Connect, Part 2: Mihai Alisie and the AKASHA Foundation

Transcript

[Music] never sleeps pal hey there welcome to episode 45 of money never sleeps a podcast that looks inside the head of entrepreneurs and what makes them do what they do I'm Pete Townsen your co-host of money never sleeps along with Owen Fitzgerald this episode of money never sleeps is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialist top tier recruitment if you a colleague need help attract retaining great talent for your fintech or financial services company we highly recommend you have a chat with the team at top tier recruitment as they really know their stuff you can find them at top te recruitment.com and tell them we sent you in this episode I bring Owen into the conversation with Mii elisi the

founder of the Akasha Foundation Mii and I had a fireside chat at the Dublin Tech Summit 2019 that will recorded for episode 44 but we wanted to dig a bit deeper so we brought him back at least in the virtual world so here we go with episode 45 of money never [Music] sleeps never sleeps here we go again welcome to money never sleeps we're here in wew work du Landings in the offices of our sponsor top tier recruitment I'm Pete townzen and our co-host Owen Fitzgerald is here as well and we're here with Mii alisi the founder of the aasha foundation and one of the founders of both ethereum and Bitcoin magazine welcome to the show Mii hello everyone a

pleasure to be here awesome thanks for joining Mii thank you for having me yep so mi our listeners will be familiar with you from episode 44 uh which was a recording of the fir side chat that you and I did at the Dublin Tech Summit uh but this is um obviously we you know we're going to do kind of a part two here uh which should be interesting um but if you remember by the time we got on stage after the intro we had only 18 minutes and 48 seconds so I could still see the clock timer in my head um and that was way too short so obviously that's why you know we wanted to bring you back we had such an interesting chat I wanted to keep it going um so given that we more or less covered your formative years maybe just give us a a

quick recap um on kind of your backstory to this point um and what you're up to now uh and then we can dig in well I'll do my best to sum it up um I think it's important to go back to my like kid years uh when I was around 10 years and I stumbled upon this uh physics uh in our daily lives book that maybe understand how the thunderstorms and the Lightnings and uh this thing is not some magical thing happening in the skies but rather something that can be understood as a physical phenomena and how if you count the seconds between seeing the light and hearing the sound

you can figure out how far it is and for me I think that was U quite an important moment because it made me uh think in this way way that the word can be understood if you look uh close enough and uh fast forwarding from there I was kind of a curious mind you know the pattern of uh the KY that breaks down the stereo looks for the magnets and how it works and so on not very happy my my parents with that but uh um it was part of like how how how my childhood unfolded and I was always passionate about computers in general you know and and games and um in along the way I also picked up English from watching TV and

playing games which opened the whole New Horizon for me like for example being able to have this conversation with you and uh yeah you've got the English pretty much nailed me hi oh well thank you very much it's still kind of a rapping you know uh learning by hearing it most most of the time uh and um yeah fast forwarding uh went into High School uh informatics uh main profile then uh through University cybernetics statistics and information economy and uh right uh around the same year when I was finishing this University I stumbled upon Bitcoin and it seemed like oh my God what is this thing it sounds too

good to be true so then I started to look a bit closer into it trying to figure out is is this thing for Real uh after after few days of intense researching uh I started to believe that it is a concept that can actually work and to my surprise actually I understood how the economic part and the incentives and so on works for the Bitcoin uh blockchain uh whereas the economy in general and these kind of discussions you know you see on the the news and the television were like boring not very interesting to me but after I learned how the financial syst system and the incentives and the security of the system works in the blockchain uh world

I got curious so I like okay so now that I understand this let's see how the current Financial system works and I was horrified like oh my God the the blockchain part seems like a lot simpler and you know it would makes a lot it would make a lot more sense um and uh I think it was good that I wasn't coming into this space and trying to learn it uh with the preconceived notion on how things should uh should work uh but in the process of trying to learn this I also spotted the need for a coherent source of information because it was uh quite hard to to build this understanding on what Bitcoin and blockchain is and that's how I came up with the idea of creating Bitcoin magazine and uh actually one of the

first articles I've read when trying to you know form an opinion about this thing was written by vit butterin which I got in touch with I like hey man you know uh Bitcoin nice articles really good stuff are you interested in doing something like a Bitcoin magazine I think it would be helpful for the Bitcoin lanscape education Outreach and and these things uh surprisingly he was um you know all in sure let's do it and a few months later Bitcoin magazine was live and it was a great experience a great uh learning experience uh because none of us had any previous experience in you know doing magazines or publishing or

printing and shipping it was a whole set of challenges but it was also a great opportunity to meet projects and people and you know interact with the community from within and and get the and get the word out as well right yes that was uh actually the main uh like Kickstarter uh reason in in between uh and it also offered us a way to see the limits and what can be done what cannot be done or what can be done better and uh vit came with the idea of ethereum somewhere in late 2013 uh when he also sent me like the first lines of what later became the white paper and I was I I felt the same Rush that I uh felt when I was reading

the Bitcoin white paper and understanding the implication of that technology in at societal level and uh you know I was excited to be part of it uh as uh as a co-founder and since then like my mind was constantly rushing like oh man but uh you know uh this thing could be used in this way to solve this problem and I was seeking these uh like big problems sometimes old but now uh maybe being uh approachable from a fresh perspective using this new tool in the tool belt so um I served as vice president of theum foundation until late 2015 uh after the successful ethereum Genesis

when the blockchain was live uh I founded Akasha uh with the purpose of exploring the application and implications of blockchain Technologies uh when it comes to freedom of expression creative perpetuity and social networks in general as in removing the middleman from uh you know when you have people trying to interact with one another so the intermediation of social networks and he I I read one of your one of your recent blogs uh mihi and you know there was some pretty eye openening statements on the motivations of of the bigger social networks out there uh which uh I

hadn't quite thought about before but it really makes you sit up and take notice I'm happy that it had that effect actually it was an experience for me and the article was written as I was going through the process of you know opening my eyes so I'm happy you you got through that also T tell me what what Akasha means so um Akasha means a a couple of things so as a word it has roots in Sanskrit and means ether but ether in as a meaning changed throughout time so if we go you know thousands of years back uh it meant something more like a metaphysical internet of consciousness

conect ing Humanity with infinite knowledge and you would have these akashik records functioning almost like a sort of blockchain uh recording every experience thought and idea into this Universal database uh which is accessible to people entering you know this metaphysical connection to the internet of Consciousness uh that's like the more uh let's say poetic side of the Akasha as a as a word and then on the other side Akasha is also an an abbreviation for advanced knowledge architecture for social Human Action and U you know if if you've seen through the blogs and the communication we are trying to to get out there is that um

social networks are are a great tool enabling people to come together as one and it's uh like with the technologies that we have now like blockchain cryptocurrencies and a bunch of other interesting new tools uh it's more just about discussing about things or sharing these things or liking or commenting on these things I think the next wave of innovation will bring more uh in in our interactions including the ability to coordinate and organize Collective action and not any kind of collective action intelligent Collective action so I hope with the work we're doing with Akasha and the experiments we have done for the past few years that we will uh get this uh narrative out there making people aware that this blockchain

technology can be more than just you know coins tokens and uh get rich quick uh opportunity but something more meaningful and deep that can have a lot of impact in the lives of millions of people out there maybe billions who knows yeah absolutely and I get that I think it is it is really important and um I have a lot of conversations with people at the Enterprise level especially in financial services and you know given the Awakening that I had 5 years ago where like you but probably a few years after you Mii I did read the the Bitcoin white paper and I immediately started to think about the use cases and financial services um and I think a number of folks had done that but like anybody um and I think it was

perhaps Bill Gates who said this is that people tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the uh short run and underestimate the impact of technology in the long run um so you know I I think it's it's it's an important thing that um you know we're able to get the word out like at the beginning with you with Bitcoin magazine uh but then you know just keep telling the story as much as much as possible with your background with the formative years with Bitcoin Magazine with ethereum um also even during your formative years kind of the the cybernetics and informatics type um

you know uh curriculum that you followed in University I thought was really interesting all this seems to be leading and and that getting to know you now a bit I really kind of feel like I can see where this is going um with the aasha foundation and why it is so tied to you um as an individual now whether that may be a you know um a good thing or something we want to explore more in terms of you know what it means for the aasha foundation longer term is a different thing but you know can you maybe talk for a minute about how this is you know tied to your own ideology really and how and perhaps even beyond that it has become bigger and more of a collective ideology kind of along the lines of what the Akasha Foundation is

trying to achieve a minute might be a squeeze but I'll do my best um so the the question like why are you doing this or why are you an entrepreneur it comes back to the why yeah I came a few times and it was asked also by myself to myself you know trying to do the soul searching and figuring out my own motivations um and it wasn't until I don't know a few years when I found the right word uh because um like first of all uh it's not for the money you know uh I think my main motivation revolves around an intrinsic fulfillment

of feeling that I'm doing something purposeful and meaningful uh and the extrinsic part like you know the the monetary compensation and and this sort of uh things are more of a side effect of doing a you know or or a job well done and it wasn't until later when I discovered the term social entrepreneurship as a better way of describing like what am I doing and why and it that's when I was able to articulate it in this way and see myself more as a social entrepreneurs because uh um it's about making a difference in the world and Technology can help us change the world both in good and bad ways right and I think uh it's important to note here that uh technology can help

us so it's about still the human component is in there uh whereas much of the narrative these days when we're looking towards the future involves some kind of AI you know magically solving all our problems and you know climate change and poverty and the diseases all gone and in the process everyone fingers crossed please no Terminators but uh you know uh but but the logical conclusion at least you know and this is also the scenario for many dystopian kind of science fiction movies is that the AI would get to a point where uh it tries to optimize the the flow and the result output and humans become like

this inefficiency in in the the bigger picture where what I argue is that you know coming from more the the collective intelligence side of things and appreciating the uniqueness of each individual composing a bigger social network or multiple being part of multiple social networks at the same time is um something that we cannot lose uh in the future if we want to have a chance as a continuation respecting The Roots we have as social beings and uh many people like Focus today on the tech alone uh but uh it's also important to note how technology changes us its users and like in the post you mentioned previously the metamorphosis part two I

was kind of mapping how just one second of this Collective time ocean that we create it's a side effect of us being online connected to the same network uh equals 1 140 years so every second like now until now I think we we've run through a few thousand years already but uh the idea here is that in this 140 years if you look back in historically what happened 140 years ago you had like the refrigerator you had the first hearing device you had the first automatic speeching telephone system and a bunch of other things that today are normal and we cannot even like really imagine our society today working

without this puzzle pieces or it would look totally different so in a similar way today when we look at the social networks and the Technologies and the tools we use we have to contemplate how these tools will affect and how will this uh impact our humanness as in what does it mean to be uh human and I I just to to add something here uh that um I think uh that the focus here is on technology but the technology is not really the problem here and I would even say that we have it right it's not so much about needing to build that AI or needing to build that thing which arguably you know might be a very big

challenge for an individual mind to to build but uh it's about the the process of us being better at creating shared understanding coordinating better cooperating better and collaborating better among ourselves so technology is there this process the human side of it us coming together and so on could use uh you know some improvement so I feel that with this uh take we we have now with aasha foundation and the tools we're building we try to improve these things and tap into the natural abilities we have as human beings living on this planet as social creatures and that many times and especially you know

like social media today um let's say ignores this uh may be partly caused by this uh last 100 years view when it comes to crowd psychology and so assuming that masses in general are dumb well I'd say it's uh you know something were challenging and seeing if that's really the case but based on the last few years and the research and the experiments we've uh done so far involving technology blockchain and so on I would say that this assumption can be turned on its head and actually proing the process how this notion of collective intelligence might even offer us you know now putting again the future science fiction script here uh more like a human right uh brain

hemisphere even though the metaphor is not really accurate but when it comes to creativity to this uh um Imagination aspect of us being able to jump not from A to B to C but from a to z or uncover new possibilities that sometimes are simply Out Of Reach for a classic Ai and then who knows maybe in this future picture Humanity will uh keep its humanness when it comes to us social beings interacting with each other and so on and coexist with this other analytical left side hemisphere acting more like the AI putting us in touch crunching the numbers from sensors and so on and offering it to the individuals you know the citizens the smarter

citizens to make decisions and inform their decisions in their daily lives so you know I I feel this is something worthwh exploring uh and money is not the main motivator here right and Mii can I ask because you talk about it being a purpose um something we commonly come up against when we're talking to entrepreneurs is their challenge about I suppose bringing in additional people you know it's just kind of it's your baby and handing it over and trying to identify the right people but because what you're doing has such a purpose to it does that make it easier or harder to identify then the right people to work with well the beautiful part is that everywhere you have individuals acting

in teams or like part of a network of individuals the problem of collaboration is ever present so in theory at least everyone uh as long as uh you know is being part of a collective can benefit from uh a tool that imp proves this shared understanding generation and being on the same page aligned when acting as part of a group and I feel um in the first stages yes it might be uh more challenging um let's say pitch uh to some uh some parts of of the audience but at the same time I feel that if we take the blockchain community or like the ethereum community uh as an example

that's already 1.2 plus million people out there if we take ethereum meetup.com as a source and these people are self-organizing making these events happen and you know they generate this value within the community Through social learning the kind of Renaissance coffee shop People bouncing into each other exchanging ideas working on new projects finding about each other's projects joining forces so uh I believe if in the first stages and this is you know like everything in the blockchain space an experiment ultimately uh us collaborating with these communities in the first stages can offer us the lessons uh that would help us to pitch it better and to offer something like

you know look this is the community and what it was able to achieve before and this is the community and what is able to achieve now so when you have like some real data and some real examples that you can show I think many more people will be able to connect and see how this can be helpful for them as well like you said I think give where the technology is at and you talk about it being an experiment like everyone who's involved has chosen to get involved you know they're on it's their own purpose so I think that obviously makes it easier then to identify the people who want to be more involved and to build more solutions as opposed to just you're just building another startup and trying to hire the right people it's a different kind of uh mindset it's I suppose it's different

types of people involved yeah I I was um was introduced to someone recently who is you know probably late 20s had been running um a nice siiz book at an investment bank and had done some big deals and then had their eye opening moment their Awakening A couple of years ago and left and went to go work it specifically in the in the Bitcoin space um and then you know with the with the crypto winter that that we've gone through uh she lost her job but then um now has gone back into the investment banking Community to try to influence change from the inside um which I thought was pretty cool and was pretty interesting um Mii just on you know some of the things we were talking about with regards to the social networks one of

the things in your blog post was that I think it was something to the effect of 70,000 years um worth of time that is kind of captured on daily social network users today uh in terms of the time that they're spending on their app I've Got a Friend um who recently deleted one of her social network apps um just because she was spending so much time on it and just said listen the only way for me to actually stop doing this is to get off my phone and I think you know like you were saying you know the The Human Side of this is that everybody has something to add right even the person that you may think you have such huge differences with may have a different View and a different perspective on something that could add to your own knowledge like there's so much noise out there with the

social networks of you know pictures of people's kids even though I'm a terrible offender of that um and you know and just exchanging social greetings that could be done in person um but you know in terms of creating this next step of moving um up the you know the pyramid um like we talked about on episode 44 um of data to information to knowledge to wisdom most of what we see out there in terms of the social networks that exist today is data and a you know bit of information uh rather than moving towards knowledge and wisdom right um what what's going to be happening next for you with this um in terms of um where aasha is going in the next in the

next year um so I think uh it's important to note how uh even the word social network has been in a way co-opted by you know Facebook and all and I'd like to make a mention that that over 70,000 years is based on very conservative numbers of like 24 hours average per day per person 24 minutes yes which is like usually it's a lot you know a bigger number and it's just Facebook alone so that doesn't take in consideration like Instagram the Snapchats the twitters and so on and so forth so the number is actually a lot larger but like the the main thing that uh kind of triggered this uh um I I

don't even know how to describe it but it was an eye opening moment definitely it was that uh the founding president of Facebook uh Sean Parker you know also connected to Napster uh uh declared in one of these interviews that the thought process behind Facebook being the first of these applications like referring to the Web 2.0 social networking apps Wave uh was the first to uh to actually get it and ask the question how can we consume uh your time and conscious attention as much as possible so it's like if when you think about like the main motivation behind something like this it's almost like you have this new resource in the form of this shared ocean of time made out of each seconds

of every person connecting to it to this ocean of time and you have almost like this parasitic kind of entity now uh drilling almost like you know you have the O drilling uh uh Platforms in the ocean extracting uh the time out of the lives of each of these uh you know human being uh to towards uh you know more advertisements and increased profits for the shareholders which you know ethically there are some you know questionable decisions there but ultimately if you look at it from the perspective of of a for-profit entity they are answering the questions well and they are generating the profit in the interest of the shareholder however the problem here is that their patent so

cute and like you have friends Facebook is your friend man and Google and everyone is like they're all your friends oh check out that cute Emoji but in the background like the and I think Snowden had a really cool tweet and I I'm not going to go now and search it but uh more or less the idea was that uh the social media networks posing as social media network is one of the biggest you know public uh uh exercise of images from um the department of work posing as the department of security or something like that and in this case we have like this uh advertising platforms at their core it's like you know if we look at Facebook super specialized

really on that note uh posing as social media networks and that makes you question even the very interfaces like how are you seeing how is information presented why is that button there why is that uh flickering there in the corner right and even the the process through which these interfaces were designed are in some cases exploiting or like many cases actually exploiting this human vulnerability of creating this dopamine hit when you check your status when you do something and yes this is something that is found throughout daily usage but these guys are systematizing uh this process and creating this highly addictive uh uh kind of dark cloud like the dark side of

the cloud here that is uh just sucking away stiffening from siphoning from the lives of all these billions of people around the world without even being aware of this happening yeah I'm sitting here shaking I'm sitting here shaking my head because that dopamine hit that like button and I remember saying to my wife at one stage oh let me post this picture of the kids and see how many likes I get off that and she's like you're such a loser I said you're right you're right I am you know um you you've made some some very hard decisions along the way Mii in terms of um in in terms of your life and in terms of what you're doing um with the aasha foundation can you can you talk about for a minute what was one of the the hardest decisions that you've

made well there have been many along the way but um you know when I think about this question like the first thing that comes to mind is um um letting someone go from from a team is always hard for me so you know if we go back with Bitcoin magazine and so on when I started kind of on this entrepreneurial Road uh and continuing with the foundation and going all the way to aasha today uh this is something that hasn't got more any more comfortable or easier right and part of it is because I care about the people I'm working with and we create like these connections that go beyond just you know employee or employer and we

connect as people as friends and working and having fun together and I think that's also part of the playful creativity and some of the things that you can see through the website if you go there and so that's like an expression of us having fun together and um this is definitely something that um never gets easy and it it's hard at least for me yeah I hear you I hear you you know when you do that you do all that soul searching to bring someone onto a team and a big team with with a big purpose that when it doesn't work out it's hard to it's hard to swallow that yeah um you you've been with the aasha foundation and and having that running now for a couple of years um you

know you've been getting a lot of positive feedback along the way a lot of validation along the way I expect when was a moment you know recently or or in the you know since since You' started this um that you realize that you had something that was um really worth pursuing and pushing forward um you know beyond all boundaries so uh there was this moment when there was like an internet blackout I think as a protest against like SOA and pipa for those that still recall it uh and you know you had this moment where Wikipedia was down and a bunch of other big websites were down as a protest against like censorship and this law that was about to be passed in us I believe uh and that's when I was like looking at it and and actually I

tried uh I found myself trying to access knowledge on Wikipedia but it was down as part of the protest against like censorship and I was like man these guys are pro protesting against censorship true censorship right in that sense like they look how the world could look like with us being down but they were actually doing what it was supposed to do if the law has been passed so arguably you know yes it could awaken some people but at the same time uh they were taking more like this protest of going outside with um like cardboards and say like oh down with SOA and pea when today digitally at Le speaking the services we are using and that where we

choose to put our time that in itself is a vote that can you know lead to big big impact in the long run it's always about the long tail at this online and you have many many examp examples of successful companies that were able to become successful because of that long ter now going back to the problem of censorship and so we were working uh or beginning to uh work on the aasha as this you know freedom of expression and uh the persistent web aspect of it uh and we were thinking that yes we are definitely on the right uh Road here because this is a big problem and you know follow in the following years you had all this problems with YouTube

beginning to you know censor various creators like economically speaking boom you have no ads on YouTube your whole Revenue source is gone and uh a bunch of other you know in between uh like you know Twitter and a bunch of other companies that found themselves in a position than and this is due to the architecture they used the centralized aspect of it where you know in turkey and other let's say challenging jurisdictions these companies have to comply with the government request and other corporations if they want to keep uh to to still be doing business in that area so as in the question for an advertising platform is hey do you still want to make all those Millions from the

citizens based in this jurisdiction well yes uh okay then I need the personal information of that guy who is the friend of that guy and then you have like this uh backfire for all the people that taught these platforms are actually helping them to do something and Achieve something for the better M of their society and groups but then they found out in a big big problem because the the tool that was supposed to help them at least you know naively thinking that uh is now used against them and not only against them but you know since the social network aspect it's also them the friends of their friends and families and so on which if you go back to like you know the SS and KGB and that kind of

uh all kind of surveillance mindset the surveillance capitalism man this is really bad and it's something that we should not really accept as the way things are because now I believe we have new ways and new ways of U let's say tap into value that is simply not acknowledged yet as value like you have uh for example projects like ipfs and filecoin and swarm for ethereum and a bunch of others that seek to monetize or offer people the ability to monetize their excess and surplus of hard disk like the storage space and there are others that are trying to build

computation platforms where you can monetize the excess of computing power and this is like without even touching on the time Banking and other like Universal basic incomes and there are a bunch of other models that can be tried but if we stick to the more tangible ones like you can imagine now tools that help people connect with each other organize corrective action intelligently and you know learn from it and make decisions and so on without treating the these users as the product as something that has to be monetized and grinded into this funnel of extracting the data information and knowledge served in package nicely to advertisers that can microt Target advertising campaigns uh exploiting that human vulnerability so

now I argue that we can do better and at least we should be open to the idea of like these black swans when it comes to economic models using these things and I still believe that we haven't really scratched the surface of the new business models and the new opportunities that are open by these Technologies so I think the the future is looking bright but we have to realize that we are now in first in a problematic situations becoming aware of the problem is the first step towards fixing it absolutely and and I think that you know this space is moving so quickly um in terms of you the technology side of it it and how that is developing but also the population growth like when you mentioned we're close to 8 billion people on earth I was

still working off of five or six billion right um sorry trillion is it trillion yeah uh no we're in billions now we're in billions yeah yeah yeah I'm not trillions would be crowded yeah I'm not sure how long this planet would last if it was in the trillions um you you've obviously you know I can hear a lot of this in in in your voice Mii and in the conversations we've had that you know there have been a number of things that have been helpful to you over the years in terms of what makes you you right but just from your perspective what are a couple of the personality traits that you think have been helpful to you um in pursuing this um deep questions here um so I've I've been uh I've read actually a really nice

book uh it's called The Power of character strengths and um in this book uh the authors uh and by the way there's also a test that you can take at Via character.org I believe and they managed to pack like the um let's say traits as in a 24 U character strengths uh grouped into six virtues and you know it's a really nice book because it makes you it makes you aware that it's uh everyone Manifest this it's almost like uh you know the experiment with micro Expressions where you had these researchers going to all kind of remote areas like the papa guini and so on that didn't had contact with civilization to see if they express similar emotions

with their faces you know and indeed these people without having any contact with civilization they would smile when they are happy or they would frown when they are set so that those are like U uh let say embedded in our nature like hardwire uh not necessarily something socially learned so in a similar way I see this as a as a way of almost like building a periodic table of character strengths that each of us has and manifest to a certain extent and uh in here you know there are quite quite a few cool ones I'm just going to say the virtues they are split in Courage Transcendence Justice uh wisdom and knowledge Temperance and humanity and each of them you know have like five six

but if I would try to map this out and you know looking uh through the lenses and understanding I have today uh I would say the Curiosity uh part is definitely something uh important that helped many times just you know uh stay with the problem a bit longer or search for some things that some people might might find boring or not interesting uh which goes hand in hand with the love of learning which is another character strength uh I I enjoy you know reading and finding out more and I usually go down the rabbit hole when there's something like really uh picking my uh interest uh and then there's also like the humor and playfulness uh sometimes you know it's important to find

the humor in something even if it's like one of those tough situations like you know find the the humor in the the good and the bad and also um like the persistence and hope are a couple of U things that keep me going even when things you know were not going as as as planned alongside gratitude so even when things were not going as planned or expected and yes uh you know like making a timeline yes we will have this version by then or will have this feature by X it's like you have to live in a a constant disappointment so to say it's like Milestones are great for constantly passing uh you know and going over over over them um and um yeah I think these

are like the the main ones that really help me throughout this journey it's uh it's a and by the way it's a cool book if anyone is interested in more like self-discovery self-improvement and so on this is a really nice read oh absolutely I'm going to have a look at that we'll reference it in the show notes and and Mii everything you just said there you know kind of kind of validates my perception of you uh but definitely did learn a few new things there um and so so really cool to hear all this and I I think it's quite helpful in you know helping to tell the story of of Akasha as well I think we're at the point in time in the interview where Owen likes to ask his favorite question um so Owen I'll I'll hand it over to you to do just that yes so uh

Mii look we've learned a huge amount over the course of this episode and the previous interview with Pete around your journey um is and you talked to us about some of your personality traits there is there anything about you that people wouldn't expect to know about you uh well there is something I'm not sure how many people uh actually know this but there was a brief uh period before entering the blockchain space when I played the poker online semi-professionally and um I was very close to begin playing poker professionally including like real uh real life tournaments and I got to the point where I was able to play like 12 tables at the same time on two monitors and like um The Experience uh started as a way to see if I can understand the

game you know air codes uh and beat it in a way of using skill and know skill and knowledge rather than lock because many people take the Assumption like poker is a gambling game and so on I like what if it's not because I saw so many pro players and and people that were making constantly like decisions and they were winning so it can it cannot be just luck there has to be something there and uh yes there is luck involved not to say that there isn't because no hand is 100% win situation but the fun part is actually navigating the Sea of uncertainties and playing the mind game like constantly assessing what does the so the first step like you know in the problem solving would be what cards do I have first understand the game what cards do I have in my hand and

by the way this is Texas hold them so you have like two cards and then you know up to five cards down and you try to see what combinations you have and then assess also what combinations the other person has and um uh when talking statistics you know touching a bit also with the the the the university there it's a very uh interesting like to look at poker tournaments in general and there is this pH called the bubble which you know also is found in in in crypto but it's not that kind of bubble it's a bubble in the sense that uh for example if we take a nan uh tournament with people uh playing this pocker game they each put a certain ENT entry fee and then from these nine person only three

will walk away with some money the six the rest of go with nothing so you have this interesting risk reward kind of meta game unfolding in the background especially as you're approaching the let's say six person left five person left and even four person left like the four is like the peak and in here is like there are like some very interesting edge cases where even if you have something as good as an Ace Ace in your hand or or an Ace King you have to understand that because you don't have that 100% guarantee is like oh I have it's it's done I win there is still like a 20% or 30% even with like two random cards so uh like part of the the lesson that I have kind of learned that

at no point you you should take anything as a guaranteed success but along the way and you know I've played over a million hands and if we take like over a million hands taking consistently the right decisions uh adds up and if uh if on the other side you put lock side by side you can see the difference clear day and night so this uh this is something that uh I think kind of also help me uh in my kind of entrepreneurial Endeavor and I'm not sure how many people are aware of this kind of episode in my well I'll I'll tell if we get you back to Dublin mihigh there's a place that where we can take

you where there's plenty of Poker to be played so I think that's definitely on our list and uh and we wein have fun that all right well thank you so much for joining us it was a real pleasure to learn more and to talk to you again and I think we we will keep talking um but thanks for coming on the show Mii yes thank you and thank you for having me and uh thanks everyone for listening in all right cheers thank you [Music] that wraps it up folks thanks to Mii for opening up his mind to help us figure out why he does what he does remember if you are a colleague need help attracting retaining great talent for your fintech or financial services company get in touch with a team at toptier recruitment is they really know their stuff you can find them at toptier recruitment.com to

learn more about mihi and the work of the Akasha Foundation you can find more information as well as in network at donon at Akasha org if you like what you heard today please subscribe to money never sleeps on iTunes and leave us a festar review you can also subscribe VI our website to channels like Spotify and Stitcher so just go to the subscribe page on money never sleeps. and follow the links if you're searching directly on iTunes or Spotify money never sleeps is spelled as all one word for more info and links check out the show notes on money never sleeps. you can drop us a line on info@ money sleeps. or MNS show on Twitter as for me I increase the odds of startup success DM me on Twitter at pwns innv if you want to know more and you can follow Owen on Twitter at Owen

fitzgerald9 finally thanks to Conan bro from create sound for recording and editing this podcast till next time thanks for listening see [Music] you hone never sleeps [Music] pal