Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - The Ethereum Co-Founder Who Quit Crypto | Anthony Di Iorio - Built $1B Platform, Walked Away

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Lessons - The Ethereum Co-Founder Who Quit Crypto | Anthony Di Iorio - Built $1B Platform, Walked Away · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, examine how speculation and utility shape the evolution of crypto and
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  influence its long-term value. Discover why early risk-taking sparked key innovation,
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  understand how decentralization and multi-currency tools are redefining financial control,
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  and explore how inclusive frameworks can support more sustainable technology ecosystems.
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  And I guess the point that I'm trying to get to is the crypto as a market, it's really driven
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  with a lot of speculation as well. So I'm wondering if it's more like the underlying tech and
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  practical applications use cases that are driving the technology forward or is it more speculation
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  and potential financial gain that's driving this industry forward?
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  So it's a combination of both and over time I think you're going to see more and more of the
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  utility aspect that's going to lead to more and more of the value increases and that's where the
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  value comes from in my opinion. When we started off we had 9,000 people that entrusted us
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  with their Bitcoin to then turn that into the technology that we were creating and they took
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  a gamble in a risk by giving us that money upfront in a presale of a product that we didn't
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  deliver till a year later, which was the plan, but they were speculating that or when it's
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  speculation is just another term for taking a risk or it's a term for investing. There's a lot
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  of it's just terminology but early on there was a lot of speculation, there's still a lot of speculation
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  but more and more every month you're seeing utility come out of it. You're seeing how the different
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  sectors and different industries are going to be radically changed from the technologies,
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  so it is still speculation but it's people also that realize where it's going to go and it's always
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  about thinking ahead of the curve and that's something that I pride myself on being able to see
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  where things are heading in the future whether it be business models that are deficient or whether
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  it be where the crypto space was going to come in and be able to start to offering potentially
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  alternatives for government currencies, it's all about staying ahead of the curve and understanding
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  where things are going based on where things have gone in the past and making sure you have the
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  tools and assets that you can put it together in order to utilize what your knowledge is. So
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  there is a lot of speculation, I'd say most of it is still on speculation but there's a lot of good
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  utility coming out and there's a lot of good people realizing that their jobs and their areas of
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  where they are in aren't going to be radically changed and it's important to stay on it and a lot
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  of people are betting on a theory and other similar technologies and that's why it's growing,
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  it's growing because there is a realization that these things are very powerful, they're very
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  empowering, they could be really efficient and once they scale and grow beyond some of the barriers
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  they may have now or not watching out, it's going to be really radical change in the world.
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  Yeah and like now you see like obviously El Salvador has adopted Bitcoin as legal tender and these
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  are more like actual fixing addition like existing currency problems that countries have.
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  I know that Zimbabwe is looking at adopting Bitcoin as legal tender so you're starting to see some
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  like practical application that are like that are really changing how a country can function
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  but yeah okay so let's let's walk through you know your your story so after Ethereum I know that
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  you worked on Decentral for a bit but then you left those or walked me through how you how you
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  left what you're working on with Ethereum and Decentral and then what you wanted to focus on
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  going forward because I know that you're working on a new project now and I think it's actually
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  very interesting and it totally syncs up with like what your vision and your mission is
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  so walk me through that process and what we're doing right now. So I left Ethereum in 2015
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  you know I was one of the initial funders we had also Joseph Lubin who runs a company called
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  Consensus and Organization we kind of we funded the operations of it until the crowd sale and
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  then the money came in from the crowd so it kind of came down to the developers carrying out
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  the mission and there was there's a little bit of the restriction back in the day there was eight
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  founders at that time it was difficult to get decisions made and what happened is kind of the
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  developer team you know it was about them carrying things out and they kind of took things by the
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  reins and worked towards getting the product out and Charles ended up leaving the project and a
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  mere one of their founders and then over time Joseph and myself also knew that the rating was on
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  the wall there and with Ethereum it kind of opened my doors to things or my mind to things other
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  than Bitcoin which at the time before Ethereum everything was Bitcoin and then there was Ethereum
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  and then it's like well Ethereum is going to spawn so many other organizations and projects
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  that are going to be run on Ethereum and other technology so it's not just about one technology
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  and I like to be very inclusive in my mindset with things and so the idea was there's going to be
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  thousands of these things out there and they all need interfaces they all need ways to send and
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  receive and connect to the network so I continued building the wallets that and creating the first
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  multi currency multi platform wallets in the space that wouldn't just support Bitcoin or Ethereum
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  but also would support Litecoin and dogecoin and eventually you know thousands of these
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  technologies so in 2015 I continued building wallets and technology and infrastructure to connect
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  it all together and I launched a product called Jax and Jax I think launched in 2016 we launched
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  a successor called Jax Liberty and really again building the tools to empower to be in control
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  of their digital lives their money their communication their identities the three pillars that I've
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  always built things on I think it's really important own your identity it's really important to own
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  your money it's really important to own your communications and those three together done in a
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  decentralized fashion where the user is in full control it's a very powerful product and that's
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  what we built is we built wallets that put the keys and allow the individual user to actually
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  fully own his assets we don't ever take custodian ship of it of any of the digital assets it's
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  actually fully owned by the users and they only they want the keys but what we do is connect
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  into all the different protocols and the platforms like Bitcoin and Ethereum so that's where that's
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  kind of been my main focus is CEO of Decentral over the years and just just you know since 2018 when
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  the market's really started hitting down in 2018 after the big ICO craze that happened in 2017
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  I started re-evaluating what it is I want to do with my life and I got into the point where
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  in like I didn't need to be you know thinking about setting myself up for the rest of my life
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  things were pretty good at the time but I realized that one more of the more freedom that I was
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  seeking actually less freedom I actually had and what I mean by that is you know when you become
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  your own bank you got certain responsibilities and you no longer have your your money sitting
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  in a bank somewhere that that's being secured by a bank and it's not black and white one of the
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  biggest lessons I've ever learned in my life is that nothing's black and white and there's kind
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  of gray areas of everything there's always dials and you have to turn up and down and yes it's
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  important to be in control of your life but also sometimes it can be good to have others that are
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  that are offering services to help you along the way and it was it was an eye-opening experience
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  when you know Ethereum started getting really really really big and just the attention that we
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  were getting got really massive and it just you know it was I'm at a point in my life I'm like
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  I don't want something to happen here that could really make a game-changing life on my family
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  and things you know I make wallets we don't hold the keys but something could still happen there
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  that could that could could cross some issue and there's other risk vectors to be considered of
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  and I ended up rethinking what my mission was and spent a lot of time thinking about three things
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  my what my why and my how and those three things I ended up figuring out where my what you know
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  what is it I want to do with my life and now that I've done what I've done and I have the resource
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  just to continue to do what I'm doing what is it that I really want to do and what and then it's
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  like well why do I want to do the thing that I want to do and then how am I going to do it and
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  over time I'm really thinking about this and I decided to you know what makes me happy is being
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  in service it's it's it's the idea that you know what am I good at and what can I do to offer to
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  the world that I that I with what I'm good at and and it's to be to serve as many people as
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  possible and to help people and and that's a figured out why do I like to be in service not about
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  posting events and doing things like that but it's generally because I it makes me happy to see other
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  people happy so the idea what is it I want to do is to serve why I want to do it is because it makes
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  me happy and then how do I do it is is something I call perfect formula it's a it's a general framework
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  that I came up to solve problems it's a it's a general problem solving formula that runs around the
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  basis of creating winning situations where as many stakeholders as you can possibly imagine what
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  and what it is you're doing it's a framework that I've developed based on princess principles
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  processes and tools I've developed over my lifetime and it just kind of revolves around you have
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  a problem or there's something you want to achieve and it takes it I take a framework through
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  where I say okay who are what what is the problem you're trying to do who are your stakeholders and by
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  stakeholders I mean anybody that you could potentially have in the mix that could provide value to
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  you with what you're trying to do something where you're trying to to create movements of people all
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  aligned towards common interests and common goals so that people realize by joining you on what
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  you're doing their life gets better so I spent time putting together this framework that kind of
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  is how I've run my businesses in the past and and I ended up coming up with something that I think
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  is pretty powerful and something that I that I think can I can utilize as a problem solver and as a
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  leader to take my framework to the world and no matter what sector it's in and be able to utilize
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  the framework to create better results that create more situations of winning for more people and
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  doesn't exclude people from the equation because a lot of times a business formulas and business
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  models they're they're not they're not they're not efficient enough for and they're they have
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  deficiencies which exclude people and those decisions of people leads to people that aren't happy
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  with what you're doing or leads to people that you're not creating a win for and if you're not
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  thinking ahead of how you can actually provide value to as many stakeholders as possible over time
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  you're either going to get disrupted with change that comes about because you haven't thought
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  as good as someone else doesn't comes down the road or even get people that that are feeling that
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  you're your mission whether it be to return maximum returns to shareholders which is what a lot
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  of companies are kind of forced to do that's what their mandate is it usually comes at an expense
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  of something else whether it's other people or comes at an expense to the planet and I think if
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  we can move the dial from the efficient models which are maybe let's say 50% efficient and they're
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  still not serving 50% of the population how do we move it to 60% or being served how do we move
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  to 70% how do we create models of aligned people that come together to create 90% of models where
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  people are realizing that by joining your product or joining your company or joining your mission
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  their day-to-day life is getting better and that's kind of what I'm trying to do with with my
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  framework is bring to the table that there are better ways to have business models there's
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  better ways to do things that don't necessarily rely on advertising models which create
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  in my opinion a lot of misinformation and people that are that are that are taken down these
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  paths because advertisers are paying money to get eyeballs on something which leads to you know
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  this this attention economy that we have and the amount of screen time that's out there and
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  even models that collect user information and then are allowing that information somehow to get
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  to get exposed and people are in control of their other stuff so I think there's a big
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  deficiency in business models which usually stem from having to return money to investors
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  and people having to squeeze things that eventually lead to problems and lead to a situation where
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  like we've had with Facebook you know government's questioning hey your business models are
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  leading to these problems here and and it's not good and why are you doing it this well it's like
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  well that's all that's all what everyone does that's a status quo and we haven't thought
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  differently and we need to think different you know I created models for my world that don't
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  hold customer funds because I realized when you're holding stuff of other people's you're now
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  responsible for it and I don't want to be responsible for it so how do you think differently to create
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  wallets where the user is holding the key and I'm not holding the key we've never used advertising
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  in our models I think generally people don't like advertising and there's better ways to do
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  things so our models for our wallets are we create partnerships and provide services that connect
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  individuals with with companies that provide good services and we provide the interface and kind
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  of the thing that connects it all together so I believe there's better ways to do things in the
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  business models that exist I think the business models that exist lead to a lot of problems
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  of what has and it leads to the exclusion of people and it leads to a situation where a few
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  are maybe being served but a lot aren't and when you have that type of situation we don't get a
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  line people coming together to create movements when everybody feels that they're in this together
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  so I kind of want to be a leader and a problem solver because I think that's two things that
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  the world is totally lacking these days and using my frameworks that I developed and I want to
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  serve as many people as possible with what I'm bringing out as perfect formula which is really a
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  framework I want to get out to the world that has no other intention rather than to just
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  be in service it's not something I'm doing going to plan on doing for profit in fact if I was
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  to enter that into the game I think I would lose credibility from a lot of people that believe
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  that it's the same type of motive that I'm trying to fix or trying to work with so it's really
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  important to have trust it's really important to have social capital trust capital you need wealth
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  capital you know these things to come together to create a perfect formula to be able to do what
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  it is you want to do and check all the boxes in your business and create a situation where no one
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  can say you didn't think of that and what you're doing and your your solutions are creating more
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  inclusivity they're creating more people coming together to on common goals and interests
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  and you're creating new solutions for incumbents to even come along because you can't
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  exclude them in the mix either you have to bring everybody along in what you do it I want to help
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  be a catalyst for that. Thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that
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  subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation
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  check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one