How Blockworks Bootstrapped To A +$20M/yr Crypto Empire

25:18How big was that company? I don't know. I don't have metrics. The CEO, I think, went to jail for a year or two, though. Oh, my God. What was the charge? This is one of the things. I wasn't even sure I wanted to talk about it on the podcast today because I have a lot of, not regret, but it is inherently kind of a shady thing to talk about, right? It's like multi-level marketing is a shady thing. And I didn't realize it at the time. I truly had no idea. I'd like drank the Kool-Aid so hard. I really had no idea. And the debate I have, I don't have any kids, but if I had a kid, would I let my kid do this?

25:57And the immediate answer is no. Like that is this super shady. No, but it did teach. I know for a fact I would not be here today if I hadn't done that. Why is that? Blockwork started by just me posting on LinkedIn a lot about crypto and nobody was posting on social. Nobody was posting on LinkedIn back then. It gave me the confidence to post on social a lot. It gave me the understanding that most of growing a business at the beginning is just grit and hustle and really marketing and sales. It's less product. Eventually, that changes over time as you find product market fit and all that kind of stuff.

26:40And it just taught me this. It made me realize that there was nothing in the world I wanted to do outside of build a company. And it gave me the, I didn't know how to build a software company. You have some geniuses come on the show, they're coders. I wasn't like that. And it just gave me the confidence to go do it. Were you thinking about any other different ideas before you started Blockworks? Yeah, I was desperate for something. I was really desperate to do something, but I had a bunch of shit ideas. The way Blockworks originally started, Who's the consultant that you had on the show? Ovens.

27:17Sam Ovens. So the way BlockWorks started, Sam Ovens plays a role. I wanted to start a consulting practice because I read Sam Ovens' stuff. And I didn't buy his course, but I saw all of his ads. And I was like, this dude's making it. It was funny hearing that New York photo shoot that he did. You know what I'm talking about? I remember seeing that ad. I was like, obviously, now I know how the game works. That wasn't a real thing. But he, I wanted to like do what Sam Ovens did, start a consulting firm. By the way, Sam Ovens is this guy who came on our pod. Nowadays, he's like a really nerdy, like almost like an intellectual.

27:55He started a software company and he's doing everything right. But previously, he started this thing called consulting.com. He rented out this slick apartment, slicked back his hair, wore a bright blue blazer. And I don't think he did anything unethical. but he was like selling the dream. He was like, I started a consulting business that makes money. I'm going to teach you how to do that too for this amount of money. And he came on our pod and he was like, I don't remember exactly what he said. But I think the energy that I got from him was, he's like, I don't regret doing that because I helped a lot of people.

28:27But I was playing a part that wasn't authentic to me. And I got bummed out. Maybe there was a little like regret. He's like, I fucking played a part like I was an actor. and I don't think he regrets it because I don't think he did anything wrong but he just pushed it to the limit. Yeah, so I saw those ads. That's what I wanted to do. I was like really sick of my job. I wanted to do that. And so I used to go to this thing called Brunch Work or something in New York. I don't think they exist anymore but I'd go to all these events. They had a thing on how to build a consulting firm at 2 p.m. on a Sunday.

29:04I think it was like 2 p.m. on a Sunday they had a thing, how to build a consulting firm. I thought it was at 1 p.m. You just get sucked into these scabs. One day, if you ever talk to Mike, he'll tell you about the Jerry Seinfeld ticket flipping scheme. Did not make money. Anyways, I get there an hour early because I thought it was at 1 p.m. And they were doing a talk on Ethereum. And I already knew about Bitcoin since 2015. I was living in Budapest, heard about Bitcoin. This is 2017 now. Got really into Ethereum from this talk. And so I decided I went, I came home that day. And the real story of BlockWords, I went home that afternoon.

29:43I was like, I'm launching a consulting firm to help companies figure out Ethereum. Hours after learning about Ethereum. Hours after I was like, sold the dream. Yeah. I was like, this is what I've been looking for. Well, I had known about Bitcoin for two years. I was already like listening to Bitcoin podcasts and stuff. And like kind of had heard about Ethereum, but like didn't understand, didn't click, didn't get it. and came home and I was living with four guys at the time. And one of them was Mike, who's my co-founder. And we remember it slightly differently. What I remember is him saying, let's do it.

30:17And then waking up in the morning and saying, hey, this is a horrible idea. I currently work in consulting. Nobody's going to buy consulting from us because they don't trust us when we're 23 years old. We need to build trust with the community. How do we do that? And I said, great, how do we do that? He said, what if we hosted events? We went to that event last month. that made some money. So we started hosting events to then try to sell consulting. And six years later, we have no consulting. But it's so funny. I think that like, all right, so Blackworks is going to be a huge success. I don't know how big, but I believe you're going to have a multi-hundred million dollar exit before the age of like 33.

30:53Very likely. What are you, 28 now? 29. You're going to be worth at least$100 million in the next five years, I would imagine. Liquid. That's my prediction. but in order to get there i think what people like that we shaw and i talk about this all the time they're like there's this always like revisionist history of like oh i had this great idea when in reality uh like you just do dumbass like kind of meathead stuff and you just kind of can iterate your way and then after like you get to like some type of sustainability and some type of mastery you're like okay i actually clearly see the path now and like maybe i'll go back in time and say i I had this revelation that we have to build this big thing.

31:34You said your story earlier. You're like, I thought crypto was going to be a big thing, but no one was covering it. But in reality, it was like, Ethereum sounds sick. I need a job. I'm just going to host this event and see what happens. You know what I mean? You just kind of do shit, and it works out sometimes. There's always basically a... So that is true what I said about. We had this vision that crypto would be this institutional asset class. Because once we said, hey, how do you host an event? what should we talk about? I think our first, like one of our first events was like crypto and the institutional age of blockchain or something.

32:07Like we had that vision, right? But yeah, I think you are dead right. And I think that is a, almost a problem that gets pushed is that everybody thinks that founders had this vision from day one. But if you talk to founders who have built big companies, 99 % of them do not. They do. They never did at the beginning. Second-time founders actually do, I've noticed. Like, second-time founders will, but honestly, like 100 % of first-time founders, there's no grand vision. It's this kind of, it's this like, how did Blockworks get built? I don't know. We took one foot in front of the other day after day and like slogged it out.

32:45And that's how you build your first company. Second company, I think, is different. Second company can be like, you know, robotics and like all this other shit. but that's you can have a grand vision but not the first company yeah i don't think it is i think that um i remember when i started my first the very first thing i started i was like i want to start a newsletter and then i had this horrible idea i just read the biography of ted turner and he like employed all these people and i was like that sounds amazing i want to employ 10 000 people and then i had like a team of 10 and i'm like no i definitely don't want 10 000 of these assholes hanging around like this is just too hard like too many people yeah and like he he inspired me but i'm like oh my god i don't want all these people and and i just made so many mistakes but then the second or third time around you definitely have a more clear vision you also have more um you have more uh you have more wisdom and and that shows up in the sense of like look like after we do this for like two or three years i have a feeling we're going to be able to do this in like five years like you have a little bit more vision but you know it's still pretty murky but you also have a lot more patience and trust in the in the cycle or in the evolution because things evolve but when you're first starting stuff you like you're like this isn't even gonna work to get to point b let alone like thinking about point c and d you know what i mean 100 i think that's a big fallacy and i think the other one is um this idea that it gets easier as you grow, right?

34:18That's, I think anyone, startups are like this weird, or being a founder is this weird thing where like, I think what they, you kind of hold constant the rate at which you can tolerate problems and everything else kind of becomes this variable that moves. And you're always as a founder in this zone of max pain. And whenever you are able to, if you're ever below that threshold of max pain, you take on more stuff. And I think that is, that's something I thought at the beginning, which was like, when Blockworks hits 10 people, man, it'll be a lot easier. All right, when Blockworks hits like 30 people, a lot easier.

35:00And that's, I don't know, I was just listening to Patrick Collison, the founder of Stripe on a podcast. That dude's in max pain right now. You think so? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He is reading between the lines of that company. He is in max pain and doesn't get any easier. Have you read the Elon Musk biography? I'm reading right now. I'm like 200 pages in. I haven't started it yet, but all my friends keep talking about it. And his life sounds miserable. I wouldn't trade what he has in a million years. It sounds miserable. Like his personal life sounds awful. His professional life sounds awful. Everything about it sounds bad.

35:42It does not sound enjoyable in the slightest. Can I flip the script? Am I allowed to ask you a question here, Sam? This is a conversation. You guys were talking with the Soylent guy about what you're optimizing for, basically. And you guys were like, some people optimize for money, right? Some people are optimizing for happiness. Some people are, like he said the things, every person has a duty to make a big impact on the world. So some people are optimizing for that. I did not agree with him. I did not agree with him. I know you called him out on that. But what are you, because you're doing Hampton again.

36:11You probably have enough money where you could just sit on it and put it in some treasuries for the rest of your life, but you're doing Hampton again. What are you optimizing for? I'm optimizing for fulfillment. So when I took time off after selling my first company, I was incredibly lonely. I think Scott Galloway talks about a loneliness epidemic, particularly amongst young men. And I experienced that where I was like, I'm just so alone. I feel alone. I feel quite unhappy. I felt proud of my previous experience, but I felt lonely. and so I started the business because I wanted um a new challenge where like I just wanted to achieve something and I wanted to succeed at something but more so I wanted to be less lonely and I wanted to be in the trenches with the troops and like create something together um I think that uh young men I imagine young women but I'm a young man so I only know that perspective is that like I need something to chase after with a team of of people who I enjoy being near and that's really what I was optimizing for I'm also optimizing for

37:19living life on my own terms so the reason why I'm not willing to do like this what John said what did he say he was like you got to build something big I'm like dude I don't want that because I feel like you're signing up you're signing up to live a life where you have so there's like three things what do you want to do what should you do and what do you have to do? And I only want to spend my time doing the things I have to do and the things I want to do. I don't want to do things that I should do. So let's just say that you have a huge company with 10 ,000 employees. You should be doing lots of meetings with them.

37:58You should be talking to your investors. I don't want to do any of that. There's shit in my life that I have to do no matter what. I'm okay with some of those, but I want to maximize my time for things that I want to do. And so that's kind of what I'm maximizing my life for is spending my time how I want to spend it, not things that I should be doing. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense. And I think that when you sign up for those, I think that like Brett Abcock was on the pod yesterday or Monday, and he's this guy who goes big. The thing about him is I believe he's happy. Like he's doing what he wants to be doing.

38:32I listened. He sounds like it. And I'm happy that freaks like him exist, but I am not that person. I don't want to go into the warehouse or his factory on a Sunday and mess with robots. That's just not how I find fulfillment. I would rather read a book and be by myself on a Sunday. So I don't want to sign up to those big world-changing ideas because I feel like you're obligating yourself to live a life for other people. Do you know what I mean? I do not even. Is that how you feel? Kind of. I think fulfillment's a good way to put it. But if I had to like distill that into a couple different things, like, well, first off, there's safety and security in starting your own business.

39:18I think it is a one idea that is in like people's heads in the US, especially people who like graduate from good schools and they go into like the workforce that has been broken in the last year, which is going to be really interesting to see how this plays out, is that working at like a big tech company is a safe thing to do. Like the number of people have been laid off from like big tech and from banks and stuff like that recently is incredibly high, right? And so I actually think there's more safety and security in doing something that you own and where you can like manage 100 % of the risk.

39:51Like you can be the best employee somewhere and if all hell breaks loose and like the company doesn't have a good business model, you can get let go. So I think there's safety and security in doing your own thing. I think there's autonomy, like just the type of personality that I am. I've never done one of those like Myers-Briggs things, but I'm sure it would say I need my own autonomy. Like I could, I would not work well in other companies, I would say. And then I think there's this like need to, I think building a company is also like a very personal growth type of thing. And I think you like you, there's no way Blockworks can grow if Mike and I don't become better as humans.

40:29and I like that it's this forcing function to become a better person. Yeah, and I think in a weird sense, and I don't want to act like this is some big world changing idea or that what I'm doing isn't selfish, but it's almost like being an artist. I joke about it. I'm like, dude, just give Pablo Picasso a freaking tuba and he'll make art out of it. And that's sometimes how I feel about when I'm playing on the internet. Yeah. Hey, this episode is brought to you by Mercury. They are the fintech of choice for over 200 ,000 companies. I myself use it for eight different companies. The reason why we all choose it is because it has everything you need under one roof.

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41:38It's such a seamless experience. It's very intuitive. Everything's under one place. They basically took all the things any company would need for their financial tech, and they made it super easy to use and put it into one platform. So highly, highly recommend it. If you're not using Mercury, I question your judgment. So that's it. You've heard on my first million for more information check out mercury.com mercury is a financial technology company not a bank check show notes for details we were talking about like different ideas that you're you're tinkering with or that you're like different opportunities that you're spotting what uh what interests you at the moment you're not going to go and start anything because you have a full-time gig but is what interests you i mean like just crypto right now i'm like head like just super deep into crypto i think there are other startup ideas like if if someone waved a wand today and said you couldn't go work in you couldn't go work in crypto what would I do?

42:27I would probably, there's probably two, maybe three things there's probably two things I would look at that I think are huge opportunities. First off, remember when everyone started creating like the Uber for X? Like the Uber for whatever? I think we're about to see that with Beehive actually. What does that mean? Beehive's this newsletter platform that's just like a 10 times better newsletter platform than anything on the market. I know you are friends with the ConvertKit guys, so sorry to him. I like Tyler. I like ConvertKit too. Or I like Beehive too. I'm also super biased because I'm an investor in Beehive, but we don't use it yet because it'll be enterprise scale soon, but it's more for the individual creating their newsletter.

43:07All they did is they just had a super deep understanding of newsletters. Tyler was, I think, CTO of Morning Brew before this. They just had a super deep understanding, deep domain expertise, and then they just built a really slick UI UX and a really deeply technologically more powerful platform than anything that exists on the market. And I think you're going to start to see people basically say, hey, Beehive was able to do this in newsletters where there's all these platforms, right? Campaign Monitor, Send Grid, Sail Through, ConvertKit, Substack, and they just built a 10 times better product.

43:43I think you're going to see people try to do this for other industries. If I were doing it, I would do it for conferences. we have used six different ticketing platforms in six different years at Blockworks. And it's always been, we like our current one actually kind of a little bit right now. But in the past, it's just been a nightmare to find a ticketing platform. And there's this company called Hopin that was like one of the hottest startups of the year a couple of years ago during COVID. I heard the founder took$100 million in secondary. Yeah, he did. He did. I actually heard it was even more than that.

44:16That's insane. yeah it's insane they raised a seven billion dollar valuation they just sold for 15 million so down from seven billion to 15 million and they just sold hop in so hop in sold for you should you should fact check me on this but i think for 15 million no way no way yeah ring central uh acquires hop in events and session products for 15 million holy shit and the founder took over$100 million in secondary funding. That's insane, dude. He won that one. Yeah, he did win that one. Oh my god. Anyways, that's what I would do. So I think Hopin kind of... Hopin could have dominated this market, but they had this stupid thesis that virtual events were going to take over physical events, which was like the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

45:07And so they failed. But if they had just built a better product for event hosts and conferences that was just a 10 times better product that's a that's a colossal business that's a shit business that's a good business no i don't think it is i think that like if you look at event bright look at their their market cap i i haven't looked at it in forever i'm pretty sure it's been like slow growth i also think um are you looking it up let me know what it says i also think that um there's this company called splash do you remember splash splash that dot com oh yeah you're You're right. I remember, I think they rebranded to Splash.

45:42So it was great. It was like Eventbrite, but they just made a slicker landing page for cheap or free events. And it was great. It was really fun. I created so many events with Splash. I think it was splash.com. And I have no idea if they still exist. And the problem with them is that most of, or I think the problem was, is that most events are like$10 or$40 or something like that. and they could only earn like 3 % or 2 % or some number like that of the ticket sales. And it seemed like a really small business that raised tens of millions in funding that never came to fruition. So that's a good pushback.

46:21I would go enterprise. So the reason I think probably Eventbrite... So the reason Splashlight didn't work is because they were trying to sell to like random people just setting up events. It was kind of like a party full, if you know party full now. And then like they were kind of flirting with... Yeah, so many people are using that. I don't think that will work. They were kind of flirting with Enterprise, but weren't really doing it. Eventbrite, their probably cost of support alone is a total nightmare. Just because anyone can go create an event on... You know what's a better comparison, Sam?

46:53Bizabo. I would just go make a 10 times better Bizabo. What's Bizabo? It's an Enterprise events platform. They sell it like SaaS. It's like 20K a year, 30K a year subscription. Shin, you host all your platform, your events on them. They don't take a cut of the ticket sales I don't think. It's just a platform sucks. It's a shit product. But they just dominate the enterprise event space right now. Why are you interested in hair transplants? The rate of balding in men right now, the hair transplant hair transplant space is the one of the fastest growing markets in all of medicine right now. Hold on, I I was actually researching this before this.

47:37Did you ever get LASIK eye surgery? No, I'm afraid to do it. I should do it, but I'm afraid. So LASIK 20 years ago was this kind of sketchy thing to do, or maybe 25 years ago. And now it is so, the success rate is 99.9%. The costs have come down 95 % for a surgery, and everybody gets LASIK. It's like$1 ,000 or something like that. But before, it was way more expensive and way riskier. and I think you're about to see the same thing happen with hair transplants. And the reason I think it's, so first off the market, market size$5 billion last year, projected to reach 30 billion by 2031. So eight years, it's going to go from a$5 billion market to a$30 billion market.

48:18That's a compound annual growth rate of 20 % year over year. The people that you are selling to are the most desperate cohort of individuals, right? Like started losing a little hair on the back of my head. That sucks. Like that is a thing that you don't want, right? So I think, and I think you see this already with HIMSS and the other one, I forget, Roman or something, whatever the name is. Like they're selling like fear of balding basically. And they've been able to create these huge businesses. And I think if you're able to do this, like if you look at the hair transplant market today it's a bunch of just like kind of like semi-shady plastic surgeons who like billboard like like billboard having like billboard yeah exactly those kind of people and like you have to sign like these waivers where it's like you know like 50 pages of like i will not sue you is what it sounds like and i just think there's a an opportunity to build a better to build to build something like that can you um tell me how so a thing that before i started hampton i was really interested in the research business particularly data i screwed this up with trends man at the hustle we had this business called trends i charged 300 a year it's really dumb and i went like fairly broad we should have just done that before a more narrow niche and you're one of the few companies i think that's gonna a few media company a few media first companies that's gonna to pull off having a totally non-related income stream to ads.

49:54How does your research business work? Because what I've noticed is that there's very little innovation. Not innovation, but there's very few younger people talking about it because it's not very sexy. But if you look at a lot of really large companies, for some reason, a lot of them are in England. But there's a lot of research businesses that are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And they've been doing that for 50 years, but they're so big and the founders are dead. And so I'll go and read the biographies, but I'm like, I don't even know how you started this damn thing because it's been lost in 50 years of history.

50:26What's your research business providing the user and how do you operate it? How does it work? Basically, in crypto, there are these things called protocols like Uniswap and Aave and Compound. And then there's these layer ones like Ethereum, you've probably heard of Solana, all these other things. The industry is moving from treating these protocols like they're these like weird esoteric things to treating them like what they are, which is just businesses. So MakerDAO, for example, they'll do 100 million of revenue this year. That is a business. They have like people they pay, like employees and contractors, profits, costs.

51:01That is, nobody talks about them like that. So what Blockworks Research does is it's a platform for investors who allocate to crypto assets to basically look at these crypto protocols and look at their user metrics, financials, get research on them. We're very early to trends with what's happening with the protocols. You can look at the governance. So like if you want to look at who's voting on different proposals, if you want to look at like how people are, how people like who are the big stakeholders inside the protocol, you can look at all of that inside the platform. So it's probably not useful to you.

51:36it's incredibly useful if you're a crypto fund who has like 2 % of their portfolio in crypto. And so the way that you built like V1 was, did you just go and find like a dozen or something public or private databases and aggregated all of the information into an easier to use way? And then do you like write articles on your findings? We started with research. so what we started with was we just hired analysts and had them write what feels like almost sell side research on these protocols and we put it behind a paywall it's super easy, we started with$25 I don't know what sell side research means, you're using these words and I don't know what they mean so I'm going to interpret it as disrespect it is disrespect it's like these 10 page research reports you got a lot to learn my friend I don't know fucking anything dude is these like 10 page reports on like how is something doing so there'll be what's like the sell so you know so in in finance there's no i don't know anything man you had a family in finance you know this shit man my dad sold onions for a living i love onions so anyways we have there's there's like deep research basically on these protocols so instead of a news story which might be a couple hundred words there's like a 10 page report like here's how we think the asset's gonna do here's how that we think the protocol is gonna do here's how the The last quarter, the user metrics looked compared to this quarter.

53:07That all went behind a paywall. That's how we launched. Then we did what you're talking about, which is we basically just started. There's all these inside these protocols. They vote publicly on what to do with the protocol. And it's called like forums and proposals. And that's a total pain in the ass to track that. It all happens in like Discord and on these disparate sites. We just super manually scraped all that information, put it into a database, and then built a front end for that and put it behind the paywall. And now we've automated most of these processes. But back then it was just a lot of very manual uploading.

53:43And then two weeks ago, we launched our analytics product, which is the data product, where you can see the user metrics and the financials for any of these protocols. So if you want to look at, hey, what was Ethereum's revenue yesterday? I can tell you that. Hey, what was Ethereum's revenue compared to Solana's revenue yesterday? I can tell you that. User metrics of this exchange versus this exchange, I can tell you all that. How much did the first product cost to build? Like a million bucks, probably. So we have a team of eight analysts and a couple of engineers. And how big do you think this business could get?

54:19Just the research side. I think Politico Pro, what were they doing? They were doing like$100 million in revenue, weren't they? Yeah, Politico sold for a billion. So the reason Politico's business was nice was they had a huge media business and then about 0.01 % of their audience converted into the research platform. And that was called Politico Pro. So yeah, we think it can get much bigger than that. We think that there's a lot more ad dollars and a lot more subscription money in finance than in politics. So like low end of the spectrum, you've got Politico, they sold for a billion. Bloomberg Terminal is like the super high end, almost like, it's like saying you want to build a Google or an Apple.

55:01It's like Bloomberg is one of the best businesses in the history of the world. They'll do like$9 billion in subscription revenue. So that's a crazy business. But somewhere in between, there's like Refinitiv. Nobody knows Refinitiv. They're a capital markets information platform. They sold for, I think,$27 billion. Cap IQ, right? FactSet. A lot of multi-billion dollar companies just built on the back of basically one asset class. Like Bloomberg was just bonds. And then you expand out from there. Are you taking all your personal money, Jason's money, from the company and buying crypto right now?

55:33So Mike and I don't pay ourselves that much. So we don't, I mean, most of my money is just in Blockworks. Like if Block, like, it's just, yeah, I don't, I don't like, I don't have too much money yet. But you're heavy on crypto, right? I mean, of what you're, of your liquid portfolio? Of my liquid portfolio, I'm, until very recently, I was 100 % in crypto, yeah. you're insane man i think that's so stupid that is insane you and my wife you and my wife agree so that's not the case anymore but uh if it if it was up to me i'd be 100 in crypto really still that's crazy man what why i have deep deep deep conviction on this industry yeah more conviction than the energy drink?

56:18Slightly, yeah. Yeah, deep, deep, deep conviction. And like, I think it's one of the best things to work on for the world. And I think it's from an allocation perspective, like risk reward perspective, there's no better industry in the world to work in than crypto right now. I was talking to Sean the other day, like through text, I was like, my preferred route for personal finance is just like his argument is I was like, well, do you think that I think the trailing 100 years is going to repeat itself? And he kind of is like, well, I actually don't believe that. Okay, so because I believe it, I think like an 80-20 of stocks and bonds is the way to go.

57:02But what I think is if you have a private company like Blackworks, like I used to, I think it's reasonable to keep most of your liquid money in almost mostly bonds or T-bills or some type of liquid, but low rate of return, but safe bet. And then you have what's it called? The barbell strategy. And then you have the rest of your money in a high-risk thing being your private company. Your private company, I would say, is not crazy high-risk because it's a profitable business with years of operating history. But if I'm in your position, or my criticism of that portfolio is, You have your liquid money and a high risk bet at the moment.

57:45And you also have your private money or the majority of your net worth and also a somewhat high risk thing. Doesn't that freak you out? I know you're neurotic like I am. How do you go to bed at night thinking like that? No, it doesn't freak me out. It doesn't freak me out at all. And here's one difference. You have money. Right? Nobody ever got wealthy through diversification. No single person ever got wealthy through diversification. But you are wealthy. It's just not in cash. Your Blockworks is wealth. It may not be cash money, but it is wealth. It is something. I get that. And you could make the argument that, look, if crypto works, Blockworks is a billion, multi-billion, whatever you want to call it, hundreds, whatever you want to say, whatever number you want to assign to it.

58:34So I'm basically already betting big on crypto. So yeah, put it in equities. that's the reasonable thing to do. I'm not... I think you're probably right. I just am... You know what it is? It's this cheesy Jeff Bezos regret minimalization thing. It's like, you know what would kill me, Sam? If I didn't have any of my personal money in crypto and crypto went the way I think it's going to go. That would kill me to my bones. You know what wouldn't really? like it would suck, but I would be like, at least I took a bet is if crypto went down another like 90%. Wouldn't faze me at all. I'd be like, you know what?

59:18I took a bet. And even though I make fun of you, I respect that. I think that, I do respect it. I think you're in a really good, I think you're no different than the Brett Adcock who we just had on of like, who's just like, you have an idea, you have a vision, you have a, you think the world's going to go one way and you're talking, you're talking the talk and you're walking the walk. And so I deeply respect that. I think the good news is is that you're such a wonderful entrepreneur that everything's going to be great in the grand scheme. But I always like to push back on people who are pretty...

59:52It's also just like the way the world is... So I probably agree with you about the S &P. Like the S &P will most likely just keep doing what it's doing and it's a safe place to go. But does any part of you look at what's happening with the world and say like things might be a little different in the future. Do you know who Peter Turchin is? No. Wait, does he spell his name funny? Does it actually start with a T? It does. So Peter Turchin is this historian and mathematician. He developed this field called Cleodynamics. And he kind of studies the, you would like him, he's a history guy, studies like the cycles of cooperation and conflict amongst elites and societies throughout history.

1:00:33And his argument is that periods of internal peace and cooperation are disrupted when the population of elites grows too large and then competition emerges among them for what is actually these limited elite positions. Which then, because there's too many elites and too little positions, that leads to infighting in the elites as they try to maintain their wealth and status. And it causes social instability and a breakdown in cooperation. and it doesn't historically that breakdown cooperation social instability does not stop until there's a crisis like something big right say collapse revolution whatever it may be and then a new new cycle of cooperation resumes so i don't know if you tend like if you look at history you can cut you can see history through the lens of whatever lens you want to see it there's like the the fourth turning which is like these four big periods and you can explain it like that there's like this peter turchin cleo dynamics view but one thing i believe is like crypto is a better way out of this whole system so let me give you my argument against that cool i think it could be true and i don't know anything about this guy but i want to read i want to learn about what he has what he thinks i know i read a lot of history books and that's I do it for fun.

1:01:57Not for trying to find the answer to this question. But what I've noticed is that when empires cease to be number one, they don't go to not existing. Oftentimes, they just go to being like number five or number seven. For example, England. So or let's just like look at I just pulled it up. I just look at what the iShares Emerging markets ETF is. For the trailing 30 years, its compounded annual return is something like 5 % or 6 % a year. So the reason why I'm willing to bet over the next 100 years that the trailing 100 years will repeat itself is because if it doesn't repeat itself, it's still not going to be that bad.

1:02:42It will go from... So actually, in the last 15 years, I think it's been crazy. I think it's not seven or eight percent it might be five or six do you know what i mean yeah i kind of agree with that it's not going to go away it will maybe not be as good but it's not going to go away that's kind of my point that's what i believe in i i agree with that i i agree with that i think i think we're on the same page but i i think that you just i think i think it's just far more exciting to read about america ending than it is about the same shit happening over and over again i don't think america yeah i don't think america is gonna end and i don't think that um this is my problem with kind of like the bitcoiners which you're not in like you don't spend time on crypto twitter so you're in your lucky man for that but like the way the best way for bitcoin to really work is for the u.s to collapse and that is a really shitty vision for the future and um that's why i like don't align with a lot of like the the bitcoiners i would say bitcoin's a good hedge but like i don't want Bitcoin to go to a million because the world in which Bitcoin goes to a million is the world in which like civil war is back in the US.

1:03:49So, but, but a theory, but a theorem and like what is happening in DeFi is a very different vision. And that is a vision that like says, look, these companies that were built in the, in the, in Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple, they have become far too powerful. The traditional way to, uh, or like what the US thinks is the way to like decrease their powers through regulation. I don't personally believe that that's the way to do that and I don't think that will work. And I think that the best way to build a better future there is through crypto. As we wrap up, tell me the books and articles that you've read on this topic.

1:04:29Who was that guy? What was his name? Peter Turchin. It sounds like you've read about this. What else is good? Fourth Turning is good. how long is that book dude i can't read a thousand pages on this topic what is your current thought on crypto sam just out of pure curiosity here and like seeing something like permissionless with like thousands of people walking around like do you think that it is a scam do you think it's just not going to work do you think you're excited about it but you don't understand it like i'd just be very curious to get your take there i'm not incredibly well versed so i will preface anything by saying that like i'm not i'm not that well versed in it but i would say that the major things in the space, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, I enjoy the ideology of it.

1:05:18I respect that. And so I support it. I think that 90 % of the rest of the stuff is a complete scam. I think NFTs are, for the most part, total bullshit. I think Web3, for the most part, is total bullshit. And I think that the people who entered into that space oftentimes are horrible entrepreneurs who are looking for get-rich-quick schemes. And by slapping Web3 or an NFT onto it, rather than building a widget that truly solves a problem that people love, that isn't just built to sell to other people in that space.

1:05:57So that's what I believe. So I own Ethereum and I own Bitcoin. and I like to sit on it and I enjoy the idea that it could exist because I'm in favor of the government not controlling certain things. I think it will exist for a very long period of time and will potentially become more useful. But most everything else in the space I think is nonsense. Cool. Interesting. What do you think? What do you think about that? I think you're generally right that there are a lot of hucksters who come into crypto and that was probably true two years ago. So anyone who's still in crypto is not a scam artist.

1:06:34It's two, no one operating in a market that's 90 % down trying to scam people. But two years ago, generally the same. And I think like you love history. You read all the same history books that I do. Like you, there are a lot of parallels to new industries, right? Whether it's like all the scammers coming into the oil industry, right? In like the 1870s, like very similar because there's get rich quick money trying into the railroad industry. Same thing, get rich quick money. into the electricity industry, into the car industry. Basically, 90 % of people who came into those industries, they were scammers.

1:07:07And I think that America, because we're talking super macros, America is probably the most optimistic country in the world. And that leads to frauds. And you can't have one without the other. So in places where they're not optimistic, they don't have frauds. They also don't have companies that get built. So I think those are like, you can't have best part about someone is also the worst part about someone say one in the same. I think the worst part about crypto is that the people who are selling bullshit social media consultancies or agencies, then they got into crypto. I agree. I agree. And now they're in AI.

1:07:47Now they're in AI. and now they're and now they're an ai and i think it's that's bad for that industry it's like being a presidential candidate and like the kkk seeming like being like oh we love you you'd be like no no no get the hell out of here you know what i mean that's like what it's like yeah it's like we're like i don't get out of here yeah so i think that's been quite bad uh for the crypto industry in this in the same way yeah it is ai now but that that's kind of my opinion um i agree what's your plug blockworks research yano on twitter what are you what are you doing yeah yano on twitter um we got blockworks research.com i have a pod we have eight eight crypto podcasts at blockworks so if you like crypto podcasts go to you know we got a bunch i host one called empire that's the plug come to our conferences das london coming up march 2024 going across the pond well i appreciate you coming on that's the pod that's the pod

1:08:46I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off on the road. Let's travel. Never looking back.

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