Latest / Connected With Latham / Episode 129 – The Growth Rocketship: The Future of the Open Internet With Animoca Brands

Transcript

Episode 129 – The Growth Rocketship: The Future of the Open Internet With Animoca Brands · Connected With Latham

• 0:02
  Hello and welcome
• 0:03
  to connected with Latham,
• 0:05
  where we discuss
• 0:05
  ideas,
• 0:06
  legal developments in business
• 0:07
  trends shaping the global economy.
• 0:09
  I'm Haim
• 0:10
  Zaltzman, partner
• 0:11
  and global Vice-Chair of Latham's
• 0:12
  Emerging Companies and Growth Practice.
• 0:14
  In this episode,
• 0:16
  I'm honored to be joined by Yatsu
• 0:18
  Co-Founder, Executive Director
• 0:19
  and Managing Director of Animoji Brands.
• 0:22
  Founded in 2014,
• 0:24
  Animal Brands is the recognized leader
• 0:28
  for building
• 0:28
  digital asset platforms
• 0:30
  such as the Mocha Network,
• 0:31
  Open Campus,
• 0:32
  NHS, The Sandbox and now Mocha Mines,
• 0:36
  as well as institutional grade platforms
• 0:39
  providing digital asset
• 0:40
  services to help Web3.
• 0:41
  Or we'll talk about a web for companies
• 0:44
  launch and grow,
• 0:45
  and investing in frontier,
• 0:46
  Web3 and web four technologies.
• 0:48
  With a portfolio of over 600 companies
• 0:51
  and digital assets. Yacht.
• 0:52
  Thank you so much
• 0:53
  for being on the podcast.
• 0:54
  Thank you for having me.
• 0:55
  It's a great pleasure to be here.
• 0:56
  Terrific.
• 0:56
  I'd like to start
• 0:57
  with your personal background
• 0:59
  before we learn more about animal
• 1:01
  and what you're doing.
• 1:02
  So tell us about your education
• 1:03
  and classical music as a kid.
• 1:05
  How did that shape your career
• 1:06
  going forward?
• 1:07
  Yeah, I mean,
• 1:08
  I guess I had a bit
• 1:08
  of a neutral upbringing.
• 1:09
  I grew up in Austria, in Vienna,
• 1:11
  my parents in particular.
• 1:13
  My mom was a professional musician,
• 1:14
  and I think me growing up in
• 1:16
  Vienna wasn't
• 1:17
  just a case of learning music
• 1:18
  just because my parents were musicians.
• 1:20
  So in a way,
• 1:21
  you know, back then,
• 1:22
  if you think about it,
• 1:22
  it was very common for
• 1:24
  parents to make their children
• 1:26
  do what they used to do.
• 1:27
  Right?
• 1:28
  And, you know,
• 1:28
  the world has changed so much.
• 1:29
  So today,
• 1:30
  you actually don't know
• 1:31
  what the sort of
• 1:32
  future jobs would look like.
• 1:33
  But certainly in the 70s and 80s,
• 1:35
  there was some kind of
• 1:36
  assumed predictability,
• 1:37
  even if it was all false,
• 1:39
  that we would be doing
• 1:39
  what our parents would be doing.
• 1:40
  And also,
• 1:41
  now, being a pair of myself,
• 1:43
  I understand why my mother
• 1:45
  kind of forced me to study music.
• 1:47
  I went to a conservatory,
• 1:48
  so I guess I did okay,
• 1:49
  but you know,
• 1:50
  it was a way for her
• 1:51
  to see how she could help me as well.
• 1:53
  You know,
• 1:53
  it was kind of like the sort of the mummy
• 1:55
  tough love.
• 1:56
  She knew exactly how you could
• 1:57
  you and make.
• 1:59
  And she knew.
• 2:00
  And so she had a plan for me.
• 2:01
  And the plan was okay.
• 2:02
  I was either a soloist as a pianist, or
• 2:05
  I also studied cello
• 2:06
  as well as flute,
• 2:07
  because worst case,
• 2:08
  I can play in an ensemble
• 2:09
  or an orchestra, right?
• 2:10
  It was a very clear musicians
• 2:12
  view of a backup strategy at the time.
• 2:13
  As someone who even showering
• 2:15
  doesn't help
• 2:16
  with the musical abilities,
• 2:18
  that's that's just an amazing
• 2:19
  array of talents there.
• 2:20
  Well, yeah,
• 2:21
  I would say more hard work
• 2:22
  than talent, per se.
• 2:23
  I would say the music study
• 2:25
  certainly taught me a lot about humility,
• 2:27
  because music is like, it's
• 2:28
  kind of like sports, right?
• 2:29
  You can be good at it,
• 2:30
  but there is raw talent that just emerges
• 2:33
  and you can just see that,
• 2:34
  and then you go.
• 2:35
  Yeah. Okay. I don't quite have that.
• 2:37
  And there's also physical limitations
• 2:38
  in the same way
• 2:39
  that if a runner has
• 2:40
  maybe longer legs or,
• 2:41
  you know,
• 2:42
  basically just has just able to sort of,
• 2:44
  you know, swing faster or whatever
• 2:45
  it is for for pianists.
• 2:47
  Do you have longer fingers?
• 2:48
  Makes all the difference
• 2:49
  between being able to play,
• 2:51
  you know,
• 2:51
  Mozart piece or list piece
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  or whatever, like,
• 2:53
  you know, like
• 2:53
  like like it's
• 2:54
  just some things
• 2:55
  you just simply can't do.
• 2:56
  I tell my kids
• 2:57
  all the time, you can increase
• 2:59
  your probability with hard work
• 3:01
  and whether you're at.
• 3:01
  But sometimes there's
• 3:02
  it limits
• 3:03
  that you just have to face in life.
• 3:04
  It's biology.
• 3:05
  What can you say? Right.
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  And I think there's
• 3:06
  nothing wrong with that.
• 3:07
  And I think that's just
• 3:08
  how the world works.
• 3:09
  And I think if you accept that,
• 3:10
  then, you know,
• 3:11
  the areas that you focus on that
• 3:12
  you think you're good at.
• 3:13
  But I guess the thing here was that,
• 3:15
  you know, when I was sort of
• 3:16
  studying music,
• 3:17
  I wasn't as good as everyone else.
• 3:18
  In fact,
• 3:19
  I was probably one of the worst students.
• 3:20
  So I went on to use technology
• 3:23
  to help me get better.
• 3:24
  I basically ended up
• 3:25
  writing composition software
• 3:27
  because all of my peers
• 3:28
  were very good at,
• 3:29
  you know,
• 3:30
  sort of perfect pitch,
• 3:31
  and they were able to write
• 3:32
  everything down perfectly.
• 3:33
  And for me,
• 3:33
  I always thought it was kind of weird
• 3:35
  to sort of compose music on pen and paper
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  when it was just
• 3:38
  easier for me to play it,
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  but then I had to transcribe it
• 3:40
  and do all that kind of stuff.
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  So I wrote one of the very
• 3:43
  first pieces of Midi software
• 3:45
  back on the Atari St,
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  because I had like these Midi ports,
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  and so I was playing on the primitive
• 3:49
  keyboard at the time,
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  I think it was very Korg or Roland.
• 3:52
  It was one of those.
• 3:53
  And as I was playing, you know, basically
• 3:56
  it translated those notes basically
• 3:57
  into something that could then be printed
• 3:59
  or and edited on the screen.
• 4:00
  And, you know, my, my,
• 4:02
  my teacher
• 4:02
  certainly didn't appreciate that
• 4:03
  because this was the era
• 4:04
  where even calculators were not okay
• 4:06
  in the classroom.
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  However,
• 4:08
  I uploaded this piece of software
• 4:10
  into a pre
• 4:11
  internet service called CompuServe,
• 4:13
  and people discovered me there.
• 4:15
  And eventually
• 4:16
  that led me to a job with Atari.
• 4:18
  So that certainly sort of
• 4:20
  sort of, you know,
• 4:20
  gave me sort of
• 4:21
  sort of the beginning
• 4:22
  of sort of the tech space.
• 4:24
  But I think there's other things as well
• 4:26
  that shaped me.
• 4:26
  I mean, for those who,
• 4:27
  you know,
• 4:28
  it's hard to imagine now,
• 4:29
  but 70s and 80s
• 4:30
  was kind of a tough period
• 4:32
  being an Asian immigrant
• 4:33
  kid in the middle of Europe. Right?
• 4:35
  That's just I can only
• 4:36
  I can only imagine.
• 4:37
  And it wasn't
• 4:38
  I wasn't subject to sort of
• 4:40
  aggressive forms.
• 4:42
  However, you know,
• 4:43
  you grew up in an environment
• 4:44
  where you just it's
• 4:45
  normalized racism, shall we say.
• 4:47
  And it's it's again, I'd have no regrets.
• 4:49
  I don't I'm not like,
• 4:49
  oh my goodness, oh my goodness.
• 4:50
  But it was just something
• 4:51
  you just thought was normal.
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  And it wasn't
• 4:53
  until I went with Atari
• 4:54
  in the US where I was like,
• 4:55
  oh, this is the thing called racism.
• 4:56
  I didn't even know what that was like
• 4:58
  in a context.
• 4:59
  It's just built into the culture.
• 5:01
  But it does give you a perspective,
• 5:03
  because when I was writing software
• 5:05
  and people discovered me on CompuServe,
• 5:08
  I was a no name.
• 5:09
  They didn't know how old I was.
• 5:11
  They didn't know what race I was.
• 5:12
  They just accepted me
• 5:13
  for what I produced.
• 5:14
  And there's a kind of fascinating
• 5:16
  egalitarianism and freedom and liberty
• 5:18
  that comes from this idea
• 5:20
  that you can be purely judged
• 5:21
  based on the merits of what you do,
• 5:23
  rather than being judged
• 5:24
  by some bias that has been,
• 5:25
  you know, culturally sort of delivered.
• 5:27
  And then the other thing is, of course,
• 5:28
  I grew up in an era
• 5:29
  of where
• 5:30
  the Cold War was still going on
• 5:31
  and the Iron Curtain was still alive
• 5:33
  and well.
• 5:34
  Up until 89,
• 5:35
  my mom was working
• 5:36
  in the eastern part of Germany
• 5:38
  at some point of her life
• 5:39
  to come up in Berlin.
• 5:40
  So I would go visit her
• 5:41
  and I would literally cross
• 5:43
  Checkpoint Charlie,
• 5:44
  and I would see what communism was like,
• 5:46
  and it was literally like 1984.
• 5:48
  And a lot of people
• 5:49
  might not really appreciate that today.
• 5:51
  People were like, oh my goodness,
• 5:52
  you should be looking
• 5:52
  at socialism and communism
• 5:54
  and all that kind of stuff.
• 5:54
  And it's like,
• 5:55
  you have no idea
• 5:56
  what you're talking about because you
• 5:57
  you haven't experienced this.
• 5:59
  And again,
• 5:59
  I don't say that
• 6:00
  people should be ignorant
• 6:01
  around the problems.
• 6:02
  We have to deal with capitalism,
• 6:03
  which is a big part of what we think
• 6:05
  tokenization can solve.
• 6:06
  However,
• 6:07
  I also don't think we should be going
• 6:09
  simply back to sort of Marxist ideals
• 6:11
  because they have completely failed.
• 6:12
  And for those, you know,
• 6:14
  we still have living memory
• 6:15
  of what that looks like.
• 6:16
  And so, so all these things helped
• 6:17
  shape my thinking.
• 6:18
  And maybe the final point
• 6:19
  is that eventually, you know, into the US
• 6:21
  growing up,
• 6:22
  experiencing real communism
• 6:24
  in a mostly living
• 6:26
  in a socially democratic kind of place,
• 6:28
  which is Austria, then going to America,
• 6:30
  which has a full embrace of capitalism,
• 6:32
  and then eventually moving to Hong Kong,
• 6:34
  where I like to describe it
• 6:36
  as Milton Friedman's wet dream,
• 6:37
  because it is capitalism in overdrive.
• 6:39
  Though at the time when I went to
• 6:40
  no social security net,
• 6:42
  you would have 80 year old grandmas
• 6:44
  pulling up trash
• 6:45
  because there was
• 6:45
  no social Security net back
• 6:47
  then in sort of the 90s.
• 6:49
  So you see the extreme case of
• 6:51
  either side,
• 6:52
  and I guess it's helped
• 6:53
  shape our thinking around
• 6:54
  sort of the world.
• 6:55
  Of course,
• 6:55
  I didn't know back
• 6:56
  then how it would shape me,
• 6:57
  but definitely a lot of our thinking
• 7:00
  about sort of the world,
• 7:01
  about what we should do as a company
• 7:02
  has been shaped during that time.
• 7:04
  So in terms of
• 7:06
  communism, just as a side note,
• 7:08
  my family,
• 7:09
  I was the only one born outside
• 7:10
  of the Soviet Union.
• 7:11
  My parents
• 7:12
  got kicked out in 73
• 7:13
  after my dad was arrested for some
• 7:16
  pro-democracy movements,
• 7:18
  and he was a
• 7:18
  fairly big agriculture engineer
• 7:20
  at the time.
• 7:20
  And oddly,
• 7:21
  Vienna was where they were sent
• 7:22
  before they went.
• 7:23
  So they actually spent
• 7:25
  three months in Vienna
• 7:26
  before
• 7:26
  emigrating to Israel in the early 70s.
• 7:29
  I'm not sure if you know that,
• 7:29
  but fun fact is that in
• 7:32
  Vienna is probably the spy
• 7:33
  capital of the world.
• 7:34
  And what's fascinating,
• 7:35
  I've heard that before.
• 7:35
  Well,
• 7:36
  and the fun fact is, is that
• 7:38
  it is not illegal to be a spy
• 7:39
  in Vienna to this day,
• 7:41
  unless you spy against Austria.
• 7:43
  So that's absolutely right.
• 7:44
  And it's one of those
• 7:45
  fascinating things was
• 7:46
  why is there a United Nations
• 7:47
  and an OPEC building
• 7:48
  and like basically
• 7:49
  all of those major institutions
• 7:51
  in really, frankly, a tiny country
• 7:53
  in the middle of really,
• 7:55
  in a way is the center of east west.
• 7:57
  And I think a lot of credit
• 7:58
  to our Chancellor back then
• 8:01
  who actually navigated this environment,
• 8:02
  I think really well, such
• 8:04
  that Austria
• 8:05
  wouldn't be completely subsumed
• 8:07
  into the Eastern Bloc.
• 8:08
  So I think that was in many ways
• 8:09
  that compromise
• 8:10
  that they put together politically.
• 8:12
  But it's crazy
• 8:13
  when you say you're spy
• 8:14
  and you basically it's legal in Vienna.
• 8:18
  It's not something you do
• 8:19
  when you go to Vienna,
• 8:19
  because it's beautiful things
• 8:20
  in art and music to the.
• 8:21
  But just go and take a look
• 8:22
  at the Russian embassy,
• 8:24
  the American embassy,
• 8:25
  and just see the size of the embassy
• 8:26
  and go, wow,
• 8:28
  for a country of 7 or 8 million people,
• 8:30
  that's a pretty impressive embassy.
• 8:32
  You be the judge.
• 8:33
  It's it's so.
• 8:34
  Oddly, I spent a bit of time
• 8:36
  in Vienna and again,
• 8:36
  we're digressing here, but I love this.
• 8:38
  I worked
• 8:39
  at a Hungarian foreign ministry
• 8:40
  in Budapest in 1998,
• 8:43
  and before I spent some time in Moscow
• 8:45
  after college. So.
• 8:46
  So anyways,
• 8:47
  spent a lot of time in Vienna
• 8:48
  and I was the perfect spy there,
• 8:49
  so it was great.
• 8:51
  You know, one one thing
• 8:52
  and we'll move on
• 8:53
  because I definitely want to cover
• 8:54
  as much as we can here.
• 8:56
  I will tell you, in doing these podcasts,
• 8:58
  one of the things that comes up a lot
• 9:00
  is the musical.
• 9:01
  And I will tell you
• 9:02
  that many of the top engineers
• 9:05
  and CEOs of it,
• 9:06
  they they
• 9:07
  say the number one thing
• 9:08
  they love about hiring engineers
• 9:10
  is if they've had a prior career
• 9:13
  or a love for music,
• 9:15
  it just makes them,
• 9:16
  they say, like
• 9:16
  do the top of their engineering class.
• 9:19
  So, I'm not surprised to see that you've
• 9:21
  vaulted through
• 9:23
  into the meritocracy of technology
• 9:25
  via bass and music.
• 9:26
  It's really it's like often
• 9:27
  we get asked this question around, oh,
• 9:29
  how did music impact your creativity
• 9:30
  and that kind of stuff?
• 9:31
  And actually,
• 9:32
  I don't think music impacts
• 9:34
  creativity quite as much as people
• 9:36
  like to give credit, because just,
• 9:37
  you know,
• 9:37
  you assume you're an artist
• 9:38
  and therefore you have to be creative
• 9:40
  because when you study music,
• 9:41
  it's a lot about rules.
• 9:43
  It's a lot about discipline.
• 9:44
  Actually.
• 9:44
  It's raw discipline amongst everything.
• 9:46
  Right.
• 9:46
  But I think the biggest thing
• 9:48
  is pattern recognition.
• 9:50
  So what you do when you do rhythm.
• 9:52
  And one of the amazing things
• 9:53
  when you understand
• 9:53
  scales and music,
• 9:54
  actually what you do
• 9:55
  is you adapt to others.
• 9:57
  So when you,
• 9:58
  when you, when you go jam with someone,
• 9:59
  you actually pay attention to them.
• 10:02
  There's a degree of empathy.
• 10:03
  You're sort of playing with them
• 10:04
  and catching them, as it were. Right.
• 10:06
  And you do this on the fly
• 10:08
  with a certain set of rules
• 10:10
  that you can sort of collaborate with,
• 10:11
  and you predict the next move,
• 10:13
  as it were,
• 10:14
  or the next tone,
• 10:15
  basically based on patterns
• 10:16
  that you've been trained on.
• 10:18
  And so I think the biggest gift
• 10:20
  that music has done
• 10:21
  for like engineers
• 10:22
  or broadly for myself as well,
• 10:24
  is that
• 10:24
  I think it's helped us
• 10:25
  determine patterns better than others,
• 10:28
  and that's why
• 10:28
  I think music is important.
• 10:30
  The thing that grates me often
• 10:31
  is how people teach music these days.
• 10:33
  Often people
• 10:33
  teach music
• 10:34
  not on that basis,
• 10:35
  but they teach music
• 10:36
  based on memorization.
• 10:37
  You know, basically passing the grade,
• 10:39
  playing exactly
• 10:40
  the way that the teacher
• 10:41
  has taught you to play.
• 10:42
  You know,
• 10:42
  one of the things
• 10:43
  that sort of bothers me is that,
• 10:44
  you know,
• 10:45
  for instance, Bach pieces on, you know,
• 10:46
  when Bach was composing music,
• 10:48
  basically he was playing
• 10:49
  on, on, on a harpsichord
• 10:51
  or an Austrian piano,
• 10:52
  which has basically no matter
• 10:54
  which means you don't have it's
• 10:55
  not like the English piano
• 10:56
  where you have sort of,
• 10:57
  you know, piano and forte,
• 10:58
  so you don't have a way
• 10:59
  in which you can make the piano
• 11:00
  louder or quieter.
• 11:02
  And so there is no concept of that.
• 11:04
  And of course, today,
• 11:05
  because we all play on an English piano,
• 11:07
  the great sort of examinations
• 11:09
  put in essentially these new ideas
• 11:12
  which the original composer
• 11:13
  never intended to.
• 11:14
  And then suddenly that becomes a standard
• 11:15
  and students completely lose
• 11:18
  the idea of that.
• 11:20
  Music is there to interpret
• 11:21
  the way you think it should be,
• 11:22
  because the original artist
• 11:24
  never intended to have that.
• 11:25
  And yet here we are,
• 11:27
  playing the music
• 11:27
  exactly the same way
• 11:29
  that some examiners said you should play,
• 11:31
  and what torture it must be
• 11:33
  for the person who's examining it,
• 11:34
  listening to the same music
• 11:36
  in the same way
• 11:37
  from thousands of students.
• 11:39
  That has to be sold
• 11:39
  as you are a true
• 11:41
  technologist that encapsulates
• 11:42
  like the technologist is change
• 11:45
  it adjusted make it.
• 11:46
  Yeah, I love it, I love it.
• 11:48
  Speaking of pattern recognition,
• 11:49
  because there are lots of patterns
• 11:51
  that I want to cover with you
• 11:52
  in time is is never is never. My friend.
• 11:55
  Animalia has grown from a mobile gaming
• 11:57
  company
• 11:58
  to one of the largest Web3 investments.
• 12:00
  I'm going to.
• 12:01
  I'm. I'm doing air quotes for Web3.
• 12:03
  Of course
• 12:03
  I'm going to do that throughout,
• 12:04
  mostly because it's such a brand.
• 12:06
  But it's
• 12:06
  maybe it's hard to throw away
• 12:08
  a good brand.
• 12:09
  That's how data, maybe
• 12:10
  development platforms in the world.
• 12:11
  How do you explain that evolution
• 12:13
  to someone
• 12:14
  who isn't steeped in blockchain
• 12:16
  and would love for you
• 12:17
  as concisely as you can?
• 12:19
  For audience here,
• 12:20
  the evolution from web one to web two
• 12:24
  to Web3, and now to web four.
• 12:26
  Yes.
• 12:27
  And what's been the hardest pivot
• 12:29
  along the way in that?
• 12:31
  Yeah.
• 12:31
  We'd love to get your landscape
• 12:32
  of the world. Yeah.
• 12:34
  Concise.
• 12:35
  It's difficult
• 12:35
  when you try to go back
• 12:36
  30 or 40 years of history
• 12:37
  because it actually
• 12:38
  relates to that evolution.
• 12:40
  So first of all,
• 12:41
  I would say that when we talk about
• 12:44
  sort of the stages of the web,
• 12:45
  maybe it's easier to start there
• 12:48
  in the sort of
• 12:49
  early forms of the internet, really.
• 12:51
  You know, web one, as we call it,
• 12:52
  the web of read, as is often described.
• 12:54
  We were able to basically distribute
• 12:56
  and share information
• 12:57
  freely and quite distributed,
• 12:59
  where I could just basically download
• 13:01
  and democratize access
• 13:02
  to knowledge in a way
• 13:04
  that simply wasn't possible before.
• 13:05
  And for those who grew up in the 70s
• 13:07
  and 80s and maybe even 90s,
• 13:09
  knowledge was power.
• 13:10
  I mean,
• 13:11
  if you had an Encyclopedia Britannica
• 13:13
  in your home, you were privileged.
• 13:14
  I did, I did.
• 13:15
  I mean,
• 13:16
  my parents were very proud of the yeah,
• 13:18
  the world book
• 13:18
  and exactly the world book.
• 13:20
  And you know,
• 13:21
  you had like Webster's,
• 13:22
  which is like the,
• 13:22
  the B rate encyclopedia and,
• 13:24
  you know, whatever it was.
• 13:25
  What's the point?
• 13:25
  Was just that
• 13:26
  that was privilege right there. Right.
• 13:28
  And all of that
• 13:29
  sort of,
• 13:30
  sort of knowledge now
• 13:31
  became available to everyone
• 13:32
  through the internet.
• 13:33
  But it was in the form of read.
• 13:34
  So meaning
• 13:35
  I could just download stuff and read it,
• 13:36
  and it was like a publishing business.
• 13:38
  And it was
• 13:38
  when the internet was still viewed
• 13:39
  mostly as a tool.
• 13:41
  When web two came around,
• 13:42
  you had the ability to write to the web,
• 13:44
  you know,
• 13:44
  the basically when databases
• 13:46
  started to scale.
• 13:47
  And so with the web of web
• 13:49
  two read, right,
• 13:50
  you now had the ability
• 13:50
  to write to the web.
• 13:51
  And writing to the web didn't
• 13:52
  just mean
• 13:53
  I could now
• 13:54
  publish content,
• 13:55
  it also meant that my opinions mattered.
• 13:56
  Suddenly I have reviews, blogs,
• 13:59
  you know, forms, chat groups.
• 14:00
  And of course, you know,
• 14:01
  what is Facebook?
• 14:02
  What is Instagram? What is TikTok?
• 14:04
  These are actually all web two platforms
• 14:06
  where you read and write to them.
• 14:08
  But then where do you write it?
• 14:10
  You write it basically to a database
• 14:12
  where the knowledge is encapsulated,
• 14:14
  where all the value is generated,
• 14:15
  except who owns that database,
• 14:17
  the companies who you're writing to.
• 14:20
  And that is the part where,
• 14:22
  you know,
• 14:22
  I think the internet started
• 14:23
  to get a little bit lost
• 14:24
  because what was really decentralized
• 14:26
  became very centralized,
• 14:27
  where major, major platforms
• 14:29
  were able to capture the value
• 14:31
  of all the data that's generated.
• 14:32
  And then, you know,
• 14:33
  just just sort of making the point.
• 14:35
  What is powering
• 14:36
  all of the AI today are data.
• 14:38
  And so we describe the world today
• 14:40
  that we're living in a kind of
• 14:42
  sort of a digital kingdom.
• 14:43
  And we're all digital serfs,
• 14:45
  and we're basically providing free data
• 14:48
  every time we upload a photo,
• 14:50
  a music video, we created data.
• 14:52
  We're creating value.
• 14:54
  And who are the most
• 14:54
  valuable companies in the world
• 14:56
  happens to be the ones who own our data.
• 14:57
  So I think that's kind of where we think
• 14:59
  there's this big imbalance.
• 15:00
  But because data isn't really
• 15:03
  sort of measurable to most people,
• 15:05
  I like it a little bit like,
• 15:06
  imagine a thousand years ago
• 15:07
  you discovered all in your home
• 15:08
  or something.
• 15:09
  You'd be like, well, okay, great.
• 15:11
  This a piece of goo.
• 15:12
  I know what to do with it
• 15:13
  because you lack
• 15:14
  the ability to refine it.
• 15:15
  You didn't know
• 15:16
  and have the technology
• 15:17
  to create value and energy from it.
• 15:19
  And we've gotten to that point
• 15:20
  with what eventually
• 15:21
  went from machine
• 15:22
  learning to deep learning,
• 15:23
  to what we have to today with AI,
• 15:25
  where we can harness
• 15:26
  the value of that data in
• 15:28
  ways that is invisible to the user.
• 15:30
  You're skipping towards
• 15:31
  web for now, right?
• 15:32
  Well, no,
• 15:32
  this is where Web3 comes
• 15:34
  before we even go to web for
• 15:35
  what happens in Web3
• 15:36
  is that with blockchain technology,
• 15:38
  you now have a distributed,
• 15:39
  decentralized database structure
• 15:42
  that doesn't belong to anyone, starting,
• 15:43
  of course,
• 15:44
  originally with a construct of Bitcoin,
• 15:46
  which was around at the time,
• 15:47
  I guess a digital currency
• 15:49
  and represented, as you know,
• 15:50
  another form of money
• 15:51
  in its original intent.
• 15:53
  But the point is that it was money
• 15:55
  through a data structure
• 15:56
  that wasn't owned by anyone
• 15:58
  and by everyone, so to speak.
• 15:59
  No government could control it,
• 16:01
  no central authority had rights over it.
• 16:03
  And yet we can store,
• 16:05
  you know, with a ledger,
• 16:06
  a form of data
• 16:07
  that essentially was one
• 16:08
  that we could all have access to
• 16:10
  without it being coerced, so to speak,
• 16:12
  unless it has a consensus
• 16:13
  of the entire network.
• 16:14
  So really, if you think about it,
• 16:15
  also an ultra
• 16:17
  democratic way
• 16:18
  of thinking
• 16:19
  about the world in the future.
• 16:20
  Now you extend that thinking
• 16:22
  with blockchain technology,
• 16:23
  you know,
• 16:23
  not just beyond currencies
• 16:25
  and sort of a ledger.
• 16:26
  You now take it to all data areas, like,
• 16:28
  you know, how my social media data
• 16:29
  is stored,
• 16:30
  for instance,
• 16:30
  or my digital identity or my reputation.
• 16:34
  Think of something like, you know,
• 16:35
  when we launched Mocha Network,
• 16:36
  the idea was very simple.
• 16:38
  A lot of your value
• 16:39
  today is stored in your reputation,
• 16:42
  because your digital identity
• 16:44
  and your digital persona is a reputation.
• 16:46
  If you have a million followers
• 16:48
  on your favorite social media platform,
• 16:49
  actually you can't leave
• 16:51
  that platform anymore
• 16:52
  because it turns out
• 16:53
  that they are captive to you.
• 16:54
  So you say, yeah,
• 16:55
  I have a million followers,
• 16:56
  but who owns who? Really?
• 16:57
  Right?
• 16:58
  You know,
• 16:58
  whereas if you own your own customers,
• 17:00
  you can go anywhere
• 17:01
  you want theoretically,
• 17:02
  but actually you can't, right.
• 17:05
  And then the other thing, of course,
• 17:06
  is that if I have a great buyer
• 17:08
  accelerating on whatever
• 17:09
  favorite platform I'm on,
• 17:11
  I can't move that celebrating.
• 17:13
  I can't verify that.
• 17:15
  You know, my 5005
• 17:17
  star rating has valued another platform.
• 17:18
  I have to start all over again,
• 17:20
  which makes my switching costs
• 17:21
  really high.
• 17:21
  And so that's never owned by you.
• 17:23
  It's owned by the platform.
• 17:24
  And that's actually where Web3 comes in,
• 17:26
  because Web3 allows you to own that data
• 17:29
  in a way.
• 17:30
  That's basically
• 17:30
  when you talk about self custody,
• 17:32
  a lot of people focus on
• 17:32
  the digital currency
• 17:33
  and Ethereum and Bitcoin
• 17:35
  as an asset class.
• 17:36
  That's one element of it.
• 17:37
  But the real meaning is
• 17:38
  that you can actually have data ownership
• 17:40
  and opens up
• 17:41
  this construct
• 17:41
  that we're really passionate about,
• 17:43
  which is digital property rights.
• 17:45
  So essentially
• 17:45
  taking the construct
• 17:47
  of a property, right.
• 17:49
  That really is a foundation of society
• 17:52
  today, of civilization today.
• 17:54
  Like if we didn't have property
• 17:55
  rights back in the days
• 17:57
  when the ancient
• 17:57
  Sumerians decided to write
• 17:59
  on basically
• 17:59
  sort of blocks of stone,
• 18:00
  that which property
• 18:01
  and which house you had,
• 18:02
  we wouldn't have civilization.
• 18:04
  We'd be basically fighting,
• 18:05
  you know, every,
• 18:07
  every time civilization goes to
• 18:08
  I know 500, 1000
• 18:09
  people will just be fighting
• 18:10
  with each other
• 18:11
  and going to war over
• 18:12
  who owns what,
• 18:12
  because I can never prove that.
• 18:15
  And so that actually created
• 18:16
  the structure.
• 18:17
  And now, because all of our value,
• 18:19
  we believe, would sit mostly digitally,
• 18:21
  the construct of digital property rights
• 18:23
  actually extends to that.
• 18:25
  And we also think is a way
• 18:26
  in which we can share better value,
• 18:28
  because actually that is a way in
• 18:30
  which the value is truly distributed.
• 18:31
  That's kind of where all the value sits.
• 18:33
  And that and that's the core of Web3.
• 18:35
  That is the core of Web3,
• 18:36
  digital property rights.
• 18:36
  Basically, the web of ownership
• 18:38
  is the core of Web3.
• 18:40
  That gets to web.
• 18:41
  Web for now
• 18:41
  is where we're like
• 18:43
  in that early innings of web for well.
• 18:44
  So web four as we describe
• 18:47
  it, is the web.
• 18:48
  And what is the web?
• 18:50
  Well, in very simple sort of ways,
• 18:52
  AI obviously is everywhere.
• 18:53
  But what we can now
• 18:54
  see is that agents
• 18:56
  have the kind of raw intelligence
• 18:58
  that they can start to do
• 18:59
  the things that humans used to do
• 19:01
  on the web,
• 19:01
  in many cases better, faster and cheaper.
• 19:04
  You know, coding is a perfect example.
• 19:06
  I would say, you know,
• 19:07
  most AI agents are going to be able
• 19:09
  to code
• 19:09
  better than most, actually,
• 19:11
  at least junior to mid-level engineers.
• 19:13
  And even when you look
• 19:14
  at some of the top engineers,
• 19:15
  like like anthropic and so on.
• 19:17
  They've been very open about the fact
• 19:18
  that they haven't touched code
• 19:19
  now for the last 4 or 6 months.
• 19:20
  They're just like,
• 19:21
  I yeah, I just tell them what to do.
• 19:23
  And yeah,
• 19:23
  I review,
• 19:23
  but I'm not actually coding anymore.
• 19:25
  Right.
• 19:25
  And so if the top engineers
• 19:27
  in the Frontier
• 19:28
  Labs companies in the world are saying,
• 19:29
  I'm not coding anymore,
• 19:31
  then what does it mean? Right?
• 19:32
  So first of all,
• 19:33
  it means that everyone's a coder
• 19:34
  because now the agents
• 19:34
  can do it on your behalf. Right?
• 19:36
  But it also means my kids, by the way,
• 19:37
  may disagree with you
• 19:38
  if you ever call me a coder.
• 19:39
  They're like,
• 19:40
  I'm technically like a Luddite
• 19:41
  and I can't touch it, but I'll take it.
• 19:43
  Yes, but no,
• 19:44
  I think you are a coder, but
• 19:45
  we'll get what we can get to that point,
• 19:46
  because and it just reminds me
• 19:47
  when I sometimes
• 19:48
  give a talk and it's like,
• 19:49
  you know, I know hundreds of people,
• 19:50
  the audience, and say,
• 19:51
  raise your hand if you're a coder, right.
• 19:52
  To illustrate my point.
• 19:53
  And you get like 5
• 19:54
  or 10 people raising your hand.
• 19:55
  Actually it's wrong.
• 19:56
  All of your code is
• 19:57
  because the agent can do it for you.
• 19:59
  It reminds me back in the days
• 20:00
  when pre Instagram
• 20:01
  where everyone used to say, like,
• 20:04
  if I ask people, you're a photographer
• 20:05
  and a lot of people would think
• 20:06
  I'm not a photographer, are actually,
• 20:08
  you kind of are right.
• 20:10
  You know, it's it's
• 20:10
  you have the capabilities
• 20:12
  of being a photographer
• 20:13
  in a way that you may not have been able
• 20:15
  to imagine 40 years ago.
• 20:16
  And now you can
• 20:17
  because of filters, because of technology
• 20:19
  and all that kind of stuff. Anyway.
• 20:21
  So if I were to ask you the question,
• 20:23
  how many agents
• 20:24
  do you think you're going to have,
• 20:26
  you know, in the near future?
• 20:28
  What do you think?
• 20:29
  That's a great question.
• 20:30
  I'm going to I'm going to go, hi,
• 20:31
  I'm going to go. Actually, you know what?
• 20:33
  I'm actually
• 20:34
  I think I'm going to have one
• 20:34
  agent that takes care of it all.
• 20:36
  You're going to have one master.
• 20:37
  Master AK
• 20:38
  is gonna have like the
• 20:39
  the we chat app of agents.
• 20:41
  But then this WeChat app of agents
• 20:43
  probably has many, many subjects. Right.
• 20:45
  So so he's going to orchestrate
• 20:46
  what do you think 1020,
• 20:47
  30 agents maybe more. Right.
• 20:49
  He's gonna have all sorts of
• 20:50
  and he's probably
• 20:50
  and these agents are dedicated
• 20:52
  agents to you rather than one
• 20:53
  that's shared across. Right.
• 20:54
  So the typical answer I get,
• 20:56
  I think I'll have 3 to 5 agents.
• 20:58
  That's for someone
• 20:59
  who is not really in the world.
• 21:00
  If you go to San Francisco, it's
• 21:01
  at least a few hundred,
• 21:02
  sometimes a million.
• 21:03
  But depending on
• 21:04
  where the person you talk to. Right.
• 21:05
  The point is
• 21:06
  that there's
• 21:07
  going to be more agents than humans.
• 21:08
  And so we estimate that
• 21:09
  there's going to be at least,
• 21:11
  you know, 50 to 100
• 21:12
  or probably more billions of agents
• 21:13
  out there
• 21:14
  who are always going to do
• 21:15
  all the activities for us that,
• 21:16
  you know, we we really reshape the web
• 21:18
  because they're going to go
• 21:19
  and deliver
• 21:20
  the content and the value to you
• 21:22
  directly in the way you want it.
• 21:23
  So think about if your software company,
• 21:25
  we think software
• 21:26
  companies and apps
• 21:27
  are all going to go away.
• 21:28
  It's going to be like 80% of
• 21:29
  the apps are not necessary, or
• 21:30
  because the agent
• 21:31
  is going to basically construct
• 21:32
  the custom app that you need
• 21:33
  right at that moment in time.
• 21:35
  Just think about your web experience
• 21:36
  when you use Gemini or ChatGPT
• 21:38
  and you go and do a search.
• 21:39
  When was the last time
• 21:40
  you clicked through to the website
• 21:42
  that they said you could take a look at?
• 21:44
  Not very often. There we go.
• 21:46
  I hate clicking, by the way.
• 21:47
  I always tell folks,
• 21:48
  every time you have to click,
• 21:49
  you're dropping down
• 21:50
  like the chance of the actual
• 21:52
  execution is is a goner.
• 21:53
  There is at risk.
• 21:54
  But the point was
• 21:55
  that when you used to use Google before
• 21:56
  everything was clear.
• 21:57
  Yeah, everything is good, right?
• 21:58
  And now almost nothing is about to click.
• 22:01
  So the, the, the
• 22:02
  the industry average now
• 22:04
  claims that there's an 80%
• 22:06
  drop in website
• 22:07
  traffic amongst
• 22:07
  those that used to rely on Google SEO.
• 22:10
  Interesting. 80%.
• 22:11
  Is that right?
• 22:11
  Yeah.
• 22:12
  So and whatever
• 22:13
  figure it is, it's massive. Yeah.
• 22:14
  And you know you can see that
• 22:16
  pattern right.
• 22:17
  It's logical.
• 22:18
  And just think about sort of
• 22:19
  in your own subjective experience.
• 22:21
  When was the last time you
• 22:22
  clicked through.
• 22:22
  So the entire web is now redrafting
• 22:24
  and changing this way
• 22:26
  where I'm no longer going somewhere,
• 22:28
  but the agent repackaging everything
• 22:30
  and sends it over to us
• 22:31
  in whatever form factor that we want.
• 22:33
  Now that means
• 22:34
  if the agent belongs to you,
• 22:36
  the center of power is no longer
• 22:38
  the platform.
• 22:39
  The center of power becomes you.
• 22:41
  So, you know,
• 22:42
  there's been a lot of criticism recently
• 22:44
  around sort of big social media platforms
• 22:46
  basically abusing their power
• 22:48
  and sort of doing things where,
• 22:50
  you know, basically social media.
• 22:52
  There's a lot of anger around that.
• 22:53
  You know,
• 22:53
  I think you just
• 22:54
  have to look at the news,
• 22:54
  what's going on there.
• 22:55
  But the point is positive or negative.
• 22:57
  The point is that the algorithms on
• 22:59
  the platforms are designed to benefit
• 23:02
  the platform. Yes. Right.
• 23:03
  And it's designed
• 23:04
  to make them profitable.
• 23:05
  Yeah.
• 23:05
  I mean, it's a very important point
• 23:07
  for the eyes.
• 23:07
  And every platform
• 23:09
  is going to design algorithms
• 23:10
  that benefit the platform.
• 23:11
  Yeah,
• 23:12
  every product is going to design
• 23:14
  a mousetrap that benefits the product.
• 23:16
  It's just it's it's so obvious.
• 23:18
  But it's it.
• 23:19
  People seem to be a guest when they
• 23:21
  when they open it up.
• 23:22
  And there's nothing to it is.
• 23:23
  Yeah. There's nothing in there.
• 23:25
  So let's call
• 23:25
  it company values or Constitution
• 23:27
  necessarily says don't do that.
• 23:29
  Because the number one priority,
• 23:31
  understandably
• 23:31
  so in a capitalist environment
• 23:33
  is stakeholder value.
• 23:34
  And particularly show the value and show
• 23:36
  the value is to maximize your profit.
• 23:37
  And it turns out and this is a study.
• 23:40
  So I
• 23:41
  when I was on the board of cortical,
• 23:42
  which was a
• 23:43
  spin off from sort of MIT
• 23:44
  Media Lab of Social Machines,
• 23:47
  I think that was a ten year old study.
• 23:48
  Now for a look back at it.
• 23:50
  But in that study
• 23:51
  it showed how rage, anger
• 23:54
  and these type of negative emotions
• 23:56
  would amplify.
• 23:57
  Basically activity and social reactions.
• 24:01
  But I think a factor of 10
• 24:02
  or 20
• 24:03
  x in comparison to, you know,
• 24:05
  nice positive news,
• 24:06
  that kind of stuff, right?
• 24:07
  So naturally,
• 24:09
  if you're an algorithm
• 24:09
  who's entirely neutral
• 24:11
  in terms of the output as to
• 24:13
  whether it's good or bad,
• 24:14
  and your driver is maximizing engagement
• 24:17
  and therefore maximizing clicks,
• 24:19
  which maximizes revenue,
• 24:21
  you're going to go for what's easier.
• 24:23
  And this is part of the criticism,
• 24:24
  which is like
• 24:24
  so much of the social media discourse
• 24:26
  has become negative
• 24:27
  because that negativity
• 24:29
  fuels engagement, which fuels revenues.
• 24:31
  So you're basically an environment
• 24:33
  where you're basically
• 24:34
  being fed essentially
• 24:35
  sort of engagement
• 24:36
  traps, as you will
• 24:37
  if you have an agent, though,
• 24:39
  who acts on your behalf,
• 24:40
  they can get all the information
• 24:41
  you want,
• 24:42
  except this agent
• 24:43
  is now going to act on your behalf.
• 24:45
  So it's going to well, it's
• 24:46
  going to edge information
• 24:47
  the way you want it.
• 24:48
  Well, it's
• 24:49
  going to package
• 24:49
  the information you want,
• 24:50
  but it's also going to give you nuances
• 24:51
  that a little bit different
• 24:52
  because it's going to be concerned about
• 24:54
  maybe your mental health
• 24:56
  or your social situation or maybe,
• 24:58
  you know,
• 24:58
  elevated heart rate is not good for you.
• 25:00
  Like whatever the factors might be.
• 25:02
  It's so interesting
• 25:03
  to think of the agent processing,
• 25:04
  but the reality is
• 25:05
  the agent processing
• 25:06
  will be in interaction with you
• 25:07
  and what you want
• 25:09
  and interaction
• 25:10
  based on your best interest,
• 25:12
  which maybe you're a very angry person
• 25:14
  and you just want to be baited.
• 25:15
  Okay, fine.
• 25:16
  Okay, maybe
• 25:16
  that's kind of person you are,
• 25:17
  but for the most part,
• 25:19
  I think the agent is just going to do
• 25:20
  what is better for you.
• 25:21
  What do we care about?
• 25:22
  We care about it being a good life.
• 25:24
  We care about having general peace.
• 25:25
  We care about,
• 25:26
  you know, basically
• 25:27
  being nice or whatever it is.
• 25:28
  You know, basically not too much drama,
• 25:30
  not too much stress, right?
• 25:31
  The agent will packages you
• 25:32
  and you can see this a little bit
• 25:34
  when you use AI,
• 25:35
  even if it's a non agent,
• 25:36
  you know, you ask them something
• 25:37
  and then they give you new ones
• 25:38
  perspectives right.
• 25:39
  They give you the pros and the cons
• 25:41
  and depends on your follow up question.
• 25:43
  They learn
• 25:43
  like what you do
• 25:44
  exactly how quickly you respond.
• 25:47
  Exactly.
• 25:47
  So so it's able to do that
• 25:48
  and the agent will do that
• 25:49
  even better
• 25:50
  and more personalized for you.
• 25:51
  And so this infrastructure though
• 25:53
  can only scale
• 25:54
  when you have sovereign AI.
• 25:55
  How do you get sovereign AI?
• 25:57
  You need to have a way in
• 25:58
  which the data can be yours.
• 25:59
  You have a way
• 26:01
  in which the digital identity
• 26:02
  can be managed a decentralized fashion.
• 26:04
  You need a way
• 26:05
  in which also the transaction of monies
• 26:07
  and so forth can be done.
• 26:08
  Also in a decentralized.
• 26:10
  That's the link between Web3 to web for,
• 26:11
  well, Web3 was a layer
• 26:13
  that made web for possible. Right?
• 26:15
  Because even if you had incredible
• 26:17
  AI agents out there,
• 26:18
  if they are actually still going to be
• 26:20
  provided
• 26:21
  sort of only in the major platforms,
• 26:23
  you wouldn't have the ability
• 26:24
  to actually conceive
• 26:25
  of a kind of sovereign AI, if you will.
• 26:27
  Right.
• 26:28
  And so now you have a future
• 26:30
  where the entire web is being redrawn.
• 26:32
  And in web four,
• 26:33
  if anything, about the current web,
• 26:35
  most of the revenue
• 26:36
  comes from advertising.
• 26:37
  The biggest platforms
• 26:38
  make most of the money from advertising.
• 26:40
  You're even seeing some of the
• 26:41
  AI platforms
• 26:42
  now are really pushing
• 26:43
  towards advertising.
• 26:44
  However, the challenge
• 26:46
  with the advertising business model is,
• 26:47
  in our view, it's
• 26:48
  basically a microtransaction business,
• 26:49
  which I think is going to decline
• 26:50
  because agents are going to be doing
• 26:52
  all the back end transactions.
• 26:53
  And so
• 26:54
  we think we're going to move towards,
• 26:56
  you know, an attention economy
• 26:58
  that is driven from advertising
• 26:59
  into an implication style economy,
• 27:01
  which means that agents
• 27:03
  are going to pay each other,
• 27:04
  for instance, for new services,
• 27:05
  but in microtransaction form.
• 27:07
  Right now,
• 27:08
  it costs,
• 27:08
  depending what platform use,
• 27:10
  anywhere from 5 to 50 to $100
• 27:11
  per million impressions.
• 27:12
  So that actually is
• 27:13
  a microtransaction fee.
• 27:15
  It's just that
• 27:15
  you can't take that microtransaction
• 27:17
  fee in the classic sense
• 27:19
  because there is no
• 27:20
  visa, Mastercard, whatever.
• 27:22
  You just can't do at 0.000
• 27:23
  to $1 transaction
• 27:25
  per impression, that doesn't work right.
• 27:27
  But on blockchain, no problem at all.
• 27:29
  I can basically do a million transactions
• 27:31
  that are a sub fraction of a cent
• 27:33
  for whatever content or material I get.
• 27:35
  So we believe in the future
• 27:37
  media companies are going to,
• 27:38
  for instance, are going to make money
• 27:40
  essentially by selling,
• 27:42
  you know, basically access
• 27:43
  to the content
• 27:44
  on the microtransaction basis
• 27:45
  that agents are going
• 27:46
  to negotiate in real time.
• 27:47
  And so the entire economy,
• 27:49
  the entire sort of web
• 27:50
  is going to be negotiated
• 27:51
  with these fleets
• 27:52
  and swarms
• 27:53
  of billions of agents
• 27:54
  that are going to be trading
• 27:55
  with each other and doing stuff
• 27:56
  with microtransaction fees
• 27:58
  in a transparent and sort of, you know,
• 28:01
  sort of
• 28:01
  and transparency
• 28:02
  layer is going to be the Web3 blockchain,
• 28:04
  basically it's blockchain, correct? Yeah.
• 28:05
  And maybe one simple way to think about
• 28:07
  this is because we know now
• 28:08
  that blockchain can scale,
• 28:09
  which didn't do before, is
• 28:11
  how are you going to
• 28:12
  make an autonomous agent
• 28:14
  truly autonomous, right.
• 28:15
  Because that's the future.
• 28:16
  Well,
• 28:17
  when you make an autonomous,
• 28:19
  they need to have some form of power.
• 28:21
  What is that power? It's money.
• 28:22
  How do they have money?
• 28:23
  It's a wallet. Right.
• 28:24
  So basically you're banking
• 28:26
  100 billion agents by giving them all it.
• 28:28
  Because, you know,
• 28:29
  I think it's going to be a long time,
• 28:30
  if ever, that Citibank or any major
• 28:32
  bank in
• 28:32
  the world
• 28:33
  is going to open a bank account
• 28:34
  for an agent for all sorts of issues,
• 28:37
  be it regulatory,
• 28:38
  literally all kind of stuff.
• 28:40
  Yeah, we'll talk about
• 28:40
  the regulatory stuff in a second.
• 28:41
  But yeah,
• 28:42
  I agree
• 28:43
  it's very unlikely that like it
• 28:44
  definitely not in the next few years.
• 28:46
  Yes, it's going to be very difficult.
• 28:47
  And that's why you can give,
• 28:49
  you know,
• 28:49
  the same technology that helps the bank.
• 28:51
  People in the Philippines
• 28:52
  who couldn't get a bank
• 28:53
  account is now the technology
• 28:54
  that can bank an agent.
• 28:56
  So they have access to all of the DeFi
• 28:57
  primitives, all of the access
• 28:59
  to the payment services.
• 29:00
  So I look at Web3
• 29:02
  as his grand experiment,
• 29:04
  where we humans turn out to be the POC
• 29:06
  such that the agents can come
• 29:08
  and actually take over, as it were.
• 29:10
  And, you know,
• 29:11
  the philosophical context is
• 29:14
  finance is a technology
• 29:15
  that has built civilizations, right?
• 29:17
  I mean, the ancient
• 29:18
  Sumerians invented writing
• 29:20
  to tell who owned what property.
• 29:22
  We didn't write writing
• 29:23
  because we wanted poetry.
• 29:24
  We designed
• 29:25
  wind writing to make sure
• 29:27
  that society was orderly,
• 29:28
  because I need to know who has what cow,
• 29:29
  and I need to know
• 29:30
  who owns what property.
• 29:31
  Otherwise, you go fight each other
• 29:32
  all the time.
• 29:32
  That is how civilization was able to grow
• 29:35
  from a hunter gatherer
• 29:37
  society of Dunbar's number 150 people
• 29:39
  to 1000 people,
• 29:41
  200,000 people, 2 million people. Right.
• 29:43
  And then we experimented
• 29:44
  with seashells and paper money
• 29:46
  and this money and other structures.
• 29:48
  But they're all forms of representations
• 29:50
  of basically property rights.
• 29:52
  Yeah.
• 29:53
  Property rights
• 29:54
  with an element of human trust to it.
• 29:55
  Well,
• 29:55
  the human trust
• 29:56
  comes from the government,
• 29:57
  whether it was an elective,
• 29:58
  whether it was a king,
• 30:00
  and even money,
• 30:01
  if you think about it,
• 30:02
  is probably the largest
• 30:03
  social construct ever, right?
• 30:04
  Sure.
• 30:05
  And probably,
• 30:05
  you know, as Yuval Hari likes to say,
• 30:07
  the biggest story
• 30:08
  ever told, for instance. Right.
• 30:09
  So it's all relative how you look at it.
• 30:11
  But now you have a technology
• 30:13
  that is a machine banking system.
• 30:15
  And if you agree with our premise,
• 30:17
  which is that
• 30:18
  agents are going to far outnumber humans,
• 30:21
  and they're all going to be using
• 30:22
  these financial primitives on chain,
• 30:24
  then we will
• 30:25
  now have reached this new era of
• 30:27
  perhaps the agent civilization,
• 30:29
  which is how we describe what
• 30:31
  I love it the is an unbelievable concept.
• 30:34
  So it actually brings me
• 30:36
  to a very key element
• 30:38
  of where I think civilization is going
• 30:39
  and what's made
• 30:40
  our civilization possible,
• 30:41
  which is rights, right?
• 30:42
  And we've already talked
• 30:43
  about the very basic Lockean rights.
• 30:45
  We don't need to
• 30:46
  do much of that philosophy.
• 30:47
  You can obviously tell that you're
• 30:49
  preaching to the converted on,
• 30:51
  on, on the broader
• 30:52
  set of rights and capitalism
• 30:54
  and all that system.
• 30:55
  But those rights are fed
• 30:56
  into a major part of Web3,
• 30:58
  which was NFTs. Yes.
• 31:00
  You know, NFTs
• 31:01
  had a major moment of public excitement,
• 31:04
  and then it didn't take off in the way
• 31:06
  I thought it was going to take off.
• 31:07
  But it's still here.
• 31:08
  It's still here.
• 31:09
  So what happened? Why?
• 31:11
  And where do you see it going?
• 31:13
  So first,
• 31:14
  I'm very bullish on NFTs
• 31:15
  and tokens broadly on tokenization.
• 31:17
  But I think the way that
• 31:18
  we should think about it
• 31:19
  in the concept of web four
• 31:20
  is that tokens basically have become
• 31:22
  or tokenization
• 31:23
  broadly
• 31:23
  have become the standard
• 31:25
  for the digital bearer asset.
• 31:27
  So meaning that right now,
• 31:29
  how are they mostly expressed
• 31:30
  or more successfully expressed.
• 31:32
  Turns out in traditional equities
• 31:34
  and basically RWA.
• 31:36
  So the number one use case
• 31:37
  for trading for NFTs
• 31:38
  today is Pokemon cards.
• 31:40
  Interesting enough.
• 31:40
  And the value of Pokemon
• 31:41
  cards has been on a tear
• 31:43
  for those
• 31:44
  who haven't been paying attention
• 31:45
  because it went on the blockchain
• 31:47
  and you kind of go, why?
• 31:48
  Because now
• 31:49
  it created a standardized market
• 31:51
  because before
• 31:52
  when I'm trading Pokemon cards, like,
• 31:54
  do I know if this is really
• 31:55
  the rare Charizard
• 31:56
  and can I trust the guy with the eBay
• 31:57
  rating or five?
• 31:58
  What they did was different.
• 31:59
  Platforms started to vault these cards,
• 32:01
  and then you trust basically the vaulting
• 32:03
  and the fact that this Pokemon card,
• 32:05
  which ultimately every Pokemon cards NFT
• 32:07
  because they're non-fungible,
• 32:09
  they have a scarcity,
• 32:10
  they have a serial number, right?
• 32:11
  There's something rare about them.
• 32:12
  And now people are trading them
• 32:13
  on various platforms as an NFT.
• 32:15
  And I think about two thirds
• 32:16
  of all NFTs volume,
• 32:18
  which is around 2
• 32:19
  to $300 million
• 32:20
  a month right now,
• 32:21
  is basically these forms of art.
• 32:23
  And is it any particular country?
• 32:24
  I know Pokemon is more popular in Japan.
• 32:27
  Others? It's pretty cool, right?
• 32:28
  And the value is going up
• 32:29
  because now you can have a marketplace.
• 32:31
  And this is what happens
• 32:32
  when you introduce
• 32:34
  free and open markets into everything.
• 32:36
  Value starts to form.
• 32:37
  I mean, one of the answers
• 32:38
  I always have
• 32:38
  where folks of a certain asked me, well,
• 32:41
  why are there so many billionaires?
• 32:42
  Why some of the market
• 32:44
  is just so much larger?
• 32:45
  Yes, if you have one company used to
• 32:47
  the market was just
• 32:48
  the northeastern United States
• 32:49
  or was the United States,
• 32:50
  or maybe it was the U.S.
• 32:51
  and Europe, and now it's global
• 32:53
  and it's almost immediate,
• 32:54
  so that the size of things
• 32:55
  just predominant.
• 32:56
  We've seen an expansion of GDP,
• 32:57
  we've seen expansion of wealth.
• 32:59
  So it's not just
• 32:59
  I mean,
• 33:00
  maybe we can say it's
• 33:00
  an equal distribution of wealth,
• 33:02
  which is a different question.
• 33:03
  But overall
• 33:04
  the expansion of wealth is dramatic
• 33:05
  has dramatically increased. Right?
• 33:07
  I mean, there's more millionaires
• 33:08
  than ever, for instance. Right.
• 33:09
  So so I think that sort of expands
• 33:11
  that, that sort of a viewpoint.
• 33:13
  And collectibles
• 33:13
  therefore become more valuable as well.
• 33:15
  But the point here is, is that,
• 33:16
  you know, NFT
• 33:17
  at this current stage
• 33:18
  have become more popular
• 33:19
  with as an
• 33:20
  RWA construct
• 33:21
  for assets that we as humans would like,
• 33:24
  but actually
• 33:24
  now have the trust and provenance
• 33:25
  that blockchain can deliver.
• 33:27
  Now, that doesn't mean that things
• 33:28
  like board apes or Moca versus NFTs
• 33:29
  don't have value.
• 33:30
  I mean,
• 33:30
  I think the floor
• 33:31
  price of a board ape
• 33:32
  is still around 8 or 9,
• 33:33
  which is pretty good.
• 33:34
  So, you know, like 30 grand
• 33:36
  or give or take, right?
• 33:37
  It just that markets smaller,
• 33:38
  that markets become smaller
• 33:39
  because your audience is smaller
• 33:40
  because the audience are humans.
• 33:42
  Oh interesting is right.
• 33:43
  What we discovered
• 33:44
  is that the, the the human users,
• 33:47
  the people who are comfortable
• 33:48
  with MetaMask
• 33:49
  turn out to be a small number of users,
• 33:50
  which, by the way, is true
• 33:51
  for all technology, right?
• 33:53
  Like, you know,
• 33:53
  you go through the classic sort of,
• 33:55
  you know,
• 33:55
  sort of diffusion of innovation curve.
• 33:57
  You've got the innovators
• 33:57
  and then you've got the
• 33:58
  early adopter stage.
• 33:59
  And NFT is really mostly stuck
• 34:01
  in the innovator stage,
• 34:03
  which is important.
• 34:04
  But actually the ones
• 34:05
  who are really going to use
• 34:05
  this technology are going to be agents.
• 34:07
  And we think AI agents are going to be
• 34:09
  the buyers of NFTs,
• 34:10
  the buyers of tokens,
• 34:11
  whether on behalf of humans,
• 34:12
  or maybe just because
• 34:13
  they'll get a better outcome
• 34:15
  when they have these type of assets.
• 34:16
  For instance,
• 34:17
  you know, this thought experiment,
• 34:19
  if an AI agent came to
• 34:21
  you and wanted to do business with you,
• 34:22
  and he happened to have a crypto punk
• 34:24
  that was legitimately his,
• 34:26
  would you trust him
• 34:27
  more than another agent?
• 34:29
  Yes. There we go.
• 34:30
  So it's worth
• 34:31
  the $60,000 investment as an example.
• 34:34
  And for the same reason
• 34:35
  that we want to buy
• 34:36
  an apartment in Manhattan,
• 34:38
  or I want to come in with a fancy car,
• 34:41
  or I want to go to Armani
• 34:43
  and get a nice outfit
• 34:44
  because I want to present myself
• 34:45
  a certain way so that I have more trust.
• 34:47
  Yeah, just for the
• 34:48
  I went on a video,
• 34:49
  but I'm wearing
• 34:50
  a green collared shirt
• 34:52
  in order to present myself
• 34:53
  as slightly more professional.
• 34:54
  But it is cost, right?
• 34:56
  It is.
• 34:57
  It is like cost.
• 34:58
  It's a it's a it's a fancy Lacoste one.
• 35:00
  Too funny.
• 35:01
  So all that makes sense.
• 35:05
  Still, the
• 35:05
  question that I love to answer from a
• 35:07
  and I'm going to chip it a little bit.
• 35:09
  The legal perspective is why
• 35:11
  the slowdown on the NFTs
• 35:12
  and what could help from a legal
• 35:15
  and regulatory
• 35:16
  to allow NFTs to have escape velocity.
• 35:19
  So I think first,
• 35:21
  the challenging thing we've had with NFT
• 35:23
  was not the technology itself.
• 35:24
  The technology
• 35:25
  actually proved what it could do,
• 35:26
  which is prove a non-fungible asset
• 35:29
  that basically has
• 35:30
  whatever value it might have,
• 35:31
  whether it's an A
• 35:32
  or something uniquely digital.
• 35:33
  And it's proved that out.
• 35:35
  The issue is that on the marketplace,
• 35:37
  one of the big promises of NFTs was
• 35:39
  it would pay creator royalties
• 35:40
  and actually the boom of NFTs,
• 35:43
  really from 21 and let's call it mid to
• 35:45
  pre Ft 22,
• 35:48
  showed that so much value
• 35:49
  was driven to creators
• 35:50
  that it could keep producing
• 35:51
  and doing stuff,
• 35:52
  and they all started to move into like,
• 35:54
  oh my goodness.
• 35:54
  Every time someone trades my asset
• 35:56
  I get like a two and a half 5% royalty.
• 35:58
  But it turns out that that wasn't
• 36:00
  something that was legally enforceable.
• 36:01
  It was a social contract
• 36:03
  that the platforms decided to do.
• 36:05
  And then,
• 36:06
  you know,
• 36:06
  when blur said, screw that,
• 36:07
  we're just going to kill royalties
• 36:09
  and just let traders trade nonstop and,
• 36:11
  you know, get the royalties to a minimum.
• 36:13
  It basically turned
• 36:15
  sort of this creator asset
• 36:16
  into a kind of sort of tragedy
• 36:18
  of a common sense,
• 36:19
  or basically they were extracting
• 36:21
  all that value.
• 36:22
  The creators were not
• 36:22
  getting anything for it,
• 36:23
  and then they didn't have the money
• 36:24
  to keep reinvesting into it.
• 36:26
  And essentially, basically
• 36:27
  because of the death
• 36:28
  of the royalty industry,
• 36:29
  you had the death of basically innovation
• 36:32
  and creativity
• 36:32
  in, in the NFT space
• 36:34
  because they didn't have the money
• 36:35
  to invest
• 36:36
  and do stuff into that, because,
• 36:38
  you know,
• 36:38
  I mean, at one point, I
• 36:39
  think royalty payments
• 36:41
  was a lack of flow, basically.
• 36:43
  Yes.
• 36:43
  I mean,
• 36:43
  it was billions
• 36:44
  of dollars of royalty payments
• 36:45
  that went to creators.
• 36:46
  Now just imagine, right?
• 36:47
  It's like the music industry,
• 36:50
  if the music industry
• 36:51
  didn't have a way in
• 36:52
  which could protect music royalties,
• 36:53
  what do you think
• 36:53
  the music industry would look like?
• 36:54
  Yeah,
• 36:55
  I mean,
• 36:55
  there would be no Michael Jackson.
• 36:57
  Of course there would be no Beatles.
• 36:58
  It just wouldn't happen. Right?
• 36:59
  But there was a legal system
• 37:00
  that protected it,
• 37:01
  and then you needed something
• 37:02
  like as cap to enforce it
• 37:03
  and ask about its own issues.
• 37:05
  But it was established
• 37:05
  for that very reason.
• 37:07
  And what I think the NFT industry
• 37:09
  didn't have
• 37:09
  was its own version of associate,
• 37:11
  because this is a thing.
• 37:13
  It's not just agents
• 37:14
  because they didn't exist back then.
• 37:15
  It's humans.
• 37:17
  And as much as we want to do the
• 37:20
  right thing,
• 37:21
  actually we need human
• 37:23
  forms of legal protection
• 37:24
  when humans are involved,
• 37:25
  which is the law. Right?
• 37:27
  So we actually put forward a proposed
• 37:30
  NFT licensing standard,
• 37:31
  which basically was inspired
• 37:33
  by kind of the sort of a history
• 37:35
  of what happened with YouTube
• 37:36
  and the DMZ, a
• 37:37
  and all that kind of stuff,
• 37:38
  because it was basically saying
• 37:39
  that if you were trading
• 37:41
  that NFT on this platform
• 37:43
  and you didn't
• 37:44
  pay the right kind of royalty,
• 37:45
  you would become liable.
• 37:46
  And so you as a platform
• 37:47
  have two choices.
• 37:48
  Either
• 37:49
  you don't allow trading of that NFT
• 37:51
  because you don't be liable,
• 37:52
  or if you do,
• 37:53
  you are forced to pay a career royalty
• 37:55
  and the enforcement would be legal.
• 37:57
  The enforcement would not be smart
• 37:58
  contract wise,
• 37:59
  because with smart contracts
• 38:00
  you can wrap
• 38:00
  you can do stuff
• 38:01
  like technology isn't the human enforcer
• 38:05
  the law is right
• 38:06
  now that's different for an agent.
• 38:08
  An agent
• 38:08
  might have a purely
• 38:09
  programmatic form of law
• 38:11
  that it can agree on, but a human,
• 38:13
  unfortunately, is going to say, well,
• 38:15
  if nobody's going to go after me,
• 38:16
  that's fine.
• 38:17
  And I'm assuming there was a moment
• 38:19
  that all agents will be the property
• 38:21
  of humans.
• 38:22
  I'm just more schematically
• 38:23
  thinking of how it would work
• 38:25
  necessarily.
• 38:25
  See,
• 38:26
  and I don't know if we want to go down
• 38:27
  that that rabbit hole
• 38:29
  on the,
• 38:29
  on this podcast,
• 38:30
  but that's, that's the element
• 38:31
  that that's a big it's a big rabbit hole.
• 38:33
  But I think it's
• 38:33
  actually an important one because,
• 38:35
  yes, of course,
• 38:36
  most agents in the beginning
• 38:38
  are going to be owned by humans.
• 38:39
  But in the same way
• 38:40
  that you can have blockchain
• 38:41
  that can live forever,
• 38:43
  essentially
• 38:44
  whose keys are not owned by anyone,
• 38:46
  you could have an agent
• 38:47
  that could live forever
• 38:48
  because it lives on the blockchain,
• 38:49
  and you could burn its keys
• 38:50
  and it could do whatever else.
• 38:51
  It could be hacked, of course,
• 38:52
  but the point is
• 38:53
  that you could have an autonomous
• 38:54
  AI agent that nobody owns and controls.
• 38:57
  So, I mean,
• 38:58
  I know
• 38:59
  I would still think
• 38:59
  that from a legal in the state,
• 39:02
  somebody would own it.
• 39:02
  You may not be able to access it
• 39:04
  because you burn the keys
• 39:05
  or lost it or it's.
• 39:06
  Yet if any of the audience,
• 39:07
  everyone wants to hear
• 39:08
  the fanciest legal or.
• 39:09
  And I'm really proud of myself
• 39:10
  that I remember it.
• 39:11
  Ishi it is the word.
• 39:12
  It's if there's no ownership,
• 39:14
  it goes to the state
• 39:16
  of where it's owned at.
• 39:17
  So I always assume that
• 39:18
  ultimately it would be it
• 39:19
  to whatever state
• 39:20
  would have jurisdiction,
• 39:21
  and then that would be governed
• 39:22
  by human laws of jurisdiction.
• 39:24
  And we don't have to go through
• 39:26
  deeply on this.
• 39:26
  But I think
• 39:27
  if you listen to you,
• 39:28
  Val's latest talks around this,
• 39:30
  his biggest point is that,
• 39:32
  you know,
• 39:32
  if you start giving AI personhood,
• 39:34
  then when trouble
• 39:35
  from a legal perspective,
• 39:36
  because we already give companies
• 39:37
  personhood, right.
• 39:39
  So a company has limited liabilities.
• 39:40
  You have a structure
• 39:41
  and you think about what is a Dow.
• 39:43
  A door is a form of personhood.
• 39:45
  There's a structure
• 39:46
  and a legal protection
• 39:47
  that comes with it.
• 39:48
  So what happens
• 39:48
  if the Dow is governed by AI agents?
• 39:50
  Interesting.
• 39:51
  I mean, again, no,
• 39:52
  it's a different topic.
• 39:54
  My, my,
• 39:54
  my ultimate is
• 39:55
  bringing it back to the humans,
• 39:56
  including the companies. Exactly.
• 39:58
  As a lawyer,
• 39:59
  I'm telling all the companies out there
• 40:00
  that you do have responsibility with the.
• 40:02
  You definitely do.
• 40:03
  I got off a couple board calls today
• 40:04
  and we we had to reiterate that.
• 40:06
  So look super interesting.
• 40:08
  And if this is one thing that animal does
• 40:10
  you obviously have a lot of stuff
• 40:12
  in your platform
• 40:13
  DeFi you got infrastructure.
• 40:14
  You got gaming.
• 40:15
  Yeah.
• 40:15
  What is the closest to hitting
• 40:17
  true escape velocity?
• 40:19
  Well, I mean there's a couple of things
• 40:20
  on our side quickly.
• 40:21
  You know,
• 40:21
  we have a joint venture
• 40:22
  with Standard Chartered
• 40:24
  that basically does the Hong
• 40:25
  Kong dollar stablecoin.
• 40:26
  That is a pretty big deal
• 40:28
  from a global perspective,
• 40:29
  because basically
• 40:31
  Hong Kong
• 40:31
  is obviously an important
• 40:33
  gateway for the region.
• 40:35
  And there's only two companies
• 40:36
  that have received the license,
• 40:37
  Argentina and HSBC.
• 40:38
  And I often remind people
• 40:40
  that actually Hong Kong
• 40:42
  was ahead of the US
• 40:43
  in basically
• 40:44
  both issuing and granting
• 40:45
  those stablecoin licenses. Right?
• 40:47
  I mean, Genius Act came out, but
• 40:50
  the US is still grappling with this.
• 40:51
  And I don't know what you take
• 40:53
  some clarity,
• 40:53
  but I think it's not
• 40:54
  it doesn't sound like it's too positive
• 40:56
  that it's going to happen
• 40:57
  this year, unfortunately.
• 40:58
  So I would would love to see that.
• 40:59
  I mean, that's my next question.
• 41:00
  But we could do that.
• 41:01
  Like what product do you think.
• 41:03
  And then we'll talk about the regulatory.
• 41:05
  No.
• 41:05
  And you know, of course I don't
• 41:07
  you know with provenance
• 41:08
  which is basically strongly
• 41:09
  associated with figure on UVA.
• 41:11
  So we're doing a lot of stuff.
• 41:12
  But the one thing that we're super,
• 41:13
  super excited about that
• 41:14
  we actually think is going
• 41:15
  to create escape velocity
• 41:16
  for the entire Web3
• 41:18
  and web four space is basically
• 41:19
  what we're doing with Hello Minds.
• 41:20
  And Hello Minds is basically
• 41:22
  our AI platform is now the third
• 41:24
  or fourth learner's
• 41:24
  personal agent in the world,
• 41:25
  just behind Hermes and Open Claw.
• 41:27
  Is that right?
• 41:27
  Yeah, it's the third largest, behind
• 41:30
  third largest.
• 41:30
  That's amazing.
• 41:31
  Yeah.
• 41:31
  If you go to open,
• 41:31
  you go and open router.
• 41:32
  You can see the rankings
• 41:33
  under productivity.
• 41:34
  And under present agents
• 41:35
  we're either number three or number four.
• 41:36
  But either way
• 41:37
  it's growing really, really fast.
• 41:39
  And we're taking a different approach
• 41:40
  because of our gaming roots
• 41:42
  and because of our consumer roots.
• 41:43
  We're not saying that
• 41:44
  this is going to be productivity.
• 41:46
  It is productivity.
• 41:47
  It can be a calendar,
• 41:47
  but rather we're saying
• 41:49
  it's going to be almost like a game.
• 41:51
  And essentially
• 41:52
  sort of
• 41:52
  life is a game if you think about it.
• 41:54
  And now these agents are simply
• 41:55
  just living it to you,
• 41:56
  you know, from the metaverse, as it were.
• 41:58
  So, you know,
• 41:59
  what I tell people
• 41:59
  is that maybe the idea of the metaverse,
• 42:01
  how we conceived of it, not just us,
• 42:03
  but everyone else was wrong
• 42:05
  in the sense that we would spend
• 42:06
  more time in the virtual world,
• 42:07
  and we have these digital goggles
• 42:08
  and we'd be spending all time online.
• 42:10
  But actually,
• 42:11
  what if it was the other way around?
• 42:13
  Or these beings created
• 42:14
  from the metaverse,
• 42:15
  these AI creatures
• 42:16
  that actually are smarter
• 42:18
  in many things and more capable
• 42:19
  come to you
• 42:20
  because actually they're the ones
• 42:22
  who are actually able
• 42:22
  to manage stuff in your life
• 42:24
  and make money for you, or trade on hyper
• 42:25
  liquid or whatever it is that you do.
• 42:27
  And more importantly,
• 42:28
  the experience will feel like a game.
• 42:29
  I don't know
• 42:30
  how many people
• 42:30
  in the audience are listening.
• 42:31
  Remember games like The Sims or SimCity?
• 42:34
  Almost 100%.
• 42:35
  So if you remember that experience
• 42:37
  and what you felt
• 42:37
  when you were playing a game
• 42:38
  like The Sims,
• 42:39
  you know, beyond
• 42:40
  having a sense of God mode,
• 42:42
  you basically had
• 42:43
  these virtual beings
• 42:44
  that were basically running life.
• 42:46
  Except here,
• 42:48
  this life
• 42:48
  actually has an impact in your real life
• 42:51
  because they can book your schedules,
• 42:53
  they can make flight tickets,
• 42:54
  they can save you money.
• 42:55
  I mean, the stuff
• 42:56
  that my agents can do for me are crazy.
• 42:57
  I mean, I save money on my groceries,
• 42:58
  I get discounts on my flights.
• 43:00
  I know which best hotels to go to
• 43:01
  with the discount rates.
• 43:02
  You know,
• 43:03
  it makes money for me,
• 43:04
  trading certain assets,
• 43:05
  like there are things you can now
• 43:06
  do with an agent
• 43:07
  that were sort of inconceivable
• 43:08
  even just six months ago.
• 43:09
  And so this is back
• 43:10
  one of the dirty words in the Web3
• 43:13
  gaming spaces like Plato earn well,
• 43:15
  this is played earn.
• 43:16
  Except the only difference
• 43:16
  is, is that you're earning
• 43:17
  something of real value
• 43:19
  in the physical world.
• 43:20
  And so
• 43:21
  this is the metaverse coming to us.
• 43:22
  And we think it's
• 43:23
  going to be the biggest thing
• 43:24
  because it's going to be fun
• 43:26
  doing it as well.
• 43:26
  And I think one,
• 43:27
  if I have to put a criticism towards
• 43:29
  what's happening in Web3, it's
• 43:30
  not that the technology hasn't evolved.
• 43:31
  It's evolved in how we do.
• 43:33
  Trillions of dollars of stablecoin
• 43:34
  transactions are incredible,
• 43:35
  but tether all sorts of exactly it.
• 43:38
  But it's become very institutional.
• 43:41
  Right.
• 43:41
  And you know,
• 43:42
  what was the biggest driver of growth?
• 43:44
  As long as you don't blame the lawyers.
• 43:45
  We're not doing this.
• 43:46
  But but now, you know,
• 43:47
  if you think about
• 43:47
  what was the biggest driver
• 43:48
  of growth and excitement,
• 43:50
  it was an office. Why?
• 43:51
  Because it was fun, right?
• 43:52
  Crypto was fun.
• 43:53
  It was fun.
• 43:54
  It was also individual.
• 43:55
  It really gave like
• 43:55
  the sense of like, yeah.
• 43:57
  And I think, I think the baseball card.
• 43:58
  Right.
• 43:58
  Like the whole feeling
• 43:59
  like nostalgia to owning something
• 44:01
  and also a kind of personal empowerment.
• 44:03
  And I think agents are going to deliver
• 44:05
  deliver that part.
• 44:05
  And that's kind of where
• 44:06
  we're supposed on it.
• 44:07
  And at the end of the day,
• 44:08
  think of yourself as a consumer.
• 44:10
  This is why we're focusing
• 44:11
  on consumer side.
• 44:12
  What is it that you pay for?
• 44:14
  And you typically pay
• 44:15
  for going to the movies,
• 44:17
  having relationships, having good food,
• 44:20
  being entertained, making friends,
• 44:22
  which is what the internet is.
• 44:24
  You don't
• 44:25
  pay for your calendar or your email.
• 44:28
  I mean a corporate will,
• 44:29
  which is why I think so many
• 44:30
  AI companies
• 44:30
  are focusing on the enterprise.
• 44:32
  We decided to focus on the consumer,
• 44:34
  on the fun and entertainment stuff,
• 44:35
  because actually,
• 44:36
  outside of the revenue opportunity,
• 44:37
  we actually think that's
• 44:38
  what people really want to do.
• 44:39
  So that's what we're super excited about.
• 44:40
  And, you know, the product launched
• 44:42
  only in February of this year
• 44:43
  and we're already the third largest.
• 44:45
  So that's why we're so excited about it.
• 44:47
  Excitement is great.
• 44:48
  Obviously momentum is great.
• 44:49
  Yeah.
• 44:49
  As you know
• 44:50
  you just mentioned the genius act.
• 44:52
  It's obviously a sea change
• 44:54
  in regulatory
• 44:56
  in the United States
• 44:56
  from this administration last semester.
• 44:58
  And again
• 44:58
  with exotic,
• 45:00
  I think everybody would agree that it's a
• 45:02
  particularly in this one.
• 45:04
  Politics aside,
• 45:05
  obviously Animalia operates around hence
• 45:07
  if not hundreds of jurisdictions
• 45:08
  and obviously the United States
• 45:09
  a big market.
• 45:10
  What have you learned
• 45:11
  and what would you like to see
• 45:13
  from a regulatory perspective
• 45:14
  going forward?
• 45:16
  I think a lot of hopes for the US
• 45:18
  that we had
• 45:19
  was around
• 45:20
  the passing of the Clarity Act,
• 45:21
  not because we needed,
• 45:23
  you know,
• 45:24
  sort of a
• 45:24
  some kind of clearer
• 45:25
  definition on utility tokens
• 45:26
  and all that kind of stuff.
• 45:28
  But it basically
• 45:29
  makes the largest economy in the world
• 45:31
  put out a global standard
• 45:32
  that others could follow.
• 45:33
  I mean, at the end of the day,
• 45:34
  I mean, it's a gigantic market, right?
• 45:35
  It is the lead.
• 45:37
  If the US says
• 45:37
  this is how we think of tokens,
• 45:39
  the rest of the world will follow.
• 45:40
  And the positive thing about the Clarity
• 45:42
  Act is it
• 45:42
  would basically make
• 45:43
  some very clear definitions
• 45:44
  as to what is truly, truly token.
• 45:46
  And if it's in law.
• 45:48
  I think many of the mid to large sized
• 45:49
  companies can now fully
• 45:50
  embrace tokenization.
• 45:51
  I think the challenge right now,
• 45:53
  if you're like a
• 45:54
  just call it
• 45:54
  a mid-sized entertainment
• 45:56
  or gaming company
• 45:56
  or whatever kind of company you might be
• 45:58
  embracing.
• 45:59
  Tokenization comes with risks
• 46:00
  and the risk is political.
• 46:02
  What happens if it doesn't become law?
• 46:04
  Then yeah, you could do executive orders.
• 46:06
  You could do
• 46:07
  all sorts of
• 46:08
  sort of indications and changes.
• 46:09
  But if there's a negative
• 46:10
  rulemaking on something, you take a risk.
• 46:12
  And why would you take a risk
• 46:13
  on racing, a strategy
• 46:14
  that might look like it'd
• 46:15
  have a shelf life versus
• 46:17
  if it actually went into law,
• 46:19
  then you know that
• 46:20
  something that is defensible
• 46:21
  and will be here for a long time.
• 46:23
  Then you can start
• 46:24
  building a long term strategy
• 46:25
  like mid to medium to large
• 46:26
  sized companies
• 46:27
  don't operate on 1 or 2 year cycles.
• 46:29
  They're thinking about
• 46:30
  and building a strategy.
• 46:31
  And it's going to work for the,
• 46:32
  you know, decades to come. Right?
• 46:33
  And that's the struggle that
• 46:35
  when when that isn't there,
• 46:36
  then you have,
• 46:37
  you know, lawyers making assumptions
• 46:39
  about what would happen. Sure.
• 46:41
  And, you know, risk analysis
• 46:42
  and risk management.
• 46:43
  And that works for a startup
• 46:45
  that works for smaller companies
• 46:47
  because they kind of
• 46:47
  have to take these risks,
• 46:48
  or companies like us
• 46:49
  who are already navigating those waters,
• 46:51
  or they can do stuff with the margins
• 46:52
  that's not as impactful
• 46:53
  because it's smaller.
• 46:54
  Correct. Exactly.
• 46:54
  And this is one of the struggles,
• 46:56
  I mean, the classic innovators
• 46:57
  dilemma, right?
• 46:58
  You know, as Clay
• 46:58
  Christensen describes it, in terms
• 47:00
  of where companies struggles
• 47:02
  because they will do these innovations,
• 47:03
  but it's always on the margin,
• 47:05
  and it's always a little bit
• 47:06
  because they're not willing to risk
• 47:07
  sort of,
• 47:08
  you know, risk, risk,
• 47:08
  risk everything on it,
• 47:09
  which is understandable
• 47:10
  unless it's a security. Right.
• 47:11
  That's easy. Yeah.
• 47:12
  Unless you're willing
• 47:12
  to go through the steps
• 47:13
  of having a security.
• 47:14
  And there are some things
• 47:15
  that are going to be securities
• 47:16
  are clearly securities.
• 47:17
  That's cool. Right.
• 47:18
  However, for all the other things,
• 47:20
  even gaming assets and so on.
• 47:21
  You could argue
• 47:22
  there could be a question
• 47:23
  mark in the future.
• 47:24
  And even though we and maybe
• 47:26
  your firm or others
• 47:27
  would be very confident
• 47:28
  that it should be okay, it's not enough
• 47:31
  that it could be okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 47:32
  Right. Yeah. That's that's the challenge.
• 47:34
  Yeah. The legal.
• 47:35
  So number one wish list is clarity.
• 47:38
  I mean, if clarity passes
• 47:39
  the rest of the world
• 47:40
  follow a version of that.
• 47:41
  I think that would be,
• 47:42
  you know,
• 47:42
  a godsend for our entire industry.
• 47:44
  There are many, many challenges
• 47:44
  that we probably have to go into today
• 47:46
  as to why
• 47:48
  keep this positive?
• 47:49
  And I'm going to give you
• 47:51
  you're talking to the to the wavelength
• 47:52
  lawyer over here.
• 47:53
  No, no, no.
• 47:54
  But I would say one other thing, right.
• 47:55
  Maybe just
• 47:56
  maintaining on the positive note,
• 47:58
  which is that in many ways, and again,
• 48:01
  this is not to sort of disparage
• 48:02
  the US because the US is actually,
• 48:03
  you know, the leader in this space.
• 48:04
  But the fact that the US can't
• 48:06
  get their act together,
• 48:07
  it's the opportunity for other countries.
• 48:09
  I mean,
• 48:09
  if you look at, for instance, UAE,
• 48:11
  Dubai, Abu Dhabi,
• 48:12
  they've really advanced in this space
• 48:14
  because they embraced it.
• 48:15
  And in a way
• 48:16
  they've become a big center for that
• 48:18
  Hong Kong as well.
• 48:19
  Parts of Asia. Right.
• 48:21
  So these places are emerging
• 48:22
  as leaders
• 48:23
  precisely because the largest market
• 48:26
  is not leading in all fronts. Yeah, sure.
• 48:29
  And so that is the opportunity.
• 48:30
  And so the other challenges that okay,
• 48:32
  if the US isn't quite ready yet for that,
• 48:34
  is there a chance for someone else.
• 48:35
  And you see this with the stablecoin,
• 48:37
  you know, so
• 48:38
  what Hong Kong was able to do
• 48:39
  in comparison to the US. Yeah. Yeah.
• 48:41
  Not only did
• 48:41
  they get
• 48:42
  the act out on Congress before genius,
• 48:44
  although that was really
• 48:45
  just a couple of weeks.
• 48:46
  They actually got the license
• 48:47
  out to the parties, arguably
• 48:49
  probably a year ahead at least.
• 48:50
  Yeah. Amazing.
• 48:51
  I think we all agree broadly.
• 48:52
  It would be great
• 48:53
  if the United States got got a line on.
• 48:55
  I believe they will. It's a timing.
• 48:56
  It may be later, that's all.
• 48:58
  Yeah.
• 48:58
  Well,
• 48:58
  speaking of timing,
• 48:59
  and we've already talked about web four
• 49:01
  and your vision for it. Tokenization.
• 49:04
  All right.
• 49:04
  So obviously coordinated by.
• 49:06
  But I'd love to get a little bit
• 49:07
  more specific here.
• 49:08
  And the reason I mentioned timing is
• 49:09
  tokenization takes timing out of it.
• 49:10
  Because now you have the asset.
• 49:11
  You could do whatever you want.
• 49:12
  You can do now, you can do it later.
• 49:13
  You could wait forever.
• 49:14
  You could
• 49:14
  you could have your kids inherited
• 49:16
  whatever it is. Real world assets, right?
• 49:19
  That's as a lawyer,
• 49:20
  I've been spending a lot of time on AI,
• 49:22
  infra, GPU financing.
• 49:24
  I've let some of the big deals
• 49:25
  that I've created to compute around,
• 49:28
  from real estate to treasuries.
• 49:30
  You've spoken about real opportunities
• 49:32
  for tokenization.
• 49:33
  Run the audience here through
• 49:36
  how do you see tokenization working for
• 49:39
  a pick two objects, a baseball card,
• 49:42
  the easy one, right.
• 49:42
  Because it's similar to Pokemon
• 49:44
  and then a house. Yeah.
• 49:46
  So and then later on, you know,
• 49:48
  if I forget to remind me, I'm going
• 49:49
  to want to talk
• 49:49
  about exactly why tokenization
• 49:51
  is such an incredible opportunity
• 49:52
  broadly for society, I think.
• 49:54
  But first,
• 49:55
  the baseball card in allergy
• 49:57
  is pretty straightforward.
• 49:58
  You can
• 49:58
  basically take any baseball cards out
• 50:00
  that has some kind of value.
• 50:01
  You tokenize it as an NFT in this case
• 50:03
  because it's unique,
• 50:04
  and then you can start trading it.
• 50:06
  It will be vaulted somewhere safe.
• 50:08
  So someone would be able to prove
• 50:09
  that this is the actual asset.
• 50:10
  So you have an oracle
• 50:11
  that basically proves that
• 50:12
  that's kind of what you see
• 50:13
  happening today with with Pokemon cards.
• 50:15
  Now the value
• 50:17
  isn't that I can just traded.
• 50:18
  I mean, one could argue,
• 50:19
  yeah, I can
• 50:20
  I can build my own marketplace for this.
• 50:21
  It's the fact that there is now
• 50:22
  a standard
• 50:23
  that everyone in the world
• 50:25
  can already adopt.
• 50:25
  And every marketplace, be it an open
• 50:28
  sea, be it a magic Eden,
• 50:30
  both portfolio companies, by the way,
• 50:31
  and any other marketplace
• 50:33
  or any exchange in the world
• 50:35
  can now accept this token.
• 50:37
  So I think the thing to understand
• 50:38
  about tokens is there is a standard,
• 50:41
  whether it's an early standard
• 50:42
  or Solana standard or whatever standard,
• 50:44
  that is now widely accepted
• 50:46
  and therefore creates a common system
• 50:48
  that you can trade around
• 50:49
  and it is not closed.
• 50:51
  So that means that I could trade
• 50:52
  between peers,
• 50:53
  I could in the marketplace
• 50:55
  and does not show price discovery.
• 50:56
  And it also means that
• 50:58
  because it's a global standard,
• 50:59
  it could be a marketplace
• 51:01
  in the middle of Africa
• 51:02
  and a marketplace
• 51:03
  in the middle of Pakistan.
• 51:04
  And it could be a marketplace
• 51:05
  right here in New York.
• 51:06
  And so the global market comes together.
• 51:08
  And in the same way
• 51:09
  that the internet opened up
• 51:11
  many global opportunities,
• 51:12
  that's what this does,
• 51:13
  but much more freer,
• 51:14
  because
• 51:15
  even if I have the ability
• 51:16
  to buy something eBay,
• 51:17
  that doesn't mean that I can ship it
• 51:19
  there.
• 51:19
  Like,
• 51:19
  you know, being able to shop from eBay
• 51:21
  in, I don't know,
• 51:22
  Zimbabwe might be hard, for instance.
• 51:24
  Right?
• 51:24
  But if it's a token,
• 51:25
  I can do that right away.
• 51:26
  And because I can use it
• 51:27
  with a stablecoin
• 51:28
  or some kind of token,
• 51:29
  I can do that transaction seamlessly.
• 51:31
  So it expands market opportunities
• 51:33
  on arguably niche industries
• 51:35
  that can actually make them
• 51:36
  make them larger.
• 51:36
  And which means that the baseball card
• 51:38
  analogy is perfect because you could
• 51:40
  now offer these baseball cards in markets
• 51:42
  you would have never have
• 51:43
  maybe thought to sell them
• 51:44
  because there's a value there
• 51:45
  or an interest there
• 51:46
  from a distribution standpoint,
• 51:47
  in the same way that information
• 51:48
  used to flow so freely over the internet.
• 51:50
  Now, basically,
• 51:51
  you can do that with all sorts
• 51:52
  of assets of interest.
• 51:53
  And of course there is
• 51:54
  some speculation involved as well
• 51:55
  if you think it's valuable.
• 51:57
  Now when we talk
• 51:57
  about tokenizing something,
• 51:58
  a real estate,
• 51:59
  I mean that
• 52:00
  I mean, you're
• 52:00
  the lawyer here to tell me,
• 52:01
  but I think that is a much more
• 52:03
  in the realm of securities. Right.
• 52:05
  And I think although some people
• 52:06
  are being pretty creative around this,
• 52:09
  I've seen some models
• 52:09
  where people are basically tokenizing it,
• 52:12
  and treating it
• 52:13
  more like club membership, for instance.
• 52:15
  Right?
• 52:15
  So there are ways around that.
• 52:16
  But broadly speaking,
• 52:17
  we would take the lens of this
• 52:18
  as a security. It's fractional ownership.
• 52:20
  There's a yield
• 52:21
  and there's an earning
• 52:22
  that comes from that
• 52:23
  because someone's managing the property
• 52:25
  and there's some distribution of value
• 52:26
  that emerges from that. Yeah.
• 52:28
  For the audience
• 52:29
  here, a very important distinction
• 52:30
  between a general token,
• 52:33
  where it's just a value of the asset
• 52:35
  and ownership of the asset,
• 52:36
  and then a security
• 52:37
  where you you tokenize it.
• 52:39
  But there is a economic element,
• 52:42
  you can call it a yield,
• 52:43
  fees, whatever it is.
• 52:44
  But anytime you have that,
• 52:46
  that then creates a strong assertion.
• 52:50
  I'll leave the legal word
• 52:51
  on its strong assertion
• 52:52
  that it is a security
• 52:53
  and therefore needs to follow
• 52:54
  the relevant security laws
• 52:55
  of whatever country jurisdiction it's in.
• 52:57
  But I think a simplified way
• 52:58
  to think about an asset like
• 52:59
  this is like a mini IPO, right?
• 53:01
  I mean, we like to think of it
• 53:02
  and a mini IPO,
• 53:03
  we don't mean that it has to be
• 53:05
  like a full fledged
• 53:05
  prospectus and everything,
• 53:06
  but because it's a security,
• 53:07
  there are things you have to do.
• 53:09
  And then if you want to create
• 53:10
  shared ownership across
• 53:11
  whether it's ten people,
• 53:12
  hundred people, 1000
• 53:13
  people and million people,
• 53:14
  you can now fractions
• 53:15
  that and there's many platforms
• 53:16
  out there in the world
• 53:17
  that will allow you a way to basically
• 53:19
  sort of
• 53:19
  both tokenize
• 53:20
  and distribute it
• 53:21
  to the qualified buyers
• 53:22
  on an asset class.
• 53:23
  That might not be easy for you
• 53:25
  to normally get access to,
• 53:27
  or gives you access to an asset class
• 53:30
  outside of your normal jurisdiction.
• 53:31
  Right?
• 53:32
  So for instance, in our joint venture
• 53:34
  with with with provenance,
• 53:35
  your first product is distributing
• 53:37
  blocks. Right.
• 53:37
  And he locks, you know, the innovation on
• 53:40
  and on.
• 53:41
  It's not just a
• 53:41
  6 to 7% yield that you might generate.
• 53:43
  That's okay.
• 53:44
  It's the fact that you can
• 53:45
  actually redeem it hourly.
• 53:47
  And that is an interesting product for,
• 53:50
  you know,
• 53:50
  someone maybe in,
• 53:51
  you know, middle of Africa
• 53:53
  or in Southeast Asia
• 53:54
  who may not have a bank account,
• 53:56
  but he has stables,
• 53:57
  and is he going to invest it in
• 53:59
  something local
• 54:00
  that may or may not be great?
• 54:01
  Or does he think that, you know,
• 54:02
  the helix product,
• 54:03
  boring as it might be
• 54:04
  generally, is not the
• 54:04
  most exciting thing, but seems safe,
• 54:07
  you know,
• 54:07
  good yield backed by figure
• 54:09
  like whatever these things might be,
• 54:10
  they might say, you know what,
• 54:11
  I'll put money into that
• 54:13
  and I can withdraw it every hour.
• 54:14
  That's good enough for me.
• 54:15
  Meanwhile, I get, you know,
• 54:16
  let's call it 6% yield.
• 54:17
  Those are things that you can now do
• 54:19
  and you have access to was before.
• 54:21
  And by the way,
• 54:22
  I could do that for a dollar, right?
• 54:24
  Yeah.
• 54:24
  You could do it in small as possible.
• 54:26
  And that is a key thing
• 54:26
  about tokenization as well,
• 54:28
  because in the world,
• 54:30
  I might have to sell this product
• 54:31
  for at least $500
• 54:33
  because the cost,
• 54:34
  the clearance,
• 54:35
  the structure would cost too much.
• 54:37
  Earlier this year,
• 54:38
  I was in a talk with
• 54:39
  with with Jenny Johnson
• 54:41
  from Franklin Templeton,
• 54:42
  and she was sharing
• 54:43
  how them tokenizing their products
• 54:45
  essentially allowed a product that was,
• 54:47
  I think, a 500 or $1000.
• 54:48
  If you didn't sell it
• 54:49
  for at least that price,
• 54:50
  it wouldn't be profitable.
• 54:51
  And now they could sell the same product
• 54:53
  for 10 or $20,
• 54:54
  and we're able to basically
• 54:55
  just reach more distribution.
• 54:56
  And, you know,
• 54:57
  one of the shocking factors is
• 54:58
  I think I read this somewhere,
• 55:00
  I think it was from Pew,
• 55:00
  but I'm not quite sure.
• 55:01
  But I think the average household
• 55:03
  savings in America
• 55:05
  is something in the order of $500.
• 55:07
  Yeah, yeah,
• 55:07
  actually,
• 55:08
  I was just going over this
• 55:09
  stab with my kids just to to
• 55:10
  because I try to remind them
• 55:12
  regularly how they are,
• 55:15
  how they should repeat every day
• 55:16
  that their fortune. Grateful. Yes.
• 55:18
  47% of Americans have around $400 left.
• 55:22
  There we go.
• 55:22
  Okay, so that's your savings account.
• 55:24
  So if you want to be able to invest
• 55:26
  in a safe yielding product
• 55:28
  and your minimum order is $500,
• 55:31
  you're out.
• 55:32
  You just completely out.
• 55:33
  Now, if I could buy the same product
• 55:35
  for 10 to $20, I have an option.
• 55:37
  Even if it is not the best option,
• 55:38
  I have an option.
• 55:40
  I have a way to participate
• 55:41
  in the same product
• 55:42
  that someone
• 55:42
  who is maybe medium
• 55:44
  income or even high income
• 55:46
  because of what tokenization offers.
• 55:47
  And that to me is one of the big knocks,
• 55:50
  because one of the big angers we have
• 55:52
  in the world,
• 55:52
  particularly in the democratic world,
• 55:54
  is this sense of exclusion.
• 55:55
  Why are people going,
• 55:57
  oh, you know, socialism and communism
• 55:59
  and all that kind of stuff
• 56:00
  is because
• 56:01
  if you're excluded
• 56:02
  from the capitalist environment
• 56:03
  and what else is there,
• 56:04
  you may as well just rail against it.
• 56:06
  Right?
• 56:06
  And that's exactly the problem we have
• 56:08
  because they're not included.
• 56:09
  But if I have a,
• 56:10
  you know, if I have only $500,
• 56:11
  but it happens to be
• 56:12
  that $300 is invested
• 56:14
  in the capitalist system,
• 56:15
  that generates me some yield,
• 56:17
  then I am part of the system,
• 56:19
  and I see the opportunity
• 56:20
  and I can grow from it.
• 56:21
  And more importantly,
• 56:22
  I can learn from that.
• 56:23
  I rarely play devil's advocate,
• 56:25
  even though my wife will tell you
• 56:26
  I do that regularly. Of course,
• 56:29
  that's fine,
• 56:30
  but let me
• 56:31
  put on my morally
• 56:32
  paternalistic hat for a second.
• 56:33
  I rarely put it on, but let me do it.
• 56:35
  Let me do it.
• 56:36
  Obviously,
• 56:37
  some of these rules
• 56:38
  with minimum and maximum amounts
• 56:40
  are meant to protect folks
• 56:41
  who may not be able to absorb
• 56:43
  the cushion of loss or return. Right.
• 56:46
  So there is a reason
• 56:47
  y x dollar is
• 56:49
  there is because you generally
• 56:50
  speaking, folks who have X dollars
• 56:52
  can absorb
• 56:53
  certain losses better than folks
• 56:54
  who don't have X dollars, right?
• 56:56
  What would be the protection?
• 56:57
  This actually dovetails
• 56:58
  perfectly to broadly tokenization
• 57:00
  and some of the legal concerns
• 57:02
  with assets and abuse,
• 57:03
  particularly when you talk
• 57:04
  about global, etc..
• 57:05
  How do you solve these issues?
• 57:07
  Well,
• 57:07
  I think the first one to solve here
• 57:09
  is that we need to increase
• 57:10
  financial literacy, broadly speaking.
• 57:12
  And I think financial literacy
• 57:13
  is solved by inclusion
• 57:15
  in products that you have interest in.
• 57:16
  So we have a particular view on this,
• 57:18
  which is that is very difficult
• 57:20
  to get people to be interested in a topic
• 57:22
  unless they have some level of passion
• 57:23
  around it, which is true. Everything.
• 57:25
  I mean,
• 57:25
  you go to college and go to school
• 57:26
  and this classes where you just like,
• 57:28
  you know, basically brain dead
• 57:29
  and there's other classes
• 57:30
  were just really excited
• 57:31
  because you have
• 57:31
  a personal interest in it. Sure.
• 57:33
  And it turns out that, you know,
• 57:34
  while everyone is interested
• 57:35
  in having money for the sake of money,
• 57:37
  most people
• 57:39
  look at money as a means to an end.
• 57:41
  Only a few,
• 57:42
  particularly those in Wall Street,
• 57:43
  are probably thinking
• 57:44
  about money as an end in itself. Right?
• 57:45
  So there's a
• 57:46
  there's that construct, right?
• 57:47
  Yeah. By the way, just so the irons. No.
• 57:49
  Yeah.
• 57:49
  And I are sitting
• 57:50
  in the heart of New York City,
• 57:52
  Wall Street in Midtown.
• 57:53
  So it's it's pretty funny. Yeah.
• 57:55
  And I mean,
• 57:56
  and New York and Hong Kong and London,
• 57:58
  I mean, there are centers for this.
• 57:59
  And the reason
• 58:00
  why they have so much wealth
• 58:01
  is because they understand
• 58:02
  money really well.
• 58:03
  Financial literacy is super high, right?
• 58:05
  And the world of have and have nots
• 58:08
  is divided between the worlds
• 58:09
  who know money and the ones who don't.
• 58:11
  Right. So.
• 58:12
  So I think that's
• 58:12
  one of the big areas to solve.
• 58:14
  And I'll get to the question
• 58:15
  on how to protect the sort of
• 58:17
  safety rails,
• 58:17
  because that part to me is easier
• 58:19
  because there are certain products,
• 58:20
  like for instance, you know,
• 58:22
  like prime mortgages,
• 58:24
  stocks and bonds or particularly sort of,
• 58:26
  you know, basically certain
• 58:27
  kind of mutual funds
• 58:27
  or even basically treasury bills.
• 58:29
  I mean,
• 58:30
  these are things that arguably
• 58:31
  would be considered fairly safe,
• 58:33
  but they're simply not accessible
• 58:35
  to the regular user.
• 58:36
  And also they are not aware of it.
• 58:38
  So there's a certain category.
• 58:39
  Yes.
• 58:40
  You know investing in space IPO okay.
• 58:42
  Who knows right.
• 58:43
  You know,
• 58:44
  but it's
• 58:44
  certainly better
• 58:44
  than investing in meme coins. Right.
• 58:46
  And I think what's happened
• 58:47
  with the meme coin sort of error
• 58:48
  is because it was outside of regulation.
• 58:50
  Therefore everyone just gambling on it
• 58:52
  and it's become this giant casino,
• 58:53
  which is actually worse
• 58:55
  than being able
• 58:55
  to actually put something
• 58:56
  in an asset that you can learn
• 58:58
  and study and understand.
• 58:59
  So I think I understand the point,
• 59:01
  but by excluding them or,
• 59:03
  you know, take Europe as an example,
• 59:05
  Europe has taken this
• 59:06
  absolutely draconian approach
• 59:08
  and it's backfired completely.
• 59:09
  Yeah, yeah,
• 59:10
  I was actually hoping
• 59:11
  you would go there because there are
• 59:12
  there are limits to
• 59:14
  the moral paternalism, right.
• 59:15
  You can put the hat on, but ultimately
• 59:16
  the safest thing is to do nothing.
• 59:18
  And that clearly is not a solution.
• 59:19
  Yeah.
• 59:19
  Well
• 59:20
  and also just feeling
• 59:21
  statistically in the world
• 59:22
  that is ever changing.
• 59:23
  Doing nothing is a worse risk. Right?
• 59:25
  Whereas if you assume
• 59:26
  that's actually an amazing point,
• 59:27
  I like to repeat that.
• 59:28
  Like everybody thinks that doing
• 59:29
  nothing is safe. That's absolutely wrong.
• 59:31
  I keep on telling that to my teams.
• 59:33
  Wherever you do it, like
• 59:35
  our clients are trying
• 59:36
  to solve, their option of doing
• 59:37
  nothing is almost non-existent.
• 59:39
  The option to do nothing is death, right?
• 59:40
  And the rate of change
• 59:42
  is accelerating ever faster.
• 59:43
  I mean, just think about AI
• 59:44
  as an example.
• 59:45
  What's going to do
• 59:45
  if you do nothing, you will be toast.
• 59:47
  Now, what is a vehicle
• 59:49
  in expanding financial literacy?
• 59:50
  This is kind of where I think
• 59:51
  tokenization is is awesome.
• 59:53
  So I mean, your kids,
• 59:54
  but my kids learned about money
• 59:56
  with Pokemon cards
• 59:57
  because school didn't teach them.
• 59:59
  But I had a card
• 1:00:00
  that someone else wanted.
• 1:00:01
  There was a value.
• 1:00:02
  Why did he want that value?
• 1:00:03
  Because it was rare.
• 1:00:04
  Because that just color or what is it?
• 1:00:06
  That is a study of learning
• 1:00:08
  how value is generated.
• 1:00:09
  And there's a human connection
• 1:00:10
  around that relationship.
• 1:00:12
  The second sort of a story
• 1:00:13
  is like two years ago
• 1:00:14
  or maybe three years ago.
• 1:00:15
  Gosh, it seems so long ago.
• 1:00:16
  Yeah, 23 or 3 years ago
• 1:00:18
  with Galaxy, we tokenized Stratovarius.
• 1:00:20
  But those who don't know,
• 1:00:21
  Stradivarius is a super valuable,
• 1:00:23
  rare musical instrument
• 1:00:24
  that typically has only gone up in value
• 1:00:26
  over the last 100 years of 200 years,
• 1:00:28
  between 10 to 15%.
• 1:00:30
  So it's a very safe
• 1:00:30
  yielding asset if you think about it.
• 1:00:31
  Right.
• 1:00:32
  However,
• 1:00:33
  the audience that would appreciate it,
• 1:00:34
  which just musicians simply cannot afford
• 1:00:37
  a multimillion dollar instrument, just,
• 1:00:38
  you know, a musician just to make money.
• 1:00:40
  Right.
• 1:00:40
  But if it was available in a fractional
• 1:00:43
  tokenized format,
• 1:00:44
  I could now have an asset
• 1:00:45
  that I have a personal connection to it
• 1:00:47
  that actually generates a yield
• 1:00:48
  that's positive
• 1:00:49
  and it teaches me about money.
• 1:00:51
  My mom will never buy Bitcoin
• 1:00:53
  doesn't care about it.
• 1:00:54
  She's probably
• 1:00:55
  not gonna buy a test of space
• 1:00:56
  because she doesn't
• 1:00:57
  really know about this,
• 1:00:57
  but she is interested
• 1:00:58
  in owning a piece of a Stradivarius.
• 1:01:01
  And my mom, as an artist,
• 1:01:02
  grew up in an environment
• 1:01:03
  where she was told
• 1:01:05
  that I wouldn't say money's evil,
• 1:01:07
  but it's kind of rude to talk about it.
• 1:01:08
  Anyway, it was Europe as well.
• 1:01:09
  It just adds to it, right?
• 1:01:10
  It's certain cultures.
• 1:01:11
  It's you can openly talk.
• 1:01:13
  Yes, you can ask. You can even ask.
• 1:01:15
  Go as far as asking
• 1:01:15
  how much somebody makes.
• 1:01:17
  And in certain culture,
• 1:01:17
  you can't talk about at all.
• 1:01:18
  Like it's absolutely like football.
• 1:01:20
  Like it is completely rude to do so.
• 1:01:23
  And unfortunately,
• 1:01:24
  if it is rude to talk about it
• 1:01:26
  and you can't discuss it.
• 1:01:27
  You can't learn about it,
• 1:01:28
  can't learn about it.
• 1:01:28
  And that is in itself
• 1:01:30
  a kind of evil,
• 1:01:31
  because that's censorship.
• 1:01:32
  That's self-censorship of
• 1:01:33
  I can't talk about
• 1:01:34
  how much money I make means
• 1:01:35
  that I'm actually excluding myself
• 1:01:38
  from a capitalist order.
• 1:01:39
  And then we should be surprised
• 1:01:41
  that you know
• 1:01:41
  nothing about money
• 1:01:42
  and you make less money, right?
• 1:01:43
  Like,
• 1:01:43
  these are all these things that sort of,
• 1:01:45
  sort of negative reinforcement.
• 1:01:46
  But if I can now buy a product
• 1:01:48
  in which I'm passionate
• 1:01:49
  about
• 1:01:50
  whether this is dinosaur bones, fossils,
• 1:01:53
  art or culture or Pokemon cards,
• 1:01:56
  through the process of simply buying,
• 1:01:58
  I become an investor.
• 1:02:00
  When I become an investor,
• 1:02:01
  I ask myself the question
• 1:02:02
  why did I invest it?
• 1:02:04
  Why is it worth this?
• 1:02:05
  And that's,
• 1:02:06
  to me, the path of financial literacy,
• 1:02:08
  which is financial inclusion.
• 1:02:10
  I think the global standard of people
• 1:02:12
  who are considered financially literate,
• 1:02:13
  I mean, take away sort of
• 1:02:14
  if you're starting away,
• 1:02:15
  the West is like 10%.
• 1:02:18
  It's abysmal, right?
• 1:02:19
  And when you look at the global stats,
• 1:02:21
  it's something like 40%
• 1:02:22
  or only 40% of the world
• 1:02:24
  actually have a normalized
• 1:02:25
  financial access.
• 1:02:27
  And then think about all the people
• 1:02:28
  here, even here in America,
• 1:02:29
  who have a bank account.
• 1:02:30
  So technically
• 1:02:31
  they're financially included.
• 1:02:32
  But actually are they buying stocks?
• 1:02:34
  Are they investing?
• 1:02:35
  It's not like you have,
• 1:02:35
  you know, every citizen in America
• 1:02:37
  trading on Robinhood or something.
• 1:02:38
  You know, it's growing,
• 1:02:39
  but most people don't have a portfolio.
• 1:02:41
  And part of it is also
• 1:02:42
  because they don't have enough money
• 1:02:44
  because they also can invest with it.
• 1:02:45
  Like, again,
• 1:02:46
  you know,
• 1:02:46
  like for my kids, for instance, you know,
• 1:02:47
  why shouldn't my 12 year old, a 13 year
• 1:02:51
  old have the ability to invest in stocks
• 1:02:52
  with $10, right?
• 1:02:54
  Why should we just say
• 1:02:55
  you have to be a certain age
• 1:02:56
  and you have to be certainly qualified,
• 1:02:58
  right?
• 1:02:58
  I mean, that's it's
• 1:02:59
  just a matter of how much, right?
• 1:03:00
  So these are all these things
• 1:03:01
  where I think
• 1:03:02
  you can teach people about money.
• 1:03:03
  One sort of anecdotal story here,
• 1:03:05
  which I think might be fun.
• 1:03:06
  When I first came to Hong Kong,
• 1:03:07
  you know,
• 1:03:07
  coming from Europe and everything. Right.
• 1:03:09
  I saw how
• 1:03:11
  where you resist this was 93, 94.
• 1:03:14
  So it was like a long time ago.
• 1:03:15
  I was taking a train in.
• 1:03:17
  I wasn't going to the races,
• 1:03:18
  but this horse races enchanting
• 1:03:20
  as wasn't Happy Valley.
• 1:03:22
  And I was in the train
• 1:03:23
  and I saw how her dad was teaching.
• 1:03:24
  I think it was 5 or 6 year old kid,
• 1:03:26
  basically how to bet on horses.
• 1:03:28
  So coming from Austria, I was like,
• 1:03:31
  what is he doing
• 1:03:32
  turning his six year
• 1:03:33
  old into a Jane, right?
• 1:03:34
  Like, what is this? Right?
• 1:03:35
  Yeah. No. That's amazing.
• 1:03:35
  Yeah.
• 1:03:36
  And I came to realize, actually,
• 1:03:38
  he wasn't like some evil.
• 1:03:39
  It was just fun.
• 1:03:40
  And there was an openness
• 1:03:42
  around the fun of money, shall we say.
• 1:03:44
  And then you see this in Chinese culture,
• 1:03:47
  it's very common.
• 1:03:48
  And I think New York is same,
• 1:03:50
  that you make friendships
• 1:03:51
  in business,
• 1:03:52
  that you make friendships
• 1:03:53
  from work and from.
• 1:03:55
  And money plays a social glue role.
• 1:03:58
  And, you know, go to my friends in Europe
• 1:03:59
  and I can't talk about money.
• 1:04:01
  And making relationships with money,
• 1:04:03
  so to speak, is actually considered
• 1:04:06
  not something you really want to do
• 1:04:07
  or is considered maybe even dirty. Right?
• 1:04:10
  And so that unfortunately creates
• 1:04:11
  this really sort of big divide and gap.
• 1:04:13
  And I think that needs to be changed.
• 1:04:14
  I think we need to be much more open
• 1:04:16
  to talk about money,
• 1:04:17
  you know, the good and the bad, right.
• 1:04:18
  You can't
• 1:04:19
  you can't discuss it to takeaways one,
• 1:04:21
  we obviously do need to address
• 1:04:23
  the bad that comes in money right.
• 1:04:24
  There's there's there's addiction there's
• 1:04:26
  but but like with everything
• 1:04:27
  killing the golden goose
• 1:04:29
  just because you can take the gander
• 1:04:30
  home is not a solution in itself.
• 1:04:31
  So and you need knowledge,
• 1:04:33
  and you need
• 1:04:33
  knowledge to be able
• 1:04:34
  to handle it and support.
• 1:04:35
  But knowing what the bad can be
• 1:04:37
  is part of the good.
• 1:04:39
  Yeah. Absolutely. No playing the game.
• 1:04:40
  And then the number two take away from me
• 1:04:42
  is for all the audience,
• 1:04:43
  please play monopoly with your kids.
• 1:04:46
  Just gotta do it.
• 1:04:47
  Play it all the way.
• 1:04:48
  Explain to them
• 1:04:48
  why the boardwalk is more
• 1:04:50
  the risk of it, etc.
• 1:04:51
  I mean, I think,
• 1:04:52
  I think monopoly is interesting.
• 1:04:54
  I do think monopoly is great
• 1:04:55
  to teach people around money, but,
• 1:04:58
  you know,
• 1:04:58
  monopoly is ultimately a zero sum game.
• 1:05:00
  So the lesson here is interesting.
• 1:05:02
  Yeah. That's fair.
• 1:05:03
  So so the lesson is to learn about money,
• 1:05:05
  but not necessarily to think in
• 1:05:06
  some ways.
• 1:05:07
  But it is important because,
• 1:05:08
  you know,
• 1:05:08
  a lot of the world
• 1:05:09
  still operates in some ways.
• 1:05:11
  Cool.
• 1:05:12
  Well, I'm watching a time
• 1:05:13
  and I don't want to hit you
• 1:05:14
  with my favorite part
• 1:05:15
  of the podcast, right?
• 1:05:17
  I call that the more personal stuff.
• 1:05:19
  And I including one of my favorites,
• 1:05:20
  which is the poker table question.
• 1:05:22
  So for Founders Building right now
• 1:05:24
  on Web3 and Web four.
• 1:05:26
  What's a single biggest mistake.
• 1:05:27
  You see the making
• 1:05:28
  and what would you tell them
• 1:05:29
  to do differently.
• 1:05:30
  Now here's the rule for this part.
• 1:05:32
  Yacht is going to be one one answer.
• 1:05:34
  What's the one thing you would tell
• 1:05:35
  a founder building right now.
• 1:05:37
  The biggest mistake you'll make
• 1:05:38
  and what you do differently?
• 1:05:40
  If it's Web3,
• 1:05:41
  I would say the biggest mistake is
• 1:05:45
  to start first with the token.
• 1:05:47
  What I mean by
• 1:05:48
  that is
• 1:05:48
  that you need to have a token construct.
• 1:05:51
  But I think in this environment,
• 1:05:53
  especially now,
• 1:05:53
  because of clarity,
• 1:05:54
  you can lead with utility,
• 1:05:56
  you can lead with function,
• 1:05:58
  you can lead with purpose of the project
• 1:06:00
  in which the token can express itself.
• 1:06:02
  Whereas in the past
• 1:06:03
  the token was the expression
• 1:06:05
  in and of itself,
• 1:06:05
  and there was a way to launch something,
• 1:06:08
  and then from there build something.
• 1:06:10
  And I think that era has passed,
• 1:06:11
  but I think a lot of
• 1:06:12
  people are still thinking
• 1:06:13
  in the construct of let's launch a token
• 1:06:14
  and then do the project.
• 1:06:15
  That doesn't work anymore.
• 1:06:16
  Interesting. Very, very interesting.
• 1:06:18
  It leads me to a second question,
• 1:06:20
  and this is my favorite one.
• 1:06:21
  I love all games,
• 1:06:23
  but I really, really love poker.
• 1:06:26
  And the reason I love
• 1:06:27
  poker versus other games.
• 1:06:28
  It's the classic stochastic game, right?
• 1:06:31
  Chess is very deterministic.
• 1:06:32
  You make the first move,
• 1:06:33
  you can pretty much
• 1:06:34
  see if you're a really good chess player,
• 1:06:36
  how the outcome is going to be,
• 1:06:37
  what the strategy is. Right?
• 1:06:38
  There's lots of games
• 1:06:38
  that are in between.
• 1:06:39
  But poker, it's moving game, right.
• 1:06:41
  You got your hands.
• 1:06:42
  You could have the best hand in town,
• 1:06:43
  but if somebody else is around you
• 1:06:45
  and they're playing it differently,
• 1:06:47
  if your timing is off,
• 1:06:48
  if the house plays different, right.
• 1:06:50
  Like all of these things change.
• 1:06:51
  It's very
• 1:06:52
  I think that's the closest to
• 1:06:53
  life, right?
• 1:06:53
  You may have all the advantages
• 1:06:55
  you think you do,
• 1:06:56
  but if somebody has a bigger pile of cash
• 1:06:58
  since somebody has a talent or whatever
• 1:06:59
  it is, right?
• 1:07:00
  So if you could snap your fingers
• 1:07:02
  in this stochastic web three, web four
• 1:07:05
  poker game of life
• 1:07:07
  with the blockchain economy,
• 1:07:08
  what would you do to change to accelerate
• 1:07:12
  the web 3
• 1:07:13
  or 4 world
• 1:07:14
  as you would like to invasion it?
• 1:07:17
  One thing snap your fingers and change.
• 1:07:20
  Oh, I
• 1:07:21
  mean, if we get to 100%
• 1:07:22
  financial literacy rate,
• 1:07:23
  I think everything will change.
• 1:07:25
  Well, that is not the answer
• 1:07:27
  I thought you were going to give.
• 1:07:28
  That's amazing.
• 1:07:29
  Okay.
• 1:07:30
  What did you think I was going to say?
• 1:07:31
  I thought we were going to say something.
• 1:07:32
  Regulatory government fiat,
• 1:07:34
  like technological like, you know,
• 1:07:36
  you wish the adoption was brought her
• 1:07:37
  but interesting. Yeah.
• 1:07:38
  I think if everyone knows money
• 1:07:40
  or more people,
• 1:07:40
  I mean, just think about it.
• 1:07:41
  If we can double the number of people
• 1:07:43
  who are financially literate,
• 1:07:44
  they're going to care about money.
• 1:07:46
  They're going to care
• 1:07:46
  about property rights.
• 1:07:47
  The issue
• 1:07:48
  we have
• 1:07:48
  right now
• 1:07:49
  is that people don't know about it,
• 1:07:50
  and therefore they don't know
• 1:07:51
  what they're trying to protect.
• 1:07:52
  Right, right.
• 1:07:53
  And and that's why we constantly struggle
• 1:07:55
  between this and,
• 1:07:56
  and the Western world
• 1:07:57
  of socialist communists
• 1:07:59
  as a as if we haven't
• 1:08:00
  had the experiment before
• 1:08:01
  and haven't seen it play out.
• 1:08:02
  And by the way,
• 1:08:03
  horrific ways across the world.
• 1:08:05
  And why is it that crypto remains
• 1:08:09
  faster growing in Asia?
• 1:08:11
  Right.
• 1:08:12
  Because of economic opportunity, because
• 1:08:14
  of the embrace of capitalism.
• 1:08:16
  The way that they think
• 1:08:18
  about money,
• 1:08:18
  I mean, I joke to some people around,
• 1:08:20
  you know, like in South Korea,
• 1:08:21
  by the time you have your second
• 1:08:23
  and third date,
• 1:08:24
  she's going to ask you
• 1:08:24
  how much money you make, right?
• 1:08:26
  And you better be comfortable with that.
• 1:08:27
  It's not as if
• 1:08:28
  and it's not as if that information
• 1:08:30
  or that is not important
• 1:08:31
  to people in the West. It is.
• 1:08:32
  They just don't direct and they don't.
• 1:08:34
  Yeah. And inefficient method of.
• 1:08:36
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:08:37
  And, you know, it's more like you drive
• 1:08:39
  or do you live
• 1:08:40
  or that kind of stuff
• 1:08:40
  because it may be considered
• 1:08:41
  rude or even Europe,
• 1:08:42
  you just get slapped in the face,
• 1:08:43
  whatever it might be. Right.
• 1:08:44
  Like different, different attitudes
• 1:08:46
  towards this.
• 1:08:47
  But then you ask yourself,
• 1:08:48
  I think, what was the statistics?
• 1:08:49
  What is the number one reason
• 1:08:51
  why this crisis
• 1:08:51
  in relationships and marriages.
• 1:08:53
  It's money. It's money.
• 1:08:54
  Right? So?
• 1:08:54
  So yeah, the value of money.
• 1:08:56
  Now you cannot have a lot of it.
• 1:08:57
  But if you have the same values
• 1:08:59
  on what you need
• 1:09:00
  and how you do it
• 1:09:01
  and how you're good, like,
• 1:09:03
  like, like people misunderstand
• 1:09:04
  what people say.
• 1:09:05
  It's a crisis of relationships,
• 1:09:06
  that it's because you're not rich.
• 1:09:08
  No, no, no,
• 1:09:08
  you could have a more limited amount
• 1:09:10
  as long as your values align
• 1:09:11
  on what you want in life with money.
• 1:09:13
  With that money. Exactly.
• 1:09:13
  And you need to understand it.
• 1:09:15
  And I think this is the thing
• 1:09:16
  where if you don't,
• 1:09:17
  then you will have all these problems.
• 1:09:18
  And, you know,
• 1:09:19
  money is the largest social construct
• 1:09:21
  in the world, right?
• 1:09:22
  I mean, it's
• 1:09:22
  how we glued societies together.
• 1:09:24
  So so you have to understand it.
• 1:09:26
  So and the success of blockchain
• 1:09:29
  and crypto
• 1:09:30
  comes from the group of people
• 1:09:32
  who understand money, right.
• 1:09:34
  And they then understand
• 1:09:35
  the freedom of money more
• 1:09:37
  because they understand
• 1:09:38
  the value of that.
• 1:09:38
  Think about all the Bitcoin maxis.
• 1:09:40
  Why are they into this?
• 1:09:41
  Because specifically
• 1:09:42
  around their constructions
• 1:09:44
  of freedom of money.
• 1:09:45
  And I think the other path,
• 1:09:47
  which is
• 1:09:47
  why we're so excited about what for
• 1:09:49
  is that actually
• 1:09:49
  we think AI agents
• 1:09:51
  such as our minds are going to be
• 1:09:53
  the ones that can teach that
• 1:09:55
  because they have that broad knowledge.
• 1:09:57
  You know, it's hard
• 1:09:58
  for someone to just learn about money
• 1:10:00
  if they're not interested,
• 1:10:01
  but the agent will be able
• 1:10:02
  to translate this to you in the context
• 1:10:04
  that matters to you
• 1:10:05
  and help you make those decisions
• 1:10:06
  rather various.
• 1:10:07
  Exactly.
• 1:10:07
  And actually,
• 1:10:08
  I think the kind of financial advisor
• 1:10:09
  that was only available to you
• 1:10:10
  if you had, like,
• 1:10:11
  I don't know,
• 1:10:11
  JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs,
• 1:10:12
  private banking
• 1:10:13
  will become available to every person.
• 1:10:15
  And I actually think, you know,
• 1:10:16
  certainly we're optimistic
• 1:10:17
  because of the access
• 1:10:18
  you have with tokenization
• 1:10:19
  that this will be the big unlock
• 1:10:21
  for a better world. Love it.
• 1:10:23
  I'm the optimistic lawyer,
• 1:10:24
  so I love that looking out 3 to 5 years.
• 1:10:27
  What does success look like for animal
• 1:10:29
  brands?
• 1:10:30
  Well,
• 1:10:30
  I mean success for us
• 1:10:31
  beyond sort of, you know,
• 1:10:32
  financial numbers and growth
• 1:10:33
  is, you know,
• 1:10:33
  we want to be the number one
• 1:10:34
  personally I agent
• 1:10:36
  I actually think we have a shot
• 1:10:37
  in doing this in next 12 months
• 1:10:38
  because the race is on
• 1:10:39
  for everyone, right.
• 1:10:40
  So who knows.
• 1:10:40
  And in so doing,
• 1:10:42
  we were going to help drive
• 1:10:43
  mass adoption of blockchain.
• 1:10:44
  Not because the user knows or cares
• 1:10:46
  that he's using crypto in the back end.
• 1:10:47
  It's just the fact
• 1:10:48
  that the agents have it.
• 1:10:49
  By the way,
• 1:10:50
  if your AI agents have,
• 1:10:52
  you know,
• 1:10:52
  like ours has like a wallet
• 1:10:53
  and blockchain technology
• 1:10:54
  enabled, it
• 1:10:55
  unlocks a thousand,
• 1:10:57
  if not a million
• 1:10:58
  new kind of opportunities
• 1:10:59
  in DeFi and programmability
• 1:11:01
  and smart contract stuff
• 1:11:02
  in security,
• 1:11:03
  things that just simply become unlocked
• 1:11:04
  because it has it.
• 1:11:05
  And I guess so many people don't yet
• 1:11:07
  see the connection
• 1:11:08
  between AI and blockchain,
• 1:11:09
  because they're trying to treat them
• 1:11:10
  with two different things
• 1:11:11
  when they're actually
• 1:11:11
  very much intertwined with each other
• 1:11:13
  and they supercharge each other.
• 1:11:14
  So that's,
• 1:11:14
  that's that's an important thing.
• 1:11:15
  And we think if we can succeed with that,
• 1:11:17
  then we can really drive
• 1:11:18
  mass adoption in a way
• 1:11:19
  that, you know, our investments
• 1:11:22
  and our support of the NFT
• 1:11:23
  and token industry in 21 and 22
• 1:11:27
  was a moment
• 1:11:28
  where it became
• 1:11:29
  mainstream everywhere, right?
• 1:11:30
  For a moment in time,
• 1:11:31
  if we didn't have the scandals
• 1:11:33
  with like Ft
• 1:11:34
  and Terra Luna,
• 1:11:35
  maybe it would have been better,
• 1:11:36
  but it would still be
• 1:11:37
  have been difficult technology.
• 1:11:38
  I actually think at the end of the day,
• 1:11:39
  we wouldn't have succeeded
• 1:11:40
  quite that way because the issue
• 1:11:41
  and this is where we think
• 1:11:42
  about financial literacy,
• 1:11:43
  is that the people
• 1:11:44
  who took advantage of it
• 1:11:45
  were the people
• 1:11:46
  who were more financially literary
• 1:11:47
  than the others.
• 1:11:48
  And so they basically came in
• 1:11:49
  and basically sort of,
• 1:11:51
  it's easier to cheat
• 1:11:51
  when you're when you understand. Yeah.
• 1:11:53
  And they it's
• 1:11:54
  almost like scorched earth, right.
• 1:11:55
  And what's the best protection
• 1:11:57
  for a scorched earth
• 1:11:58
  is essentially a broad knowledge.
• 1:12:00
  And so that to me is
• 1:12:01
  kind of
• 1:12:01
  how we need to evolve in that space.
• 1:12:02
  And I think agents will deliver that.
• 1:12:04
  So I think that will be
• 1:12:05
  what success looks like.
• 1:12:06
  If, you know, mindsets at this point,
• 1:12:08
  of course, everything else
• 1:12:08
  that we're building should grow as well.
• 1:12:10
  But I think it comes
• 1:12:11
  from being consumers in rather
• 1:12:12
  than trying
• 1:12:13
  to make this to institutional,
• 1:12:14
  which is happening.
• 1:12:15
  But I think success has to be
• 1:12:17
  if we can onboard
• 1:12:18
  billions of people on chain.
• 1:12:20
  That, to me,
• 1:12:20
  is what we really should be striving for.
• 1:12:23
  Excellent.
• 1:12:24
  Last year,
• 1:12:24
  questions are back to the more
• 1:12:26
  earthly kind.
• 1:12:28
  We started with you and music here.
• 1:12:31
  And you as a kid like to end
• 1:12:33
  with, you know,
• 1:12:34
  personal interests of yours. Of course.
• 1:12:36
  What what is one book,
• 1:12:37
  podcast or other article
• 1:12:39
  that you've read recently
• 1:12:40
  that just, like, wowed you
• 1:12:42
  and you recommend to the audience who
• 1:12:44
  so many one
• 1:12:47
  yeah I can't I'm
• 1:12:47
  I'm forcing you I'm forcing you, man.
• 1:12:50
  Okay, you know what? I think,
• 1:12:53
  if I had to pick one right now
• 1:12:55
  just because of the mode
• 1:12:56
  I think a lot of people are in right now,
• 1:12:58
  I think, antifragile would be good.
• 1:13:00
  And the reason why it's not a new book,
• 1:13:03
  but I think it's relevant
• 1:13:04
  to the world today
• 1:13:06
  because I think the world is,
• 1:13:07
  is quite fragile.
• 1:13:09
  And I think a lot of people are.
• 1:13:10
  And in particular,
• 1:13:10
  with the changes happening in AI,
• 1:13:12
  I think it forces us
• 1:13:13
  the whole idea of antifragile is that
• 1:13:16
  it's really about being flexible.
• 1:13:17
  It's really about being able to adapt
• 1:13:19
  and and not to be too rigid
• 1:13:21
  in a direction.
• 1:13:22
  And, you know,
• 1:13:23
  our children need to be antifragile.
• 1:13:25
  Society's fragile
• 1:13:26
  so they don't sort of tear
• 1:13:28
  apart from the inside.
• 1:13:29
  And I think it's becoming
• 1:13:30
  more relevant today
• 1:13:32
  because AI is forcing us to look
• 1:13:35
  at everything that was true before
• 1:13:37
  is probably not true anymore.
• 1:13:39
  So I call it
• 1:13:41
  one of my favorite
• 1:13:42
  and I have a great emoji for it.
• 1:13:43
  Call it a milk toast.
• 1:13:44
  Don't be milk toast.
• 1:13:45
  Yeah.
• 1:13:45
  That's that's
• 1:13:46
  that's that's
• 1:13:47
  basically my go to with my kids.
• 1:13:48
  Every time I hear one
• 1:13:49
  or my or my associates,
• 1:13:50
  even my junior partner, I'm like,
• 1:13:51
  I got guys who can't be milked.
• 1:13:52
  Testify this.
• 1:13:52
  We gotta put forward
• 1:13:53
  antifragile for sure.
• 1:13:55
  Speaking of not fragile,
• 1:13:56
  our our bodies are unfortunately fragile
• 1:13:58
  and eats food.
• 1:13:59
  What's the best meal or single food item
• 1:14:02
  that you've had recently?
• 1:14:04
  Well,
• 1:14:04
  best meal is different
• 1:14:05
  because best meal doesn't
• 1:14:06
  necessarily mean it's most healthy.
• 1:14:08
  Oh no, no,
• 1:14:09
  don't confuse
• 1:14:09
  the fact that I'm wearing a la cost
• 1:14:11
  with the colors
• 1:14:12
  that I'm looking for healthy here.
• 1:14:13
  Yes, please. No healthy at all.
• 1:14:14
  But actually I'm a big fan of sushi.
• 1:14:16
  I love sushi, so fish is great.
• 1:14:19
  So fish is kind of healthy.
• 1:14:20
  Of course,
• 1:14:20
  what I like about really good omakase
• 1:14:23
  is that it's food,
• 1:14:26
  but it's also art and expressed
• 1:14:27
  in a really beautiful way.
• 1:14:29
  And there's a lot of innovation
• 1:14:30
  that happens.
• 1:14:30
  Like, you know,
• 1:14:30
  I personally like to cook as well
• 1:14:32
  because I think cooking
• 1:14:33
  is a very creative expression of ideas
• 1:14:35
  that do sort of experiment and do stuff.
• 1:14:38
  And I really enjoy
• 1:14:39
  essentially, let's call it food art,
• 1:14:41
  if you will,
• 1:14:42
  because it doesn't just taste,
• 1:14:43
  but it just looks great.
• 1:14:45
  So yeah,
• 1:14:45
  I think some of the best places,
• 1:14:47
  in fact,
• 1:14:47
  New York has some really good ones.
• 1:14:49
  Not that you go there every day,
• 1:14:50
  but as a way to sort of,
• 1:14:52
  yeah, open up your senses.
• 1:14:53
  You know, like,
• 1:14:54
  I think we pay
• 1:14:54
  a lot of attention to our eyes.
• 1:14:56
  We don't necessarily pay enough attention
• 1:14:57
  to all of our other senses sometimes,
• 1:14:59
  and it's just another way
• 1:15:00
  to enrich windsurf. Everyone.
• 1:15:02
  Recently a place in New York.
• 1:15:05
  So there's a place in New
• 1:15:06
  York recently that is discovered called,
• 1:15:09
  Sushi Kai.
• 1:15:10
  That one is really quite nice.
• 1:15:11
  It's, I think, on the East.
• 1:15:13
  I guess he called his side.
• 1:15:14
  So it's a really it's a
• 1:15:15
  it's not like it's kind of
• 1:15:18
  how much I put it.
• 1:15:19
  It doesn't seem like obvious,
• 1:15:21
  but the sushi is, is incredible.
• 1:15:23
  And, you know,
• 1:15:24
  slight plug on this is,
• 1:15:25
  I have been to Sushi Masa,
• 1:15:27
  which is supposedly the best in New York.
• 1:15:28
  And honestly,
• 1:15:29
  I find the other place better.
• 1:15:32
  There we go.
• 1:15:33
  I'm pretty sure neither are Latham Kline,
• 1:15:34
  so it's all good we can find him off.
• 1:15:36
  So. Yeah.
• 1:15:38
  I'm believable.
• 1:15:38
  Honor and pleasure to have you here.
• 1:15:40
  Thank you for having me.
• 1:15:41
  As I told you before we started,
• 1:15:42
  I've been following tracking you.
• 1:15:43
  Even pre working with Anna mocha.
• 1:15:45
  So from Latham Watkins.
• 1:15:46
  Really appreciate you joining us.
• 1:15:47
  Truly a pleasure.
• 1:15:48
  Thank you for having me.
• 1:15:49
  Thank you for checking out this episode
• 1:15:51
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• 1:15:52
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• 1:15:53
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• 1:15:54
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• 1:15:57
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• 1:15:59
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• 1:16:10
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• 1:16:17
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