Speaker 1: So the big question is this, how do investors like
Speaker 1: us get access to the ideas, information, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: the right people that give us the tools and information
Speaker 1: we need to make informed and educated decisions to have success.
Speaker 1: That is the question, and this podcast will give us
Speaker 1: the answers. This is Mark Moss, your host. Let's get
Speaker 1: this started. Welcome to another episode of the Market Disruptors podcast.
Speaker 1: Today we are joined by Chris kem here from Susteny Capital.
Speaker 1: He is an investor in the blockchain space. However, he's
Speaker 1: much more than that. He's a technologist, a futurist. He's
Speaker 1: an attorney. He's been through the Internet um bubble. He's
Speaker 1: built companies, sold them off at the peak. He's been there,
Speaker 1: done that, and he has a unique view in this.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we're gonna dig into his past. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about how he built inside the Internet stages.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about how he exited at the top,
Speaker 1: what he learned from that. We're gonna talk about where
Speaker 1: he sees the current blockchain space today, where he's looking
Speaker 1: to focus on investing, and where he sees it in
Speaker 1: the near future. It's an amazing conversation, one that I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed, and let's just jump right into it, all right.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody. I have a special guest today, Chris from
Speaker 1: Susthany Capital. He's got a very very interesting UM story
Speaker 1: and perspective on the markets. I learned about at a
Speaker 1: conference at on Chain nineteen about a week or two ago,
Speaker 1: and I really wanted to bring him on and talk
Speaker 1: more about that. So UM, Chris from Sustany Capital. Welcome, Hey, Mark,
Speaker 1: all right, so UM, as I alluded to, UH, I
Speaker 1: heard you speak at on Chain UM in Newport Beach
Speaker 1: and and I really liked your perspective on the markets.
Speaker 1: And what I really liked was your story of how
Speaker 1: you've been through these technology cycles before. And I thought,
Speaker 1: I thought that you had a different perspective that I
Speaker 1: aligned with. But I don't hear a lot, and uh,
Speaker 1: I think it's missing, and so I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you more about that. So maybe you can just
Speaker 1: kind of explain to everybody, UM your background and kind
Speaker 1: of how you got here. Sure, I'm sort of a
Speaker 1: field technologist. I want to become a computer program in
Speaker 1: the eighties and I was doing the day during those
Speaker 1: days when there was basically just basic programming and so forth,
Speaker 1: and everything was pretty slow and mostly for me. The
Speaker 1: one thing that I remember was very hard on your
Speaker 1: eyes because the monitors back then we're just not really great.
Speaker 1: So I would write my bicycle home for my internship
Speaker 1: over it seems next of at the time, and I
Speaker 1: would see stars in the middle of the day because
Speaker 1: my eyes get really so impacted so badly that I decided, oh,
Speaker 1: I should be looking for something else that doesn't impact
Speaker 1: my health as bad. So it became a lawyer instead,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a unique breed in essence, there's
Speaker 1: not too many lawyers or vice versa computer scientists, um
Speaker 1: that have kind of this cross perspective. Yeah, but definitely, definitely,
Speaker 1: I definitely I did a good blend. I yes, it's
Speaker 1: it's usual today maybe yeah, I mean today. And again
Speaker 1: that's kind of me being biased obviously with my particular background,
Speaker 1: but it seems to me that a lot of the
Speaker 1: blockchain implementations that can be had a mix of those
Speaker 1: two topics and a few others obviously, like mechanics and
Speaker 1: economics and whatnot. But there's a lot of what I
Speaker 1: call legal technology or rec tech involved in that particular space,
Speaker 1: and it's needless to say, outside of coding, and that's
Speaker 1: the one topic that comes up all the times, that
Speaker 1: topic of regulation. All buy it often mostly misguided in
Speaker 1: my opinion, and again that's me having more international background
Speaker 1: and not necessarily being indoctrinated in any particular paradigm. Well,
Speaker 1: the the international background is very important because this is
Speaker 1: a global movement, and a lot of times people get
Speaker 1: stuck in just their view of the local, their local
Speaker 1: currency or whatever, and they forget about the global movement.
Speaker 1: But before we get into that, let's talk about your
Speaker 1: involved then in there in the Internet days, which a
Speaker 1: lot of times people draw parallels to, they were both
Speaker 1: new technologies, if you will, so tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about your experience and the Internet days. Sure, I
Speaker 1: was still in law school. I joined a little startup
Speaker 1: on another consulting site to help them build what was
Speaker 1: then UM an idea for the multi um platform voice applications,
Speaker 1: so kind of a unified messaging system of sorts, and
Speaker 1: that was the way ahead of its time. We did
Speaker 1: this a ninety four, so let's to give you an idea.
Speaker 1: It's still ahead of its time today. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of the idea of having a unified messaging system that
Speaker 1: would you do. It would let you do crossovers between
Speaker 1: voice and email and voice and text and so force.
Speaker 1: And we're still still not there, um. But because of
Speaker 1: that telecomverlation, I got really interested in then a new
Speaker 1: regulation at space. So this was closely before the European
Speaker 1: Union opened up tele communications to alternate carriers, meaning before that, specifically,
Speaker 1: in Germany, you only had one telephone carrier, which was
Speaker 1: about to Tailor Comment at the time, UM. But they
Speaker 1: were about to opening open the markets, and so they
Speaker 1: were circulating um suggestions for the regulation of that space.
Speaker 1: And I was one of the very very few nerds
Speaker 1: who would read those and then sort of also understand them.
Speaker 1: And I had my eyes set on one particular part
Speaker 1: of the regulation which would hopefully be used to guide
Speaker 1: the regulation in the space that we were interested in
Speaker 1: of this particular communications tool. And they're at the regulation
Speaker 1: and the suggestion didn't fit my my idea of how
Speaker 1: that should work at all. So, like the stupid mid
Speaker 1: twenty year old that I was at the time, I
Speaker 1: just sat down and rewrote the entire thing and send
Speaker 1: it into the Federal Communications Commission, and lo and behold,
Speaker 1: they called me back and invited me to work with
Speaker 1: them on that particular legislation, and so long story short,
Speaker 1: they ended up using what I wrote that weekend. But
Speaker 1: they're more interesting, he really is. UM. That made me
Speaker 1: kind of an expert, one of the very few in
Speaker 1: a particular space, because initially internet and telecommunication was into
Speaker 1: very entwined. Right. You probably remember you had to pay
Speaker 1: for a minute for your dial up services and number
Speaker 1: was the case for much longer and back in Europe
Speaker 1: than it was year and so I ended up becoming
Speaker 1: general counsel for one of the very early internet service providers,
Speaker 1: and we grew the company very rapidly, mostly by having
Speaker 1: a lot of people running around physically installing those dial
Speaker 1: upe models and configuring people's dialogue cards to our dial
Speaker 1: in numbers. So we were able to gobble up like
Speaker 1: I want to say, three and sixty thousand subscribers women
Speaker 1: like eighteen months and what what what? What time period
Speaker 1: was this? That was between night? So ninety eight if
Speaker 1: you're number was the first fifty six kme more thin
Speaker 1: funny enough and so over fifty well, but I say
Speaker 1: two thousand and then at the beginning of two thousand, Um,
Speaker 1: I was preparing for an initial public offering and at
Speaker 1: the time we were valued at a billion dollars based
Speaker 1: on r L subscriber valuations, so we were kind of
Speaker 1: the e L of Germany at the time, and um,
Speaker 1: we gotta takeover offer. And yeah, long, long story short,
Speaker 1: I convinced the rest of the management team we should
Speaker 1: take it because I simply couldn't see how we could
Speaker 1: ever make that much money out of our subscriber base.
Speaker 1: So we saw the company at the height of the
Speaker 1: dot com essentially to what's now the largest internet service
Speaker 1: provider in Europe Discolleague, and yeah, we couldn't have time
Speaker 1: did better or buy it. At the time when we sold,
Speaker 1: everybody around us told us we were dummies because we
Speaker 1: were selling for like thirty five cents on the dollar
Speaker 1: forty six and a half to be precise. But it
Speaker 1: worked out really, really well, and more importantly, I retired
Speaker 1: from the law that day when we sold the company
Speaker 1: and moved to southern California. Basically, you know that's great now, Um,
Speaker 1: for those that aren't aware, I'm sure everybody is. And
Speaker 1: at you know, in two thousand was the height of
Speaker 1: that dot com bubble, which then we saw a massive
Speaker 1: draw down, similar to what we saw in the crypto
Speaker 1: space draw down. However, that wasn't the end of the
Speaker 1: Internet technology, and of course it went on in some companies. Amazon,
Speaker 1: for example, went to surpass it's all time high and
Speaker 1: hit two thousand from eighty at its peaked down to
Speaker 1: a dollar up or five dollars and up to two thousand,
Speaker 1: But not all companies did, so you got out of
Speaker 1: the peak. Um if you would have got out of
Speaker 1: Amazon at the peak, maybe that wouldn't have looked so
Speaker 1: good in hindsight, but in your case it was yeah,
Speaker 1: well for us. But then also another similarity, if you
Speaker 1: want to call it that, if you're looking back, a
Speaker 1: lot of companies beg them that considered themselves Internet companies
Speaker 1: because they had a website wouldn't be considered Internet company.
Speaker 1: Needs to give right. It's a lot of these um
Speaker 1: entities that were formed with that idea we're doing quote
Speaker 1: unquote something on the web never ended up doing anything
Speaker 1: of its you on the web because they didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: need the World Wide Web for what they were doing,
Speaker 1: and or it didn't help with customerquisition costs, specifically because
Speaker 1: so few people still were on the World Wide Web, right,
Speaker 1: so you have to still convert all of those people.
Speaker 1: That was a lot of friction. Like we talked before
Speaker 1: the recording, it's like a lot of people are super
Speaker 1: reluctant to put in the credit card information, and so
Speaker 1: that has obviously a lot of analogies with our current scenario.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of entities out there and projects out
Speaker 1: there that they think they do anything blockchain related and
Speaker 1: they really don't. And some of them that specifically are
Speaker 1: very prominent in that space really have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with blockchain whatsoever. If you look at some of those
Speaker 1: retail things, not that they're necessarily bad, but like a
Speaker 1: coin base doesn't use the blockchain for anything obviously, right,
Speaker 1: so they don't need the blockchain really for for anything
Speaker 1: that they do in the daily business, and they sell
Speaker 1: pull on quo currencies, but they're really not fostering, uh,
Speaker 1: the innovation in that space in any shape or form, right,
Speaker 1: and Internet Like I think when you look back through
Speaker 1: different technology cycles, you'll see the same patterns. And so
Speaker 1: typically in the new technology, you have like existing um
Speaker 1: things that are done try to find a new home
Speaker 1: on the new technology, and then it's not until later
Speaker 1: that there's new things that were never done before. So
Speaker 1: you know, for example, you had a company advertising in
Speaker 1: the Yellow Pages and now they're advertising on the they
Speaker 1: have a web page, right, Um, but today we have
Speaker 1: applications like Uber that would have never been possible that
Speaker 1: that technology. Yeah, and it's always important to get the
Speaker 1: vocabulary right there. And that's one thing that it always
Speaker 1: takes issue with. Specifically, looking back at the early days
Speaker 1: of the Internet, people still equate Internet and Worldwide Web
Speaker 1: as being one thing and that's not the case, right, So,
Speaker 1: I mean, the world Web is build based on Internet technologies,
Speaker 1: but it's mostly HTML that lets you experience the World
Speaker 1: Wide Web, and that was the introduction of tim berners,
Speaker 1: leews most of the underlying protocols, and that's more important
Speaker 1: paradigm to understand, mostly for the topic that we are
Speaker 1: looking and now created by wind Surf and other people
Speaker 1: in that space. But unfortunately what didn't happen is that
Speaker 1: we kept working on creating these protocols. So my understanding
Speaker 1: moving on to the um, the thematic of blockchain is
Speaker 1: that blockchains are the building block to build new protocols.
Speaker 1: And the bit White people introduced mainly three new concepts
Speaker 1: if you will, and inventions, So the most obvious one
Speaker 1: being this digital bearer instruments so bit common blog case B.
Speaker 1: Then secondarily, if you will, the smart contract systems, and
Speaker 1: every quote unquote cryptocurrency is a smart contract, whereas not
Speaker 1: every smart contract is a cryptocurrency, and that's very hard
Speaker 1: for most people to understand that why the constantly intermixing
Speaker 1: those two things. Um. And Then lastly, and that's probably
Speaker 1: the most important development that we have not talked about
Speaker 1: a lot as of late anymore, is that of a
Speaker 1: central as autonomous organization, which is the reason really why
Speaker 1: bitcoin is still around, right, because it creates an alignments
Speaker 1: of alignment of interest within the system that makes the
Speaker 1: system super resilient. And that's actually actually necessary prerequisite for
Speaker 1: the digital bearer instrument. Yeah, in order to create quote
Speaker 1: unquote immuneability of the transfer of anything that's moving on
Speaker 1: the box chain. Yeah. Those are three, Um, those are
Speaker 1: three really good use cases. I think the first two
Speaker 1: could almost be like improvement offers. Um, so bare instruments
Speaker 1: now we have digit of our instruments, contracts, now we
Speaker 1: have digital smart contracts. But the DOW as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: is a very interesting piece because it takes away the
Speaker 1: human element, which is very easy to be manipulated and corrupted,
Speaker 1: and puts it into math or code. Right, So is
Speaker 1: that what you're kind of talking about. UM, Well, let's
Speaker 1: bring this on a higher level, maybe for for a
Speaker 1: second year. So the largest UM problem, if you will,
Speaker 1: that we face right now, as humans are mostly relatable
Speaker 1: to our organizational principles i e. Most obviously UM, the
Speaker 1: for profit corporation. If you look at companies that now
Speaker 1: standing on top of the food chain, they standing there.
Speaker 1: Let's use Google as an example, because they implemented their
Speaker 1: particular algorithm most perfectly into this for profit algorithm. Because
Speaker 1: as much as they will tell you well, UM, our
Speaker 1: uh mission statement is to organize the world's information and
Speaker 1: make it more accessible and useful and whatnot, that's obviously
Speaker 1: not true because the as with every corporate for profit organization,
Speaker 1: especially the ones that are publicly traded, their model is
Speaker 1: basically in law means their main objective is to increase
Speaker 1: shareholder value. If they didn't do this, the management team
Speaker 1: would be held accountable for that. If they all of
Speaker 1: the sudden decided in Google it's case, or we're going
Speaker 1: to yank all the stupid edwards and AdSense stuff out
Speaker 1: of our index, because that that's not very useful to
Speaker 1: find information which to say what they say they do,
Speaker 1: I don't think that their shareholders what we um very
Speaker 1: happy about the outcome of what profit to bottom line.
Speaker 1: So my point here is so this for profit motive
Speaker 1: is actually then UM infiltrating any other algorithm you implement
Speaker 1: after words, But unfortunately, the better you are in implementing
Speaker 1: your own algorithms or the Google Search algorithm, mainly implementing
Speaker 1: UM searches around what makes up you you and serving
Speaker 1: you the right ads is what drives this particular technology,
Speaker 1: which obviously will never create an optimal result for the user.
Speaker 1: It can't so with a dour though, if you then
Speaker 1: can take something that anybody in the system has the
Speaker 1: most interesting participating from the actual result, not from the
Speaker 1: profit modelf, but for this entity creating the best results
Speaker 1: for anybody involved, then in this case you could strip
Speaker 1: ads out right and it wouldn't matter. And more importantly,
Speaker 1: anybody right now could set up a doubt and create
Speaker 1: a matter filter, as far as I'm concerned, create a
Speaker 1: matter search and filter any commercial intent out of Google
Speaker 1: is all of a sudden had a search engine, actual
Speaker 1: search engine that would be better in terms of its
Speaker 1: results by several orders of magnitude simply by doing that,
Speaker 1: and simply by essentially removing, um, this for profit modem
Speaker 1: which excuse the incentive system between users, advertisers, and corporate owners.
Speaker 1: And then if you want to go further down, there's
Speaker 1: all so misalignment of interests of managers, shareholders, employees, suppliers,
Speaker 1: and so forth. Whereas in the example of any of
Speaker 1: the block chains with the correct and now implementation, everybody
Speaker 1: is basically pulling the same direction because they would hurt themselves. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: there's always this kind of rumor that at one percent
Speaker 1: attack could essentially swipe away Bitcoin or any of the
Speaker 1: other block chains. Um. The catch here is that anybody
Speaker 1: that would amass this form of either stake in the
Speaker 1: system or computing power, but mostly erode his own holdings, right,
Speaker 1: So it would not. So that's kind of the catch
Speaker 1: they have that prevents this from happening. Um. But by
Speaker 1: skewing incentive system using a four product profit motive that
Speaker 1: doesn't care about align and shareholder interests with user interest,
Speaker 1: you can never achieve an optimal outcome from users. Yeah. Interesting,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's interesting the conversation to have, which
Speaker 1: we won't spend too much time into. But UM, I
Speaker 1: think maybe maybe I'm maybe I'm just a little bit
Speaker 1: too optimistic. But I think maybe when those businesses start out,
Speaker 1: they do have a more pure motive. But as you say, right,
Speaker 1: as they grow, and especially as they get shareholders, they
Speaker 1: have a findiciary duty to those shareholders to increase profits,
Speaker 1: and as that grows, it gets more and more distorted.
Speaker 1: Almost so, UM, maybe it starts a little more pure.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm optimistic, but then I can definitely see what
Speaker 1: you're saying where when everything excuse to profits, it changes
Speaker 1: really the mission or the problem they're trying to solve. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting one of the many ways that I
Speaker 1: think blockchain technology will change the world. Um. I think
Speaker 1: when you look at Internet technology, the technology itself allows
Speaker 1: us to share information. Right, I can upload a file,
Speaker 1: you can download a file. UM. With blockchain technology, it
Speaker 1: allows us to share value. I can upload value, you
Speaker 1: can download value. But also it creates other things like
Speaker 1: governance models that we're talking about. UM. Do you see
Speaker 1: it like that? And do you think, um, this will
Speaker 1: really shift the world much more than what we saw
Speaker 1: with the Internet technology. Yeah, absolutely, and that's exactly come
Speaker 1: the right analogy. So the first Internet way if if
Speaker 1: you will change the paradigm for information exchange. And so
Speaker 1: the old publishers that we used to pay for back
Speaker 1: in the days before the Internet, they barely exists anymore,
Speaker 1: and most of them on the way out because the
Speaker 1: business model has been so thoroughly disrupted and there was
Speaker 1: so slow to adopt that they really, for the most
Speaker 1: part on have a reason to exist anymore. Um. And
Speaker 1: there now, yes, blockchains allow you to build the missing
Speaker 1: what I would call value exchange protocol call its all
Speaker 1: buy it. You're still at the very very beginning, and
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the larger problems in that
Speaker 1: space because specifically guys like us who have been watching
Speaker 1: it for the last decade, at this point in time,
Speaker 1: we're getting really impatient to see the next phase set in.
Speaker 1: But just like you couldn't build a YouTube with a
Speaker 1: fifty six came out then and what wasn't very useful
Speaker 1: user experience, UM, you cannot easily build more complex value
Speaker 1: transfer protocols. So what I mean by that is the
Speaker 1: easiest value transfer protocols is really what we had in
Speaker 1: the past with descent with distributed ledger technology, because that's
Speaker 1: kind of another myth in that space. Often times people
Speaker 1: are quite d lt so distributed alledger technologies. With blockchain,
Speaker 1: it's actually the blo chains are disrupting the lt s.
Speaker 1: Meaning if you look at your bank account, that's a
Speaker 1: typical example of a of a distributed ledger, right, so
Speaker 1: you have an entry there that says either the amount
Speaker 1: that you or the bank or the bank as you
Speaker 1: and if you send me money then they have to
Speaker 1: align those two ledgers us with mine and for whatever
Speaker 1: reason in between, the money disappears into Nirvana for twenty
Speaker 1: four hours or longer um. So with a digital barre instrument,
Speaker 1: it's more less instant, if you will, even if you
Speaker 1: your bitcoins typically done within ten minutes. And the big
Speaker 1: difference there though it's settled, right, And there's always these
Speaker 1: really strange comparisons between the Visa network and the big
Speaker 1: coin network, and then people keep saying stupid things like
Speaker 1: that comparison. Yes, it's it's nonsense, right, Visa will never
Speaker 1: be as fast as bitcoin because you'll never be able
Speaker 1: to achieve settlement in ten minutes, it's impossibility. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's really key, right, I mean that's really the value
Speaker 1: of your traditional barer instument. Right. You can take your
Speaker 1: printed dollar notes going to a store, you hand it
Speaker 1: over and it's setted. It's done right. In regards to
Speaker 1: there's two things. First of all, they say bitcoin or visa.
Speaker 1: You know there's a thousand transaction to second bitcoin seven
Speaker 1: or whatever. Well, first of all, visa is a payment
Speaker 1: application on top of a settlement layer. So the Visa
Speaker 1: network could be a payment layer on top of the
Speaker 1: bitcoin layer if it wanted. Second of all, if you're
Speaker 1: a merchant, visa doesn't settle, right, it takes days oh
Speaker 1: yeah to get that money at least. Uh yeah. So
Speaker 1: maybe I'll remind a little bit so um because the
Speaker 1: one thing that I wanted to get across in my
Speaker 1: target you then, well, as um, there's like this major
Speaker 1: focus on on banks and quote unquote currencies and feat
Speaker 1: and whatnot, and ad is a little bit misguided. So
Speaker 1: what I mean by that, A lot of times what
Speaker 1: we see startups do they look at banks and feared
Speaker 1: currencies as um they are the problem. What's really important
Speaker 1: to understand is that they're actually the competition. So what
Speaker 1: I mean by that, so bank and any type of money.
Speaker 1: It's actually addressing one of the fundamental problems in economics,
Speaker 1: were just the double coincidence of one's problem. Right, So
Speaker 1: I need to create an efficient exchange mechanism because you
Speaker 1: have something you want to trade, which is your time,
Speaker 1: but I don't want your time because your skills don't
Speaker 1: apply to whatever I want, which is I don't know,
Speaker 1: live somewhere, right. And so in order to facilitate that,
Speaker 1: humans came up with this idea of currencies, however, um,
Speaker 1: and there are specifically people that have been indoctrinate it
Speaker 1: in kind of this old world thinking of what money
Speaker 1: and currencies are. They don't understand the fundamentals anymore, and
Speaker 1: they're going back to kind of this eighteenth century definition
Speaker 1: of money as a medium of exchange and of accounts
Speaker 1: standard of value in the store of value, whereas that
Speaker 1: definition hasn't been useful for decades obviously, right. And I
Speaker 1: always make the example of that's kind of trying to
Speaker 1: define a phone by the fact that it's tied to war. Right,
Speaker 1: Because the same year that Javon wrote down as a
Speaker 1: definition of money, Um, Alexander Graham Bell got the pattern
Speaker 1: for the phone. Well, we don't look at phones at
Speaker 1: the same way anymore, but for whatever reason, I think,
Speaker 1: mostly because of indoctrination, we're looking at money and currency
Speaker 1: in the same way, and unfortunately there's this conflation between
Speaker 1: those two concepts, which are radically different. Money and currency
Speaker 1: are radically different things. Money is simply language, and the
Speaker 1: very simple example that you can make for that specifically,
Speaker 1: if you use a digital wallet of cryptocurrencies, whatever you
Speaker 1: have in holdings, if it's bitcoin, ether Um, ex app
Speaker 1: or any of the other old coins, you will always
Speaker 1: see the translation of your language of trade. So in
Speaker 1: our case it's typically going to be used dollar, but
Speaker 1: if you in Europe it might be the euro. So
Speaker 1: that part is just language. Money is just language. Currency
Speaker 1: is simply technology that's supposed to solve the cored incidence
Speaker 1: of one's problem. And as far as the medium of
Speaker 1: exchange is concerned, for all feared currencies, for decades already
Speaker 1: has been digital rights. There's a once in a database,
Speaker 1: so that part you can check off. As far as
Speaker 1: store values concerned, that's even a fire because no one
Speaker 1: for any lengths of time would hold any feared currency
Speaker 1: in their checking account, at least not in large quantities, right,
Speaker 1: because it's inherently inflationary because of its really uninteresting incentive
Speaker 1: system that would obviously have the issuer create more and
Speaker 1: more of it if you give them the power of
Speaker 1: which we do so UM and recently have been using
Speaker 1: the example of hey, if you created a white people
Speaker 1: that would describe a feared currency the US dollar, and
Speaker 1: like how its government system is installed, everybody would call
Speaker 1: it a ship coin, and no one would partake in
Speaker 1: your I C or no one by right, right, and
Speaker 1: so to that extent, once you understand that this is
Speaker 1: UM like a misguided definition that you need to let
Speaker 1: go off, and then more importantly, what is currency actually
Speaker 1: trying to solve, which is a nouble currency of one's problem,
Speaker 1: then you immediately jump to the conclusion we don't need
Speaker 1: more currencies, like we don't need another bitcoin, ether or
Speaker 1: any of the other outcoins. That's not the point, because
Speaker 1: any fear currency is also digital and for the most part,
Speaker 1: if you're doing a transaction, it's also a cryptographically secured
Speaker 1: so there's no difference there. The only difference there is
Speaker 1: in communication for the most part, as in now I
Speaker 1: have to explain to you what a bitcoin is and
Speaker 1: why it's more important and whatnot. And we probably reached
Speaker 1: the point already where where most people that wanted to
Speaker 1: own any of those cryptocurrencies owns them, right, and there
Speaker 1: has nothing to do restore or value or utility because
Speaker 1: there's very little utility to be had as far as
Speaker 1: using it in daily business. I mean, it was just
Speaker 1: yesterday that I got it email from UH, an Italian
Speaker 1: restaurant that said, hey, we are now accepting bitcoin, Like
Speaker 1: that's great, but yeah, I'm really not interested in paying
Speaker 1: you with bitcoin. I don't think most people were. You
Speaker 1: pay with an inflationary currency now with a deflationary cuarrency back.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean the thing is as an investor
Speaker 1: in anybody who who's dealing with money, we have been
Speaker 1: treating this like that all the time. Right. If if
Speaker 1: you want to store value, you buy a house or
Speaker 1: something that's increasing, that's your store of value. You don't
Speaker 1: think of your fear that's a store of value. So
Speaker 1: so there's the fear created monster. Right. There hasn't been
Speaker 1: money since ninety one when we severed its relationship to
Speaker 1: a commodity, and since then it's simply that instrument. And
Speaker 1: so part of this is education that this is the case.
Speaker 1: And the next part of this is, so how do
Speaker 1: you solve um not only the fundamental problem, the coincidence
Speaker 1: of one's problem, which you solved on the protocol level,
Speaker 1: and then the secondary problems that come with the fact
Speaker 1: that people still want to use or need to use
Speaker 1: intermittently FIAT currencies. And to me, the solution is right
Speaker 1: in front of everybody, and I keep proselytizing that because
Speaker 1: we want to invest into that, we want to invest
Speaker 1: into what I call money of I P. And in
Speaker 1: a simple example, that could be your digital wallet which
Speaker 1: only holds any type of yet currency for that split
Speaker 1: second when someone's asking for that, and then moves it
Speaker 1: into an actual store of value. And the actual store
Speaker 1: of value depends on the eye of the beholder, right,
Speaker 1: So it could be a bond, it could be a
Speaker 1: partial piece of real estate, could be a basket, it
Speaker 1: could be totally algorithmically created. And to that extent, we
Speaker 1: don't need quote unquote stable coins. I mean the stable
Speaker 1: compared to what, right exactly I mean, it's again, it's
Speaker 1: in the eyes of the beholding. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day. Most of these are actually PAGs, right, most
Speaker 1: of them packed to a fiat, which is to say,
Speaker 1: the inflationary. But yeah, yeah, anyhow, so, um, I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you deleting to that. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: where you went. So the solution is right in front
Speaker 1: of us, which is uh, is uh the moy I've
Speaker 1: heard it called money over I p or really it's
Speaker 1: a transfer value, right, blockchain transferring value, I think. Um.
Speaker 1: Even to add on, I love the conversation that you're having.
Speaker 1: This is I could this is what I talked about
Speaker 1: on my YouTube channel. I could talk about all day, um,
Speaker 1: But really it's this. It's the shift where we used
Speaker 1: to look at it as information is what I got
Speaker 1: in the newspaper, the nightly news, but today information has changed.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned YouTube. Right now everybody's creating news, everyone's
Speaker 1: creating information. But even um, somebody on the beach across
Speaker 1: the world is putting a picture. And then I know
Speaker 1: what the weather is like, I know what the waves
Speaker 1: are like. Right, So I'm getting all this information and
Speaker 1: I look at value Today most people, because of education,
Speaker 1: look at value as like money, but really there's so
Speaker 1: much more to value. And if we go to a
Speaker 1: tokenized economy, everything becomes tokenized and we use blockching technology
Speaker 1: constantly transfer value um and over over I P. Right,
Speaker 1: I guess kind of what you're saying. Yeah, And unfortunately
Speaker 1: a lot of people have been throwing this top money
Speaker 1: over by p around without actually explaining and then probably
Speaker 1: for the most part, not thinking it through what it
Speaker 1: means in terms of what you actually need to build.
Speaker 1: I mean, it comes down to the fact it was
Speaker 1: this initial misguided idea of the fat protocol and kind
Speaker 1: of creating value in in the quote unquote token or coin.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's not value in the token or coin ever, right,
Speaker 1: because it's part of the protocol. It's the pre to
Speaker 1: p element of the protocol, and to that extent um
Speaker 1: there's always a misapplication of that term token for the
Speaker 1: most but there's a very few options where you can
Speaker 1: create an actual token because understanding token and the context
Speaker 1: of blockchain is understanding that this is a pure to
Speaker 1: per instrument. So a blockchain, let's to create two things.
Speaker 1: One thing I call the digital vending machine, so the
Speaker 1: smart contracts or or a bottle of smart contracts. It
Speaker 1: spits out what you need. And the other one is
Speaker 1: the token either can use the too in combination. But
Speaker 1: the thing is if you need both, then the first
Speaker 1: element of the at that the token doesn't actually have
Speaker 1: that digital better function anymore because with that digital bearer function,
Speaker 1: if I can send it to your peer here, you
Speaker 1: should have all the prerequisites that let you either own
Speaker 1: the asset and or have the right. And most of
Speaker 1: the time what we're actually talking about is why it's transfers,
Speaker 1: not as it transfers. And there's a lot of conflation
Speaker 1: of these terms. Like as a law student, that's one
Speaker 1: of the first concepts you learn in civil law in
Speaker 1: Europe to to create these nuances between what is ownership,
Speaker 1: what is possession, what is governance and su course there
Speaker 1: all exist on different levels, and only if and when
Speaker 1: you can combine these in one instrument you can refer
Speaker 1: to as a token, because otherwise you will still need
Speaker 1: this other element. The typical example for that is the
Speaker 1: very vanted security tokens. Security tokens are years of the
Speaker 1: way at best. So what I mean by that is
Speaker 1: I mean with with any given evinance context, you will
Speaker 1: need to look for certainry requisites in your person. Is
Speaker 1: this person able to buy that right and we're simply
Speaker 1: very far away from having these identity protocols on main net.
Speaker 1: But right now, also the value transfer protocols on main
Speaker 1: net are super simple. Right, we really can only deal
Speaker 1: with assets and then to a very small degree with
Speaker 1: with I wanted to say, with fungible, so i e.
Speaker 1: Your your typical talking your typical feats pungible, and to
Speaker 1: a very small degree with with non fungibles, and they're
Speaker 1: mostly just recording the ownership entry and all of those assets.
Speaker 1: Take your typical crypto kitties, they actually don't exist on
Speaker 1: main net, right They they exist on the collapse UM
Speaker 1: system and their servers. Meaning if that entity deplaps and
Speaker 1: maintains the crypto kitty environment, were was to cease operations,
Speaker 1: which it is a startup, and most start ups feel right,
Speaker 1: so they're gonna be wrong. But the thing is, if
Speaker 1: you think this through, what you want to attach your
Speaker 1: security to any of those startups creating the side, I
Speaker 1: would not invest into that, and I wouldn't recommend that
Speaker 1: anybody's creating a quote unquote security this way, right, I
Speaker 1: think I I think there's no doubt that UM the
Speaker 1: way that securities are kind of created and owned and
Speaker 1: traded today could be improved. Um. You know, if I
Speaker 1: buy my share of whatever Tesla on eBay, I don't
Speaker 1: really have custody of that share Ebata. You know, e
Speaker 1: trade doesn't have custody right, and and and it it
Speaker 1: creates all these problems. So it'd be simpler. But that
Speaker 1: to me isn't super exciting. Um. But I as much
Speaker 1: as I love the technology side and I'd love to
Speaker 1: talk to you more about that, I wanted to shift
Speaker 1: gears a little bit because I know we're gonna run
Speaker 1: out of time now. Um. You have this interesting background,
Speaker 1: and you obviously get the technology side and the future
Speaker 1: vision side. Um. But you have a company, saysdy Capital. Um,
Speaker 1: that is your You're an investment firm of some sort,
Speaker 1: and you're actively investing in the technology. And I'm curious
Speaker 1: how somebody with your background in your future vision is
Speaker 1: looking at investing in the space. Maybe you can tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about that. Yeah, I mean, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, I'm a technologist at heart, and so we've
Speaker 1: been deeply integrated in the technology development environment here for
Speaker 1: a number of years. We've been running the Theorem meetups
Speaker 1: since day one, Since Abul two thousand fifteen, so far
Speaker 1: more than four years. Now. We typically two monthly events
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll try to theme them to a particular topic.
Speaker 1: Like our last one last week was all around decentralized exchanges,
Speaker 1: so that more equity should be called on because totally exchanges.
Speaker 1: So we're so be excited about UM particular angles in
Speaker 1: that space and the way we work, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: it's using the scientific method to investing, which means we
Speaker 1: formulate the investment thesis. And in our case right now,
Speaker 1: we're working roughly of three large topics, the first one
Speaker 1: being UM what we talked about money very p and
Speaker 1: within money of IP will look for smart remittance systems,
Speaker 1: point of sales systems, at M solutions, smart wallet systems
Speaker 1: and so far. So there's a lot of utility to
Speaker 1: we had, but it comes down to identifying the solutions
Speaker 1: and UM the actual operators that realized that because nine
Speaker 1: out of ten times or more, UM, we just realized
Speaker 1: that they're still stuck at trying to fix a meta problem,
Speaker 1: not the core problem. But they're trying to fix the bank.
Speaker 1: You don't need to fix the bank, I mean as
Speaker 1: far as the as far as the payment go, I
Speaker 1: mean I see a lot of people trying to solve
Speaker 1: like take take traditional POS systems like point of sales
Speaker 1: systems and trying to help merchants take credit card or
Speaker 1: take take cryptocurrencies for example. I don't I don't really
Speaker 1: understand that. Yeah, it seems like, well, cryptocurrency was designed
Speaker 1: to be peer to peer and it's supposed to cut
Speaker 1: that whole person out. So it's almost like they're trying
Speaker 1: to introduce a technology that actually puts them out of business, right, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. I mean, it's it's it comes back
Speaker 1: to they're expecting people to adopt the technology rather than
Speaker 1: adopt their technology to people that it's it's the basic
Speaker 1: entrepreneur mistake that they're making there. So you need to
Speaker 1: bury the technology onto the protocol level so that neither
Speaker 1: the merger nor the consumer has to worry about um
Speaker 1: needing to learn a new language of quote unquote cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1: But the only thing they need to know is that
Speaker 1: this particular method doesn't have any fee or better, it's
Speaker 1: actually getting them something right, and that's what you need
Speaker 1: to build in your product. And it's it's not that
Speaker 1: this is easy to do. It just takes more, it
Speaker 1: takes longer, more diligence, and mostly more diligence in the
Speaker 1: original setup and thinking. And then there's the the other
Speaker 1: portion to that, and that's again it's very specific to
Speaker 1: this topic, uh, the topic of regulation, and unfortunately because
Speaker 1: of the misalignment of interest, specifically in the United States
Speaker 1: but also all over the world. Um, the way legal
Speaker 1: systems work. As a lot of these entrepreneurs, they they're
Speaker 1: going to either see the STC worst case scenario or um,
Speaker 1: not as bad but bad, go to the lawyer and
Speaker 1: get legal advice on how to build technology. Well, we
Speaker 1: already know that lawyers in general and regulators in particular
Speaker 1: don't make for good product designers, right, so that's already
Speaker 1: a really bad idea. But then more importantly, um, they
Speaker 1: will never create a useful product because they misunderstand that
Speaker 1: this is an international technology and you should just focus
Speaker 1: on creating that technology. Meaning if you're just providing the protocol,
Speaker 1: if you're not interfacing with the user, and if you're
Speaker 1: actually building a peer to peer protocol, there's no niccense needed, right,
Speaker 1: I can as long as I'm not trading in anything
Speaker 1: elictit you and I can trade anything for anything all
Speaker 1: day long, right, that there's no problem with that, And well, yeah,
Speaker 1: with limitations, but limitations are typically physical in nature. If
Speaker 1: we could transfer this to the digital world and exchange
Speaker 1: value that way, that would be preferred. But then, more importantly,
Speaker 1: also these these jurisdictions are obviously different everywhere. I always say, well,
Speaker 1: if you don't want your security to be traded on
Speaker 1: the sabbath, or if it should comply to show real
Speaker 1: and every other regulation you could envision, I probably end
Speaker 1: up not building anything ever, right, And so it's not
Speaker 1: about picking the right regulation. It's about deciding if you
Speaker 1: want to be in the business of acquiring these legacy
Speaker 1: licenses and then eventually wait for for these to kind
Speaker 1: of go away and unify, which will take decades or
Speaker 1: um more progressively, just build technology and and build technology
Speaker 1: in such a fashion that you actually don't need any
Speaker 1: of those. And we have the stereotypical example right in
Speaker 1: found of our nose every day. It's a bit common, right,
Speaker 1: But no, it seems like it's it's not like I'm
Speaker 1: not saying this likely. I mean it's a hard thing
Speaker 1: to do, right, I mean bitcoin, But for all intents
Speaker 1: and purposes, it's it's a miracle that it exists, that
Speaker 1: it works and so far as so many things had
Speaker 1: to come together. But now that we have this example,
Speaker 1: you just need to pay close attention of how these
Speaker 1: examples came together and build it in that such fashion.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean that you cannot make money from it,
Speaker 1: by the way, right Redhead makes a lot of money
Speaker 1: by implementing Linux solutions, multi building dollar company, but it
Speaker 1: just requires a different way of thinking and realization what
Speaker 1: the problem is. So how do you how do you
Speaker 1: approach that from an investment standpoint, I mean your firm
Speaker 1: Sesny Capital, like what you're investing thesis or like what
Speaker 1: are the areas that you're focusing on? Yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: the first money of IP and like with any thesis,
Speaker 1: will put it out there, we run it against the
Speaker 1: teams that we talked to and get pay review and
Speaker 1: if we find someone who has an intelligent opinion that
Speaker 1: we haven't considered, then we adjust. Are thinking that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the best thing you can do. Is also the
Speaker 1: money over I P which is, like you said, kind
Speaker 1: of like the payment sector. That's kind of an area
Speaker 1: that you kind of have your focus on right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because at the end of the day, I mean, investing
Speaker 1: is about timing, right, So it's when you get in,
Speaker 1: when you get out, and there's not a lot more
Speaker 1: to be had the next topic that we focus on
Speaker 1: the whole topic of regulation technologies, because as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of value to be had, it's
Speaker 1: just not around the topic of security tokens. It's more
Speaker 1: incremental than that, and has to be more incremental than that.
Speaker 1: So there we made a couple of allocations in different solutions.
Speaker 1: Just one example, we're running thirty five notes for UM
Speaker 1: small fund. They have the ownly decentralized approach to this
Speaker 1: um issuance topic and um we like what Celsius does
Speaker 1: so this loan system. And another another voice over IP guy, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you need to have a talk with Alex about that
Speaker 1: topic because now you mentioned you mentioned before the fallacy.
Speaker 1: You called it the fallacy of the fat fat protocol thesis. Um,
Speaker 1: so I guess based off of that statement you you
Speaker 1: stay away from protocols, not at all. We're allocated to
Speaker 1: a lot of the protocols we just um treated appropriately.
Speaker 1: So the all the the protocol allocations and supports, they're
Speaker 1: managed by the data science team. So to that extent,
Speaker 1: you're obviously right now there's nothing you can invest into
Speaker 1: in the cryptocurrency space, right, So in the cryptocurrency and
Speaker 1: exchange in my mind, investing is the long t peround
Speaker 1: means that that's all speculation. You can invest into algorithms,
Speaker 1: and that's what we do. That do those tradings, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of learnings to be had, so our
Speaker 1: expectations in the future once the systems have all gone
Speaker 1: through the ring. I've been tested a thousand times for
Speaker 1: Sunday and you're you're probably aware of the quote unquote
Speaker 1: Binance hag right, which is really the wrong label for
Speaker 1: what happened there. But let's call it that. In a way,
Speaker 1: it wasn't advertising for that particular exchange, right because because
Speaker 1: just absorbed it and paid everybody out from the fund.
Speaker 1: Don't try that with your f d i C insurance,
Speaker 1: by the way, right, that would just in the f
Speaker 1: d i C case, that would be just one bank glass. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so money over appears one large topic and
Speaker 1: wrack technly in the other topic. But again, incremental, it's
Speaker 1: like we focus on the low hanging fruit that are
Speaker 1: actually time the end feasible right now with um the
Speaker 1: state of the protocol levels that we have, so we'll
Speaker 1: look at like bond issuing systems is probably one of
Speaker 1: the easier products. Like people saying stuff like tokenization of
Speaker 1: real estate, they're just using it unfortunately, as a metaphor,
Speaker 1: and that's always a bad idea. As a technology investor.
Speaker 1: You don't want to use meta for us. You want
Speaker 1: to understand the technology. So unfortunately we use something we
Speaker 1: know to try to describe the technology, but then we
Speaker 1: put it into a box. Right yeah, yeah, as a
Speaker 1: technology investor, you can't afford to do that, right. You
Speaker 1: need to fundamentally, at least fundamentally understand vocabulary, which is
Speaker 1: like we're still forming the vocabulary, right, So don't take
Speaker 1: my particular notion of how to define things as be
Speaker 1: all end all. If someone comes up with something better,
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely willing. I'm wanting to adapt that. Whatever I
Speaker 1: put out, it's always meant in the spirit of peer review.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the main reason why I talked to
Speaker 1: you or right on forks or anything to get peer review.
Speaker 1: I want to know when I'm wrong, and I want
Speaker 1: to know really really earlier, ideally before I spent too
Speaker 1: much time and money on making further mistakes built on
Speaker 1: wrong definitions. But unfortunately, it seems like a lot of
Speaker 1: people just jumped to just taking on these words, i e. Cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1: The term cryptocurrency is other useless. Right, any currency, hopefully
Speaker 1: in its transfer mechanisms using some form of cryptographic protection. Right.
Speaker 1: I assume that VISA is using that. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but I assume they do, and they might not use
Speaker 1: the blockchain variety. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: then that's the other topic. Oftentimes, when I find people
Speaker 1: using this term blockchain technology, I think they haven't thought
Speaker 1: about this for long enough, because blockchain technology in that
Speaker 1: never sense is really just a fancy way of encrypting
Speaker 1: things which has been around for twenty years. Right, It's
Speaker 1: really about creating um the incentive mechanisms factor in your
Speaker 1: network that creates the immuntability that lets you allow to
Speaker 1: build digital bearer instruments, which at the end of the
Speaker 1: day will then allow you to build the quote unquote
Speaker 1: digital vending machines with which then I think those are
Speaker 1: all the problems that lead to the regulations because they're
Speaker 1: trying to like put these into these classifications that just
Speaker 1: don't exist. And UM, a lot of these utility tokens,
Speaker 1: if you will, um are meant to be used on
Speaker 1: a system. UM like maybe you would go to david
Speaker 1: Busters and buy tokens to play video games or chuck
Speaker 1: E Cheese, or when I go to the grocery store,
Speaker 1: they give me reward points, um, and they're kind of
Speaker 1: similar to that, and I can use them back in
Speaker 1: the system. However, when I use my Chuck E Cheese
Speaker 1: token or my my grocery store a word points, I don't.
Speaker 1: That's not a taxable event. But now they're calling them assets,
Speaker 1: and now they're taxing me to use them. And then
Speaker 1: it's like, but that's not what they are. That's not
Speaker 1: you know, and so they're uh, and that's what only
Speaker 1: one particular context. And actually frequent fire mars are actually taxable,
Speaker 1: right yeah, same, but like that's different again in other jurisdictions.
Speaker 1: And again that shouldn't play a role. Because I was
Speaker 1: just at the conference. You probably were there when I
Speaker 1: was talking to Hasta from the SEC, and the first
Speaker 1: thing that I told her that I always tell regulator
Speaker 1: or lawyer that I talked to is like, whenever you
Speaker 1: open your mouth, shouldn't you make the disclaimer that you
Speaker 1: don't get ready you like technology, that the only thing
Speaker 1: you get to do is limit the right of your citizens,
Speaker 1: because that's all you get to do, right as a
Speaker 1: regulator of any nation, like you can tell your citizens
Speaker 1: what to do and what not to do, mostly what
Speaker 1: not to do. So if that was actually always phrased
Speaker 1: in mass particular fashion, it wouldn't get much play, right
Speaker 1: because you don't get fast standing up in front of
Speaker 1: your citizens saying hey, I don't want you three hundred
Speaker 1: million people to be able to buy digital tokens and
Speaker 1: potentially get rich stuff from that will potentially lose anything. So,
Speaker 1: speaking speaking of that, there was the California we're both
Speaker 1: in California Sherman who came out and said point blank
Speaker 1: that U. S citizens should be uh, it should be
Speaker 1: illegal for US citizens to buy cryptocurrency. Right. Um, So
Speaker 1: he did get up and say that, yeah, you probably,
Speaker 1: I mean, he probably just wanted to get a reactionize
Speaker 1: no one can be that misguided too. Well, he I
Speaker 1: don't think he was misguided. He actually said so. He
Speaker 1: said the reason why they should be if they it
Speaker 1: should be illegal for them to own it is because
Speaker 1: they believe it takes power from the U. S. Government
Speaker 1: or the the US dollar, the petro dollar, which weakens
Speaker 1: our stance to give sanctions to countries like Iran. And
Speaker 1: he specifically mentioned them. Um so he said he he
Speaker 1: knows exactly what he said. Um, but I think that
Speaker 1: gives fuel to Iran. So they're like, well, heck if this,
Speaker 1: if this takes away the part of the U. S
Speaker 1: to slap sanctions, and we're all for it, right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you obvious need to take a step back
Speaker 1: and see how this is more likely to play out
Speaker 1: because yeah, and for the time being, nations, the states
Speaker 1: are in a competition, right and we see this play
Speaker 1: out right now in a very specific way, i e.
Speaker 1: Nonsense like what New York did with the bit licensed
Speaker 1: people will just leave New York and exclude New York
Speaker 1: City business for participating and or just decide entirely have
Speaker 1: we don't want to play with US citizens. So if
Speaker 1: you carry this forward, Um, if you have done the
Speaker 1: same things like yeah, we don't trust this internet thing,
Speaker 1: we don't let us people have access to the internet.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine that happening and how we would be
Speaker 1: competitively in the world today, right, and it's no different,
Speaker 1: it's actually worse by several orders of magnitude. What I
Speaker 1: mean by that is, so not only is block BLOKTI
Speaker 1: based solutions going to dirupt a disrupt value transfer, but
Speaker 1: because of the decentralized nature, A will disrupt anything that
Speaker 1: came out of the decentralized Internet. And then we see
Speaker 1: already the beginnings of that right now. But obviously things
Speaker 1: like Google and Facebook and the way they create money
Speaker 1: for their shareholders that shouldn't have been allowed in the
Speaker 1: first place. Right the Internet is the commons, and no
Speaker 1: one should be allowed to filter it and then aggregate
Speaker 1: content for their own purpose, and specifically not in a
Speaker 1: various way by by selling data. And now that's pretty
Speaker 1: much accepted wisdom, I'd say, But um, coming back to
Speaker 1: this topic of competitiveness, we can already see this play
Speaker 1: out right now here and there, with other jurs addictions
Speaker 1: being faster to adopt more appropriate regulations if any or
Speaker 1: simply saying we are hands off, or tell everybody, well,
Speaker 1: but we just treat these as digital commodities, as in
Speaker 1: the case of Canada and so forth. So if I
Speaker 1: asked you, if I asked you to give me your
Speaker 1: outlook for the the world, but the US, where the
Speaker 1: U s fits into the world over the next couple
Speaker 1: of years. It sounds like you're optimistic. You think the
Speaker 1: US is going to get on board and not push
Speaker 1: too much of this stuff overseas. I think that was
Speaker 1: already left behind and that's only going to continue. Um Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of damage I think has already been done.
Speaker 1: Um I think at this stage just can still be undone.
Speaker 1: I don't really like to think in nation state terms.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're used for organizing principle at this
Speaker 1: moment in time for humanity and because we're facing so
Speaker 1: many global problems. But um again, I'm a technologist at heart,
Speaker 1: and so I'm eternally optimistic when it comes to the
Speaker 1: the ability of technology to solve every problem that we're facing.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of my focus. So to that extent,
Speaker 1: I think it will always start, um with efficient data
Speaker 1: distributions or information distribution. I think once we solve that,
Speaker 1: it will kind of dissolve a lot of these misconceptions
Speaker 1: because um, if if you will, all these misconceptions are
Speaker 1: all these ideas that I'm I'm an American, I'm in
Speaker 1: Indian and whatever. Those are all just indoctrinated. Indoctrinations were
Speaker 1: just to say beliefs. If we just let go of that,
Speaker 1: we're all pretty much the same as humans. And so
Speaker 1: if you have the technology to to actually disseminate that information, like,
Speaker 1: the more you travel, typically more accepting of other nations, right,
Speaker 1: that's what you find. And and the more you learn
Speaker 1: and general about how the world works and what's important,
Speaker 1: the more accepting you are, the more collaborative you are.
Speaker 1: And that's the winning formula, right, And that's why at
Speaker 1: the heart of this particular development is open source technology.
Speaker 1: What's open source technology? There's a bunch of people that
Speaker 1: don't know each other, from from all around the world
Speaker 1: that collaborate to one particular purpose. Why are they doing that?
Speaker 1: What's the internsing momtive? Because simply because a they can
Speaker 1: and be it just excites them to see that particular
Speaker 1: thing in the world. And so you can't stop this
Speaker 1: with a nation state. You can stop this regulation, you
Speaker 1: can't stop this with government created money. Right. What they're
Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna try, but it's unstoppable. Yeah, And to me,
Speaker 1: I mean it's unconstitutional to try because at the end
Speaker 1: of the day. I mean, any currency should be free.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's the greater expression of your freedom, freedom
Speaker 1: of expression than allocating your wealth your funds. It's more
Speaker 1: than state. The state is always going to want to
Speaker 1: try to control that trade because they're always gonna want
Speaker 1: their money, right. Yeah. But what shines through there, though,
Speaker 1: is this idea that government's identities there aren't they're functions
Speaker 1: of society. So that's another thing that we need to
Speaker 1: get back to, realizing that governments are to serve societies.
Speaker 1: Now we created all these like quote unquote entities and institutions.
Speaker 1: There aren't institutions, there are functions of societies. If we
Speaker 1: realize that this is the case, then we can replace
Speaker 1: most of them with technology. Because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: these entities that we're that we created, that we that
Speaker 1: we keep alive for no particular reason, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: they shouldn't exist and like nonsense, like the internal revenue,
Speaker 1: so it should not exist. The The idea of how
Speaker 1: we implement our taxation system um by basically penalizing production
Speaker 1: has been has been accepted wisdom since the eighties that
Speaker 1: this is not a really useful system to have because
Speaker 1: it's causing what we call a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of partial parts of the money law doing things. But well, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if you tax Apple because they happen to
Speaker 1: be in Crepitine all about, they can create entity in
Speaker 1: island to other ones and then uh slash the text
Speaker 1: boat and half of course they need to do that, right,
Speaker 1: I mean what we would be gross negligent not to
Speaker 1: do that. So what what you're really doing as you're incentivizing,
Speaker 1: um those entities and the most productive people typically of
Speaker 1: societies to look elsewhere. Right, So we have a and
Speaker 1: that's and that's uh. And and that's why blockchain or
Speaker 1: bitcoin and blockchain is so interesting because you have to
Speaker 1: be so multifaceted, and one is on philosophy. And that's
Speaker 1: where a lot of these policymakers and economist miss is
Speaker 1: they don't understand human incentive. They try to organize everything,
Speaker 1: but they missed that big piece of incentive. Um And
Speaker 1: so you've nailed that, um Man. This has been an
Speaker 1: awesome conversation. Uh, these are the parts that I really
Speaker 1: enjoy about this space. So I could just talk about
Speaker 1: it forever, and I know we've gone way longer than
Speaker 1: you had agreed to come on for and every they
Speaker 1: appreciate you taking the time. Um, it's been it's been great.
Speaker 1: UM shared some really good information, some good food for thought.
Speaker 1: But I want to I want to respect your time now, UM,
Speaker 1: because you're so interesting. I'm sure other people want to know.
Speaker 1: Is there are a place they can keep up with you. Well.
Speaker 1: So I've been working on this long time project which
Speaker 1: I called my book project. Although I'm not entirely sure
Speaker 1: whoever result in the book at this point in time,
Speaker 1: because I started this fourteen years ago, but it was
Speaker 1: right after I realized that we never got around to
Speaker 1: actually finish what we set out to do, which is
Speaker 1: to build the worldwide weapon. Instead ended up with the
Speaker 1: commercial web. So I started writing an outline on on
Speaker 1: my block it's just my last name came dot com
Speaker 1: a long time ago, and um, as of a year
Speaker 1: or a year and a half ago, I started writing
Speaker 1: an article also every month every other months on Forbes,
Speaker 1: which was basically an outline of one of the chapters
Speaker 1: in in the book. So at this point in time,
Speaker 1: it's obviously largely slanted to watch the centralized system. It
Speaker 1: started out being about the centralized systems, but knowing obviously
Speaker 1: what I now Now with current developments in the blockchain space,
Speaker 1: it's much more sophisticated in in detail oriented. Worse, the
Speaker 1: initial outline was mostly on principle, so it's like fourteen
Speaker 1: principles of how you need to organize information distribution to
Speaker 1: make it sustainable, which to me is that the core
Speaker 1: of most of the problems that we face today. I mean,
Speaker 1: we will summarize that there's fake news, but it goes
Speaker 1: much deeper into the fact that you can basically google
Speaker 1: anything and find your ever so misguided opinion confirmed. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if the world is flat or um.
Speaker 1: You have whatever name you want to assign to your
Speaker 1: respective and visible friend, right. Uh. And that that's obviously
Speaker 1: true because there's so many people that subscribed to the idea.
Speaker 1: So I kind of adapted the opposite means. If if
Speaker 1: a lot of people think that's the right thing, is
Speaker 1: probably wrong. So I set a lot of people eat
Speaker 1: that McDonald's, that's probably not the right thing to do, right.
Speaker 1: That's one of the highlight examples. But um, yeah, so
Speaker 1: to that extent might be, I always like to get
Speaker 1: feedback on the stuff that I published there on on forps,
Speaker 1: the only thing that I once in a while published
Speaker 1: an article because it's not the right venue on forps,
Speaker 1: publishes on on linked In, but I'm not much otherwise
Speaker 1: present on on social media. I think I tweet maybe
Speaker 1: every three weeks of that and then mostly too like
Speaker 1: a now and say, we have a meet up, but
Speaker 1: does anybody want to talk about the Centristic exchanges or
Speaker 1: game technologies or whatever. Right, well, I'll get some links
Speaker 1: to those in the show notes and as far as
Speaker 1: your meet up, so I'd love to come since we're
Speaker 1: both in the local area, so I definitely want to
Speaker 1: stay more in touch with you on that um. But
Speaker 1: we'll go ahead and wrap it up. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining the Market Disruptors Podcast. Hey, if you like
Speaker 1: this episode of the Market Disruptors Podcast, please help us
Speaker 1: take this to the top of the podcast charts. Just
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Speaker 1: Taking fifteen seconds to just leave a quick review goes
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