0:00

But if I can like talk a little bit about this

0:02

more is in vet too.

0:04

There's this idea that if we compare,

0:06

like, let's say Uber and Lyft, we think

0:08

about it in a sense that, okay, there's going to be one. Right.

0:11

And it's sort of like a zero sum game where

0:14

you feel like either Uber is gonna,

0:16

when are you doing lifts? Who's going to be in, but, but not all

0:18

of them because there's a set of people. And,

0:20

you know, whereas in crypto

0:22

you can actually build positive sum games as a

0:24

group. And we saw that with wall street bets with

0:26

with the stock, you can actually, as

0:28

a community, as a whole, you can win by working

0:30

together instead of competing. So a lot of these

0:32

projects that we see as competitors, we

0:34

might end up actually working with them. If

0:37

that works out because we'll see a lot

0:39

more collaboration between these companies that may

0:41

seem like a better, but when like there's

0:43

a finite market size, it makes sense more

0:46

to work together against. So

0:59

general, thank you for joining us. When we're

1:01

thinking of like how to start this, I feel like we could have started

1:03

it with building in India, but really

1:05

I want to get to Coinbase and what

1:08

exactly it is you guys are doing there? What are you. Yeah.

1:10

So the idea with calling wise, we started out

1:13

was we wanted to bring the experience of

1:15

either get coin or at least bringing

1:17

the idea on power, giving power to communities

1:19

and giving that experience to social. So

1:22

we started out with the idea that we want to build

1:24

something like a decentralized. For communities on

1:26

the three. So how do we do that and how do

1:28

we make that valuable? So a lot

1:30

of these communities creating a token is one of the first

1:33

steps of them becoming a Dao. And I think

1:35

that's what a lot of people attribute value to.

1:37

How do we have, like these communities aligned with

1:39

whoever the community has created? Usually it's

1:41

a. Right. And that's

1:43

the idea of, we started out with giving like ability

1:46

for people to like either put their nine to five jobs

1:48

and start earning in social tokens, just sitting

1:50

at home and being part of these multiple creative

1:52

dolls. I think that's the long-term

1:54

vision that we're going forward. So it's probably a

1:56

mixed with mean a de-centralized Reddit and

1:59

how you would see how Bitcoin works for developers.

2:01

Right. Could you define

2:03

what it is? Yeah.

2:05

So a Dow is essentially a smart contract

2:08

where a group of people can interact on chain

2:10

transparently. It's essentially a smart contract

2:12

that defines certain like rights powers

2:15

and definitions that you can

2:17

say, okay, this kinds of decision making is

2:19

going to happen on chain. A lot of what, like

2:21

real world activities like money making

2:23

decisions like voting any kind of activity

2:26

that you can attribute value to. We're now

2:28

doing it on chain so that a third party

2:30

can verify. Without like having to know these

2:32

people who are running this Dow and we can

2:34

have sort of this transparent decision making but

2:36

then the company. So that's what a Dao is. It's a

2:38

company on chain, like two foot, very simple.

2:41

Right. That's super cool. I

2:43

think a lot of mainstream press has been about.

2:46

Oh, just what Bitcoin is. And that makes

2:48

sense, right? Like that's the first level of understanding

2:50

people need to have about decentralized

2:52

cryptocurrency before they can start to stack

2:54

these higher lit these higher layers on. But as

2:57

far as smart contracts go, I think

2:59

a lot of that is misunderstood. So maybe you

3:01

could kind of illustrate like, what exactly can we do beyond

3:03

just exchanging transaction

3:05

and, and keeping a decentralized. Right.

3:08

So essentially what smart contracts do

3:10

is they maintain state on a chain, right?

3:12

So you can go back and you can say, okay, this is the

3:14

state that stored on this chain. And you can verify

3:16

that state, just put simply, it's

3:18

just a piece of code that maintain state on

3:20

a chain that a third party can verify.

3:22

And what's a chain it's really like if you look at data structures,

3:25

a blockchain is really like a tree where

3:27

there's branches, there's forks and there's

3:30

even orphan branches. So when

3:32

you're maintaining that state. It's really like

3:34

it's about money, but it's, it's more than just

3:36

like money. It's more like data, any kind

3:38

of information that you can find on the internet can

3:40

be stored on chain and that state

3:42

can be preserved on chain at least until like

3:45

it's history and you can trace it back all the way back

3:47

in time or even create a Fort from it. So

3:49

I think, I mean, we

3:51

see Bitcoin in a lot of these currencies and there's

3:53

too much focus on it, but it's going to be more

3:56

like anything that's happening on the internet is

3:58

essentially like it is valuable. There's going to

4:00

be fun. So what can I do

4:02

with ether that I can't do with Bitcoin? So

4:05

the way we like to put it eater is probably

4:07

like Bitcoin is probably like a store of value in ether

4:10

is more like an internet native currency. You're

4:12

probably not going to buy coffee, but Bitcoin, where you can

4:14

buy a coffee with ether. So it's going

4:16

to be like an internet native currency where

4:18

you can like. Essentially do

4:20

any kind of activity online on the internet,

4:22

either buying or purchasing or even any

4:25

kind of like small transactions,

4:27

bigger transactions, it's going to be the

4:30

native currency on on, on the internet. Yeah.

4:33

So one thing which I, which I personally find very

4:35

interesting is that okay. This, this is

4:38

kind of into the weeds, but I'll, I'll, try to make it

4:40

understandable to all of our, so there's this

4:42

big debate about block size. So

4:45

if you have big blocks, then

4:47

essentially Bitcoin transactions

4:49

are limited by how many transactions you

4:51

can do per second. So if you have a

4:53

small block side, A block is how many

4:56

transactions you can fit. And it takes

4:58

I believe five minutes on average to complete a

5:00

single block. So if it

5:02

takes like 20 minutes on average to

5:04

buy a cup of coffee, that's just such a terrible user

5:06

experience. People are just going to use their credit

5:08

card, use traditional financial needs. So then there's

5:11

this big debate of why don't we just make the block

5:13

sizes huge so people

5:15

can actually buy stuff. Bitcoin

5:17

in a real world setting and a practical way, but

5:20

this leads to another issue, which is now

5:22

Bitcoin is not decentralized. If you have

5:24

these gigantic blocks, that

5:26

means that the amount of memory and

5:28

the amount of CPU processing, it takes to be able to

5:30

run something like Bitcoin is,

5:32

it becomes, it becomes terabytes. And then the only

5:35

people who are running it are companies like Google, Amazon,

5:37

like these big enterprises. So that's no

5:39

longer decentralized. Now you're going through a gatekeeper.

5:42

So where do you, where do you wait and wait, where do you weigh

5:44

in on this? Because personally, I. Because

5:46

of the block size issue, at

5:48

least for big mainstream currencies like Bitcoin,

5:51

they can only be stores of value. They can't be

5:53

transaction needs. I think they can be so

5:56

here's, here's my thesis on it. I

5:59

do see that a lot of people there's a lot of debate on

6:01

the block size. I think it's more of a debate, like

6:03

how many validators are verifying

6:06

those transactions regardless of the size

6:08

of the block size. And

6:10

I think it also depends on the supply of Bitcoin

6:12

and the supply feeder. I think up till now, the supply

6:15

Peter's can be infinite, but the

6:17

ERC triple one five, they're gonna

6:19

make us apply finite, but coming

6:21

back to Bitcoin if you compared to the traditional

6:23

financial system in the U S there's

6:25

this thing called fed wire, right? If you

6:27

want to send a check, like it does say

6:29

you want to write a million dollar check, just one, I

6:32

think a more reliable and deterministic

6:34

way or an accurate way to send someone could be, you

6:36

could use the fed buyer. Right. But

6:38

if you want to send like $10 or $5 for

6:40

a coffee, you'd probably use it. Right. Did

6:43

you send it to your friend? So there's always like

6:45

these different layers that we've built. The application

6:47

layer is probably when more, or a lot of these other

6:49

PayPal or other apps that you use day to day.

6:52

But then like if you trickle down to these

6:54

layers on the bottom, there's a, there's the Fedwire

6:57

that you would use for more valuable, more

6:59

like high value transactions. Let's

7:03

bring it back to crypto. Now, crypto is also

7:05

like acting in a very similar race, obviously,

7:07

like things are going to change with Bitcoin

7:10

and it's a taproot, which is

7:12

also like an interesting thing to delve deeper

7:14

on, on how that's going to open up like an

7:16

avenue for developers to build on top of it. But

7:18

once that happens, we're going to have

7:20

different like Governance mechanisms and

7:22

incentives for building like either

7:24

different chains or even scaling Bitcoin

7:26

where you can either purchase your car, but

7:29

Bitcoin, or at least high value transactions.

7:31

Right. If you're going to buy a house or if you're going

7:33

to buy, like pay for insurance or

7:35

any kind of other habit of transaction, you could probably

7:37

do it. Right.

7:40

That, that, that actually makes sense. So essentially what

7:42

you're saying is like these proposals for like the lightening

7:44

level two level three network, aren't

7:46

independent on the block size, right?

7:48

Those could be used for smaller purchases that

7:51

require less trust. Whereas the big ones

7:53

that require more trust would go through the central.

7:55

Blockchain directly. Right. And

7:57

I think that's okay for now. I think, I don't

7:59

think it needs to be like, so regarding

8:02

like mining pools, right. That's

8:04

that's more on like an algorithmic or

8:06

like a conceptual level on how Bitcoin is

8:08

designed. Right. If, if the collective

8:11

like nodes are like, if there's a collective

8:13

consensus on creating like a fork and

8:15

if you could do a fork and create a new consensus,

8:17

which we've seen like so many more times, like

8:19

there's so many scam, like forks,

8:21

and that claim to be like the real good

8:24

coin, Toshi, the

8:26

real Satoshi, but like, If,

8:28

once we see a lot of that, if there's consensus,

8:30

I think it's, it's possible. Like at the end of the

8:33

day, it's like reaching like a level

8:35

of like consensus where everybody agrees.

8:37

Okay. Like this is something that like a disproportionate

8:39

amount of reward is going to like mining farms in China.

8:42

And that's becoming like to centralized,

8:45

I think to some degree that's okay. Because that's how like

8:47

traditional, like human networks work, but

8:50

to de-centralize it further, we're gonna maybe

8:52

look into more. Yeah, either forks aren't

8:54

like different chains or different phones of consensus

8:57

where we can reach an agreement of

8:59

like creating a more decentralized structure on

9:02

rewards and all of that stuff. Right.

9:04

So going back to coin biased,

9:06

you mentioned the word decentralized a few times when

9:09

you were talking about what you guys were up to. Can you tell me why

9:11

that's important? So

9:14

a lot of like protocols, including client-wise

9:16

the way we say it is, is it's more like progressive

9:18

decentralization. If you look at our

9:20

tech stack or if you look at like, just

9:23

the way we operate in terms of like the tools that we use,

9:25

it's semi decentralized, not like fully

9:27

decentralized. And the way we say that

9:29

is like, initially it's going to be more like web

9:31

two is going to work with battery. It doesn't

9:34

have to be fully decentralized because when

9:36

you're actually building it, it comes at a cost of user

9:38

expense. Right. And

9:40

you still want to give like that vet two experience

9:43

in web three? I feel like people are

9:45

not sympathetic to like 15,

9:47

even 15, second confirmation times when

9:49

a trans person is going to expect it to be

9:51

like Venmo, where it just goes through like

9:53

magic. So, so preserve that experience

9:56

and like, even at least have some interest

9:58

on like bridging people from that about three. I think

10:00

they need to work together. So. Progressive

10:04

decentralization is something that will

10:07

eventually be decentralized as we go further.

10:09

As in when like the tech stack gets more decentralized

10:11

in terms of like rivers storing our data,

10:13

how we're like maintaining our

10:15

tools that we've built wherever, like publishing

10:18

it, or we publish it in on something like mirror.

10:20

So like in all, all those aspects,

10:22

once we do create a token, I think it's we're

10:24

going to be like more decent. I

10:27

really actually really liked that approach because

10:30

I've seen a lot of crypto projects where they're

10:32

pretty much entire selling point is, Hey, we're

10:34

very decentralized. We're more decentralized

10:37

than everyone else. And I don't really think

10:39

about like user experience or feature side

10:41

and none of them are, yeah, that's not a thing,

10:44

but the thing is like more decentralized. Yeah. Necessarily

10:47

a feature. There's this great VC.

10:49

And he was he was also a blockchain

10:51

developer before he got into the VC space. His

10:53

name is Haseeb Qureshi he

10:56

writes a great, great he wrote like a electric

10:58

series about how Bitcoin works and

11:00

he also writes about crypto and defy

11:02

and all this other stuff. And yeah,

11:05

what you said is you should actually be. Like

11:07

no one talks about how decentralized is a trade

11:10

off, you know, like a distributed ledger.

11:12

That's very, very expensive and very, very complicated

11:14

compared to a centralized ledger. So you

11:16

should have a good reason for doing it. And the more decentralized

11:19

things you throw out, the more expensive your tech

11:21

stack becomes, the slower things become the worst

11:23

user experience becomes. So you need to just balance,

11:25

like, what is the minimum amount of de-centralization I

11:27

need to achieve the goals of this project.

11:32

Even like taking a step back further. I,

11:35

we never, so we have a board where we say

11:37

online where we say like, never use the words.

11:40

So even if you go on Twitter, like we never use the

11:42

words, decentralization too much. Walk

11:44

chain, web three crypto. Because

11:46

our rule is that never sell technology.

11:48

So. Like if you go back to apple, right. They never

11:51

sold a phone. They're just so they're

11:53

just like short, beautiful people, like just

11:55

running across like the tracks

11:57

and like Albert Einstein and

11:59

a lot of these figures, they just showed like what they're about.

12:02

They, you never saw the technology. So

12:05

we'll probably never do that. Or like,

12:07

even if we do Google, progressively decentralized

12:09

will never sell like missions. That

12:11

don't mean anything. Like, just

12:14

tell people like why that's simple. Yeah,

12:16

right. So, yeah. So

12:18

what is the level of crypto awareness in India? Right. I

12:21

think it's, it's getting out just because Bitcoin

12:24

is talked about a lot in the news. And I think

12:26

Bobby gone MADEC network opened up

12:28

the doors for India. At least in my experience.

12:30

They've been like going at it for years. And

12:33

today it's like, I think it's sports $11 billion.

12:36

And I think that company,

12:39

if they hadn't like opened up and gotten

12:41

where they are, the VCs wouldn't be investing

12:44

as like. As

12:46

aggressively as they are today. Like what'd

12:50

you say the company was called? What did they do? A

12:52

polygon magic net. Okay.

12:54

So I haven't heard of them. What did they do? So

12:57

polygon is a side chain on the pterygium and

12:59

it's a layer two solution that a lot of people

13:02

use. I think it's one of the most

13:04

popular ones or it's the closest alternative

13:06

that most people choose. And we're also operating

13:09

on claudicant. Too, I'm in

13:11

polygon boats. So again,

13:13

they're from India and I think they opened up the doors.

13:15

And then there's also like if you go

13:17

down south then there's defy dollar and a

13:19

bunch of other companies that are operating, but like

13:21

really polygon is the one that like broke

13:24

the market cap of over $10 billion. And I

13:26

think that was like the starting point. I

13:28

was just gonna add, I was in a, I was in a clubhouse room

13:30

with the polygon founder and

13:32

he was explaining the extents extent

13:35

that him and like other entrepreneurs in the crypto space

13:37

five, six years ago, had to go to,

13:39

to even get into sort of relevance and funding.

13:42

And what's really interesting about India is you don't

13:44

often see a $10 billion valuation

13:47

for startups. In America it seems like every

13:49

other week we're hearing about like like a new unicorn

13:51

or whatever, but in India, Just

13:53

by virtue of like the, the market dynamics

13:55

and like the GDP and how much money people want to

13:57

spend consumer spending and things like that. Getting

14:00

that valuation is incredibly difficult. And for such

14:02

a nascent technology like crypto to get

14:04

to a $10 billion valuation is

14:06

unbelievable. Yeah, those

14:08

people are amazing. I think they really brought

14:10

a lot of eyes and even like, even today,

14:12

like I wake up every morning and there's a new ACO

14:14

chapter of like a VC fund opening,

14:17

even like, I mean, not, not to hyper

14:19

optimize for investments, but just like in terms

14:21

of like activity there's even

14:23

like it's a little bit Morris. All the COVID 19

14:25

records were stored on polygon. It wasn't

14:27

I can share the tweet with you later, but

14:30

so there is some level of awareness, at least two

14:32

people I think it's going to get like more stronger,

14:34

but Yeah. Eventually, like if

14:36

there's an awareness, I think that people are missing out. Like,

14:38

I think it's helium or how

14:41

what's the market capital material? I forgot. I

14:43

think Bitcoin crossed a trillion. So

14:45

obviously like it's missing out a lot on like

14:47

the overall like defy economy. If

14:49

India is not participating I think

14:52

the sort of immigration of American

14:54

VCs into India and then them actually

14:56

visualizing it as like a great profit center for

14:58

them is really interesting. So

15:01

how much do you think them investing

15:03

in being open to investing has

15:05

sort of incentivize entrepreneurs in India

15:07

to begin working or is that completely

15:09

unrelated to what, what is sort of your guys's

15:11

incentives? I think, I mean,

15:14

the interest is still been there.

15:16

I think the investments, it

15:18

hasn't been as much of a blogger as much as

15:20

like. There's

15:22

there's just no, like who's gonna use it

15:24

right. That it just wasn't like that stack

15:26

available. Like just recently we started

15:28

getting like PTM and, and a bunch

15:31

of these other payment apps, like what us

15:33

has been doing for years with PayPal. Like we just

15:35

gotten used to it in the last three years. Like

15:38

before that they were not QR codes, you had to pay in cash.

15:40

I think over 60% of the economy is in cash.

15:43

So I think it's still like a long way ahead. Like

15:45

most people you would talk to would probably not

15:47

know on how this works on like

15:49

a deep level or at least on a fundamental level. And

15:52

as long as like there's lack of awareness, there's going to be

15:54

scams and scams. There's going

15:56

to be a lack of trust and. One

16:00

thing that we're known for is like there's clusters

16:02

of trust, which is why there's like companies

16:04

like data. And that have been like there

16:06

for years. Right? Because

16:09

again, it's trust, it's not, not

16:11

about the product. Yeah. So I guess my follow-up

16:13

is how much time do you, and like the

16:15

other entrepreneurs, you know, in the crypto space, think

16:17

about the government sentiment towards

16:19

crypto. Cause I I'm always sharing news about

16:22

that. You need, government feels such way about it this way

16:24

about it. It seems to flip all the time. So

16:26

how much time do you guys spend sort of navigating. I

16:29

think it's it's religious exit, right? Once

16:32

you like decide to do a company and

16:34

then you see your religious, like, okay. If

16:36

it's easier for me to like incorporate a Delaware

16:38

C Corp, why don't I just do that? Like, you can

16:40

still do that, but for sitting from India, if

16:43

you're just unclear about India. So it's, it's really

16:45

a lot of problem for founders. If they

16:47

really want to put in the work, it's, it's more of

16:49

a pro problem for the India

16:51

to like losing out on that GDP. Right.

16:55

So, this is also the beauty of cryptocurrency

16:57

actually, bef so before cryptocurrency

17:00

came about, I think there were something

17:02

called eagled and I think it

17:04

wasn't like the nineties and the secret service

17:06

came. And they arrested

17:08

the guy who made it. He went to prison for like five

17:10

years, because like, according to the U S constitution,

17:13

only the U S government has the right to meant to currency.

17:15

It's like very illegal. So everyone who put

17:17

their money into eagled, they went under. So

17:20

there were a few other crypto attempts after that. Not

17:22

crypto attempts, a few other currency attempts after

17:24

that, but nobody put any money. Nobody

17:26

trusted them because they saw it happen with the

17:29

first crypto the first digital currency.

17:31

So by doing the decentralized

17:33

blockchain Satoshi completely solved that problem.

17:35

It was, there was no one person you could take down.

17:38

So now, now, like, especially

17:40

with Bitcoin and ether being at the levels of scale that

17:42

they are, no government could take

17:44

down a single cryptocurrency. Yeah.

17:47

I mean, they're still looking KYC and they're still

17:49

like, you know, they're still like keeping

17:51

it under check, like it's right, right.

17:54

You know, like if you're doing transactions, we just,

17:56

we still want to know who you are and what you're doing

17:58

at all times. Right. So they

18:00

can take you down, but they can like take you down, like

18:02

at least like prosecute you

18:05

for doing like something that they don't want

18:07

you to do. Like even if you see, like in India,

18:09

there's over a billion dollars. Lockton

18:11

D five protocols and

18:14

almost all of it. Like at least a lot of these companies

18:16

are like outside, like domiciled outside of

18:18

India. Think about how much money

18:21

they're losing out on. And I'll give you an example over,

18:23

like, I think there was a country in over

18:25

like 40% of their total economy was

18:27

entirely from crypto. Wow.

18:30

So it's just crazy. So if

18:33

there's no regulations, then it's just, you're losing

18:35

out on money. Yeah. Right.

18:38

Yeah, I've been reading what biology's been writing

18:41

about like Indian crypto and

18:43

it's super fascinating. He's basically lobbying the

18:45

Indian government to completely take advantage of crypto

18:47

and become crypto first in terms of their tech

18:49

stack and become like the, you

18:51

know, the new power of the world. I don't know if has

18:53

been falling down a lot. I have, yeah,

18:56

I've been following it like extremely closely just because

18:58

it's like, I'm vested my interest

19:01

in it, but yeah. Like long-term, I'm optimistic

19:03

about it. But right now, like the power

19:05

is in the hands of people that just

19:08

graduated high school. Couldn't complete

19:10

college. So it's hard for them to like

19:12

understand crypto. It's it's gonna be more like,

19:14

let me copy and paste it from European

19:16

or us regulations and

19:19

or, or like an extension, like what

19:21

FEMA rules for foreign exchange.

19:24

And it's going to look a lot similar to that.

19:26

If regulations came into picture. I

19:28

wanted to go back to Coinbase. I wanted to ask you,

19:30

how do you guys make money? So

19:33

we make money through like incentive. We

19:35

don't charge for tools that we build. So like

19:37

token mending, again, like the core idea

19:40

was that we would want to any take

19:42

any cuts. Right? So how do we make money?

19:44

So we have transaction fees on

19:46

eyedrops. We have transaction fees on group board creation

19:49

on NFC creation and

19:51

separately, if they're are working. Personally with

19:53

the community, helping with token design,

19:55

token economics, helping them create a Dow

19:57

and maintain treasury, a lot of

19:59

those processes. Then we keep a percentage

20:01

of their total supply of these tokens. But

20:04

again, that is only like, when it makes

20:06

sense for us to like participate in this communities

20:08

and reporting like additional, like effort

20:10

into it. But otherwise token creation

20:12

is like completely a freebie.

20:15

We earn money through like eyedrops and

20:17

other incentives that we. So

20:20

how long have you guys been at NFTs? Entities was pretty

20:22

recent. I think we announced it on March 11th

20:24

on Ethereum and polygon. It was

20:26

in an Etsy marketplace where you can buy and sell it.

20:28

And I think the core idea with

20:30

NFTs that ties along with social tokens

20:33

was ownership that you can have

20:35

these sort of like fractional or non fractional

20:37

ownership of these NFTs. And that represent

20:40

like some kind of like, let's say, if I'm

20:42

making a revenue of X amount of dollars

20:44

or tokens that can be split

20:46

into the owners at the end. And

20:49

like there going to be so many other mechanisms that could

20:51

be built around ownership. So I think that idea

20:53

was like worth exploring and doing we're going to see

20:56

being more mainstream even

20:58

then, like more so than buying and selling. So

21:01

the contract, the contract will say, I

21:03

own. You know, this amount of equity

21:06

in this project or this company or whatever.

21:08

And you can, you can sell that token

21:10

to other people if they want to that NFT to other people.

21:13

And the contract will automatically distribute

21:15

the money to the bank account of the holder of the car, of

21:17

the token. Yeah. Holders of the token. So

21:19

let's say you're a 5% owner of the

21:21

NFT. Somebody else's 60% somebody

21:24

else's 20%. It automatically

21:26

gets distributed. And even then there's royalties.

21:28

So I'll give you an example. There was this artist that

21:30

did a music album and that music album

21:33

wasn't in it. All the people

21:35

that were interested, or like at least saw

21:37

that album being a success. They bought shares of

21:39

that album as NFTs. So

21:42

after it got successful, all

21:44

these people that invested in it get a

21:47

revenue shares of whatever that album makes. Let's

21:49

say that album makes $1 million. $1

21:51

million gets distributed into all of its own.

21:55

In perpetuity. So it's enrolled in. So as

21:57

many times it gets listened in the future.

21:59

So let's say today, if you're watching friends or the

22:01

office on Netflix, there's most watched shows,

22:04

right. If you would have invested in it and had,

22:06

if that was an NFL, fractional shares,

22:09

you'd be earning in royalties, like in production.

22:12

Right. This is this,

22:14

this is what I this is what I found to be the most compelling

22:16

part of NFTs when they first went

22:18

mainstream in January, which is, I

22:21

mean, yes, we, we have to address the elephant in the room

22:23

that a lot of it is just like

22:26

I buy it so I can sell it so I can just like,

22:28

hold it until I can find someone else to buy it from

22:30

more than me. So there's a lot of annuities, insurance being

22:32

sold without any inherent value. You

22:35

know, if you're contributing some kind of thing. If you're watching

22:38

a show or if you're listening to our music, you're

22:40

doing something for the artist and he's

22:43

making a lot of money and you're not

22:45

aligned with the success. But like if you're owning like

22:47

the NFC shares, you can be aligned with

22:49

him. If they get successful, you do to in

22:51

two apps. W what I, what I find the

22:53

most compelling about this, though, is that we can shift towards

22:56

a model. Instead

22:58

of having to make money off of people through advertising,

23:00

which sucks and is essentially trying to fool

23:03

you into buying something, which you don't even want. You

23:05

can shift to a model where if you make something

23:07

that people like and more people like

23:09

will like it in the future, and it becomes more and more successful.

23:12

That is enough. To make money. So

23:14

your fans can buy into your level of success.

23:17

And as the thing becomes more successful, they can

23:19

shell sell theirs and then you get paid off of

23:21

the transactions. Yeah, I think it

23:23

just makes like the creation,

23:25

that being a creator, being an artist very,

23:27

very interesting and opens a lot of revenue doors.

23:30

It's also more along the lines of it's it's

23:32

it's not limited to like specific type

23:34

of artist. It's more like it's freedom, right? You

23:37

can, you can be a part of these multiple groups

23:39

of people instead of committing to one job,

23:41

you can just be a part of these multiple groups and

23:44

start investing, or like taking like contributing

23:46

some kind of value towards it. And

23:48

then you can essentially quit your full-time job.

23:51

And that's, that's going to be like the ultimate goal

23:53

where you should be able to do that and

23:55

work with freedom. Like you work on your own schedule

23:58

and on like terms, and

24:00

we're going to enter this like new age of like

24:02

gig economy where it's just, it's

24:05

completely. Right. It's much easier

24:07

to monetize your, whatever it is you're doing

24:10

exactly. Yeah. Yeah. For us. And I

24:12

have recently spoken more about this idea of like

24:14

super fans. And it sounds like if, if

24:16

I were to buy into some artists that

24:18

I was just a regular fan of theirs, but

24:21

I ended up buying a piece of their NFT that

24:23

almost triggered me into becoming a super fan because

24:25

now I'm invested in the long-term because I'm

24:27

receiving royalties or dividends. It's like.

24:30

A reminder, every time I receive a dividend that

24:32

while I'm actually a super fan of this person, even if I

24:35

wasn't before, just because of their music I wanted to

24:37

go back to this word you kept using, which is community.

24:39

You almost refer to your potential customers

24:42

or existing customers as a community.

24:45

And I was actually on your discord and I noticed it's

24:47

super vibrant. It's very engaging.

24:50

What role does having this discord

24:52

or referring to them as a community? Like what is the significance

24:54

of that? So, I

24:57

mean, if you want you to like, like

24:59

even a group of people or even

25:01

like a company completely on the internet,

25:03

it's, it's defined more like either

25:06

if it's on the web too, it's a startup or a company

25:08

or if it's like, you know, just one purpose

25:10

tying all of you guys together, it's more like a community,

25:12

but like those definitions are going to blur away. I think

25:15

we're going to see a lot more like either Dows

25:17

or either collect. And I think like

25:20

an initial example that I personally saw was like

25:22

GCM. When they started out, I think they started

25:24

out with like 10 30 people at once

25:26

and it blew up to like 3000

25:29

people discord. And even more today, it

25:32

was just this idea of like meeting cool people in

25:34

the bay area or not even the, in the barrier.

25:36

Like then it grew out like the entire world

25:39

and the only thing United them was that being

25:41

able to network because everybody was quarantined.

25:45

That's why we call them committees. Got

25:47

it like collectively, there's no market cap

25:50

for them. There's, there's like exchange of value,

25:52

but there's nothing like you can point to that

25:54

says like, okay, this is what's worth what

25:56

a token does for these communities. It's just adds

25:59

a value to them that you wouldn't see in conventional

26:01

startups or companies. So

26:04

that's why we refer to them as collectives communities

26:06

are towels. Right. Do you

26:08

consider your discord community as sort of

26:10

in-built distribution for future products

26:12

that are going to release or even existing? I

26:15

think we Mo we see it more as a term of

26:17

like either being doused

26:19

for other smaller dials. Like we want to be

26:21

that sort of structure where we can

26:23

transfer hardly do any kind of thing that we want to

26:25

do. Like posting a reward talking to people,

26:27

hosting AMS doing sessions

26:30

Even like sharing updates, like any single activity

26:32

that we want to do, we can do it like in an open manner.

26:35

And I think this court enables to do that. I think eventually

26:37

there's going to be Cloudamize is going to be a place

26:39

where people are going to just explore. But until Daniel,

26:41

like, we're going to see a lot of these, like communities

26:44

stay on telegram or discord. What

26:46

do you think was your tips and tricks

26:48

for building a solid committee? I

26:51

think, I mean, initially Peter

26:54

pan I think has really great ideas on

26:56

that. And one of the things that I learned is like, there's,

26:58

there's core values that unite people,

27:00

like, why do, why do you care? Right.

27:03

If you're a part of this Partially self-interest,

27:05

but it's also like something bigger than yourself.

27:07

Like you see something bigger than yourself

27:09

and there's a bit of self-interest you. And once, once

27:11

those things combined, and everybody can come together,

27:14

like there was this example, like even FWP

27:17

or even memes there was this group of people that

27:19

were just sharing beams and that like created like

27:21

10,000 people in the discord, which is

27:23

just insane. So if

27:25

you can collectively find like one thing

27:27

that everybody shares, okay, this is cool.

27:31

If you can find, let's say a hundred people that says

27:33

NFTs are cool and we want to collect them. You

27:35

have a community. So you need to find that one

27:38

or two things that collectively you guys can

27:40

point to that says, okay, this is what our purpose

27:42

is. And this is why like, I should care

27:44

as a course. Right. And that makes a lot of sense,

27:46

right? If you guys are early in the curve in India, four

27:49

were some of the first people who are looking at NFTs

27:51

and seeing this crazy potential that they

27:53

have for fan base and community and all these other

27:55

things. And imagine that. People

27:57

like that would want to link up and want to talk to each other about

27:59

what they see as the future. Yeah, exactly.

28:02

And in the more, like, I think with, with

28:04

COVID and people are trying to stay more on the

28:06

internet, so it's like, it's gotten a little easier

28:09

there, right? So

28:11

actually I'm building something right now

28:13

and I'm having trouble, like, you know, how

28:15

do I get the best a hundred people onto

28:18

the platform and, you know, have them

28:20

again, have them give me their feedback, et cetera.

28:22

So on day one, when you're building coin buys,

28:25

how did you outreach and get

28:27

or convince a hundred people to join that discord?

28:30

Or was it really easy and just organically? I

28:33

think it was more organic. But,

28:35

but I think the initial thing was that we talked

28:38

about the idea, a lot of what we're

28:40

building and why it's important to people and

28:42

why it's important to me and our team and why that's

28:44

going to bring value to them and why it's going to be useful

28:46

to people. Like we conveyed that a lot on Twitter. And

28:49

we had a few people, like a few people that were like

28:51

sharing it and like really believe

28:54

it. And that really helped

28:56

us, that really helped us like get that outreach

28:58

and have people join our discord. And then there

29:00

was like, the friction of joining a discord is

29:02

a little more, but like, it's, it's not that much.

29:05

Like you're not asking them to sign up, like for early

29:07

access on a website, like joining a discord

29:09

is much easier than like, get

29:11

doing like an early access link. So

29:14

that's what we were doing. And I

29:16

think that worked out for us where we could communicate

29:18

the idea that we worked with a few friends and

29:21

like the community organically developed from. Like

29:23

getting the first people, a hundred people is the hardest part

29:26

after that. Like it just like, if it's strong enough,

29:28

it's going to grow. And the network facts started. Okay. I've

29:31

actually heard this before. This is how you, this

29:33

is like the funnel for getting people to use

29:35

your product is first you go on a platform where everybody

29:38

is like Twitter or Facebook, whatever. Then

29:40

they go to your platform, which is your podcast,

29:43

your discord, your subreddit, whatever. And

29:45

then they use. Right.

29:48

So we didn't want to like, do kind of formal

29:50

kind of thing where we have like, get

29:52

early access or like stuff like that,

29:54

where you would just put your email and then you

29:56

would just wait until like they messaged you,

29:59

you were just like, Hey, join your discord. And,

30:02

and, you know, we'll like chat about like, what's

30:04

what's next and that's it right. Like extremely

30:06

low friction. So keep them engaged.

30:09

The product ready yet, but they still are dreaming

30:12

with you. Yeah, exactly. So

30:15

would you say that the biggest challenge ahead for

30:17

coin bias is getting creators

30:19

on the platform or getting

30:21

a supply of people willing to buy what the creators

30:23

are putting out. There's

30:27

already a lot of creators. I think

30:29

there's going to be more, eventually everyone is going to be

30:32

a creator. I think our definitions of creators are

30:34

too narrow. I think to some degree,

30:36

everybody is a creator, but I think it's, it's not

30:38

a lack of resources or lack of privilege is more

30:40

like, lack of like, how do

30:42

we make them make the argument

30:44

that this could be like something that's exponentially

30:47

more useful than what they're currently doing.

30:49

And if you can communicate that message and

30:51

then eliminate the learning curve,

30:53

like, okay, this is how you use metal mask. This is

30:55

how you would interact with tokens. If

30:58

we can get those two things and like really

31:00

convince them that this could be like more useful,

31:03

or at least like give them like. An

31:06

avenue for them to do this really simply, but calling

31:08

my stars, I think that's going to change

31:10

the gears for them and make the switch. I'm

31:13

not really familiar with the space in India,

31:15

but do you guys have any direct competitors

31:18

you're competing with? So.

31:21

Not a lot, particularly in India,

31:24

but when you're in crypto, like the competition

31:26

is more global because you're

31:28

competing on like chains. So like who's

31:30

on attorney, who's on polygon.

31:32

Right. It's, it's more like it's less

31:34

location specific. It's more like worldwide

31:36

in the sense that crypto like eliminates

31:38

borders completely. Right. Which is kind of

31:40

the whole point. So I think like Roland

31:43

valley are probably the two closest that come

31:45

to, like what we're doing in terms

31:47

of competitors. Interesting.

31:50

But like, if, if I, if I can like talk a

31:52

little bit about, about this more is in

31:54

vet too. There's this idea that if

31:57

we compare, like, let's say Uber and Lyft, we

31:59

think about it in a sense that, okay, there's going to be one.

32:02

Right. And it's sort of like

32:04

a zero sum game where you feel like either

32:06

Uber is gonna, when are you doing lifts? Who's going to be in, but,

32:08

but not all of them because there's a set

32:10

of people. And, you know, whereas

32:13

in crypto you can actually build positive sum

32:15

games as a group. And we saw that with wall street bets

32:17

with with the stock, you can actually,

32:19

as a community, as a whole, you can win by working

32:22

together instead of competing. So a lot of these

32:24

projects that we see as competitors, we

32:26

might end up actually working with them. If

32:28

that works out because we'll see a lot

32:30

more collaboration between these companies that may

32:32

seem like a better, but when like there's

32:35

a finite market size, it makes sense more

32:37

to work together against. So that's

32:40

a, that's a really interesting framework. You're almost saying like

32:43

the other group, the, the people on the other side of the,

32:45

sort of the water do not see us as

32:47

somebody taking their lunch, you know, we

32:50

could theoretically add to our values.

32:52

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

32:55

So I think that, yeah, I think that it absolutely makes

32:57

sense when you're kind of early,

32:59

when you're early in this space, which

33:01

obviously has huge potential. Yeah,

33:04

my last company, we made 3d printers for

33:07

the dental industry. People would always ask us

33:09

who our biggest competitors were. And I could say, yeah, like

33:11

there are other 3d printers who we're competing with, but those

33:13

are not a real company. Our real competitors

33:15

are dental mills or dental labs,

33:17

or people are just traditional dentistry. Like

33:20

we're trying to get dentists who use an old

33:22

piece of technology to migrate to a new piece of technology.

33:24

Right. We're not competing with the other new piece of technology.

33:27

All of us. When market awareness

33:29

goes off. Exactly. So we're

33:31

competing with probably like a

33:33

lot of these, about to social protocols,

33:35

like, you know, Instagram, Reddit, Patrion

33:38

Gumroad yeah. Got it. Yeah.

33:40

I remember reading a statistic, which is like in America,

33:43

less than 5% of businesses fail because

33:45

of competition. They fail for other reasons. So

33:48

rarely competition that affects their success.

33:51

I think one sort of you admit the key thing I wanted

33:53

to bring up. Something I found really interesting is

33:55

the actual design on your website for Coinbase.

33:57

You guys have designed it as a feed. So as soon as you

33:59

go on the page, And so you can just scroll down

34:01

and see what people have created. You know, how many tokens

34:04

have been social tokens have been airdropped or I guess it's

34:06

been built. As far as like you starting

34:08

to design, that was a, an intentional choice. How did

34:10

you guys decide that it should be a feed? You know, it, wasn't thinking

34:12

before. I think the thinking

34:14

behind that was like we could either have

34:16

a bunch of texts and wait for

34:18

people to click. Okay. Go to app, which

34:20

is what a lot of these DFI protocols do. Some

34:23

don't some do or we could just show the product and

34:25

let the product do the talking. And

34:27

one of the problems that we were trying to figure

34:29

out was that how do we show people?

34:32

It was never about the tools. Like tell me

34:34

what you can do with social tokens and

34:37

how do we show like what you can do with them

34:39

instead of creating them. So we

34:41

just wanted to show the utility of these tokens.

34:43

And as soon as you go on the website, you can scroll

34:45

through a list of bounties. You can scroll through

34:47

a list of NFTs and that's, that's like

34:49

basically utility of what you can do with them.

34:53

So we wanted to show like, okay, let the

34:55

product do the talking instead of like putting texts

34:57

instead of putting like random words

34:59

and like a really like

35:01

big ambitious, like, you know, like mission

35:04

statements that don't really mean anything.

35:06

It's just let the product of that. So

35:08

it sounds the idea. So general yeah, really

35:10

appreciate you joining us. We like to wrap

35:13

up our episodes by asking

35:15

this question, which is, what is

35:17

your favorite piece of technology

35:19

either in recent memory or of all time? I

35:22

think what I, what I'm really excited

35:25

about today that I, I don't see a lot of people talking

35:27

about outside of crypto is comma.

35:29

I really like what they're doing with self-driving

35:31

cars. It's basically like, if even

35:34

if you have a Toyota, you can like plug in comma

35:36

into your car and that's gonna make it self-driving.

35:39

Which is just insane. And I think they are

35:41

probably one of the most strongest, like new neural

35:43

networks out there as just a developer. I

35:45

like to read a lot more into it.

35:47

So I'm really excited about like where this is going

35:49

for like self-driving cars, because if

35:51

we can fix self-driving cars, I think that's

35:54

the closest to what we can get to like

35:56

a really strong AI model. We need to try to

35:58

solve that problem. You're really solving

36:01

a human problem where you're working with

36:03

figuring out, you know, the physics

36:05

of like how we perceive distance, how we perceive

36:07

speed, how we react to that. And

36:10

if you can fix that problem, we're getting really close

36:12

up humans work and creating like a strong BI

36:14

model. So I'd really recommend like, if people

36:16

don't know what that is, like look into comma AI.

36:18

It's really cool. C O M M S C

36:20

O N M a.org. No, they're,

36:22

they're actually super cool. And the guy behind it, the

36:24

founder is this guy named George, George

36:27

Hotz. And he's like one of them. Best

36:30

program or separate live? In my opinion, like when

36:32

he was like, when he was like 14 years old, he jailbroke,

36:35

he was the first one to jailbreak the first iPhone. Right.

36:37

Then he was like, no, that's when he was like, he was a teenager,

36:39

he was in high school and then he did a bunch

36:41

of other crazy stuff. He's one of the first people to hack the PlayStation.

36:44

He, yeah, he just built a bunch of wild

36:47

stuff. And you can go on

36:49

his Twitch and he has these

36:51

sessions where he'll just code for 12 hours straight.

36:53

I'll just be like begging on his keyboard. He'll like,

36:56

like when you see those Hollywood movies of like

36:58

people hacking and you're like, that's not how hacking works.

37:00

That's how he codes. It's like the most impressive

37:03

thing. So I'd recommend that. Check out comment

37:05

on AI and also check out George

37:07

Hotz is coding streams. Like they're really, really cool,

37:10

but he's their background music or anything, or is it just

37:12

him in a dark room? It's usually it's pretty well lit,

37:14

but yeah, essentially just him

37:16

just banging away at his keyboard and explaining what

37:18

he's doing. He's just like, he'll say things like, oh, you know,

37:21

so today we're just going to build we're going to build

37:23

the basic self-driving system from scratch

37:25

and he'll just code it up over like 10 hours and

37:27

you'll see him like literally go from like, okay,

37:30

Python three is a real pain. Let's

37:32

see, how do I do this basic syntax to actually

37:34

building it out over the course of 10 hours. It's like

37:36

really, really amazing. Yeah.

37:42

Yeah. It's good content. It's good content.

37:44

I'll say that. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

37:46

A great formative. Cool. Thank

37:49

you. Thank you, Jeff. That was amazing. Thanks guys.

37:52

That's our episode for this week. Thank you so much for listening.

37:54

Make sure to subscribe to us and rate us on Apple

37:57

podcasts. We would really appreciate

37:59

the support. You can also follow me on

38:01

Twitter at F Z from Cupertino

38:03

and Busan. The ad next facade.

38:06

See you guys next week.