The streets has now picked up our content. Coinbase distributes our contents, and
we would not have been able to grow this quickly if not for our decentralized
community of supporters who have minted NFTs to help power everything that we're doing right
now. And this content is brought to you by v chain, which is
a leading enterprise grade Layer one public blockchain spearheading a digital revolution from a sustainable,
highly scalable smart contract platform. The v chain blockchain has many unique features,
which makes it an ideal choice for Web three applications. V chain is
working with many great enterprises such as PWCGVONCI, BMW, and Walmart China.
Most recently, they partnered with the Boston Consulting Group to build a revolutionary decentralized
application ecosystem. I'm a big believer in this project. I have been since
twenty eighteen. I've been a VET token holder for years, and this blockchain
is highly scalable, great with security and speed, and it has low energy
consumption. If you'd like to learn more about v chain, please visit vchain
dot org. Link will be in a description. Welcome to the Thinking Crypto
podcast. You're home for cryptocurrency news and interviews with me today is Zach Guzman,
who's the founder of Trustless Media. Zach, great to have you on,
TONI thanks so much for having me on, man, I'm excited to
chat. Yeah. Look, it's an exciting day. Bigcoin is pumping,
it's over fifty seven thousand. You guys are doing great things, So lots
to talk about. But let's start with your background. You know, where
are you from and what's your professional background? Yeah, my background's in traditional
media. So basically my entire professional career has been bouncing around big media outlets,
whether it's CNBC, Yahoo, Finance, climbing the ranks of starting out
as a lowly intern and making it all the way to the comfy anchor seat.
So that's kind of my worldview is all through the traditional media lens and
have gotten to cover a lot of great stories, a lot of things in
financial media and eventually started to go down the rabbit hole as you've done in
crypto and just got sucked into the wild world of web three and now here
we are trying to build out a better way for media and creators to build
with their audiences. And I'm applying everything that I learned basically in the broken
media model of yesteryear to what could potentially be the future for creators now.
Yeah, absolutely, and that's why I wanted to have you on, because
you're bridging that gap between media and web three and I'm very curious as to
what you guys are building and all the great things that are laying ahead in
your roadmap. But before we go further, what was your first encounter of
bitcoin and what was your aha moment? Yeah, I was back in twenty
fourteen. I was graduating. My brother actually gifted me half a bitcoin as
a graduation presence, and he said, look, I'm going to give you
this, but you can't touch it for three years, and I basically forgot
about it because of that, and then sure enough in the Big Bowl run,
I was like, wait a minute, that three hundred dollars gift is
worth thousands of dollars now. And you know, my brother has never let
me forget that. But when it happened in twenty eighteen, it basically sparked,
you know, a huge curiosity on all right, I want to learn
more about bitcoin, and then opened my eyes to the rest of crypto and
then, as you know, the pump continued basically from there was just like
this, this is the future and I need to cover this. And at
CNBC tried to get a crypto show off the ground. It was too early
for them, didn't happen, got laughed out of the room basically, and
then you know, later on things died in crypto. My interest kind of
was like, Okay, that was fun. But then NFTs came back and
it unlocked a whole new world of you know, I looked at it through
the lens of bitcoin, go up number, go up investing, and then
the cultural unlock that came with NFTs basically blew my mind for an entirely new
way to incentivize anything on the Internet. And it's been super exciting. See
the cultural piece now happen in this cycle. And that's that's kind of how
I got in. Mostly how everyone else gets in is you saw what bitcoin
can unlock here with just digital money, and then from there what blockchains can
do for almost any industry blew my mind. That's amazing, and you and
your brother would be considered ogs. I mean twenty fourteen, right, So
I got to ask because your brother like a bitcoin millionaire or something like that.
No, because he and I are both very similar in that we get
distracted easily. So you know, we were there, and you know,
it's I think there are a lot of people that have that story right where
it's like, Okay, this is huge, and we saw the potential but
also kind of somewhat risk averse, and so you just, you know,
you put in what you can put in at the time. And like I
said, starting out as a lowly intern in the media world, it's not
like I had a lot to put into anything beyond a gift. So you
know, I beat myself up, as I think everybody does looking back hindsight
twenty twenty. But no, I don't think he is necessarily a bitcoin millionaire,
nor am I. But you know, applying a lot of those learnings
to the next quote unquote bitcoin or the next thing, right is kind of
what you know, you do a great job of. And I think when
a lot of content creators in this space try to do, which is what
are the lessons we learned, how do we help you prevent making those yourself?
And you know, how can we apply those learnings to the next project
and figure out kind of where this industry in space is moving to Really capitalize
on the next big opportunity. Yeah, absolutely, So tell us about trust
this media. What do you guys, what's your vision and what what are
you trying to achieve? Yeah, so trust Us is born out of what
I think has become increasingly clear if you listen to Elon Musk, or if
you just listen to any of the news headlines around media layoffs, and you
know the model being broken. Basically, we started trust lists with the idea
of applying web three two media. It was how can this technology be used
to help leverage a creator's shared passion with their fans. We started in the
crypto space to trust is Media's first show is Coinage. It's community owned.
The whole idea and the whole model is what can you do if you let
your fans co own something with you from idea to creation and then beyond.
So with Coinage, it's a crypto media outlet that lets our NFT holders both
own Coinage and also influence what we cover the guests we have on the show.
And now we just announced this but can also stake with Coinage. Now
we're partnering to run our own validators, which again is just really trying to
break down the wall between a content creator I EME and the fans we've been
able to attract by just publishing stories in Crypto, and we've done I think
a pretty good job of winning awards with the content we've put out, mostly
focused on video, and now trust this is building an entirely separate show that
has nothing to do with Crypto that's actually in the food space called Bestischever.
But we'll apply the same model, which will let those creators which are huge
names, you know, some of them are Top Chef Season whatever finalists,
and we'll basically let their fans who love food would co own that brand with
them. And so it's again a whole new model for media. We've been
able to attract big media names like the co founder of Netflix is one of
our backers as well, and I think that's really cool and cool signal to
see, Okay, this might be something here. What can you do when
on this new era of the Internet if you break down that wall and realign
incentives, can something actually grow quicker and avoid this idea of having to go
down the traditional studio model, where you know, if the big exacs don't
agree with your idea, it's never going to get green lid. Absolutely,
I love it because to your point, we're seeing a change a power what
do you call a paradigm shift is what I'm trying to say. With media
and how people consume content and the advent of networks, and now you have
blockchain networks where people can participate and become owners. And now you guys are
taking it to media, you know, outside of a social platform, outside
of holding a token. But I can have a say, I can have
a voice, I can have equity, so to speak. Tell us about
the logistics of the getting the NFT, which block chains it's on, and
how the ideas I can Let's say I'm an NFT holder, how can I
send ideas to you guys. Yeah, I think that that's been you know,
and I don't take credit for any of this. Really, it's like
the idea of web three media started even when I was still back at Yahoo.
Right, there are a bunch of experiments. Constitution Dow was kind of
the first thing that blew my mind in terms of people on the Internet coming
together to put their funds together and do something crazy. When they were trying
to buy one of the last replicas of the or the Constitution or whatever it
was, and it's just like, you know, crazy things can happen when
people come together to put their you know, energy efforts, money and time
into something. And you know what Dow's unlock is community ownership. And so
with Coinage, that was kind of the idea is, you know, I
have relationships in the space, I know some people. I knew Joe Kwan
from Tara. That's how we kind of put out our first episode, which
did two million views in that episode. But the idea is what could we
do if we had a decentralized community of you know, co owners who wanted
to also use their network effects. And again, the NFTs constitute membership in
co owning Coinage, so there's a vested interest in like making the show better
and bringing better guests on and chasing these stories, which again has been really
cool because when we launched, these memberships were basically free to unlock our content,
and now they're up one hundred and eighty five percent as we've been able
to put out more content, get better guests, drive the network effects of
all of this. You know, the streets has now picked up our content.
Coinbase distributes our content, and we would not have been able to grow
this quickly if not for our decentralized community of supporters who have minted NFTs to
help power everything that we're doing right now. And so again I don't take
a lot of credit for this. I really do think that, you know,
it's corny. I interviewed Pitbull when I was still at CNBC and he's
like, you know, money can make you happy, you just got to
give it away. And I feel like there are creators out there who have
been pioneering this in the last wave of innovation on the Internet. When Instagram
first started, was just really like all I care about is putting out good
content, honestly, Tony, Like you, you put out great content,
and I don't know how you're monetizing or whatever the model is, but it's
like people who really want to deliver value to their fans, to their followers.
In this era of Web three, there are a lot of new ways
to start to unlock those network effects and value there that you know have not
been possible, and we're just trying to explore kind of one way. Yeah,
absolutely, I love it. So as far as the NFTs are those
issued on one blockchain, you are are there on other blockchains and how can
folks access those? Yeah, so if you go to Coinage John Media right
now, we built this on Ether in twenty twenty two, right so at
the time Layer twos were just getting started, we didn't know which ones were
going to be the ones that were going to still be around owns. As
Tara showed, a blockchain can implode and then what are you going to do
there? I suffered through that as a lot of our you know, community
members did as well. But as we expand you know, the way that
Coinage is set up is we're a Colorado cooperative, so it's not too dissimilar
from kind of Riis camping store. You go there, you shop, you're
a member, and at the end of the year, you can unlock what's
called a patronage dividend, which is really a way for that company, for
that co op to distribute dividends back to their members. And it's been really
cool because there's a bunch of different quote unquote doos And we just spent a
year working with lawyers to say, how can we do this legally in the
US, How can we like issue NFTs on a blockchain? So it's all
on eth maintenet for Coinage and let them legitimately unlock the upside here as we
grow an audience. And so you know, we haven't announced anything obviously,
it takes a little bit of time for a media company, again historically not
the most lucrative business to be in, but for a media company to grow
to the size of becoming profitable. But what we've been able to do at
Coinage, like we are actually pacing to get that done and to allow our
NFT holders to start to unlock dividends if they're active in our dow co op.
So that's the model. They're on the main net again everyone can see
on Open Sea or mint right now honestly at Coinage dot Media to unlock the
ownership in what we're building at Coinage. But it's been exciting because, as
I said, to see a rise of one hundred and eighty five percent in
our NFTs as they trade to unlock our content is not something I would have
expected necessarily. You know, NFTs in general are kind of pressured or have
been until maybe now, and you know, it's it's out of my control,
and I think it's a really cool way to start to see, all
right, what does the market think about the content we're putting out. What
does the market think about where coinage could go? And as I said,
to have kind of you know, John wu from Avalanche as one of our
first holders and a bunch of other Web three founders and the co founder of
Netflix to be the ones that were there to first has been pretty humbly honestly.
Yeah, that's amazing. Congrats on that. Now you mentioned you know
this staking, you announced a partnership with DAIC to enable steaking. Tell us
how that works and because is it the NFTs that are involved in mistaking or
different chokings. Yeah, so I think this is actually again one of those
things that's really cool in the network effects that happened here because they're an Austrian
validator company, so no different than you know, you could stake with coinbase
or Cracking or any of these big companies right and start to unlock rewards.
Normally those rewards would go to Cracking or Coinbase and you would take some rewards
as well as the individual staking with them and Dyke in Austria are are kind
of you know again another staking option. They have three hundred and fifty million
dollars in assets. Already staked with them, but I had never heard of
them before. The only reason I heard about him was because one of our
NFT holders was actually a content creator Donku, and he partnered with them to
launch that community validator set, and he got out of the game and he's
like, look, I'm basically retiring. If Coinage wants this, I think
you guys are a really good content creator. They're looking for someone else to
step in, and it just made a lot of sense. And again,
it unlocks the network effects because perhaps you watch our content, perhaps you want
to support our channel, you can go and stake with them. Again,
their commissions are right in line with everybody else, but those taking rewards would
go back to the DOW, which can help support our content. So it's
another kind of sustainable way again to support the creators, you know, outside
of just paying for memberships or you know, like a Patreon. You can
actually stake these assets. And it's been exciting because today is day one.
We just announced that. I'm telling you first, Tony, And again,
I don't think I would have even seen that opportunity if it weren't for one
of our members saying I have aligned interests with Coinage, and this is a
deal that I think makes a lot of sense. It's amazing. What are
your thoughts and then I'm going to get a bit maybe out of our conversation
for a bit, but it's something that fascinates me. What do you also
think about web monetization for content with micro transactions from different blockchains. So,
for example, maybe I have a wallet that has Ethereum or Solana, I
go to your go to Coinage's website looking at an interview maybe with John Wu
and as I'm on there, my wallet automatically tips you or I can choose
to tip you, and it will be a micro transaction very fast, it
goes to your wallet because I'm on there. What do you think about that
as well? In the future of Web three and media, Yeah, I
think it's been really tricky because there are a lot of different ways to attack
this problem right of rewarding creators, and I think even traditional Web two companies.
I mean, it's no secret that Elon Musk has really leaned into that
to kind of challenge the other big content platforms to say, Okay, we
want to reward creators somehow. And so it's a huge problem right among the
competition, and I think for Web three solutions, it's not easy to choose
which one's easiest, right, And you know, I think the automation is
great, but self sovereignty around how wallets work and everything else has enabled you
know, interesting models and ourselves included, right, Like, It's not like
we kind of lean too hard, honestly, maybe into Web three. We
didn't collect any information from anyone when we first launched, and that again was
a call of do we want to be Web three or Web two? Do
we want to like steal all this information from the users who are our first
users? And we said no, And you know, we live with that
choice. But I think that there's a lot of different roads to go for
us. Honestly. You know, we're taking the parts that work for Web
three and the parts that I think work for Web two. Sometimes a lot
of the stuff is too complicated for an average media consumer. So you know,
we're taking parts that work for coinage and applying it outside of the crypto
field now with best as sever And I think think a lot of the simplicity
there is where the industry is going. Right. You don't even know that
you have a wallet, You don't even know that, you know, you
need to use crypto to pay for these things, and so for us,
we're kind of abstracting that away with the help of Privy and other partners.
But I think it's a constant question that honestly changes day by day. I
don't know if anyone knows the real answer to how hard do we want to
lean into web three and how much of this can be out of me?
Yeah, you're absolutely right, and there's a lot of ideas out there.
And to your point, the consumer has to get educated. The technology has
to be a point where there's less friction, where it's easy for maybe my
mom and dad to set it up and they go to their favorite websites and
it happens automatically. Right. They don't have to think about it. They
don't have to worry about a wallet address and doing this and that and private
keys. It has to be very simple, and I think we'll get there,
but right now we're still in the building phase and we'll see which technology
wins. Yeah, and I mean, like again, i think it's been
really cool to see other ways that some other people have been tackling this.
You know, collectibles are so huge, right, so there's a lot of
creators who are putting episodes and everything on chain, letting people collect them.
To me, I've always kind of been confused by that because I don't know,
I've never collected any like form of media outside of art and you know
what pfps are all about. But for us, I think we're a little
bit old school in the way of, Okay, what needs to be on
chain? What can live off chain? Can we set up like a dow
co op, which is you know again, ARII has been around for like
one hundreds of years. The idea of a cooperative in the US has been
around for centuries. Can we like build something that honestly allows us to do
this legally and pay dividends to to our community members and like, it's not
that revolutionary, but putting memberships on chain to allow people to trade these if
they want is a bit revolutionary in what we've set up. So it's just
been you know, kind of cool an accountants telling us, like, Okay,
all you're really doing is up converting the cooperative into the twenty first century.
And that's kind of cool to hear too, because not everything needs to
be the old way of startups and in the air of web three as we've
seen, like rewarding your earliest users is something that does accelerate the network effects
and does accelerate growing something way quicker and honestly, I think supports the idea
of success. So it's been exciting to see it work out thus far and
to hit this kind of I don't know, this kind of leg of oh
wow, this is actually maybe working here. A year in I did not
think that it would happen. Well, you know, congrats again and I
love it and I think it's the future. And since we're talking about media
and blockchains, recently we saw Fox Business I believe it was corporation. They
partnered with Polygon to set up a platform where they're going to put their content
on the blockchain to help avoid AI deep fakes and the rise of de fakes
in different mediums and different media types. What do you think about that and
are you guys looking at anything along those lines. Yeah, I think it's
I mean, it's a huge problem that honestly hasn't really I mean everyone's been
talking about it for years in terms of deep pis are going to destroy the
Internet, and I think this year we've seen the acceleration so much, whether
it was you know, kind of what happened with Taylor Swift or almost any
celebrity, and now as the election approaches, anything that could happen there is
definitely a real risk and I think, you know, blockchains are perfectly suited
for that, for verification and for you know, showing where something comes from.
I think that Polygon and Fox initiative is really cool, and I know
some of the people working on that team, and I think it is a
unique way to kind of see AI and crypto like converge, and I think
we saw a lot of people rotate out of crypto being cool and into AI,
and now I think these are just kind of like a symbiotic circle of
okay, how does one augment and help the other? And that's a perfect
example, and I think it's necessary and needed for I think, you know,
I don't know if it's so high on our list of items that we
necessarily need to solve right now, but I do think that risk vector is
growing like pretty quickly in terms of like something fake gets out on the internet.
It's not too crazy to think about it, like some really like bad
outcomes that could happen from it, So I'm excited to see that because I
think that that's just one of like the top use cases for how blockchains and
AI kind of work together for sure. Now, let's talk about your ROADBAP
a bit. And you know, do you anticipate as trust us media grows
and coinage grows and your new show the best best dish ever I believe it
is? Yeah? Yeah, are you planning to bring other creators under your
fold? You know, maybe offer this service, like here's a white label
package, how to launch this for your community and things along those lines.
Yeah. I mean, if you think about the creator economy, it's one
of the fastest growing pieces of the Internet. Right. And traditionally, you
know, again the model has been grow an audience as large as possible,
sell ads against that audience and make a worse product or endanger the trust you've
built with your audience, right, because then someone's like, I don't know
if they really like this thing or if they're just getting paid to say they
like this thing. And it's the same problem that web two media suffered from,
Right, it's the same thing that kind of has led this huper or
hyper radicalized right and hyper radicalize left in the news space, and then no
one really knows who to trust, and I think influencers are dangerously set up
to do the same thing. And again, unless you change the model,
and we've seen attempts. Patreons obviously a huge company out there. Instagram has
been trying to help creators for years. I just think that you know,
Web three again unlock some of these network effects. Speculation is not a bad
thing to say, Okay, I think this creator is great, they're going
to blow up. I want a piece like That's kind of what our models
set up to augment and build around. And yeah, to your question,
I mean Coinage was the proof of concept. It's working great. It's also
you know, very squarely focused on the crypto news niche and Bestish ever is
going to apply that same model to that niche. And we're excited to work
with creators who again have you know, more than a million followers and are
squarely focused on the New York City food scene. But yeah, beyond it,
I mean, like I said, Netflix kind of started somewhere right,
and they didn't start as a streaming platform. They started selling DVDs in the
mail. And to have the co founder of Netflix as one of our backers
kind of say the same thing is you attack the problem. And I think
that the problem of trust and the problem of community in the Web two era
of media has not really been solved. And streaming as well as a bit
of a bit of a problem in the way that Okay, we're all paying
for like eight different packages now and they're all kind of still competing to figure
out what's the what's the piece of content that's going to drive this, and
I feel like, again it's setting up for a very different outcome. You
don't need to chase an audience that big, But what can you do when
you realign incentives to let a creator produce content that their existing community really loves
and wants to see, and how can they influence it? You know,
mister Beast is a perfect example. Like he's blown up and then he was
talking about ipoing and it's like he had given so much money away to his
subscribers along the way, But he probably could have even grown quicker if he
had from the very onset figured out a way to give that value back to
his earliest subscribers. And so, I don't know, Reddit's another good example
of them trying to do this as the IPO. But I just feel like
if you do it from the very beginning, it helps everyone. So that's
kind of the model as we see it. Yeah, and you know,
as you're saying now, I was thinking about NFTs going to the next level
where it's unlocking utility. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with the
collectible market, the artwork and so forth. But we know a lot of
it's very frothy, right, the whole artwork and this guy's popping up.
But I think the true value of NFTs comes with the utility in addition to
digital ownership, where you have a voice, you can participate it, unlock
special perks, events, benefits and so forth. And you know, as
we were talking about mister Bees, could he have done something with NFTs where
the NFT holders maybe get to go on the show and watch how these things
are made and get a tour and it puts them in some sort of raffle
to be able to win money or whatever it may be. Right, just
unlocking a ton of benefits and would they be more engaged and you know,
promote the mister Be's brand even more possibly? Yeah? Yeah, Well,
I mean you just touched on a really important piece of that too, which
is not just the engagement, which we've seen again in this model, our
engagements like up ten x over the old model, at least comparing you know,
engagement for competitors in our niche. But it's the other piece, the
IP piece that you touched on there too that like, again, pfps are
kind of interesting in the way that you know, Pudge Penguin and some of
these other projects have been set up to kind of tokenize your own Penguin or
your own PfP in a collection, but it's also somewhat dilutive, right,
And we saw that with board apes. Is like how many people and their
mom were trying to pitch board ape shows when that craze was going on,
and each one kind of diluted away from the other one, right, And
so like, you know, that's not necessarily the best way to build around
IP. Whereas you know in our model again, everything is owned by the
DOO and the case of coinage, everything is owned by the coinage dow co
op. And so what does that look like if we can do one thing
over here and one thing over there, but everyone else is kind of sharing
in the upside via the DOO and their NFT which unlocks dividends. So it's
a different way of looking at kind of controlling IP, maximizing the value that
you can get from a creative idea and co ownership. But you're right,
putting it on chain is something that enables all of this. And I'm not
saying one solution is better than the other, but I am saying that,
you know, it is a technology that you can apply and start to unlock
some of those network effects, whether you want to go one route versus the
other, and at the very least being in the arena. It's cool to
see now as a builder versus just kind of covering it as a journalist,
like what these decisions and trade offs look like on a day to day basis.
Yeah. Absolutely. Let's talk about the crypto market at large. With
the limited time we have left here, what are your thoughts on bitcoin ripping
man? Today, it's over fifty seven thousand, the ETFs are seeing record
inflows. The market looks great. Obviously, we're still early in the bull
market cycle. Most are anticipating we still got to go into twenty twenty five.
But what are your thoughts and outlook on the market. Yeah, I
mean I've obviously been watching a lot of the interviews you've been doing on your
channel, and I feel like everyone's saying the same thing right now, which
is kind of scary, right, and the idea of oh, look it's
up, only it's applying demand. It's very easy to understand. You know,
it's no big deal. We're already like way beyond where anyone thought this
would be. And that is all true. But at the same time,
you know, I've seen that before where everyone gets on one side of the
trade. So it makes me nervous. And you know, obviously, if
you've covered crypto as long as we have, Tony, like you've seen these
cycles before, so you know when it's upcycling up, only sometimes it really
is and you don't fight the trend. The trend is your friend. And
so like, I don't know looking at how quickly this has gone beyond Like
a simple example is like how quickly Blackrock would have been able to displace micro
Strategy as one of the largest kind of public holders of bitcoin publicly traded.
And you know a lot of people were like, oh, it's gonna take
like two years. BlackRock's like probably gonna do it in a couple of months,
like they're gonna jump past Michael Saylor like that quickly. And it's just
one example of showing like how far off these predictions were. And so if
you consider that, it's not difficult to extrapolate and get to you know,
where we go from here. And I'm in the camp of truly people do
not understand the mismatch. So as as worried as I am, I would
say, you know, I agree with the price targets that we're seeing around
like one sixteen up there for bitcoin this year, I would be in that
camp. Yeah, And I put out a newsletter yesterday with a thesis around
that because of the macro factors, but the ETF buying as well, the
macro factors being presidential election year has performed well in the past. While the
FED is saying, hey, we're going to cut rates, I don't think
they're going to do it before the election because that might show some sort of
bias and put a ton of volatility in the markets. I don't think Biden
wants that, and I'm not supporting Biden or anybody. I'm just saying it.
You know, any president would not want that, And I think when
they do decide to cut. We've seen historically the markets pull back because there's
usually a problem when they start to cut, something is breaking, and it
could the markets be like, Okay, let's let's get our party going this
year before they make that cut, and then you know, it's a pullback.
I don't know. That's just my thesis, but you know, we'll
see what happens. Yeah, I mean the forward looking piece of this,
look, the crypto market's been very good at getting ahead of the stock market
and where this is going to go. And I think if you're an investor,
whether you're a crypto investor or traditional investor, that's exciting to see kind
of the lead happening there in crypto and there's so much to be you know,
excited about, whether it's Bitcoin and that adoption or the ETHTF and whether
or not that's coming this year, and everything else that's being built. Like
a little bit farther down the line. I do think that this cycle hopefully
does get away from just pure speculation and more into okay, this is a
rational reason as to why we are arriving at these price predictions, and that's
the way that I think you look through it and That's the way I look
through it, and like it's at least exciting that we are here talking about
that rather than just, hey, this thing is on an upward triangle trajectory.
I don't touch technicals here because of some of this stuff, but I
think that we are getting fundamentally into some really really exciting times for crypto for
sure. Now, the other big thing that everyone's watching is will we see
crypto regulations is here? It is an election year, so it's going to
be tough, but there are two bills in the House and two in the
Senate. Patrick McHenry has been trying to make this happen. You know,
are you anticipating regulations get pass this year? Yeah? I think the stable
coin piece is huge. I've interviewed Patrick mcchenry before. That guy is great.
He understands this and he understands the importance, and so using the time
that he still has there, I'd be optimistic that he would get it done.
And he has worked with Maxine Waters on it for literally years, and
you know the updates that we saw out of DC, it was I was
optimistic because I had thought no, because it'd be a lame duck, you
know, session, we won't get much done, but it seems like that's
kind of turning now. And you know, you know, just as everyone
else does, Like stable coins matter in so much in crypto because it's just
kind of how the money flows in, and if the money flows in,
usually that does drive number go up, and so it would be a huge
unlock that again the biggest pumps, the biggest market movers, And this isn't
just crypto, it's always when the expectations are so far away from that thing
happening. And to say that there's potentially a stable coin bill in twenty twenty
four, I wouldn't have believed you last year. So I think it's huge
and I think it would be a pretty big unlock. So I'm in the
camp of yes, I hope it happens. But again with politics certainly this
year, I wouldn't want to predict anything in that camp. For sure.
It's going to be a very interesting year. Now, I got some wrap
up questions for you. First, if you could create your own metaverse,
what would the theme be. We've built so in one of our Coinage episodes.
Actually this is kind of fun. We built my shitty New York City
apartments in the Metaverse. We put it into centraland it was like an amalgamation
of all the terrible places I've lived with, like you know, the leaks
and the cockroaches and the mice. And we put it into Central Land.
And then the architect was like, you know, just Central. It's not
built for like something that's this bad. You know, it's supposed to look
good. And we bought a plot of land that was going to be close
to Snoop Dogg's place in the metaverse, and the now owns that. We
haven't sold it yet. We put out an episode around it, but I
think you know that would be That was my twisted version of my metaverse is
can we actually create something so bad as New York City apartments in something so
good as the metaverse has been promised to be? You had to get you
put up one of those shoe box or closet apartment. That's terrible. Man,
it's terrible, and it reminds me every time about how bad it was.
It was literally a six foot by nine foot like room that I had,
So not good. Oh man, all right, rapid fire questions,
favorite food, Yeah, it's a great question for best of schever too.
I love I'm a steak guy. I'm a meat guy. I started a
little meat TikTok randomly in the pandemic. I think everybody is obsessed with meats
if you get to be a guy who's old enough and bored enough. So
I was just smoking meats. But huge steak guy, huge brisket guy.
And I think with best of schev, it's gonna be cool to just kind
of put all that on chain and let a community choose what the best dishes
are. Because my opinions are mine, but there are much more qualified people
who will be steering that whole thing, and we'll see what they say.
But I'm not afraid to say I'm a meet guy in this era of veganism
for sure. Favorite musician or band. I'm a huge block party guy.
I don't know if that's because I'm a millennial and that's just kind of where
I learned that, but I'm a huge block party guy. And surprisingly,
you know, there's a lot of Web three musicians that have come up to
I'd give Spoty Wi Fi a shout out. He came on the show and
talked about how he's been able to sell NFTs. He's actually got some bangers,
so block party, spotty WiFi, those aren't bad options. Nice and
favorite movie, dude, I'm an old classics guy. I'm gonna go with
It's a wonderful life. Watch it every year on Christmas time. Good ideals,
community, What can we do? Where does real value come from?
It's the connections we make, It's the network effects. It's not the dollars
in your account, especially not in the bear market. So those are the
themes. I love that movie, dude. Yeah, it's great. I
literally, like you said, every holiday, Christmas, alli Day and so
forth, I'm watching that. It just resets your perspective on life sometimes because
we get so focused on money and things. But like you said, dude,
yeah, and it's also like it's the bank run. The bank run
like scene is legitimately like where I think Web three like that should be required
watching for anyone Web three because it's like, okay, banks want you to
panic and everything, and and you know classic Jimmy Stewart being like, look,
if we band together, we can we can do this. And I
feel like, you know, man, dumb money, perfect example to point
to you, like traditionally markets do not help the little guy and like if
you can actually bring those network effects together to where you can bind together like
it's Jimmy Stewart man, it's it's a wonderful life. It's dumb money.
It's like in this era of the Internet, like community matters, and it
unlocks huge value that we couldn't have done before. Absolutely favorite book, dude.
I'm embarrassed to say I don't really read that much, but I I,
oh, man, let's see. Actually, you know what, Mark
Randolph's book That Will Never Work is honestly like one of the few that I've
read and enjoyed and said, this actually has a lot of learnings. It
was all about why he created Netflix and like where it came from in the
early days of building that out and everyone's saying that will never work, and
he was able to overcome that. And now you know, as I said,
he's one of our advisors, and I think it's it's a great business
book for anyone who wants to learn anything about startups in a way that's not
too preachy. So shout out to Mark for that one. You brought that
up that you don't read too many books, and I find myself not reading
as much now, But it's not that I'm not learning. I'm more listening
to podcasts because it's almost like the audio visual version of a book because you're
hearing stories in depth. I don't know if you agree with that, but
I don't think that. Yeah, I mean, this is what you and
I do, So it's probably not too surprising that maybe we're not book guys
because we spend our days in and days out working on good video and podcast
content. So you know, I haven't authored a book. I wouldn't know
where to start, and I haven't read that many either because I'm too visual.
And finally, when you're not working at Trust Trust us Media or Coinage,
what are you doing for fun? Yeah? So I mean most of
my times dedicated to working these days, to be honest with you, Tony,
like I don't get to get out. I'm literally like chained to this
desk most days, just working on Coinage and trust lists and Bestish ever and
everything else that we're trying to do. But when I do get to escape
normally, I think one of my favorite hobbies is just cooking, to be
honest with you, and trying to grow my repertoire and can do a nice
braze short rib could do maybe a little salmon, some chicken, but like
you know, I think it's just a really good way to like, like
you said, like there's so many distractions and so many things to kind of
do in this world, specifically in crypto, and just kind of like unplug
for a little bit and use your hands. It's just nice, nice Zach,
pleasure chatting with you. Excited for future updates around trust media and coinage
and best dish ever, and I'd love to have you back on in the
future as things progress. Thank you for joining me. Thank you Tony in
again shout out to what you do here man, because there's not a lot
of good places to go to learn anything about what this crazy world is in
crypto, and honestly shout out to you for what you do. We need
to find more creators who are focused on the actual use cases and how to
survive in this in this industry, man, So thank you for having me
on and I would love to come back anytime. Awesome