Permissionless II Recap: RWAs, DeFi Resurgence, Top Takeaways

Transcript

this episode is brought to you by the chronicle protocol a cost-efficient transparent and decentralized Oracle Chronicle has developed a Next Generation Oracle primitive called scribe which reduces Oracle gas fees on l1s and l2s by over 60 percent you'll hear more about Chronicle later in the show hey everyone before we get into today's episode I want to take a second to acknowledge vouch with over 4 000 startups insured from napkin sketch ideas to large IPOs vouch is the insurer of choice for crypto companies including l1s l2s Dows protocols and a whole lot more they're exclusive coverages are enhanced for crypto covering everything

from regulatory defense to Smart contract vulnerabilities with vouch you're not just ensuring your startup you are investing in peace of mind so you can keep on building you'll hear more about vouch later in the show [Music] all right everyone we missed you last week Santi and I were both at permissionless my voice is slightly recovered but I'm running on like 30 it feels like uh half the people I know got like bronchitis laryngitis some sort of covid between between permission list and token 2049 and uh there was some event in Germany as well I feel like half the industry's hurting right now so I mean it's always true that like the market does puke every time there's big conferences the markets just will do some big movement it's always because

consensus we did that we gave people a sell-offs we'll see what's going on Main net is happening I guess uh next week uh one thing was the reason why we we usually are not here to blame but the reason why we missed the podcast is I had to catch a flight and we went to the booth the Kraken Booth nice little kind of like Aquarium and it was occupied by the gentleman of bankless you know Ryan uh we'll say Aaron so you know we we play nice and so we said hey look you know we just you know record and whatnot and we couldn't do it so um anyways here we are so so Santi never preps for any of these episodes and I forced Santi I said you're off the show if you don't do some damn research so uh he DM me at 11 PM

last night said you have to like do your work I'm like are you telling is this a subtle way of telling me that I've like just I suck at this and you know honestly maybe maybe if there's one take away from permissionless two years in the bear Market you just gotta work harder man you just gotta work harder to get through this so okay here's what I asked here so here's what I want to talk about I wanted to um uh talk about just takeaways from the conference I think it was a kind of classic bear Market conference in a lot of ways um and I'd be very curious to hear your I know you weren't able to make it last year I'm not sure I'm not sure if you've been to our other conferences digital assets Summit kind of our other buttoned up you know conference brand but I think

this might have been the first block Works event you've yeah they've ever attended so I'd just be curious maybe we can go like take away for takeaway you share takeaway I'll share take away yeah just be curious to hear uh overarching thoughts on on the event and maybe get into your first takeaway well before before we do that I just want to put out on the record that um for for history yes I have not attended a blockwork sponsored event not only that but the reason why we're here is because I got rejected first time by these two gentlemen Mike and Ayano when I suggested to them that we should do a D5 podcast while as a verify and D5 was not even a thing uh and that was right before d by summer so I got rejected and the best way to get my attention is to reject me so uh

it took the second chance uh and and then finally we did we actually started the podcast when D5 was like ended and it's been like January 2020 and you're like totally totally missed the opportunity to do a great podcast candidly it would have been difficult because I was so busy uh while it's a Purify uh but anyways uh one of the and I'll start with I guess my first observation is if you were to kind of take the sample size of the conversations that were happening on these kind of either during panels or inside conversations and events that we were at with font managers with investors uh just people in the industry and Builders is it feels like there is renewed interest in defy not all pockets

of D5 but the key word here is real world assets was something that was discussed heavily in the conference um not everyone agrees that it's going to be a category but you know I was in the panel of who's still investing in crypto which was admittedly could have been a very short panel because no one is investing in crypto these days uh which is another takeaway of mine that I'll get to later but I think real world assets was one of probably the main topics of conversation uh whether you believe that to be real or not um I think it's uh it was one of the things that uh throughout the conference was Buzzy you know like like in East Paris it was like you know layer twos like Roll-Ups this theme thematic one of the big themes is real world lessons I

don't know if you'd agree with that um I would agree and disagree so do you remember I don't know if you called chow oh you were on with ciao yeah yeah so you're one of I think one of the best panels was you and Chao uh Vance who's the fourth calcium look I thought Tom did a great job moderating that yeah this thing he says uh he said the real world asset is a fake narrative and I'd be curious what you thought of uh if you remember when he said that yeah I think his point was look stable coins are real or lessons like uscc is a real world asset and I think his point was more nuanced Around The Way We characterize and describe real world assets as a catch-all phrase and so we ought to be a little bit more Discerning when it comes to talking

about real world assets which is what exactly are we talking about here because it is a catch-all category and I think his point was we ought to be a little bit more Discerning and part of the conversation I mean it was a 40-minute panel but we could have gone to another panel separately just purely talking about the different classifications buckets of real world assets that we think are going to get more traction and some that will not um and the second observation was particularly talking about like use cases was um kind of certain real world assets lend themselves more to gaining traction on chain than others that just will not and just probably deserve not to even have a crypto native like like wrapper to it if you will yeah

so to this takeaway I would say I agree I think one of the clear takeaways from this event is that the two main ways that you kind of import yield into crypto today are I think maker actually does a pretty good job of importing yield um it kind of is a tedious process you have to do you know uh like the steakhouse team does a lot of work there they kind of you have to Value off-chain assets and but they do a good job of importing some of this higher yield on chain and then stable coins import yield on chain and I think one takeaway that I had from this conference is uh in the coming year or years we're going to find and develop more ways to import yield on chain and actually I forget if leschner said this on stage but he said

this to me off stage he said I really hate this idea of real world assets because what you're actually saying when you say the word real world is you're saying that on chain is not the real world they're not real assets so there are traditional assets and there are crypto assets or there are off-chain assets and they're on chain but I think this idea of real world assets is um we always get the nomenclature wrong in crypto right it never changes by the way you've never changed a term once it's like we did crypto then like blockchain not not crypto and you know Equity not tokens and then web3 and like anyways uh you know we do certain things very well as an industry but nomenclature is not one of them yeah all right so take away

your takeaway number one is real world assets are coming more ways to import yield on chain yes and do you think that this is remember in 2018 it's like very tokenized real estate 2019 like token do you look I mean I I know you want to get to your takeaway but maybe I'll cheat and this is a big takeaway a second takeaway yeah give me number two it is it is very common in Bear markets to be skeptical of things that have been tried before uh meaning in this case Harbor like Harvard was a tokenization platform it I remember yeah you know a lot of like crypto like OG's like or even like in the price cycle remember Harvard is super hyped there's a lot of interest and it didn't get traction it didn't uh

fulfill its promise it's very common like it's not to say that like things and this happened in the internet right like pets.com failed and then you saw like you know the same model with a different kind of different infrastructure that allowed for that it was a good idea it was just like it was the right time it was too early the infrastructure was not there and I think that's the state where crypto is today it is very and you see a lot of skepticism within crypto around these ideas uh and so yeah it's just important to be mindful of things that have been tried in the past revisit some of those with because the infrastructure has come a long way and so that that's like my takeaway number two right you would have as you as you as happened now real world assets are quite polarizing tokenization

of these things is very polarizing because it failed before and so it's just mindful to be you have to be mindful of that so that's um that was my one of my takeaways I'll jump into the front is that the most bullish people in this market seem to be actually some of the traditional Capital markets players um and not just semi Thunder too that was my third yeah that's your third yeah there you go I mean it's tied into that one though it's it's not just the capital markets players but it's I mean uh a very overlooked announcement I will say was layer zero took the stage with Google right Google put on some Heavy Hitters onto the main stage right they were the last panel on the main stage um and I think you're seeing like right

layer Zero's partnership with Google uh this is around the Oracle right uh solution yeah exactly recent development a lot of a lot of uh uh Marines came out saying like this is this is counter or crypto decentralization like yada yada but yeah it was yeah which I get and I think uh Uma the Uma found her heart uh yeah pushed back on that as well like and which I totally get I think that's a fair pushback um but there's like legitimate big players coming in um PayPal P what is it py USD stablecoin uh Visa is expansion into stable coin settlement on Solana uh BlackRock ETF developments that were talked about uh there were some uh right Franklin Templeton spoke there uh there were some really big

asset managers that sent like 10 people there they didn't speak they wouldn't speak they wouldn't let us say that they were there but they were they if you were at them yeah not only investors but there were also Builders right and it was interesting I mean right before permissionless we had Tyron from JP Morgan was on the podcast uh and it was very Illuminating to hear I mean for when I was at JP Morgan you couldn't even whisper crypto uh in the elevator you would have been you know like Jamie was calling on rat poison and whatnot camp but it was very interesting people should go listen to that podcast and even he was he was at the conference it was great to catch up with him we I mean we could have done uh two or three more episodes to cover the different

kind of components of what JPMorgan is building um it is a bit frustrating because a lot of that because of lack of privacy they cannot operate in a kind of open environment like ethereum um body was quite Illuminating to hear him and his the interest particularly in this market conditions of how much buying there is within the organization how much interest there is and that's not just CP Morgan I think you and I were talking about that there were there were so many other not just investors family offices endowments that were there because I I think like an event like permissionless really the composition of the crowd and I said it before which is one of the reasons why I wanted to go because I think it's it's more diverse it's not super like crypto native purely um but there were a lot of corporations

that were there and have been doing work for like six years and and the question was hey does Terra the regulatory environment like Luna all these blow-ups like does that like has that been more of an uphill battle internally to convince you know management that this is something that is worthwhile and they're like you know on the margin um you know something like JP Morgan like yeah like allocators have certainly like interest is Wayne but but we're still moving along I mean there's we've done the work we appreciate the opportunity it's going to be big one day and and we cannot wait for that date to come because we need to be thinking about we need to be thinking ahead to gain an edge on our competitors yep and that's true for PayPal that's stripe JPMorgan so many others that I think

were the event that you and I and others met with that it was really interesting to see yeah all right so we have takeaway number one yeah we're figuring out more ways to import yield on chain takeaway number two what was your second takeaway well my second takeaway was uh um what was that particularly amongst crypto investors I think there was a cohort that is now thinking about ideas that have been tried in Prior cycles and appreciate yeah that there's more infrastructure um there's and we ought to revisit some of those like you know in the panel that we you know we had Advanced between where Kyle myself we're all actively investing uh Xiao from D5 Alliance and and we all were of in agreement when we said yeah like this time is different in

the sense it is infrastructure has come a long way since 2018 that we ought to revisit certain use cases like real world assets so that was my second takeaway number two takeaway number three I would say the industry is gaining legitimacy even in pretty crappy markets um and they're they're a lot more like web 2 and specifically Capital markets players there that are at more actively participating than you could ever imagine so that's number three number four so those maybe maybe I'll throw a spicier one in here and I'll I'll try to uh maybe get you to push back a little we haven't been spicy enough okay um so when you pull up crypto Twitter the uh I think crypto uh crypto Twitter narrative has always had this kind of

ethereum tilt to it and no no wonder why it's it's you know obviously the biggest smart contract L1 um it did feel like these kind of Worlds of l1s are converging and if it felt like if you listen to folks on stage whether it's Ben from optimism or um you know Steve room from and uh Ethan Buckman from Cosmos right with uh you know Anatoly from Solana it feels like a lot of the issues that say Solana's deal dealing with they're peeking over at other chains to see how they're solving it it seems like the issues that you know optimism is about to start facing right those are kind of the classic Cosmos issues value capture on the op token coordinating upgrades

interoperability between things built on optimism those are things Cosmos has been trying to figure out for years right uh soon once they figure that out they're gonna be forced to contend with kind of the classic Solana problem right low latency like high throughput things like that and it feels like these blockchains are like converging both in goals app chain thesis used to be a cosmos thing now it's an ethereum thing as well converging in goals but also in problems that they're trying to contend with and it makes me wonder if the future is multi if the future is multi-chain or if just the these folks are all just learning from each other and and one L1 will will win out against the other um yeah the other thing here was like

I don't know um monad some folks were talking about monad right paralyzing the uh parallelizing the evm uh the launch of Roll-Ups like Eclipse right using the SPM um The Innovation still is not done on this front I would say and so there's still even though it feels like there are too many l2s too many you know kind of all l1s like there's still a ton of innovation going on in this front so yeah yeah I certainly agree look I mean I think uh crypto Twitter can be quite toxic especially when people are losing money um people fighting like the level of negativity and social media goes up I think during these environments but also I think the folks that remain here and are still building

it also brings you together in some capacity which I think dovetails to what you just said which is there's a even for the conference I think there's more scrutiny and open dialogue within the ethereum community around raising awareness around hey optimism doesn't have for our proofs let's talk about that how's that any different than Solana we criticized Solana for some things but is it more secure less secure you don't have fraud proofs you know that's a bigger issue yeah and so I think I think I think the the intellectual honesty within the ethereum community I've sensed it as of recently has shifted tilted towards you know the better and openly have these discussions around value capture

you know I think you look to other chains that have struggled out so so I think there's sort of like uh Two Worlds if you will on one end crypto Twitter is quite toxic people are are waiting for you know are losing patience there's despair people lose money but also there's there's also kind of a collective like Hey we're on this together we're kind of suffering a bit it feels like nothing's going on but there's a lot of building in the background and I think Builders really are probably coming together more in this environment like bunkering down um and trying to learn from each other to kind of weather the storm um and so that's that's really good I think that's quite productive yeah another um let me add one more take that kind of related to this one which is takeaway number two is that um

it felt like people are kind of getting frustrated with some of ethereum's the the complexity of ethereum I would call it and looking over folks in ethereum kind of looking over their shoulder at other ecosystems saying I love the Simplicity of that um and I think that ethereum's got a crazy lead and a stupid amount of momentum right now and all the stuff with l2s like arbitrum optimism I have a takeaway related to just scroll itself um that I wanted to talk about at the end but I don't know I did I did talk to some folks specifically at the uh the hackathon which started to which was two days before the conference um and I think that they were like you know you have four eight four four coming soon which is kind of this good

start not really complete solution there's gonna be two markets is the way I understand it now there's gonna be like a block space market and a blob space market and I think some of these developers specifically that I spoke with are kind of like man this is a this is a complex landscape to uh to navigate if you're trying to build here so I wasn't with the hackathon but so I can't really comment on that but yeah I mean it's still certainly solidity and there's been you know tools out there that have made it easier for developers over time to to start coding you know get familiarized with these code bases like even Integrations like C plus plus and all these things like tooling has improved quite a bit but it's still challenging right yeah

um I guess uh so I had dinner in the first or second night there with uh some larger fawns and a fund of funds uh probably one of the largest I'm not the largest in crypto that I've built a big relationship with over the years who the new name who would I don't know I'd rather not yeah uh but nonetheless you need to know what matters here is Opie interest is dead yeah like crickets no new money has been raised um and I think it is in asking him hey is it more idiosyncratic is it like just crypto related and he's like no just generally people are hurting you know it's not it's not just crypto it's it's Venture it's hedge funds

you know it's it's uh it's a very challenged environment um so I said where do you like at what point do you think that changes uh of course then you start talking about you asked me well what should be on macro and interest rates yeah yeah no one you know you know I don't I don't know best guess so yeah I I think that's why I asking the question okay when you go and talk to like a Calpers like a big pension fund oh at one point between now and five years you ought to believe there will come a time where there's more appetite to go farther on the respecter maybe you always come down and then people naturally go and Chase yield in in farther out into a spectrum given the choice of investing in

traditional Tech traditional venture or crypto venture where are those dollars on a relative basis going to go do you think it's going to be less or more than prior cycles that was my question to him I I obviously have bias and and and the exhibit a to this question is look at historical returns of venture funds and they're terrible was this a fun to fund in crypto a large crypto and also outside like they start they were one of the earliest Funda funds in venture like in the 90s oh I know who they were and they were early as well in crypto so they have a lot of visibility and historical context to answer the

question and so I I you know when you look at like the Cambridge data around vintage returns for Venture as a NASA class they're terrible they've come down a lot the last vintage funds like 2007 2005 2008 uh or 2000 I guess 10-year fun so like 2010 plus anything that raised after 2010 is super challenge like like especially DPI like forget about DPI just like mom is like terrible and look I think hedge funds have gone through this as well like you there's an overwhelming amount of data that like mutual funds just put on an index fund and why pay a hedge fund 220.

um ISO think crypto is a very like nascent asset class and the return possibility um a venture within crypto will be more attractive purely because it's just a more emerging asset class with more opportunity um than traditional venture and more of the money is going to the larger funds like super large Venture funds I think still you know raise money why because you never get fired putting money with the larger one guys but new managers are really struggling um but yeah you know I think I think just to wrap up this point it's uh no surprise I guess but there's no money no

money coming into crypto but who's a marginal buyer I think you see these retail kind of within crypto movement of funds into the latest fad and trend but new money coming in is I think you you need a probably bigger Catalyst around on ETF uh rates come down yep um just more of that and you know I guess the last comment I don't mean to be negative as I think about how I invest I think it's the best time because if you have the money valuations are low and this is the time where you invest if you have conviction and the best builders you know anecdotally I've had three companies recently shut down three of those Founders are still in crypto are

building something new and to me that's encouraging because smart people are still in the industry still believe they have learned a lot over the last you know six years and the craziness was D5 summer and they're like hey we've learned a lot from this we shut down but we're but we're pivoting and we have this better idea and with better execution we know more people and that's great and the valuation is like uh one tenth of what it was and I think you know I just look at that and this is this is the time you ought to just be patient right yeah yeah all right give me another takeaway um well you stole my thunder around there is more skepticism within crypto than outside of it and my point there was

like there's a lot of building happening from Legacy players like the JP Morgan the stripes of the world so so that I'll just kind of gloss over that I guess um um one of the observations like I don't have context on permissions last year fortunately I got rugged by Airlines and and got stuck in New York um I didn't feel like a bear Market conference and it just because I remember what a bear Market conference yeah true there was no one no one there I went to the first binance conference in Singapore Kyle was there um he had a big thesis on BNB Kane was there man you could have gone up to CZ and had

a normal conversation with him for like 20 minutes and no one would have approached him uh today's environment he's like a celebrity of sorts um you know and so not only on sheer attendance and diversity of crowd but also on the level of excitement and we've talked about here that I don't believe there's existential risk now now we're discussing what are the use cases of this technology and which type of now we're entering that discussion around things are being used and we're being critical of the things that are being used and and the implementations of said ideas versus before it was just you didn't have anything to hold on to and so I I think it's very different it didn't feel like a bear Market conference to me um of course of course the the sentiment is not Raging Bull

but it's not not the bear Market that I'm used to seeing it certainly was not what I saw in 20 I guess 1920 um those were those were difficult they were both great and very difficult in terms of morale um so yeah that was uh I guess a subtle observation I don't know if you'd agree with that you you've been doing conferences for so many years yeah I mean you know just because last year was such an insane event for us with permissionless this one felt a little more like a bear Market conference but still like thousands of attendees I mean very different than like 2019 yeah I'll give you that right yeah yeah um and then I think candidly the venue didn't help

I think the venue was very big the venue was too one of the biggest venues in the U.S right the Austin City Convention Center like you felt there was there you didn't see the concentration right where you go to ECC Paris it is jam-packed because the event is small and so it was like it's just sort of the guy after that yeah I mean you could walk like 10 minutes to get to the culture track you know it was uh did not do something I mean it was it was a stadium I do think though like if you're if you're looking at like the conversations you had and only basing it off that it was a very like low amount of Shilling highly technical non-party atmosphere which um which is really nice yeah I know it's refreshing look every time I've gone to

conferences Raging Bull Market it's like the scene of The Big Short you want to you yeah you come out of there you're like sure and that's why I don't go to conferences anymore because it's quite tempting um but I was great to catch up with with folks and and uh you know I think a lot of a lot of the people that you would have thought that are here for the right reasons are still there and start going I think there's a certainly like more like people there's like a there's gravity there's like people people have sobered up a bit and there was a sense of skepticism for sure but I think there's there's optimism more within Builders um less with investors um and and so um yeah you know I think it's uh and even like uh students I met a few students from like University of Austin

and law and whatnot and um and it felt like they were you know they're still very excited about this like yeah people are still captivated by this and want to learn about it and take the time to to go to the conference and even send their parents and so it's great I mean it's uh I think it's it's those are the things that are are enduring and to me signals and leading indicators of kind of um of where we're going yeah I have another takeaway that I didn't know at all about before permissionless and specifically before the hackathon I think I actually learned it learned a lot it was our first hackathon we'd ever done we had 300 developers come and you had protocols like scroll it's really

interesting so scroll ZK sync fire blocks Ernst young ey a lot of other great teams basically sponsored it and then they gave bounties it was really cool to see what we had five different teams that the hackathons pulled all-nighters built some awesome stuff get coin um I'm sure there's some others I'm forgetting there um the so we talk about basically infrastructure versus consumer apps and where everyone says we're building too much infrastructure not enough consumer apps the other thing that's missing developer tooling which I never I never think about so in developer Tooling in web 2 if you want to deploy a website you want to deploy I don't know a login a checkout flow anything like that super easy to just basically deploy some

components you don't you can actually just pull up react basically pull a drop down type in what you're building social network it'll almost like auto fill the different components and react for you none of that exists in crypto so in web 2 when you want to build an app you can actually almost like Auto populate and autofill a lot of the things as an engineer in web3 in crypto you are starting from zero every single time so you can form something like something Chad gbt like help you just code in solidity uh it can yeah it can um it's not good enough so GitHub co-pilot is getting better um there are a couple there are a couple tools like that like GitHub copilot's pretty good um I built if you know the game pong like

I don't I don't know how to build um I can like build a website like little HTML CSS but like I can't build something that like pong and I used only uh chat gbt to build Palm so you can do little things like that but yeah these developer tools these a lot of the developers were just saying like like if you could build anything in the world to get more developers to come into the industry we need better developer tools so yeah it just got me thinking about from an allocate like from investing it might be interesting for you like if you see any good developers yeah yeah well there's a decentralized get get hubbed uh what is it error but nobody needs a decentralized GitHub what you need I mean I mean you could from a kind of like redundancy

standpoint but not I what I'm saying here is there's an opportunity to build more tooling for sure but then this is like a versatile like versel verse yeah yeah at I think a two and a half or three billion dollar valuation everyone's using for sale and that's just a better developer tool you know we use versa this episode is brought to you by Chronicle protocol the best on-chain source for cost efficient verifiable data for anyone who listens to Empire a lot you know that we talk a lot about maker Dao well Chronicle protocol is this novel Oracle solution that has exclusively secured over 10 billion in assets for maker and its ecosystem since 2017 and for the first time ever super excited to share here that Chronicles

Oracle service is now publicly available for anyone to use compared to using other Oracle Services Chronicle offers a 60 reduction in gas fees they have an unparalleled level of transparency at Chronicle they offer a dashboard that allows anyone to track the Genesis and trajectory of the data it provides marking this milestone in on-chain data availability Chronicle is endorsed by a network of the most revered validators including etherscan infura get coin dydx and maker Dao it is time for a paradise time shift in Oracle development a future where data is verifiable operational costs are contained and the possibilities are immense you can learn

more about Chronicle at chroniclelabs.org that is chroniclelabs.org all right everyone wanted to talk about vouch again our favorite insurance provider for crypto companies if you are building in crypto you have probably come to realize that contracts need Insurance Partners demand insurance and as a Founder myself trust me when I say you owe it to not only yourself but your investors and your clients and your customers and I'm not just talking about any insurance there are exclusive coverages are tailored specifically for crypto companies that can address issues like protections for regulatory defense recognizing Gauss as insured addressing smart contract vulnerabilities and even covering the loss of digital assets they're in it

with you whether you're working on l1s l2s Dows MPC wallet providers building a protocol and a lot more so whether you're just dribbling your next big idea on a napkin or gearing up for a big fundraise or maybe thinking about that IPO or an acquisition don't leave things to chance get insured today with five percent off vouches exclusive coverage for Empire listeners using Code Empire think about it this way with vouch you're not just ensuring your startup you are investing in peace of mind I have another takeaway regulation right did you catch Tom Emmer's panel no really good uh Kristen Smith Hester Pierce Brian contes and Tom emmer

um it feels like regulation is just at like in a tough place in the U.S let me read you some of these quotes like Tom emmer is just for the People by the people four context who's Tom emmer uh Tom emmer is the uh the whip yeah in the house yeah majority whip of the of the house yeah people saw house of cards that was uh yeah yeah I think he's from Minnesota anyways great great guy and um let me just read you some of these quotes he goes he goes as people in the audience you should be making decisions that are most important to you someone asked him about uh proposals to stop people from holding

crypto in digital assets he goes that is not an American value someone says uh the the moderator says uh what's it like being a politician he goes it sucks uh he goes you don't have to be Pro crypto but you do have to be Pro Innovation um I don't know it's like he was saying pretty like it was it it also followed Eric Voorhees so he was giving these quotes that were kind of like you know do not give up do not let them do not give up the fight do not let them win uh and uh Hester Pierce said this quote let me just pull it up said the government develops its own interests and has started to forget that it represents the people we need to be ready to go and the opportunity strikes yeah yeah yeah so look I mean this was

something that I is not specifically tied to the conference itself but um you know no surprise I love San Francisco before things really escalated um I I started noticing it's like the Frog and boiling water um you know certainly I'm not American I love America it's a country that I where I went to school I I had the most amount of opportunities you know working at JP Morgan getting a scholarship from JP Morgan you know I think it's the best country in the world still is to have a fair opportunity that anyone can come there education and and have opportunities it's not perfect but relative to other places like you have a fairer shot of being successful because of the institutions are there because there's a culture of innovation like in

places like Japan you cannot fail you fail it is the worst you can do you it's a disgrace and dishonor to your family and future Generations in America they celebrate success and failure is okay and accepted and all of those combinations like I love the you know I and I I have so much respect and to anyone that disagrees with that probably has not lived elsewhere and probably hasn't spent enough time in America in the U.S but I will say though is I left because I just didn't see where my tax dollars were going and I think a certain amount of policies were very misguided I think there's a amount of like woke culture that is highly disruptive in places like San Francisco this idea of not like like Prosecuting like Petty crimes and shoplifting I think on the surface may

seem not as impactful but if you look at like how crime was abolished in New York in the 80s it was you started with the small things you started by cleaning up graffiti in the Subway because if you look at subtle things like that it's like chaos theories small things like that can have a profound impact in Social perception and you know all this leads me to say you know I I went back to Austin I hadn't been in Austin in like probably seven years and I had very fond memories at like my first triathlon there had a bunch of friends around the University of Austin Texas I always felt that Austin was like a hot very Pro yeah like a great place where I could consider living it felt very different this time it felt

eerily like San Francisco in the early days when things started to like um kind of get out of hand on the homelessness situation on the shoplifting situation I don't know my Spidey sensors go off because I grew up in Mexico so like I didn't feel I just felt like there it was a bit like it was a bit of a ghost town downtown on Ice Kyle because he lives there and I said is this always been the case he's like no you know it's like it's pretty bumping like restaurants are full and like but I just I walked around and I was just like looking around and it fell like things were like it's not what I'm used to seeing yeah and you know I don't want to be too opinionated around you know whereas the US is that a broader representation of the US and you know I it was just uh

yeah it was I I thought a lot about that let's put it that way yeah uh and it was a big takeaway for me and it left me wondering like what will it take to get back on course to get back on track um because as we've talked about extensively in this podcast on the topic of Regulation is you have to believe in the three prong system you have to believe in in the courts and I I still very much think that if you look at the interpretation of the court in sort of like the Ripple case the grayscale case the coinbase case like it's very encouraging to see that I think the Democracy in the US is very sound and these checks and balances are there for a reason and and crypto is is is an example of them working yeah right

um so that gives me a lot of Hope but I do Wonder like you I mean you still live there maybe more of a question to you not to get too philosophical on the topic but I do think about like it's not just in America this has been a problem like Nordic countries have also gone backwards I feel like this is a general like historians are probably going to look back at this phase it's like we got a lot of things right The Innovation was like top like it was it was it was like it was like A Tale of Two Cities like Innovations all-time high like probably one of the most impactful developments at a technological standpoint across a number of facets including AI crypto um you know biotech like you know mRNA vaccines like all of that is like hugely impactful but but also at the same time

like society's really like like some of our Legacy institutions have like really are failing us and but there's also this apathy right amongst like the voter base and there's also this like you can't really be public and vocal and if you're a politician you can't advocate for these things because there's Council culture and so it feels really paralyzed um and so I am really curious as you think about like your experience if you believe that to be a true and and more importantly as a voter what do you do because like civil participation is is the Bedrock of any democracy if there's apathy or if there's fear to be vocal about these things I mean we're quite vocal as an industry but I also know privately there's a lot

of people that are very there is fear to be very vocal uh fear of repercussion fear of being canceled fear of I don't know and so I I am curious how you think about all of that I know it's kind of a very loaded question maybe less of a takeaway but yeah it's just an observation for me um I'm an eternal optimist almost to a fault right so I'm incredibly optimistic about the United States in general and I think that the I think that the pendulum always swings right I was I'm a lover of history and history major and I I know you like history as well and the pendulum always swings right and and if you look back at newspaper clippings from basically any decade in U.S history

it seems like the world could be ending right in the 60s you have all the riots and you know you start having Vietnam War and it you know World multiple world wars between 1900 and 1950 and you know you have oil low I I will say there is also this notion that Empires fall every 100 years or so so that so that so that was the next one I was going to get to is that every 100 years every 100 years there's a new Global Currency and that's for the last 600 years going back to what 1400 or 1500 whether it's Portugal or Britain or the United States or there's there's a couple in between there that I forget I think Spain maybe um every 100 years there's kind of a new Global Reserve currency

and we are at the end of the hundred years right so then it's like okay well what what's the other countries the global Reserve currency China I'm not I'm not moving to China right then it makes you think okay Global Reserve currency aside well what's the what's the better country in the world where else would I move I mean yeah if I was retired and like not building block Works maybe I moved to like Tuscany in the hills of Italy or something yeah it sounds pretty lovely uh but I'm trying to build a business and like build build wealth and build a really impactful company and there's no better place in the world to do that still today than the United States I like yeah I mean I don't think I disagree with that I think it's just on the margin you do feel the you do feel

the rate of change you do um quite a bit um yeah um on the way to the airport I was thinking of like what are the things that let me cut you off but it was like and stop me from getting off track but it was like the question like that I thought about and I heard it was like what are the things that are like are future Generations like kids and their kids are going to look back and say God why were you guys doing that like so stupid and the first thing that keep reminding me was petrol stations yeah and and and and downtown like how we think about traffic like streets the size of streets traffic itself probably goes away when you're automated right a lot of the traffic jams are just human error um and then the rezoning of said

downtowns is probably going to change more commercial heuristic crisis or whatnot but like rezoning and whatnot there's so many that I've thought about I think I've thought about this question for a long time uh obviously the natural one is why don't we have a non-sovereign independent neutral kind of unit of account and transfer of value I.E ethereum or Bitcoin that is outside the purview of Central Bank policies that affect certain countries um something I was thinking on the flyback so I mean that could be a whole episode right that that we can save that for another episode we haven't but yeah I know it's drive driving your own car definitely will be one right shopping at physical stores will be one uh the idea of using a smartphone this big clunky

thing it's gonna just be embedded inside of you yeah uh eating real meat and unless you're like hyper wealthy do you think we'll still eat meat but it would just be lab grown yeah yeah I do yeah or it will just be like nobody it'll be live grown will replace traditional farming right separated devices this idea of having a smartphone a laptop a tablet instead of one single integrated multi-purpose device that is more inside of you than outside of you yeah like like even like a paper passport you know it's like come on guys like scanner I mean unfortunately with all this the Privacy as we know it goes away well biometric surveillances analytics the no no concept of privacy by the year 20.

now on the topic of conferences are we going to be in a virtual world with uh Apple's thing and not be going to permissionless let me pump my own bag for a second which is the more that we move online the more powerful conferences become because the less you see your friends the less you go to dinners the less you meet in person you crave more of that you crave the once a year once every six months in person I mean the the watch industry went through this kind of uh pronunciation A lot of people saying it's the death of the luxury watch industry because the Apple watch doesn't boom boom and then boom I mean it's just gone through a huge huge renewed interest in vintage

watches I am extremely bullish as well on luxury physical items actually yeah if you look at the two richest people in the world right Bernardo or no runs luxury house and Elon Musk builds luxury physical items with with Teslas um I think that I think people will demand more and more luxury physical items to get too off topic from permissionless humans yeah yeah I mean this I think this has been a great recap I don't know if there's anything else those were pretty much my takeaways obviously you stole two which is kind of like meh so I I did my homework to be fair I appreciate you I appreciate you um no that's it our next event is uh so next permissionless is gonna be in Salt Lake City in October in 2024 we also have uh digital asset Summit

and I don't think I'm supposed to say where yet we're making an announcement this week is it is it on in Europe uh you'll see we'll see I mean what continent is this in Antarctica like come on like give me some breadcrumbs I mean I'll tell it on the Pod it's gonna be in life I'm pretty sure it's supposed I'm pretty sure we're making a big announcement and I'm gonna totally agree okay okay announcement so I'm just saying I usually I've been vocal about saying I'm only gonna go one conference a year but if it's in London I'll be here I can't describe to you how mad our marketing team is it's fine it's fine it's my you can blame it on me but like listen like I hadn't seen like someone like Ben from parapro like you know we spent so much time together but like the

last time we saw each other was like when I we were getting started we've gotten this office in San Francisco and literally I went three times to the office and then everyone else is like coveted hit and then we're all remote and that was the last time I saw Ben like three years ago we went through like D5 summer and all and then and then you don't hear something crazy that was the first time I've ever met Ben I've talked to Ben like every order for like three I mean you know way better than I do but like love man talking to like every quarter for like four years first time I've ever met him yeah yeah I mean you and I met in uh in Solana breakpoint like very very briefly it was great to spend more time uh and this is the first

time I saw Ryan Sean Adams I mean I think he's just sort of like an elusive character he just does not go to conferences so this is the first time I saw him it was great you know I I really enjoyed it so uh a very nice event uh and most importantly they just met people that really enjoyed the podcast and to me that's the most important thing that was like a very wholesome experience that people came up to me hey you know I met your parents uh that was fine that was great right before the panel you was like hey uh someone wants to meet you I'm like I feel like a celebrity I'm like hey who like it's my parents I'm like oh great yeah shout out to all the parents that uh listen to the podcast I always tell my parents this is free melatonin and I've

caught my dad listening to my podcast deep in sleep like so I think your parents are better than that no they're loving it so by the way last shout out I will give uh the MVP of the event Eric Voorhees gave this why we are here opener that got the higher conference on their feet Standing Ovation it's on Twitter on the permissionless account uh it's pinned to the top of the permissionless account it's got ten thousand likes 5 000 retweets over two and a half million views so if you haven't seen it definitely go watch that last question on that topic are the other videos available they will be so people are going to listen to this on Tuesday they will be all available by Tuesday night

fantastic okay well folks um folks as you all know we all listen read the comments um so drop us a comment if you want us got great feedback from the centers at the at the conference so thank you and I would be remiss not to say that I uh won the bet I had more followers than uh Yano at the time of the conference took a snapshot by 500 000 by 500.00 what do you get I don't know actually I don't remember we'll have to go back there was an episode we talked about this so yeah we gotta go back and listen it's on you man because there's something I'm gonna get a I have like a a card here that I'm gonna play uh I got to think play the card all

right man all right this has been a treat thanks so much for hosting had a great time at the conference and everyone that was there not there uh you know still thanks for listening as always and uh we'll be back here later this week see you folks all right [Music] foreign