Why Crypto Finally Makes Sense to Wall Street | Jason Yanowitz

Transcript

I spoke with a hedge fund in New York about a $10 billion fund. They have $300 million allocated to crypto tokens if clarity passes. That's one fund in New York. So the amount of funds who are on the sidelines waiting for clarity is [music] way more than people realize. There were walled gardens being built with banks and there were walled gardens being built with Facebook and [music] Google and now you know obviously there are walled gardens being built with Anthropic and Open AI. Crypto is supposed to give you the ability to opt out of this system. How did this Msari acquisition uh happen? You what's the story behind that?

>> It is the biggest endeavor the company has ever taken on. Misari by far was our biggest competitor on sales calls. 47% of all sales deals. Half of our deals we competed against Misari on. [music] And so I think there's always been a natural fit there. Welcome to Epicenter, the show which talks about the technologies, projects, and people driving decentralization and the blockchain revolution. I'm Sebastian. I'm here today with my guest Jason Yanowitz who's a co-founder at Block Works. But before I talk to Jason, here's a word from our sponsors this week. This episode's brought to you by Near AI Cloud. OpenClaw is one of the biggest stories in AI right now.

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not a promise that they won't look. It's cryptographic guarantees that they can't. With OpenClaw on neari cloud, you get cloud convenience without data exposure. There's no hardware to manage and no trust assumptions required. You can learn more at near.ai. Hey Jason, how's it going? >> Good man. Good to see you. >> Good to see you too. Yeah. Uh, I was just looking at when we last talked um before hopping on here and the last time we we chatted on the podcast was in 2024 in October at permissionless and it feels like that was a decade ago.

>> RIP permissionless no longer even exists. So, >> exactly. Yeah. and and and that actually kind of like brings me to some of the points I wanted to touch with you, but like you know during that podcast we were talking about how infrastructure was shifting into applications and the applications were coming and to some extent that has happened but maybe not in the ways that you know people thought or would have liked right we've seen this very big shift towards institutionalization of crypto and kind of crypto growing up and a lot of the you know more cipher punky aspects of the industry, if I could kind of put a word on them, have not done so well or kind of moved to the wayside. So, you know, give us your view on how the ecosystem has evolved in, you

know, this year and a half, almost two years since we last spoke. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I would actually correct you um and say that cipher punk stuff has done way better than anyone has ever thought it could do. and um it has just ev because it has evolved and done so well the cipher punk nature has been kind of you know has has been shed. So we've we've we've lost you know we've we've lost a lot of the um we've exited phase one and we've entered phase two right so if we look at let's you so we talked about permissionless where we did this last podcast Yumi and Sunny and um you know we used to have two conference brands we had digital asset summit and we had permissionless permissionless was this like cryptonative you know dgens and it was it really started as a DeFi conference which back

then was like meant retail it meant cryptonativity it meant kind of degeneracy onchain and the reason we kind of disbanded permissionless is because we also have this other institutional conference. Well, where has DeFi gone? It's done so well, it's done so extraordinarily well that it's now starting to get embedded into institutional finance. So, these topics, you know, we, you know, they used to be so separate, I couldn't even conceive of them being one thing. Uh, it's now it's now it's it's now all one thing. We're now just moving capital markets on chain. And so I know people maybe think that like, oh, we've done a lot of the early crypto ideas didn't do well. We've moved on to other things. I would say

they've done so extraordinarily well beyond anyone's early beliefs that it just feels upsetting to some of the early people because we've lost some of the maybe extremely hardened core beliefs in exchange for TAM penetration and mass adoption. >> Yeah, I I I see what you're saying. and and you know uh I was kind of expecting uh a similar answer from you. Uh but at the same time you I was just in Berlin about a month ago and you know Berlin very much is the kind of cipher punk capital of crypto where a lot of the early ideas kind of took off. you know, Ethereum, Polka Dot, Cosmos, and all these teams that were building what I think they would have described

as an antithesis to this the financial system uh where you had privacy, where you had uh self-custody of assets, where you had agency and and sovereignty over over your assets. And it it it does feel like the space generally has moved away from a lot of those ideas. You know, we we don't have privacy to a large extent and I think there's a lot of regulatory push back at least in Europe. I'm not sure about you as maybe you can you can sort of give some color on that but to having privacy on chain um you know a lot of the ways that people hold assets now you even with fintex even with you know if it's like Robin Hood or Revolute you

assets are not fully held like not fully held by someone's personal private keys that they're uh that they have full access to and and are the only and sole um uh sort of proprietors of those keys and able to move the assets. there's all these things that crypto has kind of um in some ways not fully like built into the system. Do do you do do you think that that's a loss or do do you think that like it's just a necessary sort of middle ground that we end up into where you know we have the uh all this kind of user experience benefits of being on a blockchain you know fast transactions cheap 24/7 markets etc but we have to give up some of the other stuff and some

of the other ideas that um were really pertinent in the in the early days >> so I don't think the this is where you know maybe some people will get upset with me the goal of what we're what is the goal of what we're doing here? Why are we all spending so much time and money and our lives building this stuff? It was never to make it so that everyone in the world would self-custody their assets. You might disagree with me on that. I don't think the goal of crypto was ever to make it so everyone in the entire world is this self-s sovereign individual. The goal as I saw it was crypto is supposed to give you the ability to opt out of the system. The scary thing I think about where the world was going pre-crypto was there was no way to opt out of the system. There

were walled gardens being built with banks and there were walled gardens being built with Facebook and Google and now you know obviously there are walled gardens being built with anthropic and open AAI and the scary thing about that world is there's no way to opt out of it. You're you're trapped there. You cannot access money or the internet without it until crypto came around. The UI and UX of self-custodying your assets is is bad. Like we can just say it's bad and that's fine that it's bad. it. But it the reason crypto is so powerful is it gives you the ability to do those things. That's by the way that's one of the things that crypto does. It also does the less sexy things. It's better financial rails. It lets you move money around the world faster and easier and cheaper. All those things are true. But

I think the um the ideology of crypto was half correct. The the the ideology that I think was wrong was that um was this ardent belief that every single person in the world should become a self- sovereign individual. Everyone should opt out of the system. Everyone should self-custody their Bitcoin. I don't I don't self-custody my Bitcoin anymore. Not worth the risk for me. For me, the risk of losing a losing the ledger like that's not worth it to me. So, I actually don't self-custody mo most of my Bitcoin, I will say.

um other people would would disagree with me. Other people live in a you knowitarian state or a um authoritarian regime and and they would totally disagree with me. They'd say it's more of a risk to hold your capital in the system. So yeah, I don't I don't know. I actually don't think that the that the whole goal of all of this was to self-custody all of your stuff. And I look at what Venice is doing, right? Like um Eric Vorhees in Venice and I I really like what they're doing. They're not saying every single person in the world should use Venice, right? There will still be people in the world who use Anthropic and Open AI, but there's they're giving people a way to opt out of those. And I like that. And I like that.

>> Right. So you think it's more of a like you having the tools to have the ability to opt out is better than like having none of the tools to opt out. And having that option to opt out is actually a net positive. you know, people will still use, you know, this the the the non-self custody, the the hosted wallets and uh we'll use uh walled gardens like like Anthropic uh or OpenAI or any other wallet gardens. But we have that ability to opt out if we want to. If we want to use some sovereign way to like hold our coins, we can do that. If we want to use a private AI, we can do that. Uh but we have the options for both. In a world of centralizing forces, crypto gives you the ability to live a self- sovereign

life. That does not mean all seven or eight billion people in the world have to live a self-s sovereign life. That that that's how I feel. It also gives you other stuff like look at what Robin Hood is doing with Robin Hood chain and and the app. Like they're they didn't launch uh you know they didn't launch like a huge prime brokerage team and go hire 200 people to do lending and borrowing. They just plugged in Morpho and I think Maple too. So it does like it's I almost think of it as just an extension of fintech in some ways like okay let's say you used to have a you used to have 10,000 people building lending and borrowing then fintech reduced that to you could now run a lend borrow company with only a thousand people. Now you can run a lend borrow company with only a hundred people and

it's just an extension of making finance much much much more efficient. So, and that's the area where I think that people maybe, you know, your I I forget how long your pod your podcast I think has been around longer. I think it's like the first crypto podcast, like at least the first one I ever listened to. 2014 15 >> 13. Yeah. 13 years going on 13. >> Yeah. 2013. Most of the people who listen to your show originally, they do not like seeing, you know, that you can open your Charles Schwab account and buy Bitcoin. They do not like seeing Bitcoin inside of Black Rockck. They do not like seeing Morpho integrated into Robin Hood. But news flash for them is that none of these things would be able to exist for a long for a long amount of time if all the things that give them

self- sovereignty wouldn't be able to exist if they weren't generating revenue and making money. And the only reason that a lot of the self-s sovereign things existed in the first place is because venture capitalists funded it. And venture capitalists won't fund it for a long time if they're not making money. And so that's why like this whole theme. You know, Block Works gets kind of crap because we're um we talk about this return to fundamentals a lot and revenue and like why do we need to generate all this revenue? It's so that we can actually have these systems that work well because the venture capitalist funded the original self-s sovereign systems even if people don't want to admit that.

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you're just looking for a place to generate yield on your idle assets, Lido Earn makes it super simple. It offers curated DeFi strategies built around SDH. You deposit once, you choose a vault, and manage everything from a single interface. To learn more and start building with SD Vaults, go to lido.fi/stvaults FI/Stvaults and get in touch with lighter contributors today. >> So, you know, speaking of blockwords, uh, you I'm always sort of uh fascinated by the arc of sort of blocks over the last nine years. you know, you guys started as a company. It was mostly doing sort of podcast production for other teams and selling ads. And then, uh, I believe in 2020 or 2021, you launched the news arm, which then became

one of the largest, um, news organizations in crypto and certainly one of the most reputable ones. U, then at the same time doing events with Permissionless and Digital Asset Summit. Uh, there might have been some other ones in there I probably forgot about. Uh but yeah, lots of different sort of like verticals to the business and uh and then uh launched a data arm and recently acquired Misari, a company that was founded just around the same time as Block Works, but you know had raised at just astronomical valuations. Um you ended up buying for you know huge discounts uh from from those from from those times. Um but now it seems like Blockworks has kind of stripped down to

uh becoming you know a data company uh with a very strong uh media um and events business. I I'd love to get your take on like you know what what what what that arc sort of looks like from the perspective of you as an entrepreneur you know was was all that intentional were there some mistakes along along way which ones were the most sort of salient and um and is this is this like block works final form or like what's the you know what's the sort of like next thing that you're looking at as uh ways of the business business go >> yeah yeah so this is blockworks uh we you know we started the business December of 2017 and you were intimately familiar with some of the the early years. Um, for those who don't know, we

we sold some ads on Zeb's podcast back in the day. Um, and uh the but I I think the the way that things have evolved maybe doesn't look that normal to an outsider. The way it looks internally feels kind of just like what we thought the business would evolve to. So the whole vision for the company was that eventually crypto would become this institutional asset class and as that happens there would need to be way better information for the asset class. So super simple thesis crypto would institutionalize there would need to be better information around the asset class and around the technology. And so back there's two ways to go build an information platform. You can either start with what I'd call the bottom of the funnel like the product layer which is like data and products and stuff like

that. Um, and that's probably a better that's that's ar that's def actually definitely the most valuable part of it. The problem was back in 2017, you remember this, there was no market for it. There was no there were no institutions. There were there were no companies doing things on chain. Like there was just a a Jaguar pilot on IOTA. Like there was no there was no real stuff happening on chain. And so I you know you look at a lot of the companies for example like Msari uh who went and raised on this vision. It was just they actually had the vision right like Selkus Misari Sulkus I tip my cap to him he had everything right he was just too early he was just a little bit too early and um so there's the other layer of the

funnel though which is was was really really really important for Blockwork starting off which is the meet the the top of the funnel information this is what I call like soft information it's building an audience it's building a relationship with your customers it's kind of the marketing layer It's um and for us, what would that look like was podcasts newsletters conferences and eventually a news business which we ran for a couple years and then shut down that layer. So, we scaled, we bootstrapped, first off, the nice thing about media is you can bootstrap it. So, I don't know if you ever raised money for Epicenter, but like you don't really need a lot of money to go start a podcast. You don't really need a lot of money or any money to go start a conference and they can generate loads of cash flow. So we built we scaled the

um the media and events business from zero to 25 million in revenue without ever raising an institutional round of venture money. Um when in 2022 the industry evolved and there was this really strong need for the data. So people our customers who had listened to the podcast attended our events started saying hey guys there's no good data. Can can can someone build the data? And we said look we don't need to build the data. you have the block and you have Msari and you have all these other businesses and they said the data is not good enough. We need better data and so that's why we got into the data space and yeah we've been building that and um it's scaled drastically. We're up you know our ARR is up 110% this year and um yeah it's I think the thing that we got

wrong was we thought the we thought we originally thought the investor would be the customer. So we thought Panta and Multicoin and Two Sigma and Suscoana would be the dream customer. Turns out that the businesses running moving onchain are the real customers. They're you have these legacy web 2 systems Quickbooks and into it and uh SAP and Oracle and HubSpot and Salesforce none of that mirrors over to you know on onchain when companies run onchain their whole all their systems break down and so we we have a we have the underlying data layer and then we build products on top to service them.

>> Yeah. What's what's kind of uh and you were talking about Misari and and and Celkus you also Ryan also had this like massive uh audience and distribution. I think he you know he even understood that you know you needed to build the audience before you went and built the product. >> Isn't that the way things are going though? Like isn't I I do believe you know you if you look at the um I think it's like a Gallup chart of uh trust in institutions. I mean and every single year it goes down. I think trust in institutions is at an all-time low for America. It's at like 36%, we trust >> um you know the government and institutions way less. This also means that we trust companies way less. So like think about the brand that like a Proctor and Gamble or like a Coca-Cola

used to command. It doesn't work like that anymore. And so but there so but people still need to trust something. So who do they trust? I think people trust people over brands now. And um that's why like part of our strategy is we have a lot of people internally internally at Block Works with these huge followings and we incentivize that. We actually we pay people to grow their Twitter followings which would seem super weird to a company 10 years ago. >> Yeah. It was actually maybe even antithetical right like 10 years ago or 15 years ago you you you probably couldn't have your own Twitter following or Yeah. The company I was at before block works was a company called called Cyisense and I started posting on LinkedIn in 2016 about >> back then it was just like like

blockchain and bitcoin and uh they were like don't post on LinkedIn like you like the company account is the is the is the view of the company like do we we don't want you to represent the view of the company and >> think about how different that is just 10 years later and by the way that trend is early days we're early days of that trend and I think people follow people, not brands. And I think if you're a company today and a startup, you should be thinking about how do you empower your people to build their own brands. And look, there's a risk like the amount of job offers our employees get is probably 10x higher than another company. But yeah, I think I think it's well worth the risk here.

>> It's just like uh you know 10-15 years ago, we started seeing this trend of like you know, bring your own device to work, right? Like bring your own laptop or bring your now it's like bring your own audience. >> Bring your own brand. Bring your own brand. >> Bring your own brand. Bring your own brand. Yeah. Yeah. No, I I heard you talking about uh about this on on another show. Um and you know, I said like media and events businesses are I think raising money uh for those types of businesses is is hard because those types of revenues are not like seen as high high multiple revenues. And so it's it's hard to raise money on media events businesses. Like we we never raised money, never expected to because we never thought we could raise money. Um uh but but there's this sort of like the

a trend that's shifting where lots of like really big media businesses and media brands are being acquired like TBPN was bought by OpenAI and like you know some of the early guys I know you you you guys looked up to like Morning Brew were acquired years ago and um you know the Hustle and like Robin Hood's acquiring media businesses and I I wonder if now you know within the investment community and and venture Sure there will be a shift right not necessarily funding media businesses directly but uh definitely seeing those as being more value more high value or if you have a founder with a with a large audience right >> u if those value like the products that they raise for will will um garner

higher valuations is that is that a trend that you expect to see in the next couple years >> I don't think media businesses will do well like look at look at crypto media I mean nearly all of them are defunct or shut down um And I'm talking like news specifically. What I do think will continue is um uh businesses, software and software and AI companies continuing to go direct to their customers, right? So, you used to have this um this third party that you had to go to to get in front of your customers. You had to pay for ad dollars. You had to pay for sponsorships. You had to pay for um you know, you just you had to like go to the go to the press. Um, and that stuff matters less and less than it I mean it

matters less than it ever has. And so I think you will continue to see a lot of companies just going direct. That is the overarching theme I'd say is going direct to your customers. One of the ways to do that and this is what Blockworks has done is to actually own a medi a mini media and events business internally. So we've never spent a dollar sponsoring another person's event. We've never spent a dollar advertising on a on a podcast. And the reason for that is because because it's actually much more effective and cheaper and way higher ROI for us to go actually hire a podcast host internally and to go actually have a we have a threeperson events team. The events by the way >> threeperson events team.

>> Three person events team. So and the events do >> so so digital asset summit is organized by three people. >> We have three people. >> Jesus. Okay. That's that's impressive. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean they're they're they're amazing. They're amazing. Uh, Bennett, Kate, Carolyn, that's it. That's the team. Um, and you know, the events, by the way, generate eight figures of revenue. So, we're able to take what is like theoretically low multiple revenue, which now is changing because Mark Andre tweeted out that events should command a high multiple because of AI, but we'll ignore that for a second. Theoretically, low low multiple revenue. And we're able to take all that revenue and um we're able to take the cash flow because the

margins are quite good. So we're able to take the cash flow from the events and we're and then event uh essentially invest it into product and data. So we're turning low multiple cash flow into really high multiple cash flow. And oh by the way, we have 3,000 people who attend DAS. Some percentage of them are our ideal dream ICPs. So our sales team is able to get in front of them at the conference and um you know each dash should generate at least $10 million of ARR for us in in pipeline. Now not all that closes obviously but yeah it's um I think it's a model that a lot of other people will adopt. And by the way we didn't create it like look at a company like HubSpot um HubSpot is owns a you mentioned the

hustle uh my first million is the podcast of was the main podcast of the hustle. It's owned by HubSpot. HubSpot now today I think owns the second or third largest tech podcast network in the world. It drives about 20% of HubSpot's new leads every quarter are driven by their media business. So I think this is I I I do think this is a big trend but it's different right? It's a cultural change internally. >> Do like what's your advice to you know new founders like would you advise founders that say like have a good product idea um to like first go and build an audience and trying to sell that product to their audience. I mean like is like

it's sort of like a chicken and egg thing, right? Like you can you either like have a good product idea, no audience. Let's say you you're sort of sitting on one or one extreme or another or you have an audience but no product idea. Uh like do you need one to sort of start the other? And what would be your advice to a founder that doesn't have an audience that doesn't have distribution that wants to go and do stuff like should they go and build an audience on a specific sort of like vertical or narrative like you know sort of content uh vertical before they like really start building and trying to sell their product. For 95% of founders, it is extremely rewarding and beneficial to build your own audience. There's 5% maybe who don't need it. Maybe they're if your credentials are so unbelievable

that you can go raise around and get a bunch of customers just on the back of your credentials. I think about someone like um the guy who started Sierra um I'm forgetting his name. He um Brett Taylor, right? He was president of OpenAI like you know that you know CEO of Salesforce like co-CEO of Salesforce. That guy doesn't need to go build a following on Sierra on Twitter. By the way, he still does go post on Twitter all the time. So, you know, maybe you're a PhD from Stanford. Sure, you can go raise on the back of that. Go get customers on the back of that. But for most other founders, it is it it is actually an amazing time. It's best time in history to go build a company. It's both never been easier to build good products and it's never been easier to

go build an audience. And that's I think the beautiful thing and that that's something I think that people get wrong is they treat it as these um that they're mutually exclusive. It's like should I be like a product focused founder or should I like go build an audience? It's like you can do both my friend. You can do both. And so it doesn't take that much time to go build an audience. Um you just have to understand the craft and understand the art. And the the thing to do here is go study people who have built a good following. pick, I'd call it two niches. Position yourself at the center of both of those niches. Become the only person on Twitter posting about those that intersection of the two niches and and boom, you'll get you'll get an audience right there. That's that's interesting.

So, you it's interesting that you think that it's easier it's never been easier to build an audience. I I I I I guess I I I see what you're saying from the perspective of like, you know, there's like all of these sort of platforms that one can build an audience on, but it's also there's so there's so much competition, right? you're competing for the for attention against, you know, all the people on Twitter, you know, YouTube, Tik Tok, like whatever like social media network that you want to like sort of focus on because there's so many people out there vying for their for for your attention with like dumb videos of whatever and like every other piece of content out there that I I think it's a lot of people see it as much harder than maybe it actually is if you kind of like

hone in the craft. >> Yeah. But but the so two things. One is the reward is much greater than it's ever been. But also I mean okay so let's say 10 let's take Twitter. 10 years ago on Twitter there were way less people. So naturally it's way easier to grow an audience because you're competing against um you're you're maybe competing against less people but you're also the mark the number of people on Twitter is also way lower. So in a in a sense it's a there was less people that you could you could reach. So, let's say you're one in 500. I don't know how many people are on Twitter. Let's say back then you were one of 100 million. Now you're one of 500 million. And sure, it's much harder to maybe reach all 500 million,

but maybe the odds of still reaching a thousand people are still, oddly enough, the exact same as they've ever been, if that makes sense. >> Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, there's a there's a larger pie and so therefore you can like garner a piece of that pie uh that's like proportion like you know proportionally is small but like is large for you, right? >> Exactly. Exactly. >> No, that's that's interesting. >> And by the way, it is only Twitter. It is the the only platform that you need to care about is Twitter. It your company your company can figure out I mean look if you're there are exceptions to the rule if you are like LinkedIn has been extraordinary for us from a sales perspective. of LinkedIn is actually quite powerful. Um, and if you're a DTOC founder, I'm sure Tik Tok is also quite

powerful obviously. Um, but if you want to be I'd say it like the center of the industry and I mean candidly like for fundraising uh there there is no better plat and you know I I think most people here listen are in crypto like there is no still no better platform than Twitter in the world. It is just for >> right it's got it's got >> for crypto for crypto and AI. Yeah. Twitter Twitter is the Bitcoin of social networks. Twitter's got the Lindy. It's done so much wrong. It has done so much wrong and it just still continues to grow.

>> Yeah. Yeah. No, I I agree. I think if if you're talking about crypto and and possibly AI, then yeah, Twitter is the place to do it. Um other verticals might be might be LinkedIn. And if you're like BC, it could be it could be like other places like >> Instagram or Tik Tok. Um, no. That those are those are cool insights. I uh I I think you know my I mean personally I've always found it difficult to like I love getting on a mic and talking to people. I've always found it difficult to like engage and like I've I've never I don't feel like I've cracked that, you know, that art that you're talking about of like being able to like craft tweets that like people are that that are going

to like hit the algorithm and like and do that consistently enough to like build up your following in your audience. Like it's just it's just not not something I've felt comfortable with to do consistently. Um, so yeah, I'm always very admire. I always admire people who do it who do. >> If you really wanted to and it was important enough to you, you would figure it out. And if you didn't figure it out yourself, you can hire a you know who gets it? A 23-year-old who lives who's, you know, perpetually online and uh what is it? Terminally online. And uh you know, I know many people I know many many many founders who essentially have a 23 or 24, you know, it's like Peter Teal's Blood Boy. Like I have a lot of friends who have a 23-year-old, you

know, Twitter boy basically like being like, "No, no, no. Don't tweet this. Tweet this. Capitalize this. Don't capitalize this. You put a period here. Take out the period." Like Algo just updated, you know, 18 second videos, not 38 second videos. There are You would be shocked at how many founders in AI and tech and crypto have a have a Twitter boy. >> I didn't know I didn't know that. And I don't want to know what Peter Till's blood boy is. I'm not >> Look it up. Look it up. [laughter] >> Don't actually don't look it up. You'll >> Yeah. Okay. Uh, but anybody who wants to go look it up. Um, yeah. So, I mean like uh how did this um how did this Misari acquisition uh happen? You know, what's the story behind that?

>> Misari I think had uh again like Ryan had one of the best visions of Ryan to this day is maybe the best analyst that crypto has ever had. He started as an analyst, right? He he uncovered Mount Gox. He's um >> he you know his his annual thesis were like the must-read of the year I'd say and so he had the right vision disclosures and ratings and transparency and Edgar online he had all of that right and so we've I think we've always you know for a while when we had the media and events business we admired them and thought you know we actually did a lot of work together we admired them and then when we got into data they were our biggest competitor um you know we've been for about two years now recording all of our sales calls or at least most of Um and uh Msari by far was

our biggest competitor on sales calls. 47% of all sales deals uh that we went against we competed against MSARI. So it's almost half of half of our deals we competed against Msari on. And so I think there's always been a natural fit there. They they do so much of what we do as well. The main difference though is that Blockworks, you know, Msari already existed and they've been building a data platform for years. Msari went broad with their data. So, Msari has unbelievable breath across their data. They have 40,000 assets, every chain, every exchange. They have so much data breath. Block works to to own our niche. We had to break into data somehow. If we just copied Misari, we wouldn't do well. So, we went deep. We have we have the most data depth. So,

you can go on our website. You will find more a data than anyone in the world. You will find more data on vaults than anyone in the world. you will find more data on Salana than anyone in the world. So that's what we really focus on is is depth. So, you know, several months ago, >> I've used most I've used both products and I think that really perfectly exemplifies like each's individual strong point, right? They accomplish. So, you could go to MSAR and you could you could literally type in anything in crypto and you would get a page or an answer. Block works >> that did not that was not the case. Like you might type in like an an exchange or a chain and like we might have zero results on it, but if you pull up something that we had, we would have we

would cover that asset better than anyone in the world. And so and that's how we built the brand in data. People knew us as going really really deep. Um now that we started about a year and a half ago, two years ago, we started service servicing the our biggest customers became the the businesses running things on chain. So this could be an exchange, it could be a regulator, it could be an uh you know financial institution, it could be an app, it could be a chain, an L1 and L2. They needed both depth and breath. So at that point it becomes a build versus buy conversation. Do you do you build it or do you buy it? Misari uh had these amazing enterprise customers and they had amazing APIs and they had amazing people. they had really

really really good engineering and product talent um amongst many other people at the company as well and so at a certain point it just became a natural fit right there's a I think if you zoom out from just the Misari deal Seb there's a the pl the I mean I don't know if you agree or disagree but like you know been doing this for a long time place is at uh you've been doing this 13 years which is wildly impressive the industry is at this line in the sand moment where it It is becoming a game of halves and have nots. And really what that means is you have a decision as a founder. Do I consolidate or do I get consolidated? There there is no in between anymore. For the last several

years you could kind of just run your business happy golucky raise a little venture. Maybe we bootstrap it. Maybe we do it at like you know run a small business 10 million in revenue. Like sure all is good. You can no you can no longer do that anymore. If you are running like a happy golucky like yeah you know raise a little venture run it at like 10 million revenue you you will you will go out of business eventually and so I think as a founder you have to decide do we want to get consolidated or do we want to which means sell and you know you get to make some money that's great uh or do you want to be the consolidator which means go raise a large amount of venture money usually and go consolidate the market and do and roll up the roll up the market and

verticalize your whatever whatever area you are owning, go verticalize that. And so we decided, Mike and I decided we want to be the consolidator, not the consolidated. And so, um, yeah, Msari was the first natural fit there, but yeah, probably won't be the last. >> And and so the the two products still exist as separate like products, um, websites. Are are they going to >> they will >> consolidated as? >> Yeah, they will eventually come together. Yeah, exactly. So even if you know, we have these new landing pages as of last week. You go to the website, you go to products, you go to API like that is actually the masari API. So if you go to blockworks blockworks.com, then you at the top menu, you go to products,

then you go to API, that is the Masari API. You go to the uh monitoring product. That is actually Msari's monitoring product and it's totally skinned as MSARI still. So if you buy that product, you will see a Msari product eventually. Um, and we're we're sprinting at this internally, it it'll all turn into Block Works. So >> that must be like a huge engineering lift. >> It is um it is the biggest endeavor the company has ever taken on. Um and you >> what's the biggest challenge there? Is it is this like migrating the infra? Is it the merging? Is it >> product side? like what's the biggest >> you know imagine you um I don't know where you live or you know what your living situation is but imagine you know

you live in an apartment building and you buy the apartment next to you and you're like we'll just knock down the walls combine these things. Yeah. Well, now you have two kitchens. Now your bathrooms are connected. Now you're, you know, you've got a bedroom in your living room. It's very similar to this. So you're like, "We'll just slap these products together and put it all inside of each other and bada bing, bada boom, and you're good." Doesn't work like that. So, you know, we're paying for two CRM right now. We're paying for two data indexers. We're paying for two data warehouses. We have Snowflake and ClickHouse. We have we have uh Msari was a a um a Salesforce shop. Blockworks is a HubSpot shop. We don't need two CRM.

The list goes on and on for every single thing. Um and by the way that applies to roles too. Sorry had a head of sales. We have a head of sales like you know you got there's so much to figure out but um look we have really good really good board who has been really helpful here. We have really good adviserss. We have really good people internally too. Like the misari people are worldclass and credible. We've respected them for so many years. Like they've been a natural fit into block works too. >> And um how long is this transition going to take? dealing like until sort of everything gets >> I would guess the business will be fully integrated by end of year.

>> Wow, that's like pretty fast. And how how many employees do you have and that they have? >> Uh the combined entity has 80 people >> that Okay, that's it. All right. >> Yeah. >> All right. I thought I thought >> Msari at the beginning of the year did a big layoff. They had, you know, somewhere around 150 people brought it down to 85. Um and then uh we we brought over 11 11 people. >> Got it. Okay. So you've already kind of like uh cut some of the some of the staff and like >> Yeah. And you know this is the cold hard truth of these acquisitions is like you know we don't need two heads of >> heads of finance for example. Um >> yeah that's just I think the nature of

these things. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Wow. that that it's it's such a I mean there I saw this uh I saw this this this uh this post on Twitter, you know this like um uh what is it? Um Ninja Turtles, you know, where they're like they've the the rat I forget the rat's name, but like he's holding the little baby turtles and then later like the b the turtles have grown up and they're holding the rat who's kind of it's like >> it very much like sort of felt like that kind of moment. >> Master Splinter, Master Splinter, right? Yeah. How could I forget? Um yeah, no it's very very impressive and uh what you guys have built as a business and like are continuing to grow. So where do you think Blackworth goes from here?

Like once Msari is like fully integrated and you have the depth and the the breadth >> what's next like what's the next logical step for a data product? >> Yeah. So I mean >> how does AI fit into all this as well? I think like that's a huge thing we haven't talked about is like AI and uh you I know you've talked a lot about this on Twitter and on the podcast too. >> Yeah. The whole thesis of the business is that capital markets are going to move on chain. And by the way, will crypto gaming happen? Will NFTs come back? Like maybe, sure. We're not that focused on it. We think the even if it even if all we're doing here is just we get digital gold with Bitcoin and all of capital markets move on chain. That is an amazing opportunity. So the whole

business is based around capital markets moving on chain. There are two sides of the platform. So you we basically have this flywheel where you have on one side you have issuers of onchain assets. So these are today it's tokens but quickly becoming tokenization and rwas and stable coins and onchain equities. You have issuers of onchain assets and then on the other side of the platform you have um underwriters of those assets. So you have the actual investors but you also have exchanges that need to list these assets. You have custodians that need to custody these assets. You have brokerages that need to allow you to trade these assets. And so we basically sit we get paid both sides of those are our customers. So the issuers need to

they need ratings, they need disclosures, they need to present their information to the market. They need investor relations. That's one side of our business. This is like investor relations, ratings, disclosures. That data then flows through block works out the other end through APIs and MCP and a software platform into the enterprises. So these would be the exchanges and brokerages and financial institutions and banks and regulators uh AI companies as well. Um they need to consume all that information so that their customers and themselves can underwrite those assets. Uh and there's this beautiful really really really simple flywheel that exists here. The more issuers we have on the platform, the more data there is. The more data we have, the

more enterprises get onboarded and the more investors consume the data. The more enterprises who get onboarded, the more investors consume the data, the more it incentivizes the issuers to join Blockworks as a customer, which then feeds more data, feeds more investors, more incentive, more issuers, more data, and the and and so on and so forth. And so I'd say in the last several months this year we've really hit escape velocity like you know revenue went from a couple years ago you know on on the recurring revenue data side of things it was 200k then 2 million then you know 7 million and then now we're you know into the eight figures of of uh recurring revenue ARR and so you know and on top of that we have the whole we have the

you know still we still do have some advertising business we have the events business but the entire focus is scaling this two-sided, you could call it a marketplace. And eventually we will we will compete with the S&Ps and Moody's of the world. Like we, you know, S&P, I don't think people realize, is 120 billion business. Moody's is an $80 billion business. Moody's does 8 billion in revenue. S&P does 14 billion in revenue. These are gargantuan businesses. And so, um, but they're built for the off-chain world. And so, as capital moves on chain, we will we will compete with them. >> I want to touch on something that, uh, Mike posted recently. I think you've also I think you you both you both have sort of similar takes here is that we need to stop doing equity token deals

sort of like value in crypto needs to be fully on tokens and essentially you know as investors whether you know institutional or retail there should be like one thing that's that where where people can sort of buy into the value and that's the tokens. Can you kind of explain what that thesis is? Sort of like maybe that also brings us into the next point which is the the token transparency framework and and the token transparency alliance but like what's the underlying idea here that you know like one thing should represent the the the the value of the project or the company.

>> Yeah. There's there's a core belief that if tokens internally at block works that is is that if tokens don't work what are we all kind of what are we all doing here in a sense and so I think all one of our things that we've been so focused on is fixing tokens I think there are ma I think that the idea of a token is a beautiful idea this global permissionless thing that can be used to incentivize your users and used uh you know almost algorithm ithmically instead of just like this thing that gets gets issued by this Delaware CC Corp is a is a the idea of a token is a beautiful idea. The idea of having two assets that investors can invest in and one kind of

like hint hint wink wink represents the value of the business and one and you know you kind of sell it to retail and like but the retail doesn't really get anything and then the others like you sell it to VCs and it's like hey nudge nudge like that this is the thing that's actually going to go up. It's like obviously this is a broken market. And by the way, you don't have to listen to Mike or me or Blockworks. Look at the token market. It's down only. So something is clearly fundamentally broken. By the way, there's other things that are structurally wrong with the token market. A lot of the backdoor deals that happen with um like the TVL deals are really bad for the token market. The exchange listing deals are really bad for the token market. So, it's not just the token equity split,

but >> maybe maybe explain those for for those who are not familiar with kind of these backdoor deals. >> Yeah. So, um here here's a really So, all the TVL that you see in crypto is um uh sorry, shouldn't say all near a lot of the TVL that you see in crypto and nearly all of the early stage TVL that you see in crypto is incentivized TVL. So, what actually happens, let's say you're building a um let's say you're building a lend borrow platform, you need to do two things. You need to show to the market that you're successful. So you need, you know, the metrics on Block Works to say that your TVL went from 100 million to a billion and, you know, DeFi Lama and Dune and Token Terminal. You need all these data sites to show that you're doing well. You also need to

raise some money, right, to go fund the team and marketing and all that stuff. So, so what do you do? You go to a VC and you say, "Hey VC, we're raising um 5 million out of 50 million post." VC says, "Great, we're interested, but we want a little cherry on top. We will give you guys we will you know we got this big asset management firm. We'll put $50 million into your protocol to bootstrap the liquidity for the first year but on the side kind of outside of this whole you know series A fund raise that you're doing you have to give us 3% of your tokens.

So what you're doing here is you're creating a a um a huge cell wall that retail doesn't actually know about. So if you go so the this is so by the way so then you're you get to show on you know block works and diva llama and token terminal and all these sites that your t your TVL this is why the TVL starts growing so quickly. So you go from 10 million TVL to 100 million TVL a billion TVL but on the side the TVL is really coming from just a couple of players who are getting your tokens in exchange for depositing TVL into the platform. So what happens at a year when your TVL deal ends or at two years when your TVL deal ends you dump the tokens.

The other thing that happens Zeb is along the way you have to list your token. You got to get some liquidity for the token. So you go to so so you've already given 5% of your tokens to the venture firm. You've done the you've done the fund raise but then you give 5% of your tokens on the side for TVL deals. Well then you also go to the exchanges you know Binance all the rest. They say hey we need some more tokens. we need some tokens to give to our our users and we need some tokens ourselves to list your asset. Boom, another cell wall. So, there's almost this perma cell wall that happens. Um, and it just it's uh yeah, retail gets rinsed over and over and over again. And you know, even even for me, like I am I am the dream

customer of a of a token like for a token like I am the dream buyer. Like I live in crypto. I should want I believe in these founders. I only own four tokens right now. Like, why do I, who loves this industry more than anything? I only own four tokens. That's crazy. So, something's fundamentally broken. And I think that's it's a it's a it's a both a a structural thing, but also a it's a transparency thing, too. And not to ramble for too long, but this is why we have the token transparency framework. Like the the TVL deals in and of themselves are not the problem. It's that the market doesn't know that these TVL deals exist.

>> I mean, do do you think that this is like also fundamentally like, you know, we just saw the SpaceX IPO and you know, there was like a bunch of changes made like to like NASDAQ's listing rules and >> yeah, >> you know, those are known to the public, but like most people don't know about them. And then there's like all these unlocks and like most of the retail investors don't know about it. They were just fed like this media story that like this is going to be all and all their favorite influencers telling them this is this is the next like hundred trillion dollar stock, right? Like it this also exists in traditional finance and traditional finance has lots of rules regulations scrutiny regulatory scrutiny. Uh I is is this just like just sort of like a story that's as old

as financial markets where you know those that have the information get richer and those that don't like end up losing money. >> No, I disagree. I fundamentally disagree with that. I think that there's a there's the difference, right? There's a there's a core difference. So, okay, when I got into crypto, I thought that crypto would eventually look more like finance. I was wrong. Finance is starting to look more like crypto and that is a really really really fascinating dynamic. What is Palunteer? It's a meme stock. What is SpaceX? It's a meme stock. What is the game that Elon is playing with SpaceX? It's a lowflat high FDV token. It's why I did not touch that thing with a 10-ft pole. I was like, I've seen this game a 100 times.

Things going to go down eventually. I'm a buyer of SpaceX, but not not at, you know, not at these lowflat high FTV pre-unlock prices. Um, the difference here is that legally SpaceX had to disclose everything. So, sure, retail might have not have researched this stuff. And yes, Elon's the best marketer and salesperson in the history of the world, but there was a thousandpage SpaceX S1 that went live. How crazy is it that there's a thousandpage SpaceX S1 that went live when they IPOed? When a token goes live, there's nothing.

There's not even there's not there's there's literally just a a pie chart that shows what percentage of the team owns what. That's all you get as retail. So you get a thousand. So if retail wanted to they could find those answers. That's that's the best we're going to get by the way. That's all you need. You'll always have media games. You'll always have showboers who go on CNBC and I actually don't care about that game. Elon should the best Yeah. salespeople and marketers like will continue winning but there has to be some transparency brought to the token markets and again I don't care that you know lend borrow protocol is doing TVL deals I actually don't I think it's smart I care that retail has no visibility into that into those deals all right so let let's then

I think this is a great a great time to talk about token transparency framework and the token transparency alliance that uh is being led by blockwork so what is this project and what like I mean, is the is the is the goal here for this to inform regulation? Like, you know, would you guys sort of like try to push a regulatory framework that is based on this framework for the industry to adopt it or does the industry need to sort of like adopt what already exists within the existing sort of like SEC rules or do we need something in the middle?

Yeah. >> Uh, two questions in there. No, no, we so tooken transparency framework is um a standardized open-source disclosure framework. The goal is for to bring trust back to onchain markets and trust back to tokens. Right now, crypto tokens lack this shared disclosure standard. And so, it's what we talked about token holders and exchanges and funds. They're kind of forced to piece together like all this material information from scattered incomplete sources like a tweet from the team with a pie chart. And so what the the goal of the TTF is to just give the industry standardized disclosures with very consistent completion states. So we're not saying, you know, X protocol got a 97 out of

100. We are saying, you know, they had four things that were incomplete here. Buy or beware. So um you have a B1 filing, which is kind of like the equivalent of the S1 for crypto. We talked about the SpaceX S1. The S1 is what you file when you go public. So, we have a B1, which is a one-time disclosure, which is filed pre-launch or post-launch around your token. So, it's a it's kind of like the TGE filing. Then you have a B2, which is like a 10 Q 10K. Um, right. It's a continuously updated filing for post ICO teams, post launches, filed like every six months.

Um, totally free to participate in both of these. The data is then sent out to the exchanges and to investors and integrated into a bunch of teams, listing processes, all that kind of stuff. On the regulatory side, we don't have to push a message. It's called the Clarity Act, right? So, the Clarity Act is already doing it's completely aligned with Clarity and even if Clarity doesn't pass, we're recording this July 21st, so I don't know if Clarity is going to pass or not. I'd put the odds at 50/50 today, maybe 6040 that it will pass. Um, there's also REGG crypto from the SEC.

So if clarity passes, rag crypto will just get folded into into clarity and disclosures are going to be mandatory. So there's going to be thousands of teams overnight that are forced to do disclosures and we can help them with that. If clarity doesn't pass, reggg crypto and you know, chairman Atkins will still push forward with reg crypto which is also going to push forward disclosures. One way or another, like it or not, the industry is going to be forced to do disclosures and we're we're, you know, we have the leading disclosures platform in the industry and it's free to file and we're here to help.

>> What what's the timeline on both of these uh US regulatory frameworks? >> So the um you know there's a recess that starts August 7th. Um so you know it's July 21st, so I'd say we have two weeks, two and a half weeks to get this thing done. um if it doesn't happen by the recess, you know, obviously it can still happen, but then we head into the midterms in the US and uh I don't think that uh you know crypto market structure is going to be a hot topic in the midterms. I think that uh AI and data centers will be the hot topic that voters care about. And so I don't I don't I I think that clarity I think unfortunately clarity will stall out if it doesn't get pushed forward by August 7th. But look, I'm optimistic. Like we're I don't know when this episode's

going to get released, but >> uh poly market says, you know, 30 or 40% chance that it passes, like I I think that's a buy. Like I I'd go long that market right now. I think it's probably 50 or 60%. >> And so so when when a team files their their B1 uh or their what's the other one? B2. >> Is there any sort of audit of this? What's the what's the sort of penalty for not filing accurately or sort of lying on this or is it is it just sort of the the reputational uh damage of like having lied on one of these things or like is there sort of further action that investors can take you know if if a team does not uh is not honest in their

filings. >> Right now it's just market dynamics. The market will punish you if you start to lie with this stuff. Eventually, this needs to become more like an S1 where it is >> illegal. You will go to jail if you lie in your S1, right? It is >> securities fraud. So, >> we're working, you know, >> spending a lot of time in DC to see what we can do there. >> But so, so there is there is an alliance, right, also of like exchanges that are that are part of this. Uh I is there some sort of pack there where um or sort of guidelines where if let's say a team sort of lies on on these filings that they will delist them or stop doing business with them or >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So most of the

several of the big exchanges. So this transparency alliance we went live with an uh an alliance called the transparency alliance. So inside of the as members of the transparency alliance you have um Coinbase, Kraken, BinanceUS, Anchorage, um you know, Wisdom Tree, Paxos, Bitwise, Van, BitGo, Falcon X, Moon, Copper, the list goes on and other exchanges, right? Gate.io, Bybit, Mexi, um you know, many many many good teams. they to be as as part of the transparency alliance, you have to do something to support the token transparency framework. So, there's a lot of stuff that isn't public that um you know, I can't fully talk about, but

I'd say many of the exchanges have are incorporating the TTF into their listings processes. So, >> okay, >> they will start saying, look, this team isn't on the TTF, like now we're going to punt on listing it. Um, okay, this team did a fully complete TTF. Like, let's prioritize the listing. H does the framework include disclosers relative to kind of Koss and marketing is is that also part of it where you have to disclose who your KS are and >> um so if you go onto the if you go onto the website so here there's basically there's uh 12 different criteria here so you have the disc you have the like the known team like who is the team you have the Dow structure you have the primary foundation you have the primary devco

you have the token supply and alloc So like the initial allocation, the airdrop process, you have transactions and market structure. So we don't do K stuff right now, but we do market maker agreements and we do sex agreements. So centralized exchange agreements and we do DEX agreements and then we do financial disclosures. So prior token sales and fundraising, prior exploits and uh material risk factors like regulation, technology, tokconom token economics. >> Okay, interesting. [snorts] Yeah, because I I think in Europe, I'm not like super up to date on this, but I think the regulatory like the MA framework >> Oh, you know what >> has a bunch of disclosures. You need like a bunch of disclosures of like who your koss are and like you you can't sort of promote

>> uh tokens and things like that. I'm not entirely sure. Maybe maybe someone will. >> No, no, you so if you so if you look at the B1, we don't do Ks. If you look at a B2 though, like if you go on our website and look at uh the Aerod Drrome filing for example, >> you the B2 does have um does have K marketing activities. So under token allocation, there's initial allocation, insider vesting, token advisory billings, unissued and operational wallets, and actually number 10, 10 of 18 is K marketing activities. So, >> right, >> you know, we need you to dis quote unquote disclose on ongoing KOL influencer relationships that partially or fully receive tokens for payment. Do not need to disclose K influencers that

do not receive tokens for payment. Use lettered sub items. So, >> okay. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So, the website's blockworks.com/token-transparency. U people can check that out. There's already something like 65 uh disclosures here. And I I think it's a very cool initiative. I think like more teams should opt in to do this because I I do think it creates like a bunch of like just a lot of transparency and kind of trust. But then then you know I think the logical sort of outcome here is there needs to be enforcement if and enforcement could be yeah of course like the exchanges that are part of the alliance dropping this or you know having um u some some sort of like you know negative outcome for the for

projects that lie or or are not fully transparent and then at some point like regulatory like legal uh consequences. Um for sure. Yeah. >> Exactly. Exactly. >> Super cool. I I' I'd love to get your thoughts on like where we are right now. Like where where's the market? I saw you tweet this thing uh which I thought was interesting which you're saying that uh this month is is set to have like as as little VC deals as November 2020. So people are speculating whether or not this is the bottom, whether things can go down from here. Um yeah, love to get your thoughts on where you think we are on the cycle.

>> Yeah, I mean to quote uh I think it was I think it was Baron Rothschild, right? Um you know the time to buy is when there's blood in the streets even if the blood is your own. And then I think you know Buffett may have adapted that in some way. Uh that's where we're at today. There's blood in the streets and the blood is your own. Like not you know it's not like a bunch there's no companies that are wellunded. Everyone's tokens are down and they're not well funded. The investors aren't able to raise funds. Uh we just had our lowest venture deals quarter since or month since 2020, six years ago. There's blood in the streets. Um here's the good news.

We the market's bottomed. The market has bottomed. And um look, we could always, you know, AI rolls over, stock market implodes, crypto could always go a little lower, sure. But um I I think today is like a will be seen as a generational buying opportunity for crypto tokens. And I think that includes tokens too, by the way. Like I'm a firm believer that these tokens will come back with or without clarity. So imagine we get clarity. Clarity I I spoke with a hedge fund in New York about a $10 billion fund. They have $300 million allocated to crypto tokens if clarity passes. That's $300 million to buy crypto tokens if clarity passes. So there's that's one fund in New York. So the amount of funds who are on the sidelines waiting for clarity is I think

way more than people realize and it's very similar to stable coins. Like think about the mainstream stable coin adoption. Enterprises doing stable coins pre genius. There was no one. It was like Circle and Tether were the stable coin companies. Now everyone's a stable coin company. Now everyone's board is forcing them to be a stable coin company. So that will happen just at a much even larger scale once clarity passes. And if we don't get clarity, we're, you know, chairman Atkins is still going to push forward and do rag crypto, which is almost even better than clarity. So, um, yeah, I think I'm, you know, I'm just started buying tokens. I just started buying crypto for the first time in like two years. I'm I'm very bullish. when you say when you say like the tokens will go up I mean I think one

of the things that uh has been sort of characteristic of the last year 18 months is that you know in the last sort of like runup you know Bitcoin did well hyperlquid did well like a few tokens did well but then a vast majority of the other of the other tokens that did not have you know the fundamentals if you will uh did not do well tokens and projects will need to show fundamental value for them to do well will they not >> I think tokens that have fundamentals will do better than tokens that don't have fundamentals. Yeah, I think the think about the investor use this hedge fund for example the thing that they are looking at is hyperlquid. They like hype a lot because hype it makes sense to them. there's revenues, there's not, by the way, there's not Hyperlquid was the

thing that really drove home dual split between equity and a token um because it's working so well and the team chronically underells overdelivers. And so, uh yeah, I think I think the tokens that have fundamentals will do better than the tokens that don't have fundamentals. And by fundamentals, I just mean like this shouldn't be a new thing. It's like, yeah, they have a real business. They have revenue and they have users and they have customers. They have a good business. You heard it here, folks. Businesses will do businesses will real businesses will do well. There you go. >> Nailed it.

>> Cool. Uh Jason, thanks so much for for joining me again on Epicenter. Yeah. And also just uh just want to say just how fundamentally like what a great um what how great it's been to like watch you guys grow from you know this small team of uh salespeople build selling podcast ads and producing you know lots of lots of podcasts that you guys have eclipsed since then and uh yeah you know keep going keep going keep building this thing for the next for the next 20 years.

>> The feeling is mutual my friend. Thank you for all the support and then uh onwards onwards. [music] [music]