Speaker 1: Ether is not a younger brother of Bitcoin. For a
Speaker 1: lot of its history they've traded in tandem. But I
Speaker 1: think ethereum has an intrinsic value given the tailwinds. It's programmable.
Speaker 1: The future of finance is going to be written on ethereum,
Speaker 1: not Bitcoin. So I do think we need to start
Speaker 1: thinking of these things as decoupling. Each one should stand
Speaker 1: on the merits of the utility and the value they provide.
Speaker 1: But the idea of throwing out price points of what's
Speaker 1: going to happen, you're just going to be wrong and
Speaker 1: let people down.
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Speaker 2: welcome into the Thinking Crypto Podcast. I'm your host, Tony Edward,
Speaker 2: and we are recording at Station three in New York's
Speaker 2: Financial District. And joining me today is Joseph Shalom, who
Speaker 2: is the CEO of Sharplink.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Sharplink is the institutional grade etherorem treasury platform for smarter,
Speaker 2: more productive access to eth. Joseph is also the former
Speaker 2: Managing Director and Head of Strategic Ecosystem Partnerships at Blackrock.
Speaker 2: He was instrumental in driving the firm's global strategy across
Speaker 2: digital assets, fintech innovation, and blockchain infrastructure. Joseph, great to
Speaker 2: have you.
Speaker 1: Really happy to be here, Tony.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Joseph, you have a plethora of knowledge in the market,
Speaker 2: so I'm really excited to dive into crypto as well
Speaker 2: as what's happening in the broader markets. I would love
Speaker 2: to start with your background. Tell us about where you're from.
Speaker 2: How'd you make a way into finance and end up
Speaker 2: at black Rock?
Speaker 1: Sure, I grew up in the DC area. Actually pretty grateful,
Speaker 1: have amazing parents, child of immigrants. Education was a big deal.
Speaker 1: I went to law school, I moved to New York,
Speaker 1: fell in love with the city, went to Columbia, and
Speaker 1: after graduating, thought I would go right into business or
Speaker 1: finance or diplomacy, And I actually practiced venture and technology
Speaker 1: law in what today younger people would call web one.
Speaker 1: Learned tremendous lessons business models colliding, I saw innovation, I
Speaker 1: saw fraud, And after doing that for a number of years,
Speaker 1: getting married, paying off my debt, I got recruited to
Speaker 1: go to Blackrock, and that was in early two thousand
Speaker 1: and five.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Did you always think you would want to work in
Speaker 2: finance or was just kind of something that pulled you
Speaker 2: in and you got interested in it.
Speaker 1: Actually I wanted to go to the Foreign Service, but
Speaker 1: when I graduated from undergrad it was like a year
Speaker 1: and a half wait to take the Foreign Service exam.
Speaker 1: So I went to law school. And I would tell
Speaker 1: you studying law was great for both broadening and deepening
Speaker 1: your mindset, and it actually let you focus on problems
Speaker 1: without having to be an expert in any area. And
Speaker 1: practicing technology law. You know, during the Internet Boom and
Speaker 1: Bust were some of the greatest lessons of my work experience.
Speaker 1: And I joined Blackrock when Blackrock was a very small,
Speaker 1: not well known, institutional only fixed income US asset manager.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the fourteen trillion dollar trusted fiduciary that it
Speaker 1: is today. And I joined a business unit that was
Speaker 1: basically building a fintech platform, a SaaS platform called Aladdin
Speaker 1: and spent about twelve years helping scale that business as
Speaker 1: the chief operating officer. And it was some of the
Speaker 1: most foundational positive experiences working with brilliant people who knew
Speaker 1: technology and the markets, and those three things don't always
Speaker 1: go together.
Speaker 2: That's incredible. So you played a key role in helping
Speaker 2: Blackrock become the world's largest asset manager.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, I would. I would say that I
Speaker 1: played a role with incredible tea people, and for most
Speaker 1: of my career I was kind of a number two,
Speaker 1: you know, always supporting, you know, the heads of businesses,
Speaker 1: and you know, when we transition to talk about sharplink,
Speaker 1: one of the fun things in your career is going
Speaker 1: from a number two to a number one. But the
Speaker 1: beautiful thing about Blackrock is if you do the right
Speaker 1: thing and you learn the business, you can gain the
Speaker 1: hardest currency and to achieve which is also the easiest
Speaker 1: one to lose, which is trust. And the foundation of
Speaker 1: my whole career was building trust and solving hard problems.
Speaker 1: And I'm super grateful for the twenty years I spent there.
Speaker 2: Where along the journey at Blackrock, did you discover blockchain crypto?
Speaker 2: And maybe it's also in line with the CEO Larry Fink,
Speaker 2: where at one point he was in type crypto or
Speaker 2: bitcoin and now obviously things have changed. But where was
Speaker 2: that aha moment for you?
Speaker 1: So I had a bunch of roles at Blackrock in
Speaker 1: the wealth space. I spent a year as the deputy
Speaker 1: COO of the firm, and in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: I took a role basically running partnerships and a bunch
Speaker 1: of ecosystems, some boring ecosystems, some innovative ecosystems, but one
Speaker 1: of them was inheriting a one person blockchain team. Actually,
Speaker 1: when you do a shout out, it's a wonderful Canadian
Speaker 1: guy named Robbie Mitchnick who's actually currently running digital assets
Speaker 1: at Blackrock, and he taught me everything I needed to
Speaker 1: know about blockchain and crypto. I would say, we took
Speaker 1: a couple of years to figure out what the role
Speaker 1: of a trusted fiduciary asset manager could be, Like I
Speaker 1: don't like using the word tradfi, but what a large
Speaker 1: financial player could do to play a positive role for
Speaker 1: our clients. And we spent almost two years twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty twenty doing over a couple hundred meetings with the ecosystem.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible to go from a one person team
Speaker 2: to what Blackrock is doing now with tokenization. ETF's the
Speaker 2: most successful ETF and history of ets which is incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we did it the right way. There's a
Speaker 1: misnomer or a myth in the industry that when you
Speaker 1: build financial products, you create demand. In fact, we built
Speaker 1: the products because their word demand, and so the idea
Speaker 1: of listening to clients learning that some of the largest
Speaker 1: wealth managers and individuals and institutions actually wanted exposure to
Speaker 1: bitcoin and ether not much more. They just couldn't own
Speaker 1: spot and so for almost two to three years they
Speaker 1: had been pouring billions of dollars to get crypto exposure
Speaker 1: through a proxy investment, which was Crypto VC, because they
Speaker 1: could invest in venture capital and they did that and
Speaker 1: they created a massive supply of capital into the ecosystem
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen, nineteen, and twenty and it turns out
Speaker 1: that that was a good strategy, but it underperformed bitcoin
Speaker 1: and ether, and eventually we worked with our regulators along
Speaker 1: with eleven other issuers to be in the position to
Speaker 1: launch a Bitcoin ETF and an ETHTF in January and
Speaker 1: July of twenty twenty four. But the misunderstanding was like
Speaker 1: Blackrock built the products and the clients came. The clients
Speaker 1: were there was just great product market fit.
Speaker 2: So in addition to the et apps, the demand for
Speaker 2: the ETFs and access to bitcoin and ether, was there
Speaker 2: also demand for tokenized products or that was something black
Speaker 2: Rock that pioneering to maybe let the consumer know, hey,
Speaker 2: there's an alternate option that could give you more benefits. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think when we set a strategy in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one on what could be the benevolent role of an
Speaker 1: influential trusted asset manager, it was really around three pillars.
Speaker 1: The idea that stable coins, you know, essentially tokenized versions
Speaker 1: of dollars on chain, We're going to change how value
Speaker 1: is moved, and we partnered with Circle. We managed their
Speaker 1: treasury reserve of USDC and that was a great learning experience,
Speaker 1: and it also taught me that partnerships are win win
Speaker 1: and they could endure through cycles. The second was crypto exposure.
Speaker 1: We connected the black Rock fintech platform to coinbase so
Speaker 1: clients could invest in bitcoin and ether alongside their other
Speaker 1: portfolio investments. They weren't going to do it in some
Speaker 1: web three smart wallet. In DeFi, we launched ETFs to
Speaker 1: give them that exposure. And the third pillar was tokenization.
Speaker 1: And you had mentioned Larry Fink. I've never been a
Speaker 1: spokesman for Larry. I'm not a spokesman for Larry, but
Speaker 1: he really evolved as thinking on bitcoin. And I give
Speaker 1: him a lot of credit because there's very few people
Speaker 1: in their sixties or seventies who have the humility to
Speaker 1: continue to be a student of the market and a
Speaker 1: student of technology, and he learned that it's an incredible
Speaker 1: store of value and it has a role in a portfolio.
Speaker 1: I think Blackrock and others believe even more strongly that
Speaker 1: tokenization is going to essentially be the democratization and digitization
Speaker 1: of all of finance. Crypto is a two point four
Speaker 1: trillion dollar market total financial assets are over seven hundred trillion,
Speaker 1: So I think our clients wanted to know where we
Speaker 1: were going, and we led them along, and we launched
Speaker 1: a token called Biddle, which was a yield bearing security
Speaker 1: on mayet ethereum that was interchangeable twenty four to seven
Speaker 1: with stable coins and can be used as collateral in
Speaker 1: on chain transactions. That became the largest tokenized fund in history,
Speaker 1: not because it was Blackrock. It's because we provided real
Speaker 1: utility and the industry was missing real examples and use
Speaker 1: cases of utility, and we wanted our first foray intertokenization
Speaker 1: to be something that would break barriers and give clients
Speaker 1: more utility than what they had today, which was stable
Speaker 1: coin's not earning yield.
Speaker 2: Pardon the interruption. Hi, I'm Tony. I'm the host of
Speaker 2: the Thinking Crypto podcast. I wanted to ask you if
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Speaker 3: So you've seen Web one, Web two, and worry in
Speaker 3: what many would call Web three. So is this the
Speaker 3: natural order progression where with the Internet you're building layers
Speaker 3: on top of it, and blockchain is one layer and
Speaker 3: you're tokenizing assets on there. So ten years from now, Joseph,
Speaker 3: are we seeing all assets tokenize on blockchain?
Speaker 1: I think the answer is yes. And I'm a futurist.
Speaker 1: I'm a believer that certain things can never be reversed,
Speaker 1: and technological progress is one of them. You know, when
Speaker 1: you're used to trading Monday through Friday nine thirty am
Speaker 1: to four pm, and you know in Asia, if you
Speaker 1: sell something on a Friday, you don't get your cash
Speaker 1: until Tuesday evening on T plus two settlement. Once people
Speaker 1: have an ability to trade twenty four to seven in
Speaker 1: a programmable way with instant settlement. And I'll use a
Speaker 1: word that's misunderstood, which is composability. The idea that today
Speaker 1: if you own a physical version of gold, or if
Speaker 1: you own a stock custodied at a big bank, there's
Speaker 1: not much you can do with it. You own it
Speaker 1: in digital format, you can lend it, you could bit
Speaker 1: you could you know, earn yield by providing it to
Speaker 1: hedge funds and others, or stable coins. You know, you
Speaker 1: own a stable coin, you hopefully can start earning some yield.
Speaker 1: You can't when you deposit into a checking account. So
Speaker 1: I do believe everything will be tokenized. I think it'll
Speaker 1: happen by as a class, and I think it'll happen
Speaker 1: in step functions.
Speaker 2: This question applies to both black rock as well as sharplink.
Speaker 2: Why Ethereum, why not another smart contract platform?
Speaker 1: Sure? I think there are two things that we need
Speaker 1: to tip our hat to. One was Bitcoin, the first
Speaker 1: fully decentralized network that was based on cryptographic proofs. In
Speaker 1: that case proof of work, very energy inefficient. But it
Speaker 1: led to this idea that why not have a version
Speaker 1: of a programmable decentralized network that was programmable. You know,
Speaker 1: I've said that twice, but truly programmable. And you know,
Speaker 1: when Italic and others got together to write the Ethereum
Speaker 1: white paper, it was really important. They spent a decade
Speaker 1: building the underlying foundation for decentralized, trusted, programmable infrastructure. And
Speaker 1: I feel very strongly that there are many trying to imitate,
Speaker 1: but there is not a blockchain that has ten years.
Speaker 1: In this case, Ethereum has been up since July of
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, zero downtime, truly decentralized, a million plus validators,
Speaker 1: tens and tens of thousands of developers, you know, clients
Speaker 1: across eighty countries, and it's never gone down. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you one thing. I don't know a lot, but
Speaker 1: from my twenty years of experience at Blackrock, I know something.
Speaker 1: With Surety, which is the largest institutions in the world,
Speaker 1: when they're going to choose a new platform to digitize
Speaker 1: financial markets, it's going to happen on one that's the
Speaker 1: most trusted, the most secure, and has the most liquidity.
Speaker 1: And Ethereum has those qualities. And I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: as a spokesman for Sharplink or a spokesman for Ethereum.
Speaker 1: These are facts. And if you look at stable coins,
Speaker 1: of the three hundred eight billion dollars of stable coin,
Speaker 1: sixty five percent is on Ethereum, and tokenized assets are dominated,
Speaker 1: not because Ethereum is the greatest marketing organization. It's just trusted.
Speaker 2: So on that note, as you mentioned, is not the
Speaker 2: greatest marketing organization. I'm curious how institutions are viewing etherorem
Speaker 2: because there's this paradigm shift, Joseph. For the first time
Speaker 2: you have a network where you can hold or have
Speaker 2: how should I say, a financial incentive to hold a
Speaker 2: native token but also be a participant on a networks.
Speaker 2: It's unlike you know, I think a lot of people say,
Speaker 2: you know, you talk about bitcoin and other networks, Well,
Speaker 2: where's the cash blow, where's the right? They think about
Speaker 2: it from a business standpoint, but they're not thinking from
Speaker 2: a network standpoint. So how are intitutions looking at it
Speaker 2: as an investment, a building opportunity, that type of thing.
Speaker 1: So I think the first I told you we tip
Speaker 1: our hat to bitcoin, you know, laying the foundation for
Speaker 1: another cryptographic decentralized network like ethereum. The second actually is
Speaker 1: to Michael Sailor at Strategy, who had this idea that
Speaker 1: you can give people exposure to an asset, in this
Speaker 1: case Bitcoin through a public company wrapper at Sharplink.
Speaker 2: We do that for Ether.
Speaker 1: I think the fundamental difference between Bitcoin and ether there
Speaker 1: are two. Ethereum is programmable and ether is a natively
Speaker 1: productive asset Because for your viewers, ethereum is a proof
Speaker 1: of steak network. You need to own Ether. You stake
Speaker 1: it to record immutable transactions on the network, and by
Speaker 1: staking your Ether, if you do it the right way,
Speaker 1: you can earn an Ethereum staking rate. Today it's around
Speaker 1: two point seventy five percent. So this idea that you
Speaker 1: can own ether, you can make it productive by securing
Speaker 1: the network, and in return you get a yield. And
Speaker 1: that's why I think Ethereum is a better network and
Speaker 1: Ether is a better treasury asset because it's natively productive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of my questions for you was, how are
Speaker 2: you navigating this bear market, Joseph, because it's rough, right
Speaker 2: as we all market downturns, but it sounds like with Ether,
Speaker 2: regardless of bull or bear, there's that native stake and
Speaker 2: rewards built in, plus you can do DeFi So talk
Speaker 2: to us a bit about the revenue sources for Sharplink
Speaker 2: in this downturn.
Speaker 1: Sure, even just taking a step back, if it's okay.
Speaker 1: Sharplink is an Ethereum digital asset treasury company. We raised
Speaker 1: over three billion dollars in twenty twenty five in common stock,
Speaker 1: so we have zero debt and we use that to
Speaker 1: buy Ether and we take that ether, and from day
Speaker 1: one we've been staking nearly one hundred percent. So you
Speaker 1: stake it, you make your ether productive, You get a
Speaker 1: yield that shows up as revenue on our balance sheet
Speaker 1: for our investors, and we take the returns on our
Speaker 1: staked eth and we've just put it back and we
Speaker 1: grow our eth pile, our eth reserve. We've earned over
Speaker 1: fourteen thousand ether tokens since our inception, So that's number one.
Speaker 1: The second characteristic about why we will survive and thrive
Speaker 1: in both up markets and down markets is we own
Speaker 1: something on behalf of our investors that doesn't exist in crypto, Tony,
Speaker 1: you're ready for this. It's permanent capital. So the idea
Speaker 1: that when you're running a fund, including the funds that
Speaker 1: we launched at black Rock, it's not permanent capital. Investors
Speaker 1: have an ability to take out there. They can redeem
Speaker 1: shares in the ETF and in return, you're selling your
Speaker 1: eth or bitcoin or whatever the native asset is. If
Speaker 1: you own permanent capital and a treasury and you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about the price going up for a
Speaker 1: period the price going down for a period, you can
Speaker 1: actually do amazing things to make your token productive. That
Speaker 1: fund structures can't, and I'd love to share a few examples.
Speaker 1: But while the price when the price of eth goes up,
Speaker 1: our stock goes up. When the price of eth goes down,
Speaker 1: our stock goes down. But we do the same thing
Speaker 1: every day. We make our eth productive, but we're able
Speaker 1: to put it back into the ethereum ecosystem for multiple
Speaker 1: years because we don't have to sell our eth. We've
Speaker 1: never encumbered it. We're not a fund.
Speaker 2: Very interesting. I have not heard of that concept of
Speaker 2: permanent capital. So is anyone else doing it? Or is
Speaker 2: that unique? Too sharp link?
Speaker 1: So, I think there are several other eth debts. Some
Speaker 1: are staking their eth, some aren't. Some have encumbered their
Speaker 1: eth or have taken out debt or preferred equity, and
Speaker 1: some of the other dats actually have been forced to
Speaker 1: sell their eth. There's a few of us who I
Speaker 1: think are organized the right way, and we can make
Speaker 1: our eth natively productive by staking it. But I think
Speaker 1: staking your eth is step one of generating yield. We've
Speaker 1: done other things that are really good for the theory
Speaker 1: and ecosystem. I'd love to share what those are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, please if you can.
Speaker 1: Sure. So when I said that crypto is usually filled
Speaker 1: with short term interest in capital. That's very different than
Speaker 1: traditional finance. You do have short term speculators and buyers,
Speaker 1: but in traditional finance you have people who take their
Speaker 1: capital and they deploy it for multi year periods. So
Speaker 1: let me give you a great example. In any other
Speaker 1: market other than crypto, there's something called term structure, you
Speaker 1: get rewarded by deploying your You get more rewards by
Speaker 1: deploying your capital for longer periods. In crypto, that really
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. So I'll give you a great example of
Speaker 1: a partnership we struck this year. So if you own
Speaker 1: billions of dollars of ETH, you can view it as
Speaker 1: a portfolio and you could take portions of that and
Speaker 1: deployed in more than simple staking. So I only give
Speaker 1: you one great use case or case study. We partnered
Speaker 1: with Consensus, which is the largest ethereum go to market
Speaker 1: company run by Joe Lubin. We partnered with their layer
Speaker 1: two ZKVM blockchain called LINEA, two blue chip DeFi organizations,
Speaker 1: ether Fi and Eigencloud to essentially build a liquid restaking token.
Speaker 1: We deployed two hundred million dollars into that solution. You
Speaker 1: get a restaking rate, and then because we were willing
Speaker 1: to commit our capital to these protocols for multiple years,
Speaker 1: they were willing to give us incentives ether denominated incentives
Speaker 1: on top of our yield. So the idea that you
Speaker 1: could start getting DeFi level yields as an institution was
Speaker 1: really interesting, but without taking more risk. These are incentives
Speaker 1: that will last for our deployment. And if you think
Speaker 1: that's not enough, you know, pushing the fission frontier to
Speaker 1: get additional yield for investors. Very often when you go
Speaker 1: out into DeFi, you're in a web three wallet, you're
Speaker 1: taking all sorts of DeFi risks. We did something that
Speaker 1: had never been done in a public company context is
Speaker 1: we worked with Anchorage Digital, one of our two custodians,
Speaker 1: to host this liquid restaking solution in their qualified custodian.
Speaker 1: So here what I just said, get a restaking rate
Speaker 1: for your investors, get economic incentives on top of that.
Speaker 1: Because you're committing your capital, and if you're able to
Speaker 1: do it in a qualified custodian, you're actually reducing your
Speaker 1: operational risk, which in crypto is ops alpha.
Speaker 2: So this idea, if.
Speaker 1: You have permanent capital, you can go along the ficient
Speaker 1: frontier and generate higher yields for your investors than you
Speaker 1: could if you were a retail alone or if you
Speaker 1: were just an ETF and a fun structure, and doing
Speaker 1: these kinds of things are super fun. You're breaking barriers,
Speaker 1: but you're raising standards at the same time. We hope
Speaker 1: people rinse and repeat. This is the definition of institutional DeFi.
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, So what's the long term vision for sharplink
Speaker 2: and even the theorem as a blockchain platform. I've noticed
Speaker 2: a lot of institutions start with ethan They build there
Speaker 2: because of the security and all the great benefits you
Speaker 2: highlighted before. But what's the long term view for sharplink?
Speaker 1: Sure, I think we and many others, including some of
Speaker 1: our competitors, believe that we're in an institutional adoption supercycle.
Speaker 1: Like that sounds really fancy. People like talking about macro
Speaker 1: and decade long opportunities. It's the idea. If I described
Speaker 1: it six months ago, I would have said there are
Speaker 1: three tailwinds driving adoption of digital assets and particularly on ethereum.
Speaker 1: One was stable coins. You know, stable coins are going
Speaker 1: to grow from a three hundred billion dollar asset class
Speaker 1: when other countries start creating local denominated stable coins, you're
Speaker 1: going to start seeing stable coin size explode. Secretary Vesant,
Speaker 1: US Secretary Treasury says it'll grow into the trillions. It's
Speaker 1: happening on ethereum predominantly. The second is the idea of
Speaker 1: tokenized assets. Right now, there's about thirty billion dollars of
Speaker 1: real world assets that are tokenized. That is a drop
Speaker 1: in the bucket of the seven hundred trillion. If you
Speaker 1: ask them what I'm looking for is I'm looking for
Speaker 1: people to go from tokenizing single funds to earn entire
Speaker 1: fund complexes measured in the trillions. Step function increases. And
Speaker 1: the third I would have said was just this idea
Speaker 1: of institutions coming to DeFi, and a lot of DeFi
Speaker 1: is on ethereum. The good, high quality DeFi is on ethereum.
Speaker 1: The fourth thing, which I think is just emerged, is
Speaker 1: not a cliche. It's this idea that AI is not
Speaker 1: going to be what we've thought of it in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, in twenty twenty five is a generalized AI
Speaker 1: assistant copilots vibe coding you're going to see in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six task specific agents, and then you're going to
Speaker 1: see these agents start collaborating, and then you're going to
Speaker 1: see an ecosystem of agents working on your behalf. When
Speaker 1: that happens, these agents are going to have to trust
Speaker 1: one another, they're going to have to pay one another.
Speaker 1: It's not going to happen in dollars. It's going to
Speaker 1: happen with stable coins, and it's going to create a vibrant,
Speaker 1: almost a machine economy that's going to be in parallel
Speaker 1: to your personal life. That is going to create transaction
Speaker 1: volume that we've never seen before because it's going to
Speaker 1: be automated in real time, and there's a strong belief
Speaker 1: it's going to happen in an Ethereum decentralized economy, so
Speaker 1: you have stable coins, tokenized real world assets, institutional DeFi
Speaker 1: and this idea of a machine agent economy in finance.
Speaker 1: These are massive, massive tailwinds for what we call the
Speaker 1: decade long theory opportunity. And I think Ethereum has not
Speaker 1: only the license to win because it's trusted, secure and liquid.
Speaker 1: It's winning. So I don't believe it's going to be
Speaker 1: the exclusive blockchain. I think there's a role for a
Speaker 1: lot of L two's and other l ones but in finance,
Speaker 1: I think this is going to be the net winner.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I totally agree with you, and I'll show an
Speaker 2: example of you know, you mentioned AI, but also the
Speaker 2: humanoid robots when that is fully commercializing in the warehouses
Speaker 2: and in our homes eventually, you know, I interviewed the
Speaker 2: founder of open Mind. So they're building humanoid robots and
Speaker 2: there's a crypto wallet built in and the robot gets
Speaker 2: its daily download of its constitution from any theorem smart contract,
Speaker 2: which I found fascinating. And I've often looked at movies
Speaker 2: and thought, you know, Skynet and I robot, how do
Speaker 2: we control these things? Well, blockchains a solution, eth being
Speaker 2: one of the you know, the could be it a
Speaker 2: fabric of a lot of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting. I love that I grew up
Speaker 1: in the age of the Jetsons. You may be too
Speaker 1: young to remember the Jetsons, reading Jules Verns and science fiction,
Speaker 1: but I really believe we're going to be shocked because
Speaker 1: when we talk about AI today, it's about a human
Speaker 1: in the front and AI in the back, and humans
Speaker 1: are programming it. I think the role of humans are
Speaker 1: going to be to build governance and guardrails, and the
Speaker 1: AI is going to be autonomous and automated. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think people underestimate the impact of having a digital
Speaker 1: twin of your wallet that's given agency to do things
Speaker 1: on your behalf. Within guardrails, We're going to start seeing
Speaker 1: an asset manager in your wallet. We're going to see
Speaker 1: an automated market maker in your wallet. Instead of you
Speaker 1: going into the pond and trying to fish for yield,
Speaker 1: it's gonna stake your eth, move it around, look for
Speaker 1: yield opportunities. It's going to monitor compliance and risk in
Speaker 1: your smart contracts so you're not the last one out
Speaker 1: when when the next downturn happens. So it's it's going
Speaker 1: to be remarkable, it's inevitable. The real question is it
Speaker 1: going to be how fast is it going to mainstream?
Speaker 1: But I'm excited and I think it's going to happen
Speaker 1: on decentralized networks, not on vendor locked in networks.
Speaker 2: So Joseph, it sounds like I'm not gonna need a
Speaker 2: RIA or a wealth manager. I'll have my AI agent.
Speaker 2: And it's a bit of way off, but it can
Speaker 2: do that twenty four to seven and go into different
Speaker 2: markets globally because everything's going to be on the blockchain
Speaker 2: token ies twenty four to seven, three sixty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that is the answer. I still think
Speaker 1: there'll be roll for banks. It might be more in
Speaker 1: commercial relationships than in retail, but I think there's going
Speaker 1: to be a view no different when you got your phone,
Speaker 1: your iPhone, your Samsung in the early days, you had
Speaker 1: an expectation around a commercial experience, a consumer experience, always on,
Speaker 1: always available, programmable, easy to use. You don't have that
Speaker 1: experience in finance today. And once you get a taste
Speaker 1: of what that's going to be like. And I don't
Speaker 1: mean this like you know you're on a blockchain. I
Speaker 1: don't mean the UX is bad. I mean it's just seamless,
Speaker 1: and it's happening behind the scenes. You don't even know
Speaker 1: you're on the chain. You don't know that you have
Speaker 1: an AI agent helping you. When that happens, there's no
Speaker 1: going back. And I think some of the largest institutions
Speaker 1: in the world are starting to realize they need to evolve.
Speaker 1: Stop talking about accounts, start talking about wallets.
Speaker 2: Wallets with sharpling strategy around ether, do you foresee potentially
Speaker 2: adding layer two assets layer twos on etherrem into your
Speaker 2: treasury or it doesn't really make sense.
Speaker 1: I think for us, ether is going to be that
Speaker 1: trust commodity that secures the future transactions, whether again they're cryptonative,
Speaker 1: whether they're in DeFi, whether they're tokenized real world assets
Speaker 1: trading for it twenty four to seven, whether it's the
Speaker 1: machine agentic economy on ethereum. So I think Ether is
Speaker 1: going to be a really really important token, almost a
Speaker 1: trust commodity, in all order to help secure these transactions.
Speaker 1: So Ether has a lot of tailwinds. I do think
Speaker 1: that the market isn't yet pricing all that in, but
Speaker 1: I do think in the market we're going to start
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of divergence and differentiation between tokens and
Speaker 1: protocols that are truly providing utility versus those who think
Speaker 1: first price action then utility. I think the price action
Speaker 1: is going to follow the utility, not the other way around.
Speaker 1: And October tenth last year was a bit of a
Speaker 1: wake up call, and I think we're going to have
Speaker 1: a flight to quality and utility, and I think that's
Speaker 1: good for the markets.
Speaker 2: Do you think the catalyst for that is the Clarity
Speaker 2: Act passing where you have the clear rules of the road.
Speaker 2: It might help mitigate some of the over speculation, which look,
Speaker 2: speculation is part of every market, but you know the
Speaker 2: rug polls and things like that. We weed that out,
Speaker 2: and like you said, we entered an era of utility.
Speaker 1: I think that I think that is the case. I
Speaker 1: think it's going to happen with or without the Clarity Act.
Speaker 1: I think if the Clarity Act doesn't pass before the midterms,
Speaker 1: the CFTC and SEC they're working in unison, they're working
Speaker 1: in concert, and they'll do eighty to ninety percent of
Speaker 1: this through rule making. That said, I'm optimistic the Clarity
Speaker 1: Act will pass with some sort of compromise between the
Speaker 1: banks and the stable coin issuers. I think what's even
Speaker 1: more important is that you know, a lot of the
Speaker 1: liquidity was coming from speculative money, which is actually good. Sure,
Speaker 1: startups need the innovation, they need investment, but I do
Speaker 1: think there's a long tail of tokens that don't have
Speaker 1: a ton of utility. The real institutional capital is going
Speaker 1: to go to the ones that are going to be
Speaker 1: building the next layer of infrastructure, the next layer of governance,
Speaker 1: the next layer of a machine AGENTIC economy, and I
Speaker 1: think we're going to see a differentiation in twenty six
Speaker 1: and certainly in twenty seven immedia.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of like the maturing of the crypto
Speaker 2: mark if you want to say that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's maturing, but it doesn't mean that the building
Speaker 1: is going to slow down and the innovation is going
Speaker 1: to slow down. It's still really volatile, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: a great aspect of a market that's in growth stages.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It reminds me of in I think it was
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six when President Bill Clinton at a time
Speaker 2: they passed the Telecommunications Bill. You know, it's the big
Speaker 2: battle between those folks and the Internet, and that kicked
Speaker 2: off incredible, incredible innovation. So it feels like we're at
Speaker 2: that moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think there's this idea that there is a
Speaker 1: doomsday coming because of AI. It's going to take over
Speaker 1: our lives, it's going to take control of governance, it's
Speaker 1: going to replace jobs. There was that same fear in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six that the Internet was going to destroy
Speaker 1: business models. People didn't understand that it just became the
Speaker 1: new means of value creation, the new means of production.
Speaker 1: And as long as we can make sure that these
Speaker 1: new AI models are in the hands of everyone. In fact,
Speaker 1: they should be in every library, accessible to every human being.
Speaker 1: That is going to be the new means of production,
Speaker 1: and it actually breaks down barriers. You may not need
Speaker 1: the same level of Ivy League education to start your
Speaker 1: own company. You just need access. So I'm actually very
Speaker 1: bullish that we may have a period of disruption where
Speaker 1: jobs are going to be disrupted, but I think it's
Speaker 1: going to create incredible prosperity and efficiency. The number one
Speaker 1: question is the benefits of this efficiency gain that's going
Speaker 1: to be step function. Is it going to go to
Speaker 1: all humans or is it going to be held in
Speaker 1: the hands of a few companies. And the question is
Speaker 1: are sovereign nations going to put barriers up or is
Speaker 1: this something that's going to reintroduce globalism where information value
Speaker 1: will no longer have national barriers. So those are my
Speaker 1: two questions. Where is the value going to inure to
Speaker 1: and are is this going to be Are these going
Speaker 1: to become sovereign chains with walls or is it going
Speaker 1: to be open to everyone? And it's going to reintroduce
Speaker 1: this idea of globalism, globalism of information and supply chains.
Speaker 2: Great question, and I'm hoping it's interoperable and everybody works together.
Speaker 2: And you know, with stable coins and CBDCs are moving
Speaker 2: at T zero, suddenly instantly we can move money faster, cheaper,
Speaker 2: better lives for people and things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I just came back from two plus weeks
Speaker 1: in Asia, and I learned a few lessons. I learned
Speaker 1: that when the Genius Act was passed and the Trump
Speaker 1: administration became pro crypto, the US catapult to ten years
Speaker 1: forward in terms of clarity lowercase C clarity. And it
Speaker 1: started with this idea of we need to mainstream stable coins.
Speaker 1: And there's a geopolitical angle that people aren't talking about enough,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, as demand for US treasury is waning, Russia, China,
Speaker 1: Europe buying less US treasury, stable coins require people to
Speaker 1: buy treasuries. And of the three hundred and eight billion
Speaker 1: dollars of stable coins, tether USDC that the twelfth largest
Speaker 1: creditor of the US government. So when I was in Asia,
Speaker 1: I think there was a wake up call and realization
Speaker 1: that the gun went off and we're in a race.
Speaker 1: And whether you're in Hong Kong, Soul or Tokyo, there's
Speaker 1: a realization they need to pass stable coin legislation, they
Speaker 1: need to start issuing licenses because they want their economy
Speaker 1: to not be beholden to US dollar transactions through stable coins.
Speaker 1: And if the world is going to tokenize and digitize,
Speaker 1: there need to be Korean wand back stable coins and
Speaker 1: you know, Japanese yenn and Hong Kong dollar, and that
Speaker 1: is the first step to what's coming next, which is tokenization.
Speaker 1: Each of these regions want to become the digital hub
Speaker 1: of Asia, and they know they're in a geopolitical competition
Speaker 1: with the US.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's such a great geopolitical layer to all
Speaker 2: of this. And you know, I watch the top holders
Speaker 2: of US treasuries and they see Tew They're climbing up
Speaker 2: the list.
Speaker 1: Like every year alongside circle USDC.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Such a paradigm shift completely, maybe a new Bretton Woods moment,
Speaker 2: if you want to call it that.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, we're we're at the end of an
Speaker 1: eighty year supercycle and there'll be a new supercycle. I
Speaker 1: liken it a little bit to you know. The nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies saw the electronification of all equity markets and the
Speaker 1: nineties and two thousands on the bond market. This is
Speaker 1: going to be the future of how we live. It's
Speaker 1: going to start in finance, and it's going to move
Speaker 1: to governance, and it's going to really empower, you know,
Speaker 1: billions of people in ways that they haven't been before.
Speaker 1: So I want to stay really positive. I think this
Speaker 1: can be a force of immense prosperity and good.
Speaker 2: You know, you mentioned the change that took place in
Speaker 2: the seventies with the digitization. Do you see that maybe
Speaker 2: twenty thirties a bit too early, But let's say twenty
Speaker 2: thirty five, the convergence of the stock and equity markets
Speaker 2: with crypto and the commodity markets, and it's no longer
Speaker 2: they're in their own segmented group, but rather it's just
Speaker 2: the market because it's all token.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Someone I admire, my chairman at Sharplank, Joe Lubin,
Speaker 1: has a great analogy. He says, we're starting on separate
Speaker 1: rail tracks. Those rails will converge and the word trad
Speaker 1: fi will become obsolete, And I think the word crypto
Speaker 1: will become obsolete, and we're just gonna call it five.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be finance it's going to be digital, and
Speaker 1: it's gonna be cryptographic, and it's going to be twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven, and it's gonna unleash stranded capital like
Speaker 1: we've never seen before. But it's just going to become
Speaker 1: digital finance. We're going to live in a digital world,
Speaker 1: in a digital economy, and it's going to be in
Speaker 1: our wallets and it's gonna be in chips and it's
Speaker 1: gonna be all around us.
Speaker 2: Wow, a brave new world. I have an eight year
Speaker 2: old daughter, so I think about the world she's going
Speaker 2: to be living in it when she becomes an adult.
Speaker 2: And I'm trying to, like maybe Prepper, here's blockchain, here's AI,
Speaker 2: here's what to expect, and you know, I try to
Speaker 2: not also push certain things that are happening now too
Speaker 2: much because it's going to change by the time.
Speaker 1: Although it's interesting, I told you I grew up in
Speaker 1: an immigrant family. I was an immigrant to technology as well.
Speaker 1: It happened when I was in my Internet happened when
Speaker 1: I was in my twenties. Your daughter is going to
Speaker 1: be digitally native. You're going to become, you know, the
Speaker 1: old digital immigrant. She's going to become your help desk
Speaker 1: I see it with my eleven year old at home,
Speaker 1: So it's amazing.
Speaker 2: It's amazing how that works. It's fascinating. And you know,
Speaker 2: with the building out of the tokenization market and stable
Speaker 2: coins and much more. You know, we talked about it
Speaker 2: eth being that first up blockchain of many institutions and
Speaker 2: companies go to. There are also a lot of l twos,
Speaker 2: which I referenced earlier. Recently of Ittalic Blootarouen said there
Speaker 2: may not be a need for as many l twos,
Speaker 2: especially as there's upgrades on etherorem as a layer one.
Speaker 2: So do you see some consolidation there, not that all
Speaker 2: l twos are going to disappear, of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Look, I think the l twos on Ethereum were critical
Speaker 1: for five, six, seven years, and I think they're going
Speaker 1: to play a role in the future. They were critical
Speaker 1: because Ethereum built its protocol to be the most secure,
Speaker 1: to be the most trusted, to never go down. But
Speaker 1: they didn't actually prioritize initially in their roadmap throughput to
Speaker 1: the level that's needed for what's coming and privacy. So
Speaker 1: they had an intentional roll up strategy where you know,
Speaker 1: you can encourage layer twos to benefit from the security
Speaker 1: of Ethereum, to be EVM compatible, but to essentially be
Speaker 1: able to be customizable and build massive throughput. In the
Speaker 1: last couple of years and the next couple of years,
Speaker 1: you're seeing step function increases in Ethereum mainenet, the layer
Speaker 1: ones transaction throughput. I think what Fetalic is saying is
Speaker 1: you can't be a generalist layer two just because you're fast.
Speaker 1: It's not enough. You need to have an edge, and
Speaker 1: that could be privacy, it could be something else. You
Speaker 1: might be the institutional chain, you might have a you know,
Speaker 1: an asset class that you're focused on, But to to
Speaker 1: be a generalized L two is not helpful. That said,
Speaker 1: I think there will be other l ones. Many are
Speaker 1: coming for Ethereum. I just think the finality and economic
Speaker 1: security needed by finance it's going to happen on Ethereum.
Speaker 1: Others may be great for meme coins, gaming and things
Speaker 1: that require less economic security, but I think the advantage
Speaker 1: of speed. It's coming to MAInet and you're going to
Speaker 1: see it be both secure and with maximum throughput. So
Speaker 1: we will challenge some of the layer twos unless they
Speaker 1: customize and look, there's a reason there's a reason why
Speaker 1: Robin Hood, there's a reason why coinbase built on ethereum.
Speaker 1: They want the inherent security, but they want to be
Speaker 1: able to customize it in the way they want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense, and it seems like Joseph, I
Speaker 2: don't know if you agree with you, but many organizations
Speaker 2: and companies may just build an L two for their
Speaker 2: inter internal movements of value or whatever they need to do.
Speaker 2: I think of Sony, they built sonyum Etherorem L two. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Look, it's interesting. I think we need to break with
Speaker 1: the prior technological cycles. So what do I mean by that?
Speaker 1: The prior technological cycles, and I'm going to go old school.
Speaker 1: The browser wars, the CRM wars, yeah, the cloud wars,
Speaker 1: the phone wars, the AI wars. They were started with
Speaker 1: a plethora of participants and then two or three dominated.
Speaker 1: There were net winners. And by the way, in many
Speaker 1: of these use cases, it's the same net winners. It's Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft.
Speaker 1: I think what we're really really hopeful for is that
Speaker 1: there'll be a million chains and a million stable coins,
Speaker 1: and anyone can spin it up and win, and AI
Speaker 1: will not be centralized in three hands. I hope this
Speaker 1: technology revolution is more decentralized. I hope this technology revolution
Speaker 1: is more democratic, and I hope the benefits go to
Speaker 1: the users, not necessarily the incumbents. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what the promise of truly decentralized blockchain and AI can provide.
Speaker 1: There's a role for big technology, but I hope it's
Speaker 1: more democratized than what we've seen in the previous layers,
Speaker 1: and I believe it will be.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm in agreement with you that the powers
Speaker 2: are not consolidated, but more decentralized. And you know, I've
Speaker 2: been hearing to term a lot lately, a level playing field,
Speaker 2: more of a level playing field. I would love to
Speaker 2: get your thoughts on the market conditions. You've seen many
Speaker 2: bull and bear markets. It's all cyclical, right, Joseph. But
Speaker 2: it's of course tough to go through these bear markets.
Speaker 2: Not asking for price predictions, but do you see crypto
Speaker 2: rebounding maybe later this year or next year? Things like that? Sure?
Speaker 1: I think can I start with two statements?
Speaker 2: Sure you can't.
Speaker 1: Like a volatile asset on the upside and bemoan it
Speaker 1: on the downside. That's the definition of volatility. You want
Speaker 1: the upside. It has downside. I've seen similar draw downs
Speaker 1: and consolidations and Bitcoin eighth and others five times in
Speaker 1: my crypto career, and I've only been doing this for
Speaker 1: about six or seven years. And each time it's recovered
Speaker 1: in a V shape recovery and come back stronger. And
Speaker 1: what it often does is it takes out leverage for
Speaker 1: a quarter or two, takes out liquidity for a quarter
Speaker 1: or two, some of the real speculation you benefit on
Speaker 1: the high side of all, you lose on the consolidation period.
Speaker 1: So I'm not freaked out. And by the way I
Speaker 1: said it earlier at sharplink, we're built for up markets
Speaker 1: and down markets. We're productive through every one of these markets,
Speaker 1: I think I said earlier. I think one lesson learned
Speaker 1: from this October tenth deleveraging moment is people need to
Speaker 1: understand the risks of what they're doing. And I think
Speaker 1: what you saw in October tenth on PERP exchanges and
Speaker 1: centralized exchanges and decentralized exchange was there was an expectation
Speaker 1: that if you diversified across exchanges you were fined. But
Speaker 1: then you started seeing things that people didn't understand, which
Speaker 1: was auto deleveraging. Yeah, and you wipe out one side
Speaker 1: of a position, you think you're hedged on the other side,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't work. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: I think we need to do in the crypto space
Speaker 1: is not call everything a tail risk. Yeah, like Toobra eleventh,
Speaker 1: people were telling me, oh, it's a tail risk. It
Speaker 1: was unexpected. Like in all of finance, you model tail risks.
Speaker 1: You understand the risks of your positions, the correlations, the
Speaker 1: counterparty risk, the concentration risks. You know, in this case,
Speaker 1: oracles who are trying to price assets failed and that
Speaker 1: led to a cascading problem. But I'm actually an optimist
Speaker 1: and I think we'll get through in the next few months,
Speaker 1: and I think we'll see Bitcoin and eth reach new highs.
Speaker 1: But I won't throw out random predictions, and I I
Speaker 1: do have a view I want to share, which is
Speaker 1: I'm going to put it out there. Ether is not
Speaker 1: a younger brother of Bitcoin. For a lot of its history,
Speaker 1: they've traded in tandem. But I think ethereum has an
Speaker 1: intrinsic value given the tailwinds. It's programmable. The future of
Speaker 1: finance is going to be written on ethereum, not bitcoin.
Speaker 1: So I do think we need to start thinking of
Speaker 1: these things as decoupling, and each one should stand on
Speaker 1: the merits of the utility and the value they provide.
Speaker 1: But the idea of throwing out price points of what's
Speaker 1: going to happen, you're just going to be wrong and
Speaker 1: let people down. And I also don't like the narrative
Speaker 1: that you know eth is just a coefficient to a
Speaker 1: younger brother of bitcoin. These are these needs to decouple
Speaker 1: and they have to stand on their value and utility.
Speaker 2: What do you think is the catalyst that drives that decoupling.
Speaker 2: And it's also a follow up question to the October
Speaker 2: tenth situation. Is a lack of regulation, a lack of infrastructure,
Speaker 2: or combination of both.
Speaker 1: Actually think it's it's even simpler. So I actually love bitcoin.
Speaker 1: I love ETH. I think there's gonna be a role
Speaker 1: for a lot of utility tokens. But bitcoin does one
Speaker 1: thing exceptionally well. The network is trusted and it moves
Speaker 1: a store of value. At this point, ninety five percent
Speaker 1: of ale bitcoin has been mined, and I think there's
Speaker 1: a million bitcoin left to be mined. And it does
Speaker 1: one thing well. Think of it as digital store of value.
Speaker 1: Not sure if it's really functioned in the last few
Speaker 1: months as digital gold or a or a risk off asset. Ethereum.
Speaker 1: I think will over time gain supremacy because it's programmable.
Speaker 1: And when you start seeing stable coins go from three
Speaker 1: hundred billion to trillions, you start seeing tokenized assets go
Speaker 1: from thirty billion to trillions, You start seeing institutions participate
Speaker 1: in DeFi, you start seeing agentic economies being built through
Speaker 1: smart contracts and rules, and you know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: geek out erc eight zeros or four, which is the
Speaker 1: trustless agent protocol of etheroeum. It's not happening on Bitcoin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I'm not saying one is better than the other.
Speaker 1: I think over time the Theorem network will be a
Speaker 1: more used network and provide more real world utility. But
Speaker 1: I love them both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, They're very different, and I honestly I hold both.
Speaker 2: I stake ETH and Bitcoin is my digital goal. But
Speaker 2: ETH I can do a lot of different things. I
Speaker 2: can build, I can put it to work, and it's
Speaker 2: just why not have both, right? And one is they're
Speaker 2: very different, you know, And as far as network adoption,
Speaker 2: you know, ETH has that ability to have people build
Speaker 2: on it. And metcalslaw can play out there, and I'm
Speaker 2: hoping for the decoupling as well.
Speaker 1: I agree, but I'm not talking about a flippaning. I'm
Speaker 1: not an ethe Maxie. I'm actually a finance transformation maxine.
Speaker 1: I know it's going to happen on ethereum, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you know one thing that is just super interesting is
Speaker 1: is the quantum question has been hurting Bitcoin a little bit.
Speaker 1: And this idea of how do you quantum proof Bitcoin
Speaker 1: including wallets that are og wallets that have never been
Speaker 1: activated in a decade or longer, Whereas Ethereum I think
Speaker 1: has a roadmap to be quantum proof. It's a high
Speaker 1: priority to the Theorem Foundation. There's a working group. So
Speaker 1: I think bitcoin had a singular narrative and it's at
Speaker 1: risk of losing a bit of that narrative because of
Speaker 1: how it's performed. But it's a great asset. It's a
Speaker 1: scarce asset. You want to own rare, scarce assets in
Speaker 1: a world where you know many economies are debasing their
Speaker 1: own currencies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well said, what's on your road map for a sharplink?
Speaker 1: So I think it's really interesting. First of all, I
Speaker 1: want to thank you you're like the first podcast in
Speaker 1: a while that hasn't said we're in DAT four point zero.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The Digital Asset Treasury space launched last summer in Ethereum, Solana,
Speaker 1: Hype and other coins, you know, and there's no ecosystem
Speaker 1: in the world or no business model where you're eight
Speaker 1: months in and you're in version three or four. I
Speaker 1: think we're in version one point zero. Version one was
Speaker 1: building the right team, staking your eth, doing it yourself.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of the dats rely on third
Speaker 1: parties who take a lot of value out of the system.
Speaker 1: I think the second stage or where we're going is
Speaker 1: to make it the most productive and to take that
Speaker 1: permanent capital, in our case billions of ether and put
Speaker 1: it back into the ecosystem, not just to be benevolent
Speaker 1: to the ecosystem, but to drive yield. You do that, right,
Speaker 1: the price of ether will continue going up. And I
Speaker 1: think the third stage is going to be for digital
Speaker 1: asset treasuries to specialize and build operating companies that are
Speaker 1: Ethereum aligned, that help the ecosystem, that drive profits, and
Speaker 1: if those profits and revenues are in ETH, to another
Speaker 1: means to accumulate ETH on the balance sheet. You make
Speaker 1: it productive, you drive yield, put it back on the
Speaker 1: balance sheet. You build ethereum operating businesses, you earn it
Speaker 1: in eth or dollars, you put it back on the
Speaker 1: balance sheet. So it's a very righteous cycle.
Speaker 2: You do this right.
Speaker 1: You don't take out debt, you don't encumber your eth.
Speaker 1: You survive good cycles and bad cycles. And that's fine.
Speaker 1: I think we need to be mature about this. I
Speaker 1: said it before. You can't like a VOLTI asset on
Speaker 1: the upside and bemoan it on the downside.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I really like that you guys don't have
Speaker 2: a plethora of debt hanging over your head. That's a
Speaker 2: very good thing. I got some wrap up questions here
Speaker 2: for you. Sure, First, if you could create your own metaverse,
Speaker 2: what would the.
Speaker 1: Theme be, Oh, you're putting me on the spot, you
Speaker 1: know what I'll do, yls No, no, no. It would be
Speaker 1: a metaverse of the library of libraries, and you'd be
Speaker 1: able to walk into, you know, the Library of Ninveh,
Speaker 1: the Bagdad Library of Wisdom, the US Library of Congress,
Speaker 1: the British Museum Library which has three hundred million artifacts,
Speaker 1: and you'd be able to, you know, in ninveb Babylonia.
Speaker 1: There were artifacts that had, you know, incredible history. Many
Speaker 1: of these were destroyed. So imagine you can walk into
Speaker 1: a library of libraries and then even better, you can
Speaker 1: read and speak any language because AI has translated everything.
Speaker 1: Everything that would be my Disney world. So a metaverse
Speaker 1: library of libraries in your native language, where you can
Speaker 1: feel and touch these dusty books. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: knowledge that have been gathered that has never really been
Speaker 1: accessible to most people because you had to get on
Speaker 1: a plane. Who's going to Iraq, who's going to Alexandria, Egypt,
Speaker 1: not everyone's going to DC to the Library of Congress.
Speaker 1: Make that accessible in your native language. Oh and then
Speaker 1: push a button and a TLDR is what.
Speaker 2: You just didn't read? That would be amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That so I'm going to patent that the Metaverse
Speaker 1: Library of Libraries.
Speaker 2: That might be your next endeavor, Joseph.
Speaker 1: Do you know what, if I had more time, I
Speaker 1: would actually take the whole worldwide organ donation system and
Speaker 1: put it on chain with smart contracts and priorities.
Speaker 2: Sorry, that's that would be a side hobby. Oh wow,
Speaker 2: but I love that at Metaverse Idea. That's something I
Speaker 2: would geek out.
Speaker 1: On and go to you really put me on the spot.
Speaker 1: What's the next put me on the spot questions? I
Speaker 1: like hard questions, rapid fire questions.
Speaker 2: Favorite food.
Speaker 1: Favorite food is usually at restaurants that don't have tablecloths,
Speaker 1: and I will tell you, I just came back from Tokyo,
Speaker 1: Soul and Hong Kong. I really like Korean food, and
Speaker 1: our offices are a block away from New York Korea Town,
Speaker 1: so I would say Korean food, but someplace that doesn't
Speaker 1: have a tablecloth.
Speaker 2: Favorite musician or Ban.
Speaker 1: The Cure from the nineteen eighties and nineties.
Speaker 2: Nice. Favorite movie.
Speaker 1: I don't have a favorite movie. I just I watch
Speaker 1: everything pass Favorite book, I think a book. I don't
Speaker 1: read books. Twice I read a book recently Wise. It's
Speaker 1: a book called A Thousand Brains, and it's this idea
Speaker 1: of a unified theory of intelligence, or a unified theory
Speaker 1: of how the brain works. And it's remarkable. We know
Speaker 1: a lot about the anatomy of the brain, but we
Speaker 1: have no idea why we have like a neocortex and
Speaker 1: billions of neurons, or why they're all firing. And it's
Speaker 1: this theory that there's not one brain determining that I'm
Speaker 1: picking up a mug right now, Sure, there are thousands
Speaker 1: of mini brains who each have their own model. There's
Speaker 1: not a unified model of knowledge in your brain. Each
Speaker 1: one has its own model. And when you touch, perceive,
Speaker 1: or pick up something, they're all firing to put out
Speaker 1: their theory. And there's a consensus mechanism where the brain
Speaker 1: kind of votes, yes, this is a white mug. It's cool.
Speaker 1: It's made of clay, so that a thousand brains with
Speaker 1: different models, each voting, and then you have this idea
Speaker 1: of a voted perception and it's brilliant. So it's called
Speaker 1: a thousand brains. I would highly recommend it. Will and
Speaker 1: by the way, if you're in crypto and you're working
Speaker 1: around decentralized consensus models, it touched a nerve, no pun intended.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's analogous in a way, right, Yeah, that definitely
Speaker 2: makes sense. Why you're networking? What are you doing for fun?
Speaker 1: I'm a father of three, I've been married for twenty
Speaker 1: six years. This year I'm doing something super geeky. My
Speaker 1: local library has a fifty book challenge. Can you read
Speaker 1: fifty books in a year? And I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: short stories and children's anime books. So I'm trying to
Speaker 1: read fifty books this year. And I have like a
Speaker 1: very very taste from things like I just described, to
Speaker 1: murder mysteries to science fiction. I do like to shut
Speaker 1: down on the weekends because I'm a really intense worker. Sure,
Speaker 1: but I spend time with my children tour out of school,
Speaker 1: one lives at home, and I read a lot, and
Speaker 1: I'm really looking forward.
Speaker 2: I live in New York.
Speaker 1: I live outside New York. Every time we've seen the graphs. Yes,
Speaker 1: this winter, the snow came back again.
Speaker 2: So we're recording on Wednesday, fourth and March, so got
Speaker 2: a few more days or four or five days before
Speaker 2: we hit that high sixty eight degree weather, so that
Speaker 2: a should be pretty nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking forward to the spring and seeing grass again.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, Joseph, have great conversation, A pleasure. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for joining.
Speaker 1: Me, my pleasure. Thank you for the questions and making
Speaker 1: this conversational. I hope your listener learns something and I
Speaker 1: learned something too.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for tuning in. Please hit the
Speaker 2: like button, subscribe if you haven't as yet. If you're
Speaker 2: listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify or Apple.
Speaker 2: Please follow and leave a five star rating. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much.