Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisnal and I'm Tracy Halloway. So, Trady, I
Speaker 1: guess it's kind of a cliche like every time we
Speaker 1: do a crypto episode. Crypto markets have been pretty volatile lately,
Speaker 1: but actually right now they have been extremely volatile, and
Speaker 1: it's not just a it's not just a cliche. Right now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: people are talking about crypto winter, so I guess a
Speaker 1: redux of what we saw back in where we had
Speaker 1: the big fall and then it took a very very
Speaker 1: long time for people to get excited and interested in
Speaker 1: crypto again. But that said, I do feel like this
Speaker 1: period of time is it feels a little bit different
Speaker 1: because even though the spot prices of a bunch of
Speaker 1: different things are falling, it seems like there's still a
Speaker 1: ton of money flooding into the space. And maybe that'll
Speaker 1: change eventually, but for the time being, it feels like
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of interest. Yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 1: It also feels like there's you know, twenty eighteen en
Speaker 1: it felt like it was the only thing that people
Speaker 1: really talked about with crypto was the price. And I
Speaker 1: still think like the price of the coins is still
Speaker 1: like the part that captures people's attention the most. But
Speaker 1: I guess there is this idea of like, okay, like
Speaker 1: there's some new Web three point oh Web three that's
Speaker 1: getting built out, and it's being built towards something, And
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone is that great at describing what
Speaker 1: it's going to look like or what this new version
Speaker 1: of the Internet is. But I guess that that it's
Speaker 1: I think it's sufficiently captured people's imagination enough that even
Speaker 1: if the price were to stay depressed, people want to
Speaker 1: keep building it out and turning it into something a
Speaker 1: little bit more tangible beyond speculation. Well, this is one
Speaker 1: of the remarkable things about crypto. I feel like it's
Speaker 1: almost like every time you turn around, there's a new
Speaker 1: use case that gets invented, And you're right. It is
Speaker 1: weird to think that a few years ago, we weren't
Speaker 1: talking about Web three point oh, we weren't talking about
Speaker 1: defy at all. We were just talking about bitcoin mostly
Speaker 1: as a unit of payment, maybe an inflation hedge, digital goal,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And already in the space of
Speaker 1: a few years, the narrative changes so quickly the narrative
Speaker 1: change is super fast. I sometimes go back and forth
Speaker 1: whether that's a good sign or whether it's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's our new thing because the last thing didn't materialize.
Speaker 1: But nonetheless it's ongoing. You know you mentioned in the beginning,
Speaker 1: and I think this is really key is that, yes,
Speaker 1: there is this decline in prices that we've seen, but
Speaker 1: on the flip side, it feels like there's an intense
Speaker 1: amount of investment and building and money pouring into like
Speaker 1: creating new things. And so I really want to explore
Speaker 1: this tension more by talking about like what's really going
Speaker 1: on between the price and then you know there's sort
Speaker 1: of like actual activity in this space, because they really
Speaker 1: are two different things. Yeah, absolutely, let's do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I am very excited. Oh wait, wait, there's one more
Speaker 1: thing I want to say. You know what, one thing
Speaker 1: that's really weird about talking about crypto is you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to narrow it down one weird thing about talking
Speaker 1: about crypto. There are many weird things. There's one more thing,
Speaker 1: which is that so many of the best people in
Speaker 1: the space are pseudonymous, like I don't know who they are.
Speaker 1: There's like all like these like incredible like experts that
Speaker 1: I've learned a ton from over the years, and I
Speaker 1: literally have no idea who they are. And unlike tread
Speaker 1: fi like pseudonymous teams, pseudonymous founders, pseudonymous investors, people are
Speaker 1: just an avatar, you know, maybe a frog, maybe an
Speaker 1: anime character, maybe something like that could be like these
Speaker 1: really important voices to listen to the space. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: always interesting when you're you're getting really good crypto information
Speaker 1: from like like digital picture of an ape, a drawing
Speaker 1: of a monkey. Yeah, exactly right. All right, well today
Speaker 1: we are going to be speaking to a frog, but
Speaker 1: we're going to be speaking to a maybe a colleague
Speaker 1: of them. I am very excited. We're going to bring
Speaker 1: speaking to Eva Balen. She is the director at the
Speaker 1: Graph Foundation, and she is an e girl at the
Speaker 1: Girl Capital, an amorphous crypto investment collective whose members include
Speaker 1: various handles that people might see at crypto Twitter, like
Speaker 1: at loom dart and at Digen Spartan and at Crypto
Speaker 1: cat VC. I'm just looking at their website and Eva,
Speaker 1: who is not pseudonymous. So Eva, thank you very much
Speaker 1: for coming out odd lot, Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me excited to chat. So wait, First of all,
Speaker 1: I used to be in some discord that was like
Speaker 1: the egirl Capital discord, and now I'm not in it anymore.
Speaker 1: Did I get kicked out or did it disappear like
Speaker 1: what happened? Oh no, I'm not sure. Maybe we should
Speaker 1: talk to our resident discord owner of the cat in
Speaker 1: the Hasmath suit. But we did have a public chat
Speaker 1: that was just sort of for our unity to come
Speaker 1: around share information. Alright, well, somehow I'm not in it.
Speaker 1: The cat is at c L two oh seven. But
Speaker 1: more seriously, like what is the girl Capital? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: first we started off as just you know, a few
Speaker 1: and nons, and we quickly realized that the scope that
Speaker 1: we were covering in our interests, um you know, we
Speaker 1: could do some damage. We could either start to invest
Speaker 1: or um you know, start to get more involved in
Speaker 1: the way we were already involved in Web three, which
Speaker 1: you know, as you mentioned, I'm director of the foundation
Speaker 1: at the Graph. We've got a few members who are
Speaker 1: leaders of projects, so Scoopy Trooples, a CEO of Alcomics.
Speaker 1: We've got another guy named DevOps who leads Saddle Finance.
Speaker 1: We've got a few traders, a few security engineers. So
Speaker 1: we realized that with this breadth of experience, we actually
Speaker 1: have something very unique to offer that wasn't consistent with
Speaker 1: typical investment funds in UM Web two or in Wall
Speaker 1: Street UM, and not even consistent with Web three, where
Speaker 1: we don't have any LPs UM and we operate quite independently.
Speaker 1: So UM even every deal, you know, not every member
Speaker 1: participates in, and we actually um you know, only agree
Speaker 1: to you know, take on an egirl d if we're
Speaker 1: all kind of in consensus. So I mean, I have
Speaker 1: a bunch of questions already, but maybe just to begin with,
Speaker 1: could you could you maybe describe your your membership a
Speaker 1: little bit more? And I guess who are the types
Speaker 1: of people that would join something like egirl Capital versus
Speaker 1: going down the route of traditional crypto investment, and what
Speaker 1: is it that they get out of this particular organization
Speaker 1: versus again, more traditional forms of investment. And I guess
Speaker 1: my overarching question is also how do you actually decide
Speaker 1: what to invest in and coordinate given that you're dealing
Speaker 1: with a group of disparate people, some of whom, as
Speaker 1: Joe pointed out in the intro, are pseud aotonomous yes
Speaker 1: and answer your first question. You know, the way we
Speaker 1: came together was again very kind of organic, and a
Speaker 1: lot of us have full time jobs that are different.
Speaker 1: So you know, I have a full time job as
Speaker 1: a builder, um. Others you know might be trading or
Speaker 1: running other investments full time. And so for us it
Speaker 1: was like, how can we come together in this way
Speaker 1: that is organic. We don't have some quota or some
Speaker 1: expectations from LPs, but still provide value. And so for
Speaker 1: us that it's much more of a choice. We aren't
Speaker 1: sort of behold into any expectations and even our investments
Speaker 1: you know, aren't again meeting some kind of quota per year.
Speaker 1: So um, we've been around for about a year now
Speaker 1: and we've made two million dollars about two million dollars
Speaker 1: worth of investments across ten different projects UM. And really
Speaker 1: our priority is to invest in critical decentralized primitives of
Speaker 1: web three UM and kind of you know, the metaverse
Speaker 1: meets defy. So a lot of our projects, um, you
Speaker 1: know are actually an f T based something like yat
Speaker 1: um or you know, investing in actually art or unisocks,
Speaker 1: as you you know might have seen. We startingly believe
Speaker 1: in um veblin goods and the ability that you know,
Speaker 1: for goods representing early defy um like unisocks you know,
Speaker 1: are likely to increase in value long term. UM. But
Speaker 1: we're also investing in a lot of really critical protocols
Speaker 1: that are going to fundamentally change technology and innovation. So UM,
Speaker 1: things like connects, which is a layer two protocol that
Speaker 1: connects literally connects between different layer twos on ethereum UM,
Speaker 1: or Radical, which is sort of a GitHub replacement a
Speaker 1: way to have open source code collaboration. UM. So really
Speaker 1: we are motivated by what are the best projects, what
Speaker 1: would make the most impact, and what's most aligned with
Speaker 1: Web three. I just want to ask about the coordination
Speaker 1: portion of it, Like how do you actually go about
Speaker 1: identifying and evaluating potential investments. Yeah, so all of us
Speaker 1: are in different sub communities, so typically, you know, there
Speaker 1: might be one or two members of the girl that
Speaker 1: are kind of leading that deal. Maybe it was, um,
Speaker 1: you know, a project they've already been working with or
Speaker 1: got connected with, and then we'll start doing our own
Speaker 1: internal due diligence. UM. I'm excited to say we now
Speaker 1: have a few interns we didn't have that here ago UM,
Speaker 1: but they often will help us do research, whether that's
Speaker 1: looking at on chain metrics, maybe comparing against other projects UM.
Speaker 1: And again, because we're so deep in the space, a
Speaker 1: lot of us have expertise, whether it's you know, security
Speaker 1: or smart contracts or business that we can kind of
Speaker 1: bring to to each deal. UM. But I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: it's you know, quite the most traditional due diligence process
Speaker 1: as hedge funds that you're used to seeing. Is there
Speaker 1: a pooled capital element of it? Like is there a
Speaker 1: pot that you and these fellow your fellow members and
Speaker 1: put money into. And I'm just curious, like are they
Speaker 1: anonymous to you as well? Most of them? So first question,
Speaker 1: we don't have a potum, although we have been considering
Speaker 1: growing into a doubt formally on chain um where right now,
Speaker 1: the way we behave is per deal, so you know,
Speaker 1: we kind of bring it to the group. Anyone who
Speaker 1: wants to participate, you know, gets a cut or you know,
Speaker 1: depending on kind of the breakdown or interest, and we
Speaker 1: typically will um, you know, bring it on as an
Speaker 1: ego deal if there's enough interest from the group. If
Speaker 1: there isn't enough interest, you know, again, we have our
Speaker 1: own statures in the community, so often someone will do
Speaker 1: an angel investment or maybe even go work with the
Speaker 1: project directly. Um. What was your second question again? To
Speaker 1: what degree? Like, do you mostly know your colleagues as
Speaker 1: a nons or have you like are there some there
Speaker 1: that you still don't know who they are? Oh? No,
Speaker 1: they're fully ant me. Um. I've met a few of
Speaker 1: them in person. UM. I know you know a few
Speaker 1: of their first names, but otherwise you know, I I
Speaker 1: don't know very much about them. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: the beauty of it. You know. Part of the Web
Speaker 1: three and cryptovision is how do we actually utilize pseudonymity
Speaker 1: in a more productive way. So you know, DJs have
Speaker 1: been doing this for years. You know, almost every DJ
Speaker 1: has their own alias or alter ego and they get
Speaker 1: to then create that sub community or sub brand. And
Speaker 1: so similarly with crypto, you know, you can participate in
Speaker 1: a protocol in a sort of gig economy style. And
Speaker 1: why do you need that to be tied to your
Speaker 1: birth identity? Um? When actually you can start to create
Speaker 1: your own alter ego on chain that might be associated
Speaker 1: with you know, a cat or a monkey. Um. And
Speaker 1: maybe you're only you know, participating in this one protocol,
Speaker 1: and then maybe you have another identity for a different one.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about David Solomon and DJ soul Um. So sorry,
Speaker 1: he might be an E girl, he might be yeah,
Speaker 1: who knows. Well, okay, So again this is one of
Speaker 1: those conversations is just throwing up more and more question.
Speaker 1: But two things. One y E girl, and I guess
Speaker 1: it's a really stupid question. Are most of your members
Speaker 1: female or was there a desire there to get more
Speaker 1: females on board with crypto? And then secondly, what's the
Speaker 1: benefit of pseudonymity? Because when I think of crypto and bitcoin,
Speaker 1: I always think, well, this is sort of attention at
Speaker 1: the heart of crypto. On the one hand, it's transparent
Speaker 1: and traceable and you can see all the transactions on
Speaker 1: a blockchain and things like that. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily tied to a single identity, and so
Speaker 1: you are able to do anonymous transactions. So I guess
Speaker 1: what I'm getting at is what's the benefit of preserving
Speaker 1: that pseudonymity of investors. The meme of E girl, I
Speaker 1: believe came out of more anime and hent culture um
Speaker 1: as I'm sure you've seen, you know, things like v
Speaker 1: tubing where people are literally creating cartoon images of their
Speaker 1: faces and then going on YouTube and you know, doing
Speaker 1: a show has become extremely popular or even streaming, and
Speaker 1: so we kind of tapped into this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: anime and m cartoon characters you know, should also be
Speaker 1: taken seriously as much as suits. Um in a sense,
Speaker 1: we kind of present this anti suit culture or anti
Speaker 1: suit meme. And I really personally related to that because
Speaker 1: I used to be a management consultant in New York
Speaker 1: and you know, being forced into sort of this box.
Speaker 1: And it was very clear to me that webs three
Speaker 1: and Crypto are the antithesis of that, where you really
Speaker 1: can still be taken seriously for your bottom line or
Speaker 1: for you know, the insightful tweets or whatever you might
Speaker 1: be investing in. You don't need to be wearing a suit.
Speaker 1: You could be wearing a hazmat suit, I guess on
Speaker 1: your second question. So, the biggest misconception to me that
Speaker 1: I see is people think that suitonymity or anonymity means
Speaker 1: that you don't have reputation, when actually it's quite the
Speaker 1: opposite that if you want to be known, and if
Speaker 1: you want to have a community or you know, have
Speaker 1: a job, you have to make much more effort to
Speaker 1: develop that reputation than otherwise, you know, k y C people.
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm one of the only DOCS members
Speaker 1: and you know, technically speaking, I've been developing my reputation
Speaker 1: since I was born, and you know that's google able.
Speaker 1: But anyone who chooses to take on a different personality
Speaker 1: is starting from scratch um. And so there's this misconception
Speaker 1: that you know, of course, maybe you can't always trust
Speaker 1: and nons, maybe there's some degree of risk, But at
Speaker 1: the same time they've taken on a significant amount of
Speaker 1: risk too that if they wanted to rebuild that identity
Speaker 1: or reputation, they would take much longer than for everyone else.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious, you know, I'm looking at your your
Speaker 1: portfolio on your website. I'm very amused by the unisocks investment.
Speaker 1: For one thing, that was for those who don't remember,
Speaker 1: we had Mike de m Ray on the podcast in
Speaker 1: December and he was involved in that, which is basically
Speaker 1: buy an n f T that's associated with a literal
Speaker 1: pair of talks. But some of these projects like I
Speaker 1: think there's like all the like well known I guess
Speaker 1: you would call them docks actually or just sort of
Speaker 1: like established VC firms in them, and then the announcement
Speaker 1: will like you know, to be like some name that
Speaker 1: you've heard of from Silica Valley, egol Capital as part
Speaker 1: of the round do legacy vcs? What do they think
Speaker 1: about being part of a deal where you guys are
Speaker 1: listed on the round? You know, I don't. I don't know,
Speaker 1: and to be honest, I don't really care. Um. I
Speaker 1: think part of what we're trying to bring here is
Speaker 1: like we're a group of highly capable, you know, folks
Speaker 1: that have been in the space for between you know,
Speaker 1: three to ten years. Um, you know, some started early
Speaker 1: on in bitcoin, and we're bringing a lot of value
Speaker 1: to the table that maybe untraditional, but um, you know
Speaker 1: we're still here. We still were able to get a seat,
Speaker 1: you know, the project believed in our value that we
Speaker 1: could bring to them. Um. So I think it's really
Speaker 1: exciting and it's you know, breaking down that barrier that
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have to be wearing suits, you
Speaker 1: don't even have to have an identity that's public really
Speaker 1: to do well. Can we talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: out the graph, which is your day job, and I
Speaker 1: would love to get your summary of what exactly it does.
Speaker 1: But the other thing I want to ask you is
Speaker 1: it has to do with atherium. It's not like a
Speaker 1: bitcoin based application or protocol, and I guess I'm wondering.
Speaker 1: You know, excitement over a theory um seems to be
Speaker 1: one thing that a lot of the vcs share. So
Speaker 1: the institutional capital is much more excited over ethereum and
Speaker 1: applications and defy type stuff that you can build on
Speaker 1: that versus basic bitcoin, which is seen as not being
Speaker 1: as well suited to those types of applications. So I
Speaker 1: guess my question is why ethereum and not something else
Speaker 1: and doesn't mean that you sort of share something in
Speaker 1: common with vcs and institutional money. So the graph is
Speaker 1: a decentralized protocol for organizing and retrieving on chain data.
Speaker 1: And what that means is every application that you see
Speaker 1: that is running on a blockchain or queries smart contract,
Speaker 1: they have to retrieve that data from a blockchain somehow,
Speaker 1: and it's actually really difficult for developers to do that.
Speaker 1: They would have to run their own node, they would
Speaker 1: have to become experts in that blockchain. It's essentially a
Speaker 1: back end job. And so what the graph does is
Speaker 1: we have a standardized layer or a standardized API called
Speaker 1: a subgraph that allows developers to develop you know, an
Speaker 1: organization style or figure out exactly what information they want
Speaker 1: from the blockchain and just you know, play around with
Speaker 1: that subgraph. Meanwhile, the actual indexing and processing of that
Speaker 1: data goes on in the back end on a network
Speaker 1: of index ers. So we're really decentralizing the server or
Speaker 1: the back end of what otherwise would be you know, uh,
Speaker 1: database UM, you know, indexing infrastructure UM that is serving
Speaker 1: data to users. So we often like to call ourselves
Speaker 1: the Google of blockchains, so as Google is a search
Speaker 1: engine and also the back end indexing of all of
Speaker 1: the Internet's data. Currently, the graph protocol is the indexing bit,
Speaker 1: and so we're trying to enable other applications like search
Speaker 1: engines and just in general to be able to retrieve
Speaker 1: that data as efficiently as possible. And why ethereum ethereum,
Speaker 1: so our our ethos as the graph has always been decentralized,
Speaker 1: and you know, to enable the best security possible. You know,
Speaker 1: we really believe you can't have a DApp if it's
Speaker 1: not decentralized, meaning all components are. And in our history
Speaker 1: of just assessing blockchains, and you know, having been around
Speaker 1: for a few years, um Ethereum was the one that
Speaker 1: stayed true to that mission. Um the strongest, you know,
Speaker 1: and we're even seeing that today in you know, what
Speaker 1: some people call Ethereum taking its time with a roadmap.
Speaker 1: Others could see as actually Ethereum being very thoughtful with
Speaker 1: its roadmap to not do things too quickly UM. And
Speaker 1: you know, you see other problems on newer chains that
Speaker 1: you know Ethereum also experienced earlier on but Ethereum is
Speaker 1: just at a more mature state. And you know, our goal,
Speaker 1: although the graph network is built on Ethereum, our goal
Speaker 1: is actually to index all of the world's data, meaning
Speaker 1: any blockchain. So our hosted service currently supports twenty seven chains,
Speaker 1: including many of the layer twos on the aream, and
Speaker 1: soon all those chains will also be supported on the
Speaker 1: network itself. And you mentioned that other Layer one other
Speaker 1: chains have had issues recording this January and the last
Speaker 1: few days. Salana one of the chains that we've talked
Speaker 1: about in the past that is arguably an Ethereum competitor
Speaker 1: has seen some pretty big delays and slow down, so
Speaker 1: a lot of kinks still being worked out. You just
Speaker 1: raised at the graph fifty million dollars is led by
Speaker 1: Tiger Global. What is uh, what is the plan for
Speaker 1: this money and what do you need to build? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really glad you asked. So. Over the last year,
Speaker 1: we've been pioneering this new strategy that we called decentralized
Speaker 1: m n A. So we realized really early on that
Speaker 1: the mission of the Graph was so ambitious, so vast,
Speaker 1: it couldn't be done by one team, and nor was
Speaker 1: that the goal. UM. You know, part of decentralization is
Speaker 1: also decentralizing the contributors. So over the last year, we've
Speaker 1: had four new teams join us full time UM that
Speaker 1: specialized in anything from back end infrastructure to cryptography to
Speaker 1: UM graph q l A p i s and bring
Speaker 1: them into act basically as full time core developers on
Speaker 1: the protocol. So we aren't no longer you know, one
Speaker 1: team that you know initially launched the protocol. Where five
Speaker 1: and we raise this round basically to continue moving along
Speaker 1: the strategy. UM. We have a goal of bringing on
Speaker 1: another three to five teams in the next two years UM,
Speaker 1: and that might be to help with the current roadmap
Speaker 1: elements such as, um, you know, improving the efficiency of
Speaker 1: the infrastructure. We also are you know, working and doubling
Speaker 1: down on cryptography to make sure that the data that
Speaker 1: is actually being you know, queried by apps is verifiable.
Speaker 1: So we've got quite a complex roadmap UM, and we're
Speaker 1: looking to use that fifty million dollars immunition UM to
Speaker 1: basically continue building on our vision. So you've talked in
Speaker 1: the idea of like, oh, this is going to be
Speaker 1: the Google of blockchains and decentralized are making it easy
Speaker 1: for any DAP or applicating to centralized application to query
Speaker 1: the chain. That sounds obviously very cool and theory. Can
Speaker 1: you give a little bit more, I guess some concrete
Speaker 1: examples of what kind of apps or what specifically would
Speaker 1: be involved in that, Like what are like I think
Speaker 1: this is where when people at least for me maybe
Speaker 1: I'm projecting, but at least for me, like I sort
Speaker 1: of get trading and how the automated market makers work.
Speaker 1: I sort of get like n f T s. But
Speaker 1: still when I think about, like, well, what is a
Speaker 1: web three application? What is it true? Like blockchain application.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about specifically how applications
Speaker 1: are using your infrastructure. Yeah, So, in my opinion, a
Speaker 1: true DAP or true Web three app would be one
Speaker 1: that is open permission lists and decentralized, meaning that it
Speaker 1: would be very difficult or nearly impossible to take down.
Speaker 1: And users have the right to exit, meaning that the
Speaker 1: app or the platform itself isn't locking the user in.
Speaker 1: But because everything is on a blockchain and other protocols,
Speaker 1: they can swap their data and assets between those um
Speaker 1: So you know, one really great example is e n
Speaker 1: S Ethereum Name Service. So this is you know, ethereum domains,
Speaker 1: and this means that any application could essentially query data
Speaker 1: about your Ethereum name Joe or Tracy and use that
Speaker 1: information on any website. So instead of using a Google
Speaker 1: Magic link like we use today, we could use Ethereum
Speaker 1: name service. And that means that any application that wants
Speaker 1: to get data from your e n S names so
Speaker 1: maybe that's your wallet and your activity, they could query
Speaker 1: a subgraph, so that's an e n S a p I.
Speaker 1: So any information on you know that that's from the blockchain,
Speaker 1: whether it's trade volumes, or pricing or assets needs to
Speaker 1: be queried from a blockchain, and subgraphs make it much
Speaker 1: easier since developers don't need to rebuild their own ap I.
Speaker 1: So you know, anyone building on let's say the unit
Speaker 1: swap protocol can just use the exact same unit swap API.
Speaker 1: Because it's open source, they can also fork it, rebuild it,
Speaker 1: maintain it if they want to. Um. You know, the
Speaker 1: end goal being that all these subgraphs are public goods
Speaker 1: and they're even maintained by the community or a doubt itself,
Speaker 1: and that really enables much more you know, innovation time,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe even cost savings for the team because
Speaker 1: they don't need to hire a full time engineer to
Speaker 1: manage that database. UM and it really enables compose ability.
Speaker 1: So many teams can collaborate on either the same API
Speaker 1: or you know, the same protocol without having to do
Speaker 1: the same work again. So I really like that definition
Speaker 1: of right to exit because it jives really nicely with
Speaker 1: the wallet idea. We're talking with Mike dem Ray about
Speaker 1: this about how um you know, if if you have
Speaker 1: a wallet, you know, say meta mask or something, it's
Speaker 1: easy to port that onto something like Rainbow and you're
Speaker 1: not dependent on the platform in order to access your
Speaker 1: information and your data and your assets. So that makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense to me. But one thing I'm
Speaker 1: wondering is, you know, you've mentioned decentralization a number of
Speaker 1: times in this conversation, and you've even talked about a
Speaker 1: decentralized way to invest in decentralization. Why is it so
Speaker 1: important beyond a better user experience? Because people talk about
Speaker 1: Web three point oh as almost creating at our world, right,
Speaker 1: it seems to have all these philosophical attachments and moral
Speaker 1: values attached to it. What is it about decentralization that
Speaker 1: makes it so important in your view and presumably so great.
Speaker 1: I think there's a few things that we're starting to
Speaker 1: see even play out in crypto. So one is censorship,
Speaker 1: you know, the very common use case, and we're starting
Speaker 1: to even see folks that just recently entered the n
Speaker 1: f T space realized that, oh, you know, if the
Speaker 1: n f T DAP isn't fully decentralized, meaning the A
Speaker 1: P I, the server and where that n f T
Speaker 1: metadata is stored, then you know, is that n f
Speaker 1: T really real? Can I have the right to exit
Speaker 1: that platform? Um? So you know, that's one one use case.
Speaker 1: The second would be, you know, servers get taken down
Speaker 1: all the time. Google goes down, Facebook goes down, and
Speaker 1: they've been around for decades, and when we think about
Speaker 1: scaling to a global network, you know, whether that's transactions
Speaker 1: or n f T s, you really want to make
Speaker 1: sure your app doesn't go down. So one really great
Speaker 1: anecdote for us was Constitution down. So I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if you've heard of Constitution to um, you know, millions
Speaker 1: of dollars collected from the community to come bid for
Speaker 1: the Constitution and at its peak, uh, you know, of excitement,
Speaker 1: It's app went down because the API went down, and
Speaker 1: so they actually transitioned to using a subgraph that was
Speaker 1: on the decentralized network to make sure that they could
Speaker 1: continue staying up during the auction. So that's a great
Speaker 1: example of we're already seeing that today that you know,
Speaker 1: things go down all the time. But furthermore, like why
Speaker 1: would you want adapt team to be the team also
Speaker 1: managing the node and doing all the complexities. So one
Speaker 1: thing the graph and other decentralized protocols allow for is
Speaker 1: unbundling of what we're otherwise centralized services. Or um tasks
Speaker 1: that were managed by the project team originally, but now
Speaker 1: we can actually completely fragment that. So whereas a team
Speaker 1: might have been the one that deployed the smart contracts,
Speaker 1: they might not be the team managing the UI. They
Speaker 1: also might not be the team managing the a p I.
Speaker 1: And that's fine because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: we're all building on top of each other's open source
Speaker 1: tooling and protocols. So just on that note, I mean
Speaker 1: this is something that people who are iCal of the
Speaker 1: web three point oh idea will often go after this
Speaker 1: idea that you're just going to have people, you know,
Speaker 1: a community sort of maintaining these databases or being responsible
Speaker 1: for individual components of something that all fits together. And
Speaker 1: maybe they argue that, well, they don't have an actual
Speaker 1: self interest in keeping these up to date in the
Speaker 1: same way that a company like a Google or a Facebook,
Speaker 1: even though you know, you might think it's evil, at
Speaker 1: least it has a reason to kind of keep things going.
Speaker 1: So the decentralized processes might not be as reliable as
Speaker 1: a more traditional or centralized process. I guess what's your
Speaker 1: response to that sort of criticism. Yeah, I definitely hear
Speaker 1: that centralized coordination has its efficiency gains. But the benefit
Speaker 1: of blockchains and cryptocurrency is that we have this new
Speaker 1: incentive system. So whereas maybe Google had to be the
Speaker 1: one managing their servers because they owned all their equity
Speaker 1: and they also owned the rights to the server UM,
Speaker 1: we now have a world where anyone can buy a
Speaker 1: token at any time, a utility token. Anyone can use
Speaker 1: that token in the network. So in the graphs case,
Speaker 1: that would be staking as an indexer or a delegator UM,
Speaker 1: and you can then earn rewards from you know, that
Speaker 1: network and the productivity and value that it creates for
Speaker 1: the world. So I actually think we're you know, solving
Speaker 1: some scalability issues where typically the only people that really
Speaker 1: care about the product are the people inside the company.
Speaker 1: You know, often shareholders don't even care UM. But with tokens,
Speaker 1: you allow anyone to you know, contribute and take ownership
Speaker 1: in the graph or whatever protocol it might be. So
Speaker 1: we're seeing things like grantees come up with ideas of
Speaker 1: you know, tooling or protocol improvements just because they've now
Speaker 1: bought in and feel they are part of the community
Speaker 1: as well, even though maybe their full time job is
Speaker 1: you know, using their real name, and you know maybe
Speaker 1: in the Web two I wanna talk more about you know,
Speaker 1: censorship and this and the dangers of centralization. And of
Speaker 1: course one of the most obvious cases is Twitter, and
Speaker 1: people find themselves their accounts are banned, uh suddenly, and
Speaker 1: there's sort of this impulse to like, you know, this
Speaker 1: is a word, like people love Twitter. You're on Twitter,
Speaker 1: the fellow egirls are on Twitter. But you know, one
Speaker 1: day Twitter could just take your account away. And it's
Speaker 1: sort of this poster child for the sort of like
Speaker 1: the double edged sort of Web two. Yes, there's all
Speaker 1: these like cool platforms. We can share stuff, we can talk,
Speaker 1: but we really don't own own anything and we can
Speaker 1: be cut off. Do you first see Web three depths
Speaker 1: rebuilding that in a decentralized way, Like will there be
Speaker 1: a decentralized Twitter? Do you envision that, like at some
Speaker 1: point in the next five years, you won't have to
Speaker 1: use Twitter, you won't have to use Discord, or you
Speaker 1: won't have to use Telegram because there are new decentralized
Speaker 1: versions where you could share and communicate without the need
Speaker 1: for a middleman company. I really do, and I think
Speaker 1: it's going to make building applications way more competitive because
Speaker 1: the switching costs are much ower. So you know, often
Speaker 1: the way banks and credit cards keep customers in is
Speaker 1: the switching costs or hig you can't reach the bank,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. UM. Here it's as easy as
Speaker 1: just sending wallet, sending funds to another wallet, UM, or
Speaker 1: you know, switching UM your your name or your n
Speaker 1: f T s. You know, by just selling it in
Speaker 1: the marketplace. UM. So it'll be a lot easier to
Speaker 1: build those apps. And we're already starting to see it
Speaker 1: with adapt called Orbits recently came out. I know adapt
Speaker 1: called Scent has been out for a while, UM, but
Speaker 1: we'll probably see more iteration. What I'm personally excited for
Speaker 1: is to see the coupling of the actual actions on
Speaker 1: chain with our social platforms. So you know, right now,
Speaker 1: most dows, they typically have a forum or some kind
Speaker 1: of social platform where they discussed the doubt proposals before
Speaker 1: it's actually put to a vote. And why is it
Speaker 1: that the voting in the forum discussion is disconnected? Um?
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things I love about Bloomberg
Speaker 1: is that the reason you know it kind of kicked
Speaker 1: off was because the messenger or the chat became so
Speaker 1: useful for traders, um, to make settlements or OTC trades,
Speaker 1: whatever it might have been. And so I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna see that same kind of thing happened where our
Speaker 1: social applications are gonna start coinciding with maybe actually transactions,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe um submitting trades, and you know, across
Speaker 1: the board, we could see even the way we behave
Speaker 1: with each other starting to change. You know, people already
Speaker 1: start to stock each other's e and s names to
Speaker 1: see what they're doing. Um, So what else could there be?
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask another boomer feasibility question, I guess,
Speaker 1: but I mean a lot of the a lot of
Speaker 1: the services online that people use now, like Twitter or Facebook,
Speaker 1: they're free. And the way those companies make money, um,
Speaker 1: you know maybe with the exception of Twitter, but the
Speaker 1: way they're supposed to make money is through advertising and
Speaker 1: through gathering user data so that they can target these
Speaker 1: people with the most effective ads. And it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be the data which is the valuable product here. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got something for free in exchange for providing these
Speaker 1: companies reams and reams of data. When you move to
Speaker 1: decentralized applications my understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: But my understanding is a lot of that data is
Speaker 1: supposed to be more freely available, more open, more transparent,
Speaker 1: which I guess makes it maybe less valuable to a
Speaker 1: company trying to do something with it. It's no longer proprietary.
Speaker 1: So I guess the question is, like, how does that
Speaker 1: wide that wide open data or you know, the way
Speaker 1: that decentralization will make data more accessible, more transparent, more
Speaker 1: widely available, how does that stack up with actually making
Speaker 1: money from decentralized services and transactions? Like how are profits
Speaker 1: actually supposed to be created through this process? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a really good question, and to be honest, I don't
Speaker 1: have a clear answer because I would say a lot
Speaker 1: of the infrastructure to enable even the most simple like
Speaker 1: data analysis isn't quite there yet. You know, I can
Speaker 1: speak for the graph and our roadmap is still quite ambitious.
Speaker 1: You know, we'd like to be able to better support
Speaker 1: analytics for that use case you're talking about, But I
Speaker 1: I foresee a lot of different kinds of monetization strategies,
Speaker 1: so kind of like I mentioned, people participating in protocols,
Speaker 1: you know, that's revenue, so you know, whether it's a
Speaker 1: fund or an individual UM staking uh, you know, tokens
Speaker 1: and then providing services. And those services could be anything
Speaker 1: from you know, looking at images and curating which art
Speaker 1: is most interesting to actually running hardware or you know,
Speaker 1: maybe being a trader or a yield farmer UM, and
Speaker 1: that is a way to generate income UM. I think
Speaker 1: we'll also start to see a lot more innovation in
Speaker 1: the micro payment level. So whereas right now we're you know,
Speaker 1: not very mature in how do we enable what we
Speaker 1: call meta transactions, so kind of transactions embedded in the background.
Speaker 1: But I think what we might see in the future
Speaker 1: with oracles UM, you know, which is retrieving off Chaine
Speaker 1: data UM and other tooling UM the ability to charge
Speaker 1: or or be charged for smaller interactions and that gets
Speaker 1: charged directly to a wallet, and your wallet being you know,
Speaker 1: something like your E and S name is now tied
Speaker 1: to your identity. Instead of the ad companies paying uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Twitter, the ad companies could in theories start
Speaker 1: paying users and that could be micropayments or micro transactions
Speaker 1: that are sent directly to the user wallet. UM. Similarly,
Speaker 1: maybe instead of UM artists, you know, art being looked
Speaker 1: at and them never receiving any rewards. Maybe artists are
Speaker 1: earning to their wallets based on impressions or micro impressions
Speaker 1: on Instagram. UM. So I think we're gonna start seeing
Speaker 1: different kinds of monetization patterns arrive as the tech also
Speaker 1: becomes more mature UM. And that includes layer two. It
Speaker 1: includes things like the graph Um storage. You know, things
Speaker 1: like are we've ipfs really seeing all those pieces come
Speaker 1: together to make that possible? So, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the reasons, you know, one that I'm excited about having
Speaker 1: this conversation is you're really on both sides of the market.
Speaker 1: As part of the Girl collective, you're an investor in
Speaker 1: various Web three infrastructure, and the director at the graph
Speaker 1: you're building stuff and raising money. So I want to
Speaker 1: start like, Okay, obviously we've seen this pretty big volatility,
Speaker 1: and by volatility I mean selling Ethereum has basically been
Speaker 1: cut in half since the middle of November. A lot
Speaker 1: of coins have done worse. So I want to just
Speaker 1: start with like a simple question, which is have you
Speaker 1: seen when you're going out to market as an investor
Speaker 1: looking to buy into projects, has the selling um had
Speaker 1: any effect on sort of like private market valuations or
Speaker 1: deal pace or anything like that. I haven't seen it effected,
Speaker 1: and I would be surprised if it does, because the
Speaker 1: thesis with you know, the girl and others is much
Speaker 1: more long term um typically at least two years, often decades,
Speaker 1: and so we're really focused on what is the next
Speaker 1: thing we're building, and how do we invest in in
Speaker 1: that team that's building it. I mean, when you see
Speaker 1: people talk about crypto winter on Twitter, and you know,
Speaker 1: there have been people who maybe panic isn't the right word,
Speaker 1: but certainly there's a sort of sense of unease amongst
Speaker 1: crypto investors at the moment. I think, does does it
Speaker 1: affect your investing behavior at all? Or does it affect
Speaker 1: the way you think about things? Does it lengthen the
Speaker 1: timeline to make things come together or be viable or
Speaker 1: affected in any way? Yeah, I'd say it probably affects
Speaker 1: us in how we think about our community. So anyone
Speaker 1: who is around during the last bear market remembers how
Speaker 1: brutal it was. You know, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: really challenging experiences, whether it was layoffs or lack of
Speaker 1: capital um, and so that is The first thing I
Speaker 1: thought about was, you know, are we going to make
Speaker 1: it as a collective, you know, is everyone going to
Speaker 1: be okay? But the more controversial perspective I have is that,
Speaker 1: you know, bear markets are great. You know, as a builder,
Speaker 1: you know, the graph was built in a bear market,
Speaker 1: and most of the best projects and infrastructure today, whether
Speaker 1: it's later two S or n f T s, arrived
Speaker 1: during the bear market, and it gives us time to
Speaker 1: actually make mistakes, iterate. And even as an investor, you know,
Speaker 1: you need that time for a project team to iterate
Speaker 1: to actually come up with something innovative. So I'm also excited,
Speaker 1: you know, if that is what's what's happening, if we're
Speaker 1: having a little bit of a slowdown to have projects,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe take that time, reassess whatever the roadmap
Speaker 1: is and keep shipping. So the other part of this
Speaker 1: and this was, you know, this may be true now
Speaker 1: in January, maybe it's probably true in November because there's
Speaker 1: just an insane amount of like institutional money coming into
Speaker 1: the space. And last week there was a report that
Speaker 1: in Teresent Horowitz, which raised has a huge crypto fund,
Speaker 1: has been into the space for a long time, there's
Speaker 1: a report that their rate looking to raise like another
Speaker 1: four and a half billion for another crypto fund. We'll
Speaker 1: see if that comes together. But is there really like
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess there's questions like is their capacity
Speaker 1: like right now can money that scale be put to use?
Speaker 1: Is there enough need for that much capital? Or if
Speaker 1: you have a good project as a builder, like is
Speaker 1: it really like all the options are on your side,
Speaker 1: like what is the who has the power right now?
Speaker 1: And is there really is there really used for that
Speaker 1: much cash coming into the space. I would say there is.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of projects that continue to raise,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, their seed or precede because they're
Speaker 1: just starting to out, or you know, maybe a Series
Speaker 1: B because we're a few years into their cycle. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of opportunity to get involved,
Speaker 1: depending on what the flavor is, you know. So, um,
Speaker 1: some institutionals are more interested in defy given it's more
Speaker 1: consistent with their you know, typical finance exposure, and some
Speaker 1: are more interested in protocols. And I would say protocols
Speaker 1: are probably where there's more opportunity because they take longer
Speaker 1: to build, and so when when an investor might be
Speaker 1: thinking about, you know, the roadmap of that team. You know,
Speaker 1: Ethereum took what is it now, so about six years
Speaker 1: almost six years just to really ship East too, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe there were some inefficiencies, but really
Speaker 1: it's just hard problems. It's hard cryptographic problems that requires
Speaker 1: the coordination between many different teams, often global, and so
Speaker 1: I think that's the best place that we could see
Speaker 1: more investment, you know, given that the roadmap is likely
Speaker 1: you know, the next decade. I have a really tough
Speaker 1: question and um you know, we talked about in the
Speaker 1: intro how there always seems to be a new use
Speaker 1: case for crypto h So, you know, we had method
Speaker 1: of payment and then we kind of moved into defy
Speaker 1: and then web three point Oh, what do you think
Speaker 1: is the next big crypto use case or or perhaps
Speaker 1: what do you think is an underappreciated use case at
Speaker 1: the moment that people are going to be talking more
Speaker 1: about in the coming years. Yeah. I have two favorites
Speaker 1: here so E and S. Like I mentioned Ethereum name
Speaker 1: services UM as the universal log in I think has
Speaker 1: been untapped and you know, watching them grow over the
Speaker 1: past year, grow into a dow you know, is really
Speaker 1: allowing them to flourish and so sort of surpassed the
Speaker 1: Web three community. Everyone in Web three is known about
Speaker 1: them um. But the goal is really that that could
Speaker 1: be the killer app that gets WEBB two people in,
Speaker 1: because a universal login is something we can all relate to.
Speaker 1: You know, we all log into many apps and we
Speaker 1: all forget our passwords. The second is this cross chain universe.
Speaker 1: So something we've seen at the graph is a lot
Speaker 1: more queries and usage of subgraphs that are more focused
Speaker 1: maybe on wrapped bitcoin, so you know, creating some kind
Speaker 1: of wrapped bitcoin or solution that enables access to bitcoin
Speaker 1: on ethereum or other chains. And to me, that signifies
Speaker 1: a lot more interest from the bitcoin community to actually
Speaker 1: get involved and defined some of these new activities or markets.
Speaker 1: So whether that's investing in n f t s or
Speaker 1: maybe actually just doing some investing in utility tokens um.
Speaker 1: Seeing that growth in wrapped bitcoin and wrapped tokens um
Speaker 1: signifies a much more mature smart contract ecosystem. UM, So
Speaker 1: folks not only interested in the typical Bitcoin use case
Speaker 1: of you know, hard money, but also seeing that there's
Speaker 1: a bigger world here and a lot more opportunity to
Speaker 1: get involved. Well, Eva, that was great. I've always wanted
Speaker 1: to learn more about the work that you do and can,
Speaker 1: but you gotta I gotta get back. I really miss
Speaker 1: like the morning saying GM in the e girl a discord,
Speaker 1: So I don't know what happened, but if it still exists,
Speaker 1: I really want to come back yet. Okay, I will
Speaker 1: make sure you're invited back in, Tracy, do you also
Speaker 1: want to join? You know? I think, okay, I'll come in.
Speaker 1: But this is a lot of pressure because now I
Speaker 1: have to think what my avatar is and what my
Speaker 1: I'm going to join on the pseud anonymous basis as
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, I gotta go choose my ape. So
Speaker 1: it's a lot of pressure. Yeah, exactly, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: Eva Balan, thank you so much for coming out on
Speaker 1: odd Lots. Thank you so much for having me with
Speaker 1: the pleasure. Thank you, Eva. That was great, Trazy, I
Speaker 1: thought that conversation was really fun. I really don't know
Speaker 1: how you could like look at like the website of
Speaker 1: Eager Capital and see this investment collective of like all
Speaker 1: these cartoon characters and part of their investments are like
Speaker 1: like on their like portfolio page or a bunch of
Speaker 1: n f T s, And even if you think the
Speaker 1: whole thing is kind of nuts, like it seems pretty
Speaker 1: fun and cool. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: want to get too profound about it, but maybe it's
Speaker 1: a really nice like due diligence test where if you
Speaker 1: saw a bunch of cartoon characters saying that they were
Speaker 1: investing in all this random stuff, you would be like, well,
Speaker 1: I have no idea if they're serious or not, because
Speaker 1: you know, one is a frog and the other one
Speaker 1: is nape and another's an anime character or whatever. But
Speaker 1: if you actually looked at what each of them is
Speaker 1: doing and saying and understood whether or not what they
Speaker 1: were saying was making sense, and whether or not they
Speaker 1: were making intelligent commentary on the space, I feel like
Speaker 1: that's actually probably a better method of due diligence than
Speaker 1: seeing like Mark Anderson is investing in whatever startup and
Speaker 1: so it must be really good, which seems to be
Speaker 1: what a lot of people do nowadays. No, I totally agree,
Speaker 1: and it's exactly right. Like if you know, like I
Speaker 1: said in the beginning, a lot of the people over
Speaker 1: the last you know, We've been following this space for years,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the people who I've been following
Speaker 1: and really like must read their stuff, I have no
Speaker 1: idea who they are. They're completely undocked, their pseudonymous, but
Speaker 1: like they've broken through, and in Crypto specifically, I would say, also,
Speaker 1: you know, I think what did what was the term
Speaker 1: that evil years, like anti suit or something like that,
Speaker 1: like we're suits, But they said, like a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who I think, like frankly speak the most
Speaker 1: nonsense and speaking total jargon, are exactly like suits and
Speaker 1: people who like it's like I don't trust you, And
Speaker 1: so I do think, like Crypto, the whole world like
Speaker 1: short of flips on its head. Where where credibility comes from,
Speaker 1: where credibility has earned? Yeah, And actually, I mean this
Speaker 1: has been a challenge for us on all plots because
Speaker 1: there have been anonymous people that we want to get
Speaker 1: on the show, especially to talk around n f T s,
Speaker 1: and it's hard for us to get them on because
Speaker 1: you know, even if they don't want to docks themselves
Speaker 1: on the show. Um, and it's a bit difficult for
Speaker 1: us to have totally anonymous people, but if they give
Speaker 1: us an audio recording, you know, unless we like try
Speaker 1: to disguise the voice. Um, there's still a concern that
Speaker 1: they might docks themselves. But UM, I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: if anyone has any good ideas for getting around that,
Speaker 1: we would be all ears. The other thing I want
Speaker 1: to say is, you know, we're talking about the difference
Speaker 1: between people who just like sort of babble in technical jargon, um,
Speaker 1: try to sound like they're knowledgeable versus people who are
Speaker 1: actually able to explain this stuff in a clear way.
Speaker 1: And I thought Eva's definition of what you know Web
Speaker 1: three point oh is what true do Centralization is, as
Speaker 1: this right to exit is a really simple and intuitive
Speaker 1: way of thinking about it. Yeah, the idea of like
Speaker 1: that you could like, okay, you have this data or
Speaker 1: you have to use at cliche term that's or some
Speaker 1: jarget that's coming back, like the so called social graph,
Speaker 1: and the idea that you could move it, and the
Speaker 1: idea that not one company could control it and could
Speaker 1: be somewhere else. It's very powerful. I still feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, look, we're all like tweeting, even tweeting.
Speaker 1: The other girls are tweeting their discords or sorry discord
Speaker 1: and cetera. Like there's still an incredible reliance on we
Speaker 1: have two tools, and I don't know, like it's still
Speaker 1: really hard for me to like envision like what the
Speaker 1: decentralized version of all this is going to be. Like
Speaker 1: I get n f t s, I get like having
Speaker 1: a wallet with like showing your n f t s,
Speaker 1: But that's different than like updating something that would be
Speaker 1: equivalent to a tweet, or sending something a message that
Speaker 1: would be there would be the equivalent to an email.
Speaker 1: So I still have some part of me that's like
Speaker 1: has a hard time wrapping around like what the decentralized
Speaker 1: Internet really looks like. But you know, I don't get
Speaker 1: most of this stuff anyway, so I wouldn't necessarily hold
Speaker 1: that against them. Well, to me, that the data is
Speaker 1: the is the important issue here and the thing that
Speaker 1: has the big question mark around it. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you have the right to exit, you have the right
Speaker 1: to take all this data with you. And historically Web
Speaker 1: two point oh has been run on proprietary data. That's
Speaker 1: how people make money. My question is like how does
Speaker 1: that transform into companies that are actually making profits? And Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe you don't need everyone to be making a profit
Speaker 1: in the same way that Facebook and Google and whoever
Speaker 1: have traditionally been making profits. But it seems like you
Speaker 1: still have to have some sort of monetization in order
Speaker 1: to incentivize people to come in and build this stuff.
Speaker 1: But I mean, on the other hand, it does seem
Speaker 1: like there are a lot of people who are interested
Speaker 1: in building it right now, and there's certainly a lot
Speaker 1: of money pouring into the space without that monetization question
Speaker 1: actually having been answered in detail, So maybe that's on
Speaker 1: its way. Who knows. And I certainly believe Eva what
Speaker 1: she says that even with the recent selling and so
Speaker 1: many coins basically being cut in half, that these sort
Speaker 1: of like impulse to build and invest is still going strong.
Speaker 1: It feels like, I'm I don't think we're going to
Speaker 1: have like an actually like crypto winter or everyone sort
Speaker 1: of like forgets about cryptover three years the way we
Speaker 1: did starting. No, it does feel like there's so many
Speaker 1: people and so much money in the space and it's
Speaker 1: almost its own belief system at this point that it's
Speaker 1: really hard for it to go away totally. Great, All right,
Speaker 1: shall we leave it there, Let's see it there? Okay,
Speaker 1: this has been another episode of the all Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Tracy Alloway and I'm Joey Isn't Thought. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at The Stalwart. Follow our guest Eva
Speaker 1: Bayalin she is at Eva Bayalin Fellow or producer Laura
Speaker 1: Carlson at Laura M. Carlson. Follow the Bloomberg had a podcast,
Speaker 1: Francisco Leavi at Francisco Today, and check out all of
Speaker 1: our podcasts at Bloomberg under the handle at podcasts. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.