Why Speculation Drives Crypto (And How to Play the Game) - Meltem Demirors | E109

Summary

This podcast episode features Meltem Demirors, an early crypto investor and CEO of Crucible Capital, discussing the driving force behind cryptocurrency markets: speculation. The conversation touches on her journey into crypto, the role of speculative enthusiasm in advancing new technologies, and the cultural quirks within the crypto community. From practical insights on self-sovereignty to humorous anecdotes like Ether Rocks, Demirors offers a blend of serious and comedic takes on the evolving landscape of digital assets.

Highlights

• Speculation is essential for new tech; don't shy away from it! 🚀
• Meltem Demirors emphasizes the real-world impact of crypto beyond digital. 🌐
• Ether Rocks and absurd NFTs add humor to the serious business of crypto. 😄
• Practicing self-sovereignty is crucial, extending beyond digital asset management. 🔒
• Crypto's future is intertwined with technological and infrastructural shifts. 🔮

Key Takeaways

• Speculation fuels technological advancement; embrace it! 🚀
• Bitcoin and crypto have bridged online innovation to physical world impacts. ⚙️
• Ether Rocks symbolize crypto's humor and absurdity, balancing the serious. 🎨
• Self-sovereignty in crypto isn't just theory—practice it, like off-grid living! 🌍
• Demirors predicts continual crypto growth, driven by AI and market dynamics. 📈

Overview

Meltem Demirors explores the core of cryptocurrency's speculative nature, asserting its necessity in driving technological revolutions. Her discussion delves into how speculation has historically fueled innovation across industries, highlighting crypto's role in bridging digital developments with tangible, real-world advancements.

The podcast takes a light-hearted turn with anecdotes about Ether Rocks and the cultural artifacts birthed from crypto's vibrant community. Demirors shares the inherent absurdity and humor within these projects, underscoring the blend of serious entrepreneurism and playful creativity defining the crypto space.

Despite the fun narratives, Demirors stresses the importance of self-sovereignty and practical applications of crypto principles like decentralization and resilience. This includes personal practices such as off-grid living and hardware innovation, connecting individual autonomy with larger market trends and future predictions for crypto's growth.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Background The introduction highlights the role of speculation in acquiring wealth, particularly within the cryptocurrency sector. It debates the view that speculation should be discouraged, pointing out its role in helping investors, like the speaker, gain significant wealth. The chapter introduces Melum Demos, an early investor in cryptocurrency and a key figure at Crucible, as well as her involvement as Chief Strategic Officer at CoinShares, Europe's largest digital asset firm managing significant assets.
• 01:00 - 11:00: Meltem Demirors' Perspective on Speculation in Crypto Meltem Demirors reflects on her nine-year journey in the crypto space, highlighting the diverse disciplines involved such as philosophy, economics, and technology. She recalls the volatility in the market, with Bitcoin's price climbing to $1,200 in 2015 before plummeting to $120. Despite the downturn, she notes the influx of enthusiastic newcomers, which she found inspiring. Meltem also mentions her interest in unique crypto assets like Ether rocks.
• 11:00 - 15:00: The Role of Aesthetics and Personal Image in the Crypto World This chapter discusses the significant role that aesthetics and personal image play in the crypto world. It starts with an anecdote about purchasing a digital rock for $35,000, representing the surprising and sometimes absurd aspects of value in the crypto space. The speaker highlights the importance of being early in new technological trends, suggesting that the early adoption of Bitcoin is paralleled by opportunities in the current crypto market. The narrative suggests intrigue in the decision-making process and foresight of others, especially when their actions seem unconventional or hard to comprehend at first.
• 15:00 - 23:00: Social Interactions and Perceptions in Crypto The chapter discusses the importance of subscribing to and engaging with a YouTube channel focused on crypto investments. The host encourages viewers to subscribe, like, and comment to support the channel's growth, which in turn allows for better guests and conversations. Additionally, the role of Jupiter, a decentralized trading platform on Solana, in supporting the conversation is mentioned.
• 23:00 - 31:00: The Motivation for Knowledge and Investing in Crypto The chapter discusses the largest Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) in the world, Bitwise Asset Management, which is a crypto specialist asset manager handling over 10 billion dollars in client assets with more than 30 different crypto solutions including ETFs, index funds, alpha strategies, and staking. It also covers the development of a scalable layer one blockchain built by former Facebook developers. The blockchain is characterized as fast, secure, and affordable, integrating the benefits of web 3 with the usability of web 2, and mentions a specific layer 2 development called 'mental a leum'.
• 31:00 - 53:00: Speculation's Role in Innovation and its Criticism The chapter discusses the role of speculation in innovation, particularly within the cryptocurrency and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) spaces. It highlights specific examples such as fbtc, which allows users to borrow and lend Bitcoin, and mirrors one of the largest e-liquid staking protocols. Additionally, the conversation includes personal reflections on self-awareness and the perception of appearances, particularly from a woman's perspective, and how these can relate to broader personal and professional considerations.
• 53:00 - 63:00: Crypto's Impact on Physical and Digital Infrastructure The chapter discusses the transformation of an individual involved in the crypto industry who initially did not care about personal appearance but later recognized the importance of aesthetic and public image. The speaker reflects on their past indifference towards their looks and the importance that they now place on aesthetic post-2021. This shift signifies the evolving nature of personal branding within the context of the crypto world.
• 63:00 - 81:00: Building and Investing in Foundational Infrastructure The chapter discusses the concept of 'aesthetic maxing' as a practice of enhancing personal looks, framed as an activity with a high return on investment (ROI). The text opens with a philosophical contemplation about belief in God, considering if the pursuit of holiness and divinity might involve aesthetics. It mentions 'pretty privilege,' suggesting societal bias towards attractive individuals, and addresses how being aesthetically pleasing can lead others to underestimating someone's intelligence.
• 81:00 - 91:00: Meltem Demirors' Personal Journey and New Ventures In this chapter, Meltem Demirors reflects on an amusing personal experience at a social dinner in London organized by an acquaintance, Stanny from Aave. During the dinner, a man attempted to explain cryptocurrency to her, unaware of her expertise in the field, highlighting the sometimes presumptuous nature of 'mansplaining'. This moment ties into the broader theme of navigating gender dynamics in the tech industry.
• 91:00 - 110:00: On Speculation, Humor, and Cultural References in Crypto In this chapter, the narrator recounts an amusing experience at a social club where they deliberately withheld their expertise in cryptocurrency while interacting with a Bitcoin enthusiast. Despite their background, they feigned ignorance as the enthusiast eagerly explained the concept of Bitcoin for two hours. This humorous interaction underscores the social dynamics around cryptocurrency discussions and highlights how cultural references to crypto can often lead to lengthy, one-sided conversations.
• 110:00 - 120:00: The Importance of Adaptability and Realism in Investing The chapter discusses the significance of being adaptable and realistic in investing. The speaker narrates an anecdote where someone was enthusiastically explaining Bitcoin, which the speaker found endearing despite already understanding the topic. The story highlights the importance of allowing others to express their understanding and perspectives, even if it seems redundant, as a way of adapting to social situations and absorbing different viewpoints without confrontation.
• 120:00 - 135:00: Balancing Professional Life and Personal Values In this chapter, the focus is on the balance between professional life and personal values. It illustrates a scenario during a conversation where the speaker reflects on an interaction. The interaction involves a misunderstanding or comic situation about someone's knowledge or experience with Bitcoin. The speaker recounts the incident as a light-hearted moment, highlighting the tension between appearing knowledgeable in professional settings while staying true to one's personal and honest self. The anecdote serves as a metaphor for balancing one's work persona with authenticity and personal values, suggesting that even in professional environments, maintaining integrity and having fun is possible.
• 135:00 - 154:00: Future Predictions and Closing Thoughts In the chapter titled 'Future Predictions and Closing Thoughts,' the speaker mentions a personal tactic of asking questions they already know the answers to in order to make others feel good. They highlight their role as the one asking questions in the current context, and amusingly note they might request explanations for things they already understand. The speaker's humorous side is acknowledged, referencing a tweet that generated significant engagement, underscoring their wit and self-perceived humor.

Why Speculation Drives Crypto (And How to Play the Game) - Meltem Demirors | E109 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 I got rich from speculation it worked out for me people in crypto who have made a lot of wealth because of this speculation and they will come out and say oh well speculation is not a real use case speculation is bad we shouldn't have speculation you are here because of speculation melum demos early crypto investor and founder and general partner at Crucible she was also Chief strategic officer at coin shares Europe's largest digital asset investment firm which oversees 7 billion in a crypto has been
• 00:30 - 01:00 such a great place to spend the last 9 years of my life cuz there's so many disciplines you touch on there's the philosophical side to it economics there's technology and the rabbit hole goes really deep absolutely 2015 Bitcoin ran to $1,200 and then crater to like 120 joining the Bitcoin when Bitcoin had just gone down 80 90% And you see so many people coming in that was really inspiring one of the thing that caught my attention was The Ether rocks and the Dig butts I think I bought my I eat the
• 01:00 - 01:30 rock for 9 e which was like $35,000 the first you bought was for 35k and it was a JPEG of a rock um I'm just a girl so you're really early in this uh Bitcoin wave and now the goal is to be early in something else that a lot of people don't even think about it to be honest first I was like what the [ __ ] and second I was like she's smart so instead of saying what the [ __ ] I should ask what does she understand that I don't do you want to hear something crazy I want I think everybody wants
• 01:30 - 02:00 okay [Music] son 75% of you that watch this channel frequently do not subscribe if you like this show and think it provides value to you in your Crypton investing Journey can you please please please do me a favor and subscribe to this channel hit the like button and leave a comment below it helps this channel more than you can imagine the bigger the channel the bigger the guests and the better the conversation thank you this conversation is supported by Jupiter the most used decentralized trading platform on Solana
• 02:00 - 02:30 and the largest Dao in the world bitwise Asset Management the crypto specialist asset manager with more than 10 billion dollar in client assets and more than 30 crypto Solutions across ETFs index funds Alpha strategies staking and more three a scalable layer one blockchain that's fast secure and affordable built by previous Facebook developers and that delivers the benefits of web 3 with the ease of web 2 and mental a leum layer 2 that build two products I particularly
• 02:30 - 03:00 like fbtc which enables you to borrow and lend Bitcoin in Defi and me or meth one of the largest E Liquid taking protocols in crypto is it your good angle right angle every angle is good baby no because often women are like very conscious about what's the right angle you know I just like I wasn't really into um I've always been like a brains person so I never really worried about how I
• 03:00 - 03:30 looked and then I became like a public Persona and now I'm dealing with the fact that like my first six years in crypto I like didn't wear makeup I like too at and I looked like a turtle it's like I need to figure out how to delete myself off the internet pre 2021 cuz pre 2021 I just didn't care about my appearance what made you change um because you might just not care right here I think aesthetic is incredibly important anesthetic is everything like
• 03:30 - 04:00 if you believe in God which I don't know if I believe in God but if you believe in like Holiness and Divinity then you should be aesthetic maxing it's the highest Roi activity being that's true like if you if you're honest to yourself that's true right the first thing you see is like the first it'ss yeah absolutely absolutely pretty privilege is real I really like it um and I want people to assume like I'm dumb because people look at in they're like look at this dumb
• 04:00 - 04:30 hell like I'm GNA reminds me of one of the tweet I saw the other day which where you said um I let uh Men explain me the Yen yeah it's a little tra it's a little treat for them the boys need love to I'm like yes please expl I was once at a dinner I was sitting next to someone I won't name him um and he didn't know I worked in crypto right it was just like a social dinner in London um that Stanny from a had organized start it's like we're at a
• 04:30 - 05:00 social club it's fun it's sexy whatever I'm sitting next to this guy he has no idea I working C and um and I don't bring it up I never bring it up because it's like not interesting and nobody wants to sit next to that person at dinner who just talks about Bitcoin the whole time that's what this guy did and he was like have you ever heard of Bitcoin and I was like no I haven't I'm like like I've read about it but I don't and I thought he would get the joke but he didn't and so for 2 hours this guy is explaining Bitcoin to me how will
• 05:00 - 05:30 not not terribly well but it's really like it's sweet and he was really enjoying it so I'm like who am I to to St like he's man's plaining me on bitcoin no but it was like he was really it was cute right and I just I had at no point did I feel like it was a good moment to sort of stop him so just let him keep going it's not a malicious thing anyway so for dessert everyone switches places and he sat next to someone who I guess was like
• 05:30 - 06:00 telling him about me was like oh did you have a good conversation with melum you know she's B and she's B he comes up to me after the dessert course and he goes I just want you to know you're an [ __ ] and he's like why did you let me make a fool of myself I'm like you were having fun like I mean if he's really in Bitcoin you should you should kind of know you prob right it's not no no no no it's not even that it was just um it was I thought it was is really
• 06:00 - 06:30 cute so sometimes I like to ask people things that I know they answer to just because it makes them feel good you know so that good luck for me I'm the one asking the questions today so I'm not going yeah but I might ask you to explain something to you like oh comein would you please like I don't know what that is I I know you trick I know you trick since I read that tweet actually and I loved a lot and there was a lot of Engagement so people understand the the witty side I'm very I'm funny I think
• 06:30 - 07:00 I'm just a funny strange person you have funny and strange strange yeah AB why um I think that I like thing I like a very specific set of things like you asked me what my hobbies are like crypto the history of capital markets science fiction vintage furniture that's it bushcrafting like survival camping it's that's I don't that's it
• 07:00 - 07:30 that's as far as it goes so you can do survival camping but you can also look very good and wear super nice shoes during your podcast show show us the shoes yeah show us the shoes it's fun it's fun actually it makes me feel good so anyway it's just like that guy explaining Bitcoin that felt good for him this feels good for me so for people like that guy who don't know who you are I don't like this phrasing though like I'm nobody I'm just a random person right why why should anyone know
• 07:30 - 08:00 anything so you're a random person yeah I think so we all are right like when you're in a social setting I think when people come in and they're like I'm so and so I that's so it's insufferable yeah yeah terrible yeah or even like I go to a lot of events I used to go to a lot more events now I don't go to so many events but I will again now that I have my new firm right I always find it so strange because people will come up to you at events and I'm sure people who watch your show will come up to you and they're like I more more but only nerds
• 08:00 - 08:30 yeah they're like but I find it so interesting socially cuz they're like oh my God Hey Kevin and I'm like hi my name is nelton what's your name like it's so nice to meet you like what is this [ __ ] weird social and like just be normal it's strange so for someone who doesn't know you and who asks you who are you yeah what do you answer um I'm just a girl
• 08:30 - 09:00 you don't you don't know a word I'm just a girl I'm just a girl you're a girl but you have a huge fire in the belly right yes where does it come from I think um people are motivated by different things right I think the framework that most people use like people care about money people care about Fame people care about power right those are like typically the three kind of drivers I think for me ever since I
• 09:00 - 09:30 was a a kid it's been knowledge I just like knowing things not for any other purpose that that's that's fun for me and that's why I think crypto has been such a great place to spend the last nine years of my life because there's so many disciplines you touch on there's a philosophical side to it there's obviously economics there's technology there's all these different disciplines and the rabbit hole goes really deep so for me I think the motivation has always
• 09:30 - 10:00 been I like to to know things um but more than that I think investing is fun because it's the exercise of trying to translate knowledge into Alpha and there's a scorecard 100% And I like the scorecard I'm competitive mostly with myself but also with the market and I'm like can I catch things before they catch fire 100% I remember being um at school and
• 10:00 - 10:30 doing pretty well there but I was always thinking it's so rational right the grading system that I can never show that I'm the best because it's kind of like too rational right or sometimes some some classes actually are very irrational it's more like the the teacher likes you or not right and then I discovered with with investing actually and Entrepreneurship building businesses I was like this is actually the way to for me to express whether my
• 10:30 - 11:00 opinion about the word and whether I'm right or wrong and I might be completely wrong but at least I have a way to kind of differentiate myself from the masses right so I felt know what's fun about crypto is it's not just about being intellectually right I talked to a lot of Founders and they spend a lot of time talking to me about the specifics of the technical specifications or the technical differentiation of their product or their protocol and that's really not the most important thing I think we are currently in an era of
• 11:00 - 11:30 crypto and we've always sort of been in this this sort of meta but I think we're now just starting to understand it it's about and this is why I joke like I'm an aspiring cult leader and I want to invest in Founders who are aspiring cult leaders because it's really about not just your ability to build something that is H technically Innovative and brings new features to Market but it's also about your ability to create narratives and to capture attention and to compete for Capital right to compete for tvl to compete for transaction
• 11:30 - 12:00 volume this is really important and I think that's something that many in there are a lot of investors I really respect I think they are intellectually like leagues and leagues above and beyond me but that's not the game we're playing that's a portion of it but it's not all it is so I think the ability to understand these social dynamics and how transform and this is why I love like Cults right and Bitcoin is a religion
• 12:00 - 12:30 more so than anything else a religion and a social movement yeah yeah I was talking with Kia Wong the other day from Alliance and we're talking about um what Charlie merer brought to the Warren buett approach Warren buett was very um fundamental investing and then Charlie M was much more kind of like almost growth investing he was saying and the whole thing the whole phasis was everybody saying in crypto out season is coming out season coming right but then K was
• 12:30 - 13:00 saying actually it's very different now because the the fundamental Catalyst for Al season basically are that you need to have a limited amount of tokens and need to have a lot of liquidity right now we have no one of both right yeah for the moment and we have we have too many tokens we have low liquidity right because the other thing that's fundamentally shifted is Market micr structure with the introduction of the ETFs a lot of the new inflows coming in are going into ETFs and that capital is
• 13:00 - 13:30 not going elsewhere whereas in Prior Cycles I think you had more of this um sort of circularity of capital where Capital would flow into Bitcoin Bitcoin would appreciate in value people would go further out on the risk curve right now that's not H it's still going to happen I think but not to the same degree uh and I think one of the sort of dichotomies that we don't talk about enough is with the financialization of crypto and everyone talks about oh the institutions are coming like they're not coming to buy your shitcoins my friend
• 13:30 - 14:00 my brother in Christ they are not coming to buy your shitcoins uh and so I just think that many people are sort of detached from that very fundamental reality absolutely so it's going to be much more of a a barbell right I think there will be an extreme sort of um sort of it'll be binary outcomes it's either a zero or it's a one right and if it's a zero that means that your project will go public go go live launch main net
• 14:00 - 14:30 issue token and it will trade below your last round fdv which in my view is kind of a zero or you'll catch fire and there will be very few who sort of reach that escape velocity and so now my focus is figuring out what are those things going to be dear wind shift happens family the following message is probably the single most important thing you should take away from today's podcast if you're serious about your crypto investing Journey please take some time to learn how to self custody your assets to make
• 14:30 - 15:00 sure that nobody can take your coins away ever if you don't learn how to be your own bank it is very likely that one day you will lose all your hard-earned crypto the safest way to hold your crypto is in a cold storage that we also call Hardware wallet Hardware wallets are not complicated and they give you peace of mind I personally use a hardware wallet called treasure it is open source very easy to use and the first Hardware wallet created ever as would like to say it in crypto not your case keys not your coin you can order
• 15:00 - 15:30 your treasure wallet with a 10% discount by following the link in the description down below and by using the promo code W10 and now back to the episode and you're saying that this is not fully but a huge part of the ones we're going to W is attention right that's a lot of it and price drives price everyone thinks narrative drives price but it's price drives price which I think has um and
• 15:30 - 16:00 it's this way in all markets right and I think as we look at public equities right volatility and public equities is way up since the pandemic and why is that I think much of the investing Community has shifted from this sort of a closed subscription based to research driven model where you relied on you know stock Pickers and analysts at large financial institutions hedge funds um specialist for for intelligence and
• 16:00 - 16:30 insights now you go on X and there's all of this free information from worldclass analysts who are deep experts in a lot of different domains right there's FX Twitter there's Commodities Twitter there's crypto Twitter there's equities Twitter there's now even uh you know all of these Twitter gurus who invest in small businesses like car washes and what whatever you're looking for there's so much expertise and so much information out there and I think it has made a lot of the rest of um Finance much more Trend driven much more sort of
• 16:30 - 17:00 narrative and meta driven and resulted in a lot more inherent volatility and crypto supercharg SC right big hot ball of money you have 247 365 instant liquidity is this a good or bad thing this there is no good or bad it just is there is no I I am not in the business of judging good or bad I'm in the business of deploying Capital so it's not about good or bad it's about this is and as a result of this is this
• 17:00 - 17:30 is how allocators investors whether you're a retail investor a semi-professional investor or professional investor this is how you adapt to what right I think we need to disabuse ourselves of this idea of good or bad there is no good or bad the market decides what's good or bad yeah with price the good or bad is more like the way kind of our parents would think about things right if you think about um for example example robots right Elon
• 17:30 - 18:00 Musk said recently there will be a humaning robot for every person on Earth plus robots working in the industry which means there will be a market for 20 billion human robots my mother probably would say this this looks weird this is not a good thing right or just social media right sure this is bad like people are too addicted there's proof that people feel bad about it more suicide Etc right but at the end of the day what can you do
• 18:00 - 18:30 about it but take it as it is right and adapt and again um but that's the Arc of human progress it is yeah it you go through it just is we faced the same thing in uh Bitcoin right when I started working in Bitcoin I was convinced it was a question of if uh of when right not if but when like Bitcoin is absolutely
• 18:30 - 19:00 going to be a force that radically reshapes Capital markets Financial system Global economies it was just for me a question of when it's like okay I'm perfectly happy to be in the struggle for as long as it takes because I know it will happen I felt very convinced of that I think a lot of people were in the if stage right they did not feel convinced same thing with what I'm doing now I
• 19:00 - 19:30 know it's going to happen it's no long question of if I've seen enough to know this is going to happen it's just a question of when and can I be in the game long enough so that when it happens I win right and winning is different to different people of course right it goes back to what drives you some people it's very much about money some people just really want to be right you see this all the time I see people engaging on Twitter and they're so combative and I'm like yeah yeah relax a
• 19:30 - 20:00 little bit actually I read the there is actually some scientific studies that say that there is the the heat that you get from being right is actually much higher than the heat that you get from making money yeah right just being right like hey I was right and but what's the prize what's the prize probably Pride I don't know maybe maybe insecurity where you're just like I don't know I I just think it's fun like for me that's how I'm wired for me it's it's fun I'm just
• 20:00 - 20:30 like yeah okay [ __ ] yeah like that's all right before we talk about um your thesis right for the future it's not a thesis it's a direction what's the difference between a thesis and direction I think thesis is very like a definitive sort of um I don't I shy away from the word thesis I just think it's overused or when people say like principles first or first principles um thesis driven it's
• 20:30 - 21:00 become so overused that it's meaningless I have a directional heading but there's a lot of uncertainty around that directional heading so I think remaining uh intellectually flexible is is is important I think thesis is a bit rigid for how early things still are and how un form things still are so I'm no first principles no thesis we're staying away from those words so before we talk about this
• 21:00 - 21:30 Direction Let's understand how how you got fascinated by the word of Bitcoin and blockchain what's your crypto aha moment when did you understand like this is because you said before this is this was clear to me right early on yeah I think the aha moment for me was when I sent a Bitcoin transaction I was like how why I almost felt like I was doing something naughty you
• 21:30 - 22:00 know you're like how this is crazy but why did you send the bco transaction initially like how would you even have the idea um so it was 20 late 2012 I was working in China at the time was working in uh on a acquisition of a mining equipment manufacturer very sexy stuff I used to do um and I was talking to my brother and I wanted to you know I had to send money for something and I was like I don't know what to do and he's
• 22:00 - 22:30 like oh well Bitcoin and I was like what's a bitcoin he's like oh oh boy and then I started reading about Bitcoin and then I figured out how to get some Bitcoin and then I sent some Bitcoin and I just thought it was one of the wildest Things I'd ever experienced but it didn't really I'll be very honest it didn't really click for me immediately I then did other things went to graduate school and then Bitcoin started growing and growing so 2013 coinbase comes out
• 22:30 - 23:00 2014 Circle right I was in grad school in Boston so obviously a lot of people talked about Circle and then I had the Good Fortune of being um at MIT and there were a lot of people at MIT who were really focused on bitcoin at the time so Dan elitzer who now runs nent Jeremy Rubin who has been you know a Bitcoin Dev and I think a really sort of prominent figure in the Bitcoin ecosystem um there was uh Gavin andreon who was the maintainer of the Bitcoin
• 23:00 - 23:30 core repo who took that over from Satoshi he was also based in in Boston Circle was based in Boston Fidelity is headquartered in Boston um Abby Johnson who owns Fidelity runs Fidelity she got into Bitcoin very early started mining Bitcoin early on so there was just it was being exposed to the idea being at a point in my life where I wanted to try new things but also being exposed to a really interesting group of people M who are all talking about thinking about
• 23:30 - 24:00 Bitcoin yeah and then I took a took a jump and that's what what made you take the jump take the leap I'll be really honest I was very bored I was very bored I was like I the thought of going and spending the rest of my life working in corporate finance was very depressing I think a lot of people feel like that still today probably yeah most likely right uh if I'm going to go back to doing
• 24:00 - 24:30 Powerpoints and Exel models for the rest of my life I what's the point and that's not a criticism I just think understand grow up and you get older you just learn things about yourself and I was like okay as I learn more about myself and what I like I am learning that maybe some of these skills I've Acquired and these things I'm doing are not really aligned with what makes me feel alive right but I didn't know that I didn't know I didn't even know about startups till I was in my mid-20s like I worked
• 24:30 - 25:00 in the oil industry I was hanging out in pipe yards in you know the Yukon in January is Nega 4 degrees Fahrenheit outside like you have to plug your car in when you go to bed at night that's the environment I was hanging out and it was a bit different I would say than what was going on in silan Valley and in other entrepreneurial ecosystems what's your first experience in crypto then when you said that jumped I joined dcg yeah 2015
• 25:00 - 25:30 yeah I was actually hired by second Market which was Barry's prior form yeah but I met um Ryan sukus first through Dan elitzer actually Ryan suus was supposed to be in our CL in our grad school class but he decided to stay uh in Bitcoin and work on bitcoin and he built the blog to bit idiot TBI the Bitcoin lore goes very de we have to remember this is like the days of gaw in the Silk Road right so when I decided and then through Ryan I met Barry they were
• 25:30 - 26:00 starting dcg it's like okay I think I have some really specific skills I can bring to the table here having worked in very corporate environments right these are two much more entrepreneurial sort of like startup guys um and then I was like okay let's let's do this and we we did it what's yeah we did it what's something you learned at dcg that you could never have learned anywhere else so many things
• 26:00 - 26:30 um I think I built first and foremost there was something really special about Bitcoin like 2015 era Bitcoin because Bitcoin has sort of gone through this crazy boom right 2011 2012 it was still very early some of the first products were things like Satoshi dice which is Eric ves's uh company in in 2011 I think he started it you know you had gaw there were just a small number of companies coinbase really was the first big
• 26:30 - 27:00 Venture backed company that was YC spring summer 2013 um there weren't a lot of Bitcoin companies around and then gax happened the Silk Road happened right Bitcoin ran to $1,200 and then cratered to like 120 there was this really big existential sort of question about the future of Bitcoin and so joining theit Bitcoin industry which at the time was very
• 27:00 - 27:30 small um joining the Bitcoin ecosystem Community industry whatever you want to call it at a point in time when two really catastrophic things had just happened and when Bitcoin had just gone you know price is down 80 90% sentiment really bad and you see so many people coming in and building companies in this space and more convinced than ever that they're right about Bitcoin that was
• 27:30 - 28:00 really inspiring it was also really hard lived through the blocksize wars as well and that was a really interesting experience I learned about the power of communities from that because that's when you had these different factions in Bitcoin um really competing for control trying to dictate sort of what is the future of of Bitcoin and you know uasf user activated soft Fork was sort of the the force that one out um I learned a lot I learned I I
• 28:00 - 28:30 gained a lot of respect for Founders particularly Founders in Bitcoin just the challenges they went through there's you know the BSA operation choke point not being able to get banking um regulatory pressure so many different attacks from different vectors the surface area of risk working in Bitcoin was insane right there's constant cyber security risk there's constant personal security RIS there's all of these insane
• 28:30 - 29:00 risks that are really difficult to mitigate and then on top of that there's just the psychological challenge of dealing with an underlying asset that's extremely volatile just on the tip of net yeah cherry on the cake but I do think there is like this really today when I see people from the early days of dcg and I'm really proud of what we did we built a really amazing community of Founders and brought them together different ways um with a lot of
• 29:00 - 29:30 in-person events but also just introducing people to one another trying to build synergies in the portfolio we were building I think it's nice running into people now um they've been really successful their companies have been successful they were right they were right about Bitcoin and it's just nice running into them and being able to go back to that time and just like wow we we did like we did it and different people did different things but what I love about Bitcoin and what I think
• 29:30 - 30:00 still makes Bitcoin so special is such a big component of it is driven by volunteers right and just people on the internet like we weed a global Reserve currency into existence yeah over the span of a decade on the internet that which is pretty crazy yeah that's just pretty wild it was pretty profound and obviously had the support of um investors and you know others who really supported Bitcoin on
• 30:00 - 30:30 its journey to becoming what it is today but what I like about a crypto which is why I sort of detest it when people are like oh you know I've been in crypto since 2013 or I've been in crypto since this state nobody cares right and it's because there's so many different ways for people to contribute to the growth of Bitcoin as protocol Bitcoin as an asset class Bitcoin as a social movement SL religion and there's a lot of different types of people who built businesses of all kinds whether those
• 30:30 - 31:00 are more services oriented businesses Media or content businesses or you know exchanges Financial Services businesses whatever it is there's so many people who've built really great businesses that are also complimentary to the growth of Bitcoin so that's really I think really really cool to see so you're really early in this uh Bitcoin wave right and now the goal is to be early in something else that a lot of people don't even think about it to be
• 31:00 - 31:30 honest I spent quite some time resurging and I hurt my brain what what on your on your direction right because I was like otherwise I'm going to arrive there I'm going to understand nothing what she talking about but hold on it's really it's just it's just every time when you when you look at something the first time it's a New Concept right so I was like oh now I understand it better so I'm able to to ask questions that makes sense right yeah but uh I I think it's actually uh quite intuitive and it goes back to bitcoin uh if you think about
• 31:30 - 32:00 what Bitcoin is right uh money is a way to transport value across space and time right and I think one of the things that this AI boom is bringing about is a renewed conversation about what it is we're actually trying to do with technology and I think all technology and money as a technology is just an abstraction of thermoeconomics when I say thermoeconomics is like a fancy way of talking about thermodynamics which is a
• 32:00 - 32:30 fancy way of saying there are only two things that are sort of foundational to life on planet Earth and I presume elsewhere in in the universe and that's energy and matter right so Bitcoin did something really unique in that it created thermoeconomic money right so created money that was anchored to the laws of thermodynamics in the sense that in order to operate the Bitcoin protocol you need energy and you need matter
• 32:30 - 33:00 atoms in the form of a a chip right A specialized semiconductor the Asic and so Bitcoin is interesting and cool I think because it anchors back to these core laws of the reality that we live in which is thermodynamics right now I think there's sort of this renewed focus with the AI boom if we look at what's driving value in markets right now it's compute and compute again it's about
• 33:00 - 33:30 access to energy and access to semiconductors right those are really sort of your your core levers and around that there are a lot of other levers um when I think about these levers that you can sort of work around build businesses around there's a technical Innovation right there clearly some limitations to technical Innovation but new sources of energy new sources of generation new models for distribution transmission on
• 33:30 - 34:00 the semiconductor side right new models for semiconductors whether it's photonics which is using lasers instead of doing a traditional transistor based chip um there's now even companies like extr Tropic right that are doing some derivative of biocomputing but there are these technological innovations on the energy and atom side and there are also technological innovations in sort of this OSI model or this networking architecture which is like the hardware layer the networking layer transport layer and then the application layer
• 34:00 - 34:30 right so and crypto has been a lot of innovation it's sort of the the transport layer and the um application layer and now we're starting to see people going further into the stack we're starting to see new generation of like fpgas that are specialized for specific type of crypto Computing I.E zero knowledge proofs um so first lever is technical Innovation second lever is operating leverage right and this is where how do you optimize the way you operate assets infrastructure that could be you know companies in the managed
• 34:30 - 35:00 Services space there are a lot of companies like the alchemies of the world the INF furas block Damons Etc that are in this sort of managed Services um operating leverage space it's tooling that makes it easier for people to run nodes um operators validators whatever it may be and then there's the third lever which is I think the most interesting and probably the most explored design space in crypto which is financial engineering so those are kind of the three levers that you have like if you sort of reduce
• 35:00 - 35:30 everything down right and you take out all the fancy words like thesis and principles first or first principles I don't even know how to say it honestly there's those three levers technical Innovation operating leverage and financial engineering and it was the same in the oil field right like this is where my experience in living through those days of Commodities and fundamental technological shifts in the oil industry through the introduction of fracking which was Technology Innovation it resulted in fundamental changes in
• 35:30 - 36:00 operating models for oil and gas companies and then the facilitation of a Futures Market a derivatives market for Commodities particularly oil that took off in the 2000s with electronic trading allowed Commodities to become a more defined asset class with broader participation and then introduce these new financial instruments and it just resulted in this amazing exponential explosion in the volume of activity Financial activity happening in the oil and oil trading space in particular but
• 36:00 - 36:30 that also sort of filtered back and made new technical Innovation possible and then allowed for different kinds of operating leverage so these three levers kind of all work together and I'm trying to be very simplistic here I think for me Frameworks are really helpful and there's a lot you can learn from history right so like informative it won't be exactly the same but I think there's more commonality than not so I basically broke down the whole thing into kind of framework right to make people so people can understand
• 36:30 - 37:00 thing better right um the first one is infrastructure right which is a big Focus for you what is infrastructure um that's question number one we throw around the word infrastructure a lot it means different things to different people uh one of the I think this is also one of the funny sort of challenges in in crypto like there are no canonical definitions and when I say canonical it's sort of like why accepted uh truths like Global
• 37:00 - 37:30 truths versus localized truths right so I think one of the challenges is I'll say infrastructure and you'll say infrastructure and we're speaking about two very different things or I'll say deepin you'll say deep in and we're thinking of two very different things so I think this is one of the challenges of working in an industry where there is no sort of a formal body that sort of decides like here's the canonical definition the Market decides the canonical definition which I think is
• 37:30 - 38:00 also cool right like whatever becomes the most financially successful that is going to be the definition so you operate in a framework where there is no concrete definition for infrastructure but you find it no sorry I'm just saying infrastructure is a confusing term sorry okay but you have it my definition of infrastructure it breaks down into two categories there's physical infrastructure and digital infrastructure right infrastructure is basically the scaffolding that people build things on so it's it's protocols it's Frameworks that used to build it's about to me infrastructure is about
• 38:00 - 38:30 standardization right so standardization in terms of that technical Innovation is standardization in terms of the models people are using to optimize how they operate these different assets whether it's digital or physical infrastructure and then it's also a standardization of the financial Primitives that we're going to use for this financial engineering right so a lot of these defi building blocks are infrastructure for Capital markets does that make sense it does the only thing I would say is for I
• 38:30 - 39:00 think many people we are not a bit strange as you said right that you are it's not very sexy right to think about that but for you it is it's extremely how is it not sexy why is it sexy for you to to to talk about that and to focus on that for the next 10 to 20 years because it's foundational to everything else everything else that you interact with like this right this beautiful paju
• 39:00 - 39:30 penguin this one's quite cool it has a katana sick um this paju penguin right how does this paju penguin exist absolutely ERC 721 right which is the nft standard token standard like that's foundational in making this possible right then there's Financial Market infrastructure you have the openc contract right which allows you to to trade these things then you have um
• 39:30 - 40:00 lending protocols that allow you to use these as collateral so infrastructure I think is very sexy and is required to make things like this possible which is interesting and comes back to what you said before because when you said you talk about you showed the pro wi you talk about infrastructure you talk about all the digital infrastructure and me the first idea was the physical one that enabled you to build this actual toy right yeah I mean this I don't know how this was produced right that's not my expertise that's not
• 40:00 - 40:30 I know where my limits like I know where my competence begins to just know it's cute it's I we love the Penguins this is kind of badass it has a I want a katana I want to walk around with katana on my back I think that would be a good look for Me Maybe hard to get through TSA with a katana now probably not easy but uh you found the parking lot to come here so you can you can find solutions to anything I want talk about I don't want to talk about it
• 40:30 - 41:00 Bo yeah so so I think that's maybe my articulation of infrastructure it's like what are all the underlying components that make it possible for this to exist and then as there's sort of this recursive relationship um and I think Fred Wilson wrote a really great blog post on this and other people have written about it but I think Fred Wilson's blog post is sort of referred to as like I don't know the Holy Grail here but there's this ongoing conversation that happens in crypto like
• 41:00 - 41:30 why are that they're not more consumer applications right where are the applications where are the applications it's like well first the infrastructure has to get built and so when new infrastructure gets built it unlocks new applications right without erc721 we would have not had this so new infrastructure Innovations happen and then new applications can get built and there's sort of this recurring cycle infrastructure gets over capitalized then people build new applications those applications get over capitalized and so that's sort of the cycle now the way I
• 41:30 - 42:00 translate this to what I'm excited about is this is not just happening in the digital realm there is currently a massive shift underway in the Deep Tech and physical infrastructure space for a very long time if you were doing anything in the hardware or physical infrastructure space nobody wanted to invest unless you were spent out of a corporate or you had some sort of unique access to Capital at low cost is very very difficult to capitalize a hardware startup and I will God on a
• 42:00 - 42:30 Limon say over the last decade Bitcoin has done more for Hardware investing than any other Tech sector because Bitcoin catalyzed a hundred billion doll dedicated semiconductor and data center boom I think you also said that ethereum is one of the reason why Nvidia was so successful in 2017 yeah in 2017 Nvidia sort of soared past um Intel and others because of this massive demand for gpus driven by ethereum proof of fork mining
• 42:30 - 43:00 same thing in 2020 2021 with Seagate solid state drives ssds they were impossible to find price skyrocketed Blockbuster year for revenues for seate primarily who produces SSD solid state drive um for people farming uh CHF file coin and other um proof of space and time protocols so what's interesting is people think of crypto as purely digital Tech but crypto has had a massive impact on
• 43:00 - 43:30 the world of atoms on the world of semiconductors and data centers right and we're seeing this now Bitcoin data centers are really good at one thing because of the unique economics of Bitcoin as a digital commodity you can never make more Bitcoin per block right there is a fixed block reward what does that mean you have to get really good at optimizing your operating cost which means lowest cost of electricity possible efficient operations and that could mean like immersion cooling it could mean a multitude of things but
• 43:30 - 44:00 because Bitcoin data centers have gotten so good at minimizing Opex operating expenditures and finding really lowcost power those Bitcoin data centers now in a lot of instances are really optimal for GPU deployments for AI so I really think there's this interesting relationship where we think of crypto as happening like purely online but crypto has had a massive impact on our physical world on phys phal infrastructure and now there is a new wave of investing
• 44:00 - 44:30 that's happening in Silicon Valley and Beyond where I think investors are recognizing that it's time for a new era of hardware and physical infrastructure that is going to be needed to unleash a new like category of software companies right over the last 15 years really the dominant Focus has been investing in in software and bits and bites but I think we're now starting to see that we need new new hardware new Chips uh new energy generation new models for robotics like all of these interesting categories that historically have been really
• 44:30 - 45:00 unattractive to investors are now becoming really compelling and really attractive because I think crypto and these early beginnings of AI are showing tremendous upside lift right tremendous multiple expansion I have two points based on what you just said the first one is what you just said right in the last 15 years we invested in bits and bites 2010 yeah most of the biggest market cap companies were were uh um Commodities right yeah oil and gas comp oil and gas
• 45:00 - 45:30 yep and now it's technology right so it feels like who's the number one company NVIDIA Nvidia yeah it wasn't even on the chart a year ago yeah yeah so you oh getting back to it's crazy that's one of my favorite charts and this is why I'm such weird this is why I said strange is like normal people don't think that's exciting I think it's so exciting and so fascinating something wrong with us
• 45:30 - 46:00 you I've accepted it so you think that in 2038 2040 right in another 15 years we're getting back to bits and bites sure one of the big questions is whether or not those Cycles will compress and go faster and faster I don't know I actually think there is um and this is where I think history becomes really interesting I have tremendous respect for people like Bostin who just have
• 46:00 - 46:30 such a amazing grasp of human history his knowledge on this is just mine is not so profound I would not say it's my strong suit but I do think there is a rate uh like a limiting factors to how fast humans can integrate technological change so one of the Frameworks that people use is the scurve right of adoption where you kind of have like this slow build slow build slow build and then there's a moment where things sort of have this EXP iial uplift and that sort of parabolic part of the
• 46:30 - 47:00 scurve happens one of the fun things I like to think about is has that moment happened for crypto yet I don't think it has and I think what will actually unlock that parabolic moment for crypto is the AI economy AI agents the agentic economy can I explain why because I think humans struggle to interact with public private key cryptography like interacting with crypto is quite hard why do so many people go through the ux hurdles and the of interacting with crypto it's because there's a bunch of early adopters kind
• 47:00 - 47:30 of like weirdos out there who think it's fun and cool interesting whatever there's also a lot of people who are opportunistic they like oh I can make money so they go through all this friction because there's just opportunity and I think AI agents right they will have no problem interacting with public private key cryptography and things in the realm of crypto because it will be very easy for them right they operate off of of code yeah and so I think that's an interesting thing I like
• 47:30 - 48:00 to have these like weird conversations with with Founders like we don't actually talk about the companies really all that much sometimes we end up spending a lot of time just talking about what does the world need to look like for what you're building to be incredibly successful which I think is an interesting way for me to understand how other people view the world which influences my thinking as well right it's it's always really constructive and I think um as having this conversation with a founder a couple of weeks ago we're sort of debating about it and it's has crypto
• 48:00 - 48:30 even had that exponential growth moment yet have we even reached like a reasonable point of adoption because today the primary interface that people use to interact with crypto is a centralized exchange exchanges yeah exactly that's it so I don't think I don't think we've had that moment yet tot which is kind of wild to think about they agree and even when people kind of throw these numbers of we have that many users if you're very critical which you should
• 48:30 - 49:00 be there's so many people with so many addresses right like even the number of users the hundreds of millions of or you can say okay maybe they hold some some coins but what what for probably kind of gambling right or making money right which which is a great use case which exactly it leads us to something I really want to talk about today speculation right um uh which is very interesting because before you said crypto is this kind of like
• 49:00 - 49:30 online thing but that actually had a massive impact on this kind of new New Direction and offline phasis right um and Hardware right but crypto itself so Bitcoin and E fueled Hardware right yes but crypto itself is fed by speculation which a lot of people when they come into crypto or they look at this thing kind of from far away they think it's you know scammy or weird or doesn't make sense Etc right you have a very
• 49:30 - 50:00 different take on that you say speculation is the fuel that makes the future possible absolutely why is greed so important in any nent Market to help it take you to the next level I think a useful uh framework again here is um Carla Perez wrote a great book uh called technological revolutions and financial bubbles that is about this pattern that emerges um anytime there's new technology it tends to be over capitalized because it
• 50:00 - 50:30 happened with I think the analogy she uses in her book is railroads right railroads emerg there was crazy boom to invest in railroads through um stock offerings and so 90% plus of these stock offerings went to zero very quickly there were a lot of scams a lot of ponzi's but then there was this fundamental shift because railroads became a dominant mode of transportation they unlocked all sorts of New Commerce all of a sudden you know all of these new things were were possible created new Industries Etc like led to this massive industrialization so it took
• 50:30 - 51:00 just a long period of time and there was a very heated sort of financial speculation bubble that happened around that Innovation we saw it again with the internet everyone loves talking about the dotcom boom is sort of the prime example here like pets.com and a lot of the the internet bubble um same thing happened I think with Enterprise SAS we look at some of the valuations that people are investing in Enterprise SAS and you're like wow that's interesting and uh same thing happened with crypto
• 51:00 - 51:30 and crypto's gone through few waves of intense and fervent speculation we saw it with icos we saw it with defi uh we're seeing it now I think with like l2s and all of this protocol Innovation there's so many many many protocols that are being capitalized at really lofty valuations ambitious valuations I should say and they have to grow into those and then they're going to be just like a small handful of winners that make it through that speculative bubble and those are going to win really big and
• 51:30 - 52:00 that's sort of just a recurring pattern what I don't like sometimes and I'm not going to name names before you ask me one of the things that aggravates me is you will have people in crypto who have made a lot of wealth and who have gained power and influence because of this speculation right because they've been on the right side of the trade and had a right and they will come out and say oh well
• 52:00 - 52:30 speculation is not a real use case speculation is bad we shouldn't have speculation and I'm like you are here because of speculation I don't understand the I don't know if people feel moral guilt or they feel that that somehow uh reduces the legitimacy of crypto or their legitimacy as an investor but yeah that is just a foundational part of any industry and so I don't understand the moral grandstanding and I'm like just just embra Embrace like it's not good it's not bad it's what it is and the more
• 52:30 - 53:00 intellectually dishonest you are about it the scam of your crypto looks just be intellectually honest about it it's not a bad thing like it just this is it is how humans work it's how we make bets on the future right it's just part of human nature but people get so I don't know they get very weird about it and people are like oh well this speculations over and now we're doing real use cases and the real use case is something like
• 53:00 - 53:30 helium which I love helium right I think they have uh done a really great job showcasing the potential of deepin but helium's been around for seven years as a token prior to that you know it was this series C company and there's zero shade here but again helium has been through seven years of intense sort of ups and downs and a lot of the reason why it's survived for so long and had enough capit to figure out the model and get to a point where they're able to actually
• 53:30 - 54:00 create real production value is because of this speculation and that's not a criticism right same thing for a lot of other protocols but I think it's funny when people say that I'm like the reason a lot of these projects have been around so long and have had the runway they need to figure out the model and build the supply side the demand side and build things that work is because of the speculative fervor and again not a criticism like zero shade here but I just find it
• 54:00 - 54:30 so strange honestly so I embrace speculation if anyone wants to pitch me about speculation I'm very happy to listen and I think again the market decides what is right Mr Market decides so you could have the technically most brilliant non-speculative use case but if the market values it at zero what do you have and the market decided that the we needed frog coins and dog coins because frog coins and dog coins don't
• 54:30 - 55:00 have VCS and maybe people are a little bit tired of the moralizing where VCS are like yes I got rich from speculation it worked out for me but now nobody else can have speculation I think people were just tired of some of the Dynamics of the lowf flow High FDB Paradigm and on the top of that they are fun they're fun they're fun I own some dog coins I mean talking about that I have to talk about that now right there's a it was last cycle but like that's how um I mean I I
• 55:00 - 55:30 was following what you were doing but one of the thing that caught my attention was the The Ether rocks oh yeah and the dick butts right yes I was just thinking I love PES but my favorite nfts are yes the rocks and Dick butts and my first I mean like everyone you know when you go through for example nft is a good one in the beginning like what the [ __ ] is that right and then you need to hurt your brain maybe if you're a bit more weird like you need to less hurt your brain but you probably need to hurt
• 55:30 - 56:00 your brain in the beginning to understand what the hell this is right yeah and so my brain hurts often so basically I was just looking at what you were doing and talking about these ether rocks I mean then they went crazy right and then the Dig butt and I was like first I was like what the [ __ ] and second I was like she's smart so instead of saying what the [ __ ] I should ask why what does she understand that I don't I think and I get this question a lot um and people were people are still really mad about ether rocks and crypto
• 56:00 - 56:30 dick butts they make people viscerally angry I think he's awesome but I think it's hilarious um what I thought was really interesting so I learned about ether rocks I don't even recall how but I learned about ether rocks randomly and I remember texting a good friend of mine being like should I buy a used Honda Civic or an ether Rock just explain for those who don't know what an ether rock is okay so an ether rock is an nft like this beautiful fudgy penguin but an
• 56:30 - 57:00 ether rock is one of the very very early nfts I believe the project was created in 2017 um and the like uh crypto punks ether rocks have their own Marketplace so you manage your ether Rock through the rock manager console which is a very funny ux it's like very clunky there's a 100 ether rocks um the nft itself the artwork it is a free clip art of a rock so it's a PNG file that is like when you Google Rock PNG it's just
• 57:00 - 57:30 a clip art ver it's free it's free on some website and the dev basically took it and each ether Rock and there's been extensive analysis of ether rocks each one is a slightly different shade there's gray rocks uh Blue Rocks Red Rocks brown rocks the Grays are the most common the blues are a bit more rare the reds are very rare each Rock has a number so some people like to buy specific Rock numbers um a friend of
• 57:30 - 58:00 mine after I bought my ether Rock and then Rock pilled him bought Rock 21 uh another friend bought Rock number eight and 88 because eights are are good luck in in certain cultures so that's it's quite fun um there's some people who own multiple rocks I know a triple rocker somebody who owns three rocks which is like quite an accomplishment but I bought my ether Rock and I was like this is really that was my first nft was The Ether Rock first nft that I had actually gone out and and bought right I didn't
• 58:00 - 58:30 like aird some whatever but I was like I'm going to go in on ether rocks and figure out what's going on so the firstview you bought was for 35k and it was a JPEG of a rock of a rock yeah okay and then I no no but like it's so interesting but then I saw this group of people I was like okay I'm going to get other people I know who I think are really interesting and have a unique view on Marcus I'm going to get them to buy ether rocks MH it's like went in you know Arthur hey's from M Max good friend of mine I was like Hey Arthur you should get an ether Rock um I talked to uh Kan
• 58:30 - 59:00 Warwick from synthetic I was like you really need an ether Rock I like I was just like ether Rock should be status symbol they're 10,000 punks and punks are status symbol I just don't Vibe with punks personal sort of aesthetic thing to me the rock is much funnier cuz it's so absurd right and there's only a 100 of them yes and it's like crypto data ISM basically right it's like it's so it's like performance art really and I think it
• 59:00 - 59:30 takes that absurdity of crypto to a very much an extreme it's so absurd and so ridiculous and the best part about it was was we got together a group of people who owned rocks we called it Stonehenge very exclusive group a lot of great people in it we threw an insane party the best story about The Ether rock party we flew in Jamie Jones and Lee bur and had them do a back to back in a 700 person club with only 150 people in it and there were people outside during nft NC like with their
• 59:30 - 60:00 Punks on their phone they're like do you know who I am like I own 10 punks and we were like [ __ ] this is an ether rock party so someone at the door actually spent $2 million on an ether Rock to get into the party wow which is just so funny to me but I think it goes back to this idea people want to be part of something exclusive um the Rocks themselves are so absurd there have been so many derivatives of ether rocks and then the media headline like Financial media was outraged and to them ether
• 60:00 - 60:30 Rock somehow represented the excesses of crypto I just thought it was very funny performance art and I think the commit committing to the bit is very important everyone's like oh you should be more professional and I'm like I'm a clown I work in crypto I don't think you understand this is what we do and at is cor what what's no but I mean first he's amazing for advertisement right because people get so pissed off and everybody talks about it Angry they get so angry and
• 60:30 - 61:00 second you talk about excess right and I if I remember well I don't the exact sentence I saw before in your telegram is the the path to success is comes with many excess something like that oh this is a um it's filled with excess yes this is a William Blake quote which like we're all over the map and cultural reference is really wild um William Blake 1800 poet he said uh the path to wisd is paved with excess wisdom and then the second part of the quote is because you never know what is enough
• 61:00 - 61:30 until you've had too much and I actually think ether rocks in many ways are emblematic of just crypto culture and ether rocks happen to be and Dick butts by the way they're silly and they're funny just because you know something is a intellectual sort of like oh we have a white paper and that's why this token blah like people will go on these 30 thread sort of tweet storms that's effectively like advertising for
• 61:30 - 62:00 something like an ether Rock but just because it has a white paper and some very light like sprinkling of intellectual pseudointellectualism on top of it they'll be like yes this is a two billion dollar protocol I'm like there's very little difference between an ether Rock and and this and so I do think it's very important to sort of take a step back and again be just be real I think meme coins are also kind of a similar expression they're absurd and Preposterous but what's the
• 62:00 - 62:30 difference between you know some protocols that have very little tvl very low trading volume effectively fully subsidized um uh Network infrastructure like all the nodes are fully subsidized it's there's no fee paying demand for Block space there's no activity and these things have multibillion dollar valuations like yeah abolutely yeah the difference might just be me going have more at least some of them have much more at least they're funny that's my thing with ether o like at least they're funny and they're fun
• 62:30 - 63:00 and I don't know it's entertainment value and I think again that the thing I think sometimes with crypto that's frustrating is people try to be so serious and I'm like that all of this is a little bit funny I mean if you think about where Bitcoin started like we were buying drugs on the internet people true there's a great meme there's a great meme that's um everyone's seen this meme I feel like it's the guy
• 63:00 - 63:30 setting up uh The Dominoes and each one gets successively bigger and there's one where the first Domino is buying MH buying drugs on the internet and the last Domino is uh toppling the Global Financial system and that's and that's true yeah but what do you think this is always a fun question what is you meet an alien mhm and you have to explain memes to them what meme do you show them what internet meme do you show
• 63:30 - 64:00 them I mean my favorite one is the I don't know his name but is the guy with the the C the old guy that is being reused uh for example in crypto applied to crypto but it could be applied to anything else right is a I'm um I'm 24 years old and I'm a crypto Trader and then you see the guy with this cup and the and he's uh he's just old and I don't
• 64:00 - 64:30 know remember his name actually I had the ray Chan on the podcast the yeah is amazing he said di by the way Ray is a whole vibe yeah he's he's great and he said he talks about this dude actually that he met uh I want see the name I actually don't know this one of course the guy who's like show me I don't know if I can maybe I show you later because I don't know if I can find it easily but he's just the guy with the curb and this is the mem you're using to explain memes to aliens okay meme what would I what would I search meme guy with cup old old
• 64:30 - 65:00 yeah okay I would be doing you you know that oh this one I just don't yeah for me like that's the ultimate meme hold on you can it how do I show that wait can you put it in front of I feel like we need to share this with everyone this guy this yeah this guy for me this guy is being used and reused for so many things right is like one of the best memes yeah I also like the house on fire
• 65:00 - 65:30 one the like dog cartoon sipping cup of coffee at a table while the house are and they're like this is fun of course but I do think for me the Domino meme where it's you know the first Domino is um buy drugs on the internet the last Domino is like toppling the Global Financial system I think it sort of goes back to uh in crypto there can be profoundly unserious things that are actually quite serious and quite Monumental um so yeah I think it's good to have a healthy sense of humor at least it makes
• 65:30 - 66:00 the journey more fun and it probably also this meme that you say is probably like a really amazing way to show that we think that you know you born for I was born in Switzerland you think that everything works government work you pay taxes everything is working right but actually things work way less than what we think right and so therefore you you should take yourself much less seriously and
• 66:00 - 66:30 just realize that hey like everything is the word is too complex for one person to understand it right and I the most profound moment is when you meet someone who you really look up to and you realize they have no idea what's going on like they are just as clueless and figuring it out in the same way that you are I mean one of the one of the examples for that is the teachers when you grow up at school and then you grow up with Google right later on you realize you start to Google everything and you
• 66:30 - 67:00 realize oh had I had Google I mean today being a teacher must be much harder in a classroom because kids have internet right and they could just ask anything whereas you would just take the teachers or even your own parents as an authority and they would very easily say things sometimes that they have no clue about just to look like they know something right I didn't grow up like this because my father is a scientist and I grew up when I was a child I really wanted an encyclopedia set this is pre- internet I
• 67:00 - 67:30 only use my computer to play Doom if you remember the doom on the fluffy disc that's like where we're at with home computers I was playing doom on a fluffy disc but I had an encyclopedia Banica set and I got in trouble a lot because I would stay up at night under the covers with the flashlight reading encyclopedia branica this is why I say I'm like a bit of a strange bird in this way because um I wanted to know things so I grew up in
• 67:30 - 68:00 a very annoying household where we spent a lot of time learning things and knowing things yeah I was imbued with distrust of authority from a young age it's like but is that actually true so you're building a new firm right investing firm called Crucible Capital mhm it's my third time on the roller coaster but this time I'm doing
• 68:00 - 68:30 it my way so let's see how that works out are you doing that alone I'm a solo GP yes so obviously dcg was an incredible journey from 2015 to 2018 um for all of his faults I do think Barry Silber is extremely smart and he was very convinced about Bitcoin very early on and turned many people into converts um great experience really fascinating coin shares for five and a half years worked
• 68:30 - 69:00 with some of the smartest people who are likewise a lot of conviction in Bitcoin staked a lot of their own Capital their own reputations on on bitcoin um and this time around it's like okay now is the time let's let's try let's do this and I had you know it's so interesting in 2011 sorry in 2021 a lot of people approached me they were like when are you going to spin out and do your own firm um and people have always been and I never really quite felt like
• 69:00 - 69:30 I knew what the thing was going to be and I've been talking about this uh energy compute crypto sort of concept for some time but I didn't really see the picture clearly maybe until December of last year and then the picture started becoming clear and then I still didn't really know how I wanted to express what I was seeing right because there are a lot of different ways to sort of express your your beliefs your conviction around what the world will
• 69:30 - 70:00 look like a decade from now and then I feel very lucky that I've had the opportunity over the last nine years in in crypto to work with some really phenomenal people uh really smart really just intelligent ambitious risk clubbing people and a few of those people that I had worked with interacted with reached out to me um and they're like I know you're going to start a firm you might not know it yet but I know you're going to and I want to
• 70:00 - 70:30 back you and so as starting that way and in particular I have to give a huge shout out to um the laser digital team at Numa they were really encouraging and I didn't even have a name or a thesis or really I didn't even have anything written down on paper and they were like yes we want to and I think that was a huge um I think that's really helpful especially when you're doing something something new like it's always scary doing anything is new is is scary um and people seem to think like VC is the this
• 70:30 - 71:00 easy job it's really scary and really hard actually I like it but it also scares the crap out of me and then um I had another really close friend I know for a number of years who had been in crypto a long time had been really successful and he was like it's go time like let's do this I'm with you so I think um that's that's really how it started and I was like okay it's go time and go time started in in like late March early April yeah so you tweeted recently building anything is incredibly
• 71:00 - 71:30 hard the she amount of inertia required to give life to something anything is massive cheers to the builders and the doers it's [ __ ] hard keep going it's really hard especially in crypto yeah what something since you started that you did not expect would be as hard I think anytime you are raising money whether it's for a company a
• 71:30 - 72:00 project a fund whatever it may be anytime you have to go out and ask people to bet on you and then not only to bet on you right people I think in our industry and just inv Venture in general people celebrate the fundraise and like the fundraise is actually the start of absolutely the hard part right you get to that point like raising capital is hard getting people bought in is hard hard getting them over the Finish Line getting everyone to wire their money and then all of a sudden you're sitting on this
• 72:00 - 72:30 pile of money and there are these expectations right and all of your sudden you're like oh [ __ ] like now I have to go and do this thing and as you go through that process they I think just the and especially for me as a solo GP like I'm lucky in that I I do feel very fortunate in that I have a lot of friends who are GPS solo GPS I have people who've built businesses I've have so many Founders I've worked with over the years who I still talk to all the time I'm close with and friendly with the founders I'm talking to now and backing now right
• 72:30 - 73:00 we're going going through similar Journeys but in different ways just every moment when you feel really tired when your brain hurts when you just like like God this is so much and then there's more and it just keeps coming and you just you have to take a moment just be like so I've become a really quite like boring person I go to bed early i' got an aura ring because I'm not sleeping well so I'm like trying to get better at sleeping um that it's not going well really this morning all of the bars
• 73:00 - 73:30 on like the little app we're all red it's basically you you suck at sleeping um now I know where you were late got at it I went to the gym that's why I woke up early this morning that's a great but you really have to manage your psychology I think um as I've gotten older like understanding respecting my physical health and just also understanding that investing is creative right like particularly investing in nent Industries is a
• 73:30 - 74:00 creative Endeavor so finding ways to refill and recharge my battery um by doing things that are completely unrelated without seeing like an imposter like hey I'm not working right now but I'm doing something that's actually beneficial for my decision making do you want to hear something crazy I want I think everybody wants my calendar is empty empty I don't like having a lot of things on my calendar like last week I had three days
• 74:00 - 74:30 where my calendar was like that nightmare calendar you know like every half hour is fully booked anxiety I those days give me anxiety I really find that I like to have an open calendar and that doesn't mean I'm not constantly talking to people or on the phone but now so much communication also happens outside of calls I talk to a lot of people on telegram I'm like in Twitter DMS with people you know I had a conversation with someone the other day I'm like Instagram DMS it just the conversation's happening so many different places yesterday I went out for like a quick walk and I ranged
• 74:30 - 75:00 someone up I was like hey do you want just do quick FaceTime and and talk through this thing I was talking to a Founder about valuation we don't have a call schedule but I just like being free and available because I think it gives you more room for creativity and sort of that Serendipity that I think is really so important in early stage investing absolutely I think having busyness is kind of this curse and I find when I'm over scheduled I I get very depleted there's so many people reaching out to me they're like hey we should meet up in I'm like for what like
• 75:00 - 75:30 what for for what I so appreciate you thinking of me respectfully like I would much prefer to use that time to not have a meeting with you because I already know you and I I'm not going to be sense I'm not going to be a client I'm not investing like I'm happy to have a a zoom or a phone like here's my cell phone just give people my phone number like call me we can just have a chat and catch up but I don't think it's a or like people who live in new I'm
• 75:30 - 76:00 like we both live in New York we're both in New York regularly we could just meet here I would prefer to use my timing to meet people I haven't met before see people I haven't seen in some time um but also meet new people right and then I feel like outside of the conference then we can have a focused conversation probably the week after you know I'll have a week of just like lots of follow-ups and next steps but I just find it so funny people are obsessed with like meeting and I'm like I don't need
• 76:00 - 76:30 to fly to you know Brussels to meet with you we could just meet at the coffee shop down the street from where we both live I also don't know how much time I really want to spend with you like I have a family I have friends like I have other things I would like to spend time on you know and that's not a criticism but I do think an important part of building something is giving yourself space to be expansive I think one of the things I noticed in 2021 when my whole
• 76:30 - 77:00 life was crypto like I was on the circuit I was going to all the conferences doing all the going to all the events all the parties um I was so stupid I made bad decisions I made bad investing decisions my state of mind was bad because I wasn't sleeping my health was bad um I just made a lot of in hindsight dumb decisions because I didn't have the space and time to think rationally and I was in this sort of space where I had blinders on because
• 77:00 - 77:30 everyone around me was saying the same things doing the same things and it's very easy to C caught up in that absolutely so again I've just it's important to sort of take a step away I actually really like having dinner with non- crypto people like have some friends who work in Commodities or FX trading um clean tech they're adjacent to what I'm focused on but I find it really constru to get their view of the world to understand what they're excited about to run ideas by them get their
• 77:30 - 78:00 input to see if I can explain things happening in my world to them and if they're like I don't know what you just said I'm like I need to do some work here I do think that's important because if we want crypto to be this phenomenon that we all believe it's going to be then at some point we have to actually start spending time with people outside of Krypto absolutely I couldn't agree more I'm actually going more I had a funny I had a funny conversation with someone and I was like I got my Boomer po app this morning I went on LinkedIn you know it's
• 78:00 - 78:30 like Boomer status like I like using LinkedIn I go to non- crypto conferences now and it's really refreshing I think the exact same and one of the thing I did for this one of the things I did for this interview was um I mean this conversation was uh I went on your LinkedIn profile and I saw that your bio I like energy comput and crypto is actually more up to date than the Twitter one and was like I think LinkedIn is great like the algo I think is great like the whole thing is so
• 78:30 - 79:00 everybody in crypto is [ __ ] whatever I don't think here okay I'm G to give you Alpha LinkedIn is a Cess pool like the content on LinkedIn is so bad because it's content oriented towards people who like read a guide on marketing and they're like oh I'm going to do content it's bad it's all really bad so if you have anything even remotely coaching to say about something going on in crypto um and I like making slides which is also
• 79:00 - 79:30 Boomer activity but I think V I like visual things that just Frameworks that I can look at that help me understand things so I like just rip a quick slide and I put it on LinkedIn with some explanation and very high Roi activity Absolut I for me I just post this daily Clips on every platform right from this podcast everywhere it's like a Content machine on LinkedIn had some guys cont you are a Content machine I mean I'm I'm trying to build a Content machine because you have to right if you do podcasting that's how
• 79:30 - 80:00 people consume like short clips Etc on LinkedIn I had multiple people contacting me for even the to to interview the co-founder of YouTube from LinkedIn right a guy who build the nft project that got the cound of YouTube into web 3 and like a few other big people I'm like I'm getting notice there because no one in crypto gives a [ __ ] about LinkedIn right but all for the ones who do our marketing you know like something insane I I honestly just think
• 80:00 - 80:30 again is um like water rises to meet its level right so I think a lot of times people are very skeptical and dismissive of non- crypto things um but it's actually amazing if you just give people an opportunity um and you kind of meet them where they're at and you show them what it is that's going on that's why I like giving talks my talks tend to be like very slide framework research oriented uh because I think it's really constructive and what I always
• 80:30 - 81:00 appreciate is um people will reach out to me afterwards and they'll be like thank you because I I that something clicked for me and I feel like we don't spend enough time trying to figure out if what we're saying what we're doing what we're showing people is clicking because I don't think it really clicks sometimes and you have to try a lot of different permutations right I feel like I've been giving the same talk for the last 5 years it's all permutations of the same conversation and then if I figure out okay this thing sticks these things are not really working okay I'm going to go
• 81:00 - 81:30 back and reconfigure and I have a lot of people who are very direct with me which is helpful the big thing actually be very candid that I'm now trying to figure out I feel like um there is no good playbook for content in crypto right now everyone has a podcast no offense but like there are a lot of podcasts every Venture firm has a podcast I'm just like God the world does not need another VC podcast um newsletters like that's a lot of
• 81:30 - 82:00 pressure and also there's so many of I don't know that people even really open them so I'm trying to figure out what is a good way to get ideas out there that's like the clips are nice because it's very low effort required on the part of the viewer it's a minute of commitment is a 30 seconds 30 seconds of I mean depends depend with platform but absolutely and that's how you get people consume the podcast first through the I mean the YouTube game is a different game right thumbnail and title and then you can reach
• 82:00 - 82:30 audiences right but but stupid at YouTube but all the rest is just these clip that you just pump every day that almost you give no choice right it's like the person who drives and see McDonald McDonald McDonald at some point they're going to start looking right I do love McDonald's and because you've been there all the time right it's consistent it is when you're driving you don't know what you're going to if you stop somewhere like sometimes sometimes you have a really good experience sometimes you have a really bad experience McDonald's it's never good it's never bad it just is the big ma is
• 82:30 - 83:00 very good that's what's your order at McDonald's how you're a Big Mac Big Mac I'm a Big Mac kind of guy yeah oh I'm a two cheeseburger meal or sometime like sometimes that's too much and then it's a quarter pounder with extra pickles yeah but they're still all closed for me the the people I don't understand are the ones who pick up like the freaking fish or F or like something that's kind of like or or or the wrap or the salad I'm like would you go to MD they don't like reps and salads anymore menu been Consolidated because labor is so expensive right Supply chains so
• 83:00 - 83:30 expensive so McDonald's menu has gotten much smaller they don't even pretend to be healthy anymore they're like you are eating a hamburger you're eating you have five choices you get fried chicken you get and it's not even chicken it's like fried slop you get Burger uh that's it I mean actually as a consumer that's what you when you arve somewhere you're like I don't want to have to go through entire menu I didn't grow up in America you didn't grow up in America I grew up in nalon in the
• 83:30 - 84:00 Netherlands you grew up in Switzerland okay in the Netherlands when you go to a restaurant okay the menu is like this it's one page and there's like three appetizers there's two or three Entre there's like a a chicken a meat and a fish Choice and then there's like two desserts and that's the menu and you look at it and you're like okay boom boom easy okay in America my first din experience in America um I was 9 years old and my Dad we're in Chicago we took a family trip cuz my dad
• 84:00 - 84:30 was trying to like slow roll the idea of relocating to the states okay so we're in Chicago and my dad takes us to a Cheesecake Factory okay The Cheesecake Factory they bring you a a binder the menu is a a binder and I'm sitting there and I'm just like I this is terrifying it's too many choices the Paradox of choice but it's all slop it's all like frozen Cisco food that's reheated you know yeah in the
• 84:30 - 85:00 back it's so funny that you say that because in 2006 was my first time in the US with my family and I discovered chk Factory yeah what think and I thought it was amazing really because I was like I love cheesecake all these Burgers they were so huge first time I'm like I'm like I want to bring Cheesecake Factory into to Europe right and then I checked online I mean first I was probably 14 years old so they would be like [ __ ] off but second there was already someone doing it right so I was like and the other thing I discovered in the US was abian fish 2006 and I was like I want to bring Aban fish to Europe
• 85:00 - 85:30 Aban fish was cool cuz everyone was so hot everyone was hot the store was really dark you could not see what you were buying the store was so dark it actually you know the 2000s were an incredible time in human history the 2 like the '90s amazing I moved to America in the the 9s amazing unparalleled era to be a in America 1990s um 2000s just wild absolutely wild now everything's very
• 85:30 - 86:00 sanitized everything's very like prepackaged sanitized and then the algorithm right has made everything this I don't know what I really dislike and this is again why I like don't have stuff on my calendar um I'm not really into like trendy things because I feel like the algorithm I used to just travel right and I'd go somewhere never been before and I just wander like I didn't have a plan I didn't have a map I didn't have a list of stuff you just go wander
• 86:00 - 86:30 and like figure stuff out and then you'd write it down and then your friend would be like Oh I'm going to go here and you're like oh and I went you know you go here and you walk down this Alleyway and there's this great little shop and they just sell gloves I don't know something random and it was great or there's this little cafe here and they have this really lovely owner and you should ask him about bu but it was an experience an adventure now because of Instagram everyone has all these expectations and everyone wants to get the photo to put it on their social that they've been there and everything has
• 86:30 - 87:00 just become so the same and commodified and I find it very tiring yeah it's very tiring I couldn't I read more with that anyways neither here nor there Cheesecake Factory overwhelming you loved it I was horrified and then the food came out I remember I was so overwhelmed by the menu I don't know what anything is like in the Netherlands the food is appalling right like no offense to the Dutch but the Dutch kitchen's not known for its deliciousness it's quite practical
• 87:00 - 87:30 it's like fish here's some fish asparagus um but I was like what do I order and I was like I asked the waiter and he was like oh the Meatloaf's our top seller I'm going to get Meatloaf I don't know what meatloaf is then meatloaf arrives it's literally the size of a book yeah that's true that's that's why I funny oan because I was a guy who was always hungry as [ __ ] so like it's so much even the burgers are like like this is burger paradise right comical how big it is I was I was
• 87:30 - 88:00 I still I haven't been back to the Cheesecake Factory in a while but it's it's an experience uh I don't want to but we have to wrap up okay um when's the last time on your uh show that you talked about the Cheesecake Factory never but we often talk about a lot of things that are know crypto Rel that's one of the goals actually I had so many other questions on so many things but wait let's do quick let's do
• 88:00 - 88:30 quick one answers we can do three quick one word answers or one sentence go what what do you have the do you have kids no comment do you have kids I feel like asking a crypto person that nobody should answer that question your personal life is a personal life be safe good
• 88:30 - 89:00 OPAC actually had the ask R Pal's question and he said no and then he explain why oh so that's why I never asked specific question about specific people is more like to understand why if yes or if no how did you change your life Etc uh asked Annabel hang from Ember uh as a woman who is very successful ask her what you going to say no comment no comment I have no comment I always have no comment about my family or my personal life that's for me and
• 89:00 - 89:30 not for anyone else you told me the other day I think uh if I understood well that you got your house Off the Grid I'm working on taking my house Off the Grid yes so I buried a 3500 gallon propane tank in my yard I have a generator I'm running off of well Waters I have a well and I have two ponds a 1 acre pond and a slightly smaller Pond that can store water um I have like a year supply of beans and other legumes and then um I'm now working on a solar
• 89:30 - 90:00 and battery installation that are going to be on uh the solar installation will be on the glow Network and then the battery installation will be on daylight Network which are two decentralized energy generation protocols so I'm taking my house Off the Grid um I recently just picked up a really beautiful beta 1301 tactical I've been dreaming of that for a while I got it in a custom Bronze finish like I'm very into personal resilience um I think it's very important why why yeah why is self sovereignty so important because that's
• 90:00 - 90:30 what we keep talking about in crypto and I think it's important if you talk about it if you invest in it you have to actually do those things like how am I as an investor going to sit here and tell the world oh yeah like you know daylight is an amazing protocol it's so easy to use but if I don't do any of those things myself the talk yeah you you you must I've always done that I have lost count Bitcoin doing that but I think it is I it doesn't make sense to me I talk to investors who like have never even used
• 90:30 - 91:00 metam mask and I'm like doesn't make sense yeah listen to each their own for me personally like very important I also think if we talk about self- sovereignty it's the reason I have my house in New Hampshire like it's the reason I spend a lot of time there we talk about self- sovereignty why don't you actually try some self sovereignty it's [ __ ] hard it takes planning it takes effort it takes a lot of maintenance it's important to know how to do these things and all these crypto Bros like they no fans Not to stereotype but I
• 91:00 - 91:30 talked to these people who are like oh yeah like bitcoin's all about self sovereignty and I'm like what have you done in your life other than go on a computer and pushed some buttons to express your self sovereignty what what actions what steps have you taken and I think you can tell a lot about someone's character and their the fiber of their being like laring is one thing go and be about it and then come back to me and tell me what that's like it's very important to me I think to actually
• 91:30 - 92:00 adhere to the principles that you're preaching and it's it becomes very apparent when people say one thing but then live their life a completely different way last one for today what's your biggest prediction for the next 12 months biggest prediction up only why not no it's you said short done only beautiful up only thank you so much for doing that that was awesome thanks [Music]