Why we're still early in crypto, with Santiago Roel

Transcript

do you ever feel like you're late to crypto maybe fomo kicks in and when prices go up you think you don't have enough or you wish you got in sooner well Santiago today's guest says that right now he feels like he's earlier in crypto Now versus how he felt when he first entered the space back in 2012 it's all about perspective and understanding how secular Trends work in today's episode We compare the trends of blockchain to that of the internet in the early '90s and 2000s in Santiago who started as an investment banker at JP Morgan and then became a partner at parfi Capital shares his insights on investing in the cycle as well as the specific use cases and narratives that he feels will take crypto to the masses this was a fun one welcome to milro

radio the easiest path to get smarter about crypto I'm k rehead your host for today's show and we believe that onchain is the next online this is the opportunity and we're here to help you capitalize on it before we get into the episode I just want to announce we are hiring we filled a bunch of our positions just recently but we are still on the lookout for a social media wizard someone who absolutely loves crypto and lives on Twitter and other social platforms if that's you check out the careers link in the show notes below and make sure to apply immediately by the way a quick warning just want to let you know that I recorded this episode from the mic for my webcam by accident not my actual mic so bear with me on the audio quality thankfully Santi does most of

the talking so it's not that big of a deal but just want to let you know you just got a to bear with me for this one episode and then we'll be good to go moving forward thanks friends Santi welcome to milro radio it's good to have you on the podcast thank you kle I really like the name and the logo it's pretty cool it just brings me back to like this warm like childhood moment of like drinking milk at night with cookies hopefully this episode will evoke that level of uh we be I think productive and successful if we evoke that absolutely we're trying to find more ways to make milk more synonymous with crypto and I don't know why but that's just what we're going with uh people talk about like slurping Alpha like slurping you know like milky Al milky anyway San I've been listening to

you for a long time on Empire which is a great great podcast for for those that are listening as well and you've yeah you do a great job at just sort of like explaining your thesis around the space around what you're doing talk a lot about like even psychology of investing stuff which I really appreciate and love that but I'm just curious I don't think you've ever really shared your background too much on that podcast or maybe I missed that episode and I'm sure there's many listeners here that haven't heard you previously so why don't you just start off with just a quick like background of what got you into crypto and walk us through a bit of a story there yeah be brief and cut me off uh obviously first discovered the the big white paper in 2012 was like the first interaction with it my backgrounds in

Game Theory so to me that was like purely from an academic perspective I'm like oh wow like we can do stuff without trusting like we've solved a big problem which is the Byzantium General problem people should go look it up it's fascinating emailed it to my professors are like oh this is a scam I've heard about it so grow and I've learned time and time again anytime you get a very strong visceral reaction from people in Academia or people in in high status like pay attention to that most of the time that's where disruption happens and to me it was like okay well I'm going to keep learning about this because this is pretty cool I grew up in an emerging country in Mexico and so this idea I think like whenever you travel like you're in Brazil now sorry to have doxed when you take finance and Export it like

and you try to do it internationally it absolutely breaks and it's like as an investor my thesis was like constantly asking questions like there has to be a better way to sending money cross border and that was like ju theose with like your day-to-day interaction you're using Amazon seamless you're streaming Netflix like the Internet is just amazing and all of a sudden you're like why hasn't particular pockets of this world not modernized and there's a very specific reason why and I think that that's like if you go on your crypto journey and I did you start understanding why that is the case it obviously helped that I did Investment Banking I was doing like you know transactions in like Tech and in fintech and so you kind of like really appreciate how broken it is and then like was investing what really clicked

other than Bitcoin like in 2012 was when ethereum launched I was at a fund where we were a venture fund we were investing in open source software and this was in a time where like most investors didn't appreciate that you could make money investing in open source like inherently it's like paradoxical it's like it's open it's free anyone can copy the code how are you going to make money like where's the mo and then you know red had acquired got acquired by IBM and everyone's like oh wow you can actually make a lot of money and ethereum was that right and just generally like applying a lot of the stuff of Bitcoin and I was early I discovered it early and I was like okay this this could with some degree of probability really transform how we think about open source and fixing a lot of the issues that

traditional open source development has primarily like where value acrs and how you compensate contributors in an open source system without crypto without token tokenization becomes incredibly difficult it needs to be subsidized in some way and I think crypto as I think about it just to kind of wrap all of this up is if there's one key takeaway for me and what keeps me really interested in this game is crypto for the first time kind of ever allows us to tokenize create digital scar seed but also like map out and create a more Equitable renumeration for contrib in these open source systems smart people and Technology generally gravitates to open source systems and now you have the

ability to tokenize and map out contributions and output and reward these contributors in an equitable manner that kind of flips the whole model of the internet and it's head and opens up a whole new kind of chapter of the Internet it's not that crypto replaces the internet it actually enhances it by orders magnitude and I don't think people are really prepared for that outcome we're talking about like when I got started I used to have a whiteboard and I would be like okay like I think Bitcoin was like at 60 bucks at the time or 100 bucks it was like I forget what that was it was like I I guess we can talk about like 21 billion times 60 couple billion 100 billion in market cap yeah in Market yeah in market cap you're like God if this ever reaches like you know like no no no not even no

no no no no no I mean it was 21 million total Bitcoin like the fdv of Bitcoin Network at the time was like nothing I it was it was a couple billion and you're like God if it reachs like 200 billion 500 billion be like it was surreal and now we're like at 2.5 trillion it's been kind of crazy what I'm trying to impress on people is I think it updating that and like sometimes it's useful to like expand your Horizon and say okay how big can this really get like for me something like collectively smart Contracting generalized platforms can be way larger than a digital gold vastly vastly larger let me ask you a question like okay we we comp Bitcoin to gold which is nine trillion all right so you know you come up with a number

bit little higher now it's said alltime highs yeah yeah true right exactly but it's like 10 trillion 11 trillion or so with inflation or whatever and then the question is like well how big is the internet I think it's way bigger of course exactly that's what's really exciting now two questions here actually so when you f in 2012 you learned about Bitcoin did you you get it right away did you and then invest in it and like P that or like how did that go through these wild Cycles and then when eth came along did you see right away like oh this is moving from I mean Bitcoin wasn't called digital gold back in those days but did you see automatically like oh what this ethereum thing is doing is open this up to the entire internet or did it take a while to like it always

takes a while fig it always takes a while it always really does in the sense of like how big can it get Bitcoin was interesting I I compt it to the global remittance flows because at the time you know I bought a bunch of Bitcoin I was in New York so actually went to Soho Center felt like drug trade really sketchy took me a while to figure it out bought a couple of Bitcoin and sent it to people of Mexico and said if they can actually retrieve it if like n out of 10 which is a majority can actually convert it like I I'm dollars by Bitcoin they convert it to local currency and the commission there is negligible and almost instantaneous then this can actually displace a Western Union which is charging five eight% and shouldn't exist actually I made it my life at that

point I made my life's purpose to like blow up this type of business I hate it I absolutely hate it because people really the people that need it the most are the ones that get screwed over by the traditional system anyways I said that feels to me like a pretty big use case it's the number one or number two source of income for Mexican families remittance flows are also really important like Singapore to Indonesia Philippines some of these places right so it's a really big market and so as a payments rail I felt that Bitcoin was pretty compelling after that like episode after that like hypothesis and it it working out but still I mean you don't like it's kind of surreal we have an ETF now it's like covered constantly it's a ticker in Bloomberg no you didn't you like no it's wild ethereum it took me a while right

it's so abstract my mind just works in a different way like I don't know I didn't see it immediately as an investor I think you take certain bets and you size them with a certain degree of probability the probability is quite low I mean just think about this for a second you meet vitalic he comes from Bitcoin magazine there were other attempts that of what ethereum was trying to do Golem maid safe and a bunch of others I believe the predated ethereum with people that probably had more like deep deep cryptographic technical experience but in comes valian says I want to build a world supercomputer he looks you straight in the eye he's 18 he just comes from Bitcoin magazine what do you do you laugh probably do you give a million dollars I wouldn't exactly and there were some elements that I think made it

far more interesting as ethereum developed I think you had Gavin what you had like it was not just I do appreciate so like from that perspective you know you get more conviction but I think I would be lying to myself if I told you that it was obvious out of the get-go I I felt that there it was really interesting this thesis of like let's generalize this piece of technology and like smart contracts were like it was something that I was kind of clicked how big how fast definitely not and then you had the Ico kind of capital formation machine that like I think was in large part what has made ethereum ethereum today you know like how do you make a community we make a bunch of people Rich that want to make have a vested interest in building and you know the iOS were

like just ethereum had a lot of success with icos just being as the deao currency to fund this these things as a first kind of proof Point how you could use a Smart contract right send money in we'll distribute you other tokens like that was like very basic kind of the probably the earliest defi kind of use case right but it wasn't as obvious back then I head to my Bitcoin I mean it was also at a time where like a lot of the Bitcoin miners were like there's disagreement in the Bitcoin community and I felt kind bit disillusion I was like oh you know I'm going to punt this I'm going to swap like 20% of my stack and put it in ethereum and not just ethereum but golems and Maid saves and a bunch of other stuff you kind of have to right

you size these things with certain degree of probability like if you can invest in multiple players even today the industry being so early like why wouldn't you right why would you just bet on one horse it's kind of stupid I think now people anytime you look back especially when crypto is so cyclical you look back oh that was so easy to trade that right like if you bought that in 2017 or you bought it in 2020 even with eth you're like yeah it was so easy but it's like if you weren't in that moment you don't realize how much doubt and how much like fud was going around it's kind of like salana last year right so many people missed that trade early on because there was so much fun and now it's like well that was so obvious I'll tell you two things on this point

because I think it's fascinating one most people full of [ __ ] when they say it's so obvious yeah it's not it never is the reason is my best investments have been the most uncomfortable at the moment I made the investment the most most highly uncomfortable and this is not like me going like 10x leverage I've never used leverage for the most part you have some strong feeling about the founder the type of person that they are but it's never obvious if it's really obvious it's arbed out by virtue it's like if it's obvious and it's obvious for hundred other people the valuation is going to be really high like you're not getting into the ground level you're not buying defi at 5 million market cap you're buying it at 50 very big difference the second component is this point around five to 50 in crypto

historically you've had like time to scale into a trade salana the problem though is the mind just gets at you right it's like oh God how many times have you asked the question tell me your crypto journey and how many times do someone say I discovered Bitcoin super early but invested five years later how many times that's why I asked that's exactly why I asked you because almost always that happens exactly and what is that what that's a a soft way of saying I didn't put money in it and I'm stupid and regret it and you know that they regret it and I think it's just important to like zoom out and say invert and say how many more years do you have as an investor you look like you're in your 30s 20 whatever you have

at least 30 30 40 more years to invest do you think we're early in crypto like you walk around where you are how many people do you actually think are investing in this s class we just got an ETF approved are you trying to time every cycle I'm trying to invest in the next 30 40 years and compound I want to perfect my process is I want to focus I know I'm not going to catch them all and so is that a way of coping that I didn't catch like the latest fat at like 1 million market cap or the latest meme coin that just launched or runes no partially maybe it's a cope but I also like you have to stay focused like this industry's grown a ton where it's impossible to keep track of every sector every opportunity you know AI deep in

memes different ecosystems you're not going to catch them all right I think you need to just like have conviction around it pays to do the work it pays to have thesis it also is useful to be flexible but also scaling like D5 for instance if you map out like you could have looked at maker and said okay there's something here maybe you didn't catch defi that early on maybe you waited until compound launched at liquidity mining program blew everyone away it's like wow like you can earn yield and this is great like stable coins you then had another six to nine months to scale into that trade in size now there are some people that were just very like I missed it and we're like I'm not going to touch this I'm late to the

trade I'm late to the train I'm like what are you talking about are you really you're like or like salana right now right publicly I've been very vocal about salana and I've said there's no reason why salana shouldn't FP flip ethereum that's just my view that's my thesis I've done more work I continue doing more work there are reasons why that could be validated there are reasons why that might be invalidated and I'm focusing my attention on like the recent outage in salana well I'll pay attention to that like what are the devs doing how's this happening how's fire answer going you know there are clearly certain things that salana hasn't figured out at all yet there's a reason why it trades at a discount but if you didn't catch salana at8 you could have CAU caught it at 20 60 100 150 200 now it's at 150 or 130 if you're

constantly focusing on that price movement it would be way more useful to go back to Dro and say okay why is salana even worth what it is today and why is ethereum worth what it is and why are they different why is salana fundament better or worse than ethereum and I think like asking those very basic questions is probably better use of time than like you know eating yourself up for like not catching it not catching it at the absolute bottom you know I mean it's like it's impossible we're gonna get into your thoughts around salana versus eth as well as a bunch more actually I think later on let's pull back a little bit first and I want to talk about well a few things actually one thing you talk about a lot you touched on a bit here is the psychological impacts of investing I

feel like the psychology of investing is probably like 80% investing and 20% doing your research I don't know if those those numbers are actually accurate but the thing I've learned over the years investing and especially in crypto is how important it is to just like manage your mindset and like understand your plan and your framework and your strategy and so two things I mean one if you want to go on a rant about the psychology side feel free to do so I've heard you do it before so I think you'll you know people are going to really like that the second thing I just want to talk about is sort of just a general framework obviously you've been in the space since 2012 and investing in it what is that four 12 years which is wild actually and so you've seen these crazy Cycles you said already you know we're

still early talk to me a little bit about how you play this stuff is it just always long term are you trying to take profits somewhere at the top somewhere like just walk me through how you think about it look there's always an O relative opportunity cost to things and so naturally yes you I'm not of the mind that you should hold these things indefinitely there's always an opportunity cost couple things right in my journey if you can change your life change your life change your life insulate your lifestyle that has been the biggest upgrade that I've done and someone said it cuz I didn't I I roundt tripped like three Cycles or two and a half and then someone came to me and said insulate your life I was like no I don't want to take money out of crypto I think we're still early it's like yes

we're still early but like first of all if you believe her that early it doesn't really matter because what you take out like you know what I mean you still be widely successful but optimize for minimizing distractions cuz when you insulate your life you don't have to think about like the mundane stuff then you can really focus and that's that I've like really and it touches on both elements right like at some point you you take profit at some point there's like exuberance to things there's irrationality to what the way things are trading I think you have to constantly question and re underwrite your thesis right and it's hard look I mean I've done an episode about my mistakes like arguably would have been more successful I didn't touch my eth that I bought at you know very early on how do you define success is the other question what is

success and part of what I think of success now is going through these motions of developing a framework developing a process because you know the outcome could be wiely successful say you made a billion dollars on E I probably could have actually if I just held the bag but I didn't right like it's just wild to think about that and and over times in my career I've looked at that and like I've become depressed I've thought of myself as a fail as an investor but at some point you realize well it's a bit difficult in a parallel universe maybe I would have been I would have used that money to invest in other things that I love that I think the world just doesn't allocate resources to like research and whatever but you know iess he'll do that today different outcome but I I like the fact that you

know for whatever reason that happened and I like the process right you learn about through the process and you know I think as an investor you can be extremely right about the future and maybe it takes one good investment like you were right about ethereum you're right about the future but trying to replicate that is actually probably hard if you don't have a process and I didn't have a process going into crypto I had some I was investing but crypto is just a different animal like it's liquid it's Venture and it's liquid and so it requires like certain Motions like other people have been way more successful than I have I for me is just taking this idea that how do you manage risk right is the hardest thing to do because you're you're investing in something that is super inherently longterm but you can you have a market that is 247

365 and to your point managing those emotions and managing that risk is very difficult and I think it goes back to a core element in my process which is I sort of there's two things right there's an error there's two types of Errors one of process and one of outcome in investing you're going to make a ton of mistakes of outcome you can't control million things you can't tell me like I can't tell you what the price is going to be tomorrow much less I have certain degree of probability the long term you know certain things I think are going to be much larger than what they are now based on some Market assumption and whatever usage and whatnot but it's very difficult the outcome is is you can't control it the worst you can do is think that you can control the outcome and

then just do crazy stuff like Leverage and whatnot and blow up but I think what you can always do is perfect your process if you made a mistake you can look back and say okay diagnose those errors of process and perfect your process why because you have 30 more years ahead of you and you can compound that you can perfect your process compound your Capital I'm not trying to time this cycle perfectly I am trying to like protect my principle and I'm looking out for really smart people I'm also constantly re underwriting my thesis so like hey well I have more certainty that salana like I see a cleaner line of path for salana supporting a bunch of applications across defi Ai and a bunch of others I don't necessarily see that in the scalability road map of ethereum and it's been frustrating I'm still

investing in ethereum I'm still investing in these l2s I think they're worthwhile exper exp the question and the Nuance is in What proportion do that make sense absolutely so you say the word Cycles which makes me believe you think we're in another cycle we're always in a cycle right we're always in a cycle true but do you think that we are in a similar cycle to what we've been in previously these sort of foure cycles that we've had there's been what three of them since you've been in the space at least maybe we're in our fourth there's this huge debate with everyone and everyone seems to be mixed some are like it's an accelerated cycle some like this isn't a cycle anymore there's a super cycle there's all these things which is generally when you talk about oh I'm going to take some profits and

stuff I'm going to try and do the top of the cycle what are you thinking in terms of like where we're at right now of Market structure whether it's a cycle or not and by cycle I mean like the typical crypto cycle like what is your analysis on that it's a very complex question I think I'll offer people practical stuff to your point around psychology if investing at the micro level everyone is investing in it's a very psychological sport inherently markets are very psychological therefore they're prone to excess extremes right both on kind of like everyone's seen kind of the different stages of the market cycle despair of to Euphoria and then you know disillusionment whatnot that always plays out it's it always has in every market so I think it's just important to

like recognize an honor history there super cycle does not exist there's always volatility it's an asset class that is going through constant price Discovery we could be back Bitcoin at 40K and I want be surprised I don't think anyone will be people might be sad but we could be there it's just very volatile concretely I am of the mind that probabilistically we are earlier than in the early mid phase of a cycle not so much towards the end I feel good about the rest of the year the things I'm looking at is we just had the ETF approval we're probably going to see an eth ETF by the end of the year and I think that was pretty useful instrumental get more people and the reason I say that is because because

Bitcoin is very different than the rest of crypto I think and I think allocators the type of allocator that is perhaps buying into the Bitcoin ETF is using it as a proxy but I think something like ethereum probably captures more mind share amongst people that are looking to invest in technology whereas Bitcoin that people might be investing in Bitcoin for a variety of reasons like it's really the barometer of risk right it doesn't over the weekend like this is 247 365 so crypto has become a really good proxy for B for for risk the people paying attention to but I think the ETF for ethereum likely happens this year and I think that sustains you know part of the cycle and then the interest also it is a flows game right I that's something that I've appreciated more and

more like certainly like November 2021 like rates are going up for the first time ever in my investing career this is the first cycle that I'm investing through you know nonzero interest rates and I was very mindful going into that like I'm just it's just sort of a new normal a new paradigm for me I've never gone through that so so it is a learning curve understanding and you know you also hear people like Stan drunken Miller who's been investing way longer than I have way more successful and say this is pretty difficult environment to invest in I asked this question in a panel I was at like BL in London at uh ad Das digital asset Summit mostly institutions and then I was at token 2049 in Dubai asked the question in both panels who would have predicted who on the timeline predicted that we would have alltime

highs and rates on chain at five and a half who actually was saying that it's like no maybe there's one or two people were saying that but who believed it with conviction like through in and the answer is like very little people like it's it's very challenging so I'm very cognizant of that concretely again offering just kind of more tips like you always kind of things that I look at like are funding rates you know how much Leverage is in the system how heated is a particular narrative you look at open interest and funding rates across different exchange venues and generally like you can always expect really Vol like a lot of volatility even in a bull market regime you have 10 20% draw Downs all coins are down 40 60% 70% since you know two months ago does that invalidate

the bull market thesis no I just think it's part of like uh consolidation and you know there's always kind of a early investors take profit and then the relative opportunity cost people kind of migrate more into Bitcoin and then more flows come into the space typically they go into Bitcoin and then you know they go into other stuff I think that's generally through still I guess the last thing I'll say maybe this opens up for subsequent questions is like I do I'm quite excited Market pychology Cycles are always a thing always going to happen there's always going to be like Bull Air Market whatever trough you know Peak the internet offers really useful analogies because kind of like the Doom crash true disillusionment 2001 people

are skeptical of the Internet it's like why why do I need this I think crypto email came around made the internet like what it is today like it really like brought home what the internet meant for people I think crypto is finally entering that stage we've been like investing in infrastructure for the last 12 years and I think what's the use case what's what's the email to crypto I think I think it's deep in interesting okay look when you're buying a data plan and it's helium you don't care it's crypto power you just say okay I'm comparing with the AT&T it's like half the price and I'm also like or less it's actually paying for itself maybe it doesn't pay for it's not sustainable it's free like stepping you know walking and then get getting paid 40 bucks to walk the Lin that's like sustainable but

it offers like something really interesting which is people start using this stuff they don't appreciate it but it's a great onboarding mechanism and I think deep and just makes crypto very relatable you're from Canada or you know you live in Europe asking someone to buy Bitcoin as a macro hedge clearly turned out to be incorrect or as a hedge against what or I mean it's incredibly volatile instrument anyways you could argue stable coins are that email moment right it just needs the unlock of like regulatory Clarity and you know you have the stable coin builds coming through MAA and Europe up and a bunch of other places like the ETF certainly deris and makes crypto like a legitimate asset class and so maybe I think I think like we're I I go back and forth whether it's

a stable coin because I think payments back to my initial opening of like why I became interested in this like payments are the first thing that you discover crypto you're like holy [ __ ] like stable coins are just amazing like people want to hold a more stable thing that their local shitcoin Pon I say coins was my thought which I was like you said deepin I was like well I don't know maybe it's maybe it's stable coins is the email version to the internet but I don't know do you think that either of these could be the thing that brings in and already sort of our at least on the stable coin side bring in millions but let's say tens hundreds of millions do you think that we're even there that's one of the things where like people keep talking about this super cycle and I was like I don't think

we're getting to mainstream adoption yet we're still got to be years away I think I think the think is is this a secular Trend absolutely the internet like had succcess in spite of geopolitical tensions multiple Wars in Iraq and other places moments of high interest rates like the question is like is this technology fundamentally better is there a reason for people to normal people to use it is it like 10x better people are inherently lazy they don't want to change their status quo they might complain but they're not going to change it the reason why I like at a global scale deep in is that it makes it very relatable across not just consumer but just invested in a company like you I spent a lot of time with the founder in Dubai and and they are like mapping out and creating like this local network

like rtk Network like basically GPS is very unreliable so you have these antennas that have like a 40 40 mile diameter that covers like high density or even rural areas so it's applicable and it's actually getting a lot of traction from industry because they go to a convention like a convention a bunch of farmers there and they're trying to use drones good luck trying to use drones with GPS GPS is like when you're talking about like small Parcels of land mapping out that technology and having like a people talk about Ai and like a you know the smart John Deere tractor like moing and farming and whatever irrigation technology I'm like yeah but you need like really precise location data and GPS is not going to cut it there's like web 2 companies that

have trying to get this type of scale and they have like there's big multi-billion dollar companies that have provide these type of antenna and services like can that provide precise range but they're they haven't covered most of the world this company it's like a year old and they've been able to bootstrap and go to market and like map out an incredible surface area of the world and the same way that you see Hive mapper tracking and and mapping out a bunch of roads and helium like a lot of people just do it yourself kind of people like buy the equipment because they can earn the rewards like it basically in a similar manner that like software as a service was incredibly transformational from the internet because a lot of like startups like pets.com it's actually good business model but when you have such high capex

capital expenditure and you can't pay as you go like through software the service that flexibility in your business model then it becomes incredibly Capital intensive and I think tokens are that new mechanism to really get off the ground these otherwise really Capital intensive networks to bootstrap supply and demand that's the hardest thing to do right whenever you talk about a network whether it's a n network to a physical infrastructure Network whatever it of any kind it's usually really intensive and it requires you to balance like uber for instance like very few cities are actually profitable like if we were not in record low interest rate environment over the last 10 years a lot of these businesses wouldn't have gotten off the ground because they required incredible amount of EC funding and what I'm trying to say is like I think crypto

a lot of the innovation of crypto is just that it is like a new mechanism to get the scale to bootstrap these businesses by turning your customers into shareholders in a very effective way and so they're doing the marketing for you they're buying the equipment you're not buying the equipment they're taking that cost and they're fronting that because they expect the reward and as opposed to just the shareholders of this company wants to go as public like most companies are not even going public in 10 years I think that's like a subtle mechanism but software as a service was a huge unlock Salesforce came around and then all of a sudden you're like wow like it just powered this incredible movement in the internet wave the last like 15 years I think people are coming

to that realization especially for deepen it's like hey this is actually a or even create a networks or whatever it's like it's artists both on the supply and demand side I think people are realizing the power of I know it sounds obvious of like making your customers shareholders and rewarding them mapping them out by tokenizing attention or tokenizing contributions is it going to sound probably ridiculous looking back if you're a new Creator and you have the option of uploading your content to to a network that shares the revenue ad Revenue 50/50 or 8020 in your favor versus the opposite which is YouTube and I know people are really focused on well YouTube has a distribution it's incredibly hard to displace I'm like yeah but you start

small but I think the value proposition to creators contributors RIT large is really powerful for any type of network my my thing with deepin I think tpn is going to be huge and I do think it is one of the things that brings in the mainstream I don't think it's because you become a shareholder because I just don't think most people care about that like exactly I was goingon to say is Like Us in crypto space care about maybe ownership and things and some people want to do governance but most people could care less my other thing on deep hand of why I'm not sure that it's fully ready to go mainstream is because people also just don't really care about tokens like mainstream people so you tell them they do care about making money but it needs to be super simple and I just

don't know that the ux of it all is quite there yet to be like hey add this thing to your car or add this thing to like something else foring your computer and all a sudden don't make money yeah but I mean you're you're old enough to remember dialup internet definitely was that easy was that easy not at all but not a lot of people did it until it went to broadband right which is the moment I'm saying is like I feel like we're still in that dialup phase where like the use cases are there but like I don't think it goes into the mainstream the super Cycles kind of thing until that ux is fully fixed but but I could be wrong well look at point I was very critical of ux I think a lot of times it requires you to update your

thesis like for me that led me to salana the salana apps pre FTX Yankee ux difficult if I were to send someone a new comer to crypto and say name me three apps to tell people to go to use they're all in Salena Jupiter tenser and maybe some backpack like I'm biased I'm an investor in all of them so you know biased but I invested because of that the challenge of course has always been on ramping getting your Fiat the crypto but I think that's changing I mean coinbase and circle they're not far from becoming large financial institutions 100% And The yeah it's easy to move money you know what I mean like once you interact with stable coins and like the wallet have gone way better like you

don't want to do wire transfers 100% well this is my debate on the ux is like people always complain of the ux of crypto and I kind of go back for on because like if you think about the ux of moving money from one country to another I can have a suitcase full of money and take a plane to Europe faster than I can send money to Europe right which is insane in 2024 only less than $10,000 but yes yeah yeah less than exactly and so like whenever people complain about ux crypto I was like just send money from someone to another person in the world and you'll see the TX is actually way better I think the problem is it's just the mainstream doesn't really send money to people from outside of other like most people in the US don't even have a passport number one

and so like they live in the US they spend in the US and they don't need to send money elsewhere many of them don't travel it's easy for me I'm a nomad so well not always noad but I travel around a lot and so I'm always using different exchanges and it is such a pain point that I could care less what the ux is so obvious to me I just think like you said most people are lazy and so for most people I I don't want to say most for most western people money is not necessarily an issue for them and so like the ux needs to get really really good for them to start use staple coins and things like that but definitely like developing world they're like what you problem no AB I mean I definitely agree with you I think it at that point the

the supply side probably becomes more important for in Western countries if your local Commerce if your local favorite retail shop starts using crypto there will come a point where that probably becomes the hook right because they might offer you better incentives for the simple reason that if you're paying with stable coins they could that's settled in instantaneously if you're swiping your Visa or American Express they get paid in at least a week or two weeks time so the working capital be it's just a practical business decision a business would rather own would rather transact in a stable coin it's instantaneous it's Atomic like there's no fraud like bail checkout is a multi-billion dollar industry dropped cart false POS or false negatives renewal for subscriptions because your

credit card information has changed like I know stripe is a very business very big lucrative business there's no need for stripe in a world where you're transacting automically through a stable coin the strip has come in and try to solve the patchwor cluster [ __ ] that is a financial system very only westernized crypto solves that if we stopped innovating and we just focused on payments then crypto's massive way larger than what it is today but Commerce and payments with nfts right because nfts are perfect cookies if you're a business of course you want someone to come in scan a QR code blockchains are incredible pieces of information a proof of time and space and so then you layer on the deepend

network that I told you that tells you exactly where you are then all of a sudden Pokemon go or some of these other brands are really interested because they can track location they can blockchains are like just better coordination mechanisms and so therefore as a brand as a business you always want to coordinate right you attract people the key there on the demand on the supply side like why payments haven't gone to scale I think in in most places is because stable coins work they're fantastic products regulation it's just regulation I think most businesses would rather say Hey listen come to me when we have Clarity and it's sad it's unfortunate but I think I am very optimistic it's like uber faced a lot of push back from local authorities and Lobby is primarily the taxi industry

because you know it came and displac her business the reason why just you can't fight something the consumer loves and wants so it's balancing that out are we at a point where Western consumers are screaming stable coins no and so the best we can do is just continue to build really good applications like deep in like stable coins in and of itself are not going to move the needle because to your point most people are not moving money they're not thinking about you know but when you have ai agents transacting stable coins when you have uh deepend networks transacting stable coins the more and more consumer facing applications that get scale gaming or using backend in their backend stable coins to settle this flow it matters for more cons it puts pressure on

politicians to actually realize this is a really novel piece of technology we should probably regulate in a sensible manner I mean same happen the internet right they tried to regulate out and then it was just so good for the consumers that you do it got shut down and then Spotify came around you know right it's interesting though we've we kind of jumped around a bit here of many different topics but this is what's kind of interesting about crypto to me and what I love about it is there's not just one use case or one thing that will make it go mainstream it's like we're hitting it from all angles there's payments stable coins there's cookies with nfts as you just mentioned you mentioned something about creators and now they can put their content on chain and make more Revenue there's dpin like there's so many use cases that blockchain just

makes the internet and the world quite frankly just more efficient and better and so it's like this is that secular Trend you're talking about we don't know which one of these Trends are going to hit today and be the next thing but there's just so many shots at it that you might as well be in it because it is such an obvious secular Trend yeah my question though is when you look so obviously okay secular Trend be in crypto that's the number one advice there if you're not in crypto well that's a bit crazy and then we talked let's say deepin for example when you look at deepin you go okay this is probably the next big thing it might be the thing that brings in the masses how do you think about then investing that I'm sure you do a lot on the private

side with most of these companies it's probably more private than liquid mostly private so maybe you can't really talk about your liquid strategy but if you did but to be fair yeah yeah that's actually a great question to be fair I more time in liquid markets now because private markets are getting way out of hand they're like so hot I mean most uh funds didn't allocate last year last two years there was scared [ __ ] and you know most of them blew up or lost money and there wasn't a lot of capital now they're offside and they've been sidelined and they're trying to catch up and so I think the time to invest in private rounds was last year this year I'm investing less of my Capital on privates and spending more time on public on liquid stuff I just think there's stuff that is overlooked falls

off the top 100 you're getting it cheaper than what the private round was last raised at the team has continued to build continue to ship it's a dris investment now was it worth what it was the private round yeah different question many times no but the nice thing about projects that have a token is that you can I think they're you can do much more diligence right it's farther ahead this played out like last cycle some of my best investments was looking at a for instance or like synthetics and projects that are raised yeah okay large iOS whatever the token collapses 98% and as a Founder if you continue to build through really adversarial environment like that and you're not demoralized and you've been able to retain or grow your team then

I'll hand it to you that to me is impressive I want to back those guys that have like forged in the fire of a bare Market it's never easy to build in crypto in a bull market people screaming at you to launch a token in a bar Market you're a scammer and you've done price goes down and it's all your fault but you know I think it takes a certain level of like moral fiber to be successful and I sympathize with Founders so I think it's really interesting to back those type of Founders right that that you know haven't been demoralized continue to build and there's a lot of projects out in the public like five out of my last six seven deals have been like otc's directly with the team I go to them and say hey look I want to get your token

I'll commit to a long lock up lock up you know I'm comfortable holding the bag for one or two years or whatever but I can't buy because there's no volume on this thing it's like it's going to take me a year to accumulate size like but I want to work with you like here's the things that I want to help you with and so you know we constructure or something like that then nice it's like a pipe other times I just buy a liquid token most privately funded things are not going to outperform something like Solana or even ethereum or even ethereum or Bitcoin it's really hard to outperform has been something like ethereum through cycle it it's it's just actually quite hard agree with that I think new people coming into space don't really realize that they don't realize

how I don't want to say easy but like almost easy it is to just hold the major and let it let it go you can hold Bitcoin through the cycle and you'll do freaking very well and compared to traditional finance and traditional assets like it's unbelievable how well you can do let's talk about you mentioned Salon a bunch of times now and you've hinted at your superiority of of salana and I just want to talk about that thesis real quick here because one of the questions that we put out on Twitter or someone actually asked was they've heard that you're big on Sal you think it's going to outperform eth I guess through this cycle I assume it's longer but you can comment on that and is there anything that would make you reevaluate that thesis like what you obviously think salana is the narrative

or the next thing why do you think that number one and then would anything change that and I guess actually if you can comment how do you then go invest in that is it just you buy soul or are you going in a bunch of different yeah lever bets on solo like investing in so so two things like my journey in son is long like I was an investor multicoin so they were investors in salana early on and then I started paying more attention when I was a Pari I obviously bought when the foundation sold like at a dollar or whatever and so I think architecturally the background of the founder like someone like anatol comes from like he worked at Cisco I believe he he understands networks like scaling networks is they have the same problem scaling blockchains like you have this problem where you have surges in demand

and you have to balance that load somehow and so the network doesn't break it's like a network problem and I think Sal like you hear Anatolia one of the founders of salana talk over and over that so I think his background is really well suited for that and I think they just take a very different approach to and a very opinionated one on on you'll hear him say time and time again I want NASDAQ on the blockchain like real time highest throughput low latency Network that's their thing they've held to that and does that mean it's going to serve all use cases no where I think a lot of people including myself been critical over time has been like this higher Hardware requirements right to run a node and I think sort of is counter ethos to like decentralization and w y y

but I think it's it's kind of nice and sounds really cool to be able to run a light node like with a Raspberry Pi it's like open accessible to everyone and like does that contribute to security probably how many people are actually running a node in their kitchen counter none there's always clusters in centralization look at Lio look at Bitcoin miners there's just a thing technology is centralizing now the the thing that I make salana quite interesting and I had this realization like last year it's like okay well there's actually really nice applications here actually seen real usage like look at Jupiter look at like it's a delightful experience I'm not talking about delightful within crypto I'm talking about delightful relative to like web to like it is actually something that I'd be proud to send someone in in in in web to a ftech

investor be like take a look at Jupiter take a look at backpack take a look at you know tensor it's good there's no ux problem like it's seamless so Phantom it's actually like easier to use in many ways the realization for me is like when when we think about like the blockchain tri Lio right it's like security you know you have to make some sort of trade-off but I actually think like yes there's a higher Hardware requirement but at the end of the day if there is a ton of activity in atwork that means there's going to be a lot of fees for validators that means you're going to justify the capex to run the node that is more expensive by the way it's not that more expensive it's like 700 bucks it's sort of like a mute argument of like the highed hardware requirements

for me at least it's like understanding like from a p&l perspective like if you're going to validate yeah of course you're gonna like Meb is a thing in salana right now you have goto and like you know you're making a bunch of money there because there's a ton of activity it starts and ends with can you actually have a Network that has a ton of demand because that's not a bad problem to have now ethereum has had a ton of demand but it just hasn't been able to scale because it's not paralyzable it it's just struggles it's very fragmented the L1 to L2 now L3 is ethereum dead absolutely not I still invest in ethereum I still have a big part of my portfolio in ethereum I've invested a number of I seated a bunch of l2s like I think it's their interesting research experience I think they might work

Solana is not the BN end all of things you have like other design mechanisms you have other languages like move that make it really interesting from like a defi perspective move as a programming language you think is like far superior from a defi use case just like the security of it I believe in a multi-chain world I think generally speaking in salana has had a couple issues and you've heard the team even the team is very upfront about them they have technical debt because they had limited resources they have to push stuff out and you've seen those outages right most recently like dealing with Spam the network has been an issue I think every Network kind of struggles with that it's growing pains most blockchains I think and where the most of the Innovation I think will happen now going forward at least in the L1

space is like how do you price compute how do you price block like how do you price that the the fee markets and how you price those is an area that requires and is probably worthy of a lot more Innovation and I think you're seeing some interesting experiments there salana and the team is very aware of that like you're probably going to have to have an e559 type of mechanism in salana it's underpriced it's kind of hard like imagine you saying okay I'm going to build this huge Highway wherever you are Imagine just like there's no one there and you're forced to make a decision of how to price the toll fee you're like [ __ ] I don't know like no one's showing up here like no one there's like no one in sight for the the next city is like a thousand kilometers away or miles away but you're

forced to make the decision of how to price the toll and the highway cost at that moment in time it's unrealistic to for you able to price it efficiently that's like basically every network has had to make that decision and so it's different now that you have millions of cars going through on a daily basis well you have to update that you have to right change the economics but it's not a bad problem to have I think salana is very focused on that you also have a second client so having client redundancy is incredibly important for these you know the the uptime and the liveness of a network for it to not go down ethereum has multiple clients Bitcoin has multiple clients salana needs to have multiple clients there's this thing called fire dancers is developed by the jump team that has

launched to later this year so that's also very encouraging right you want to have a network that is performant if you're a builder you want to have those insurances that it's a network that fine okay great a lot of this interest and a lot of usage and users none of it matters if it constantly fails once it gets Demand right so if you're all showing up to watch the St in the game and the stadium lights don't work well people are gonna go to a different stadium and so it's important to pay attention to this right you could have looked perhaps like last two weeks and seen the salana transactions not landing and saying God this is awful and I get it it it was a very bad experience but where I tend to focus on as an early stage investor or even investing in

public stuff is again going back to what is the DNA of the team one how do they behave how do they communicate under adversity and how quickly are they technically competent to patch this stuff and I think you saw pretty Herculean effort from the salana developer Community to like patch this thing and also like be acutely aware name a project that has had taken it on the chin constant criticism and they've used that to their advantage because they've optimized fee markets they've optimized certain things because they're aware it's not a perfect Network whereas ethereum is going through this kind of like there's some fantastic builders in ethereum like folks like step and arbitrum like really good guy like Justin Drake really solid humble aware that they need to make a lot of like

it's so early still but then there's a huge contingency that it's like we figured it out everything else is a scam really that has never served any yeah the the other I mean salana being the team that you know they took it on the chin and they just kind of battled through it is completely true I'd say the other one is like eth did that right but they did it four years ago right so they were kind of and I guess you could say Bitcoin did it too being the first to even start this thing off right which is one of those telling signs of like this is how you know that this ecosystem is going to be one that makes it and then the other thing I would say to add to your thing on salana which was you talked about there's no or can a open

source project have a moat and a lot of people are like well it's G you know Sal is gonna be the retail chains where all the meme coins are Etc and I was like yeah maybe but I mean you look at Bass it's taking off it's getting meme coins but Sal does have a bit of a boat right now for deep in right yeah like I invested in this project that I'm talking about I said I'll invest if you like take a serious effort on moving to salana Because deep lives in salana yeah and I'm sure some of the other like newer L ones that come maybe can take that share but yet to be seen and like obviously they're very far off from where Salon is so like I kind of see salana as having a bit of a mo but I I don't know that that lasts

for forever obviously so maybe MO is the wrong term but anyway I completely agree on the east side though obviously you're still investing in it so I don't think you done with Stills a relevant place or like yeah all no well look I think so op performs eth yes I position myself but I'm still investing in eth like uh in E projects for sure I'm investing in like certain l2s that are very opinionated about the trade-offs that they're making yeah we're gonna have a centralized sequencer but we're going to be focusing on throughput like okay fine yeah good or hey we're going to be very focused on this particular region or this particular use case like yes eum is like again you got to think of probabilities like the probability of ethereum going to zero well no like there's still a lot of re a lot of really smart devs are

there a lot of attention is there and some fantastic researchers are are trying to figure this stuff out right and so the modularity kind of movement is really interesting you know like you've basically unbundled the components of what a blockchain does and so that's freed up a lot of capacity a lot of ability to do really cool stuff and lower fees and so and perhaps higher throughput but there are certain limitations around like single threaded evm that I have issues and concerns with and why I like sort of paralyzed environment that I think is just I understand that my lizard brain sort of understands that better I I struggle with the single threaded evm like it's just there's some things that unfortunately when you go first and you make certain architectural decisions I don't think if you were to ask falic if he would have built the network today he

would have designed it the way that he did it's just a virtue as you said we're early we're trying stuff there's cuttingedge research on both cryptography Game Theory econom like incentives but particularly I think blockchain design is an area where even if you ask Satoshi or balica I think they would say yeah we would probably make some modifications and I think the single versus paralyzed execution environment is one that I think is the biggest constraint that ethereum faces today and and making evm compatible and migrating to that is something that is going to be difficult right well speaking of being first I haven't I don't think I've heard you speak about this much on the Empire podcast anyway but Bitcoin is having a bit of Renaissance right it's coming back and

not just like Bitcoin dominance I mean l2s coming on bitcoin runes just launched like there's a lot happening there it's a weird different world curious what your thoughts are on that is this are you bullish on this no if you're in the space you appreciate Bitcoin it is the king it is the largest Network we're sort of like I think the tap route upgrade was it like 2020 late 2021 early 2022 like really has set the path I'm I'm saying this because people need to appreciate this didn't happen overnight the taper upgrade like allowed for what you see like orinal activity like really Spike up and then a whole interest in like l2s or even native l1s that like trying to bring more things to do if you're a Bitcoin holder I mean there's just a ton of un like

unproductive Capital there and so yeah like they've been like tbtc and a couple other things but like trying to bridge your Bitcoin over to ethereum but no like a core Bitcoin is going to be like bring me something here I'm not going to go to another shitty blockchain which is right you know like you're trading security and I think the core bitcoiner doesn't want to do that in a testament unfortunately the whole irony of it is that they ended up like putting a lot of their Bitcoin in centralized venues like blockfi and blown up right because they didn't want to use a shitcoin network like a shitty Network like e theum and instead use a centralized provider which was like probably worse sad and unfortunate but I think that speaks to the opportun Unity at hand I just in announced two Investments one meso which

is built by the thesis team which has been in around and building around the Bitcoin ecosystem from tbtc to L and I know Matt for years so I'm excited they're trying to being like an economic layer kind of think of it as an L2 Bitcoin and so I think it's a very competent team it's one of those teams has been focused constantly on bitcoin and the other one is Arch Network which is different from an L2 it's actually natively L1 kind of building like kind of like a barow chain and then doing a lot of like through paraliz like a lot of things there on both instances you have to there is some trust assumptions that you need to like loosen up right the question is who's your audience and for a lot of these projects I do question and I I've looked at a lot I'm

like do you really understand the core Bitcoin holder and how easy and accessible and also upfront are you going to be about these tradeoffs because a lot of teams might say well look at eel1 L2 most people don't care that you know optimism doesn't have fraud proofs and basically it's just like a multisig but they love yield and so they're going to Deen into this I'm like I understand I understand that's happen in ethereum and I understand human psychology and behavior but appreciate the Bitcoin holder like it's just a different animal I think it's an incredible just round out I think it's an incredible exciting moment for Bitcoin finally my biggest concern with Bitcoin has been the 97 95 plus perc of all the security budget of Bitcoin 95% of it comes from block rewards like I

need to see fees that's what supports it right and so so I'm happy because finally miners have woken up with ERS largy and saying huh we actually make a lot of money and Bitcoin is making a lot of money as an L1 now with right and that's really exciting yeah no I mean and it probably does like if does another 10x I won't be surprised like I mean it's not sustainable but it's encouraging yeah so I agree my only problem with this is I feel like all the things that they're building on bitcoin right now which are meant for as he said do you know your audience which are meant for bitcoiners is like how many bitcoiners are there really and like how many more are there to come when the masses come to crypto they're not coming in with the same mindset and like idea

that the bitcoiners that have been around since you know 2010 have I think they're coming in for very different reasons and so I just wonder like it's a very small audience that ruins and all this stuff is building for and yes people play around with it right now and it'll probably have a hype cycle I just like I don't know that that's what the world cares about or what a lot of people are going to care about because I just don't think the Bitcoin religion continues to proliferate really I think people will hold Bitcoin and whatever but I'm just not sure that those properties matter to a large group of people I think it's an excellent point I am more excited about other stuff yeah I'm excited because it's a very interesting question maybe like in a year's time we'll revisit this and say yeah like you're basically saying and I

kind of agree with it no I definitely agree with this maybe not from a flows perspective because a lot of flows might Disc Go on the Bitcoin ETF that is constantly buying you know Bitcoin but from like a number of users I mean the ux is better in salana right it's better in ethereum what is in Bitcoin like it's a pulling teeth try to buy you know runes it's like reminds me of the early defi days I don't know part of me just I'm always very excited when I see some some really killer use cases crypto feels real and I've struggled to make people see that like over the last 12 years and so finally my my life becomes easier when I tell people you just don't load this app you know is step in for instance like and of course I was a first investor like advisor and so you

know bias like whatever but steppen was kind of the first application that people that I knew were skeptical had no interest in crypto reach out and say hey I see you on the website you're like an investor adviser can I get a code I want to use this my friends are using it like every I just went to dinner people talking about step in I want to use it at some point technology needs to become real for people and and not just so abstract and like investing in like a DA layer it's just like there's only so many Handi people get excited about it maybe you and I are one of them but you know this is the thing for me too is I've been telling everyone I know about crypto for forever and I'm like listen there's going to be these cool apps that

we're all going to use and then the thing that just keeps coming back is mem coins and I'm like damn it like it's almost embarrassing to try to bring these people in the space and then this is the thing that keeps coming up and you're like okay this is harder to get people to really get serious about this not that I hate on Meme coins um I actually just bought my first mem coin the other week um as our community member so but uh interested to hear this will be our our last sort of narrative or subject we'll touch on but it kind of floated well so just want to hear your sort of obviously it's the biggest thing right now and has been fed a while so I want to hear your take on it I was just in a panel in token 249 talk about memes

and look I never even thought i' would be invited to a meme panel because I was very skeptical of memes in every other cycle and it's actually you're trying to reinvent the financial system and then you have like a doge that just is worth more collectively than all Defi and you're like for [ __ ] sake you know like we get discounted as an industry my concerns around meme coins back then were it makes a mockery of the space it's a distraction this is why we're not taken seriously this why crypto will never be big now I actually take a more practical stance which is it doesn't matter what I think and it actually showcased the people it is pretty novel like memes are my medic desire is like incredibly powerful we talk about community and culture in crypto a lot then why don't we accept memes it's a

pure expression of a meme it's a desire and it's interesting because you're seeing so I'm not skeptical I actually very interested in memes I invested a lot of memes I think they're important cultural components they're no different than nfts actually in fact more accessible a lot of VCS are actually skeptical to memes because oh all of a sudden people are not buying their high fdv low float coins and they're going yeah okay who's gonna we talk about like people in investing in markets get hurt I understand that people make money they lose money it's true for Vegas it's true for the stock market it's true for crypto and so the argument around me coins people lose money on mem coins is one where it it doesn't get to the Nuance of it which the most important thing is not to be opinionated about a

Marketplace but to be focused on and if you're a regulator to be focused on markets being fair transparent and accessible to all not to have an opinion on what is actually traded in these venues unless of course they're causing harm if you're funding terrorism your of course that you interfere but that's the role of the regulator and so being opinionator about what people want to trade is like saying Vegas and and gambling I think like sports gambling and betting sports betting has gone through this Evolution used to be banned in many states now it's opening up people take an interest in that I mean people at the end of the day want to live their life and have have fun Vegas no different than the stock market no different than memes if memes are a mechanism to get people interested in in

crypto and and showcase what his tokenizing culture and attention is then by all means also interesting you have a flavor now of meme coins that are acting like predic markets you have the bden token you have the Trump token that's going to play a huge role and like Biden has a speech and that token's active markets are Arbiters of Truth and mem coins like a flavor of trump and Bowden I would argue are better predictors of the election then you're political analyst and pundit in CNN that has no value on the line by the way they've been incredibly unsuccessful Nate Silvers of the world didn't predict Trump are not going to predict your next president take a look at if you have a market that's trading bill millions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars that represents the collective

consensus on a particular candidate that's really interesting and so I think it showcas say Chris Dixon had an oped on the financial times of critical of meme coins he also I think seems to contradict his theory that most technology big technology starts looks and starts like a toy I think you should take a serious look in the face and then say okay well isn't that Meme coins look not all meme coins are created equal people talk and are critical about look certain meme coins launch and they get boted they get sniped the team takes 40% of it distributes a bunch of wallets I'm like yes not only a problem mem coins be skeptical and wary look on chain if you don't know ask but that's not a problem the criticism a lot of times of mean coins are not inherent by like me is a

thing it's unfortunate it's a thing there are really interesting mechanisms like pump. fun that basically allows anyone to create a meme coin so say that we wanted to create a mean coin about this episode we record it we store uh the video an ipfs and you know the mean coin however represents like this milk Road I say something stupid in the spot if you want to me in whatever they go and pop up fun you have a bonding curve mechanism so as opposed to launching something with really low liquidity which is how you get these unfair distributions of meme you have a bonding curve where like an auction like people like explicitly Express certain interests and so out of the gate there's more liquidity therefore less manipulation therefore fair market and I think like we should be thinking more

about okay how can we have these more Fair distributions of of whatever token whether it's a meme or not through a bonding C mechanisms which we know are better mechanisms for distribution certain auctions with privacy enabled in them or whatever like that's a real more important fundamental question right but I guess as a closing question would be who do you think it's hurt the most like you have World coin trading at like 150 fully billion fully diluted and like let's actually look at this actually as an experiment because people bring a Boral coin and I just think it's ridiculous World coin market cap a billion fully diluted it's come down 55 billion look at that ratio like you I mean and by the way the circulating Supply is you know 1% no is actually no 200 200 million out of 10 billion so

what's that over 20% no no no 10 billion no 2% 2% 2% in circulation right that you have a massive unlock schedule of people that invested early that want to get their Capital back and want to recoup principal and then lock in a return does retail know that or aware of that most of these memes with or whatever fully like fully distributed all the tokens are in circulation the price of that the price of worldcoin is not 55 billion because if you try to liquidate all that the order book does not support that right but on the other hand meme coins you know don't have this problem most of them are just fully distributed and they're trading and by the way whiff and some of these and Dogecoin and sheep like they actually

are represent a huge percent percentage of trading volume so what I'm trying to say is I'm happy to have a debate about it I'm happy to have a discussion about it because a lot of times it's important to like focus and be critical a particular topic like memec coins because it then highlights broader issues of crypto distribution funding mechanisms maybe iOS are the solution maybe we should go back to that because it all it's basically allowed people to like pull Capital like that is a huge novelty untethered unpooled Capital markets and when we think about regulation which is much needed is we should just focus on how do we make these markets more fair more transparent uniform the disclosures like a lot of the stuff is on chain like you can understand supply you can understand the the vesting contracts let's make sure that that's uniform and standardized and

projects don't abide by that get penalized or don't don't operate in these markets don't get listed those are the real questions that that's where the Nuance is people want to trade a dogcoin and that makes them happy so be it who cares agre think I think we're super early in what mean points going to be like just your explanation of like geob and in that as well it's like a almost like a predictions Market there's so much that could come from this and I'm not smart enough to know what that is you mentioned with christic and how he says you know most things look like toys most like good Technologies look like toys in the beginning this is definitely that and I still think it's very early stages in that and who knows what gets built out from that I think it's gonna

be a whole different world than most people are even imagining to be honest oh yeah well this was great so I want to finish off with just just like a question for you to just share any relevant advice for the listeners in terms of I mean everyone here that's listening is an investor of some sort they obviously have a lot of their capital in crypto and they're trying to navigate this cycle or this space as best they can and so I'm going to put you on the spot and ask you just to give the best advice you possibly can before you give that advice though also let people know where they can follow you where they can find you if they want to learn more from you so I'll let you share that first and then that gives you a little bit to think about your advice

and then just the best piece of advice you can give to that would be that would be great yeah Twitter I'd like to keep the conversation open accessible to everyone and so that's the best way and then obviously I do Empire I I left Pary I manage my own Capital now because it frees up my time too I want to bring and much like you I think Elevate the discourse in crypto more education less buy this bu that just take an interest go through this crypto Journey it's the best thing I've done in my life like it forces you to question everything and everyone should go through that process whether you come out of that believing in any particular crypto asset currency great if you don't even that's fine too so take the time it pays off develop a process and that would be my advice you

know I I think um I don't pretend to give advice what worked for me may not work for you and so I think it's very important to internalize that and crypto as you said is a fascinating industry because I believe that I am earlier today than I was in 2012 it just is like you just finally see a line of sight and like how crypto really fits into solving a lot of the world's problems s like even with AI like AI agents are going to use stable coins like technology is an incredibly abundant but also centralizing Force crypto is probably your best shot to more equitably distribute value and and I think a testament of that is just really smart people coming to try to build in this space people that don't have a need to work ever again in their life but they they appreciate that this technology is

like can really transform and I think it's going to be one of those things where we look back and we say people made the distinction between an internet business in a non- internet business I think similarly where there's like a crypto business and a non-crypto business this is just a better more efficient mechanism to coordinate attention and transmit value using and magnifying what the internet has allowed us to do with information we're incredibly early and what is most powerful about open source systems is that they really break with useless stupid constructs like having to have a University degree having to have money having to be look or talk in a particular way if you're smart there's a much higher probability for you to be

discovered in an open source system if you're contributing to these systems by the way no one is stopping you from going in and contributing and you don't have to be an engineer you can start posting on Discord channels you can become like we all started from zero in crypto and most I think you did as well and we all get a ton of help and that's just the ethos of Open Source systems like and if that doesn't get you excited then I I don't know what does really seriously like it is the place where you can I never thought I'd leave the US I thought the US and probably still is today the best country in the world because of this idea that anyone can come in and really make it there's a ton of opportunities like public education

but now the internet like there's all this knowledge that is free and accessible and so you combine that with the capital markets that is crypto if you're smart you didn't have to go to Harvard you don't have to be in silen Valley if you have a good idea you're going to be funded because there's a bunch of capital that is moving and historically that hasn't been the case you had to be in Silicon ball you had to be at the right place at the right time now still important less so I think it matter now I think the ability for people that are smart and building interesting things or thinking interesting things for them to get funded has never been easier and that's just like super exciting take advantage of that more 100% the opportunity is it was if you were I guess an entrepreneur

in the late 90s on the Internet it's the same now right but an entrepreneur living in San Francisco in the right Network right true now right now it's Global now you don't have to necessarily yeah yeah it's incredible well son thanks so much for uh for joining us on milkwood radio I really appreciate your time appreciate your insights it's great to get someone that's such a deep thinker on this space and not just throwing out price predictions and things but instead like really thinking thinking through and yeah it's great to have you on we'll have to get you back on again there's always so much going ones we got to get your updates too I appreciate always happy to come back and be and laugh at how terribly wrong my predictions were in this episode and and

I have I really enjoyed the questions and the discussions so hopefully it was useful for your audience as well awesome I'm sure it was all right well thanks so much and listeners we'll see you guys in the next one thank you for listening to milk Road radio the easiest path to get smarter about crypto if you like this episode share it and hit subscribe or follow so you don't miss out on the next one there's also a link in the description to our free 5minute daily newsletter where we simplify crypto for you well making you laugh and if you're willing to step up your crypto investing game then we'll leave a link to milk Road Pro as well your number one resource to help you invest successfully in crypto one final note this podcast is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice

crypto is risky so you should never invest more than you're willing to lose thank you friends and we'll see you the next one