Speaker 1: And Helium. I think really the first to sort of
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Speaker 2: visit the link in the description. Hi, everyone, welcome into
Speaker 2: the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host, Tony Edward, and
Speaker 2: joining me today is Amir Helium, who's the founder of
Speaker 2: the Helium Network and the CEO of Helium Mobile.
Speaker 3: Amir, it is great to have you on.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me Tony. Good to be here, Amir.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned before the recording, I'm excited to speak
Speaker 2: with you because I followed Helium over the years. The
Speaker 2: folks at Pantera Capital spoke highly of Helium, and I
Speaker 2: just noticed your big partnership with.
Speaker 3: AT and T.
Speaker 2: I have a lots I have lots of questions for
Speaker 2: you and what's happening in the deep in space as well.
Speaker 3: But let's kick it.
Speaker 2: Off with your background. Where are you from and what's
Speaker 2: your professional background?
Speaker 1: Goodness, So, I grew up in the UK. I was
Speaker 1: actually born in Scotland, of all places, and I grew
Speaker 1: up in in England just outside London. My professional background
Speaker 1: really mostly be in the video game space. Like my
Speaker 1: very first job was a video game tester as an
Speaker 1: intern in in high school. By the way, it's that's
Speaker 1: a thankless task. But I'm sure video game tester sounds
Speaker 1: like a fun job and you just get to play
Speaker 1: games all day, but it is brutal. You just got
Speaker 1: this like sheet of like here's eight hundred known bugs,
Speaker 1: you know, like recreate them, and some of them are involved.
Speaker 1: You've got to play like four hours into the game
Speaker 1: or something just to get to the to the bug.
Speaker 1: So that's actually a much harder job than I thought
Speaker 1: than I thought. And then I was a software engineer,
Speaker 1: worked in design game design rather than than graphic design,
Speaker 1: worked on stuff like Battlefield nineteen forty two. I used
Speaker 1: to also play video games professionally, was another thing in
Speaker 1: my past life. So I was a Quake and Quake
Speaker 1: three and Unreal Tournament champion, and that was cool. I mean,
Speaker 1: I met a lot of really good people and a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, a lot of interesting companies and sponsors
Speaker 1: in the space. And this was a long time ago,
Speaker 1: this sort of late nineties, before before video gaming was
Speaker 1: really or pro gaming was really a thing. But that's
Speaker 1: kind of how I strangely, that's how I ended up
Speaker 1: in Helium is that I met Sean Fanning, who was
Speaker 1: the co founder of Napster, in that video game journey,
Speaker 1: like he was a big Quake player and a big
Speaker 1: World of Warcraft player. Pats crossed and we ended up
Speaker 1: staying in touch and ended up founding Helium together many
Speaker 1: many years later. So it all it all works out
Speaker 1: in the end, but the path was was definitely windy
Speaker 1: and strange in hindsight.
Speaker 2: So on that note, you're well aware that in Web
Speaker 2: three there's a big sector with game fi. Have you
Speaker 2: gotten the itch to say, you know what, maybe I'll
Speaker 2: jump sectors go from deep en to game file.
Speaker 1: You know, not not yet. I've kept a close eye
Speaker 1: on it. I'm I wrote, I'm an angel investor in
Speaker 1: this company called Shaga that I think is potentially doing
Speaker 1: some really interesting things in the in the gaming universe
Speaker 1: on Solana. You know, I've kept track of it. My
Speaker 1: skepticism around gaming on on in the Web three world
Speaker 1: has always been that having worked for and like knowing
Speaker 1: these companies really well, like EA, there is no way
Speaker 1: they're going to give up ownership of their ip that way,
Speaker 1: like they're going to like try and build their own
Speaker 1: layer one or layer two or something. It would be
Speaker 1: my I shouldn't say with such certainty, My expectation would
Speaker 1: be that like that's what they would want to do
Speaker 1: rather than building on Solana or you know, Bay or whatever.
Speaker 1: And so that's where my skepticism kind of creeps in,
Speaker 1: is that, like all of the value really lives in
Speaker 1: the game itself. You know, so if you thought about
Speaker 1: World of Warcraft trading items and gold and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and I can't see those guys being interested in like
Speaker 1: moving any part of that value chain away from them.
Speaker 1: But we'll see. I mean, I think it's you know,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of hatred I think in the
Speaker 1: gaming space towards crypto, and that primarily comes from the
Speaker 1: old days of GPU shortages. You know, gamers couldn't get
Speaker 1: hold of GPUs at reasonable prices because everyone was trying
Speaker 1: to buy them to mine ethereum or you know whatever
Speaker 1: they were doing. And I think that created a lot
Speaker 1: of conflict between the two universes. But we'll see. I
Speaker 1: hope it's something that takes off, because to me, it's
Speaker 1: something that makes logical sense, and having spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time in that world, I can totally see how
Speaker 1: they would crossover. But today I haven't thought about it.
Speaker 1: I've just been focused on Helium and most of the
Speaker 1: stuff I spent time on in the Deep in the
Speaker 1: deep in universe, rather than.
Speaker 3: Gaming, Oh for sure.
Speaker 2: So do you think with a gaming aspect, it just
Speaker 2: needs to be the bridge where these virtual assets can
Speaker 2: be used in the real world, where they're interoperable. And
Speaker 2: to your point, Ea, in these folks they create maybe
Speaker 2: their own blockchain, but it is maybe a public blockchain,
Speaker 2: or they build a layer two in a public blockchain.
Speaker 3: What do you think might be the bridge for that?
Speaker 1: It is, I'm not I'm honestly not sure yet. So,
Speaker 1: like I think, you know what's interesting about it is
Speaker 1: it all formed I think very organically, especially in World
Speaker 1: of Warcraft, which is probably really where this all started.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say it started, but that's where it really
Speaker 1: got popular. The idea of like trading items and people
Speaker 1: paying for items, and you know, like that that felt
Speaker 1: like somewhere between EverQuest and World of Warcraft is like
Speaker 1: where that concept became real, and it's not you know,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not clear to me yet what value
Speaker 1: there is in taking it outside of the game itself, right,
Speaker 1: because I can't do anything with the World of Warcraft
Speaker 1: sword or whatever outside of World of Warcraft, right, Like
Speaker 1: maybe I can have it as a PfP or something,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if that's you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's valuable enough. So I think that's a
Speaker 1: little bit of the challenge right now. Is like a
Speaker 1: lot of the solutions are solutions searching for a problem basically, right,
Speaker 1: and like can we apply that? Can we apply web
Speaker 1: three to like X thing? And a lot of times
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that that makes sense. And I think
Speaker 1: the item idea is like a decent one, Like unless
Speaker 1: there's interoperability of currency and items and stuff between games,
Speaker 1: then I'm not sure there's a ton of value in
Speaker 1: like just putting those things on chain, right, because there's
Speaker 1: nothing to do with it on chain. I can only
Speaker 1: use it inside its game, right, And so I think
Speaker 1: that's going to be an interesting thing to watch it.
Speaker 1: It's not a new concept or a new probably this
Speaker 1: is like way before web three, like this idea has existed.
Speaker 1: Steam is kind of an example of trying to create
Speaker 1: sort of a cross platform thing that is useful, and
Speaker 1: it has been, but that's been you know, it's become
Speaker 1: more of like a game library or a game marketplace
Speaker 1: rather than an in app kind of experience. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm curious to see, but I am
Speaker 1: definitely skeptical and a bit wary. And by the way,
Speaker 1: this is, this is why I think it's generally a
Speaker 1: bad idea for people who come from the space to
Speaker 1: be the ones trying to pioneer the disruption in web
Speaker 1: three is that you know all the reasons why it
Speaker 1: shouldn't work, and it is better if someone that just
Speaker 1: comes in who quite frankly, is kind of clueless about
Speaker 1: it and just sort of forces it to work. And
Speaker 1: I think that's actually what happened with Helium and us
Speaker 1: because we didn't come from like a wireless or a
Speaker 1: telecom background. We just like it should just work this way, right,
Speaker 1: And you know, you kind of need a little bit
Speaker 1: of that cluelessness sometimes because you know where all the
Speaker 1: pitfalls are if you've spent too much time in some
Speaker 1: of these industries.
Speaker 2: That's such a great point and to your point that
Speaker 2: mostly the disruptors usually come outside of the incumbents, right,
Speaker 2: and the legacy into tuitions and things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you couldn't have imagined Uber being started
Speaker 1: by like a taxi cat exec, right, or Airbnb being
Speaker 1: started by like some of them, the Hilton family, right.
Speaker 1: It's just it is they can't think that way, and
Speaker 1: it's because they've spent so much time in like the
Speaker 1: regulation and you know all the stuff that comes with
Speaker 1: the with that world, and so you know, as much
Speaker 1: as I know about gaming, which is a little bit
Speaker 1: old now, I think I would also be totally the
Speaker 1: wrong person to like try and approach that problem, just
Speaker 1: because I know so much about it, and I think
Speaker 1: that generally can work against you.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, I would love to know about what was
Speaker 2: your first encounter with bitcoin or maybe etherorem or blockchain,
Speaker 2: What was your aha moment and you know what led
Speaker 2: to integrating that into a helium.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was way late. I was clueless on crypto
Speaker 1: for for the longest time. One of your very earliest
Speaker 1: employees who's still with us, actually was the ethereum ico
Speaker 1: and he was like, you should get in on this ico.
Speaker 1: I was like, it just sounds like nonsense. You know.
Speaker 1: It was like thirty five cents at the time per eth.
Speaker 1: So in hindsight, I was an idiot. Maybe in foresight
Speaker 1: I'm an idiot as well, but it was it took
Speaker 1: me a very long time to understand why that why
Speaker 1: it was interesting at all. Right, And and you know,
Speaker 1: we used to joke in the early days with that
Speaker 1: particular employee about maybe we should put bitcoin a six
Speaker 1: inside you know, hotspots. And this is before Helium was
Speaker 1: even a Web three crypto thing at all. We were
Speaker 1: just trying to think of ways to incentivize people to
Speaker 1: like go deploy these you know what ended up being
Speaker 1: called the hotspot. But we were trying to create any
Speaker 1: incentive we could think of for that to happen. And
Speaker 1: it really wasn't honestly, and I think I've said this
Speaker 1: on another podcasts and stuff. It wasn't really until file
Speaker 1: Coin that I really was like, Okay, this actually really
Speaker 1: is kind of cool, right, because you are you sort
Speaker 1: of devised the system in Filecoin's case, like they're trying
Speaker 1: to prove that you were storing, that you were making
Speaker 1: file storage available, or that you were storing files. And
Speaker 1: it was the first time that I had seen like
Speaker 1: a credible let's say, a credible team, right, like they
Speaker 1: had already been doing that kind of work for a
Speaker 1: very long time, proposed something that I thought made sense
Speaker 1: and sort of the use the thing that the network
Speaker 1: needed as the work. Right. So rather than like hashing
Speaker 1: or you know, using GPUs or whatever, you were making
Speaker 1: file storage available, right, And it's a file storage network, right.
Speaker 1: And that was the first time that I had seen that.
Speaker 1: There were other file storage networks before filecoin, like CIA
Speaker 1: or siah and storage and others that I have great
Speaker 1: respect for, but their work was still hashing, and that
Speaker 1: was like orthogonal to the problem, right, And it was
Speaker 1: just sort of a way to like, you know, cause
Speaker 1: there to be some work in order for rewards to exist.
Speaker 1: So file coin was the first time I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's really clever. And then and then we started we slash.
Speaker 1: I started to like go down this rabbit hole of like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: what if we could revisit the concepts of like using
Speaker 1: that as an incentive to like go build wordless networks, right, Like,
Speaker 1: how could we how could we cause the network to exist?
Speaker 1: Which is I think the genius of Bitcoin and file
Speaker 1: coin and others is that they have invented the bootstrapping
Speaker 1: system basically, right where the earliest participants in the network,
Speaker 1: the miners, earned something, right even though the network isn't
Speaker 1: being used and it's new, and you know, like you
Speaker 1: have to solve that chicken egg problem somewhere. And that
Speaker 1: was what I thought was genius about it. And obviously
Speaker 1: we borrowed, slash copied heavily from from everything that had
Speaker 1: come before us when we were designing Helium, and I
Speaker 1: think ended up being I think very successful as a
Speaker 1: way to like bootstrap wireless networks.
Speaker 3: And I'm curious at what you think about this.
Speaker 2: You know, you mentioned your time at Napster and the
Speaker 2: concept of file sharing and computers distributed globally that are
Speaker 2: seating certain files, and then blockchain is almost the same concept,
Speaker 2: but just the verification and the cryptography aspect to it.
Speaker 2: Do you see the similarities there? Is that is this
Speaker 2: an evolution of file sharing?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think so. So just to be clear, I
Speaker 1: was never at Napster. My co founder Sean was the
Speaker 1: founder of so I'm not that well versed in that universe.
Speaker 1: But it feels the same, right, like it is a
Speaker 1: user created distribution system basically, right, like you don't have
Speaker 1: to go to Tower Records or HMV if you're British or whatever,
Speaker 1: Like you now have this sort of at the time
Speaker 1: highly illegal version of a of a of a you know,
Speaker 1: file sharing network. But I think what it proved was
Speaker 1: like that's actually what people wanted, right, Like they want
Speaker 1: to be able to like you seem too young. But
Speaker 1: if you remember, at the time, the only way to
Speaker 1: like get a single song was to like buy the
Speaker 1: whole album, right, and like that was like, honestly, the
Speaker 1: biggest shift with Napster was like I just want that
Speaker 1: one song and I would even pay for it, but
Speaker 1: there's no way for me to pay for it, so
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna steal it. Basically was the way that worked,
Speaker 1: and I think that led to what ultimately was iTunes
Speaker 1: and everything else, because that was the unlocked was like
Speaker 1: I just want that song, right, and it should be
Speaker 1: easy for me to acquire it. And web three stuff
Speaker 1: is I think a little bit like that. It is
Speaker 1: all you know, it's all user created and all sort
Speaker 1: of lives in this public domain, and I think that
Speaker 1: is such a radical change from what had happened in
Speaker 1: the past, and things like Napster and bit torrent after it,
Speaker 1: and everything that sort of came came that way. I
Speaker 1: thought it was sort of I don't know, almost prepared
Speaker 1: the public for like what that feels like, you know,
Speaker 1: like to have these sort of publicly distributed networks, and
Speaker 1: I I love that part. I think it's fascinating.
Speaker 3: Oh for sure.
Speaker 2: Take us back to the genesis of Helium. You know,
Speaker 2: how did this idea come about, what was the mission
Speaker 2: and how has that mission evolved over the years.
Speaker 1: Helium started as not a crypto company. So we started
Speaker 1: the company in twenty thirteen, and the thing that we
Speaker 1: were trying to solve for was like there should be
Speaker 1: a big wireless network for low power connected things, so
Speaker 1: sensors basically, right. We had friends that were building hardware
Speaker 1: startups that likes sensor companies, but basically and they had
Speaker 1: no way of like getting their devices connected to the internet,
Speaker 1: Like you either had to use Bluetooth, but in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases that wouldn't work just because of what
Speaker 1: they were trying to build, like they wouldn't be any
Speaker 1: phones nearby. Wi Fi had the problem of like, hey, well,
Speaker 1: how do you authenticate to all these different worldless networks?
Speaker 1: And like how do I make it seamless? Cellular was
Speaker 1: really really expensive at the time and you know, very
Speaker 1: very power intensive, and so that was sort of the
Speaker 1: genesis thought was like, Okay, well, why is there supposed
Speaker 1: to be this like blow up of Internet of things,
Speaker 1: you know, IoT stuff, but there doesn't seem to be
Speaker 1: a network that would actually support those devices. And so
Speaker 1: that that was our sort of original thought. And because
Speaker 1: we had friends working in that universe, we we sort
Speaker 1: of understood the problem at some level and thought we
Speaker 1: actually had our first set of customers in those friends.
Speaker 1: It took a long time, though, like we had not
Speaker 1: solved in any way the how do you build a
Speaker 1: wireless network? Park Like we had built the technology, like
Speaker 1: so we had built an interesting, low power wordless protocol,
Speaker 1: but the problem remained of like, oh, well how do
Speaker 1: I how do I build a big wireless network? Or
Speaker 1: like how do I get thousands or hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: or millions of these things deployed? And I you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't really until we started dabbling in crypto like
Speaker 1: years later that we even thought about finding a solution
Speaker 1: to found a reasonable solution to that problem. We spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time, you know, building products for like
Speaker 1: healthcare and like restaurants, and you know, we started to
Speaker 1: we tried to think of it that way. It was like, okay,
Speaker 1: if we got every restaurant to like install these helium
Speaker 1: sensors and devices, then you would end up with the
Speaker 1: big coverage network that way. But it's a very very
Speaker 1: very slow and kind of painful grind and to some
Speaker 1: degree like not a thing that at least for myself,
Speaker 1: but I think for a lot of the team also
Speaker 1: not that interesting. You know that we came from like
Speaker 1: the sort of protocol background of like wanting to build
Speaker 1: distributed systems and change the world in some way, and
Speaker 1: instead we were building you know, sensor solutions for restaurants,
Speaker 1: which is a perfectly fine business. It just wasn't what
Speaker 1: we wanted to do and what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: So I think when we when we read the file
Speaker 1: coin white paper, like I literally just ninety degree turned
Speaker 1: the company. At that point, I was like I don't
Speaker 1: even want to do what we were doing anymore, like
Speaker 1: we should do this right. And that was an interesting
Speaker 1: period of time. It was a lot of intense conversations
Speaker 1: with investors and the board because crypto was still pretty
Speaker 1: new and still very cowboy ish. I can't tell if
Speaker 1: that's gotten better, honestly, but so it was. You know,
Speaker 1: it was kind of a radical idea to like abandon
Speaker 1: a business plan that was kind of working but slowly,
Speaker 1: and go chase off some other crazy, you know thing.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of the That was sort of the
Speaker 1: evolution is that we struggled for a long time to
Speaker 1: figure out how to get the sort of technology for
Speaker 1: IoT that we had built deployed at scale. And then
Speaker 1: when we discovered file coin, that kind of set us
Speaker 1: down the path of what became things like proof of
Speaker 1: coverage and hotspots and wrote the first white paper in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, and that was sort of the start of
Speaker 1: out of Helium's crypto journey, I guess.
Speaker 3: And you mentioned the word radical.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't imagine what that was like to
Speaker 2: steer to ship in a very different direction. And you know,
Speaker 2: are you happy you did that and made that change,
Speaker 2: as hard as it may have been.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, No, no regrets about that, not even for
Speaker 1: a second. Like there are things about crypto that I
Speaker 1: think are troubling and it can be exhausting, for sure,
Speaker 1: but that is absolutely one of the better things that
Speaker 1: we've ever done. And I think, you know, people may disagree,
Speaker 1: but I think Helium really created deep In as we
Speaker 1: know it today, you know, like I don't think I
Speaker 1: don't think there would be a deep In without Helium
Speaker 1: or something that looked like us. And for that, I'm
Speaker 1: very proud. Like I think that that's an awesome thing
Speaker 1: to have been part of, and I hope to like
Speaker 1: watch it evolve and participate in the evolution, whether with
Speaker 1: Helium or as an investor in other stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: to the extent that I can. Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in many ways, you guys are leading the charge
Speaker 2: here and deep end, because any time I ask about
Speaker 2: deep Into anyone, Helium is brought up, I mean as
Speaker 2: a great example.
Speaker 3: So kudos to you and the team.
Speaker 2: Now, at one point you had your own blockchain and
Speaker 2: then you switched to Salona. Tell us about that and
Speaker 2: the whole strategy behind that.
Speaker 1: You know, when we started building it was probably twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen that we started like building stuff. You know, we
Speaker 1: hadn't really finished the first version of a white paper,
Speaker 1: but we knew roughly what we were trying to do,
Speaker 1: Like we were trying to invent a way to incentivize
Speaker 1: people to deploy these like we call them hotspots, so
Speaker 1: they are sort of like wireless access points, and you know,
Speaker 1: kind of the way I'd mentioned earlier. The problem is
Speaker 1: there's no there are no users of your network yet
Speaker 1: because your network doesn't exist, and so you have to
Speaker 1: create some kind of reason or incentive for people to
Speaker 1: deploy these hotspots absent there being customers and usage and
Speaker 1: money on the on the other side. And that's what
Speaker 1: that was. I think really Bitcoin's greatest invention with this
Speaker 1: concept of mining, right right was like I'm going to
Speaker 1: do some work, and I'm going to get rewarded in tokens,
Speaker 1: coins like currency or whatever for doing that work, regardless
Speaker 1: of whether there's actually any users of the network or not.
Speaker 1: Right like in the early days of bitcoin, you know,
Speaker 1: you're just mining empty blocks for the for the most part,
Speaker 1: right Like, there aren't transactions, There aren't substantial transaction fees.
Speaker 1: There's no revenue for you right as a minor, and
Speaker 1: you know, earning the genesis or the coin based rewards
Speaker 1: sorry in bitcoin, is your reward, right, And so we
Speaker 1: we knew that that's what we wanted to do at
Speaker 1: the time. Really only ethereum existed that would have made
Speaker 1: any kind of sense for us to There were other
Speaker 1: st I mean, EOS was kind of a round ish
Speaker 1: sort of you know, there was other stuff that we
Speaker 1: could have used. Ethereum we thought was the only one
Speaker 1: that was reasonable as an idea, but I think, you know,
Speaker 1: we would have had to have built what is now
Speaker 1: thought of as an L two basically, right, We would
Speaker 1: had to have built an entire blockchain basically on top
Speaker 1: of Ethereum in order to be able to do what
Speaker 1: we want, just because we have so many transactions and
Speaker 1: like so much stuff going on. It would be too expensive,
Speaker 1: and in hindsight, you know, maybe an L two would
Speaker 1: have been the right thing to do. I don't know.
Speaker 1: What was clear was that we needed to build something
Speaker 1: because doing it on Ethereum directly was not going to work.
Speaker 1: And so that's where we you know, our team at
Speaker 1: the time had a pretty deep background in building distributed systems,
Speaker 1: Like a bunch of the guys on the team had
Speaker 1: worked on the back end for Apple's eye message for example,
Speaker 1: which is like a gigantic like distributed systems problem. So
Speaker 1: we thought we knew how to like tackle that problem
Speaker 1: and to some degree we did, right, Like, we built
Speaker 1: an l one that was pretty good. It was sort
Speaker 1: of unique in that it didn't have validators. Like all
Speaker 1: of the blockchain ran on these little hotspots, which at
Speaker 1: the time we thought was super important, like we wanted
Speaker 1: to sort of maximize decentralization, but I think it was
Speaker 1: you know, it ended up being a lot of work
Speaker 1: to maintain. As the network scaled at the speed that
Speaker 1: it did, it became ever harder and perhaps impossible to
Speaker 1: like keep running the blockchain on these like miniature little
Speaker 1: devices that were like raspberry pies, which again I'm like,
Speaker 1: I amazed that we got that to work at all,
Speaker 1: but it just became like an impossible burden and started
Speaker 1: to it started to make it harder to scale in
Speaker 1: terms of users because it became so much harder for
Speaker 1: the network to work, and there were outages all the time,
Speaker 1: and there are problems, and people had to open their
Speaker 1: fireworlds for peer to peer connection, you know, just it
Speaker 1: became complicated to be an operator of a hotspot, which
Speaker 1: was the opposite of what we wanted, right. We wanted
Speaker 1: to make it as simple as possible. So we had
Speaker 1: known the Solana guys for a very long time. Our
Speaker 1: CTO had worked with Anatolely back in the qualcom days.
Speaker 1: Anatotally the founder of Solana or one of the founders.
Speaker 1: We tried to hire Anatolely to work on Helium, but
Speaker 1: he had already sort of sele and was, you know,
Speaker 1: working on this proof of history thing. But it was
Speaker 1: too early at the time, like Solana was like roughly
Speaker 1: in the same stage of development that Helium was, and
Speaker 1: so we couldn't really hitch our wag into something that
Speaker 1: was also in development and also hadn't launched and also
Speaker 1: would have bugs and also you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like we wanted to control our desks a little bit better.
Speaker 1: But over time, as Solana started to succeed and started
Speaker 1: to get adopted and you know, a DeFi ecosystem started
Speaker 1: to form, and exchanges started to support SPL tokens and
Speaker 1: wallets started to support SPL tokens. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of work to try and go to every single
Speaker 1: exchange or every single wallet you know provider and say like, hey,
Speaker 1: add support for this you know, custom l one that
Speaker 1: only works for us, right, and it made it very
Speaker 1: difficult for us to get adoption on exchanges or wallets
Speaker 1: or really anything, and certainly there was no DeFi ecosystem
Speaker 1: or anything like that that existed. All that was happening
Speaker 1: in telegram. So once Solana got to that point, I
Speaker 1: was like, it makes no sense not to switch as
Speaker 1: far as I'm concerned, right, like, because we own a
Speaker 1: wireless telecom company at the end of the day, and
Speaker 1: having to like build and maintain our own blockchain, which
Speaker 1: is something like we had to do rather than something
Speaker 1: that we thought really added a lot of value to
Speaker 1: what we were what we were building.
Speaker 2: Oh, that absolutely makes sense. Yeah, I mean I can't
Speaker 2: imagine building and you know, managing your own blockchain. The
Speaker 2: amount of work that is evolved in that. You know,
Speaker 2: for the folks who are listening, who may this is
Speaker 2: maybe all new to them. What's kind of your elevator pitched,
Speaker 2: you know as to what is helium at how they
Speaker 2: can leverage it?
Speaker 1: Mean, Helium is that, I think the world's first user
Speaker 1: owned telco. But basically is the way to think about it, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to, you know, participate in the telecom
Speaker 1: world in any way, like if you wanted to own
Speaker 1: a cell tower a bit basically, right, and you thought
Speaker 1: that would be an interesting way of making money. Helium
Speaker 1: is like a way to like go go and do
Speaker 1: that right. Like, it's an industry that historically has been
Speaker 1: gate kept by money regulation, and Helium I think really
Speaker 1: the first to sort of blow it open in a
Speaker 1: reasonable way right where you or I or anyone can
Speaker 1: operate a miniature cell tower but basically in our house
Speaker 1: or in our business, and we will make money every
Speaker 1: time someone connects to that cell to out right, and
Speaker 1: like so anytime someone is nearby watching Netflix or whatever
Speaker 1: they're doing, you are getting paid every time the user
Speaker 1: is doing that right, and that at the highest level
Speaker 1: is what is what Helium is all about. We've done
Speaker 1: these deals as you've seen with you know, T Mobile,
Speaker 1: AT and T Telefonica. There are others that we haven't
Speaker 1: announced yet, and they are you know, effectively a way
Speaker 1: for for example, AT and T subscribers to automatically use Helium. Right,
Speaker 1: so if you're an AT and T user, there's no
Speaker 1: affirmative action that you have to take. You don't have
Speaker 1: to find the Helium network and join it. You don't
Speaker 1: have to do anything. Your phone will authenticate with Helium
Speaker 1: using it simcard and automatically join and automatically connect and
Speaker 1: start sending data through the Helium network whenever it's available
Speaker 1: because it's cheaper. It's cheaper for AT and T to
Speaker 1: do it. That way, we can create coverage in places
Speaker 1: where AT and T can't really reasonably go and do it, right,
Speaker 1: Like they're not going to go and deploy a you know,
Speaker 1: small cell or cell tower or something in a Starbucks, right,
Speaker 1: and so you know, so that's where Helium sort of fits.
Speaker 1: Like over time, what we see now is almost ninety
Speaker 1: percent of cell phone traffic, you know, at least in
Speaker 1: the United States, it's happening indoors, right, And so it's
Speaker 1: less about building like cell tower infrastructure outdoors, you know,
Speaker 1: which is still very expensive and very difficult business to
Speaker 1: participate in, but much more about capturing people that are
Speaker 1: indoors that may not have good service already or knee
Speaker 1: cheaper options or whatever it may be. But it's mostly
Speaker 1: a coverage game indoors, right, Like, there are plenty of
Speaker 1: places that I'm sure you go to and that I
Speaker 1: go to that have poor cell service inside, right, and
Speaker 1: this Helium is a great way of solving that problem
Speaker 1: and also allows for the operator to make money at
Speaker 1: the same time, whether that's the business owner or someone independent.
Speaker 1: We also run Helium Mobile, which is a cell phone
Speaker 1: service that uses Helium. It uses both Helium and T Mobile.
Speaker 1: So you could think of Helium Mobile as equivalent to
Speaker 1: you know, Mint Mobile or Boost or like you know,
Speaker 1: any of those sort of prepaid cell phone plans that
Speaker 1: you can buy, except for the fact that firstly there's
Speaker 1: a plan which is completely free, and secondly uses a
Speaker 1: combination of Helium and T Mobile to provide the network coverage,
Speaker 1: rather than something like Mint which would only use T
Speaker 1: Mobile's network and sort of be stuck with their pricing.
Speaker 1: So that's you know, Helium sort of has two ends,
Speaker 1: the network building side and then the Heliumobile the subscribers
Speaker 1: service on the other side.
Speaker 3: How are you able to offer free service?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that was one of the interesting I
Speaker 1: think revelations for us. I mean, at first, when we
Speaker 1: launched Helium Mobile, we made it very cryptocentric, right We
Speaker 1: as part of using the service, you would earn crypto,
Speaker 1: for example, in the in the background, And I think
Speaker 1: that's that's super interesting. It just I don't know how
Speaker 1: to say this in the most in the nicest way possible.
Speaker 1: It attracts a certain type of user who only cares
Speaker 1: about earning crypto. As soon as the crypto price changes,
Speaker 1: they're like up in arms and like, you know, like
Speaker 1: can't stand it, or if they earned less than they
Speaker 1: did yesterday or whatever, it's a disaster. And so you
Speaker 1: know it it also, you know, anytime you have these
Speaker 1: kind of incentives, whether it's in crypto or not, you
Speaker 1: get everyone trying to game the system somehow, and that
Speaker 1: is like just taken to the to the nth degree
Speaker 1: when it comes to crypto. And so that was the
Speaker 1: first version of Heliumobile is like let's make it a
Speaker 1: compare plan. It's going to be like twenty bucks a
Speaker 1: month unlimited, but you're also going to earn crypto if
Speaker 1: you if you do this thing called discovery mapping. And
Speaker 1: what discovery mapping is is, as part of the Helium
Speaker 1: Mobile app on your phone, every time you sort of
Speaker 1: are wandering around about your day, you're sort of reporting
Speaker 1: back to us or to the Helium network what the
Speaker 1: cell service looks like in the area that you're in,
Speaker 1: and we can use that data to say like, okay,
Speaker 1: there's dead spots here, right or these are areas where
Speaker 1: people are spending a lot of time or there's a
Speaker 1: lot of foot traffic, and you can sort of using
Speaker 1: it as a network planning tool basically. Right, you can say,
Speaker 1: like there's a ton of people that are always here, right,
Speaker 1: like if there was if there was a hot spot here,
Speaker 1: you would be capturing you know, like a ton of use,
Speaker 1: you know, a ton of usage from this group of people.
Speaker 1: Or we know that there's no cell phone coverage in
Speaker 1: the Stomer books over there, Like if someone were to
Speaker 1: go put a hot spot in there, you know, they
Speaker 1: would also capture a lot of traffic. So that's what
Speaker 1: discovery mapping is. It was basically a way to create
Speaker 1: decentralized network planning to like figure out where people are
Speaker 1: and where people aren't, where cell service exists and where
Speaker 1: it doesn't. And that's what you got rewarded for, right,
Speaker 1: So the more you discovery map, the more you earned,
Speaker 1: the more you earn tokens. And I think that was okay,
Speaker 1: it worked well. There's a group of people that's very
Speaker 1: upset that we went away from that model, But the
Speaker 1: bigger group of people, by many, many, many orders of magnitude,
Speaker 1: are still highly skeptical about crypto, and anytime you are
Speaker 1: associating crypto with your products, you run a little bit
Speaker 1: of that risk. Right. You are no longer just a
Speaker 1: phone service, You're like a crypto company, right, and that
Speaker 1: creates some level of skepticism. I think that's going to
Speaker 1: improve over time, and certainly is improving over time. But
Speaker 1: we thought it would make more sense if we hid
Speaker 1: the crypto part away from the user, right, So we
Speaker 1: would still earn from discovery mapping, so that still happens,
Speaker 1: but we would use that to subsidize phone plans basically
Speaker 1: and effectively make them free. And that was our way
Speaker 1: of like still rewarding the user by doing it in
Speaker 1: a completely different way. So rather than like directly giving
Speaker 1: users tokens, we now keep those tokens and the user
Speaker 1: gets a free phone plan or a discounted phone plan
Speaker 1: or whatever out of it. In the back end, you
Speaker 1: also points in the same way that you would with
Speaker 1: a credit card or an airline, and you can use
Speaker 1: those points to buy stuff, right, gift cards, like whatever
Speaker 1: it may be. And we think, you know, we think
Speaker 1: that's better. We think that's a better model because it
Speaker 1: appeals to everyone, right, Like even if you're even if
Speaker 1: you're cryptocentric, you understand like what's going on in the background,
Speaker 1: and that's interesting to you. If you're not cryptocentric, if
Speaker 1: you don't care about crypto, or you don't know about it,
Speaker 1: or you think it's a scam or whatever, you still
Speaker 1: don't care because you get a free cell phone plan
Speaker 1: out of it, right, And so I think that that is,
Speaker 1: at least to me, I'm obviously biased, but I think
Speaker 1: that is the sort of future of like how you
Speaker 1: should apply crypto to consumer businesses is that you you
Speaker 1: make them sort of crypto enabled rather than crypto facing
Speaker 1: to some extent, and I think that's been wildly successful
Speaker 1: for us so far. Here Immobile is growing at an
Speaker 1: incredible rate. We're adding two or three thousand subscribers a
Speaker 1: day right now, which in some universe doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: a lot until you think about the fact that like
Speaker 1: AT and T loses fifty thousand prepaid subscribers every quarter
Speaker 1: or whatever, right, and so we are. We are growing
Speaker 1: very very quickly relative to the rest of the market,
Speaker 1: certainly outpacing AT and T team over Izon on when
Speaker 1: it comes to prepaid and I'm excited to see how
Speaker 1: that how that goes, like whether that is whether this
Speaker 1: model of like sort of inverting crypto into something that's
Speaker 1: sort of under the hood is the right thing to
Speaker 1: do over time or not. Right now, it certainly feels
Speaker 1: like it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was file question to that is it
Speaker 2: seems to your point, you know, how we're using the
Speaker 2: internet right now, we're not thinking about TCIP and all
Speaker 2: the nuts and bolts and makes it all this work,
Speaker 2: just that it works, and the end consumer, the average
Speaker 2: Joe and Jane, they don't necessarily need to know about
Speaker 2: all these things, just that it works and it's something
Speaker 2: better than they've had before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And crypto isn't quite there yet, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you think about l one blockchains, like they should
Speaker 1: feel like AWS or Google Cloud or measure so you
Speaker 1: don't care, right like I'm not using Instagram because it
Speaker 1: runs on AWS, Like I could care less what back
Speaker 1: end you know, server or service provider they're using. But
Speaker 1: crypto isn't there yet. It's very tribal, and obviously that
Speaker 1: comes due to the financial incentive, right Like I own
Speaker 1: tokens in Solona whatever, so I want that to succeed
Speaker 1: more than I want ethereum to succeed. And I think
Speaker 1: that part is, you know, when when Helium was proposing
Speaker 1: to migrate away from our l one, you can really
Speaker 1: got to see that tribal thing come out. It didn't
Speaker 1: matter whether or not it made any sense or not.
Speaker 1: People just wanted you to migrate to like whatever l
Speaker 1: one blockchain, like they were a token holder that they
Speaker 1: were a token slash bag holder of and there was
Speaker 1: no logic applied to it whatsoeverage just like either than this,
Speaker 1: and therefore you should move to that or you're otherwise
Speaker 1: you're a scam. But basically was that was That was
Speaker 1: where so Crypto still has a way to go. I
Speaker 1: think into what you said is true, but I think
Speaker 1: that's where it should go, right, Like Solana should just
Speaker 1: be like the better option that you use to deploy
Speaker 1: Web three apps, but not really the selling point, you know,
Speaker 1: like it and someone had this very good mock, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of troll image of like what Netflix would look
Speaker 1: like in Web three and it would be like streaming
Speaker 1: videos on Solana or something right that, and you know,
Speaker 1: and no one really cares about that. No one's watching
Speaker 1: Netflix because it because they run their own data center
Speaker 1: or they have clever CDNs or whatever. It's just you
Speaker 1: want millions of titles like out of the press of
Speaker 1: a button, and that's what you're getting, right, And so
Speaker 1: there's a ways to go before that's true. I think
Speaker 1: the financial incentives make it more complicated to get to
Speaker 1: the place that you're describing and the thing that Helium
Speaker 1: Mobile is doing. But the thing I love about it
Speaker 1: is that we are sort of very much outside of crypto.
Speaker 1: I mean, Helium Mobile might be a fifty hundred million
Speaker 1: dollar business this year and it is sort of separate
Speaker 1: in a way from crypto, but not you know, like
Speaker 1: it only exists because of the crypto power behind it,
Speaker 1: but the end user doesn't really see or feel that
Speaker 1: in any way, Oh for sure.
Speaker 2: Now, earlier we were talking about the gaming industry and
Speaker 2: the gatekeepers and you know, the incumbents not wanting to
Speaker 2: be disrupted. So how were you able to get partnerships
Speaker 2: with T Mobile and AT and T huge incumbents.
Speaker 1: You know, I think these companies are smarter than they
Speaker 1: were in the past, right, Like they see this as
Speaker 1: for what it's worth. I would still be surprised if
Speaker 1: any of these companies thought of Helium or anyone else
Speaker 1: in the deep in space in a very very serious way.
Speaker 1: I think it's all very interesting to them, and we
Speaker 1: are providing some value to them that is growing over time,
Speaker 1: but it's still very much, I think, an experiment for
Speaker 1: those guys. And the reason I think it's interesting is
Speaker 1: is it makes obvious sense, right, Like, of course this
Speaker 1: would be a better way of deploying a wireless network
Speaker 1: than spending you know, one hundred and fifty billion dollars,
Speaker 1: you know, building cell towers and going you know and
Speaker 1: installing in every single location with fiber backle and all
Speaker 1: of this stuff. Like that's obviously not going to be
Speaker 1: the way forward, you know, And some of that is cost,
Speaker 1: and some of that is technology, right, like things like
Speaker 1: pass Point, which is the technology that we use that
Speaker 1: allows what I described where an AT and T subscriber
Speaker 1: will just jump on and off to the Healium network
Speaker 1: without having to like authenticate or go through a portal
Speaker 1: or do any of that stuff. You know. Pass Point
Speaker 1: is a pretty old technology. It's at least a decade old,
Speaker 1: but it's only recently started to become widely adopted. And
Speaker 1: then Wi Fi has greatly improved, you know, especially with
Speaker 1: Wi Fi six, WiFi seven, you know, like that has
Speaker 1: allowed companies like ours and other deep end players to
Speaker 1: like very very cheaply deploy network coverage that's really really useful,
Speaker 1: you know, like a Wi Fi access point or a
Speaker 1: hot spot of hours can support hundreds or of thousands
Speaker 1: of simultaneous users, but the device itself might only cost
Speaker 1: a couple hundred bucks, right, And so it's a completely
Speaker 1: different paradigm than what the teleco industry has been used to.
Speaker 1: And so I think they're curious about that, and it's
Speaker 1: interesting and I have to imagine this part of everyone
Speaker 1: who looks at this and says, what if this is?
Speaker 1: What if this is uber to taxi cabs? Right, Like,
Speaker 1: what if that's what's about to happen, and it's what
Speaker 1: should happen. And I think those that are early on
Speaker 1: it and paying attention to it at least have that
Speaker 1: curiosity in their mind that like, Okay, this could be
Speaker 1: this could be how tel code networks get deployed in
Speaker 1: the future going forward, and the way we've been doing
Speaker 1: it in the past is all wrong, which is a
Speaker 1: bit which is a huge win for them, right because
Speaker 1: populations are still expanding, they're still moving. So it's not
Speaker 1: like you've built your wireless network and now you're done.
Speaker 1: Like it's a constant job, right, Like you're constantly having
Speaker 1: to build more coverage and more capacity and that's expensive,
Speaker 1: you know, as is maintaining your existing network. And so
Speaker 1: I think everyone is interested in different models and different
Speaker 1: ways to build network coverage that their customers can use.
Speaker 1: And starlink is probably the best example of that, right
Speaker 1: where starlink should over time render outdoor cell towers like
Speaker 1: completely obsolete over time? Why would you do that? And
Speaker 1: so I think there's a lot of interesting stuff happening
Speaker 1: and it's a super exciting time to be involved in
Speaker 1: that industry.
Speaker 2: You know, you mentioned we were talking somebody's analogies and
Speaker 2: you know Netflix and Blockbuster.
Speaker 3: So let's say AT and T or a team all
Speaker 3: were like, you know what.
Speaker 2: We see this as the Netflix, right and the direction
Speaker 2: things are heading in, and we want to acquire helium.
Speaker 2: Would you would you sell to them?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, certainly some of those conversations
Speaker 1: have come up. I don't I don't know. I mean
Speaker 1: just personally, like I don't know what I'm even do
Speaker 1: in that situation, Like I couldn't imagine myself working for
Speaker 1: AT and T, so that would be a would be
Speaker 1: a challenge, you know. I think the best way I
Speaker 1: think I could answer that question is that one of
Speaker 1: the things I hope for crypto to do the best
Speaker 1: of all is change capital markets right so that you
Speaker 1: don't need to be acquired, you don't need to IPO,
Speaker 1: you don't you know, their liquidity exists in this public
Speaker 1: universe that is accessible to everyone. And it's been really
Speaker 1: really cool to see the SEC starting to focus and
Speaker 1: talk about tokenizing equity for example. It's a thing I'm
Speaker 1: super interested in because we are we have a sort
Speaker 1: of unique business where there's a crypto part of it,
Speaker 1: but there's also a sort of off chain part of
Speaker 1: it which generates a lot of revenue, And is there
Speaker 1: a way to sort of merge those two things together
Speaker 1: so that token holders can participate in the equity side
Speaker 1: of the business somehow, which typically is impossible, but like
Speaker 1: you have to either IPO, you have to be an
Speaker 1: a credited investor that gets into these deals somehow, and
Speaker 1: it's not a deal. So the thing that I hope
Speaker 1: most of all is that crypto like democratizes access to
Speaker 1: wealth basically, right, because it is wildly unfair that you know,
Speaker 1: me or vcs or whatever, you get really access to
Speaker 1: a lot of these companies. By the time they IPO,
Speaker 1: everyone's already rich, like you are way down, like you
Speaker 1: regular person are so far down the line now, and
Speaker 1: everyone else has already made ten thousand x learn investment, right,
Speaker 1: And so I've never liked that. I've always thought that
Speaker 1: was elitist. I've always thought the accredited investor laws around,
Speaker 1: like you must make one hundred and fifty grand or
Speaker 1: two under and fifty grand or whatever it is a year,
Speaker 1: is just a dumb way of like deciding who should
Speaker 1: get to invest in what. Let me invest in whatever
Speaker 1: I feel like investing in, right, And so that's what
Speaker 1: I hope happens the long way of answering your question.
Speaker 1: But I would hope ultimately that Helium never has to
Speaker 1: be acquired because that market infrastructure exists and we just
Speaker 1: use that rather than needing to be acquired or go
Speaker 1: public or whatever it may be.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure, now I know we're coming up on time,
Speaker 2: so I want to make sure I get that here.
Speaker 2: There was news of expansion to Mexico. Tell us about
Speaker 2: your coverage globally, and you know which markets you're in.
Speaker 1: Today we're only in the US and Mexico. And we're
Speaker 1: trying to be a little bit more strategic than we
Speaker 1: were in the IoT days, where IoT was like just
Speaker 1: put this thing anywhere, anything anywhere, right, And I think
Speaker 1: that's interesting. But in the cell phone or the mobile universe,
Speaker 1: you kind of want a partner to bring the subscribers,
Speaker 1: or you have a plan to get your own subscribers,
Speaker 1: like we do in the US. So in Mexico we
Speaker 1: have this deal that we do with Telefonica. Most Americans
Speaker 1: probably Telefonica, but they're an enormous global telecom based in Spain.
Speaker 1: They operate a subsidiary called movis Star in Mexico. And
Speaker 1: they think they were like today we have to pay
Speaker 1: AT and T and tell sell and others to access
Speaker 1: their towers and it's expensive and we don't want to
Speaker 1: build our own towers. So what can you do for us?
Speaker 1: And so we did this pilot with them for several months.
Speaker 1: We sort of took over like a city Wahaka. And
Speaker 1: I think because there's always skepticism or like no one
Speaker 1: believes that what we're doing is real or not or
Speaker 1: that or that it works so that it works well.
Speaker 1: And so it took a few months of doing these
Speaker 1: trials and they I think, we're very excited about what
Speaker 1: they saw. And so now we're expanding sort of all
Speaker 1: over mex and I think we will start to see
Speaker 1: subscribers go live in Q three, I think, I think
Speaker 1: is the intention. And when I say go to live,
Speaker 1: I mean the Movistar Telephonica subscribers in Mexico will automatically
Speaker 1: start to use the Helium network. They won't have to
Speaker 1: join anything, they won't have to opt in, they won't
Speaker 1: have to do anything. And so that's, you know, that's
Speaker 1: what's happening, and we hope to see that light up
Speaker 1: this year.
Speaker 3: That's exciting.
Speaker 2: Is there anything else on your rolemap you want to
Speaker 2: highlight anything aside from the you know, going to Mexico
Speaker 2: and much more.
Speaker 1: I mean we're running past right like we're growing. I
Speaker 1: think Crypto again in one of those places where like
Speaker 1: everyone's always looking for the next big announcement or the
Speaker 1: next big thing, and you know, arguably we're in sort
Speaker 1: of the boring phase where product seems to be working
Speaker 1: and is just growing, and so there's a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, boring stuff going on like supports right and
Speaker 1: things like that to keep up with with all of
Speaker 1: the customers that we're wing. But that's you know, that's
Speaker 1: where we focused. We want to we want to go
Speaker 1: larger in terms of subscriber base, will the network to
Speaker 1: be larger. I want to work with more vendors in
Speaker 1: these ecosystems, whether that's Wi Fi, access point vendors or
Speaker 1: telecoms like AT and T. We're spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time on that sort of business development work, and we
Speaker 1: got a lot of stuff going on on the token
Speaker 1: side that we've been spending time thinking about, like the
Speaker 1: tokenizing equity thing that we're describing. I really want to
Speaker 1: find a way to sort of blend those two ideas
Speaker 1: together where you don't have HNT and you don't have
Speaker 1: herely immobile equity is two separate things that they are
Speaker 1: sort of congruent and a singular thing is a thing
Speaker 1: that I really want to spend some time on that
Speaker 1: I don't think we could have done in the prior
Speaker 1: SEC administration that that we can do now. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of where we're going, is that we're just trying
Speaker 1: to grow more and more and more. I don't have
Speaker 1: a crazy announcement for you about like launching satellites or
Speaker 1: anything like that. We're just getting bigger and bigger. You'll
Speaker 1: start to see on May nineteenth, we are sort of
Speaker 1: taking over in New York, so you'll see subway comers
Speaker 1: covered in Heliumobile and you'll see billboards and stuff everywhere.
Speaker 1: So really trying to push pretty hard on customer acquisition
Speaker 1: and sort of growing a Helium Mobile as one of
Speaker 1: the largest telcos in the country.
Speaker 3: Amazing.
Speaker 2: So I'm close to New York, so I'll definitely be
Speaker 2: looking out for those as and things along those lines.
Speaker 2: You know, you mentioned the SEC and the change in
Speaker 2: the regime, you know, with the government much more pro crypto,
Speaker 2: and I feel like entrepreneurs and innovators are breathing a
Speaker 2: sigh relief and they can focus on building and doing
Speaker 2: their thing. How are you feeling about this change and
Speaker 2: are you optimistic you know, Congress can get legislation through
Speaker 2: this year.
Speaker 1: Overall, it's feeling very good about the changes in the SEC.
Speaker 1: Like it's great to have Hester Pierce running the Crypto
Speaker 1: task where she for those that don't know, everyone used
Speaker 1: to call a crypto Mama. She is like the you know,
Speaker 1: she is the most pro crypto person at the SEC
Speaker 1: and has been for a long time. I'm very very smart.
Speaker 1: I've met with her before. I think she thinks she's awesome.
Speaker 1: So I'm very optimistic about where that's going to go.
Speaker 1: Certainly less optimistic about what happens in Congress, Like it
Speaker 1: still seems to be very politically motivated. No one's making
Speaker 1: decisions because they're good decisions. They're just making decisions because
Speaker 1: they may make someone look good or bad. But I'm
Speaker 1: still optimistic there in general, Like I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to see like the stable coind of legislation
Speaker 1: get through, for example, and anything that makes it easier
Speaker 1: for crypto to be also more legitimized but also more accessible,
Speaker 1: I think is very important. And I'm really hopeful that
Speaker 1: we move out of this sort of crime era a
Speaker 1: little bit. It's still it's still a very sort of
Speaker 1: pump and dump driven universe, and I think that's just
Speaker 1: tough for retail guys, right, Like, we live in this
Speaker 1: world and we sort of understand what to avoid and
Speaker 1: not avoid. But I think newcomers coming to the outside
Speaker 1: everything looks like doge to them. Yeah, I might. I
Speaker 1: might make one hundred million dollars on this thing, right,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of money gets lost that way,
Speaker 1: so I hope he steals. SEC still stays very focused
Speaker 1: on fraud on bad actors because they really genuinely like
Speaker 1: ruin it for everyone that's that's working hard to try
Speaker 1: and do real things. And there's a lot of us
Speaker 1: in the industry working hard to do real things. So
Speaker 1: I'm optimistic for that, looking forward to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great point, great point. Wrap up questions here for you. First,
Speaker 2: if you could create your own metaverse, what would the
Speaker 2: theme be.
Speaker 1: I would have to be something racing related that like
Speaker 1: cars and racing very very much, my very much my pattern,
Speaker 1: So definitely car racing related for sure.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've seen it. There's a F
Speaker 2: one movie coming out with Brad Pitt. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you're looking forward to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it looks super cool. They spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time being precise about you know, they did
Speaker 1: a lot of the filming at real F one races,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how good are that it's going
Speaker 1: to be, but it's awesome to see it, and I
Speaker 1: think it will just bring more interest to f one,
Speaker 1: especially in America, which I think is which I think
Speaker 1: is awesome.
Speaker 3: Oh for sure. Rapid fire questions. Favorite food.
Speaker 1: Have to be something Indian, maybe a Panier tika masala
Speaker 1: or something like that. Love it nice.
Speaker 3: Favorite musician or band.
Speaker 1: I would have to go back to the nineties, but
Speaker 1: probably like Guns N' Roses, skid Row, like Metallica, like
Speaker 1: something in that something in that era.
Speaker 3: Nice. Favorite movie.
Speaker 1: Gotta be Inception or Interstellar, anything that Christopher Nolan makes.
Speaker 1: He's just a genius.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love all this movies. Favorite book.
Speaker 1: I'm not much of a book reader. I did start
Speaker 1: reading Wool recently, which is the book about that the
Speaker 1: Silo TV show is based on. And if you've seen that,
Speaker 1: Silo a great show on Apple TV, but it was
Speaker 1: based on a book and I did just start reading
Speaker 1: the book. Not much of a book person.
Speaker 3: I'll check that out. And when you're not working at Helium,
Speaker 3: what are you doing for fun?
Speaker 1: Recently started playing golf, which has been awesome. I hadn't
Speaker 1: played since high school, so I've been really enjoying that.
Speaker 1: I raced cars. I work on congers is my thing,
Speaker 1: so most of the time if I'm not practicing golf
Speaker 1: or something. I'll be doing something car related for sure.
Speaker 2: Awesome, Amir, A pleasure chatting with you. I got to
Speaker 2: have you back on I'm really fascinated by Helium and
Speaker 2: maybe the next one we could try to do in person.
Speaker 3: But thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. Would love to do it again. Appreciate it.