Speaker 1: We have what we call our giga gas roadmap, which
Speaker 1: is scaling up to one hundred thousand transactions per second
Speaker 1: and have no reorgs, almost instant finality. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the price will be tomorrow, but I feel like
Speaker 1: I know where we're headed in the next thirty to
Speaker 1: fifty years. I feel like I'm a permeable with like
Speaker 1: how we're going, and like your rationally optimistic.
Speaker 2: I feel like once that interoperability and those bridges are built,
Speaker 2: more consumers are educated, maybe ready, we'll you know, bring
Speaker 2: it back, and even more platforms will have NFTs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think about it too.
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Speaker 2: a description. Check it out. Hey, folks, welcome into the
Speaker 2: Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward and joining
Speaker 2: me today's two cent Timmy, who's one of the moderators
Speaker 2: on the cryptocurrency subreddit on Reddit and he's part of
Speaker 2: the Polygon marketing team as well. Timmy, great to have you.
Speaker 2: I'm super excited to be here. I'm like, very excited.
Speaker 2: I've watched your podcast before.
Speaker 1: I think it's great, So it's yeah, it's fun to
Speaker 1: finally be talking to you. I mean we've met in person,
Speaker 1: but not on a podcast.
Speaker 2: A yeah for sure. And we met at the Treasure
Speaker 2: event in Prague just a few weeks back, and that
Speaker 2: was a great event. It was great meeting you, and
Speaker 2: you know, we had a conversation about Reddit and the
Speaker 2: big part is playing at crypto in addition to the
Speaker 2: markets overall. So I'm excited to dive into that conversation
Speaker 2: and as well as get some updates around Polygon. But
Speaker 2: you know, tell us a bit about yourself. Where are
Speaker 2: you from and how'd you get into crypto.
Speaker 1: So I currently lived just outside of Atlanta, Georgia, originally
Speaker 1: from Boston, Massachusetts area. And I guess I have like
Speaker 1: two intros to crypto and it's kind of funny. So
Speaker 1: the first one when I started college. I went to
Speaker 1: school starting twenty ten and I was a computer science major,
Speaker 1: and early on someone basically asks if we he wanted
Speaker 1: to mine bitcoin with him, like using the computer lab.
Speaker 1: That's just stupid, like why would anyone do listen, that's
Speaker 1: twenty eleven. I'm like, no, I don't want to do this.
Speaker 1: I don't want to like whatever. Like and I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, like the cliche of like everyone's like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't understand this, it's magic Internet money whatever. I'll
Speaker 1: move on, uh. And then that person deleted off social
Speaker 1: media after her bitcoin over the year when it ran up.
Speaker 1: But my second intro to crypto was probably the bigger
Speaker 1: one that I actually started using. I would say, I'm
Speaker 1: a clash of twenty twenty one cliche. So I my
Speaker 1: first crypto purchase ever was doge coin on Robinhood and
Speaker 1: it was just trading meme coins having a laugh. And
Speaker 1: it's funny because like I feel like Reddit and GameStop
Speaker 1: is what brought me to the doge coin like in
Speaker 1: Robinhood trading world. But then once I got into crypto,
Speaker 1: I was basically hooked and like I really fell in
Speaker 1: love with the technology, trying to learn everything I could,
Speaker 1: and I think realizing that it was more than just
Speaker 1: a meme coin, and like I would say, fell in
Speaker 1: love with the It's funny because I never really spent
Speaker 1: time studying bitcoin, but all a lot of the ethos
Speaker 1: in bitcoin are my personal ethos. I'm like, if I
Speaker 1: just spent time way soon I'm learning about it, I
Speaker 1: could have like I would have been all in at
Speaker 1: that point. Like so it's a but yeah, it's so
Speaker 1: basically a little over four years now and I've enjoyed
Speaker 1: every minute of it.
Speaker 2: Mostly How did you end up at Polygon?
Speaker 1: It's funny through Reddit? I guess it's a so in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, Reddit came out with avatars that were
Speaker 1: NFT collections and they minted on the Polygon blockchain, and
Speaker 1: that was my first intro to Polygon. If I don't know,
Speaker 1: was I how do I want to say this? I
Speaker 1: am very serious and like care about the technology and
Speaker 1: try to take it seriously and with the respect it deserves.
Speaker 1: But I also like to have fun, so these avatars
Speaker 1: were just like a fun little collectible. Hey, let's have fun.
Speaker 1: And I really liked the Polygon ecosystem kind of what
Speaker 1: Polygon stood for, where it was like giving sovereignty to
Speaker 1: the world, and that includes financial sovereignty, but just our
Speaker 1: founder Sandy've talked about like his mission is to give
Speaker 1: everyone sovereignty, so whether it's sending payments or having identity
Speaker 1: or all of these big things of Okay, I bought
Speaker 1: into that the Polygon subreddit was unmoderated that had very
Speaker 1: little content on it, and I literally sent out a
Speaker 1: tweet saying that the subreddit needs motoration and I'd be
Speaker 1: happy to do it. And then I ended up basically
Speaker 1: was contacted by a couple of people on their team
Speaker 1: and community team, and they said, hey, do you want
Speaker 1: a contract? Like, we love what you do and have
Speaker 1: been contributing, so we think there's something here. And then
Speaker 1: I started working for Polygon. It's a I don't know's
Speaker 1: it's the beauty of web three where we say it
Speaker 1: all the time, you can just do things, you say things,
Speaker 1: and then you make it happen. And that's really how
Speaker 1: it worked out for me.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Yeah, I mean from just like you said,
Speaker 2: having fun and then it became sort of your career,
Speaker 2: your job right of working web three both on Reddit
Speaker 2: but also supporting Polygon. I'm curious, you know, for those
Speaker 2: who may not be very familiar with Reddit, right I am.
Speaker 2: I know a lot of the different subreddits on Reddit
Speaker 2: with crypto, bitcoin and so forth. Give us an overview
Speaker 2: of the cryptocurrency subreddit, and I want to make sure
Speaker 2: folks know it's slash crypto currency, right, yep, our slash
Speaker 2: cryptocurrent and see it's it's right. It's funny because some
Speaker 2: people say just cryptocurrency subrought it. Some people say are
Speaker 2: cryptocurrency because our precedes every subreddit's so, but yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's the largest cryptocurrency subrodit out there.
Speaker 1: There's over ten million members right now. I was looking.
Speaker 1: We had in the last thirty days like fifteen million
Speaker 1: page views over that. So it's very very popular, massive,
Speaker 1: and it's I would say, it's very different than a
Speaker 1: crypto Twitter. The type of user is you get really
Speaker 1: really novice users who I would say, I don't know,
Speaker 1: they don't know anything about crypto right, they're they're coming
Speaker 1: to learn, and if you're on Twitter, it's really hard
Speaker 1: to know who to trust in what the good content
Speaker 1: is because scams they're popping up all the time. New
Speaker 1: blockchains are coming out and some are legitimate and some aren't.
Speaker 1: And when you're in the industry, it's you develop tools
Speaker 1: to spot them, but if you're brand new, it's really hard.
Speaker 1: So our suburb it is more heavily moderated than so
Speaker 1: on on Twitter would be used to. But it's intentional
Speaker 1: because what we want is there's really not a good
Speaker 1: place for someone who knows very little about crypto to
Speaker 1: start learning about it in a kind of like safe
Speaker 1: we I like to think of it almost like a
Speaker 1: walled garden where like we will give you advice, like
Speaker 1: here's general practices. It's really interesting because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of like I don't know, I would say it's more
Speaker 1: negative and more skeptical of everything than even I personally am.
Speaker 1: As a community, like I like to take risks, or
Speaker 1: like I think the frontier of technology is really interesting,
Speaker 1: and I think it's really good for new people to
Speaker 1: have this like a massive community of like wait, be
Speaker 1: skeptical and it comes out to like the don't trust
Speaker 1: verify sort of opportunity, and it might go too far,
Speaker 1: and maybe at one point it was too band heavy.
Speaker 1: And I know people have talked about like they share
Speaker 1: something and then they get banned. But it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you're sharing this new project that no one ever heard of.
Speaker 1: And if you can imagine a subword with ten million
Speaker 1: people who are predominantly novices, bad actors love using the
Speaker 1: subword to take advantage of people, like it's sure, it
Speaker 1: becomes the targets out like it's a it's interesting. It's
Speaker 1: a hard and delicate balance to find between letting new
Speaker 1: content and stuff, but I would say that's part of it.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people who are genuine, like
Speaker 1: when they reach out, it's nice to have. Like you
Speaker 1: and I met and we were talking like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: person's going to be genuine. If you start posting content,
Speaker 1: we can approve it. But a lot of people just
Speaker 1: go and it's like I don't know you from a
Speaker 1: hole in the wall, so like I'm not trusting that
Speaker 1: you're a good person, which is but yeah, it's there's
Speaker 1: content there, there's news articles get posted. One thing that
Speaker 1: I think is really cool about the subreddit. And this
Speaker 1: is kind of a history story going back, but one
Speaker 1: thing I like about Reddit is they've tried a lot
Speaker 1: in crypto and web three. So I mentioned the avatars,
Speaker 1: but they also had something that they called the Reddit
Speaker 1: Community Points Program. So the way Reddit works in general
Speaker 1: is there's an upvote button and a downvote button, and
Speaker 1: you get karma if you're upvoted, and if you're downvoted,
Speaker 1: you lose karma. It's kind of what their point system
Speaker 1: is called. And Reddit came out with this feature and
Speaker 1: they were piloting it in the cryptocurrency subreddit and then
Speaker 1: in a Fortnite subrunnit. It didn't do so well in
Speaker 1: the Fortnite subred up, and in the cryptocurrency subredit everyone
Speaker 1: loved it where each month, technically every twenty eight days,
Speaker 1: they would calculate the karma users earned and then pay
Speaker 1: out a ERC twenty token as a governance token to
Speaker 1: users proportional to the karma that they earned. So if
Speaker 1: the total subredit generated one hundred thousand karma, you got
Speaker 1: a thousand, you'll get one percent of the distribution for
Speaker 1: that loud And what was really cool about it is
Speaker 1: it then acted as a governance token for the subreddit
Speaker 1: where each week the community would put up proposals about
Speaker 1: ruled on how to govern the subrudit, and then your
Speaker 1: weight vote weight was proportional to what you earned. So
Speaker 1: it was a cool way of like, hey, the people
Speaker 1: who are participating in the most putting out the best
Speaker 1: content are the people who have the biggest say in
Speaker 1: the community. Reddit eventually sun set that program, but the
Speaker 1: moderators in the community are like, well, this was amazing,
Speaker 1: we loved it. So now we're all we basically did
Speaker 1: a community takeover and there's this token that we use
Speaker 1: as a government stoken, which is I think it's fun
Speaker 1: and like this really like I said earlier and crypto like,
Speaker 1: we're like, this was fun. A centralized entity shut it down.
Speaker 1: Let's just take you over it as a community and
Speaker 1: make it a decentralized token and project. Well what's that token,
Speaker 1: by the way, and is it erc twenty base as well? Yep,
Speaker 1: so it's called our cryptocurrency moons. When Reddit introduced it,
Speaker 1: they introduced it on arbitram Nova because at the time
Speaker 1: that was a super cheap blockchain and super fast. It
Speaker 1: then branche to Arbitram one so now it's basically on
Speaker 1: nova in one and there's a very small amount on
Speaker 1: a theoryum mainenet. But it's yeah, it's just an any
Speaker 1: token that people have fun with. And this is not
Speaker 1: financial advice. You should not, but like if you don't
Speaker 1: know anything about it, like do your research on it.
Speaker 1: But it's because I participate in it, I'm like, it's
Speaker 1: it's something that I haven't seen anywhere else, and it's
Speaker 1: such a unique use case where it's like this is
Speaker 1: a community token for the largest subredit and then we
Speaker 1: try to give it more use cases too. And I
Speaker 1: didn't get to this, but we let projects advertise on
Speaker 1: the subreddit whether they're doing amas or we have a
Speaker 1: spotlight where we kind of feature them, and they need
Speaker 1: to essentially buy the token, burn part of the token,
Speaker 1: and then we distribute it back to our community as well.
Speaker 1: So it's like this is actually a very circular economy
Speaker 1: token where if you're a project that want to get involved,
Speaker 1: like you actually have to give something back to our
Speaker 1: users in a very like real way. So it's a
Speaker 1: it's different and it's fun and basically when we aren't
Speaker 1: when projects pay for their ames and moons, we put
Speaker 1: it back, give it back to users, whether it's distribution
Speaker 1: or we burn it to reduce the supply and things
Speaker 1: like that. So that's great. I mean, I in my hat,
Speaker 1: I'm like I can imagine like Bitcoin Maximal's hearing this
Speaker 1: and like it's a scamble, like all this stuff. It's
Speaker 1: a gimmick and it's not that, but like it's not
Speaker 1: for everyone. But I'm just like it's a fun, fun
Speaker 1: way to power community where the idea is to benefit everyone,
Speaker 1: like participating in the ecosystem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that makes sense. Right, there's some gamification.
Speaker 2: You allow people to have skin in the game, so
Speaker 2: to speak. They get rewarded, and it's a token that
Speaker 2: actually has value that can trade in the market.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it's on I think
Speaker 1: it's on Crack. I know it's on Crack and it's
Speaker 1: on unit Swamp and camel Lot, and like you can
Speaker 1: buy it and sell it and speculate on it if
Speaker 1: that's what your heart want to say.
Speaker 2: Do tell us about you know, you mentioned that there's
Speaker 2: like ten million users, and you mentioned there's a lot
Speaker 2: of crypto newbies and so forth. Why do you think
Speaker 2: this subreddit has the appeal versus let's say X or
Speaker 2: other social platforms. And I remember, just to add some context,
Speaker 2: in my early days, I spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: on Reddit because it was much cleaner and it was
Speaker 2: easier to read through and pick up things because there
Speaker 2: was a lot of noise on X and there still is.
Speaker 2: But I feel like, you know, the subredits are cleaner. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: that's a good point, I think. So you have if
Speaker 2: I went to my ex right now, what I would
Speaker 2: see if I had to guess, is today's November tenth.
Speaker 2: So Monad announced the presale. That's going to be flooding
Speaker 2: the timeline. There's some drama, there's going to be talk
Speaker 2: about we pumped a little bit earlier today, so I'm
Speaker 2: just going to like see price chart after price chart,
Speaker 2: probably a little bit on the government shutdown. It's like
Speaker 2: it's this wave of information that it's really really hard
Speaker 2: to find solid footing on Reddit. You can get It's
Speaker 2: like I want to go to our cryptocurrency because I
Speaker 2: want to see general crypto news, and then you go,
Speaker 2: I want to know what's going on with bitcoin. You
Speaker 2: go to the bitcoin subred and I want to know
Speaker 2: what's going on with Etheroreum. You go to the Ethereum
Speaker 2: suburd it. I want to know what's going on with Solana,
Speaker 2: I go to the Salona subreddit. I want to know
Speaker 2: what's going on with Polygond, I go to the Polygone
Speaker 2: sub reddit.
Speaker 1: And then you just start. You can curate it. And
Speaker 1: then another benefit to Reddit too is they have flares
Speaker 1: for posts on the topic. So like on the cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: subred it sometimes is general discussion, sometimes it's news, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's advice, sometimes it's a perspective, and you can sort
Speaker 1: by that going to find what you want to find.
Speaker 1: And I think the last part that makes reddit really
Speaker 1: powerful is upvote and down vote. So what ends up
Speaker 1: happening is the best content goes to the top, and
Speaker 1: that happens on XSU with the algorithm, but the most
Speaker 1: uploaded post of caralments you see the most. But you
Speaker 1: also get real feedback on what isn't good content. So
Speaker 1: when I first got into Reddit and was a novice
Speaker 1: to crypto, I said things on the cryptocurrency subreddit and
Speaker 1: got downvoted to oblivion, and I'm like that was probably
Speaker 1: a stupid thing to say, or a lot of times
Speaker 1: see you almost get let's say something slips through the
Speaker 1: automoderator feature, then it's a scam and moderators don't see
Speaker 1: it and they can't remove it. If that happens on X,
Speaker 1: it's just out there forever and doesn't get removed. On Reddit,
Speaker 1: you can have users downvote in comment and say this
Speaker 1: is a scam, and like, actually, Reddit collapses and hides
Speaker 1: heavily downvoted content so it doesn't even get views or seen.
Speaker 1: So if you're a beginner, it's like, okay, you have this.
Speaker 1: It's way more curated, it's way more refined, and it's
Speaker 1: farder to manipulate. Like Reddit. One of the things Reddit
Speaker 1: is really good at is anti bought and anti spam features.
Speaker 1: And I don't think it gets soken off about it
Speaker 1: as a company, but in the r cryptocurrency subword it
Speaker 1: you see spam and then it gets removed instantly by Reddit.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's really really good for novices
Speaker 1: to figure out. And then I think having the silos
Speaker 1: of this project, this project, like you can basically go
Speaker 1: to where you want and get the information you want
Speaker 1: and it doesn't get flooded. And I mean, I have
Speaker 1: my own subredits and I have my routine of like,
Speaker 1: I'll go to this sub and that's up and that sub,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't. My brain is prepared for the content.
Speaker 1: So like, I'm also an NBA fan, My Twitter is
Speaker 1: filled with NBA content. When I may want to be
Speaker 1: a research project and on Reddit, I can go. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to look at the NBA sub run it
Speaker 1: at eight o'clock at night after my work died.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: I'm a big NBA fan as well, So I have
Speaker 2: to ask, what's your favorite NBA team?
Speaker 1: The Celtics. It's a rough year. I grew up in Boston.
Speaker 1: I can't not be a Celtics fan, and I had
Speaker 1: it so good the last two years and this year
Speaker 1: it's painful.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm in New York or near New York, so
Speaker 2: I'm a Knicks fan. Grew up a Knicks fan, so yeah,
Speaker 2: we hate each other.
Speaker 1: So you were very happy, Yeah, last playoffs, but I
Speaker 1: won't talk about that much more.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, I'm curious with regards to Reddit's integration
Speaker 2: of like crypto and blockchain. You know, you mentioned the tokens,
Speaker 2: A sunseted that, but you guys kept it going, you know,
Speaker 2: specifically for the r cryptocurrency subreddit. But what about the
Speaker 2: NFT avatars that you mentioned that was on Polygon. Is
Speaker 2: that still enabled on a Reddit?
Speaker 1: Yes, for the time being. It's funny, I said, Reddit
Speaker 1: like Satri thinks, so this it was when it started
Speaker 1: a wildly successful program. There's something like Reddit. When you
Speaker 1: bought an NFT avatar, they created a wallet for the users,
Speaker 1: and users didn't even know that they were minting n FT,
Speaker 1: so it was created and it was really this nice
Speaker 1: combination kind of what the dream of web three people
Speaker 1: saying like, oh, we just need to let people use
Speaker 1: crypto without knowing that they're using it. Reddit did that
Speaker 1: really well. Created the wallet over thirty six million wallets
Speaker 1: held avatars, which is insane to me because these were
Speaker 1: all Reddit users. And then I don't know if you
Speaker 1: paid attention to the NFT market over the last three years,
Speaker 1: but it hasn't hasn't been going well. The hype kind
Speaker 1: of died down and Reddit announced that they would sunset
Speaker 1: the program in January. So it's interesting they won't be
Speaker 1: minting any new avatars the ones that you bought and traded.
Speaker 1: You can certainly they said, you'll still be able to
Speaker 1: use on Reddit. It can still be used as your
Speaker 1: little identity and play with it and then it's read.
Speaker 1: It announced that about a month ago, and it was
Speaker 1: really cool to see the community come out. In the
Speaker 1: avatar community just have started building new platforms to still
Speaker 1: participate in it. A couple of those are building on Polygon,
Speaker 1: where it's not going to be integrated to Reddit. But
Speaker 1: if you can imagine, there were a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: artists and really strong communities, you just like these characters
Speaker 1: that were created. They basically said, like, we're going to
Speaker 1: take that technology. We're going to put it in our
Speaker 1: own smart contract where you can just mint like artists
Speaker 1: can go on and say here's what I want and
Speaker 1: then you can mint it for I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think they set the price in to be wrong, but
Speaker 1: I think less I saw it of like between ten
Speaker 1: pole and fifty pole. You could meant your own like
Speaker 1: designed similarly to a Reddit avatar by these artists, and
Speaker 1: you can play around with it. So I think that's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Reddit, it has a special place in
Speaker 1: my heart where people are negative and they say Reddit
Speaker 1: ruins everything, and I don't I'm not going to make
Speaker 1: a judgment on that. But what's really cool is when
Speaker 1: people say that there's enough people out there that go
Speaker 1: out and say like, well, then we'll just do it ourselves.
Speaker 1: I think of like the Futurama vendor me and like, well,
Speaker 1: I'll make my own like I'll make my own moons,
Speaker 1: I'll make my own Reddit avatars. And it's like that's
Speaker 1: just embodies Reddit because they're just like, well, we like
Speaker 1: this and work community, so that's what we're doing in
Speaker 1: this community. So I thought it was really cool to see.
Speaker 1: Some people may have different takes, but I loved it.
Speaker 2: It feels yeah, I love it too, And I feel
Speaker 2: like it's maybe we're still so early that because the
Speaker 2: masses are not fully educated about these things. Where there's
Speaker 2: also interoperability with these nft NFTs where you can take
Speaker 2: them off of Reddit in a different whatever it is right,
Speaker 2: where I can do cool things in other parts of
Speaker 2: society or other industries. It's not there yet. But once
Speaker 2: that interoperability and those bridges are built and more consumers
Speaker 2: are educated, you know as to why this is so
Speaker 2: important as technology and how the benefits it can have,
Speaker 2: then maybe maybe ready it will you know, bring it back,
Speaker 2: and even more platforms will have NFTs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think about it too, where I think digital
Speaker 1: identity is something that a lot of people actually really
Speaker 1: really like, but they don't know enough about digital ID
Speaker 1: to like fully use. And I'm like, no, Like you can, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can have a picture of yourself, but if you're
Speaker 1: you don't want to expose yourself to the world, like
Speaker 1: you can have this avatar or MFT and that can
Speaker 1: kind of be who you are and kind of how
Speaker 1: you present yourself on platforms. And I think it's I
Speaker 1: don't know, I want. Some of my favorite things are
Speaker 1: if I play a game and then I go on
Speaker 1: Twitter and I see the same person as a game,
Speaker 1: It's like, wait, you're here too. Like I've actually had
Speaker 1: people in crypto who I knew from a previous life.
Speaker 1: They're like wait a second, Like that's the same user name,
Speaker 1: and it's like, I guess we're interested on the same thing.
Speaker 1: But that discoverability is I think really important and really fun,
Speaker 1: and I think there's a pathway to that with Reddit avatars.
Speaker 2: Also, Oh for sure. You know, Reddit has an amazing history.
Speaker 2: I've used it in many different ways, but you know,
Speaker 2: when it comes to markets we saw what happened with
Speaker 2: GameStop and AMC, and there's just a huge community there,
Speaker 2: especially around crypto as well, and I think it's so
Speaker 2: important to have it as a resource and you know,
Speaker 2: very different from X and and where a lot of
Speaker 2: crypto people hang out as well, but very good for beginners.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, yeah, I wonder if we will
Speaker 2: see a type of gm E AMC type of rise
Speaker 2: for certain crypto tokens.
Speaker 1: It's one thing that I actually love that Polygon was
Speaker 1: so open to working for them, like coming from REDIT
Speaker 1: and just telling them like so the r cryptocuarancy sub
Speaker 1: red it has like community supporters and Polygon has sponsored it.
Speaker 1: So this was something I thought was really cool where
Speaker 1: I told you about moons and it gets distributed every
Speaker 1: month and Polygon to like, well, we believe in creators.
Speaker 1: I've read it. And then Polygon's actually putting a whole
Speaker 1: for words too to kind of go like, hey, this
Speaker 1: is a community we want to tap into. I think
Speaker 1: in the age of AI am I how that's used
Speaker 1: for research. Reddit something like basically half of AI data,
Speaker 1: like half of AI prompt respond with like subreddit pages
Speaker 1: and Reddit post which is insane, and I think that
Speaker 1: we're seeing if you see trading or speculation or literally
Speaker 1: just research. If someone to like I want to send
Speaker 1: a stable coin to a friend, what's the best blockchain
Speaker 1: to use? And they ask that in AI, it's going
Speaker 1: to pull from Reddit to get some information, and I
Speaker 1: think we will see that where it's like uh, and
Speaker 1: it takes time because AI is slow to update and
Speaker 1: models aren't like super responsive in faults, But that's just
Speaker 1: a part of the growing technology. I do think I'm
Speaker 1: hoping Polygon does this, but like projects that and we've
Speaker 1: seen other projects spend time and invest in Reddit. If
Speaker 1: your goal is to be like GMME, you're probably going
Speaker 1: to fall short. But like you like no, there's a
Speaker 1: huge retail community of people who really want to learn
Speaker 1: and grow in this space, and we're going to take
Speaker 1: time and invest in those people as well, because I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, you joined something early, you
Speaker 1: discovered early, and it leaves an impression on you, and
Speaker 1: I think that's like super important. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people, like I said, because it over moderates
Speaker 1: and people get banned and it's hard to introduce projects.
Speaker 1: People turn off Reddit right away. And I think that's
Speaker 1: entirely the wrong idea. I think it's just like working
Speaker 1: within the system and figuring out how to leverage it
Speaker 1: to like maximize what you want to accomplish in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you definitely have to have a ready
Speaker 2: strategy if you're a crypto project or what it may be,
Speaker 2: and have a presence and have that you know, back
Speaker 2: and forth conversation because sometimes people have questions or they
Speaker 2: have issues, and it's good to be able to have
Speaker 2: the transparency and answered the questions and address them and
Speaker 2: you know, if you make a mistake, own up to
Speaker 2: it right, And I think people appreciate that. But huge
Speaker 2: community on Reddit, and I think more people need to
Speaker 2: pay attention. And I guess I'm a user, so the
Speaker 2: I use x more because of I have to. I
Speaker 2: tried to get like different news and interact with certain people,
Speaker 2: but I also have read a bookmarks, I go to
Speaker 2: Reddit and like, hey, what's trending right now in bitcoin?
Speaker 2: What's trending right now cryptocurrency and much more.
Speaker 1: What I was going to say too is I think
Speaker 1: you're someone and I'm like this as well, where it's
Speaker 1: like I want the news when it breaks because it's
Speaker 1: a major part of what we do and how we
Speaker 1: are in a living, Like we just have to be
Speaker 1: kind of on that cutting edge. But for a novice,
Speaker 1: you can find out a day or two later. So
Speaker 1: I guess, like, so you can find it, you can currate.
Speaker 1: It's funny. I saw I have a friend who uniswap
Speaker 1: uh is starting to bull out their runnit strategy, and
Speaker 1: he reached out to me and all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: un swap somewhere it posted a question where it or
Speaker 1: something like where do you get your crypto news from?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, when I started, it was on Reddit.
Speaker 1: And now after a few years, I got my news
Speaker 1: for Rex and I share it to Reddit. You're paying
Speaker 1: it codes for that next generation of users. Got like, so,
Speaker 1: like it is a I don't know. Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: think Reddit is important and a Reddit strategy is very
Speaker 1: important for companies to have because, like I said, it's
Speaker 1: just your true retail user.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, yeah yeah, And I, like I said, I
Speaker 2: think back to years man when I got into this
Speaker 2: market twenty sixteen, and along the way got a lot
Speaker 2: of information from Reddit, whether it would be for bitcoin
Speaker 2: or different all coins, and joined certain conversations got banned
Speaker 2: from some but you know, it's all part of the process.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a great, great resource. I'm curious what
Speaker 2: you can share as far as Polygon, what's new there,
Speaker 2: what you guys are working on and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm so excited for probably Gone's future. And it's
Speaker 1: like I said, what drew me to it was this
Speaker 1: like core ethos of like what drew me to what
Speaker 1: drew me to crypto call it dogecoint was just having
Speaker 1: fun and then once I started taking it seriously, I
Speaker 1: was like Bitcoin, I'm a huge like personal sovereignty and
Speaker 1: freedom is so important to me that like that just
Speaker 1: connected me with bitcoin very much. Like you know what,
Speaker 1: it's actually really cool to have a censorship resistant, like
Speaker 1: decentralized currency that you can use for payment. And I
Speaker 1: think one thing that bitcoiners are I would say upset
Speaker 1: about or like still up for debate, let's say, is
Speaker 1: bitcoin as an actual currency and like means of transact
Speaker 1: it certainly hasn't reached the level of adoption that the
Speaker 1: most bullish people thought for everyday payment. But Polygon is
Speaker 1: really focus on the payment sector and becoming the lead there.
Speaker 1: So we spent a lot of time working with different
Speaker 1: stable coins. Predominantly it's USD because that's typically what's used
Speaker 1: for payments, but we are doing a lot with other
Speaker 1: types of stable coins as well, which is so exciting
Speaker 1: that people will actually be able to turnsact in their
Speaker 1: native currency. For a long time, Polygon was what we
Speaker 1: call a general purpose chain where it was built to
Speaker 1: scale ethereum and be good at everything, so you could
Speaker 1: send payments on Polygon, you could do NFTs, you could
Speaker 1: do game, and you could do defy. All of these
Speaker 1: send on Polygon. And the as this industry was growing
Speaker 1: and maturing, you started seeing chains get more and more
Speaker 1: specialized and the like focus because they're like, we are
Speaker 1: going to be the best gaming chain, we are going
Speaker 1: to be the best DeFi chain, and I'm kind of
Speaker 1: tailoring their text sack to that. So Polygons have like
Speaker 1: payments are really the number one use case for crypto
Speaker 1: is sending money in a cryptograph fleet cryptographically secure way.
Speaker 1: So we've been we have what we call our giga
Speaker 1: Gas roadmap, which is scaling up to one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: transactions per second and having no reorgs, almost instant finality.
Speaker 1: We actually just had a hard fork called the Rio
Speaker 1: hard fork, where we have five thousand tps and no reorgs,
Speaker 1: basically finality within five seconds, which is what you need
Speaker 1: for payments, right, like you don't want to be a merchant,
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I make the joke about bitcoin
Speaker 1: all the time, like I feel like every time that
Speaker 1: I try to transform my bitcoin to a central exchange, like, oh,
Speaker 1: of course, this is the block that takes thirty five
Speaker 1: minutes to mine, Like I feel like I'm with that.
Speaker 1: So that's one thing that Polygon'm working on is like
Speaker 1: absolutely owning the payments. But then crypto is bigger than that.
Speaker 1: So we have another product or initiative called ag layer,
Speaker 1: which is the interoperability solution. So we believe that chains
Speaker 1: will be specialized in the future and you're just going
Speaker 1: to have like app chains and hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: chains probably who knows how long. But like the way
Speaker 1: that we're seeing blockchains kind of get spun up, now
Speaker 1: there's going to be a ton of blockchains we saw,
Speaker 1: I mean Stripe and PayPal are doing their own blockchain.
Speaker 1: So ag layer is this unified liquidity and information layer
Speaker 1: where the way I would describe it if you're playing
Speaker 1: a game on polaystation and you have a friend playing
Speaker 1: a game on Xbox right now, you can't really play
Speaker 1: with each other, and ag layer allows you to talk.
Speaker 1: So if you go, hey, this is a really cool game.
Speaker 1: I'm a gamer. I like this game on Polygon, in
Speaker 1: this game on Immutable, like and there are two separate games.
Speaker 1: And I have an asset in this game that I
Speaker 1: sold for ETH, and then I want to use it
Speaker 1: to buy an asset in the other game. Like that's
Speaker 1: a painful process for a lot of people, Like you
Speaker 1: got a bridge and then you got to wait, like
Speaker 1: and it's not good. With ag layer, the idea of like, okay,
Speaker 1: then you just take to eth that you just sold
Speaker 1: it for and buy the asset on the other chain
Speaker 1: and all the hard work takes voice in the background.
Speaker 1: But then another really cool thing with ag layer is
Speaker 1: we also just announced what we call CDK Enterprise, which
Speaker 1: is bringing institutions on chain. So one of the problems
Speaker 1: that prevented major companies from going on chain and anti
Speaker 1: money wandering and not wanting to commingle fund with pink
Speaker 1: did tainted money or like it's it's something I never
Speaker 1: thought about, but like, oh, actually, if there's a DeFi
Speaker 1: pool and whatever blacklisted funds are in this DeFi pool,
Speaker 1: you can't actually trade out of it. So we said, like,
Speaker 1: institutions want to come on chain, and we want to
Speaker 1: help them do that in a way that supports their initiative.
Speaker 1: So I think in crypto, I think people in general
Speaker 1: are tribal, and it's like it's us verst them. And
Speaker 1: one thing that I really like about Polygon, I'm like,
Speaker 1: we're not actually trying to destroy tradifi. We're trying to
Speaker 1: make trad fi better through blockchain power. So like we
Speaker 1: want to work together and we want to help you.
Speaker 1: And then like, by doing this, we can help give
Speaker 1: people greater sovereignty, Like you're not going to it's almost
Speaker 1: working within the system that currently is, And like, how
Speaker 1: can we build a solution for traditional finance to come
Speaker 1: on chain and once they do that, things will get better.
Speaker 1: It's not Yeah, I would say, it's basically just an upgrade.
Speaker 1: Like we're going to just constantly work to make things
Speaker 1: better and improve.
Speaker 2: That's great. Yeah, I love that. And you know, interoperabilities
Speaker 2: such a key thing. You know, we were just talking
Speaker 2: about the NFT avatars and if the technology was there
Speaker 2: for interoperability to move these avatars so to speak, or
Speaker 2: NFTs to different platforms and have utility around it much more,
Speaker 2: that would boost adoption. So but you know we're in
Speaker 2: the building phase right the infrastructure being set up or
Speaker 2: for all these things. That's really great and great to
Speaker 2: hear the progress of polygons making. I'd love to get
Speaker 2: your thoughts on what's happening in the crypto market. You know,
Speaker 2: we got lots going on with tradfi adopting at a
Speaker 2: rapid pace, a lot of folks tokenizing on stable coins,
Speaker 2: the banks launching custody, they want to want stable coins.
Speaker 2: What are you thought and how the adoption has searched
Speaker 2: for crypto.
Speaker 1: I think we are in the regulatory clarity phase of crypto.
Speaker 1: Like that's what if you subscribe to the four year cycle,
Speaker 1: and like this is what this cycle is. In this cycle,
Speaker 1: I think right now a lot of people thought this
Speaker 1: was going to be the mass adoption cycle, and I
Speaker 1: actually think this is the clarity cycle where we're going to.
Speaker 1: This is going to be the foundation for the future.
Speaker 1: And like once we set up the systems in place,
Speaker 1: the legislation for these traditional finance. That's when mass adoption
Speaker 1: will really take off. I mean it's I love seeing
Speaker 1: I feel like every other day there's a like this
Speaker 1: bank is offering bitcoin assets to its customers, and we
Speaker 1: just work with an institutional bankup gone that's allowing hole
Speaker 1: staking for their customers, and like seeing this come out
Speaker 1: over and over, I'm like, this is really really fun.
Speaker 1: I don't it's funny. I'm with the markets. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the price will be tomorrow, but
Speaker 1: I feel like I know where we're headed in the
Speaker 1: next thirty to fifty years, like that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and there's always ups and down. So but no, I
Speaker 1: think it's super exciting, and I don't. I mean it's
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm a permeable with like how we're
Speaker 1: going and like irrationally optimistic. But I think, yeah, I
Speaker 1: love seeing where the markets are at right now. In general,
Speaker 1: I think the cycle kind of got slowed down a
Speaker 1: little bit, but we're going to see call it all
Speaker 1: season or more assets. So, like, I know bitcoin, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's done with its moment, but it had
Speaker 1: its run up and we saw it was basically bitcoin
Speaker 1: and then I don't know, I throw a dart on
Speaker 1: a chart, and like you got these random ones that
Speaker 1: did their run. But we haven't really seen the asset
Speaker 1: class in crypto have its moment, and I think we
Speaker 1: are going to see that very soon. Just I think
Speaker 1: it's I think part of it was it was so
Speaker 1: much easier everyone knew bitcoin, Like I feel like everyone
Speaker 1: knew bitcoin in twenty thirteen or twenty seventeen, Like doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they used it or could tell you exactly what
Speaker 1: it was, but they heard the word. And so when
Speaker 1: you're talking about ETFs and all of these things, like okay,
Speaker 1: bitcoin will have this traditional finance I don't know, boomer cycle.
Speaker 1: Like all of my friend's parents, like mostly dads asked
Speaker 1: me what I think about bitcoin, like and buying it
Speaker 1: in their IRA retirement account. It's like, okay, that is
Speaker 1: that's progress, and I'm not going to say, like think
Speaker 1: negatively of that. But I think eventually, when you get
Speaker 1: millennials and gen Z getting older and I would say
Speaker 1: have more wealth and equity, then we can really see
Speaker 1: a lot of these other sort of I don't know
Speaker 1: all points really that provide a different value proposition than
Speaker 1: bitcoin does. They will also see really huge girl I
Speaker 1: also think the market's really inefficient and doesn't really know
Speaker 1: how to price things right now, because that's also new.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and hopefully we can get the Clarity
Speaker 2: Act pass, because I mean that will help boost adoption
Speaker 2: once it's illegal, clarity what you can and can't do,
Speaker 2: which regulators in charge of what, And it will allow
Speaker 2: more folks and more companies in the tech world and
Speaker 2: different parts of business to be able to integrate blockchain
Speaker 2: and crypto.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, I'm moving forward to.
Speaker 2: That, Yeah for sure. All right, Timmy, I got some
Speaker 2: wrap up questions here for you. First, if you could
Speaker 2: create your own metaverse, will the theme be.
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings? I can't tell if she can
Speaker 1: tell behind me, but I am a huge Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love Middle Earth like for sure, rapid fire questions.
Speaker 1: Favorite food probably ice cream? Look forward to eating most?
Speaker 2: Oh? Sure, favorite musician or band.
Speaker 1: I'll be surprised if very many of your listeners have
Speaker 1: heard of this band. But they're called Libio, Like they're
Speaker 1: kind of an alternative rock band, but I would say
Speaker 1: they're they're my favorite one. I feel like also everyone,
Speaker 1: it's funny. I know we a one time and I'm
Speaker 1: like I feel like music everyone of like your favorite
Speaker 1: music was when you were fifteen to twenty two, and
Speaker 1: like that's that for everyone? Like what you listen dude
Speaker 1: at that age?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you get the nostalgic sentimental connection to it. Right.
Speaker 1: Favorite movie I'm going to just say V for Vendetta
Speaker 1: was like a very impactful movie for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one of my favorite movies.
Speaker 1: Favorite book Catch twenty two by Joseph Heller.
Speaker 2: And when you're not working, what are you doing for fun?
Speaker 1: Watching basketball? Playing basketball? Honestly, I feel like I also
Speaker 1: am living the dream where I'm like trying to figure
Speaker 1: out where the next Like crypto play is like it's
Speaker 1: it's my job and it's a very big time hobby.
Speaker 2: So nice. You should check out what Tristan Thompson and
Speaker 2: some of these guys have been doing. They've been working
Speaker 2: on some crypto projects.
Speaker 1: That's then charged.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so we'll see you. I know there's been
Speaker 2: NBA top Shot and some of it was like NFT
Speaker 2: based and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think top Shots was an amazing getting people
Speaker 1: on chain. I think it was like there and that's
Speaker 1: another example of getting web two people on chain without
Speaker 1: Malan that they're on chain.
Speaker 2: Timmy, great stuff man. Looking forward to seeing the growth
Speaker 2: with our or our slash cr Crancy and that's all Brenden,
Speaker 2: a huge community, and looking forward to the future updates
Speaker 2: and as well as around.
Speaker 1: Part Yeah, I know, I know we talked about it,
Speaker 1: but I'm looking forward to you something on doing an
Speaker 1: AMA there like well, uh, I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: I think people can get a lot out of it,
Speaker 1: So I'm excited to see what's happening.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure, Timmy, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 1: Thank you you have a good one.