Speaker 1: Why would a web three company buy, you know, a
Speaker 1: genomics company, right, And so this follows on the heels
Speaker 1: of the same foundation's announcement a couple months ago early
Speaker 1: this year, I think it was January February, we announced
Speaker 1: a sixty five million dollar DECI fund.
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Speaker 2: the link in the description. Welcome into the Thinking Crypto Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Tony Edward, and joining me today is
Speaker 2: Gerald Gallagher, who's the general counsel for SAY Labs and
Speaker 2: a board member of the Say Development Foundation. Jerald, Great
Speaker 2: to have.
Speaker 3: You, Thanks for having me, Tony. Good to be here, Jerald.
Speaker 4: Great updates happening around SAY So. I have a lot
Speaker 4: of questions for you and all the great things you
Speaker 4: folks are doing at the labs and the foundation and
Speaker 4: much more. But let's kick it off with your background.
Speaker 4: Tell us about yourself and how'd you get into crypto.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1: I had kind of a winding I feel like very
Speaker 1: few people have a traditional path in the crypto but
Speaker 1: I've been full time in the industry on the legal
Speaker 1: side for coming up on five years now. I started
Speaker 1: out so I did JDMBA and was coming out of
Speaker 1: school right around when like the ico bubble, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of grew and then bursts, and so crypto kind
Speaker 1: of initially was off the table, but I was fascinated
Speaker 1: by kind of the structuring, and some of those discussions
Speaker 1: ended up going into what I call like the heavily
Speaker 1: regulated industries, you know, VC doing life health insurance, fintech,
Speaker 1: insure tech, some of those areas. So I was in
Speaker 1: venture for about four years prior to making the jump
Speaker 1: full time. And then the way I actually got sort
Speaker 1: of red pilled or kind of down the orange pill
Speaker 1: or down the rabbit hole, however you want to talk
Speaker 1: about it is a couple of my buddies are actually
Speaker 1: the guys who started Constitution Now. So we were living
Speaker 1: in Atlanta at the time. They so, so I shout out.
Speaker 1: Graham Novak and Austin Kane hit me up and say
Speaker 1: we have this idea. You know, we're gonna buy a
Speaker 1: copy of the Constitution. And I said, that's a terrible idea,
Speaker 1: don't do that, and so uh so, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you know, they kind of took and ran with that.
Speaker 1: The rest is history. So I had kind of very
Speaker 1: early eyes on that. I was one of three attorneys.
Speaker 1: I don't want to claim too much credit for you know,
Speaker 1: contributing the structure there, but was one of three attorneys
Speaker 1: basically in a Google doc after they had raised fifty
Speaker 1: million bucks in the juice box wallet, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to go to Sotheby's uh and buy something
Speaker 1: with a juice box wallet from Sotheby's. So that was
Speaker 1: my kind of initial exposure. I had been doing a
Speaker 1: lot of like capital formation work, a lot of sort
Speaker 1: of like heavily regulated structuring, and so that that was
Speaker 1: kind of the dive and I figured out, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe this this wasn't like the you know that was
Speaker 1: going to carry me through the next four years, but
Speaker 1: really interesting kind of early experience, and then ended up
Speaker 1: going ahead of legal into into another company from there,
Speaker 1: so that was kind of the beginning.
Speaker 4: And then you're also one of the hosts on the
Speaker 4: Crypto and America podcast.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, So that's been a blast, co host that
Speaker 1: with Eleanor Tarrett and Jackie Melnik, who does Token relations. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we were really really lucky to kind of steal Eleanor
Speaker 1: away from Fox. And you know, I can tell you that,
Speaker 1: you know, I really admire what you do because you know,
Speaker 1: hosting a podcast is no joke. From a commitment perspective.
Speaker 1: But you know, we've been really lucky to have the
Speaker 1: guests on that we've had, and you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of fun to work with them. So it's been good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I know both of them very well. And Ellie doesn't
Speaker 4: live far from me. I think she's like fifteen minutes away.
Speaker 4: We met up for coffee and things like that, and
Speaker 4: I really enjoyed the conversations you three have had with
Speaker 4: your guests as well. Now, I really wanted to go
Speaker 4: back to accounts Institution now because it just fascinates me
Speaker 4: that you can buy a copy of the Constitution and
Speaker 4: it's amazing that you set up this Web three infrastructure
Speaker 4: to do so. And I'm not fully up to date
Speaker 4: with everything, but so you the dow still owns that
Speaker 4: that document, and what's the future plans around that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's a it's a great question. So famously,
Speaker 1: they they actually lost the auction to Ken Griffith Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: from from a citadel, so he kind of came in
Speaker 1: and like rugged them at the last minute. The funny
Speaker 1: thing is, you know, the beauty of crypto is that
Speaker 1: everything is transparent, including your balance, right, So if you're
Speaker 1: in an auction one on one situation with somebody else
Speaker 1: with deep pockets, you know, they can do kind of
Speaker 1: real time calculations. So I need to beat you by
Speaker 1: you know, the fees and everything else built on top
Speaker 1: of it. I can beat you by you know, a dollar.
Speaker 1: And so what ended up happening with that, it was
Speaker 1: it was really interesting. Uh, there was a there was
Speaker 1: a token swap from ETH to the native token, which
Speaker 1: is called people. At the time, I still kind of contend.
Speaker 1: I think it was like the first true like meme coin,
Speaker 1: and so gas fees at the time were really really high.
Speaker 3: If you remember.
Speaker 1: This was like, you know, November twenty twenty one somewhere
Speaker 1: around there, and it was I think basically if you
Speaker 1: put two hundred bucks into the juice box wallet, it
Speaker 1: was going to cost you like two hundred bucks in
Speaker 1: gas to get it out. So they had a redemption
Speaker 1: period saying you know, hey, you know we lost get
Speaker 1: your ETH back. What ended up happening is a lot
Speaker 1: of people actually left their funds in there, and then
Speaker 1: the token later kind of mooned after they had you
Speaker 1: know that, there was no constitution now, it was it
Speaker 1: was just a sert of wallet and a signature and
Speaker 1: it ended up moving like seventy x or something, which
Speaker 1: I think made some people very happy, but was like
Speaker 1: obviously a you know, really interesting experience for the team.
Speaker 1: And then I think also like it was one of
Speaker 1: the best things that could have happened to that team.
Speaker 1: They all went to, you know, really interesting roles afterwards,
Speaker 1: some of them you're obviously doing interesting things already, but
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, it was. It was a really interesting,
Speaker 1: kind of very very bullmarket twenty twenty one experience.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that was a fun time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's so fascinating, and you know, I'm still trying
Speaker 4: to learn more about dows and what can be done
Speaker 4: with them. You know, does it make sense for a
Speaker 4: podcast that create a DAO and things like that, and
Speaker 4: how can it benefit the listeners and viewers? You know,
Speaker 4: how do you see doos in the future, you know,
Speaker 4: do you see companies building them or it's more crowdsource
Speaker 4: decentralized type thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the there's a couple different, Like when
Speaker 1: you're talking about a DOW right like so decentralized atonomous organization.
Speaker 1: One of the hardest parts of that has always been
Speaker 1: this misnover of autonomous right A dow cannot like really
Speaker 1: run itself. Maybe we'll see like agentic AI start to
Speaker 1: change some things in that field. For me, the interesting
Speaker 1: piece has always been the structuring. What do you wrap
Speaker 1: that around right? Because in the US we have general partnership,
Speaker 1: we have joint in several liability. This is how some
Speaker 1: other projects have gotten knocked in the past. So you
Speaker 1: can have something like an LLC that was basically what
Speaker 1: ended up going to bid at Sebeby's was an accredited
Speaker 1: investor LLC. You can have Miles Jennings and David Kerve
Speaker 1: worked really hard on this Duna structure, which is also
Speaker 1: pretty new, kind of untested, and then you know, there's
Speaker 1: sort of the classic kind of larger project. If you
Speaker 1: think about what a lot of these Caman foundations do,
Speaker 1: they're a rapper for the Dow Treasury. So that's that's
Speaker 1: essentially you need legal protection first, and then the other
Speaker 1: thing is like what are you going to do with
Speaker 1: the token? So if you if you said something like
Speaker 1: a creator sort of dow or like a revenue shared dow.
Speaker 1: I've also done a lot of work on what's called
Speaker 1: a limited cooperative association that's kind of a one to
Speaker 1: one basically membership interest federal securities exemption, you can distribute
Speaker 1: token and profits to the members of the DOW. I
Speaker 1: think we're gonna see it became kind of like a
Speaker 1: a like an overly abused term kind of in the
Speaker 1: last cycle. And you know, everything's a dow and nothing
Speaker 1: is a dow, and you know democracy is messy, coordination
Speaker 1: is messy. So you know, I think it'd be interesting
Speaker 1: where you have a group of people kind of contributing
Speaker 1: to a common asset, whether that's like a DeFi protocol
Speaker 1: or you know, something like a common media interest. I've
Speaker 1: seen interesting ones around, like design collectives things like that.
Speaker 3: I could definitely see something.
Speaker 1: Like a podcast or a set of creators creating something
Speaker 1: where you know, the principles line up with the way
Speaker 1: you want basically revenue or money to flow back to
Speaker 1: the users and the holders and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: I think it'll be interesting to see how that goes
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, And yeah I'm looking to possibly explore that,
Speaker 4: but I you know, I used to have a lot
Speaker 4: to learn, but I'm also thinking about how businesses can
Speaker 4: use it, maybe brands and things like that.
Speaker 3: If makes sense, and.
Speaker 4: Eventually, you know, there's further iterations, maybe those more unique things.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but yeah, something explore. All right, let's
Speaker 4: talk about SAY. So tell us about Say. What is Say?
Speaker 4: What's its mission and what makes it unique?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So, Say is a layer one blockchain built on the EVM.
Speaker 1: I think we recently announced SIP to deprecate some of
Speaker 1: the Cosmolaism architecture, and so we're just gonna focus on
Speaker 1: the EVM.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Parallel evm is is kind of the bread and butter
Speaker 1: of SAY. It was founded Say Labs, the dev shop
Speaker 1: behind the same protocol, was founded by Jay Jog and
Speaker 1: Jeff Fang who met each other at Berkeley and really
Speaker 1: honestly was like built during the Bear You know a
Speaker 1: lot of grit in that team, and we have some
Speaker 1: really interesting things cooking at this point. The I guess
Speaker 1: the main idea of SAY is that you take the
Speaker 1: speed of Solana and you combine it with the basically
Speaker 1: deb environment of ethereum. So that's that's kind of the
Speaker 1: goal there.
Speaker 4: Got it? And what type of protocol does it have?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 4: You know, like you have proof of steak, proof of authority?
Speaker 4: What protocol does it use? And you know, does that
Speaker 4: help with the decentralization and the speed as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good question.
Speaker 1: So one is it is a proof of stake network,
Speaker 1: and then two is that decentralization question is really interesting,
Speaker 1: So say is decentralized.
Speaker 3: At this point they're about forty validators.
Speaker 1: The idea of decentralition decentralization is interesting just because I
Speaker 1: spend I spend a lot of time on the sort
Speaker 1: of the policy side of that, and I think if
Speaker 1: if you ask thirty lawyers to define decentralization for you,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get thirty different answers.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Uh, There's been a lot of work done recently for
Speaker 1: the market structuring bill on like whether or not there's
Speaker 1: control of one party over the network. So SAY definitely
Speaker 1: has a big focus on decentralization. I think the goal
Speaker 1: is to just make sort of the cheapest, highest throughput
Speaker 1: chain you know, possible and explore all the applications that
Speaker 1: can enable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. And speed is such a big factor
Speaker 4: for adoption. I mean, consumers they want things to be
Speaker 4: done at a click, up a button, they want load
Speaker 4: transaction fees, and I've noticed that, you know, Solana took
Speaker 4: a lot of market share from ethereum, not you know,
Speaker 4: certain types and maybe not enterprise, but just consumer interacting
Speaker 4: with different users being able to make quick applications. So
Speaker 4: I think the fastest blockchains, and I don't think it's
Speaker 4: just gonna be one but multiple, will be the ones
Speaker 4: that get the real world adoption and powered as Web
Speaker 4: three infrastructure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's an interesting point.
Speaker 1: Solana, you know, was this kind of like all side chain,
Speaker 1: you know, back in when I'm sure you know when
Speaker 1: since you and I have been in the industry. You know,
Speaker 1: it obviously went through kind of the FTX drama and
Speaker 1: everything associated with that, but you know it used to
Speaker 1: get ragged on a lot, and so you know, full
Speaker 1: full transparency. I also came out was one of my
Speaker 1: first jobs as GC and COO of a company that
Speaker 1: spun out of Salona Labs, and so you know, definitely
Speaker 1: a lot of respect for what they've built. I think
Speaker 1: you hit on an important point, which is Solana's mote
Speaker 1: I think to this point has been rust. So if
Speaker 1: you if you got into Solana in sort of the
Speaker 1: previous bowl and you you force yourself to eat glass
Speaker 1: as they say, and learn rust, and then the bottom
Speaker 1: fell out or your app didn't work, well, you've learned
Speaker 1: rust Like you put all this effort into it, You're
Speaker 1: you're not going to go to another chain, You're just
Speaker 1: gonna build something else on Solana, And so obviously it
Speaker 1: came back. It's got a very sticky dev community, and
Speaker 1: I think one of the challenges that Ethereum has had
Speaker 1: is there was the L two's right, and there were
Speaker 1: a lot of very interesting applications. I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of very interesting academic work that's been done there.
Speaker 1: But now there seems to be a big refocusing, particularly
Speaker 1: in this kind of EVM space that we occupy on
Speaker 1: building things for the consumer, building things that are fast,
Speaker 1: that actually work, you know, that that users can use right,
Speaker 1: which is which is obviously important, and then having the
Speaker 1: dev community be able to sort of jump and build
Speaker 1: you know, what they want is I think an advantage
Speaker 1: that will hopefully play out long term for you know,
Speaker 1: builders of the EVM.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I noticed that with the recent upgrade around etherorem and
Speaker 4: just a realignment of focus back on getting you to
Speaker 4: lead on the layer one versus all these layer two
Speaker 4: roll ups. I mean, there's so many L threes, L four's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's l it all. Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's
Speaker 3: an interesting time for sure. Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 4: And then so for per se and as an L one,
Speaker 4: I'm assuming you're targeting tokenization and different use cases. Are
Speaker 4: there particular industries that you're looking to maybe find a
Speaker 4: swim lane in, or is just across the board?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think when you're building low fee high tps, right,
Speaker 1: you want to attack use cases that need to utilize
Speaker 1: those features, right, And so I think finance.
Speaker 3: Those types of areas.
Speaker 1: You could say AI decentralized computing in general obviously needs
Speaker 1: to be able to invact enact very like cheaply and quickly,
Speaker 1: but things like tokenization are obviously super important. The I
Speaker 1: guess the sort of new rails, you know, and I
Speaker 1: have this debate with a lot of people about whether
Speaker 1: we're going to get more exposure for traditional traditional assets
Speaker 1: to be tokenized, right, so whether you know, JP Morgan
Speaker 1: stock is going to be built on the back of
Speaker 1: something they say, or whether we're going to continue to
Speaker 1: get more sort of crypto exposure into mainstream markets.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So, the ETFs and you know, some of those areas,
Speaker 1: but for say, the focus right now is definitely finance.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, we're I think we're gonna talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about d s I AI and and you
Speaker 1: know a lot of a lot of those use cases
Speaker 1: uh you know that that need architecture, they can do
Speaker 1: what we do.
Speaker 4: Oh for sure. So speaking of ds I AND it's
Speaker 4: funny because you can also maybe say sci fi. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's news of say potentially acquiring twenty three and meters.
Speaker 4: What can you tell us there? And if you are
Speaker 4: able to acquire this company, what would you know the
Speaker 4: use cases and utility be built around this?
Speaker 3: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1: So I have to be careful here, you know, just
Speaker 1: because of where we are in the process, if we
Speaker 1: are involved in the process, right, So now I'll just
Speaker 1: kind of comment on what's publicly available, and then obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, we'd love to talk about sort of where
Speaker 1: where somebody could go with that or you know, a
Speaker 1: vision for a decide project like that. So yeah, twenty
Speaker 1: three and ME went into bankruptcy proceedings I think.
Speaker 3: Maybe a month and a half ago.
Speaker 1: Now don't quote me on that date, but that was
Speaker 1: actually after a long kind of process of seeing if
Speaker 1: they could find an acquire I know the founder was
Speaker 1: trying to pull a bid together. It doesn't look like
Speaker 1: that worked out, and so the company ended up in
Speaker 1: kind of Chapter eleven worlds. So when a company goes
Speaker 1: into bankruptcy, there's this very sort of long process, and
Speaker 1: it's very procedural where everybody kind of digs in and
Speaker 1: looks at the assets, and it's just how.
Speaker 3: Bankruptcy procedure works.
Speaker 1: More broadly, everybody kind of digs around and says, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I want the domain name, I want this business.
Speaker 3: I went to a business.
Speaker 1: And so uh say basically put out that you know,
Speaker 1: we'd be interested in h in the company. Why would
Speaker 1: a web three company buy, you know, a genomics company?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: And so this follows on the heels of the say,
Speaker 1: the same foundation's announcement a couple of months ago, early
Speaker 1: this year, I think it was January or February, we
Speaker 1: announced a sixty five million dollar DECI fund. Because that
Speaker 1: was a big bet on a space that I think
Speaker 1: went through a time where it probably got overly dowed.
Speaker 1: I think that's, you know, to our our conversation about dows.
Speaker 1: Everything was going to be a dow and everything was
Speaker 1: going to solve a disease. It sort of went through
Speaker 1: this phase kind of it got really buzzworthy, and then
Speaker 1: I think the biggest thing that probably happened there was
Speaker 1: FDA clearance. Sort of timelines do not align with token
Speaker 1: holder expectations, right, It's like just the mechanics of sort
Speaker 1: of true scientific applications versus expectations in a bowl market
Speaker 1: for liquidity and things like that just really don't line up.
Speaker 1: And to provide a little more context here, I mentioned
Speaker 1: sort of.
Speaker 3: The health stuff.
Speaker 1: My last job before I joked, my last real job,
Speaker 1: my last job before I went down the rabbit hole
Speaker 1: in crypto, I was at a venture fund, health Works
Speaker 1: funded by care First, Cross the Shield. I've done like
Speaker 1: some corp dev and like the biofarmal world, and so
Speaker 1: I've been really passionate about this space for like a while.
Speaker 1: So the company basically continue to go through that process.
Speaker 1: And now the auction is is May fourteenth, and that's
Speaker 1: that's obviously publicly available. Why would a crypto company be
Speaker 1: interested in that, Well, if you look at traditional healthcare,
Speaker 1: it's one of the least efficient technology industries with probably
Speaker 1: the greatest economic impact on the United States, Right, So
Speaker 1: this number is going to be a couple of years old.
Speaker 1: But America spends something like four and a half trillion
Speaker 1: dollars a year on healthcare and health services. And that's
Speaker 1: out of a GDP of something like twenty one twenty
Speaker 1: two trillion. Right, so we're spending nearly a quarter of
Speaker 1: our resources on healthcare and the outcomes are not improving.
Speaker 1: So we're spending more money than anyone, and we have
Speaker 1: worse outcomes than anyone. The reason is that the system
Speaker 1: is incredibly extractive, right, there's a saying kind of it
Speaker 1: plays more to like social media and things like that.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you're not paying like you are
Speaker 1: the product. And so we have a duopoly in the
Speaker 1: in the the electronic health record market, which is Epic
Speaker 1: and Cerner. There's no interoperability there. The government, you know,
Speaker 1: puts out standards every few years. We recently had fire,
Speaker 1: which is an interoperability standard, and it's it's really like
Speaker 1: has not had an impact. So when you go into
Speaker 1: the doctor's office, everybody's been and to the same doctor,
Speaker 1: a new doctor, and you fill out that piece of
Speaker 1: paper again. Right, And so one of the early applications
Speaker 1: that crypto looked at was, well, let's just put everybody's
Speaker 1: health records on you know, on chain, and what you
Speaker 1: find out is that the interoperability or the systems where
Speaker 1: you need to integrate with like pharmacy benefit managers, you
Speaker 1: need to integrate with payers providers, like there's all these
Speaker 1: different parties. You need the government to be able to
Speaker 1: know what's happening. It's it's really really hard. It's a
Speaker 1: big complex system. Well, if you take that and then
Speaker 1: you combine the problems with d SI, which is that
Speaker 1: there's a huge cold start problem. Right, So I say
Speaker 1: I want to solve that's like hair dowt that's a
Speaker 1: real dow Right that basically wants to solve hair loss
Speaker 1: and things like that. So they do some novel capital
Speaker 1: formation and then they want to go solve this this
Speaker 1: condition specific disease.
Speaker 3: Well, you have to go get all the.
Speaker 1: Data on that condition, right, and so I kind of
Speaker 1: instantly need a big pool to start pulling from so
Speaker 1: that I can actually have researchers interact with that. I
Speaker 1: can develop therapeutics, I can do all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: If you took.
Speaker 1: Let's call it, you know, I think publicly it's it's
Speaker 1: something like fourteen million, you know, genomic records, you can
Speaker 1: assume that some people started deleting their data. You can
Speaker 1: assume that all that data is not perfect. So let's
Speaker 1: call it something like eight million health records.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: That's a bigger starting point than any d side project
Speaker 1: has ever had in terms of being able to actually
Speaker 1: use and interact with high, high validity data. So the
Speaker 1: interesting thing is, you know, if you were to build
Speaker 1: like a big a d SI, kind of call it
Speaker 1: like a data lake, right, you could do a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting things where you're building not only with the
Speaker 1: legacy data, but also new data sets and kind of
Speaker 1: other other inputs.
Speaker 3: So you know, patient records, things like that.
Speaker 1: If you could have users submit that data and you
Speaker 1: end up with this baseline, then you can go to
Speaker 1: these therapeutics companies, you can go to AI drug discovery,
Speaker 1: you can go to clinical research organizations, and you can
Speaker 1: have this really high integrity compliant data because it turns
Speaker 1: out that storing things on chain actually is pretty secure
Speaker 1: and so so you know, that's that's kind of the
Speaker 1: the uh, the interesting thing about you know, building with
Speaker 1: a data set or something like that, you know, as
Speaker 1: you end up I I I don't know if this
Speaker 1: analogy fits like one to one. But just again coming
Speaker 1: out of the Salon ecosystem. You know, Helium moved over
Speaker 1: to Solana in the middle of the bear right, and
Speaker 1: that didn't seem like a huge deal to a lot
Speaker 1: of folks at the time, but it was actually enormously
Speaker 1: impactful on deep in on Solana right because you had
Speaker 1: an actual IoT provider.
Speaker 3: You had somebody who had actually.
Speaker 1: Gone out and done all the contracts and gotten all
Speaker 1: the you know, permissioning and actually built the hardware and
Speaker 1: all that. So it's been very hard for other chains
Speaker 1: to replicate that kind of base layer. Right, if I
Speaker 1: want to build like a hive mapper or like a
Speaker 1: three D rendering software, you know, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go to a to a chain that obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: say would love to support more deep in projects. It's
Speaker 1: a very interesting real world use case. But that advantage
Speaker 1: that they had was was really powerful coming into the
Speaker 1: last the last cycle. And so if you could build
Speaker 1: something like that, like a Helium but for health data, uh,
Speaker 1: that's a that's an incredibly impactful thing because now you
Speaker 1: are the base layer of what anyone wants to build.
Speaker 3: Oh, you want to.
Speaker 1: Build your therapeutic for your your hair thing. Oh you
Speaker 1: want to go try to do you know, a fitness
Speaker 1: rewards program. Well, here's the starting point, and then you
Speaker 1: can just ingest this data and use it, you know
Speaker 1: in a way that also kind of shared is the
Speaker 1: economics in a very you know Web three way with
Speaker 1: everyone who's interacting with that data.
Speaker 4: Hm. Well, I for one would love to see blockchain
Speaker 4: web three integrated into the healthcare industry to your point
Speaker 4: of going to different doctors and not having to fill
Speaker 4: out all those forms over and over again, and then
Speaker 4: of course having your data secure. And then eventually if
Speaker 4: you if web three is giving us ownership of our data,
Speaker 4: having that and I can choose who I want to
Speaker 4: release it to, I can monetize it. There could be
Speaker 4: a lot of benefits here. And obviously improving the efficiency
Speaker 4: between different institutions and labs and much more. That would
Speaker 4: be really great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean data sovereignty is a huge piece
Speaker 1: of it, right, Like, you know, we talk all the
Speaker 1: time about you know, giving the economics and the control
Speaker 1: over data back to the people, and you know, you
Speaker 1: really need to mechanically be able to do that, right.
Speaker 1: It's it's one thing to say, oh yeah, like you know,
Speaker 1: you're a creator, and I pay these streaming fees and
Speaker 1: that's all yours. But I can still shut down that
Speaker 1: AWS server anytime I want, right, and so so actually
Speaker 1: returning access and control of that data to users is
Speaker 1: would be incredibly impactful.
Speaker 4: So, you know, at twenty three and meside, I'm assuming
Speaker 4: you're approaching different folks in the healthcare industry, laboratories and
Speaker 4: much more and looking to you know, get them to
Speaker 4: utilize the say blockchain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we're still in really early innings there.
Speaker 1: You know, we did hire a great head vs I
Speaker 1: Eleanor Davies, who comes with a great background, a lot
Speaker 1: of relationships there. You know, we have folks like myself
Speaker 1: and others on the team that have those relationships in
Speaker 1: sort of traditional healthcare. I think there's still an enormous
Speaker 1: learning curve, Like if I were to compare it where
Speaker 1: we are now, even though it's been something that people
Speaker 1: have been working on for several years, we're probably in
Speaker 1: you know, maybe like twenty sixteen seventy, for sixteen seventeen
Speaker 1: for like the way payments eventually onboarded to crypto, right,
Speaker 1: we had to go through kind of the the everything
Speaker 1: is fintech cycle and then okay, you can do stuff
Speaker 1: on chain, and then okay, now Visa signing deals with
Speaker 1: you know, you know, now we've got basically everybody has,
Speaker 1: you know, rain cards. Another great example. I think there
Speaker 1: was there had to be this transition to where not
Speaker 1: only does the industry get it, but the tech works
Speaker 1: well enough. And so I think we're just kind of
Speaker 1: finally coming into that phase and you know, maybe over
Speaker 1: the next like five to six years, we'll see some
Speaker 1: real integrations there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting you talked about that because I've been
Speaker 4: like monitoring different industries, like the real estate industry. What's happening?
Speaker 4: Are they integrating blockchain and looking at what the folks
Speaker 4: are prop you're doing. Obviously you got the d SI
Speaker 4: and then Deepen and much more, and you're you're seeing
Speaker 4: the move, but it's going to take years. It's not
Speaker 4: something that can happen overnight.
Speaker 3: Of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's it's the the industry goes through
Speaker 1: these phases of getting really really excited about novel ways
Speaker 1: to solve a problem, right, and so I compare that
Speaker 1: that's kind of like the you know, they're obviously brilliant people,
Speaker 1: but sort of like the Stanford you know, Blockchain Institute
Speaker 1: kind of ZK crowd. It's like you get this really
Speaker 1: really deep, deep academic research, and like that is fascinating.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows what to do with that, right, and then
Speaker 1: you go, you know, so in the next step and
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, well this system does work, right, Like
Speaker 1: I remember, I think I read something recently about the
Speaker 1: basically like the fax machine would never die because it
Speaker 1: was so efficient, and it's like that's you know, it
Speaker 1: takes time for us to go from like DARPA and
Speaker 1: you know, like four universities building the Internet, you know,
Speaker 1: to actually you know, the aol the little guy like
Speaker 1: running across the screen, you know, having to unplug your
Speaker 1: phone line to plug it in, a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't remember that phase of the Internet, but that happened
Speaker 1: to you know. Now obviously we're all walking around with
Speaker 1: you know, more tech than you know, sent me into
Speaker 1: the moon in our pocket. So yeah, we're it's it's
Speaker 1: I hate it's it's like become such a cliche at
Speaker 1: this point, but like we are still so early, Like it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a really interesting time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. I I often compare like where we're
Speaker 4: at as far as timeline wed analogy of dial up
Speaker 4: to broadband right and then eventually mobile networks and you
Speaker 4: know it's it took what thirty years to get there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a slow it's a slow grind.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So what's on your roadmap for
Speaker 4: the remainder of the year?
Speaker 3: Good question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think, uh, what's what's top of mind
Speaker 1: is is, uh, you know, the podcast, So you know,
Speaker 1: Crypto in America is continuing to expand you know, we
Speaker 1: we obviously had a lad you know, tend of from
Speaker 1: from Robin Hood on. I believe that episode came out
Speaker 1: last week, and we're very excited about you know, the
Speaker 1: guests that that we're having on and and you know, uh,
Speaker 1: with say continuing to build that brand in that community
Speaker 1: for say specifically. You know, I think it's gonna be
Speaker 1: an interesting time on the D side front, depending on
Speaker 1: you know, how how I guess the next few weeks
Speaker 1: or months here workout. You know, we're going to keep
Speaker 1: trying to build with you know, founders and applications in
Speaker 1: that space. We have a lot of interesting stuff going
Speaker 1: on in uh the I think I think we're almost ready,
Speaker 1: uh you know, on the agentic AI front to see
Speaker 1: some interesting stuff come out there. I know that it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of.
Speaker 3: Uh, it feels a little hobbyist.
Speaker 1: To me right now, but but you know, I think
Speaker 1: once you start really having agents that you can deploy
Speaker 1: and build on, that's going to be exciting. And then
Speaker 1: obviously also we're just kind of watching the markets to see,
Speaker 1: you know, what's what's going to happen here, because you know,
Speaker 1: what we would love to see is a lot more
Speaker 1: uh a lot more founders and you know, a lot
Speaker 1: more builders launching things on say and you know, getting
Speaker 1: to those you know, kind of big, big, interesting company levels,
Speaker 1: and so you know, we're just excited to see what
Speaker 1: builders come build, you know, and that's that's really what's
Speaker 1: fun about it for.
Speaker 4: Us, Oh for sure. So I wanted to get your
Speaker 4: thoughts on, you know, what's happening overall in the crypto market.
Speaker 4: You obviously being an OG being here for a long time,
Speaker 4: you know, what are your thoughts on how this acid
Speaker 4: class has grown. We've seen a big change in the
Speaker 4: government more favorable to crypto trad fis here. I mean,
Speaker 4: they're hitting the ground running tokenizing, doing all types of things,
Speaker 4: launching ETFs and much more. What are your thoughts on
Speaker 4: how the market is matured.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a it's a great question.
Speaker 1: There are people who are a lot smarter than me
Speaker 1: on this, but you know, I'll try to give my
Speaker 1: two cents here. You know, I think bitcoin like as
Speaker 1: bigcoin goes, you know, the world goes. That's been the
Speaker 1: story for the last kind of decade. And if you
Speaker 1: also look at, you know, where bitcoin was going, it
Speaker 1: seems like it was pretty you know, obviously we had
Speaker 1: kind of the not super cycle, but sort of these
Speaker 1: four year cycles, and then other than that, it's it's
Speaker 1: really been heavily correlated as of late to kind of
Speaker 1: the Nasdaq and the S and P five hundred. So,
Speaker 1: you know, people have been talking about bitcoin as digital
Speaker 1: gold for a long time.
Speaker 3: I think recently we've started.
Speaker 1: To see that that deviation a little bit, right, So,
Speaker 1: you had kind of turmoil from the tariffs and and
Speaker 1: you know some of the other sort of market volatility. Uh,
Speaker 1: bitcoin actually not suffering the way you would expect to
Speaker 1: see it in a traditional macro environment.
Speaker 3: So that's been really interesting.
Speaker 1: I think we're we're also starting to get some clarity
Speaker 1: on where the administration wants to go from a market perspective.
Speaker 1: You know, I think England signed a deal. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they're the president. I think today is in Sali Rabe
Speaker 1: doing a bunch of a bunch of interesting kind of
Speaker 1: economic development work. And I think for for the broader industry,
Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned the institutions are finally here, right.
Speaker 1: We had we had a founder on the Crypto and
Speaker 1: America podcast recently, and I think you also recently.
Speaker 3: Spoke to Bo Hines. There was a there was a
Speaker 3: great quote from bow.
Speaker 1: When when he hung out with us on on Crypto America,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, what would you say to founders?
Speaker 1: And he said, you know, welcome home, right, And so
Speaker 1: you combine that with a thing another founder said to us,
Speaker 1: which was, you know, we won like the institution, they're here.
Speaker 1: And so I think the last three months probably feels
Speaker 1: like three years, you know for anybody who's who's really
Speaker 1: tracking things closely.
Speaker 3: But I'm really excited to see.
Speaker 1: The amount of not only liquidity that you know, trad
Speaker 1: five brings into the space, but I also hope we
Speaker 1: just really don't like replicate that structure. I think They're
Speaker 1: going to have some really interesting kind of product ideas,
Speaker 1: and you know, you're going to get some of these
Speaker 1: you know, interesting crypto folks in the same room with
Speaker 1: people who understand market you know, liquidity and volatility, you know,
Speaker 1: have been doing this for thirty or forty years. That's
Speaker 1: one thing that the crypto industry is always kind of lacked,
Speaker 1: is they're they by nature of the industry, there is
Speaker 1: nobody who's been doing this for thirty or fourty years, right, So,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm excited to see the maturity and then
Speaker 1: I think also the regulatory clarity. So if we can
Speaker 1: get stable coin legislation, market structuring and legislation passed by August,
Speaker 1: which is the you know goalposts that you know, the
Speaker 1: President's executive Order set out, you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: have a lot of folks who are sitting on the
Speaker 1: sidelines or we're thinking about going overseas get really comfortable
Speaker 1: building here.
Speaker 3: And I'm really excited about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. And you mentioned you know, stable coin
Speaker 4: and crypto legislation. Boy, I'm hoping we get that done
Speaker 4: this year. That would be huge for the market continue
Speaker 4: to momentum, and you know, sometimes sometimes government moves slow,
Speaker 4: they get in their own way. They mud sling, of course.
Speaker 4: But if you know, if we can get that biparts
Speaker 4: and support and Trump signs it into a law, that
Speaker 4: would be huge. I mean the amount of innovation, jobs,
Speaker 4: wealth they will be created, it will be huge, kind
Speaker 4: of like the Internet bill, uh in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 4: I think, with Bill Clinton and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's it's the same.
Speaker 1: You know, I've heard it compared to that that's the
Speaker 1: Telecommunications Act. And then also on the market structuring side,
Speaker 1: like Dodd Frank right, it's it's like one of these things.
Speaker 1: Stable coins should be a no brainer. I know there's
Speaker 1: there's some some fine tuning needed around. You know, there's
Speaker 1: concerns on you know, uh kyc AML, some of the
Speaker 1: concerns that have been you know, plaguing in the industry
Speaker 1: for for a long time. Those seem to be largely addressed.
Speaker 1: And then and then yeah, I mean really it's off
Speaker 1: to the races with stables. One of the best quotes
Speaker 1: I heard recently and was, you know, if that passes,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have USD eight di Z. You know, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have every everybody wants to uh to be able
Speaker 1: to do instant settlement, liquidity, and US dollars, right, and
Speaker 1: that's how the global economy should run.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: So you get stable coins done, and then on the
Speaker 1: market structuring side, you know, it's like every kind of
Speaker 1: I forget if it was a staffer or remember somebody
Speaker 1: on the hill was telling me, uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like once a decade we get a shot at like
Speaker 1: real legislation, right, like real financial reform. And so the
Speaker 1: crypto industry has been relying on the same rules that
Speaker 1: securities you know, attorneys were relying on in the in
Speaker 1: the thirties and forties, right, so like not not even
Speaker 1: once a decade, like let's let's go for once a century.
Speaker 3: You know, let's.
Speaker 1: Upgrade some of these laws to uh to actually interact
Speaker 1: with the modern financial system. And so, you know, like
Speaker 1: you said, I think that the mudsling it's obviously you know,
Speaker 1: you would be you would be silly to not recognize,
Speaker 1: like the hyperpartisan nature of the United States right now,
Speaker 1: crypto should be a non partisan issue. And so I
Speaker 1: think it's it's just reality to know that you know,
Speaker 1: we need to update you know, some of the guidance
Speaker 1: and and some of the the the laws we have
Speaker 1: because frankly, like you know, there were some I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a lot of it is is uh
Speaker 1: is sort of being not brought to light, but you
Speaker 1: know it's being discussed, you know, in an open way,
Speaker 1: I think within the government, even if you talk about
Speaker 1: sort of you know, Gensler's approach and the last administration's
Speaker 1: approach to you know, things like Operation Choke Point and
Speaker 1: you know, other aspects that I think really the goal
Speaker 1: was just to hope that crypto just kind of died
Speaker 1: and just sort of went away. You know, Oh it'll
Speaker 1: it'll just kind of eat itself and spiral and we
Speaker 1: don't really need to worry about it. And that's clearly
Speaker 1: not the case, like where you know, we're not going anywhere,
Speaker 1: you know it. It reminds me that meme you know,
Speaker 1: uh like first time right, like you know, it's we
Speaker 1: we can write it out. So very enthusiastic about hopefully
Speaker 1: getting something codified in the law here that we can
Speaker 1: rely on for longer than one administration.
Speaker 3: That would be That would be nice.
Speaker 4: So Gerald you're saying, I can't believe you're saying, is
Speaker 4: that you know tokens on decentralized networks distributed globally can't
Speaker 4: be you know, managed the same way as orange grows
Speaker 4: in Florida.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately not. You know, it's really surprising that. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you and I have never met and I've never made
Speaker 1: a promise to you that you know somehow, that's not
Speaker 1: the same as as me selling you an orange growth.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's uh, you know, it's it's where we're at.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: All right, good stuff, Gerald, I got some wrap up
Speaker 4: questions here for you. First, if you could create your
Speaker 4: own metaverse, what would the theme be?
Speaker 3: My own metaverse? So?
Speaker 1: I think that I would love to do something. You know,
Speaker 1: I grew up one of the one of the first
Speaker 1: things I wanted to do was be an astronaut. I
Speaker 1: wanted to go to space camp and all that. And
Speaker 1: you know, I read too much sci fi, watch too
Speaker 1: much sci fi. So let's go intergalactic with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: space nice.
Speaker 4: That would be mine too. I love all things Star
Speaker 4: Wars and things like that. Yeah, rapid fire questions.
Speaker 1: Favorite food, Favorite food, Man, you can't go wrong with
Speaker 1: a good mac and cheese. I and it can be
Speaker 1: there's a thousand different ways to do it. I grew
Speaker 1: up in the Southeast, you know, eating cream cheese instead
Speaker 1: of butter. You know, some people do the crumbs on it,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't mind. You want to add some
Speaker 1: things to it, you know, maybe some taco meat, maybe
Speaker 1: some lobster, but you know, yeah, mac and cheese.
Speaker 4: Lobster mac and cheese, for sure. That is one of
Speaker 4: my favorite favorite musician or band.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I grew up on Red Hot Chili Peppers,
Speaker 1: so let's go. Yeah, I've seen them a couple of
Speaker 1: times live. I can't believe those guys are you know,
Speaker 1: still doing it? So yeah, Chili Peppers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, then one of my favorite bands. I actually played guitar.
Speaker 4: One of the reasons I started to play guitar because
Speaker 4: I heard John Fruchante play and I'm like, Okay.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows that riff that you know, it's like Californication
Speaker 1: or you know, Snow from the new album comes on.
Speaker 3: Everybody. You know, it's a everybody knows that sound for sure.
Speaker 1: Favorite movie, favorite movie. So I uh, I grew up
Speaker 1: a big guy ritchie finn. I think it's like one
Speaker 1: of the most just kind of guy things about me.
Speaker 1: And so the movie Snatch, Uh, you know. They came
Speaker 1: out back in I want to say it was like
Speaker 1: four or five, but it was a it was a
Speaker 1: great movie. Incredible cast. Uh you know Brad Pitt, Jason
Speaker 1: Stave was a good one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Brad is amazing in that because I first I
Speaker 4: thought the movie was like gonna be slapstick comedy or
Speaker 4: something like that, because just like Brad Pitt doing this,
Speaker 4: and then I watched them like wow, this is just
Speaker 4: so good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thats a good one. Uh, favorite book, favorite book.
Speaker 1: So I actually got this one from uh uh Tim
Speaker 1: Ferris recommendation and I've been meaning to reread it.
Speaker 3: I love reading.
Speaker 1: You can see I got these, you know, the full
Speaker 1: shelves back there behind me. I. I hope I don't
Speaker 1: misquote the title. I think it's called Lion Tracker's Guide
Speaker 1: to Life. It's uh, it's it's not it's only about
Speaker 1: that thick but it is just packed.
Speaker 3: It's by this this.
Speaker 1: Uh basically entrepreneur who went back to uh South Africa,
Speaker 1: and and uh, the whole story is is kind of
Speaker 1: an entrepreneurial sort of self help journey, but told through
Speaker 1: this journey that he's taking tracking this like single pride
Speaker 1: of Lions and it's it's a really it's a it's
Speaker 1: a good read.
Speaker 4: Yeah, interesting, I'll have to check that out. And when
Speaker 4: you're not working at say, what are you doing for fun?
Speaker 1: I gotta be outside, right, I got to play sports man.
Speaker 1: We I play pick up basketball. I think kind of
Speaker 1: every every opportunity I get, and uh, yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: good to you know, get out there and get some
Speaker 1: fresh air, given that we're you know, staring at screens
Speaker 1: like this about ninety percent of the time.
Speaker 3: So oh dude.
Speaker 4: I was literally in the gym yesterday playing pick up.
Speaker 4: I'm onnly like five eight, but I have a good
Speaker 4: vertical and I've been playing since high school, so it's
Speaker 4: it's just the best. That's yeah, well, jeryal absolute pleasure.
Speaker 4: I love the updates that are happening on SAY and uh,
Speaker 4: you know, I'll have to have you back on and uh,
Speaker 4: you know, as things progress and maybe some big news
Speaker 4: coming out with SAY and acquisitions and much more. But
Speaker 4: thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me Tony. I really enjoyed it.