Panel: Regen vs Degen

Transcript

yeah uh hey everyone I'm Chris Watton um the founder and CEO of moonblast um that sounds Deen enough already right um um seven years in the industry on the sea level past four years I've been having my own uh consultancy uh Business Development and development and uh we have won two awards for bringing Innovation to defi hey everyone my name is azim I've been in this space for about 11 years currently I'm the co-founder of morph for a new evm L2 with a big focus on being able to on board people in the global South hi everybody I'm Gloria and I'm the director of global events for morph

I've been in the space since 2017 and uh previously aim and I both worked at getcoin dealing with quadratic funding so we are definitely much more impacted in the regenerative cryptoeconomic space all right well we don't really have a moderators so we just going to talk about um the DJ vers re versus regen right um now I'm I'm I'm in between to be honest uh I understand the G gen style like the community as a Launchpad because moonblast is a launch pad uh at some point we were developing on blast already and uh we had to we had to pick a name I was like blast sounds pretty pretty Rock Solid right it's in

between prices for the domain was just way too high like 70,000 stuff like that and I was like uh how can we still get a domain going where we still attract The Narrative of the crypto people because let's let's be honest most of the crypto people they like the word moon when Moon and blast and stuff like that Moon blast was available so that's what we went for now coming to VCS and institutional backing that we are I mean and institutional interest that we got it's like the first thing that he say is like you need to Rebrand yeah yeah so that's that's that's pretty I mean what what when if you guys would have a project right would you go more like Dent style in terms of a name to attract people or would it be more like like the neutral

style like what's your take on that well I try to stay away from DJ style only because I think DJ style is mostly only connotated with using blockchain for defi or some type of financial gains when the technology that's underlining blockchain can be used for so much more than just having like Financial gains and so for us it's a lot about impact and like seeing what you can use the technology for to create a lasting impact and I think that's like the underlining aspect of a regenerative C I think the other thing I don't like about the way DJ works out is that it's basically unsustainable to me when I look at what it means to be D gen it means to be some new version of a Ponzi scheme right it's like it always always

has an inevitable bad ending and I think that a lot of the regen branding that while I don't think it's often communicated as best as possible what they're looking to say is that there are ways to create sustainable ways to actually create money ones that aren't exploitive and extractive because we've seen Celsius we've seen FTX we've seen you know there's been so many Luna there's so many examples of like that's what dgen is and so there is a few people who end up making a ton of money and then everyone else is screwed but the side about that too is it like it burns people who maybe don't understand like the technology aspect who want to get into the game and the first thing that they are uh brought into is some type of dgen like token and then they get completely rugged and then they're

just like I don't even want to touch anything within this space a SC exactly just look at what happened with meme cones in the last couple weeks right like meme coins were skyrocketing and there were a bunch of people who had convinced themselves that they were really good Traders when really they could have just taken a dart thrown it at a wall of meme coins made a bunch of money based on that like a monkey throwing a dart would have made just as much money as them yeah I've been saying this now for like almost two months right when Mee coins really started picking up again this is not I say that this is not the bull run yet this is a pre run to completely agree where the money where the money is going um all the money right now is going to was

going to meme coins and I said it the first proper correction of the market that we're going to get all those mean coin not all of them but a lot of them are just going to R pull and then all the new money into crypto because let's be honest a lot of the people that step into crypto to make money right from money money perspective um so mean coins is for them was for them the place to be I I do not promote mean coins at all stay away I I stay away from them at all times like I'm not into nfts at all I'm not into mean coins at all and I don't really support that either um and it's nfts that have a utility I can support that um but what people need to understand is when they step into meme coins specifically meme coins because I

mean Dubai I've been talking with hedge funds and a lot of market makers so what people need to understand is that they're actually investing and buing tokens that they're being trading to understand who are they trading against right I mean those are people from a whole other level So when you say like um people getting rigged ruged and people like ruged is like the bad players the people that are just losing a lot of money that's against market makers and against those hedge funds who understand the risk and new people in crypto just don't understand the risk whereas like um it's B cycle as well as like crypto is a scam and like right now we got a lot of the new money going specifically into those mean coins and I think that's a huge risk for the industry and The industry's

credibility yeah I would have to agree with you I think there's the one thing that I differ is that when you start to think about crypto being used as a financial asset it just kind of it's a lens of like privilege but there's a lot of people who have to use crypto as their main ways of like uh funding things because their Fiat Curren C is not stable enough so there are markets where people aren't necessarily looking at it from a financial gain per se of it but they're looking at it as more stability than the actual uh Fiat currencies that they have now they need to like utilize that aspect of it so when you start to like want to onboard more people like that but then they see you know stuff that's constantly you know creating these volatilities or like being rugged or like just not having a

really good uh Financial market and there um it makes them want to stay away from having exploration into a Sol to a problem that they face every day how stable are stable coins how safe are day it's not even just stable coins like I have some people who much rather like just get you know fund would rather get funded in like you know ethereum versus their main currency within like their you know full eras or things like that within their own country I think even if it ends up being cbdcs it's fine I I'm one of the few like who who does believe and I'm not technical enough to explain it but chatting with people much smarter than me is that there's ways to enable ekk technology added into stable coins that takes away a lot of the Privacy risk that we face with cbdcs and so

there are ways to do those things and I think about how a lot of what's going on in crypto today focuses on oh if you want to be able to onboard people in the global South it's this sort of like moral duty of people and I actually think it's it's actually an economically incentive aligned plan if you bring tens of millions or hundreds of millions or a billion people into markets where they can do peer-to-peer transactions they can have yield bearing accounts they can do they get into credit and lending markets like being able to bring all those people on chain doing basic banking activities in in regular ways and there's a lot of countries where while stable coins let's say even if we had to say with with tether or or usdc right like they're doing much better than Argentinian currency they're doing better than Turkish currency they're

doing better that you know and there's there's data continually indicating that they will and so if you put people in the position to instead of facing 100% year on-year inflation that instead they're able to put it into a with stable coins and earn 3% they're outperforming the majority of the people in the country yeah defi Landing platforms is the way to go centralized Landing platforms even though I'm using Nexus since 2017 2018 actually sorry 2017 I invested in them um they're still up there they're the only Landing platform uh they got raided a few times in Bulgaria in the US and so on these guys are still there so that means that like they things correctly for the for the time being can't talk about the

future of course when we talk about cbdcs and um uh a way to implement ZK technology into that we're talking about synthetics we're talking about synthesizing uh cbdcs like that is something that we can look forward to but we're talking about Regulators here and like really Central Bank digital currency so throwing a a synthetic token of that back one by one that is but but we put ourselves in a more difficult position by continually just having meme coins and nfts and scam projects represent us that when the people who are absolutely the least knowledgeable about crypto are the regulators and they're put in the position of they get to see a bunch of headlines and so we're much further away from being able to

have any of the actual things we need to happen because of the fact that we end up continually bolstering a lot of the garbage in this industry but that's just what the industry brings forward um I mean let's let's be honest about it I mean uh you've been 11 years in crypto you you remember definitely the Ico boom like I mean 95% of those projects with scams and there's enough um uh documentaries about how the same group was is just launching one project after another like like having 50 fundraisings for icos ongoing at the same time and so on I mean this is new industry right I mean and Regulators are finally starting to wake up why because institutional money is starting to flood in right so

now they're finally stepping up they're going after binance they're going after ok so doj investigation yeah so um they're they're going after the central after centralized exchanges and honestly I've been saying this since 2018 like hello regulator wake up they're all abusing custodian license right so I mean regen people they prefer to go to sanfiz exchanges whereas dgen people they want to stay completely off I mean onchain side and not santized side so how to look at that now where like we're talking about regen versus dgen and saniz exchang is getting under all those investigations and do trust me they will

go down so what do you think about that first yeah I don't know if so the regen communities that we were part of weren't really a huge part of wanting to go through centralized exchanges we were actually more pushing the more decentralized things are then the better it is so if you have a decentralized your your refi nodes or all of these different things are like running your nodes locally is the whole aspect so the DJ the regen Community actually pushes much more for selfs much more for uh having things to be decentralized much more things for privacy on that aspect of it and really pushing that forward so that really you are in control of your finances and you can create little micro donut economies

locally where you are and then you yourself become the B so the regen thing is the aspect of regenerative cryptoeconomics is really being able to like use your crypto to leverage it for good within your local spaces and so funding those type of projects too yeah yeah I would put honestly 100% what she said all right I I really thought that the region Community was really into like the interface and everything needs to be look C and forward no it all just about you know really leveraging and creating like so what with us it was like really not about at get Point really about like having like a whale decide things start to have quadratic funding it's all about the people making the decisions and using math algorithms so that the people's decisions are what

moved forwards and more regions are more like Dow style they want to have Dows and everything that decentralized government everything on chain exactly all right absolutely no no like I I'm like I think that the more that you can explore what you can do with act region aspects you know regenerative economics the whole region space uh the more that you start to see like that actually can have impact for the future and it like kind of aligns back with like the core values of being a crypto person it's very tied to like crypto Anarchy in the back end to okay when we talk about Deens and Regens right there are really good projects out there even blockchains I'm not going to name them yeah but uh there's one

upcoming um and when we look at Solana everybody says oh that's a DJ Community now what makes a DJ Community is like justers the mem coins that are being launched and so on and so on what but when a blockchain itself and a technology I'm not talking about Solana here anymore because I personally dislike Solana because it can just be taken down like this and it went down so many times already yeah it's stupid um where where do you make a different what's your what's your stance when a blockchain from technology point of view and it's completely decentralized has a let's say close to a million community that is all into copy paste

trolling um and and so on like a a true DJ Community actually and that is supported by the founders of a blockchain what is your take on that when the technology is really good but they're supporting a complete DJ community so I think at the end of the day it has to be your funding projects Beyond just like we're going to go to the mo we're going to get rich like that just the aspa aspect of that within region communities you're looking at impact where like we want to fund open source computers we want to have clean air we want to have like stop deforestation so the cause itself is what you're building a community around it and the fact that you just have a token that has some value to that Community is what leverages the actual

token so it kind of is counterintuitive to Deion where they're just like hey the only cause is causing this like the price to go up within a regen Community you have CA that's like more of a impactful like thing to build a community around FL that has much more longevity as I think a lot of the D gen ones we've seen I mean since you're talking about the icos like there's just been a lot of death what I know it's a little Rich coming from someone who's the founder of an L2 but for the most part I see l2s as the new icos there's 200 of them at this point you do roll up as a service you raise some money you put a bunch of money towards infra you get marketing dollars you pump a bunch of and then you do Shady things with your token omics and then inside of

18 months all of the key people have already cashed out and then they're able going they're just going to be able to say oh like you know it was a startup and it just didn't work out but all the VCS have made their money and all the key people who were part of the organization did I see it as no different than the Ico B I absolutely agree with that like uh a lot of these l2s right now they are uh instead of doing a token sale they're doing a not sale even though a Noe is actually being used as a terminology of a package of tokens so I mean I mean a lot of these is like yeah no you buy a note from us for the infrastructure and stuff like that where actually you're buying like a package of 100,000 tokens instead of

buing token by token you buy a node and they only yeah so so they don't do say we don't we don't do a token sale we do a node sale right um that is that is that is just where we're going right now and uh my opinion is that people just need to educate themselves and see like what what every project is what they stand for what are they developing and is this for financial GS there are projects for financial gains there's nothing wrong with that it's just that um the more financial gains that you think to make out of it the more that you can get rugged on totally totally but then you start to think of like how you invest like people can invest time they can invest money they can invest thought leaderships and like you start to look at other ways that people invest

in things other than just the financial aspect of it and that can like being able to leverage all of that is really important in my I didn't know about that note thing that's that's terrible that is kind of it's Terri it's I came across and then they talked to me about and they done a huge node sale they say and I'm like so how many tokens did you sell oh yeah this amount it's like so you did do a token sale well the tokens are packed by a fixed amount and that's a note and I'm like so I mean it's a token sale still that's like no it's a note sale and people right now like there's a lot of these uh projects right now that that are just using the word noes as a way to like where a person wants to buy

actually $10,000 or $5,000 worth of tokens ah no we don't have tokens single one by one to be bought you can only buy nodes by 12,500 15,000 on top of that they attract such a big investor Community right because DG they don't understand um and they use T Twitter following base so now the whole node infrastructure is actually a lock up of tokens in it um and they're using their whole um social media with 1.2 1.5 million followers on it um to attract projects for marketing purpose huh to partner up and so on and so on so they airdrop those marketing fee which is in tokens of those projects um to their

node holders and that is their business model wow now you get it it's completely gen style and it's it's like it's like but it works you know I mean it's it's some some reason it works and it's like for me personally as a developer it's just so depressing to see this kind of stuff that they raise so much money do the ask of it to me where I'm like that is just like civil attacks it's basically a civil attack what it is you know so just it's like really how deep can you go within the pro it's just this is something that I think hasn't really been discussed enough at length yet but I I really do also blame the VCS I think this is something I've been meaning to write about but the additional Venture

funding cycle is something that you invest in over 10 years you get to find out if you're successful but the way that liquid tokens work and being able to push on projects to have shorter lockup periods and shorter total vest has made these VCS be in a position where maybe they not may they may not get the 100x over 10 years but they can get the 5x the 10x the 20x inside of 36 months or inside of 24 months and so I think that that has also really changed the way that the majority of VCS in this space are operating and being able to delineate between the ones that are actually in it for the long term and the ones that are just there to figure out how to get token price up with a short lockup period a low total vest so they can dump on you is one of the main

reasons that we're in this position I absolutely agree with that because uh when we were doing Auto economics um even here in Dubai when uh I know I mean in industry for seven years already right I know the VCS the VCS know me so I asked like okay what are toomics what are we looking at right now and they came with a disgusting toomics model right but then I have institutional support now and institutions actually look the opposite way completely the opposite way long Cliff long fasting there's a huge difference though seat stage compared to public sale price is a TOS 10 already right so I mean when I see that as a multiplier between two sales rounds before a token is even listed that does

scare me a lot because I me to economics where VCS want to see the Tams 100 and fdv possible on launch whereas from the other side we have the um the institutions that say no it needs to be sustainable it needs to be slow but the institutions are already in in the seat stage so they already have their time stand guaranteed so what to pick and I can't I can't pick between the two you know and and whatever you pick it's like you kick the other ones to the shin you know like whatever you do I think what's going to end up happen happen is while everyone is still looking at you know whether this is a bull whether this is not a bull whether this is a pullback and the bull starts again I'm mentally

actually just prepping for the next bare Market because I think that the reality is is that none of the technology or the UI ux or anything about this Tech is in the place that inside the next 12 to 18 months we're going to have some sort of mainstream Mass adoption and so for what we're doing at morph the way I'm building relationships everything is about us being in a position where we have what we need to be able to make it through the next bare Market because it really looks like after that is when we can create actual mass adoption institution is starting to come in regulation is starting to work out more people are starting to understand it there's interesting things happening cross chain and so for me personally I think this bull market is just one where

I'm like okay cool like this is great let's be ready for the bear because as soon as the actual bull starts and we already saw it the last few months people lose their brains and everyone is just trying to figure out which token's going to 100x next and so I've been mentally putting myself in a position to be like okay this is going to end soon because even the last few months I was like there's going to be a massive pullback this happened way too quickly and we've already seen that now and so yeah and and I think there's going to be pull back but we see an instant recovery and it's so crazy because I expected to have a pullback back to 40,000 yeah I I expect a real a proper pullback to come I I just don't nothing about me sees how this happened as quickly as it did I

think there's a lot of institutional Capital coming in and that's going to continue to happen potentially over time that once there's that much more liquidity in the markets that the volatility starts to go down we're not there yet so those are some of the kinds of things I'm thinking about but in general I'm just prepping for putting us in a position that five years from now we're still standing and I always look at our Builders like I always just figure out what people are building what are the builders really excited about what do there what's the technology they want to build upon because usually when there's lots of other noises the builders are just kind of focused on still the technology and where it's going and if you focus on them and creating that ecosystem around them then once the noise dies down the builders

just continue to build cool and then those are what ends up being lasting through all the different Cycles all right any final words thank you for having us yeah thank you for the chat we're still standing you know let's go we'll see how this goes next that was conversation again for the bare Market it's going to be a brutal one though it's my favorite time it be a good time to invest it'll be a good time to work I love the bare Market I love bare Market as soon as prices started going up I was like oh man this game arst I love the bare Market because then the DJ get out exactly every everyone who doesn't actually care leaves and then you get a chance to interact and engage with people who are there who really there for the long term yeah all right yeah thank you very much

you're welcome nice to be you