Speaker 1: But the one thing that decentralization does here, of course,
Speaker 1: is that the customer base is.
Speaker 2: Not open to anyone.
Speaker 1: And when you think about what sort of the role
Speaker 1: of advertising, advertising used to be and still is actually
Speaker 1: predominantly I push you something and then you look at it,
Speaker 1: and if you like it, you might react or you
Speaker 1: might not, typically a very low hit rader, whereas in
Speaker 1: Web three, because of the whole capital aspect, it's more
Speaker 1: of the incentive. So in other words, I give you
Speaker 1: an air drop, or I give you a reward or
Speaker 1: an experience, and that's the reason why you go with there.
Speaker 1: So Web three is much of a pull.
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Speaker 3: link in the description. Hey, everybody, welcome into the Thinking
Speaker 3: Crypto podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward and we are
Speaker 3: recording at Station three in New York's Financial District. And
Speaker 3: joining me is Yatsu who is the co founder and
Speaker 3: chairman of Anamoga Brands yacht. Thank you so much for
Speaker 3: taking the time to do this.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. It's great pleasure.
Speaker 3: You just got off a flight, so thank you so much.
Speaker 3: And this is round two of us chatting. We spoke
Speaker 3: about a month ago. We ran out of time because
Speaker 3: there's so much a talk as it relates to Web
Speaker 3: three and the impact it's going to have on society.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to continue the conversation, so let's kick
Speaker 3: it off. Why should people care about Web three?
Speaker 2: Well, geez, start right off with the big one, right, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, so when you think about Web three, maybe before
Speaker 1: we talk about period of the technology, the outcome of
Speaker 1: Web three, which obviously affects things like decentralization, you know,
Speaker 1: through blockchain technology and tokenization, which basically creates more democratic
Speaker 1: access to financial assets for instance. That whole framework opens
Speaker 1: up all these new opportunities, creates a fair better and
Speaker 1: more democratic type of Internet. So we should really all
Speaker 1: care about it because it's the way in which we
Speaker 1: can truly receive the value that we generate.
Speaker 2: In the digital realm. Now.
Speaker 1: When the Internet first formed, the Internet was really you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Web one now like in the nineties,
Speaker 1: it was really something that was an add on.
Speaker 2: To the physical world, right.
Speaker 1: It was like an extension to what we were doing.
Speaker 1: It was not considered our life per se. Most people
Speaker 1: were still reading magazines and people doing stuff offline as
Speaker 1: it were, and there was this Internet thing that was
Speaker 1: extending our services and our ability to buy stuff and
Speaker 1: do stuff and so forth. But digital sort of digital
Speaker 1: things didn't have as much intrinsic value back in the day.
Speaker 1: But today because of the data construct and because of
Speaker 1: network effects. And this is the thing. Network effects are
Speaker 1: the most valuable thing we think in the world today.
Speaker 1: And the reason why they're valuable is because actually they're
Speaker 1: a way in which we really create value out of
Speaker 1: our social connections and out of our networks per se.
Speaker 1: Like even think about it, just you know, forget technology
Speaker 1: for a moment, right, what are you as a human
Speaker 1: without your network, without your friends, without your business relationships?
Speaker 1: Like would people talk to you if you didn't have
Speaker 1: your business connections as an example, would you be a
Speaker 1: member or have social connections if you didn't have a family,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, And one of the reasons why nations
Speaker 1: and society has actually come together is because there's a
Speaker 1: sense of belonging as well, I'm an American, or I'm
Speaker 1: Chinese or I'm wherever. Right, they actually create that sense
Speaker 1: of belonging, and that sense of belonging gives you strength
Speaker 1: in the network. Right, that's just as a basic level.
Speaker 1: And when you think of technology companies like social media companies,
Speaker 1: which are the most powerful ones in the world, Facebook, TikTok,
Speaker 1: and frankly even things like Apple. When you think of Apple,
Speaker 1: it's really a powerful network. You have an Apple, I
Speaker 1: have to buy an Apple so we can air drop
Speaker 1: each stuff to the other, right, Or I use these
Speaker 1: applications that are generated, you know, through the power of
Speaker 1: the networks of others, because I'm now joining an application
Speaker 1: because ten thousand other people are joining it, right. So
Speaker 1: it's really these network effects that make them so valuable.
Speaker 1: But what's happened in Web two is that these network
Speaker 1: effects actually were completely controlled by these large companies, and
Speaker 1: we don't have an ability to own a piece of
Speaker 1: that stake that network, so we're kind of building value
Speaker 1: on these networks without ever receiving it. Now that means
Speaker 1: also we deliver data, we deliver information, and then that
Speaker 1: data becomes things like open AI and becomes CHATGBT, self
Speaker 1: driving cars, so all that value is generated.
Speaker 2: I think about it.
Speaker 1: The top companies in the world, they're all companies that
Speaker 1: have exclusive access to the network effects. But where does
Speaker 1: that value come from. It comes from us as users,
Speaker 1: and we don't actually receive fair value for that. But
Speaker 1: part of the reason is that we weren't really able
Speaker 1: to encapsulate the value of a network effect. It didn't exist.
Speaker 1: And the example I like to give for this one
Speaker 1: is that you know, before, like before sort of intellectual
Speaker 1: property rights, we didn't have a way to encapsulate the
Speaker 1: value of our ideas either, which are equally virtual. Right,
Speaker 1: and when we were able to have IP rights, copyrights,
Speaker 1: you know, trademarks, pattern rights. Actually that created an incredible
Speaker 1: industry which today is employing more than half of I
Speaker 1: think roughly half of Americans, right, And I think I
Speaker 1: think about the top top companies in the world, whether
Speaker 1: it's Microsoft or Apple or Google, these are all companies
Speaker 1: that exist on virtual value over the Internet, actual property
Speaker 1: rights of their trademarks and and their patterns and trade secrets. Right,
Speaker 1: these are this is this is their value.
Speaker 2: And the.
Speaker 1: And and again you know they were benefiting from the
Speaker 1: ability to own this. And now we have this new
Speaker 1: new new property, right this this network sort of effect
Speaker 1: that we can now own through tokenization. Imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: if every user that was on Instagram were actually also
Speaker 1: a kind of stakeholder of Instagram, and the value they
Speaker 1: contribute to the network would actually be something that they
Speaker 1: sort of gives them a stake in the network. Not
Speaker 1: only would it be more powerful and would create more
Speaker 1: sort of sort of a tribal effect between people as
Speaker 1: we see in blockchain, I would also allow them to
Speaker 1: participate in the growth of the network, right and and
Speaker 1: and it would create a sort of a better outcome,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what we see here. I think of
Speaker 1: likes and follows as an example. Even though it's social currency,
Speaker 1: it's a form of currency and it's a form of
Speaker 1: network value, right. I mean, the fact that someone has
Speaker 1: a million followers and someone as one hundred thousand followers
Speaker 1: is a clear distinction of the power of your network
Speaker 1: and the value that you could derive from that. But
Speaker 1: actually it's really just rented value, and we need to
Speaker 1: own it. And that's what web three is able to
Speaker 1: do with digital property rights, the.
Speaker 3: Idea of network effects and met house law and reads law.
Speaker 3: It's so fascinating to me because, as you you know,
Speaker 3: describe it so well, these networks existed in the physical
Speaker 3: world even before the Internet, but now it's on the Internet.
Speaker 3: And to your point, these networks have power because there's
Speaker 3: actual people participating. It's so fascinating.
Speaker 1: And I think the thing is it's deeply human. I mean,
Speaker 1: we are sort of we are social creatures. You know,
Speaker 1: why are things like you know, what is the ultimate
Speaker 1: outside of capital punishment, right, what is the ultimate punishment
Speaker 1: that we have in our social society? You go to
Speaker 1: prism and what does it mean? You're isolated from society?
Speaker 1: That's the penalty. I mean, just if you think of this,
Speaker 1: you know, why is that penalty so excruciating because that
Speaker 1: means we're locked out of our friends, our family, our networks,
Speaker 1: our social environment. So we're robbing them of their social agency,
Speaker 1: which and that's exactly why it's such a big punishment.
Speaker 1: So that means really we crave social attention and we
Speaker 1: crave you know, I'm not saying that everyone is an extrovert,
Speaker 1: but even introverts have strong social bombs. So you could
Speaker 1: argue that some people have less connections, but they're very strong,
Speaker 1: and some people have many connections and maybe they're arguably weaker,
Speaker 1: but the point is that they're still social in nature
Speaker 1: and they want that. And so what the social media
Speaker 1: platforms and frankly, what technology companies have figured out is
Speaker 1: that we can harness that social energy and that social
Speaker 1: value that we have as humans and we can make
Speaker 1: a lot of money from that in the form of advertising.
Speaker 1: And you know advertising, you know, online advertising today is
Speaker 1: about a one point one trillion dollar market in terms
Speaker 1: of revenue that it generates. But it is only possible
Speaker 1: because of us as humans, And how much do we
Speaker 1: actually get paid for having engaged in those networks? And
Speaker 1: the answers, of course, a big fat zero, and again
Speaker 1: Web three solves that.
Speaker 3: It's so fascinating. So the let's say, the folks who
Speaker 3: are watching listening to this, what advice would you give
Speaker 3: to them to prepare for this change that's happening. How
Speaker 3: can they not be disrupted and you know, be ahead
Speaker 3: of the curve with Web three adoption.
Speaker 1: So the thing that a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 1: we talked a lot about network effects and the value
Speaker 1: of the networks, but what blockchain really does is, through tokenization,
Speaker 1: makes something into a capital acid. So a token could
Speaker 1: be especially meme coins, good or bad. This is not
Speaker 1: about sort of endorsing them, but you know, owning a
Speaker 1: meme coin is arguably like owning a kind of network
Speaker 1: effect of a certain community, right, And because of the token,
Speaker 1: it has now become a capital asset of that community.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Whether it's worth a lot or worth a little, that
Speaker 1: is sort of secondary. The primary point is that now
Speaker 1: I own something that has a capital value as a
Speaker 1: capital asset of a kind of network state or network
Speaker 1: sort of asset. So that means what tokenization does is
Speaker 1: it makes everything virtual but also physical in to a
Speaker 1: into capital acid and it enhances it by creating more
Speaker 1: network effects. So for instance, a stable coin, a stable
Speaker 1: coin is an r WA, so it has it still
Speaker 1: has a you know, it's it's it has you know,
Speaker 1: people use it for dollars and spend money and so on.
Speaker 1: But the moment you tokenize it, you add a new
Speaker 1: layer making it into another type of network asset on
Speaker 1: top of it. So actually it extends the value and
Speaker 1: the power or more specifically the power and the distribution
Speaker 1: of the dollar by tokenizing it, and so it creates
Speaker 1: more network value and has more distribution, which is the
Speaker 1: reason why stable coins are sort of the number one
Speaker 1: use case on DeFi because of course you have you're
Speaker 1: using it in real life and as a value for that,
Speaker 1: but also it extends it. It makes the the dollar
Speaker 1: more of a network asset. So when you look at
Speaker 1: sort of other token ecosystems, you know, whether this is
Speaker 1: an ethereum or solana, right, you don't buy them, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously you hope that there's value there, but you don't
Speaker 1: buy them because they give you great yield or because
Speaker 1: there's better yield products Frctally you get better yield from
Speaker 1: treasuries and you know ethereums taking right.
Speaker 2: You buy it.
Speaker 1: Because you believe that the value will be more will
Speaker 1: sort of increase because of what because of the network state,
Speaker 1: because more people will want it, because more people will
Speaker 1: use it, It's utility will increase, its network state will increase.
Speaker 1: And that's the foundation and the formation of that value.
Speaker 1: And so the question that companies in Web three who
Speaker 1: want to enter the Web three have to think of
Speaker 1: is how do I and what are the type of
Speaker 1: either networks or products and services or applications that would
Speaker 1: that I would benefit from if they were turned into
Speaker 1: a capital assets. So I give you an example for
Speaker 1: instance in you know, imagine if the music industry didn't
Speaker 1: have intellectual property protection, there would be no music industry
Speaker 1: because musicians would have their music gripped up all the time.
Speaker 1: There we know Taylor Swift, no Michael Jackson, no Beatles,
Speaker 1: no library. Right, And this is by way something that
Speaker 1: back in history people recognize, which is why I think
Speaker 1: it was in the sixteenth century it's called the Statute
Speaker 1: of Ann where they for the first time recognized copyright
Speaker 1: for authors because back then authors were really the sort
Speaker 1: of you know, progenitors of a form of intellectual property
Speaker 1: right in terms of writing books and stories, but the
Speaker 1: power belonged to the publishers because they're the ones distributing it.
Speaker 1: The authors actually didn't have recognition for being creators, so
Speaker 1: they're basically always kind of ripped off, kind of sound
Speaker 1: similar to where we are today. And then by recognizing
Speaker 1: that through the Statute of Anne, creators had a way
Speaker 1: in which they could now fairly collect the income because
Speaker 1: it was their property. They could also sell it on say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what I own these book publishing rights, I
Speaker 1: can sell it to you, or I can share revenue
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, because it became a capital asset.
Speaker 1: And what happened was it sort of was the beginning
Speaker 1: in the foundation where you know, all these new authors,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's Jane Austen, Charles Dickens or science writers,
Speaker 1: they all ended up emerging because now it could actually
Speaker 1: do research, or write books or write stories in which
Speaker 1: there was a commercial incentive to do so, because now
Speaker 1: actually could make money from that which then created the
Speaker 1: flourishing of that industry. And the same is true for
Speaker 1: all intellectual property, right, whether this is music, whether this
Speaker 1: is pharmaceuticals, whether this is technology. The fact that we
Speaker 1: can protect that actually gave an incentive for people to
Speaker 1: build and advance essentially, you know, technology in society per se.
Speaker 1: So now the problem though, sort of a long winded
Speaker 1: way of saying this. The problem though, is that the
Speaker 1: cost of doing so is protected only through a legal framework.
Speaker 1: So in other words, if I want to protect my
Speaker 1: intellectual property right as a musician, I got to pay
Speaker 1: you know, an IP lawyer, and I got a trademark,
Speaker 1: and that costs a certain amount of money, which means
Speaker 1: that ILL first have to make a certain amount of
Speaker 1: money with my music or with whatever I'm doing before
Speaker 1: it's even worth protecting intellectually. Now, with blockchain, though, I
Speaker 1: can protect or at least prove the provenance of my
Speaker 1: creation for less than a dollar, for instance, like in
Speaker 1: the form of Anna.
Speaker 2: And immediately right.
Speaker 1: And you know, while some people might say, hey, I
Speaker 1: had that idea as well, there's a timestamp so you
Speaker 1: can prove that, or maybe there's some kind of settlement
Speaker 1: that happens but the point is that you can now
Speaker 1: prove your origin and so we did this, for instance
Speaker 1: with one of our portfolios called tiny Tap, which is
Speaker 1: an education platform. What they did was they created NFTs
Speaker 1: out of teaching material from teachers. So a teacher would
Speaker 1: have created some new teaching content with their platform with
Speaker 1: AI and then turned it into an NFT that they
Speaker 1: would then sell on to you know, if they wanted to,
Speaker 1: because it would make like ten or twenty dollars a
Speaker 1: yield every year as a capital asset, maybe for fifty
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars right. And it's only possible because now
Speaker 1: that teaching content is now become a capital asset through tognization.
Speaker 1: So that means you can and it means you can
Speaker 1: turn anything that was virtual technically virtual into this kind
Speaker 1: of tech capital asset. So for gaming, you could do
Speaker 1: this with game items. For instance, you know, your sword
Speaker 1: could be an NFT. A virtual currency could be tokenized,
Speaker 1: and you know, whether it has value or not will
Speaker 1: depend on you know, maybe the utility and the network
Speaker 1: effects inherent. But the point is now it is a
Speaker 1: capital acid. So the question I think most companies should
Speaker 1: think of themselves is, you know, outsort of from a
Speaker 1: creation standpoint, like what type of ideas products and services
Speaker 1: don't have that could be turned into capital acid. The
Speaker 1: second one, of course, is that you know Web three
Speaker 1: is a new wealth class, right, so the people who
Speaker 1: are generating wealth and blockchain are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who have never been sort of traditional don't come from
Speaker 1: banking or don't come from traditional sectors, which means that
Speaker 1: also you can consider them as new customers, like I
Speaker 1: see them really like the emergence of a new nation.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, you know, like fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: you know, suddenly you knew Chinese tours were coming all
Speaker 1: over the world because they had money, right, So maybe
Speaker 1: you haven't business opportunity and how do you service them?
Speaker 1: So that's the other opportunity, which is you know, there's
Speaker 1: a whole new wealth class that's coming. They've got a
Speaker 1: lot of money. You're probably sitting a lot of bitcoin
Speaker 1: or ethereum maslana or some some some lucky people traded,
Speaker 1: you know, with a lot of meme coins, like do
Speaker 1: you have a product for them? Right, And a lot
Speaker 1: of that comes in the form of NFTs and digital
Speaker 1: assets of course, but of course, whether if you're a
Speaker 1: company and that's what luxury companies really understood. Luxury companies
Speaker 1: started saying, oh, okay, you know this whole sort of
Speaker 1: you know, Lambo and Gucci and Ferrari type of sort
Speaker 1: of sort of meta. That's one, But of course the
Speaker 1: other one is, you know, they were one of the
Speaker 1: first to do things like mashups with like the Sandbox,
Speaker 1: with board apes, with crypto punks, and they made a
Speaker 1: lot of money right because they understood, you know, in particular,
Speaker 1: this is a new wild class. What can we sell
Speaker 1: them that they would appreciate? And I think you can
Speaker 1: also look at the luxury companies for some inspiration around
Speaker 1: how they did it.
Speaker 3: So do you think, you know, majority of companies and
Speaker 3: brands need to start putting together a web three strategy
Speaker 3: where whether it be NFTs or they do some sort
Speaker 3: of social token to maintain customers, you know, keep customers
Speaker 3: coming back, retention and even branching out to your point
Speaker 3: to the new generation who are more digital focused and
Speaker 3: a new wealth class.
Speaker 1: So there's so many dimensions. I mean, I don't think
Speaker 1: we can go through all of them. But the one
Speaker 1: thing that decentralization does here, of course, is that the
Speaker 1: customer base is not open to anyone. And when you
Speaker 1: think about sort of the role of advertising, advertising used
Speaker 1: to be and still is, actually predominantly I push you
Speaker 1: something and then you look at it, and if you
Speaker 1: like it, you might react or you might not, typically
Speaker 1: a very low hit rate, whereas in Web three because
Speaker 1: of the whole capital aspect, it's more of the incentive.
Speaker 1: So in other words, I give you an air drop,
Speaker 1: or I give you a reward or an experience, and
Speaker 1: that's the reason why you go there. So Web three
Speaker 1: is much more pull. And of course, you know, if
Speaker 1: you do pull badly, you.
Speaker 2: Get lots of bots and so on.
Speaker 1: But assuming you do it the right way, you can
Speaker 1: now actually look at their assets and you can target them.
Speaker 1: So you know, what would the advertising industry pay for
Speaker 1: if you could genuinely target every person who owns a Rolex,
Speaker 1: Like I know you owned it, and I know you
Speaker 1: purchased it because on chain I can see proof that
Speaker 1: you have it. You can't do this in the physical world, right,
Speaker 1: you know, Like you know, I don't know how many
Speaker 1: I don't know how many sort of followers Roles has
Speaker 1: on the Instagram page, but I'm gonna assume it's millions.
Speaker 1: But there are not millions of rolics owners out there,
Speaker 1: for instance, right, So you're really when you're targeting that audience,
Speaker 1: you're targeting an aspirational audience. But actually, who can really
Speaker 1: afford a rolics is maybe the customer you want, right,
Speaker 1: and you are willing to pay much more per user
Speaker 1: for that because there's an actual target as supposed to
Speaker 1: distributed value where maybe less than one or two percent
Speaker 1: is actually the target you want to reach, which is
Speaker 1: how advertising works generally today. So if you can do that,
Speaker 1: then the other thing is that the person on the
Speaker 1: other side receives an appropriate reward for taking that incentive,
Speaker 1: and you can prove it because it's on chain, whether
Speaker 1: he owns the NFT or he has you know, you know, whatever. Way,
Speaker 1: because of on chanine dynamics, you can prove that you
Speaker 1: can basically measure his reputation and give value that way.
Speaker 1: So again, you know, that means that if I'm, for instance,
Speaker 1: launching a game and my web two company and I'm
Speaker 1: launching a game, I could actually target web through users
Speaker 1: based on what gaming assets they have. So imagine and
Speaker 1: this is never going to happen because Epic wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to sort of they have a different view about how
Speaker 1: they want to protect their customers. But if all the
Speaker 1: and if all the skins in Fortnite were actually NFTs,
Speaker 1: then you as a game company could simply offer utility
Speaker 1: for those NFTs in a new game.
Speaker 2: Right, So you.
Speaker 1: Could open up i know, Fortnite Fashion Week or something,
Speaker 1: and everyone who owns Fortnite skins could try out that experience,
Speaker 1: and you know, you could make that very fluid that's possible,
Speaker 1: which you couldn't do in the current framework because the
Speaker 1: customer could never even leave the environment. And I could
Speaker 1: also not prove whether you're an actual Fortnite skin owner
Speaker 1: for example.
Speaker 3: Right, it's so fascinating. And then I wanted to jump
Speaker 3: back to social currency becoming capital asset. And I'll give
Speaker 3: the example of President Trump and the Trump meme coin.
Speaker 3: Whether you love it or hate it, right, that's not
Speaker 3: the point. The point is the technology and where the
Speaker 3: puck is going to do. You see that celebrities and
Speaker 3: people are prominence and will have a network of following,
Speaker 3: they have a personal brand as strong. We'll start to
Speaker 3: create these tokens and fundraise in different ways to fund
Speaker 3: what they're doing, whether they're an entrepreneur, they're doing charity
Speaker 3: work and things like that.
Speaker 1: So my view is that we're going to have billions
Speaker 1: and billions of tokens. I now, sort of going back
Speaker 1: to the early days of the internet, what was the
Speaker 1: way in which we built and gained attention and created
Speaker 1: profile online. It was the website, and there were millions
Speaker 1: and millions of website built. And the first website cost
Speaker 1: millions of dollars to make, and now it caused like
Speaker 1: almost nothing to make websites. But I would argue that
Speaker 1: the website has evolved as in from things like blogs
Speaker 1: or you know, social media pages. So for instance, your
Speaker 1: Instagram page that to me is a website. It's an
Speaker 1: evolved former website. But it's the same thing, right. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I would draw attention, I write my content,
Speaker 1: I tell my stories, and then I might have more
Speaker 1: than one social media page. I might have many of them, right,
Speaker 1: just like I have my my Instagram page for my business,
Speaker 1: and an Instagram page for me and then maybe my family,
Speaker 1: maybe my dog.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, like let's see it happens, right, So again,
Speaker 2: we have.
Speaker 1: Billions and billions is of online presences in these forms
Speaker 1: of attention whether it's a website or social media, it's
Speaker 1: kind of the same thing to me, and so tokens
Speaker 1: is the same thing, except it's that version evolved because
Speaker 1: I would also argue that me giving you a like
Speaker 1: or me following you is a version of that type
Speaker 1: of sort of currency exchange. It's a social exchange, right,
Speaker 1: And very often, even though it's unspoken, we actually say, hey,
Speaker 1: I follow you, you follow me. You know, let's let's
Speaker 1: let's let's let's just look like.
Speaker 2: I'm your friend.
Speaker 1: And then you know, you know, if someone unfollows you, like, hey,
Speaker 1: why you don't follow me? Like, it doesn't feel just
Speaker 1: like a technical thing. It feels kind of personal, right,
Speaker 1: It's like what's going on here? Like, you know, did
Speaker 1: I disappoint you? Am I not important for you anymore?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: All that type of stuff is actually just how we
Speaker 1: operate in real life. And so when you're a celebrity
Speaker 1: or business or whichever, you're already dealing with this right now,
Speaker 1: So what to do? And it doesn't just have to
Speaker 1: be for fundraising, you could if you want to do.
Speaker 1: All it does is it creates sort of that social energy,
Speaker 1: if you will. Now it turns into a capital asset,
Speaker 1: whether you choose to monetize it in different ways or not,
Speaker 1: it depends on the platform or the person in question.
Speaker 1: Because you know, there is an interesting sort of paradox
Speaker 1: around value and power when it comes to money. So
Speaker 1: like a lot of people, particularly in the sort of
Speaker 1: bitcoin narrative, are very obsessed about scarcity. It makes sense
Speaker 1: because the more scarce it is, the more value it
Speaker 1: is valuable it is, and so on. But if bitcoin
Speaker 1: was only held by one person in the world and
Speaker 1: he had all the bitcoin, it would not be valuable
Speaker 1: at all. Nobody would care, right, So it's power actually
Speaker 1: comes from the fact that millions of people have it
Speaker 1: directly or indirectly. And the irony if you look at
Speaker 1: something like the US dollar, is that sure, I think
Speaker 1: the US dollar no longer really can have the credible
Speaker 1: status as a store of value, but the fact that
Speaker 1: it is distributed across millions and millions and actually hundreds
Speaker 1: of actually more billions of people around the world.
Speaker 2: And in fact, the more.
Speaker 1: It is in circulation and distributed, actually the more powerful
Speaker 1: and influential it becomes as a network. So there's something
Speaker 1: there's something paradoxical but interesting about that and really that's
Speaker 1: actually the power of mean coins. A mean coin doesn't
Speaker 1: hit powerful because it has because its value comes entirely
Speaker 1: based on you know, like some inherent value or even scarcity.
Speaker 2: Totally the opposite.
Speaker 1: Meme coins become powerful when large bona fide communities flock
Speaker 1: around it and give it that energy and essentially give
Speaker 1: it social currency. And whether it's high or low, if
Speaker 1: you have a strong culture and connection, then actually the
Speaker 1: network effects becomes stronger, and of course then they actually
Speaker 1: grow in value as a result of that. And so
Speaker 1: that to me is how we can think of social
Speaker 1: media networks as well and yourself as a personal brand. Right,
Speaker 1: you're already doing this in some kind of sort of
Speaker 1: unmeasurable way, like you sort of you don't say, okay,
Speaker 1: my relationship with you is worth you know, five tokens,
Speaker 1: and your relationship with you is like ten tokens. But
Speaker 1: essentially on the back on social media, Instagram is already
Speaker 1: calculating that, right, they're already giving an algorithm.
Speaker 2: TikTok is already.
Speaker 1: Saying what they're already measuring that. There's a whole exchange
Speaker 1: that's happening on the back, and then that value is
Speaker 1: a form of advertising. Oh, you're this kind of guy
Speaker 1: and you have this kind of like you know, you
Speaker 1: might only have a hundred people following you, but if
Speaker 1: it's people like Elon Musk, he's influential, you could have
Speaker 1: a million.
Speaker 2: People follow you.
Speaker 1: But they could be people from all over the world
Speaker 1: and actually maybe maybe not that relevant, and they might
Speaker 1: not be nearly as valuable as the one hundred people that
Speaker 1: follow you, right, Like we see this with the different
Speaker 1: areas there were, So so it's not it's not to
Speaker 1: say that every network is worth the same. And so
Speaker 1: tokens now have a way in which they represent that,
Speaker 1: and so they can represent and you could trade on that.
Speaker 1: That's one way if you choose to, but you could
Speaker 1: also simply just sort of use it as a way
Speaker 1: to represent that value and rep and that influence, which
Speaker 1: means that outside of the buildings of tokens are in
Speaker 1: the world. We don't expect the future where every token
Speaker 1: is necessarily visible to everyone. Like at the back there
Speaker 1: might be whole sort of trade and exchange of value,
Speaker 1: you know, between you know, your token and my token
Speaker 1: and my business token, and there's a whole back in
Speaker 1: exchange that gives you some kind of it might output
Speaker 1: it in bitcoin. We don't know, right, because there's also
Speaker 1: markets and third party markets and prediction markets and everything
Speaker 1: that could relate to that. You know, like they know
Speaker 1: what content is yet, so you're writing next, or you
Speaker 1: know what is Vitalic thinking about, or you know what's
Speaker 1: cz doing, Like these are all going to be traded
Speaker 1: in let's call it our brand tokens, whether we issued
Speaker 1: them or not. And then exchanges will do stuff in
Speaker 1: the back and then and it may be entirely invisible
Speaker 1: to us from a regular consumer experience, but it will
Speaker 1: be tokenization engines that are running on the background.
Speaker 3: Question you mentioned whether they're issued by us or not.
Speaker 3: How do you see that playing out? Because I had
Speaker 3: some scammers like issued meme coins off my podcast, Right,
Speaker 3: how do I stop this? Why do you think that
Speaker 3: plays out? With law enforce and so for it?
Speaker 1: So first, authenticity matters, right, So that means that if
Speaker 1: you didn't endorse it, and you know there will be
Speaker 1: things like your public wallet, if it didn't come from that,
Speaker 1: then you know it's not valid. And I think blockchain
Speaker 1: is great for that. And again these platforms will make
Speaker 1: it easier. We're kind of early right now, but eventually,
Speaker 1: you know, like at the wallet level, whether it's maybe
Speaker 1: it's at your meta mask, Like I totally expect that
Speaker 1: things like phantom and meta mask are going to basically
Speaker 1: create sort of this is a good token on not
Speaker 1: a good token. This is authorized, not authorized, not to
Speaker 1: say that it removes a permissionlessness, it's just it's still permissionless.
Speaker 1: It's just that they'll give you sort of indicators. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like anti like like like anti virus and
Speaker 1: and and sort of you know, malware protection. Right, So
Speaker 1: so that to me would be I think what the
Speaker 1: wallets will end up doing. However, there is a distinction
Speaker 1: between that and u GC. So you know, someone launching
Speaker 1: a scam coin is a form of piracy, which is
Speaker 1: not that different from someone taking content from a movie
Speaker 1: and posting on your YouTube, right, And so so the
Speaker 1: question then becomes and this is again why tokenization is interesting.
Speaker 1: And you see this happening in imperfect ways. Someone could
Speaker 1: launch a token with your brand but everyone knows it's
Speaker 1: not you, but you're okay because he gives you revenue
Speaker 1: share of the token, right, And that's what basically content
Speaker 1: ideas on YouTube when I'm sort of taking content that
Speaker 1: I'm copyrighting. So before or you know, like the whole
Speaker 1: DMCA thing, everyone was trying to shut down all this
Speaker 1: content and they said, oh, my goodness, is piracy is party.
Speaker 1: But then you realize, wait a second, it's powerful distribution.
Speaker 1: I'm getting all these people watching this content that's usually
Speaker 1: generated even though it's pirating my stuff. So you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm okay with this because today, for instance, you can't
Speaker 1: launch a successful movie without mashups from from the community.
Speaker 2: But the user in.
Speaker 1: This case says, I can use his community to get
Speaker 1: some fame, but all the revenue I generate from this
Speaker 1: will go to them. We'll go to the original ip creator.
Speaker 1: And so there's a trade off that happens between you
Speaker 1: being allowed to use the content and me receiving the
Speaker 1: revenue for it exchange or maybe revenue share. It kind
Speaker 1: of depends on that bargain. And so I expect that
Speaker 1: completely that that happened with tokens. I mean famous examples
Speaker 1: like like Chill Guy for instance, right, like, obviously he
Speaker 1: resisted and hated it. But if people say, hey, you what,
Speaker 1: take fifty percent of the supply of the token or
Speaker 1: twenty percent of the supply of token, might it change
Speaker 1: his mind?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And so so there's a whole there's a whole dynamic
Speaker 1: around that, which which I think is which is again,
Speaker 1: tokens make possible. So I think that's a dynamic that
Speaker 1: will tame is. You can't stop I don't think you
Speaker 1: can stop people from issuing tokens. But if you endorse it,
Speaker 1: which you can do on chain because you have commercial
Speaker 1: benefit or you trust them, that to me actually becomes
Speaker 1: interesting as well. So I don't see it as as
Speaker 1: just a sort of one dimensional thing. And blockchain allows
Speaker 1: you to sort of verify that and give authenticity towards it.
Speaker 3: That absolutely makes sense. And I didn't think of that.
Speaker 3: You know, where you have the rev share or there
Speaker 3: will be validation on these platforms to say this is
Speaker 3: a quality token issued by the Tony or whoever. Right, So,
Speaker 3: but I guess the platforms have to catch up to
Speaker 3: have that infrastructure.
Speaker 1: But I mean, you know, how long did it take
Speaker 1: before the Internet really had functioning antivirus right and spam filters?
Speaker 1: I remember, you know one of our you know, from
Speaker 1: our early days of the early Internet. I mean, we
Speaker 1: started an ICP in Hong Kong and then later on,
Speaker 1: you know, had an ASP that stands for Application Service provider.
Speaker 1: That really is just a fancy way of calling cloud computing.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Cloud computing wasn't a turn back then. And we were
Speaker 1: one of the largest email companies back in the day,
Speaker 1: and we were constantly fighting spam, right, constantly fighting spam, right,
Speaker 1: because the cost of sending spam was zero, and we
Speaker 1: were absorbing all that cost, and so we had to sort.
Speaker 2: Of figure out way to do that.
Speaker 1: And you know, it was fairly primitive, like literally you
Speaker 1: had sort of just basic word filters, and you know,
Speaker 1: with AI and stuff, it just got a little smarter
Speaker 1: and the same thing here, right, and so you can
Speaker 1: you can do the same thing, and I expect that
Speaker 1: process s happ and think about all the advancements we
Speaker 1: see in AI today. You could probably very easily port
Speaker 1: that in to wallet that gives you sort of indications
Speaker 1: of that looks kind of scammy based on inference, right
Speaker 1: as supposed to just based on verification, And then there
Speaker 1: could be and today we see this sometimes you go
Speaker 1: into a website and your sort of filter will say
Speaker 1: this is a scam site, and maybe that's incorrect, But
Speaker 1: then whoever says that needs to go improve it right,
Speaker 1: So again I expect a similar type of model to
Speaker 1: develop for sure.
Speaker 3: So on that note, right, where our lives are more digital,
Speaker 3: the blockchain is going to be integrated on different platforms.
Speaker 3: We'll be able to see the dat stamp and do
Speaker 3: a lot more verification, trust people better, and transact better.
Speaker 3: But we as individual. Web three gives us ownership of
Speaker 3: our data. How do you see the future playing out
Speaker 3: with us controlling our digital identity? Interacting with ya? You're
Speaker 3: on Instagram? I love your content, I keep liking How
Speaker 3: do you see that all playing out? It's on our
Speaker 3: mobile phone and we're getting different tokens, some different platforms
Speaker 3: because there'll be so many.
Speaker 1: So the thing that I find really interesting and it
Speaker 1: just kind of goes into when everything turns into a
Speaker 1: capital asset, which by the way, for some people in
Speaker 1: the world might sound like a horror right, they don't
Speaker 1: like that idea, but uh, you know, and I want
Speaker 1: to just touch on this because as humans, we are
Speaker 1: designed to measure and value things, right, and money has
Speaker 1: just become an easy metric, but we still try to
Speaker 1: value them in some form of fashion, right, like you know,
Speaker 1: do I spend time with you.
Speaker 2: Do I have dinner with you? Right? Are you doing?
Speaker 2: You know? You know, could we be friends? Should we
Speaker 2: not be? I mean, you know, there's no dollar.
Speaker 1: Value, but we're still creating a value. We're still creating
Speaker 1: a measure, right, There's there's something that we're trying to
Speaker 1: sort of equate. And then from a social standpoint, also
Speaker 1: we're trying to create a status. So you know, I
Speaker 1: live in this house and you live in that house.
Speaker 1: For instance, Right, I have this car, you have that car,
Speaker 1: And it may seem from a pure utility standpoint, a
Speaker 1: waste of time, because in reality, the car takes you
Speaker 1: from point A to point B. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: my backpack is just as good as a Gucci right
Speaker 1: or or or a broken back. But yet we do
Speaker 1: that because they denote forms of value, and we can
Speaker 1: say it makes us feel good, but it's still.
Speaker 2: A form of value. Right.
Speaker 1: So I think I think this, this idea, is this
Speaker 1: measure of us basically wanting to sort of sort of
Speaker 1: compare each other, is actually I think something innate in
Speaker 1: our human nature that also then pushes us forward because
Speaker 1: there's a there's a desire.
Speaker 2: To sort of you know, basically sort of grow and develop.
Speaker 1: And and again I'm not trying to say that you know,
Speaker 1: it's all about money, but it's more about trying to
Speaker 1: measure like it's a it's a it's a it's a measurement.
Speaker 1: It's a measurement quality. Right, Sorry, now I lost my
Speaker 1: train and thought, what was the question about the.
Speaker 3: Digital world and how our digital identity and interaction with
Speaker 3: different folks?
Speaker 2: How is that?
Speaker 3: How do you see that playing out?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So so okay, so exactly so.
Speaker 1: So when you now have that, I find it a
Speaker 1: way in which you can then start to enumerate forms
Speaker 1: of value and relationships with each other. So you know,
Speaker 1: when you saw what happened with the early days of
Speaker 1: the internet, like NBA top shots in earliers of NFTs
Speaker 1: with NBA top shot, when someone started buying an expensive
Speaker 1: top shot of a particular athlete, the athlete would give
Speaker 1: him a shout out on on on X and say
Speaker 1: thanks for buying that. Right now, that's again very crude example,
Speaker 1: because he may have shelled out thirty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: For you know, recognition.
Speaker 1: Okay, you could say that's not you know, but as
Speaker 1: an example of I can now measure whether you are
Speaker 1: a real fan or not. So all the musicians who
Speaker 1: have millions and millions of you know, like streams and
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, let's call it a million
Speaker 1: people who listen to their music, they have no idea
Speaker 1: who is their super fan. They don't know who is
Speaker 1: there a thousand true fans. They only know that of
Speaker 1: a million people sort of you know, maybe listening to me.
Speaker 1: They also don't know that, you know, you, Tony, are
Speaker 1: listening to this song ten thousand times a year versus
Speaker 1: this song one time. And by the way, the platform
Speaker 1: doesn't want to share that because that's their value and
Speaker 1: they can monetize it and then they can say, oh, Tony,
Speaker 1: you like this music, let me give you another musician
Speaker 1: that you might like.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the musician where you are actually the true fan
Speaker 1: will never engage in this manner.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: So in Web three, through tokenization, I have a way
Speaker 1: in which I can demonstrate that, right, and the demonstration
Speaker 1: comes in the form of token accumulation, which doesn't have
Speaker 1: to mean that I paid for it. It could be
Speaker 1: also ways to earn it, right, It could be actions,
Speaker 1: you know, like So again, we don't have to necessarily
Speaker 1: say it all has to have this particular capital outcome.
Speaker 1: But I can still measure the result of that.
Speaker 3: So if I listen to it ten thousand times, I
Speaker 3: can get an NFT or something like.
Speaker 2: That, exactly right, and you get a badge.
Speaker 1: But that's really a relationship you have with him or
Speaker 1: I know, for instance, you know, and maybe someone else says,
Speaker 1: I really love you. I don't have time to listen
Speaker 1: to you ten thousand times, but you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: going to buy ten thousand tokens to sow that I
Speaker 1: love you that much.
Speaker 2: Right now.
Speaker 1: What that creates is a tighter bond between and again
Speaker 1: this is about the network effects, the tighter bond between
Speaker 1: the creator and you know, the fan, and this is
Speaker 1: the evolution of fandom. And this is why I actually
Speaker 1: fandom originally really had a good home for tokens, except
Speaker 1: and this is I think partially the problem of not
Speaker 1: understanding Web three, and also the creator problem is that
Speaker 1: they looked at it from the from the pure lens
Speaker 1: of money, because from Web two the user is abstracted.
Speaker 1: I don't have a relationship with you, so I'm used
Speaker 1: to just merch, so I treated as merch but there's
Speaker 1: actually much more than that. And so in a way,
Speaker 1: when they started abusing this, they actually started to hurt
Speaker 1: their community because they viewed the tokens as an investment
Speaker 1: in our relationship. Now not saying that, they're saying that,
Speaker 1: they're thinking that it's an investment purely for capital. Of
Speaker 1: course they hope it goes up in value in some ways,
Speaker 1: but they viewed it as a portrayal when you dump
Speaker 1: on them, right, And it's not it's not just a
Speaker 1: dollar money loss, because maybe it's not material for some
Speaker 1: of them. It's more about the portrayal of is that
Speaker 1: how you value my relationship?
Speaker 2: Is that? Is that? Is that all it's worth to you?
Speaker 2: Are you like?
Speaker 1: And and and so you see relationships, for for instance,
Speaker 1: with NFTs, where tokens may have gone the value of
Speaker 1: d NFT may have gone down almost to zero, but
Speaker 1: you still have a loyal following because they know the
Speaker 1: builders were serious. I've made friends on the network, and
Speaker 1: i still have the NFT even if it's not worth
Speaker 1: as much as it is, because I've created bonds and
Speaker 1: social networks between and friendships between them and or and
Speaker 1: it could be also the relationship with the art artists
Speaker 1: and creator. Whether this is an NFT or whether this
Speaker 1: is a token kind of to me is like more
Speaker 1: secondary because they're both sort of ways in which you
Speaker 1: can measure it. One's just more fungible than the other.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you look at sort of if
Speaker 1: you look at you know, some some very popular forms
Speaker 1: of how we should look at capital, you know, I
Speaker 1: think Borderer basically measures have been four types of capital, right,
Speaker 1: So you have economic, cultural, social, and symbolic. So economic
Speaker 1: capital is just how much money you have, right, and
Speaker 1: and you know, with that economic power, I can just
Speaker 1: demonstrate that there's some there's a capital value. You know,
Speaker 1: I have a million, two million, whatever. But notice how
Speaker 1: if you're a millionaire, it doesn't matter if you have
Speaker 1: one million or five million. You're still a millionaire, right.
Speaker 1: And you might have ten or twenty million, but you're
Speaker 1: still a millionaire, right, You're not you're not like a
Speaker 1: tens of millionaire.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know you're a hundred millionaire, but again you're
Speaker 1: still a millionaire.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You have to be a billionaire first in order to
Speaker 1: be moving into this new distinction, which I mean logically
Speaker 1: is ridiculous, right, because frankly, there should be a distinction,
Speaker 1: which is why things like cultural and social and symbolic
Speaker 1: capital come into play. For instance, I live in this place,
Speaker 1: or I have this you know, education, or I went
Speaker 1: to this area.
Speaker 2: You know, these are other.
Speaker 1: Forms of capital that actually denote social status and also
Speaker 1: the kind of relationship you have within them. So for instance,
Speaker 1: in physical world, it could be owning a broken bag,
Speaker 1: but in the virtual world, it could be owning a
Speaker 1: board ape or a pudgy penguin. And when you own
Speaker 1: ormokeaverse and if you own any of these type of NFTs,
Speaker 1: now actually you gain cultural status, and it's a form
Speaker 1: of cultural capital. And notice how in those environments, if
Speaker 1: you sell your NFT, you know, you sometimes have to
Speaker 1: actually very often you have to apologize for it, right
Speaker 1: when you sell the NFT, like oh my grandma was sick,
Speaker 1: or I got to pay for my kids tuition or
Speaker 1: you know, like right, whereas with mean coins, if you
Speaker 1: make a lot of money, good for you, right.
Speaker 2: You succeeded.
Speaker 1: Right, It's still social capital. It's just a different form, right,
Speaker 1: And and I think that's h and that's that's I think,
Speaker 1: you know, how we should think about the space. It's
Speaker 1: not one dimensional.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great point. It's not one dimensional because
Speaker 3: I sometimes get caught in that mindset where I just
Speaker 3: look at it from one lens. But it's it's different.
Speaker 1: I just want to add one another thing. For instance,
Speaker 1: if you are a business that wants to entweb three,
Speaker 1: what's the best way that you can build credit?
Speaker 2: You think for a newcomer?
Speaker 3: I think trust is is definitely important. And trust could
Speaker 3: be maybe you extend some sort of offer or they
Speaker 3: get some reward or something like that.
Speaker 2: Like so I go to the measurement.
Speaker 1: Okay, if I buy ten board apes today, every board
Speaker 1: AAP member knows who I am. If I go buy
Speaker 1: a million dollars worth of bunk and I declare the wallet,
Speaker 1: every bunk person is going to look at you and say, oh, okay, right.
Speaker 1: If I buy a million dollars worth of pengu Mocha,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. So this is the point, right, which
Speaker 1: is that we can now measure our conviction, our relationship
Speaker 1: with some form. I know it's not possible to just
Speaker 1: throw money at everything. I get it, but you can
Speaker 1: earn your way. The point is you can measure that.
Speaker 1: And that is a point about blockchain. It's not just authentic,
Speaker 1: it's verifiable. It's proof, right, It's like you know, I
Speaker 1: you know, I have a lot.
Speaker 2: Of bitcoin, do you mean? I mean? Right?
Speaker 1: It's something you can actually test now, right, And and
Speaker 1: that authenticity is what I think people really want to
Speaker 1: then create an authentic relationship with you because of the
Speaker 1: fact that you it's verifiable.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely. I wanted to ask you about your partnership
Speaker 3: with Sony and this Sonium blockchain because I'm so fascinated
Speaker 3: by Sony. I've had Sony devices all my life, right,
Speaker 3: and now.
Speaker 1: It's not a big enough story because I think people
Speaker 1: in the West sometimes just don't talk bout it enough,
Speaker 1: which is I mean, you have maybe the largest electronics
Speaker 1: company from an entertainment standpoint in the world launching their
Speaker 1: own blockchain, Like why is this not headline news everywhere?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Obviously it's early days.
Speaker 1: We work with them, you know, with the anime id.
Speaker 1: You know, we launched I think something with Solo Leveling,
Speaker 1: which is a big IP brand, anime IP brand with them,
Speaker 1: and we're doing a lot more with them, So I think,
Speaker 1: you know, sonayim Is is a great example of enterprises
Speaker 1: going on chain and for Sony you know what, you
Speaker 1: may have to also remember that Sony isn't just an
Speaker 1: entertainment company. They're also one of the largest financial organizations
Speaker 1: in the world. They have a big sort of you know,
Speaker 1: they have a big finance team, and of course they
Speaker 1: have a lot of assets and they have.
Speaker 2: To manage all that.
Speaker 1: Right, even when you think about things like, you know,
Speaker 1: Sony Pictures, there's a huge financing element everything around that
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: So and of course Sony Music and IP right.
Speaker 1: So like IP value money, intellectual copy right protection and
Speaker 1: you know, consumer engagement. It makes a lot of sense
Speaker 1: for Sony to launch a blockchain, and I think it's
Speaker 1: an interesting learning case for other major, particularly consumer entities
Speaker 1: to consider launching their own blockchains or tokens. For instance,
Speaker 1: I expect that every gaming company that significantly a sort
Speaker 1: of size gaming company in the world will eventually launch
Speaker 1: tokens and will eventually maybe even launch their own chains
Speaker 1: because they have communities of networks that they can do.
Speaker 1: And you know, because of the previous administration hostile stands
Speaker 1: towards crypto, it was just not a good idea for
Speaker 1: them to even talk and utter the word. But I
Speaker 1: think we should expect that to evolve over time. Certainly
Speaker 1: we know that they're looking into it now, which they
Speaker 1: couldn't do before.
Speaker 3: So I know you probably can't give details, but I'm
Speaker 3: going to walk through a snare in my own head
Speaker 3: how I envision Sony is doing this. They have their
Speaker 3: own blockchain, they can enhance IoT functionality maybe with their devices.
Speaker 3: So if you have multiple Sony devices in your home,
Speaker 3: they are all SYNCD in a certain way to their
Speaker 3: IP stuff, they can put it on the blockchain issue
Speaker 3: and have to and Web three type of incentives for
Speaker 3: is maybe get outsiders to come build under blockchain if
Speaker 3: it's not a private network, but that could benefit of
Speaker 3: their network.
Speaker 2: It's a public blockchain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Do you are those on point or do
Speaker 3: you think any of those are off?
Speaker 1: I don't think any of them are off. I think
Speaker 1: the whole idea about building a blockchain for any network
Speaker 1: and any any company or business is it extends the
Speaker 1: network to others and that's where the value comes from.
Speaker 1: So let's take an example of another traditional business, let's
Speaker 1: call the traditional Web two business that then launched a
Speaker 1: blockchain and had a token around it, and that's Telegram
Speaker 1: and ton Telegram was not a blockchain before huge social media,
Speaker 1: so huge social social network you know, billion or close
Speaker 1: to billion users, and then they launched on and they
Speaker 1: had the ton blockchain, and what they really did there
Speaker 1: was they extended their network to other people to part
Speaker 1: take in the Telegram ecosystem and the Telegram users through
Speaker 1: the homeb blockchain in a permissionless and open way. So
Speaker 1: we can think of blockchains in this case basically almost
Speaker 1: like public API extensions, which are basically permissionless. When it's permissionless,
Speaker 1: it allows companies to build and composed in pretty creative
Speaker 1: and interesting ways. But because there's a token component attached
Speaker 1: to it, there's a way in which values exchanged, and
Speaker 1: of course that value then goes to the entity that
Speaker 1: you know, gets paid to support.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So that is the reason we think it makes sense
Speaker 1: for a lot of entities around the world to consider
Speaker 1: their own chains as a better form of essentially extending
Speaker 1: their APIs. You know, API extension works just fine, but
Speaker 1: it becomes more limited because you can't compose freely on
Speaker 1: top of them, and you're it's also not secure. I mean,
Speaker 1: Facebook's not just going to open up the infrastructure to
Speaker 1: everyone just dabble around with it. And figure it out right,
Speaker 1: Like someone's going to do something that really could sort
Speaker 1: of screw up the network, for example, so they need
Speaker 1: to have that permission structure because otherwise they get full access.
Speaker 1: The second thing, of course, is that because you don't
Speaker 1: have those frameworks, the negotiation for having access is a
Speaker 1: negotiation that takes time. So in other words, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't just have a thousand developers just onboard on
Speaker 1: a web two platform just like that, because it's it's
Speaker 1: complicated and any permission and maybe I need to sign
Speaker 1: a contract, you know, whereas in blockchain, I don't need
Speaker 1: to talk to anyone. I could just start, here's a documentation,
Speaker 1: get going right, and there's a public note infrastructure, and
Speaker 1: there's security and everything attached to it. So again I think,
Speaker 1: I think blockchain is just a really really powerful way
Speaker 1: to extend composibility on anything, which includes networks, companies, ecosystems,
Speaker 1: you know, you name.
Speaker 3: It's so fascinating, it's like a brave new world. So yeah,
Speaker 3: it's fifty years from now, it's twenty seventy five. My
Speaker 3: math's right there. Am I walking around with my mobile phone?
Speaker 3: Where my passport, my driver's license, all my verifiable documents
Speaker 3: are on there, my digital identity. I have a wallet
Speaker 3: that supports multiple blockchain, multiple tokens. I have tokens from Sony,
Speaker 3: from Facebook and so on and so forth. I can
Speaker 3: sell those tokens. I can use them to get unlocked features.
Speaker 3: I can lend them out in the open market or
Speaker 3: along with NFTs. Is that something realistic?
Speaker 1: It's realistic, But I don't think it's fifty years out.
Speaker 1: I think it's more like ten years out or something.
Speaker 1: And the reason, well, first of all, I don't think
Speaker 1: we'll be using mobile phones that way. Okay, fifty years
Speaker 1: will probably have implants and stuff, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: like whatever that may be. But I don't think I
Speaker 1: think that, you know, like because when you look at
Speaker 1: the sort of history of sort of what really gains traction,
Speaker 1: particularly when it comes to technology, it's.
Speaker 2: The ease of use.
Speaker 1: And the UX basically gives us the fastest possible experience
Speaker 1: in which we can sort of really input and process data, right,
Speaker 1: And the reason why the smartphone in particular and the
Speaker 1: phone works so powerfully is because you know, the fastest
Speaker 1: way in which most of us absorb data is through
Speaker 1: our eyes. And that's why that interface hasn't really changed
Speaker 1: for like basically thousands of years, right, And so what's
Speaker 1: faster than eyes, right, It's going to have to be
Speaker 1: something that eventually sort of plugs into our brain.
Speaker 3: What do you think glasses might be?
Speaker 2: No, I mean.
Speaker 1: Glasses are an extension to our eyes, right, So yes,
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: It may be more efficient.
Speaker 1: That's why people talk about sort of you know, the
Speaker 1: goggles and so on. But but as we know more
Speaker 1: about the brain, and as we know more about sort
Speaker 1: of you know, the world, which of course and science
Speaker 1: which you know, again this is not my field, but
Speaker 1: if you look at the progress of you know, and
Speaker 1: what's happening with AI, we should expect that we will
Speaker 1: probably have some form of brain implant. Now what that
Speaker 1: means though, is that more than ever, you need to
Speaker 1: be able to basically have things that you can verify
Speaker 1: whether this is real or not, whether it's fake, right,
Speaker 1: whether this is authentic?
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And again blockchain is great for that, right, you know,
Speaker 1: because now you have and this is the next part,
Speaker 1: which you know, part of the thing isn't about necessarily
Speaker 1: meat trading or me honing tokens and doing stuff. Everything
Speaker 1: will be agentic, so an AI will do everything for you,
Speaker 1: probably speaking right. So that means the AI has to
Speaker 1: have emission, and that means that you need to also
Speaker 1: trust the AI. So again, blockchain is actually quite good
Speaker 1: for that. Many of the interactions that you will take
Speaker 1: place will be literally maybe you interact with like for instance,
Speaker 1: I think the future wallet and token wallet is not
Speaker 1: going to be a sort of meta mass style interface.
Speaker 1: It's going to be literally you just talking to the
Speaker 1: wallet like that kind of mass adoption is simply going
Speaker 1: to be hey, you know what I need to go
Speaker 1: and you know, like I need to go here, and
Speaker 1: maybe I need my Sony tokens. So the AI agent
Speaker 1: will just take care of that for you. And if
Speaker 1: you don't have Sony tokens, he's going to just buy
Speaker 1: the Sony tokens for you to go there and say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, sir, you don't have you know, Sony tokens,
Speaker 1: but it's going to cost you ten dollars to do this,
Speaker 1: go for it, right, whatever that may be, right, like
Speaker 1: whatever currency they're exchanging or so, the AI agent will
Speaker 1: take care of all of that for you, and you
Speaker 1: would have And also I think there's not gonna be
Speaker 1: one a agent I think it's going to be you
Speaker 1: might have like at least dozens of AI agents who
Speaker 1: do specific things that will advise you right as well,
Speaker 1: and they're going to be all in this interface, which
Speaker 1: may initially be on the phone, but we'll probably extend.
Speaker 1: But I think blockchain what's powerful about blockchain is that
Speaker 1: now you can build a public reputation framework as well
Speaker 1: that you know, with through ZK, I can attest essentially
Speaker 1: who I am and verify with that necessarily even really
Speaker 1: my identity. And in a way, we kind of do
Speaker 1: this in real life. You know, like if you go
Speaker 1: to the supermarket and you're buying stuff and or to
Speaker 1: a bread store and he gives you bread and you
Speaker 1: know you'll pay. Notice how you know he gives you
Speaker 1: the bread first and then you pay later, because there's
Speaker 1: some kind of trust that is already there between at
Speaker 1: least a social trust. I don't know who you are,
Speaker 1: but you know, I think you have a reputation and
Speaker 1: I can trust you, so it's okay for you for
Speaker 1: me to give you the goods first and then you
Speaker 1: pay later, right like literally at the end of it,
Speaker 1: because you know what, you can take them a bread
Speaker 1: and run, right which happens in some countries, right, and
Speaker 1: which is why you have to lock stuff up, like
Speaker 1: in say San Francisco. Yeah, and you can see what
Speaker 1: happens when you suddenly can't trust anyone, right, right, And
Speaker 1: so with bock chain, imagine you go in and you know,
Speaker 1: you verify this is the citizen. I don't need to
Speaker 1: know your name, right, but I can verify that you know,
Speaker 1: you pay your taxes or you're like you know, a
Speaker 1: good person, and I can trust you and immediately everything
Speaker 1: is available for you to just browse and take a
Speaker 1: look and buy, and I don't have to worry about that.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's obviously a much more extreme example, but
Speaker 1: it's just to say that I like, I can, I
Speaker 1: can build frame ups of trust but while still preserving
Speaker 1: my privacy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with ZK and all that. Yeah, now Elon at
Speaker 3: SpaceX and the other folks are in the space race,
Speaker 3: who can build the best rockets to go up reusable eventually? Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're gonna get to the moon again. We're gonna get
Speaker 3: to Mars, as Elon is saying, I don't know how
Speaker 3: long it's gonna take, but we're gonna get there. But
Speaker 3: these all world economies will require digital money, digital currency,
Speaker 3: digital uh, you know, in that level. So do you
Speaker 3: see this technology getting more adoption that way because we
Speaker 3: can't try zacting cash and space and things.
Speaker 1: That first, you know, I think most of the transactions
Speaker 1: in the future will be done through AI agents, and
Speaker 1: the natural currency of A agents is going to be
Speaker 1: basically crypto in tokens. There's an interesting parallel, by the
Speaker 1: way on this. It's not just the fact that AA
Speaker 1: agents more naturally trade in tokens, it's also the fact
Speaker 1: that agents also have the ability to create tokens, right,
Speaker 1: so you know, a bit of a sort of a secutor.
Speaker 1: But what we should expect therefore is that we will
Speaker 1: not only just be in the future employed by humans
Speaker 1: or organizations, We're going to be employed by AI agents
Speaker 1: because they have the ability to generate tokens which have
Speaker 1: a form of value, which therefore gives them a sense
Speaker 1: of power as well, which you know, again, AI agents
Speaker 1: haven't had that before. Like the moment you give someone
Speaker 1: the ability to create or trade or make money, you're
Speaker 1: actually giving them power, right, And it's entirely possible that
Speaker 1: a really smart AI trading bot as we have seen,
Speaker 1: can make millions of dollars, and then it can use
Speaker 1: that millions of dollars as a way to incentivize use
Speaker 1: it behave if you're a user action that is human. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're entering a world where we're not just working
Speaker 1: for other humans. We're going to be working because in
Speaker 1: a way, I think we're already working for protocols, you
Speaker 1: know when you think about sort of air drops with thousands.
Speaker 1: But talk about the space question. So first, because I
Speaker 1: believe that most of our transactions are going to be
Speaker 1: sort of agentic and basically through AI. So tokens is
Speaker 1: actually naturally a way to do that. And to your point,
Speaker 1: you need something that is authentic and permissionless as well
Speaker 1: that can trade that way. More importantly, though, we also
Speaker 1: have to think about how communications will be done. So
Speaker 1: what's the what's the way in which you can sink
Speaker 1: in a both permissionless and scalable way sort of you know,
Speaker 1: like call it off world transactions that might be literally
Speaker 1: light years away, right, And actually blockchain is a good
Speaker 1: way to do that again right, So, so again I
Speaker 1: would say that there's some interesting mechanisms. Of course, you
Speaker 1: know a lot of things will by the time we
Speaker 1: achieve that a lot of things will have changed. For instance,
Speaker 1: I think we you know, you know, we probably will
Speaker 1: have cracked quantum computing at that point in time, which
Speaker 1: is which is going to change entire frameworks about how
Speaker 1: we think about sort of, you know, computational power. It's
Speaker 1: going to also create much more extensions because if we
Speaker 1: have the ability, if we solve quantum computing, then we
Speaker 1: will probably also be able to better take advantage of
Speaker 1: things like entanglement, which means we can also deal with frankly,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, let's not call it communications, but
Speaker 1: certainly forms of ways in which we can distribute and
Speaker 1: share information or states to be precise states, right, sharing
Speaker 1: the state in which you are literally across the universe.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's the future that we will
Speaker 1: see and know. And again I think blockchain technology ties
Speaker 1: very neatly into that, because you need ways in which
Speaker 1: you can sort of, you know, prove those states and
Speaker 1: accept it will be done in a quantum way as
Speaker 1: opposed to in a classic computing way.
Speaker 3: Folve question on the AI agent aspect and the AI
Speaker 3: agents being able to create their own tokens. Do you
Speaker 3: see AI agents replacing vcs and hedge for ones and
Speaker 3: traders like well why do I need a financial advisory?
Speaker 1: So I don't know that they're necessar you're going to
Speaker 1: replace them, but I think they're going to certainly be
Speaker 1: in competition with them, and I think there's going to
Speaker 1: be angles and perspectives that will take that creates maybe competition, coopetition,
Speaker 1: and also basically partnerships. And that's because I don't think
Speaker 1: that an AI, as good as they will be, is
Speaker 1: really ever going to completely emulate our copy sort of
Speaker 1: the human dimension. But by the human dimension, I mean
Speaker 1: the relationship so and by the way, I mean we've
Speaker 1: seen this within like Mitsuko, what's the name the the
Speaker 1: the virtual idol? Forgot forgot the name, but I think
Speaker 1: it's Escape the name. But anyway, you know, like you
Speaker 1: could have virtual characters that you have relationships with or
Speaker 1: do you think you have relationship with and and and yes,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right, you know, like like with with
Speaker 1: with that as well, so that that's possible too. But
Speaker 1: I think of it more as I invest with you
Speaker 1: or I follow you, or I want to give you
Speaker 1: money because of who you are, as opposed to necessarily
Speaker 1: just how much returns you make right in an environment
Speaker 1: where you know, you compete for returns, because hey, I'm
Speaker 1: going to invest in this way, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: help society for instance, right, you know, Or I'm going
Speaker 1: to invest in things that does something that you know,
Speaker 1: like an AI bot could say I'm going to just
Speaker 1: make money. Great, I'll put money here, but I also
Speaker 1: want to make impact. And maybe there'll be other AI
Speaker 1: agents that say I will do impact too, But I
Speaker 1: want someone who actually, let's say it's let's say let's
Speaker 1: let's let's take Nepal as an example, right, and I
Speaker 1: want to you know, like I want to help Nepalese
Speaker 1: in this investment profile. An AI agent won't have the
Speaker 1: experience necessarily of having lived through Nepal, so an individual
Speaker 1: in that area would be able to do.
Speaker 2: That as well. Right.
Speaker 1: So I think it just extends it, it expands it.
Speaker 1: But the key thing is it makes it more demoral
Speaker 1: and more open because in the past it was very
Speaker 1: much and still is investing is very much.
Speaker 2: An exclusive club.
Speaker 1: It's like a small group of people that sort of
Speaker 1: you know, really get to participate and benefit from that.
Speaker 1: And I don't even have access now in an environment
Speaker 1: where so many AI agents can emerge. Suddenly you have
Speaker 1: a lot of pretty good investors and investment agents that
Speaker 1: actually are now going to be able to do it
Speaker 1: for the masses as well, which means that you have
Speaker 1: much more I think, better wealth distribution and wealth opportunity
Speaker 1: because of it. Because really one of the biggest challenges,
Speaker 1: and this is why blockchaining organization is so important, isn't
Speaker 1: the fact that there aren't wealth opportunities in the world.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that the majority of the world is
Speaker 1: excluded from even participating in them. And that's why tokenization
Speaker 1: is so powerful, because you basically allow people to participate
Speaker 1: in it. In so doing, they learn more about money,
Speaker 1: they learn more about financial literacy, and they just become
Speaker 1: better investors and frankly, you know, I think become happier
Speaker 1: and more sustainable over the long term.
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask you about bitcoin's place in web three.
Speaker 3: So toci's Knockamota's vision was bitcoin as digital currency. It's
Speaker 3: kind of evolved the network and the network says, you know,
Speaker 3: the network effects of the market has said this is
Speaker 3: more digital goal. And there are slow transaction speeds at times,
Speaker 3: I fees and when I send people money, some stable coins,
Speaker 3: you know, if they are open to doing it. So
Speaker 3: I'm not using as digital currency, but I whole bitcoin
Speaker 3: and I have it as digital goal. Where does this
Speaker 3: fit as the web three grows?
Speaker 1: So first, I think bitcoin has really really nailed its
Speaker 1: value proposition as a store of value, and I think
Speaker 1: every other endeavor, frankly, is a little bit sort of
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say a waste of time, but it's a
Speaker 1: very difficult one because you just have to talk to
Speaker 1: any person who owns bitcoin and say, would you please
Speaker 1: spend your bitcoin? And the answer is a resounding no, okay.
Speaker 1: And and I think I think the reason why is
Speaker 1: because it's your savings account effectively, right And and so
Speaker 1: I think bitcoin will and I think it's value proposition
Speaker 1: will will never change as a result of that. I
Speaker 1: think it's, you know, like I think we shouldn't, you know,
Speaker 1: e theorem has this problem where it's you know, trying
Speaker 1: to be both a store of value and that currency.
Speaker 1: So I feel like bitcoin doesn't need to be the
Speaker 1: currency per se. I think it should be that store
Speaker 1: of value. Uh And and and that's why it, you know,
Speaker 1: is really sort of the reserve currency of our industry,
Speaker 1: and it also extends beyond basically just just Web three,
Speaker 1: but also everything that's happening in trad file world as well. Now,
Speaker 1: I think there's this very interesting thing that I think
Speaker 1: it was Taler, but in his Nobel Prize research that
Speaker 1: basically described and behavioral economics, there's construct of sort of
Speaker 1: mental accounting, right, And in mental and you can see
Speaker 1: this in real life. For instance, you know, if you
Speaker 1: win money in a lottery, you'll probably just go and
Speaker 1: spend it a lot. But yet if you worked for
Speaker 1: it and you got your salary, you save it and
Speaker 1: you treat it very differently. But the dollar is still
Speaker 1: the dollar. So what's the difference, right, right, So that's
Speaker 1: mental accounting, And I would say in crypto, we definitely
Speaker 1: have mental accounting for bitcoin. Bitcoin is your savings account, right,
Speaker 1: and you typically every time you dip into your savings
Speaker 1: account in real life, it's like, well it's painful, right,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to touch that. This is for
Speaker 1: the long term, right, And if you do dip into it,
Speaker 1: it has to be freaking serious, right, like all my
Speaker 1: kids' education, or my grandma is sick or whatever that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, right, So you'll never dip into that, right,
Speaker 1: And then you have things like air drops and like
Speaker 1: tokens that you earn, and I think this is the
Speaker 1: other thing, because it feels like you didn't work for
Speaker 1: it per se as much or in some cases right.
Speaker 1: So that's why people treat tokens they work for it
Speaker 1: differently than tokens that are just simply given to them.
Speaker 1: And then they literally just dump it in the market
Speaker 1: because they But then also but the flip side is
Speaker 1: that they may dump it in the market, but if
Speaker 1: you have something, they should use it on it. We
Speaker 1: saw differ instance, with a launch of things like Mocha
Speaker 1: and ape cooin, then you would spend it on something
Speaker 1: as well. So you're much more likely to spend your
Speaker 1: let's call it sort of a sort of spending money,
Speaker 1: which is your air drop money, into something like an
Speaker 1: NFT or something that might seem expensive. So you know,
Speaker 1: like I actually just recently, just just just a few
Speaker 1: days ago, I did a poll and I said, would
Speaker 1: you pay I think it was twelve point seventy five
Speaker 1: eth for board ape or would you pay thirty two
Speaker 1: seven hundred dollars for a board ape? Which one would
Speaker 1: you prefer?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And you know, the majority went for.
Speaker 1: Twelve point seventy five eth. What's the difference one is
Speaker 1: eth one's dollars. They're exactly the same, right, And it
Speaker 1: was just a mental accounting because because I bought eth
Speaker 1: maybe at a lower price, it went up in value.
Speaker 1: It feels more spendable. And I think the entire industry
Speaker 1: that we're in comes from the fact that when it
Speaker 1: comes about meme coins, all coins front from the mental
Speaker 1: accounting perspective, are very very disposable in ways of course,
Speaker 1: as cashould be made too, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: we're more have a higher propensity of spending that because
Speaker 1: of the fact that it comes from our disposable sort
Speaker 1: of account as supposed to our savings account, right, like
Speaker 1: like a current account, shall we say, right? And I
Speaker 1: think that's the that's that's that's another sort of reason
Speaker 1: why I think I don't think bitcoin should ever go
Speaker 1: in that camp, right. I think if pitcoin goes in
Speaker 1: that camp, I think it makes it weaker. It's like
Speaker 1: the dollar, is it a store value or is it
Speaker 1: a means of exchange. It's much more valuable and powerful
Speaker 1: as a means of exchange. It should not be a
Speaker 1: store value. And I would argue even when you talk
Speaker 1: about QE, QE certainly destroyed the construct that the dollar
Speaker 1: is a store of value, but it did make it
Speaker 1: more powerful because it became went into the hands of
Speaker 1: more people and was used more and more.
Speaker 3: Right on that note, and this is a it just
Speaker 3: came to mind because you mentioned QE. Obviously Bitcoin, it's
Speaker 3: really great propositions. And because the value is that scarcity,
Speaker 3: you can't you know, create more of it. It's algorithmically
Speaker 3: set twenty one million. There's that scarcity asp but you
Speaker 3: have to work for you get to mine it, spend
Speaker 3: a lot of energy and things like that. And then
Speaker 3: you have fiat currencies, which is the lingering problem that
Speaker 3: different regimes and countries and folks have dealt with for
Speaker 3: a long time, manipulation by government. Do you see blockchain
Speaker 3: in any way fixing that fiat regime. Maybe they're able to,
Speaker 3: I don't know, put some sort of algorithmic set up.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So first as a store value, I think bitcoin has,
Speaker 1: as I said earlier, has nailed at and I don't
Speaker 1: think you know, and the fixed supply mechanism, which is
Speaker 1: a very common sort of tokenomics meta right, makes sense
Speaker 1: because you say, okay, there's a very easy way to
Speaker 1: determine that it could be valuable over time. If a
Speaker 1: lot of people want it, then there's a value increase
Speaker 1: and sort of goes into the whole scarce sity aario.
Speaker 1: So it kind of depends what your purpose is.
Speaker 2: So if you want to.
Speaker 1: Sort of a crue value into something, then a fixed
Speaker 1: token supply may make sense. But if you want to
Speaker 1: create a lot of utility and usage, sometimes that's hard
Speaker 1: because there's a cost issue. Like for instance, if ethereum
Speaker 1: you know, went up to I don't know, ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars right, then the transaction fees would be very expensive.
Speaker 1: And when the transaction fees are very high, then it
Speaker 1: actually limits its utility in terms of the cost. Now
Speaker 1: we do this in different countries, like for instance, you know,
Speaker 1: we pay high taxes or high vat because there's value.
Speaker 2: That comes from it.
Speaker 1: So I'm more than happy to spend let's say fifty
Speaker 1: dollars per transaction if I know that it makes me
Speaker 1: you know, five hundred dollars or something. Right, Like, the
Speaker 1: context doesn't matter, and we see differ instance with NFTs,
Speaker 1: people still trade most NFTs on ethereum, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that the gas fees are lower elsewhere because you can
Speaker 1: make money or there's that, so it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: But there's a there's a balance there that needs to happen.
Speaker 1: And because we're still in the growth phase of our
Speaker 1: industry generally speaking, where you know, things will rise. But
Speaker 1: when you get to a point where we sort of
Speaker 1: have more adoption, mass adoption and billions of people are
Speaker 1: using it, there's going to be a very interesting dilemma
Speaker 1: between the ones who want mass utility and reduce cost
Speaker 1: and then at the same time say, oh, it has
Speaker 1: to be very very valuable, right, because these are two
Speaker 1: different things. And I think for mass adoption utility, I
Speaker 1: think inflation is actually a fairly healthy mechanism. The reason
Speaker 1: why is because we're not all born with equal means, right,
Speaker 1: and we're you know, we have maybe let's call it
Speaker 1: equal opportunity, we would say, but that's not really true, right,
Speaker 1: And that's why governments have things like taxes, and that's
Speaker 1: why I have social services, that's why they give education
Speaker 1: for free in those areas, or you know, like if
Speaker 1: you you know, that's why you have you know, like taxes.
Speaker 1: Supposedly people who make more money pay more taxes, and
Speaker 1: people who depends where you are, and people who make
Speaker 1: less money pay less taxes. Because there is an area
Speaker 1: in which you want to try to create sort of
Speaker 1: a cohesive society in where you have opportunity and where
Speaker 1: you can sort of you know, I have you know,
Speaker 1: the the dignity of opportunity and the growth prospects that
Speaker 1: come with it.
Speaker 2: And when you have something.
Speaker 1: That's fixed, then you basically create that scarcity that really
Speaker 1: makes it harder and harder and harder for new.
Speaker 2: People to enter the space. Right.
Speaker 1: So, and I would also argue that that makes inflation
Speaker 1: so sorry, that makes fixed supply at least philosophically, philosophically
Speaker 1: sort of against I guess, against nature. And the reason
Speaker 1: why is because you know, we're always expanding. We're always growing,
Speaker 1: whether not necessarily as a population, but we are, we
Speaker 1: live longer, like as a species, we're expanding, right, like
Speaker 1: you know, the universe expands, right, right, it's time moves forward,
Speaker 1: doesn't like it's not fixed. Right, So this whole idea
Speaker 1: that there would be something fixed and never more is
Speaker 1: it's actually unnatural now again for things that have to
Speaker 1: store val value and we create an agree in their
Speaker 1: scarcity things like you know, historically gold or that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, there's an understanding because that's how we measure
Speaker 1: around that. And so I think, you know, bitcoin is
Speaker 1: great for that. But again, if you want utility and usage,
Speaker 1: you will not be able to grow the usage and
Speaker 1: the power of the network if you make it more
Speaker 1: expensive over time and more exclusive and more scarce, because
Speaker 1: you simply can access that. Now, there are societies where
Speaker 1: you say, that's all I want to be. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: Switzerland has no ambition to be one hundred million people.
Speaker 1: It's cool, right, And and the people who live in
Speaker 1: Switzerland don't want to be one hundred million people. They're
Speaker 1: more than happy with what they have. Please do not
Speaker 1: invade our place too much. You know, we'll invite the
Speaker 1: right kind of people and it's happy. And there's many
Speaker 1: countries like that, right, So so, and each of these
Speaker 1: countries reach a kind of state that they like and
Speaker 1: that preserves whatever value and aspect they have, and there
Speaker 1: could be growth, but that's that's what they are. And
Speaker 1: I think blockchains are kind of the same thing, right,
Speaker 1: And because we're at this state where you know, like
Speaker 1: when you think about especially on chain, it's less than
Speaker 1: a hundred million people on chain, that's maybe four in
Speaker 1: a million people own tokens and trading exchanges. You know,
Speaker 1: there's eight million people in the world, right, so from
Speaker 1: a mass adoption standpoint, we're still very far away, and
Speaker 1: so we're all just simply experiencing growth from macro, right,
Speaker 1: which is why generally ambullish on the sector, because I
Speaker 1: think billions of people will have crypto and will use
Speaker 1: tokens and will be in web three.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But once we reach the point where we reached a
Speaker 1: point of saturation, which is a while away right then
Speaker 1: and wheneveryone sort of, then then we need to talk
Speaker 1: about the construct differently. And I would say, you're not
Speaker 1: going to bring on more people unless you have something
Speaker 1: that is inflationary. So so I think, you know, I
Speaker 1: think the problem when you think about sort of you know,
Speaker 1: gains in economics, which is really sort of the inspiration
Speaker 1: between QE, right, the problem isn't per se the fact
Speaker 1: that there's QI. It's the fact that after you have
Speaker 1: basically succeeded, you're supposed to then pull back. And from
Speaker 1: a political standpoint, you know, it's very unpopular when when
Speaker 1: you kind of got addicted to you know, basically just
Speaker 1: pushing it out and and and so so that's the issue, right,
Speaker 1: The issue is is that you know, sort of we're
Speaker 1: not willing to sort of pull back from from from
Speaker 1: from the q E side of things and and reverse
Speaker 1: back to it. So so, but there's a lot of
Speaker 1: debate between there's a lot of bit of it between
Speaker 1: sort of there's a big topic between sort of obviously
Speaker 1: Austrian and Chicago School of Economics versus change and and
Speaker 1: so on. It's a that's another topic.
Speaker 3: So yeah, no, that just great. I and yeah, I
Speaker 3: love I mean, I've learned so much and the fact
Speaker 3: that you know what you're saying, the ability to print
Speaker 3: money into a que is not necessarily a bug but
Speaker 3: a feature. But the problem is what I think Elon
Speaker 3: is trying to do put government spending on the blockchain
Speaker 3: so we can all verify where's our tax dollars going.
Speaker 1: But that's the different that's transparency. And I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: and I think that's a great thing because the other
Speaker 1: problem that all societies have basically, and and the US
Speaker 1: is no exception, is basically corruption, right, and the more
Speaker 1: corrupt society is actually.
Speaker 2: The less efficient.
Speaker 1: It is because there's an intermediary in the middle that
Speaker 1: then negotiates and basically uses their power to do an
Speaker 1: outcome that is not actually market spaced. So you know, generally,
Speaker 1: if you're in blockchain, in web three crypto, you're basically
Speaker 1: typically a free market maximalist, right, which means that you
Speaker 1: believe that the market has is the open and free
Speaker 1: market is the best way to determine actual pricing, demand, supply,
Speaker 1: and and the sort of resulting utility. Right, So if
Speaker 1: if something is cheap, then there will be more demand,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's indicative that is not important or interesting anymore, right,
Speaker 1: Like these all these type of things. I think the
Speaker 1: one thing that that type of economics often does actually
Speaker 1: miss is the fact that as humans, you know, we're
Speaker 1: not fully rational, right, and so the utility isn't the
Speaker 1: only reason we do it. We sort of put emotional value,
Speaker 1: control and symbolic value into it, and as a result
Speaker 1: it may be valuable. Like for instance, you know, why
Speaker 1: do we still have horses? I mean, you know, like
Speaker 1: like the utility the horse is all gone and today
Speaker 1: polo is a luxury sport. Right, then we watch horse
Speaker 1: races and stuff, and to keep a horse is way
Speaker 1: more expensive than to keep a super expensive car because
Speaker 1: it's become a status symbol.
Speaker 3: Right, You've got a central park here in New York
Speaker 3: and you go riding your horse character.
Speaker 2: Exactly right, So so you have those you have those type.
Speaker 3: Of elements, right, Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I know we're
Speaker 3: coming up on time, and I wanted to ask you
Speaker 3: about this. Last week there's a report that Animoka Brands
Speaker 3: may come to United States to do a public listing.
Speaker 3: What can you tell us there? And if you are
Speaker 3: playing to would you do IPOs back? How would you go?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So, first of all, Animoga Brands, it's not a secret
Speaker 1: that Animoco Brands has been looking at being a public
Speaker 1: company and can and that's listed and traded. So for
Speaker 1: those who may not know, we were once a listed
Speaker 1: company on the Australian Stock Exchange and as a result,
Speaker 1: we're still a public company and we're all common stock
Speaker 1: still to this day we have like three thousand shareholders
Speaker 1: and Animoko so and we kind of operate almost dowlike
Speaker 1: you know, obviously in a traditional sort of shareholding perspective,
Speaker 1: so we're quite accustomed to that. And when we look
Speaker 1: at some of the market, right, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: last year we report our results, we had like three
Speaker 1: hundred and fourteen million dollars in revenue, close one hundred
Speaker 1: million year bit dah sitting on like four billion dollars
Speaker 1: worth of assets or doing cash cryptos, table coins, bitcoin
Speaker 1: and so on. We feel that actually, you know, we're
Speaker 1: in a pretty good position to be a public company again, right,
Speaker 1: and now we haven't decided on the venue. There were
Speaker 1: some other news media out there that basically made some
Speaker 1: comments around US potentially being in the US, and it's
Speaker 1: not untrue to say that the US is in consideration,
Speaker 1: but it is not a you know, it's not something
Speaker 1: that we can confirm, right, So generally we could say
Speaker 1: no comment on market rumors. But the fact that we
Speaker 1: do want to be a public company is, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, something that we have said many times already.
Speaker 3: Final question here before we wrap it up. What can
Speaker 3: you tell us that's on your rope app you know,
Speaker 3: as far as maybe investments, how you're plan to handle
Speaker 3: the remainder of this bull market and planning for like
Speaker 3: a bear market twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven, things
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 1: It's interesting how our definitions of bull markets seem to change.
Speaker 1: So because it was definitely bull market in Q four,
Speaker 1: especially after Trump got elected, and now we're seeing a
Speaker 1: little inkling pricing, a little bit of a ball market, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love the optimism in work three and
Speaker 1: I think I think it's one of the most powerful
Speaker 1: things that we have in our space, which is relentless
Speaker 1: optimism and building in this area. So first, we obviously
Speaker 1: are very bullish on gaming. We actually think maybe I'll
Speaker 1: come to that thesis a little bit towards the end
Speaker 1: because I think it's a it's a macro thesis. But
Speaker 1: let's go into new areas that we're you know, people
Speaker 1: might not be aware that we're building on. You know,
Speaker 1: we have over five and a seventy three portfolios that
Speaker 1: the three areas we like a lot outside of the
Speaker 1: usual stuff like aid pen and of course we really
Speaker 1: like digital identity. So with mocha Vers, we're very focused
Speaker 1: around basically creating a big reputation stack for us. Digital
Speaker 1: identity is the key for digital reputation, which is the
Speaker 1: key to creating a safer and better and more trusted Internet.
Speaker 1: And I think if I you know, like one of
Speaker 1: the challenges that we have in our space is that
Speaker 1: I'm dealing with a lot of We're all dealing with
Speaker 1: a lot of anonymous wallets, right and it's okay to
Speaker 1: be anonymous. I don't need to know your name, but
Speaker 1: I need to know your reputation of that wallet, and
Speaker 1: I understand that I don't want to share what that is,
Speaker 1: but I should have some kind of score that's attested
Speaker 1: from another credible wallet that is some example of something
Speaker 1: where I can sort of still preserve, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of the privacy while actually doing trusted business because right now,
Speaker 1: you know, there's so many bots and stuff out there,
Speaker 1: and this is just an evolution of space. This will
Speaker 1: get solved, but we're very focused on that. The second
Speaker 1: thing that we are focused on is education. So with
Speaker 1: open campus, you know, with with the with Eedu chain.
Speaker 1: Why because there's a five trillion dollar market one hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of students in the world that are basically
Speaker 1: for the first time wanting to be onboarded basically into
Speaker 1: the world of web three. And the way to do
Speaker 1: that we think by providing things like student loans. So
Speaker 1: we basically backed a company called Pencil Finance that was
Speaker 1: building on du chain a student loan platform. And again
Speaker 1: what does blockchain do. It makes these things better, faster, cheaper.
Speaker 1: Now that means you can basically reduce the cost of
Speaker 1: interest to the student, you can create better returns for
Speaker 1: the person who's providing the loan. And of course when
Speaker 1: the student actually has a digital wallet to repay his loans,
Speaker 1: then guess what he's seen Crypto for life, right, And
Speaker 1: if you think about sort of you know, how we
Speaker 1: create the sort of adoption for things like PayPal or Venmo,
Speaker 1: it all really started with students, right, So that's kind
Speaker 1: of you know, some examples. Of course we're doing a
Speaker 1: lot of other things there. And then the gaming thesis,
Speaker 1: so it goes generally to the way that we think
Speaker 1: about tokens broadly. So when we think of tokens, they're
Speaker 1: not only as I said, it's their network effects. And
Speaker 1: these network effects are reflections of not only because of
Speaker 1: financial in nature, not only of what's happening in the
Speaker 1: web three space, but in the global space. They're memta
Speaker 1: like for instance, I got to know about ChIL guy
Speaker 1: because there was a token, but you know, the people
Speaker 1: who actually cared about ChIL Guy as a token was
Speaker 1: not that many compared to the people in TikTok It
Speaker 1: was just an example of how that influenced that impact.
Speaker 1: And I think of tokens broadly as like an open polymarket.
Speaker 1: If AI is hot, AI tokens do well right like gaming,
Speaker 1: Last year, Chloe closed with close to I think I
Speaker 1: think it was close to like six point six, if
Speaker 1: not seven million daily active users in blockchain gaming in
Speaker 1: web three gaming, which is more than any AI utility.
Speaker 1: And yet why has sort of web three gaming tokens
Speaker 1: done so badly and poorly in comparison to AI tokens
Speaker 1: for example, And that's because the narrative on gaming has
Speaker 1: been broadly negative. So a lot of people felt that
Speaker 1: gaming was going to grow post COVID, but it didn't.
Speaker 1: It actually stayed flat, right. Also, the other thing about
Speaker 1: gaming is that it's not actually had any price increases
Speaker 1: for over ten years, which means that gaming is you know,
Speaker 1: like you know with QE. During that period of time,
Speaker 1: the cost of their salaries, the cost of milk, the
Speaker 1: cost of everything has gone up as a game studio,
Speaker 1: but the cost of making revenue, I mean, the revenue
Speaker 1: opportunity has stayed broadly flat, right, which means on real
Speaker 1: money terms, they're actually making less money than before, which
Speaker 1: means that less investors are investing them because those studios
Speaker 1: aren't doing so well anymore. And the stock market prices
Speaker 1: for many gaming companies isn't.
Speaker 2: Doing that well as well.
Speaker 1: Like for instance, you know, Roadblocks I think has three
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty million active users, three hundred and eighty million, right,
Speaker 1: and its market cap is I think last ed look
Speaker 1: forty or fifty billion, maybe sixty yet some good days.
Speaker 1: I mean, just compute that if this thing was called
Speaker 1: TikTok or had a social network of thing in there,
Speaker 1: ten times a value. Right. It's narrative, right. The gaming
Speaker 1: the gaming narratives aren't as powerful because of the sentiment.
Speaker 1: During COVID, though, gaming was the narrative because it was
Speaker 1: like everyone's playing games, We're all gonna be virtual, we're
Speaker 1: going to live in metaverse, we're never going to travel again,
Speaker 1: you know that kind of stuff, right. That didn't quite
Speaker 1: turn out true, but and so so that effect gaming
Speaker 1: lost over the last three years. And that's why token
Speaker 1: prices are down because generally investor sentiment is down, right,
Speaker 1: and we think this because we think this impact will
Speaker 1: have it will impact other tokens as well, right in
Speaker 1: terms of other industries, whether there's AI or like you know,
Speaker 1: sort of I know, sort of sort of DCI or
Speaker 1: deep in like, if those topics become popular in the
Speaker 1: broader meta of the world, the tokens will have an
Speaker 1: impact as well. So there are really a few things
Speaker 1: that are going to we think, grow the gaming meta overall.
Speaker 1: One the launch of the Nintendo Switch to this summer.
Speaker 1: That's a big one, already sold out. That's exciting. And
Speaker 1: when people buy a new console, they tend to buy
Speaker 1: twelve to fifteen new games in their lifetime, which means
Speaker 1: more revenue, more growth space. Second thing is that Mario
Speaker 1: Karte pricing for the physical copy is at ninety dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: for those of you in gaming, you know, it's like,
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, I would never pay nine dollars for
Speaker 1: a game. Turns out that being an away, right, it's
Speaker 1: still the cheapest form of right. And you might say
Speaker 1: that seems expensive, but actually, in the context of everything
Speaker 1: you spend on in life, you can spend like forty
Speaker 1: to fifty to sixty hours playing it's actually nothing.
Speaker 3: Actually life is long. You can exactly play the game.
Speaker 1: That's right now, which then leads on to the next thing,
Speaker 1: which is the biggest, biggest, biggest gaming thing ever and
Speaker 1: also frankly cultural phenomena. It's Grand Theft Auto six. GTA
Speaker 1: six is going to be massive, and now given all
Speaker 1: the pricing, sure it's been delayed again until next year,
Speaker 1: but you know, people are thinking it might even go
Speaker 1: up to as one hundred and twenty dollars. And while that
Speaker 1: seems expensive, I can tell you no person is going
Speaker 1: to decide not to buy GTA six just because it's
Speaker 1: twenty dollars or thirty dollars more expensive than sort of
Speaker 1: murri Kart. But what that means is that is a
Speaker 1: license and permission for every other game company to increase
Speaker 1: your prices as well, which again will create a revival,
Speaker 1: be a stock market prices bet a sort of support
Speaker 1: for that, and of course, from a meta attention standpoint,
Speaker 1: you know, when everyone's going to start by buying a
Speaker 1: console to play GTA six, then everyone's going to talk
Speaker 1: about gaming as well. And the final point I would
Speaker 1: say is that you know, with Grand Theft Auto you
Speaker 1: can run ARP servers, and we do expect that we
Speaker 1: have a couple of companies in our portfolio. We do
Speaker 1: expect that people are going to start running crypto rails
Speaker 1: on these servers, and I know in the past Take
Speaker 1: two has been very negative about this, but we also
Speaker 1: think they've been negative because you know, because of the
Speaker 1: sec Right now that you know this regime is no
Speaker 1: longer that hostile towards it actually not hostile at all
Speaker 1: towards it, we expect much more flexibility what will be necessary,
Speaker 1: and I think the US will eventually get there is
Speaker 1: a definitive definition of what is and isn't a utility token,
Speaker 1: and once that happens, I think it opens the floodgates
Speaker 1: for all sorts of things, including running crypto on RP
Speaker 1: service on GTA six, which I think will be massive.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I can't wait to see that. It's
Speaker 3: going to be like the convergence of two major markets,
Speaker 3: and the gaming industry is huge as like, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, if there's one game where crypto just fits in
Speaker 1: just easily, it probably.
Speaker 2: Would be GTA.
Speaker 3: Oh man, well, well yeah, when that comes out, we
Speaker 3: have to have you back on to talk about all that,
Speaker 3: how that's going to impact gamers and much more. But
Speaker 3: thank you so much for taking the time to do this.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me