Santi's 10 Years of Mistakes and Lessons | Roundup

Transcript

your identity is the climate but that doesn't mean that New York on any given day like today could have a wild day of like a hot streak and be like super hot now it's rare but if it had that it wouldn't Define climate unless it happened many times over and over again but this probability of that happening is really low and that's how I think of identity meaning to tie it all together I think we're of the mind that weather is our identity price goes up and down all of a sudden you're worth 10 billion 100 billion or or 100 million that's your identity no not not really because these things change a lot if you are an Empire listener hopefully you've played around on chain and if you have done

that you know that transferring assets across different chains is a pain to put it nicely that is why we are incredibly excited to have the Wormhole Foundation as a partner of the Empire podcast stewards of the Wormhole protocol supporting over 30 different blockchains and six different run times stay tuned later in the show we have a cool thing that you can claim which is a wormhole nft just for Empire listeners this episode is brought to you by moned which has not only the highest performance evm L1 architecture ever built but also the wildest and craziest community in crypto mad's internal devet is live and public testet comes out soon so make sure you join the monad community today at discord.gg slad m o n a d monad this

episode is brought to you by shardi an evm based smart contract platform with State sharding and auto scaling shardi is designed to achieve horizontal scaling to ensure sustainably low transaction fees for you the end user you'll learn more about shardi and auto scaling later in the show Welcome Back folks happy Friday happy Saturday whenever you're listening Santi what's happening uh how much man uh excited for this one it's been a long time coming yeah tell us uh so this is the um this is the mistakes the Lessons Learned episode um we've wanted to do this episode you know kind of since I've known you um years ago and you know

we've been talking about it more and more and more and as the cycle came back you started talking about it more and more and we're finally sitting down and recording this why is this such an important episode to you because it's uh I think you focus on your mistakes and it's one of those nagging voices that you need to at some point address and if you don't it comes back and haunts you and so I think it's for me I'm really just doing this episode for myself because there is no better way than publicly staking stuff and I'll get into this throughout the episode but for me it was I I I've been at places where uh in this journey it hasn't been easy and um the thing that helped me the most

was writing and then publicly like publishing these things in my blog post that was after the Ico boom that was a pivotal moment in my career I think in crypto it really set me up for everything else that came after that had I not done that I don't think I'd had any reason of success yeah so I think I I want to do this pod because like I hopefully people can take what I say here and not uh make these same mistakes and kind of Leap Forward and expedite their Journey what are the when you think when you sit down and think about your mistakes there's kind of like two buckets of mistakes that you've kind of shared with me um what are what are the

two buckets of mistakes and that'll kind of tea up this conversation yeah I think the overarching message there's one takeaway of this pod if you just stop after I say this you need to understand the difference between an error of process and an error of outcome and very quickly an outcome you can't control and you may think that you can control that and that's also an error I've made but the outcome is very random and you cannot control these markets certainly not in crypto certainly not anywhere else but you definitely can and you should focus on errors of process because you own your process you control your process you have full agency over

that and the more that you understand the things that you can control and that you can control allows you to develop a a a very robust framework for improving your process and thinking in probabilities and being very analytical you can be incredibly successful and I was I had it's sort of a blessing urse in this space and a lot of people in in their crypto Journey like hit it out of the bat for me it was like discovering Bitcoin super early and then ethereum super early and you feel like you're this Wonder kid and [ __ ] genius which I'm not but you can I I think the that the worst prob the the worst thing I've probably

made is obsessing about the outcome and as soon as I started focusing more on the process and coming at to terms in piece that I can't control the outcome I think that has been very liberating let's take it chronologically maybe to start and then we can get into some of these buckets so take us back to the very early days when you get into crypto I think you were working in Investment Banking there's probably maybe Bitcoin and E that exists back then maybe it's just Bitcoin what was the um first big mistake you made back in those days probably putting everything that I to my name uh like it sounds great now but like it's just

uh it consumes you becomes your life like you you're distracted you're like like look I think uh everyone that's in crypto has a high very high tolerance for risk but um it I think you always want to do things that make you slightly uncomfortable but not like completely uncomfortable and so uh it was very easy back in the day like for me my my mental framework was like if I lose this I'll get a bonus next year whatever so so what year is this 2013 yeah 2013 and so you just took your you took your IB bonus or all my bonus put it in Bitcoin like was cost averaging in and bought Bitcoin and it

was like I don't know 150 160ish or so um the worst mistake probably did then was like not following through with like what I wanted to do uh and that's why writing later on became so important because as soon as you publicly stake something like it kind of forc es you to do something um so I was like talking about Bitcoin I was obsessed about it I was talking to my friends my family um but I wasn't really like really like S I read the white paper and it was super interesting but I I could have done way more work to like pay attention but I us said in a

prior episode I wasn't doing that full- time and so putting like all of my bonus in something that is not full time was like not something I would probably do again so was fantastic right but it was an error of process so okay so you I'm going to push you in this episode to kind of think like actually share like specifics and anecdotes and real things so you so you put your IB bonus into Bitcoin and then do you just sit in Bitcoin or do you start you know price runs up and you start trading like because I the big question on everyone's mind at this point in time first week of March is do I sell or do I not sell you know yeah I was I was I went in thinking this is a long-term Venture bit and then very quickly I forgot about that that

and was like trading this stuff in and out and you know because you know traditional markets you don't get this type of returns and so you're like holy [ __ ] like I doubled I tripled wow this is great and that was a huge detraction from my original thesis which my original thesis is this is a super long-term risky bet I'm like assuming it's like may not work out the biggest mistake I did there was like not having a price in mind not having not thinking hey what happens if something doubles triples 10 X's overnight like what do you do and I think that's something that I constantly do now going into an investment like I do these scenario

analysis of like what will happen if position triples in size tomorrow and it becomes a greater share of the portfolio like what would I do then and because I didn't do that work then it caught me off guard very quickly because there was a huge run up in price as there constantly is in crypto and then I was like carried away right and I was doing dumb [ __ ] um and I was trading it and then once you start down this path of trading it sort of is a detraction because then you know I remember when penic launched in the troll box it was like so fun right this was like 2014 uh there's all these there's now made safe and Golem and all these other

projects and you know you're swapping Bitcoin for these other things and it's entertaining um but that sort of then became a Trader and I'm not a Trader and so I was you know that was that was a big mistake not not going through scenarios of what happens if position does X or Y how would I manage that and more importantly maybe the answer is and oftentimes the answer for me today is you just don't do anything but you assume that if it happens you're going to force yourself to re underwrite and this is a probably my biggest mistaken the space was like uh buying ethereum and not rewriting my thesis as the price went from 70 cents to 10 back

to seven to 18 and like I didn't like constantly update my thesis and so that was like very very distracting and difficult to manage what's the what's the maybe Le so take us into take us into ethereum then I want to talk about the lesson so you buy ethereum when it's what so do you rotate some of the Bitcoin into ethereum how do you think about like did you do all of your Bitcoin no no no I I was mindful of the tax implications um so I actually uh called up my dad and said hey uh I'm investing this thing I at the time I was then at a venture fund uh called sage View and I was making a little bit more

money actually way more money and so I had um the ability to put more of those earnings into ether ium um and then I and I got my dad and mom to to invest in this thing as well I like and like funny enough I still have this it's like one of the best things I've I like wrote this email to my dad I'm happy to screenshot it and it said this is a future of the internet um put whatever you're comfortable 25k or whatever which you know a lot I guess um but this is a future of the internet this is a long-term bet and like again I failed because then I

did all other [ __ ] during the Ico movement but um that was uh yeah I guess I was lucky to I was lucky but also at the time I was investing in open source software as people know and so um ethereum made a lot of sense I I started discovering the power of writing I at the time was Sage VI was early later stage I wanted to go super early so I was interviewing at seoa and Kleiner Perkins and they asked me hey write a memo about investing in something and I was like ethereum that was my memo and I was listening to Chris Dixon I was listening to Reed Hoffman the LinkedIn founder and they they were paying attention to ethereum and I was in San Francisco so metallic was going

around town and um I it was I'll tell you what I did very right there I listen to smarter people like Chris like I listen to him on a podcast talk about a the I'm like okay this is a really smart guy um but yeah uh I I then bought a bunch of ethereum and then I did also dumb [ __ ] so so what are the big like if you could kind of summarize the big mistake from the you know buy Bitcoin then you start rotating into the Golems of the world and then you buy eth and maybe you rotating to the IC like what is the what is the big mistake and the big lesson here I didn't know what the game I was playing I was an investor and then I was a Trader too and I wasn't like honest with myself and I think

that's I mean that's part of the opportunity and the challenge is that crypto is this liquid asset like liquid Venture class and honestly it's uh I mean it's it is a great learning to from a like anyone that's getting started with investing like you learn so much in crypto in one cycle then probably you know it's like a huge education but for me it was like not understanding the game I was playing and you mentioned this in the prior episode we recorded right you have to know the game you're playing and it's it's okay you can be both like you can try to be both but for me it was just like I think I've done this math but had I not touched any other the Bitcoin and ethereum I would have made probably more money than I have

today no actually yeah yeah so how does that then impact how you think about today and selling and trading into things yeah well I'm sure this is like top of mind right as people start making money on memes and other stuff like they want to know how do you sell there's no right or wrong answer here and it's I can tell you what I do and think about but I would just caution because every POS like everyone's situation is different like what I did back when I had ex to my name as a analyst and Associate is very different than what I

am today like I don't okay I'm lucky because I don't have family and I don't have obligations but I think it's very sub but okay you you can definitely pay attention to certain things right um when I am seeing it on the timeline now when people are euphoric when people think that they can just continue to flip stuff and make all these games like that's just a sign of like that just no it will stop and for me I I'm okay here here's how I think about it every time on the Venture side as soon as I make a 10x systematically I size down because I'm mindful that if I

continue to do 10x on everything that I do I will become the most successful investor of all time and I will not probabilistically it's not going to be me so I just um I'm just comfortable with that yeah like that is my process like I I think in in probabilities of okay can but also like I was very rash in my the way I thought about portfolio construction and sizing down and and selling out of positions now I I'm more systematic um and I don't sell like I'm more thoughtful in how I sell um over time and I'm battling right now with like a big mem position that I

have for instance people probably guess what it is it's like it been like a 10 thousand plus X or whatever um can we can we use specifics here and if if you don't feel comfortable yeah like so so whiff is early on it's grown to like eight% of the book so okay so like whiff is you bought whiff very early it's you know thousand next or whatever and so now it's you know eight to 10% of the portfolio like how are you thinking about selling selling out of this whiff position or selling in parts or and using those lessons that you learned in the early days so I have a very clear thesis for well I have two two I only have two memes well three actually uh Whi Bon and

uh this random meme coin and Bas Toshi I think but that's irrelevant it's like nothing the big ones are whiff and Bon but I put equal amounts in both actually size with conviction early on and my thesis was I'm bullish Solana this outperforms Solana because if you're bullish Solana then you have a similar thesis with with nfts like torans or M my expression was memes are easier more accessible for people and it's a retail chain it's the best place for retail so memes will do well and Bon on the I bought Bon a bit later uh I wasn't as early as I was with whiff um but thankfully I was paying

attention and so I bought and whff is obviously done way better than Bon um and today I was like okay it feels like I thought like if it hits one it'll be huge and I had alerts and then I was like okay I should probably sell and I didn't I haven't sold any neither Bon or W um and I'm thinking okay well should I take some chips off the table at least my principal and I haven't and it was very I was actually battling this this morning I'm like all right [ __ ] it hit two it's down to 1 160 I'm talking about whiff I'm like all right time to like time to call it in like I I I'll really

regret if I don't take any chips off the table here but I'm not um and the reason I'm not is because the thesis hasn't changed you're seeing salana now at 140 um there's a ton of catalst for salana so what did I do today I woke up in the morning Sor used to have back pain I'm I'm having back pain now I'm like Fu like this is like a sign that I'm like from from gods that I should sell um but then I was like all right like I'll do something else I'll come back to this so I did some stretch and coffee whatever and then I came back and I was thinking okay the thesis really hasn't changed so I'm re re underwriting

it salana is still you know 40% below its alltime high there are at least seven eight projects that will air drop that wealth effect will have a material impact and will flow into nfts and memes if I'm bullish salana un bullish these two and then you can do all the moon math that everyone's doing right which is by the way none of this financial advice okay like so like I'm just like sharing my process but like and I'm saying okay you know there there there I think I've appreciated over time that as much as I want to believe the fundamentals matter one of the biggest things in crypto is really this anchoring effect in the comps right there are comps people are comparing cat coins the dog coins and then within the dog coins there's she Sheba Inu and Doge

that are like 35x from where Whit like whiff and bonka like roughly the same market cap 1.1 1.3 billion and I think yeah that's um so so it was a very useful I guess it's very relevant for this exercise because maybe before I would have I would have just and maybe this would be super stupid the outcome I can't control but I think think I just I focus on my process here and it's like the thesis is the same and I think it outperforms Soul so I'm gonna stick to that maybe the answer to the question is what do I do right what at what point do I start selling out whatever you know well because there's kind of two big

philosophies on when to sell it's either when you start to see the market you're basically looking at the kind of crypto Twitter and saying this there there feels like too much Euphoria I'm going to take chips off the table or it hits price targets which are arbitr price targets that you've internally set and I'd be curious how you think about those two directions like I certainly pay attention to the timeline a lot more so than before actually over time I've just appre like I wasn't playing memes before at all and this cycle is really the first one where I've played them with conviction like well first of all Pary you you can't institutions really can't touch this except like probably Joe from asymmetric um but

yeah like I uh people ask like we can get into this fun exerise of like things I've missed right chain link was one that I missed because it was right after the SEO boom and like they were announcing all these Partnerships with Google I'm like here we go I've seen this movie before like it's probably fake and and a lot of people were like dude you should buy chain link you should buy chain link buy chain link buy chain link and at some point I did but it was too late like it was a difference between like uh 300X and a not a 300X I guess yeah um and those hurt right those those really hurt because I think you you have to like every once in a while I think you have to get things very right and when you get them right they need to be

sized correctly so let's let's actually move maybe into that Ico era Santi because I in your notes you put down Ico boom not sizing with conviction prob way did the whiff Bon thing like was that clear enough or is there anything else that we should focus on I'm actually battling with that internally right now and I don't have perfect answers for this because it's like a very uh it's difficult it's it's very difficult like it's not easy it doesn't get easier by the way it doesn't get easier over time does your philosophy on Meme coins change when you have more money now like if you let's say you did not have as much money

like would you still be allocating to the would you allocate more to the meme coins would you allocate less to the meme coins like are you more pushing farther out in the r spectrum because you have this safety net [Music] um maybe yes although a lot of people that or like made certain amount of money don't touch mean coins because for them it's like whatever you know I'm just going to hold but I I like touching mean coins now because it allows me I think it gives me a lot of information on the broader ecosystem and I think you need to pay attention to memes Shia's I've learned a lot from him I I think

he's one of the smartest guys out there he's paying attention to memes I think you you have to appreciate that yeah and and I think memes for me are I want to have them size in the portfolio not 50% but you know decent decent amount to pay attention because I think it informs a lot of like the mcoin phenomena that really started and has been happening in Sal I think tells you a lot about salana of what is working in salana the type of people that are coming to salana the type of and so for me it's um it is important to appreciate these things and before I was like very critical I was like oh you know this is this is uh to left curve I'm not going to touch it I was very critical of Elon like tweeting

about Doge and like now I've like opened up to it and I become less opinionated or about memes I actually appreciate them a lot and so yeah it's also uh an ARB I think in some ways because institutions are not touching it and Retail and crypto is a very retail phenomenon yeah tell me about um tell me about the biggest mistake you made related to um sizing with conviction or or lack thereof um specifically maybe around the the Ico year is when I I you know I saw you were writing some notes on that but I guess it really doesn't matter what time period I passed on the seed round for axi because we had a very small allocation and it was a mistake because

I felt that you take the allocation even if it's small even if it's not what you by the way really hot projects like you're never going to get the full allocation that you want but take it because it's option value and I it was a mistake so you had you had an allocation but it was too small to be relevant for the fund so you guys passed yeah and and then it hurts because then you don't revisit it's like oh um the flip side of that is that then I started paying more attention to gaming right because I was like okay this is very real but um I think one of the bigger mistakes I've done and not follow through was I think generally speaking the way I think about early stage investing it's its option Valley

to pay attention as soon as a token launches like you you look at like the comps of arbitrum Lio some of the bigger projects like uh Unis swap axi there's this like I think you can run this math but like there is uh you would have exceptionally well if you bought it right when it listed and like a couple weeks into the the selling of like the early kind of the retail that gets the airdrop and is selling it for p like PlayStation fives like that that is an example of an idea and a like a a type of strategy that I had but never really implemented um and now I'm like it's probably one of the things that I focus

on the most which is there's a lot of you know as soon as a project that I'm an investor in that I know well like as launch as it you know and and is out there and like there's this wave of like post air drop where you have an ability to sometimes even size up the position way more at a price that is not too dissimilar from where you invested so yeah that was like true for arbitrum True for Lido true for axi True for ovium True literally like most of my of the projects and I've never really implemented this strategy and I always think about it and I always like all right I'm going to do it this time and I don't do it can you say more about it doesn't matter if you're right if it's not with size because this is

something that I'm trying to figure out in my you know with my liquid Holdings right now is I I kind of feel like my book is too big right I've got 30 things and I'm like okay well there's a lack of conviction there instead of being you know okay so like pause there who's do you believe that or are you believing that because other people are telling you to believe that no I'm I'm I'm not I'm not believing it one way or another I'm thinking I'm rethinking if that's the right way to handle things because um let you know CH chain link is actually a good example like chain link to date I is my best investment by a country mile right a guy next to me pre-block Works was sitting on forchan and chain link was all over forchan he's

like buy this thing and this is when you know omo Civic chain link right this was mid 2017 probably or maybe late I forget somewhere in 2017 so bought chain link and but I bought the same amount that I bought of omo and Civic and all those kind of things so I made you know ailon X did you buy more over time no why not um because it was growing so much relative to everything else so let's say it was 1% then it was 3% then it was 7% and then you know by the by the top in 2020 21 I think I think it was like

Bitcoin eth and chain link for me so I was you know but but I didn't believe in chain link more than number four five six and seven so during this time how much were you doing work on chain link not just focusing on the price but like going on Discord talking to chain link maybe reaching out to the team were you doing any of that you were just checking price no just checking price yeah same I've done that mistake that's that's the issue that's that's that's Focus Wishing on the outcome yeah that's Wishing on the outcome um and the process here would be like you re underwrite it constantly no you

don't necessarily need to add to the position like your example of chain link is an example I've had with 100 positions like literally most of them and actually I should have been buying more with way more I was buying more Bon I was like why didn't and I was looking like what why didn't I not I was looking through the log I like why didn't I buy more whiff it's working why like why did I not do it and so you know mistake that I did literally since November I guess December yeah uh and so that was pretty stupid of me um I think yeah like probably have been incredibly

stupid of not not really every time I like it never hurts to check in on Discord and reach out to teams or other people in the community like we talk about community and crypto all the time but we never actually implement it for our own process you know what I mean like it's like and plus a lot of the stuff is on chain like I certainly have made this mistake time and time again where the amount of time time that I spend on the price and looking at that and thinking about that is is should be way less and I should be investing more time on on doing

work and you know I guess memes are sometimes these memes like there's nothing right but uh like there's no team there's there nothing whatever but I'll give you an example like synthetics people asked on Twitter like what has been your biggest round trip it was synthetics what did I do right there first of all Haven it was Haven right the biggest Haven raised I think one of large not one of the largest but it was like a big Ico and it marked the top and then Haven was like the last one at the door and then it everything collapsed and I was part of a big Syndicate so I sized it fairly decent um and and then it was like it pivoted to synthetics but in that process I was

incredibly lucky because they reached out out and they wanted to like get my thoughts on some of these things they probably reached out because we were just a big Syndicate and they wanted to get our thoughts on things but I became quite close with the team but that was a I mean synthetics Haven then synthetics went through this like look at the chart I mean went from that was like an 800x return did you yeah like I did over time and oh boy was it it was difficult to look at like ether scan had now rolled out the the price to where it is now I'm like oh I swwa for x amount of eth oh okay yeah I

left a lot of money on the table but look I don't was it a mistake no I like the outcome was like it is what it is I think at least there I you know I was became close with the team and had you know a little bit more more conviction um but yeah I mean again am I coping is it like saying okay don't focus on errors of outcome A coping mechanism yeah like it is but I think like the key message that I want to impart here is I mean investing is like a more of a psychological game than anything like it's anyone can do math

anyone can do Net Present Value all this crap cash flow discounted cash flow comps um um managing your emotions is the hardest thing and I think I mean we can get into that but you know now or later time but yeah so on the personal side there was um a note you put around farming and taxes and I don't know if there's oh yes okay let's talk about that so again a big mistake costly wanted that not understanding the tax implications of of uh yield like a yield farming like when you deposit your eth and that eth becomes wrapped eth and like uh a or year or

whatever that's a taxable event and that boy that that cost me a pretty penny way more than any yield that I formed uh whereas if you deposit your Ethan maker in the CDP it's not taxable and again this the laws may have changed but back then it was like a big realization I learned that after the fact and that was again like not investing not investing enough time and energy in the half the battle is optimizing like your tax strategy and it was very costly mistake it was very stupid because I could have figured this out um staking rewards one to claim right unclaimed versus claimed it was uh it's material right and I think as

people in this cycle like I think you need to have a tax strategy you have a and look the tax laws are varying by country and Incredibly complex and but get a get a good tax person and understand the implications of you know if you have soul and you're you know um going to use that soul for other state or whatnot like I think you need to have understand that because what you don't want to be as a for seller at the end of the year right when you realize oh [ __ ] I owe so much because I've done all these strategies and sometimes the answer is it's better not to even engage in any of this strategy if it's going to be a taxable event

H how do you think about uh diversifi maybe we can we were talking about diversification maybe we can like double click one more time on that I'd be curious like so this is your fourth cycle I think what how many cycles did it take you to start taking meaningful amounts of capital out of the system I only did it last cycle when I left Pari and it was like by luck really um yeah because we had a very influential conversation I don't know if I've even told you this but you know my this is going to sound this almost sounds so idiotic when I bring it up now but my philosophy was there's things you sell and crypto and things you don't sell um like Bitcoin and remember that

conversation probably a year ago I like you just don't sell your Bitcoin and eath you can trade around other things you just don't sell your Bitcoin and E you're like that's a ridiculous statement you have to continue underwriting your things I was like No And I think the reason I thought like that actually had nothing to do with the asset it had everything to do with the tying crypto to my identity so much oh yeah yeah um but I'd be curious how you think about um both of those things which is maybe the first is when do you take Capital out of the system but the second is probably an even bigger topic which is like tying crypto to your identity and like how you think about that yeah the best advice I've gotten when I left parfi was um this guy called Ken and I was with him

uh at a summer house and he he been incredibly successful he said you know we were talking about stuff and he said look insulate your lifestyle if you can do it insulate it and you want to do that because it will free up your mind and allow you to be more aggressive when you don't have to worry about you know paying rent or covering costs for a couple years and and you're right like you it always feels kind of dirty and difficult to take money off the table because you know you look back and you're like oh [ __ ] you know I've sold eth at like a dollar I've sold eth at 18 bucks I've sold eth at 100 like if I

hold on to that I'd have like more of than a couple billing box like it's just like you're like no like you have to stay disciplined again and it's a probab like you always need to think in probabilities like the the odds are stacked against you once after you do a 10x after you do a 5x like historically people don't make that those returns and I understand crypto early but like those things like there's there's there's a gravitational pull back to mean reversion like just there are like couple principles in investing that you always have to come back to mean reversion is one and like you're not as smart as you think you are and so like after I think like to your question yes

after a certain return I take some chips off the table now I think I wanted to make sure that I would be in a position now that I was independent to just the strategy was I'll take x amount of money out and with with some of that yield and treasuries or whatever I'll be able to fund all new private investments into crypto and so like that for me like building a divers ified cash flow was something that I really wanted to have in 2018 and 2019 and I didn't have because the worst is having an idea and not having any [ __ ] money okay you can go raise a fund or

whatever no one wants to give you money then and there and so like it it never hurts to have a place where you can draw down from when no one wants to when no one wants to touch this thing we'll be back at at a level where crypto's totally out of favor no one has any money what call it next four years five what's the probability of being in that situation again yeah 100% you said every leap year so you know okay yeah then doesn't then you invert and you say okay well then I probably should have a stash where I insulate my lifestyle you have a family now you have you're GNA have kids at

some point I don't know but like I've been more aggressive in funding in investing and moving quickly and maybe buying this like memes or whatever like whff because I've insulated My Lifestyle like I've I've just put money away where it's like I don't have to think about anything else and now I can just so like the process that I have now is I want to after I left paraph like I want to minimize all kinds of distractions in my life and I went through this like ruthless process of like cutting things that were just distracting and again the best advice was like just insulate your lifestyle and and having done that I'll always be forever grateful to Ken because I think

that has allowed me to be more aggressive over the last year and a half because you can draw you know like no one wanted to invest in stuff and you know you show up and you you do have the capital like that's that's a mistake I didn't want to do right uh because I I didn't have I I wasn't in that position I didn't have a diversified stream of cash flow uh in any of the prior like Cycles hey everyone wanted to give a big shout out to today's sponsor Wormhole Foundation stewards of the Wormhole protocol if you are like Santi and I and you play around on chain you know how bad the cross chain experience is today well Wormhole has set out to solve that powering cross chain transfers for over 200 different multi-chain teams

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hm. validator big thanks to shardi for sponsoring Empire what are mistakes that you've made on the we've been talking about the liquid side what are some mistakes that you've made on the angel side of things oh I mean it's going to sound classic but like oh so so is doing the deal okay fine and then you realize no one does a [ __ ] work because it's not even their money now it's all my money so yeah I have to do the [ __ ] work uh I mean maybe I'm exaggerating but like you know what I mean like oh you know like you become a bit complacent it's like oh yeah like tier one fund is doing uh the deal so yeah sure I'll invest in it and I think

that and the second one is probably doing deals where I wasn't convinced that I wanted to work with a Founder but I did it anyways and boys those really com and haunt you because it's it's difficult man like yeah at the end of the day like you're on call and you have to be there and if a Founder calls you you really kind of want to work with him the worst is like dealing with a Founder that you just don't really want to work with and so I think time money gives you the ability to have that freedom to just say no and take your sweet ass time I think there's a so I'll give you an example you talk about identity there's two concepts that I want to highlight here one of them is when it comes to crypto it's a 247

Market uh it's Venture it's also liquid so it's a hedge fund you can be both try to be both don't be none there's I think a difference between reacting and responding reacting is you see something you know whiff is down 20% today you're like oh you react to that right [ __ ] you know Now's the Time right it's turning then you do all this chart porn and you're like convince yourself that it's the top and you're out you're reacting to that it's like I think responding it requires you to be more thoughtful and go back to your thesis whatever it was and process new information update your probability do

more work I think some of the biggest mistakes of is just when I react and I don't versus responding um so anyways that was one again if you don't size a position well if it's too uncomfortable you're going to react you're gonna you're going to be more predisposed to react because it it it's like sort of a survival Instinct yeah when you've insulated your lifestyle when you've thought more closely about okay what happens if I lose 8% of the portfolio it hurts but it's not like I don't this my entire bonus it's not like a hit to my identity if you will well so I'll tie then to your question on identity I think there's also two concepts when it comes to Identity one I became incred by the way I was in a very

dark place after the Ico uh boom and bust felt like I was a total failure I was depressed literally stopped eating um why why were you so upset because it wasn't my money it was also my parents giving me some money again the 25k for eth or whatever at the SEO and I felt that I failed them I was obsessed with retiring them I wanted to do that and I could but like I didn't lose money I was up a lot but it was not the oh like I didn't sell the top and and I it was just it was eating at me and then finally my dad was like

listen I didn't give you money expecting anything in return you're an idiot go figure out your identity because you're totally lost here and you just that to me was a moment where I went to therapy uh and I've always been a huge believer in therapy my grandmother's a therapist um I just think it's incredibly useful and I'm glad that it's now not as taboo you know it's this idea of like you don't have to be sick to go to therapy it's just nice to be able to talk to someone uh that are not your friends not your family so anyways I went to therapy and this guy was just like listen he's he he's the first the first session I had he was like who are you like what is your identity and I started talking about work you know I you know I did invest in Bank JP Morgan

all this now Krypto he's like I didn't ask you the question like who are you I was like you don't you don't know who you are you didn't mention any hobbies you didn't mention any interests you didn't mention any passions like you just talk about your work like your work's not your identity go figure out your [ __ ] identity and that's when I started writing and I think that's like that's pretty that was a pretty pretty pivotal moment because that that was a transition for me because I started writing and writing helped me order my thoughts not only all the mistakes I've done in crypto uh that entire journey and then you start realizing stuff and then also at some point you know pressing send after the first session I I published my first block post the summit so on you know people can go look

it up and I ran to this coffee shop wrote it down and posted it I was like [ __ ] it I just need to get out and publicly stake what I think because that will hold me accountable and that for me was the mechanism to get out of that rut um so I guess tying this identity thing two concepts that have been helpful for me one is I think we are conditioned to think that we can't feel a certain range of emotions we think that investing is so clinical no no it's it's an emotional game uh but more importantly I think we like Society tries to desensitize ourselves like you can't you can't feel

intense emotions all of a sudden you can only feel like a a narrower range of emotions I'm like and I think like the therapist said look you should allow yourself to to feel the entire range of emotions like it's so you can you can have rage that doesn't make you a terrible person you can feel sad about something it doesn't make you depressed if you're not recognizing the emotions that you're constantly having on a day-to-day basis they're going to be repressed and then show up in a way and I think that was prettyy liberating because no one kind of tells you that you know and especially not in this world where you're walking on exells you can't really express yourself because you know you can be canceled with all this [ __ ] and woke culture it's difficult

and I think the more that we are open-minded about this idea that you you should be feeling this wide range of emotions then it's very liberating because yeah it's everyone feels like cope and everyone feels dis spare and all these range of emotions when you're in this world of crypto and investing like of course the more you realize that I think the better you be over time like you have to be in tune with your emotions I think and I'll end with this do you know the difference between weather and climate no weather is you check your weather app weather is that day probabilistically New York at this time of the year was I don't know Fahrenheit I'm thinking Celsius but like it's

pretty cold right it's like you know within 8° Cel 30 between call it 30 and 35 fhe weather is what happens in that day climate is the accumulation of years and years and years of and it's it's hardened your identity is the climate but that doesn't mean that New York on any given day like today could have a wild day of like a hot streak and be like super hot now it's rare but if it had that it wouldn't Define climate unless it happened many times over and over again but this probability of that happening is really

low and that's how I think of identity meaning to tie it all together I think we're of the mind that weather is our identity price goes up and down all of a sudden you're worth 10 billion 100 billion or or 100 million that's your identity no not not really because these things change a lot and climate again your identity is something that is way more hardened and complex and slower moving and so yeah that's I don't know if that makes sense but at least that was useful for me to understand that because I think structurally like you know it is very liberating when you can

start feeling okay about feeling all these kind of other emotions and being aware of them not necessarily reacting or whatever just observing them like okay right now I'm not feeling that great that's okay what is the emotion that like what is the worry or fear today because financially you're good right you shared this thing with me like a year ago you said look I don't want to Fe now that I'm not aerified my fear or concern is that I lose relevancy in this industry that I love so much I mean it's something that because I I've been in this place where I didn't feel recog I they're relevant I was at the startup company uh during actually the Ico boom

setting aging I like I left Sage view because I you know they didn't want to do crypto so I was like all right and so I got this I invested in this company so and over time I you I was kind of the chief of staff or whatever and I was like they weren't paying attention to anything that I was saying and I just became I felt completely irrelevant and it's the worst feeling in the world man it really is we were talking about earlier in this pod about like certain people in YouTube comments and trolls and whatever it's like you know people are like commenting whatever it is at least you're relevant you know whether they love you or hate you but like they're paying attention the worst is like not even screaming no one like caring about it and so yeah the feeling of not being

relevant is is really yeah gets at you because we're social species right at the end of the day um it was a fear when I left Pari for sure but honestly the best thing and the most rewarding thing that I've done is this podcast is it perfect absolutely not do I ramble [ __ ] yes all the time uh you're we're 40 50 minutes in and I think we got another you know couple I don't know so yeah I'm not perfect uh but it's it it's just very rewarding um so yeah no it's not a mistake I guess yeah it's let's get back into maybe some of the on the investing side of things like what is the it's almost couple rapid Fires for

you what is the biggest rug or mistake related to getting rugged that has ever happened to you in crypto uh FTX I had some money there I was running the New York Marathon I should stop running these marathons man and uh someone seem to either be injured or lose money 10 around marathons Ser man I love it no I I wouldn't stop running um yeah and I came back I actually didn't even finish that Marathon Man Out of all things came back to my room and someone ped me said yo I think like this FTX is really real it's going down like just take your money out

and I was like oh I'll do it later tonight and I punted it but that difference was it cost me or I guess it won't if we're all paid out but yeah the yeah it was it was just uh all I'll add Nuance because I just said that you shouldn't react you should respond but sometimes you have to react when it's a matter of like life or dead when there's smoke there's fire you know and when like three four different people are telling you about it it's like pay attention independent nodes in your information Network are telling you that there's something wrong with FTX like there's probably something wrong you know like listen to that um so yeah that was that was probably the biggest

rug and I should have with it should have withdrawn and I just didn't so again thankfully it wasn't like a material part of the portfolio but it's still it it hurts because you're like [ __ ] I I could have could have done it thankfully I became hyper paranoid about that and took my money out of silvergate the next day all of it I was like I don't want any of this and and so yeah what is the biggest paper hand you have ever had eth man eth like Ethan and I have had a quite their relationship I just for just for I panicked panicked when vitalic sold when it was 18 bucks or something and it came out and I was

like okay game's over and it just becomes my identity was tied of eth like I was thinking that I was going to retire because I and it was just like it was uh it was it was uh very this he sold when he sold did he is this when he sold it to novag grats or I forget if he sold it to no grats I don't know if that was the time but there was a big announcement when he sold and it it was like around 17 18 bucks I think novag grats probably bought before novag grat so yeah vitalic sold a big chunk to Novo at 99 Cents okay no no this was when he I think he sold well yeah I guess he sold

multiple times but the one I remember is when he's it was like sub 20 so you saw that and you and you sold yeah I mean I was up like 40x or something you sell all of it or some of it no no a decent chunk yeah so eall sold any other ones that you've um yeah any other ones that you've just sold you where the the thesis was right but and and the investment was right dude I've had this thesis about eth all the time and I've somehow done dumb [ __ ] along the way and convinced myself that you know I was going to do X or Y and sometimes it works but again

um yeah it was it was uh probably the biggest paper hand I mean I've done many others right but eth is the one that hurts I mean it doesn't hurt I got to say because like I don't necessarily regret um taking levered bets on eth whether it's nfts or defi or whatever but um yeah I was I gave up probably too much ether and these icos and uh you know yeah sold when I should have what's the biggest um what's the what's the biggest mistake you've made around you got the thesis right but the investment was wrong so yeah

um well it's it's eth right I mean it just said it um I public like I was very I mean at some point I'll I'll publish this memo that I wrote to sequa about e um like open source on steroids I have a blog post about it like you know uh it was it yeah it's probably the one where I was I was very early I guess I was right about the thesis but I didn't executed perfectly now have I done poorly no but I could have done probably way better in paying more attention to and the the problem with these

questions is that like hindsight is obviously 2020 but I think I probably should have realized during the Ico boom that like this sort of fat protocol thesis of like eth at the end of the day is this Capital formation machine and it it will benefit a lot like um I'll tell you like a thesis that I got completely wrong and then I appreciate it maybe to give listeners another anecdote but I think one of the bigger mistakes I did during the Ico boom was like investing in things that had way too many dependencies like I think we're still in that state of crypto where like you're throwing kind of ideas at the wall to

see what sticks but like prediction markets can be huge but probably can be very large over time but like something like auger never was going to work because you didn't have a stable coin uh and then all these other ideas or in the during the Ico boom were never going to work because you didn't have defi you didn't have a stable coin and so that like that's a clear dependency right or like nfts like you didn't have a network like salano with super low fees like so like nfts at scale and mass are not going to work or gaming is not going to work

so I do Wonder like if my thesis on gaming was too early even though I've done very well like I still like we still don't have gaming and maybe I should revisit my thesis because maybe it's gamei like maybe it is just it will just be financialization and then just a little bit more fun but I wonder that probably isn't as big enough of a market as I probably thought it would be again this is an example of not an narrow process actually I got the out sorry not an eror of outcome the outcome was exceptional but the process was like I think pretty premature pretty poorly executed and I think it's important to like go back and and even you can have

a something like some of the gaming Investments I've made the outcome has been phenomenal but the process not so much Ms I made I'm sure like you too but like um and those are probably the ones that I've tended to overlook the most and after the Ico crash I I I went back to those and and said okay paying attention to those is important because that's where you like you always focus on like the things you didn't do well like there's an error of outcome and then naturally you diagnose the process but it's the ones that you really do well that you tend to overlook and there may be plenty of errors in that process but the outcome might be

great and that's I think the level the difference between a good investor and a fantastic investor I think that's where I made the most amount of growth in my investing um I guess style is by focusing on like that other part that I tended to overlook there was um you you put this little random section you said random thoughts and had some bullets and there's one that says on not being prepared for Success what do what does this one mean yeah I think a lot of people are afraid of being successful just

fundamentally um I've seen money change people very quickly and I think you can be afraid right like okay I now seeing in the timeline people are saying oh you know my portfolio is at alltime high but I somehow feel the worst it's not uncommon and I think money can be incredibly liberating it buys you time um it can be like it is the best thing in the world I think because it allows you to money's energy but I think I think you it's worthwhile investing in thinking what would happen if you were to all of a sudden wake up and you had the amount that you dream

of and and questioning the things that come to mind first um and questioning if your identity is tied to a number mine was at some point and it's not now how much has your happiness changed from cycle one to two to three to four I think I'm quite happy generally um it's improved for sure I'd be lying if I tell you that making more money did not make you happier I think anyone that says that money doesn't make money contributes to it a lot like being finan owning I'll

say this owning my time has been probably the biggest contributor to my happiness just that and whatever that number is it's very different because there's people that have a ton of money but don't own their time so when I left par I it's like I've and I've constantly Revisited the idea of raising a fund and I always shut it down because I know that that will be not owning my time you give up on that and I don't miss that like I don't and I think for me owning my time is more important than adding another two zeros to my name or

zero or whatever sometimes I guess what would change is if I no longer feel relevant and whatever that may but I feel fulfilled in what I'm doing uh crypto is important in my life I think it's the biggest movement that I'll see in my life but it doesn't it's not everything for me I have other interests I do other things I think about other things a lot of them are more and more related and intertwined with crypto

but um but it's not everything so I don't want to say I'll never do a fund or I'll never do things that will compromise a bit of my time I think you always do some of some tradeoff right um because it's like uh it's like it's like when you go on summer break in school when you're taking that final exam all you're thinking of is summer break two weeks in you want to go back to school I haven't felt that because I'm doing other stuff a lot of it is sitting here and doing Empire I think it's been very rewarding and I'll continue to do that if there's a time where I don't feel relevant maybe I'll go and launch a fund but that day hasn't

come there's this post from 2021 at the about two weeks away from the top October 26 2021 you said I've made many uh mistakes investing over the years one of the key learnings and insights has been not investing in things that have many dependencies what did you mean by this yeah as I said earlier like it was in the Ico boom you had a lot of these projects that like augur prediction Market you get excited about the category could truly define media information surfacing wisdom of the crowds yada yadada y you rally behind that Tam you rally behind that idea but when you're settling bets and you don't have a stable coin and you're settling on un volatile collateral like

eth it's not going to work this is why I'm so excited about salana now which by the way I think for everyone and so like that something like a prediction Market in 2018 or like Uber or airn V on the or AI today okay let's talk about AI people want to hear about AI llms all this Jazz okay fine you know great I'm excited are you going to deploy that in ethereum what kind of like what is the cost can you actually upload your model how expensive is that going to be Bitcoin

l2s oh it's an L2 you know it's a multi I'm like yeah good luck trying to convince core Bitcoin holders about that their are dependencies like they're thankfully like over the last 12 years we've made meaningful improvements on on the infrastructure side of things uh defi has been a huge backbone to power all the other stuff gaming nfts and many of the other use cases like def is so essential it's a reason why it's the first killer use case why I got so excited to perfi and Ben thankfully shared that vision is that it is the backbone for everything else because if you're if this is a financialization and untethered Capital markets the speed of light you need defi and if you don't have a def5 system in

place a core bank that allows you to Mint collateral against it like maker or compound or a it a lot of the other things don't work and so there's a reason why if you look at the evolution of every L1 every L2 blast is an example the first things that work are uh a DEX and a money market and so that's that's what I mean by but like you need or like an oracle like these are kind of like core dependencies to power to open up the um so whenever I look at something like AI today I'm very excited but at the same time I do question when a Founder says

yeah I'm working on like we're deploying on ethereum like okay like your model must be the size of like it's it's not gonna like it's not going to work and um so yeah now is AI crypto not going to be a thing no I think it's going to be very much a thing in the right with the right Network um so yeah does that does that make sense it does yeah what is a what is a mistake that happened that didn't seem to be meaningful at the time but looking back you think that it's a you you now realize that it was a big mistake um yeah someone asked this question it was a good question took me

a while to respond um so course it's a difficult question because um bi the bias is to think uh focus on the outcome right and not so much on the process you know obviously naturally like selling a particular position maybe at the time didn't mean meaningful selling eth at like 18 bucks didn't mean meaningful it's actually felt like a genius I was up 40x I'm like Jesus like this is great I've outperformed every Venture uh fund out there um of course over time that became incredibly stupid right um was there

that was an era of outcome as I've talked about but there are other instances where like sorry an ER of process um and so I think like when you when someone ask this question the natural inclination is this think I sold a bag it could have been 100x down the road which you know there's you're always I think you naturally have to think that you're going to make those those mistakes um and it's going to happen like you're not going to catch them all right and I think like obsessing about those is probably not so much of a useful exercise um I think the biggest mistake that didn't seem to be meaningful was for so many years I wasn't documenting my trades or being as

disciplined as I was Rin to be in my upbringing as an investor at JP Morgan and then at Sage and I'm like I know how to there's like a process by which like an Institutional process like as an investor like you're trained a certain way and I was lucky because so many people invested their time and I was like why am I not doing this with my portfolio like it's um and I think success especially when you have it like in crypto uh you can punt a lot of these deficiencies and you can probably get away with it for for a long time and then at some point it will just come and haunt you if you really want to scale your book if you really want to grow it

and then manage it these are some of the things that I would go back and it didn't feel as meaningful at the time because you hit it once with Bitcoin you hit it with ethereum and you're like everything goes up like it is today but I would I would highly encourage people to to be disciplined with their process to document it as much as possible and if you ever feel so comfortable to comment and open source that process publicly because to invite criticism uh because ultimately that someone else asked like where have you seen the highest growth and for me it was actually recently where I I started being more vocal about my salana thesis and inviting a lot of criticism naturally um o open- sourcing that

process was very useful for me to go back and saying all right I actually don't understand fee markets that well okay I actually don't understand stuff that is happening outside of salana like yeah salana has a really good things but actually there's some wrong things here like there's there's things that are not perfect not wrong but they're not figured out okay leten let me focus on that and I think it this probably would have taken me months of work whereas being vocal on Twitter being vocal here allowed me to connect with people because they reached out publicly or privately and that was incredibly useful so yeah I've noticed you've gotten a very transparent over the last year on Twitter how do you think about the pros

and cons of posting on Twitter and oversharing unders sharing and yeah just how do you think about like transparency in general I have come you're right I I become more comfortable being more transparent only and trying to speak from personal experience and trying to keep it to that um it's yeah it's slightly sometimes uncomfortable like I never and I I guess people want simple answers you know they want to be told what to buy and what to sell and when to

sell but that's not that's like my biggest hesitation um so I don't know like I'll I've I've liked doing it with salana um I'm prepared to be incredibly wrong if it doesn't reach parody with ethereum but I think that yeah this just now become a thing of my process um but it is I don't know how you feel about it it's very difficult because just you know so I I just recently funded this thing called bit Club um and

the ideas to like share at liquid stuff like liquid ideas that I'm interested in and I had I was talking to Jason who's like spearheading this effort from M uh folus I was like well what if like you connected your wallet and people could see your wallet I mean opsi obviously is the reason why you wouldn't want to be as transparent certain things but if I talk about a particular project like geonet for instance that I talked about that I recently did a deal it was OTC but you know the tokens are locked I can't sell them for a year like you know people can go and buy them right now and dump him on me whatever like I can't touch him

um in that case I could maybe post the contract the vesting contract or the wallet people can see if I'm when I'm buying when I'm selling selling buying if everyone does it like is that a bad thing like that would be like a perfect real time 13f right or something like that um yeah I don't know how you feel about it I'm still uneasy about it to be honest because I can change my mind on things frequently maybe after this pot I sell all my memes meme coins maybe I don't know who knows maybe scups I don't know uh my position is very different than others and and and so is yours and so whoever's listening so like I think you

have to I'll say maybe the the last thing that I haven't maybe emphasized as much in this is like everything that I've said here may not likely applied to you there are certain principles that I really have found useful and I bring him up time and time again I brought him on the last podcast like this idea of thinking probabilities constantly updating your your thesis binary thinking doesn't serve you well I think it's the most useful thing that I've applied in my process it may not worked for you you may be a fantastic Trader you may have a magic crystal ball whatever it is but like again like the process is very

unique to your style your position and you know I'd encourage it's a very personal process so I think the ultimate path is like when you make a mistake it's like denial right it's that phase right denial and then like anger and then finally like acceptance and then TR you hopefully transcend maybe I'll I'll leave you with this but like we are going to make all mistakes constantly you said it know the game you're playing never put yourself in a

position where you can be out of the game never if you love this game zoom out be here increase your probability of being at at bat don't be liquidated and you know um and play the long game like one of the more comforting things you always have to find like places of comfort because it can be very stress like it is stressful right so managing your emotional state for me what that has given me the most amount of comfort is this idea that inverting it's like okay I'm in my 30s how many more years of investing do I have ahead of me if things pan out healthwise whatever 40

50 and I want to be there I want to be in a position to backf Founders to do what I love because I love this game if you don't love this game go do play go play another game but I love this game so I think for me it's like that is given me when you ask me if I'm happier now I'm happier now because I'm very comfortable that if I play this cycle right I don't know will I play the first cycle better than the third or the second or the fourth or the 10th I don't know but I want to be here for the next 30 40 50 years and so yeah I'm just aware that uh like the the power of that compounding is

something that I don't want to give up on yeah before I would have told you I want to get to a certain number I've been there and I want to get to 10 and then 100 and then a billion and then 10 billion and it never [ __ ] stops um but the most rewarding thing literally the most rewarding thing that I've done is doing the podcast like another 10x in the it's like it just doesn't compute as much as hearing a listen and it may sound soft but it's like hearing a listen say hey man like I was listen to Empire through the bear and you guys really helped me like navigate this stuff my was great you know you know do you have a grand ambition now yes very much

so I think people most of the time don't know what to do with money and I'm always run so okay why haven't we sequenced the microbiome why is nuclear underfunded the the public sector is a terrible allocator of resources terrible even the private sector I understand picky and you can be compounding and earning 5% on like billions and billions of dollars and then you're going to go buy private yacht for like 330 million bucks and spend 10% of your you know it pisses me off when I see that not to each his own right I'm not going to judge you but I

think there are very neglected pockets of this world that deserve money to do more research to pursue their ideas and it's a coordination problem crypto helps with coordination I want to make more money because there are a lot of things that I want to pursue money is like a really high density thing and the more after a certain level I think you start playing at at like the chess board you can start moving pieces like when Bezos or Elon were deciding when to build their Factory a lot of States came to them and offered this crazy

incentives I think that's really powerful because you impact a lot of people and you have a lot of decis like decision-making power and so yeah that's nuclear and sequencing the microG gme for whatever there are two ideas that I've had for a long time I want to pursue them I just gonna take much more money um but it's like they're neglected right think about like crypto is very neglected contrarian still nuclear you and I share this passion for it so there's no reason why like it hasn't been you know why aren't we investing billions of dollars in nuclear why are we thrown away into [ __ ] solar panels and winter like that degrade in three years not 10 and it costs more energy to

produce than they ever makeing their entire [ __ ] life it makes no sense like literally it makes no sense sense but here we are yeah Nar narrative problem all right man this been great any any other last thoughts words lessons mistakes that you want to share maybe what's sh I mean I've been talking for a long time what is uh what is maybe one or two mistakes that you've what's your worst mistake that you've done 2017 I bought a bunch of eth on uh credit cards points send all that eth over to

my ether wallet loaded up on some icos one out of 20 ended up working which was chain link um and then had big old bag of credit card debt right as we were launching blockworks um yeah i' like maxed out like three credit cards so that wait then then what happened though you were forced to sell I just slowly I know I just ate like I think it was 24% APR you know 20% APR just ate that for years or not years but you know for a long time paying paying that off basically and just paid it off month by month month by month but you know that was there wasn't yield farming

back then to make that carry trade no no and Mike and I didn't Mike and I at the beginning of blockworks paid ourselves like the minimum wage of New York basically and you know and the in 2019 when the bare Market got really bad we stopped paying ourselves that was like three years into the business and we literally cut our out we we cut our pay to zero um and you know but I had credit card debt and so that you know that was that was definitely tough that was a hanging mistake that lasted for a while that was one another one was probably you know we did things at blockworks that I don't I don't know if there are mistakes but um we we chased because we're bootstrapped we had to chase short we thought we had to chase

short cash and we probably over optimized for that so we did things like um you know we hosted The multi-coin Summit in 2019 oh yeah I remember Mulin what at Half Moon Bay no this the one at chiani in New York in 2019 so like they hired blockworks to host the multi-coin summit that's that's not the game we're playing that like that's an outsourced Event Services business you're not an events coordinator you're a media no like that's not our business but we did things like that you know we we in 2018 2019 I think it was or 2020 we like basically started a influencer marketing agency on the side to for we literally almost had hired a head of

influencer business to like we had 300 people on this spreadsheet um yeah I won't name names but like you know blockfi would come to us and be like guarantee you I was not there in that list the first time I think I ever messaged you was to see if you wanted to get on and you didn't even respond to me I'm pretty sure um well we'll we'll have to check the chain check the DMS but as far as I remember you shot down my idea to do a D5 pod right oh that was the first time we talked yeah yeah yeah that was the first time so anyways there was um that I mean we another mistake that we made was like not investing in content our own content not taking a bet on ourselves so the early blockworks business we would go host podcasts for other people right

Pomp and celus meltam demirez and Joe Carlson Charlie Shem Wolf of Wall Street we had all these outside shows we had to literally start over in March of 2021 when we launched Empire that was the first time we'd ever created an in-house show that we owned um and so that was three and a half years of building where we had built other people's shows and it was great because it allowed us to bootstrap the business and those shows spit off you know lots and lots of money and a lot of those shows made millions of dollars a year but we had no leverage and we had we didn't own the IP so we had to basically start fresh so we did a lot of those kind of things to where we were kind of chasing the dollar not understanding the business value that we were creating um those are some those

are some of the one the ones that come to mind hiring from Big this is probably one that a lot of Founders are going to make this cycle but hiring from bigname companies right we we've hired from basically any time we've hired from a big Trad fi company it doesn't work like I think that's like the data is very compelling like for most organizations right yeah I mean you w to like okay you want to kind of think about the next level of your company and maybe hire there but when you hire like seven steps ahead it doesn't work so let's say so blockworks has 60 employees right now when I'm hiring I am trying to think about people who you know have built companies from 50 to 100 people or are you know you know head of functions

at 100 and 150 person companies but when you hire you know if we went and hired the head of sales from uh Bloomberg right that's a 100,000 person company with you know the the Bloomberg brand on it so very it's literally a different life that this person is living so yeah that's a mistake that we've made a couple of times and have learned the hard way over and over again I think crypto is a great training ground I think I'll close out by saying you should be making mistakes if you're not making mistakes you're not taking enough risk you're not putting yourself out there like the best investors wealthiest people people in the world

they've I know it's cliche but a lot of them have nearly bankrupt on certain things decisions that they've made um I think you never want to put yourself in a position of being as close to Absolute like liquidation or whatnot but it's normal like you should be taking those and the faster you put ego aside you recognize the quote unquote mistake and you learn from it you document it like that's that's the process that you want to get into I think and minimize ego recognize your emotions but minimize ego um you know you're never going to time it perfectly uh and so at the end of the day like you know live to see another

day be here like take at bats take swings right and you know some of them might work out others may not um but I have a ton of respect when I hear someone like St like admiration really not respect or someone like stand or Miller and I'll say it's time and time again it's just incredible to hear someone like that after his incredible track record he goes on public television says I don't know what I'm doing right now because this Market this conditions I've never experienced in my life I was like Wow but meanwhile you hear like all the other guys that are not as successful be like they know certain things they speak from Authority and in binary terms and you just tell what's going on in Stan's brain the

darking of those games like he's thinking in probabilities and hedging and constantly adapting his thinking and I think I mean it' be weird not to do that in crypto right so when you ask me like I think you always have to have a point where you you really change you do something if it reaches a certain level because who knows man like the probability of ethereum going to zero is still not zero of it maintaining its lead is still you know none of this is fig figured out right and so I think we all can rest on the conviction that crypto is here to stay it has less existential risk it's very powerful it's woken up it's opened up this box it's

opened a door to fix a lot of things but it may not be salana it may not be ethereum it may not be Bitcoin may be something that doesn't even exist but um I think your probability of catching and investing in these things uh is going to be much much higher if you if you perfect your process as much as possible um so yeah don't beat yourself too much I mean I think that's the other thing man when you make these mistakes it's like it's really you that's your worst enemy you're beating yourself up as much as possible I'd highly encourage the key takeaway from me therapy's been some of the best investment I've made and and

exercise I will say my mental health in this cycle compared to last cycle is night and day and it's because of exercise yeah get you know he like heavy heavy lifting I would say for me ruin toly I I talked to toly about this he's trying to hit the Thousand club I'm trying to hit the 800 so yeah yeah he's uh he's he's got he's got a few years on me but nice yeah I can't run I I can't run I got these long linky legs yeah yeah yeah that's why you're so critical of me running marathons and stuff it all right well I appreciate look uh hopefully it was useful if anything will be useful for me because I'll go listen to this again and again and be like oh God why did I say that

I'm so stupid so maybe this was a whole mistake or maybe it was the best thing that I've ever done who knows yeah time that was great I have a I have a on a to end as we always end on the content side of things so I recommended avatar on the last episode I would like to formally offer an apology to anyone who has actually watched that show because I watched a few few more episodes is a it is a God awful show it is take that is corrected mistake good work uh I was watching like episodes two and three and the only reason I kept watching is I was like I recommended this publicly I there's really an investing lesson here I was like I recommended this publicly

so I have to keep watching uh and then I was like you know I I can I have to offer this formal apology because man that is a that is some bad acting in that show so uh heard Shogun is really good inspired by the novel for Jay clell which is one of my favorite it's on Disney plus it's on I'm watching it on Hulu so I'm I'm an episode and a half in but uh is it good yeah um it's it's pretty good it's pretty good okay I well someone recommended it Mt Mt said the best show of all time or something M's now obsessed with Japanese culture he's been going on this like deep do Prett sure M watched one episode of Shogun thought Japanese culture is like the

coolest thing in the world I don't know I have no I have no idea about Mert's affiliation with Japan but uh anyways it's it's a pretty good show it's a pretty good show all right nice yeah awesome man well hey always a treat thanks for allowing me to share these things and uh you know people want to hear about more in particular you know drop us a comment and um yeah make sure to call me out if I'm rambling whoever you are can't wait to see the YouTube comments after this all right thanks everyone see you next week hey everyone Thanks for tuning in to today's episode don't forget to claim your free Wormhole nft exclusive to Empire listeners hit the link in the description of today's episode and fill out the form to claim your unique Wormhole nft [Music]

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