Bankless: Raoul Pal's Bull Market Guide

29:53And in a few clicks, as clunky as that interface was, make it happen, get a collateralized loan. That to me was magic. 2019, Uniswap coming aboard. The ability to swap assets without a centralized intermediary, that was all new. And so it was putting in the work to actually use these protocols. And it just it showed me how hollow the critics arguments were because they weren't actually doing this stuff. They weren't spending the time using the protocols, even even kind of the notable VCs. This is why I don't know what you believe about, like, the efficient market hypothesis and this idea that everything is always priced in.

30:33I'm like, that's complete dog shit. Like that does that is not my experience of the world. Like, I think the rewards go to the people who stick around and research and put in the hours and put in the work. And so like one message I would say is you're never going to make it through this bear market if you're lazy. Right. Like you have to put in the work to actually use the tools and develop your thinking based on first principles, not relying on a YouTuber, TikToker or someone on Twitter to tell you what to think. And that is the meta skill I think all good investors eventually learn. It's something that I certainly learned during the last bear market.

31:15Tell me the story of Bankless because you guys have, you really do produce some of the best quality content out there. It's very thoughtful. What was the, tell me the story. How the hell did you two get together? Well, I saw in 2019, I saw this guy writing all sorts of fantastic articles that I started reading. One of them, a notable piece was on Make Your DAO and sort of explaining how that works to the layman. And I think, David, you and I started a DM conversation at the time. And I had started a newsletter called Bankless in 2019. And the idea of this newsletter was very simple. It's to expose more people to DeFi tools and to help the world go bankless.

31:56We can all go on the bankless journey. And it starts by getting more of your net worth out of banked money systems, fiat in your bank account, your Wells Fargo account, and more into crypto systems. And to the point where you stop using banks, right? And I can say over time, I have a much larger percent of my net worth that's bankless. Over time, that has happened to me. And more of my transactions are on chain than are in kind of the bank money system. And so it's a journey. Anyway, I wanted to build a community and provide an information resource for people who are going on the journey, on the bankless journey.

32:35And so I met David and I was like, I have to work with this guy. He's a fantastic writer. I want this person to write for bankless because it was very hard at the time to publish, you know, three to five articles per week, just myself solo and keep up with the space as well. And so I needed some help with that. and that's uh where we started he was just kind of a contract writer on bankless and then uh over time it evolved and he's like hey ryan we should start a podcast hey hey ryan hey we should we should start a pot we should start a podcast he kept saying this over and over i was like david we're not gonna have enough to actually talk about okay like maybe five episodes worth it's not going to be a thing you've both got faces for radio yeah exactly that's what i told him especially me and and uh so but but he he i don't know i don't know how you did it man but like um it took me a while to convince ryan that podcast a podcast was a good idea yeah i had been a podcast consumer but didn't think that um i at least had the skills to to to produce and then we just hit record one day somehow you convinced me we hit record and that was episode one i think in um May sorry March 2020 um right was it before or right after COVID hit episode number two was the day of the COVID dump there you go and so that's where we started and then um we just kind of grew it from there and of course uh this is this for the last couple days is only the second time Dave and I have met in person this is true um no way yeah so we had we developed this entire thing through COVID and met for the first time last year.

34:14It was over two years of working together before we met. I mean, we had like a 10 plus person company at the time before we ever met. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, is that how you remember David? What's your, what's your story? That's right. I had my own medium. And so I would, that's where I was writing all my articles and publishing all my articles. And then I had that other podcast that was called POV crypto, point of view crypto. And so I had never really meaningfully considered about like branding and business. Like, yes, POV crypto was a sex joke, even though it was about like, yeah, I'm just learning this.

34:48It's like point of view crypto point of view with also Bitcoin, but also haha sex. Like I never, never really like put on the like, Hey, let's be professional and turn this into a business and scale this out and like lean into a brand. I was like writing on my medium just because I wanted people to read my stuff. And I, cause I didn't go to business school. I did not have that part of me to actually be able to build a foundation that was like in that mindset, right? Like a self-sustaining, Hey, we can scale this out. We can do this better and more intentionally. Uh, and so I'm just like writing on my medium, producing my content.

35:21Uh, and then Ryan makes the bankless newsletter and he's like, and I kind of like get it. It's like, Oh, distribution, like consistency brand. Oh. Uh, and I'm like, okay, what if I just take all of my writing and deposit it into the bankless newsletter. Right. And then it's like Ryan and I are saying the same words anyways. And so it's not and there's no like misalignment there. And not only that, but like the more I talk to him, the more precise both of our words become. And so like we're just sharpening each other's sticks. And so it goes from a little bit of just like, hey, can can we work together and be like, oh, we're this is working out.

35:56can we do a podcast together oh this is working out uh and so it was just like bankless for me has just been this like bastion of uh creative expression that i think always just like gets me going yeah and like gives me like what a reason to like hey what's the next bit of content i can produce like what's the next thesis i can spit out what's your what's your guys vision now for bankless that's a good question i mean i think what you've been talking about you guys because now you've had some time together but you know where do you want to go with it i think i think bankless started and uh in a way that you know dave is talking with with it's just an exploration a discovery we've always called it kind of going bankless is sort of the journey west right where you you know you you you set sail and you go try to discover undiscovered lands and i think that's why the podcast has been um for both of us just energy producing because we're both learning as we go.

36:51And so... And you get to meet amazing people and have fantastic conversations. Absolutely. And then you're developing your thesis in kind of real time based on conversations with some of the smartest people. I do think that crypto, yes, crypto attracts the scammers and the grifters. And we have some of the worst of that. It also attracts some of the most brilliant, uh humanitarian uh wonderful people that i've ever met and to have an opportunity uh you know being david and i at least myself on the left side of that bell curve to have the opportunity to talk to some of these crypto geniuses these kind of researchers you know best in their field is is absolutely incredible and so uh the cool thing about this now using obviously media as a tool is we can open source this entire journey and this entire pursuit.

37:44And so it's an open sourcing of that journey to go bankless. And it's inviting a community to come along with us. And that's really what the newsletter has been for us and also what the podcast has been for us. And so I think in the bankless community, there's now about 300 ,000 members who kind of subscribe to the to the newsletter. And, you know, that that was growing. I remember in, you know, 2019, no one has noticed. I remember the first time I hit 10 ,000 on the newsletter. And I was like, this is what could be better. I can't believe 10 ,000. That's everyone. That's like, yeah, that's it.

38:23And so, I mean, what is kind of the end state ambition here? I think the end state ambition is is similar to, you know, the ambition of crypto, which is private keys in everyone's hands. Every citizen on the planet, ideally, has the ability and is going at some level, at some point in the spectrum on the bankless journey. So I think the end state for us is how do we get a billion people into crypto and provide the open source journey, the tools, the media to do that, podcasts that they can turn to and jump aboard. I think we still have some limiters, though, in crypto, like in terms of our scalability.

39:08I'm trying to think, I don't know how you would answer this question. But lately, David, I've been thinking about 2023 and kind of reflecting on it. And I feel like crypto has gone a bit more passive in terms of it's a little bit different than the previous bear market, I would say. Like, you know, 2019, there were there were crypto natives using all of these tools. And, you know, 2023, I feel like we are caught in this rut almost where all we can talk about is regulatory. All we talk about is Gary Gensler. We talk about price. We talk about the investing side. There's tons to do in crypto. Don't get me wrong, but it almost feels like some of us have been content to sit a little passively and watch prices.

39:56And I'm just hungry for more on-chain stuff to happen. And I do feel like the community has to build the apps in order to get us to the next level so that we can continue the journey and get to 100 million, 500 million, a billion people. We really have to earn that. And we're in this place where we haven't quite earned it in 2023. MetaMask has something new. Introducing MetaMask Portfolio. MetaMask Portfolio is the best way to view your crypto portfolio from a holistic level. See everything across all the chains all at once. In your portfolio, MetaMask will report the aggregate value of all the assets in your MetaMask wallets and even the other wallets you import to.

40:36But MetaMask portfolio isn't just a passive portfolio viewer. It is a place to do all of the money verbs that make DeFi so powerful. You can buy, swap, bridge, and stake your crypto assets. So not only is MetaMask the easiest place to see your wallets in aggregate, but it's also a powerful battle station for all of your DeFi moves. So go check out your MetaMask portfolio because it's waiting for you to open it up. Check it out at portfolio.metamask.io. You know Uniswap. It's the world's largest decentralized exchange with over$1.4 trillion in trading volume. You know this because we talk about it endlessly on Bankless.

41:09It's Uniswap, but Uniswap is becoming so much more. Uniswap Labs just released the Uniswap Mobile Wallet for iOS, the newest, easiest way to trade tokens on the go. With the Uniswap wallet, you can easily create or import a new wallet, buy crypto on any available exchange with your debit card with extremely low fiat on-ramp fees, and you can seamlessly swap on mainnet, polygon, arbitrum, and optimism. On the Uniswap mobile wallet, you can store and display your beautiful NFTs, and you can also explore Web3 with the in-app search features, market leaderboards, and price charts, or use Wallet Connect to connect to any Web3 application.

41:42So you can now go directly to DeFi with the Uniswap mobile wallet. Safe, simple custody from the most trusted team in DeFi. Download the Uniswap wallet today on iOS. There's a link in the show notes.

42:20compatible. On Arbitrum, both builders and users will experience faster transaction speeds with significantly lower gas fees. With Arbitrum's recent migration to Arbitrum Nitro, it's also now 10 times faster than before. Visit arbitrum.io where you can join the community, dive into the developer docs, bridge your assets, and start building your first dApp. With Arbitrum, experience Web3 development the way it was meant to be. Secure, fast, cheap, and friction-free. One of the things that I've noticed with you guys is your journey has gone from DeFi as like, here's the killer app, to a broader understanding of Web3, which is the applications layer of a lot of this.

43:00What was your Web3 journey? Why did you suddenly start to see the bigger picture? I mean, there's ownership of crypto dick butts in this now. David's forcing us, well, a Solana NFT. And you've clearly got something. I mean, I've been down this route for a while, but there was a magic moment for me. I was at Ian Rogers' house in Paris and I was having dinner. And next to me was like artists, musicians, technologists, finance people, just this eclectic group of brilliant, talented people. And I'm like, this does not happen in your lifetime. It really doesn't. Something truly magic is happening here.

43:46And yes, we're in this bear market phase of it all, but there is total magic going on. And that just gave me in the, I don't know when that was last December, it just gave me another shot in the arm to think, you know what, what comes out of this is going to be massive. How did you start thinking about Web3 more, well, not more than, but as another layer to what you guys do at Bankless? yeah we'll think about yeah well i think one of the neat things about crypto is that it seems to present some sort of like singularity about many different topics and and like areas of focus right so we typically there's the contrast between defy and nfts right like either it's defy or it's nfts but the t in nft is token and a token is a financial instrument and that's defy and and then we have like the relationship between protocols and community.

44:37And this is where I think just like everything kind of weaves together. So to understand deeply, whatever this thing is, DeFi, like NFTs, Ethereum, Web3, crypto, internet money and internet, what words do we even use to explain this thing in totality? I don't know. I kind of like the digital nation state. I mean, that's... Yeah, but I would also say that's another way to approach the knowledge, right? There's there's and this is why I always say crypto has something for everyone. And there's 10 ,000 ways to find crypto and what that what it what you see in it. But to stop at DeFi is to only paint in like a certain corner of the picture.

45:19Maybe maybe it's towards the center of the picture, maybe. But maybe that's up for interpretation. But I think a holistic understanding and why people really enjoy Bankless, because we try and go down every single rabbit hole that crypto presents us. And so we go down the DeFi rabbit hole. We go down the Web3 rabbit hole. We go down the NFT rabbit hole. And we also try and do our best to weave them all together to to tell the grand story that is this movement that we're all like on together. And I think perhaps like one of the reasons why Bankless is what it is, is because I think we've done a bang up job, like weaving it all together.

45:52But it's still like there's still corners and dots and data to connect. And from a content perspective, it's very, very rich. Right. Like, why? Why are we able to produce three episodes a week at minimum? It's like, oh, it's because there's so much data and data points out there to connect and so much knowledge to share and weave together. And so we started in DeFi just because like like Ryan said, like, first off, no one in 2018 to 2020, no one believed in crypto. and then even inside of crypto 90 of people didn't believe in ethereum and even inside of ethereum like half of ethereum didn't even believe in defi and so it was the conviction it was the contrarian bet layered inside of a contrarian bet layered inside of a contrarian bet and being right about that like put put many many people on the map and and bankless uh specifically but then it just grows from there it's like okay now that now that we have this foundation of like hey defi is real tokens are a thing smart contracts are a thing that just makes so many other downstream technologies also a thing right and that makes dows a thing that makes nfts a thing that makes layer twos a thing and so everything kind of spawned out from there and after that it's just been like trying to capture lightning in a bottle because like there's so many conversations to be had about where this thing goes yeah i mean i mean for me it's it's sort of a few mental models that really clicked to kind of understand this and understand NFTs.

47:15And one of the mental models is the digital nation state, as you said, and a cornerstone of any nation state, digital nation, or sorry, any kind of physical manifestation of a nation is this idea of rule of law and property rights. And what we have created, kind of the mental model to unlock with something like Ethereum or even a Bitcoin is we have created a internet-based digital property rights system. And so that can be any type of property. That can be fungible property like tokens, either could be stocks and bonds or currencies and kind of the nation state world. Those are all forms of property of the nation state.

47:56And we can have that and register those as assets on something like Ethereum, or it could be non-fungible elements of property. And we see that, of course, in the physical world too, you know, that your house, your, your, your apartment, a collectible that you purchase. These are also forms of property that are kind of registered via the nation state, you know, through rule of law. And so it's all the same side of the, the coin, but you were mentioning that, that, that meal you had where you saw kind of like artists and finance people and everyone kind of collectively together. Another mental model unlock for me was we did an episode with a historian.

48:32His name is Josh Rosenthal. And it's probably my favorite episode that Bankless has ever produced just because it was so pivotal to my crypto journey. And he basically went through the Renaissance. And he talked, he compared where we have been to sort of the feudal system where there was no democratization of property. It was sort of, you know, our fuel lords kind of, you know, we worked on their land and toiled for them. And that's sort of the kind of the present day internet. And then we unlocked a couple of things that led to the Renaissance. And these were technologies. We unlocked the printing press, Gutenberg's printing press.

49:15And so this enabled mass distribution of communication. It was a communication technology. And then we also unlocked, you know, Medici and others, double entry bookkeeping, right? And so you have a communication technology and you have a ledger technology. And what do you get? You get the renaissance, this splash of human creativity and science and progress. And man, the roots of everything that humanity has achieved up to now, a lot of that was rooted in the renaissance. And so now what do we have? Well, we have a communication technology that democratizes communication. That's called the internet, TCP IP, that's the protocol for it.

49:54Okay. That's like the printing press. And we have a new triple entry bookkeeping system, a general ledger that is crypto. All right. So we've got these two technologies. And I think why you're starting to see what you're seeing, Raul, is we are starting, we're seeing the early phases of unlocking a new renaissance, almost like a crypto renaissance. I've been writing about this myself, this whole exponential age thesis. Yes. Just builds on that. It's where AI fits in, robotics, the Internet of Things, genetic sciences. All of this is building on an entirely new system that has the opportunity to be a renaissance that we can be optimistic about and not fear.

50:34People fear change, right? It's a natural human thing. But if you embrace it and go with it, that's the rewarding journey. A hundred percent. And I think that that is the opportunity for everyone, I would say, listening to this, consuming Real Vision content, consuming bankless content. We are at a very unique place in history, right? Where we've just had the, we are just, I think there's a tendency, particularly among younger generations, to be almost nihilistic about their place in time and history, right? And you could certainly go down that path. And there have been points in my life where I've gone down that path.

51:09We've all been down that path. Look at the flip side of this. Like the massive exponential opportunity that is available to you. Like the tools that we have at our disposal right now in this period of change, the old institutions aren't going to take us to the next stage in human progress. And so we have an opportunity. This is sort of what we're talking about yesterday, Raul, with the fourth turning. We have the opportunity to set up a new set of institutions that will help humanity coordinate better. And that's kind of the 21st century technology. And what a gift to be born and to be alive at such a time and a place.

51:52That's the flip side. I mean, to me, I know David has talked about this with his own sort of journey. But to me, that is the nihilism killer is when you see the pie expanding opportunity. That's going to get me into another thing, is I really worry about this, the abundance mindset that many of us have. And then there's the tribalism. Yeah. And it is, I mean, I left the Bitcoin ecosystem. Yes, because ETH was outperforming as an investment guy, but because I fucking hated the ecosystem. Right. You weren't treated well. If you want to join a digital nation state and they don't treat you well as citizens.

52:37You want to leave. And I think we're starting to see that. But the tribalism is still immense in the space. And something has to change there. If we're trying to onboard a billion people, it can't be a group of people throwing poo at each other. Let me ask you, do you think, because there have been those that argued that the tribalism is actually a feature, not a bug? Yeah, I get that, but you don't have to be nasty about it. Protect your own and be somebody who wants their ecosystem to succeed, even above others. But it doesn't have to be a pie mentality. It can be an abundance mentality. If we all do this together, we all succeed.

53:17I just don't get it. My interpretation on this, we use this line at Bankless a lot. is like we're speed running the history of money and finance. And so like the compression of time in crypto, if you want to extrapolate it out and layer it on actual human history, like Bitcoin invented in 2009, that's like us discovering gold on the internet. It's like Bitcoin's great. It is primitive. And so it makes sense that Bitcoin looks and feels. And if you like, which I do, except Nick Carter's interpretation of this, it is a religion. It is not like a religion. It is a religion. It acts like a religion.

53:53It quacks like a religion. They have religious purity tests. And so that is where crypto is in the landscape of time. Bitcoin is the earliest discovery of Bitcoin. And so it's like you have your high priest of Bitcoin. You have the word of Bitcoin, the word of Satoshi, interpretations of the word of Satoshi. And so this is where crypto was when we discovered it in 2009, where Bitcoin is. And then we move forward in time and space and very rapidly. And then we also move forward in technological progress of crypto. And then all of a sudden we have something more advanced that looks and feels more resident with modern technology and modern values and modern society, which in my mind is Ethereum.

54:36Do you think, though, that the religious aspect of it is a product of stagnation? more than anything else? I think it's a product of valuation. Because valuation in the space is Metcalfe's law. So it's about trying to get the most activity on your chain. I guess stagnation plays into that. When the market is stagnant, there's no new capital coming in. So you're fighting for your share of the capital. You can see it in the NFT space as well. It's got the exact same thing is going on because there's a scarcity of capital. So people become more fanatic about attracting that capital. And they coalesce, tell themselves different stories to try and attract capital via narrative.

55:24Once the space starts growing again, it does drop a bit. But it's particularly bad in bear markets. Yeah. There's always the, hey, let's grow the pie. conversation versus just splitting up the pie. And that's why I like to talk about Ethereum's roll-up centric roadmap in the conversation of that pie. Whereas layer twos on Ethereum, optimism competes with Arbitrum, competes with Polygon, competes with ZK Sync. Yet when an application deploys on any one of those things, it's very easy to transfer and spread that value around to the other layer twos. And so the layer twos of Ethereum exist in this harmonious equilibrium between competition and collaboration.

56:07And so it's, hey, we can grow the pie, but we're all trying to take our larger slice, but we're still going to grow the pie. And I don't think other communities have that, like that, that balance between that design philosophy, like Solana and the monolithic architecture, it is just like Solana, the layer one, they need to capture a larger share of the pie. That is their wind condition. Same thing with Bitcoin is like, They don't have this harmonious balance tug of war between competition and collaboration that the Ethereum layer twos have. Like Bitcoin, the win condition for Bitcoin is that it eats the entire damn pie.

56:41And that's the same thing for almost every layer one. I think Ryan agrees with me that layer ones are maximalists of themselves. They want to dominate. And so how do you as a layer one win? In my mind, you win by having a harmonious balance between collaboration and competition. And that's why I see layer twos. And so like the reason why we are so tribal is that I think layer ones themselves, if you apply agency to layer ones, they know that they need to dominate. They need to be the biggest layer one. Like this is a competition of empires and layer ones are, you know, warring with each other.

57:15And so I do understand why we are also tribal. It gets worse in bear markets. But I think the layer one competition kind of induces that. I think that's right. I mean, I'm working with Kevin Kelly from Delphi to try and put together a research piece on analyzing ETH as a digital network state, comparing it to traditional economies using similar metrics. So it's kind of dropping all the crypto specific stuff, looking at that, and then looking at these other economies. And look, the story of economies is also the story of competition. And it depends how you compete and how you work together. That's the interoperability layer that can drive some of this too.

57:58Holland is a small country. Holland benefits massively from being in the middle of Europe, having the same currency and borderless. OK, so there's a lot that's going to apply. We've got a bit more work to do on it. But I think I want to try and reframe the conversation in the market about understanding for the next phase forwards. Because I think people who are coming into the space, particularly in the institutional investment space, need a framework to understand that these are emerging markets. We've got emerging market credit systems. We've got emerging market. We've got business layers being built on top, infrastructure layers being built.

58:37It really is an economy. People just don't see it yet. 100%. 100%. That is the best mental model, I think, for these crypto networks is as nation states, is as emerging economies. And that's essentially what you're sort of investing in. And I do think that's why we see some of the tribalism, too. It was a Supreme Court justice, I believe. I can't think of the person's name right now, but called America's 50 States, 50 Experiments in Freedom. and i i see at at their best that's what we're doing with all of these layer one experiments right um and and even the layer two experiments right because you see now um in 2023 there's a lot of tribalism between different layer layer uh two ecosystems even in ethereum right and some of that is good though i think it's great if you if you can just ignore delete crypto twitter for a few months, right?

59:29Or for a year, just ignore all of the noise and the yammering, the clamming back and forth, ignore all of that and actually see the outcome is the alternative layer one ecosystems are making Ethereum better and Ethereum is making them better, okay? The layer two competition, this experimentation at kind of the state level inside of the federal nation state of Ethereum, they're all improving each other, right? They're all making, like, it is actual evolutionary progress survival of the fittest experiment so we get to let all of the experiments play out so while i think um tribalism is kind of negative and toxic and when when you're in the moment um you know like it is all of these things you know i agree actually i i still kind of argue would argue that it's more of a feature than it is a bug yes we don't have to be toxic yes we don't have to be nationalistic but don't try and invade other country you know it's like i agree i agree it's not fine to invade somebody else based on your own compete let's compete in kind of you know uh you're the right way and let's have a healthy competition as between sports teams or as between you know healthy nation states that aren't going to war that kind of competition i think is healthy once you kind of declare a jihad against another you know crypto community then then it starts to get into unhealthy territory uh certainly but the net is we get to let all of these experiments play out and uh that's a great thing for the progress of this space and that by the way is why i think crypto is absolutely unbeatable like we're going to win like this level of experimentation is not happening anywhere else it's not happening at the nation state level and this scale no right nothing is like it it's not even close so this is why at some points you have to kind of step back and ask again that question like am am i crazy right it's a valid question asking i keep going back to like with all of the experimentation the rapid pace and acceleration of all of these things it's all open source we're trying all of these things all at once um it's almost feels that this could be a feat this could sound hubristic to say but it feels inevitable is my conclusion on crypto.

1:01:47Like it is going to be absolutely massive. This is absolutely going to be the property rights layer of the internet. The internet, a communication network completely needs a property rights system. And that's it. That's crypto. And so if you can kind of zoom out, when in doubt, zoom out, zoom out above what's happening in 2023 and the tribal crypto battles and kind of see the big picture here. And like, look at, I mean, you've been here since 2012 uh browl so look at the progress look at how far we've come over a trillion dollars yeah like this is okay it's happening weird because my hypothesis when i first saw bitcoin and blockchain was like oh well here's the future of the financial system we need to put all financial assets on chain to start with so we know who owns what here we are 11 years later we're not even close.

1:02:40It's true. Other things I didn't imagine happened, which was smart contracts and NFTs. And it's, you know, we don't know how it works, but, you know, it's kind of just finds its way like mercury. But it's very much like, I mean, we've seen this before, haven't we? Even in all of our lifetimes, that's how the internet emerged. You remember the internet of the 1990s, people predicted all sorts of use cases that really, you know, didn't happen. And it evolved in unexpected ways. I mean, no one predicted kind of the rise of social networking. Because it's evolutionary, I think to your point, there's an evolutionary element that's organic about it.

1:03:13Yes. Which makes it less predictable. I think there's two halves of this conversation. We have the technology of the pre-existing world pre-crypto. And when we see and then invent crypto, we can be like, oh, we can improve our old technologies by applying these new crypto things. And that's totally true. But the problem is you're fighting against like a massive ship that is that you have to turn, right? You have incumbents that you have to fight. You have regulations that you have to fight. You have like old companies that are doing things in old ways that you have to convince to pivot. And so, yeah, eventually the whole world will be built on crypto.

1:03:46But in the meantime, while the whole world adapts to this new crypto paradigm, we have these new digitally native use cases that have no incumbents to fight against, like brand new startups that can capture that real estate this is something i learned when i was at that tokenized real estate startup it's like oh tokenizing real estate is trying to get the old world to adapt to a new a new system and you have to get new regulations and like man like houses already exist uh and and regulations already exist what's going to happen faster and what ultimately did happen faster is jpegs right like uniswap like digital digital digital like for there's a fertile landscape out there and it's going to be 100 times easier to build digitally native things that have zero competition versus like trying to get the old world onto crypto.

1:04:32Because also you're then doing show not tell. So you're showing people, okay, here is the efficiencies of using this new system. And eventually the old system migrates as opposed to telling them the need to go on chain and then fighting tooth and nail for decades with you. Plus, if we bring the old world on chain, they're going to be like, but we need this. And we're going to like, but you don't need that. and they're going to bastardize the nature of these crypto platforms. Yeah, they're not going to use the tools as well as crypto natives. I just want to switch a bit. One of the things I want to see your thoughts on or how it's impacted you is, look, you guys are public, like me, like a bunch of us who are trying to help as many people as possible understand the narratives and then suddenly hate comes.

1:05:20Right, I mean, I spoke to Scott Melker about this as well yeah we've all been down how did that affect you because you you know you go from your mission doesn't change you do the best you can and suddenly the narrative about you changes people get angry right or lose money or upset talk me through how it affected you guys because it can't not affect you there you go no you go oh boy yeah it's definitely not the thing that I expected. Like, I'm a content producer. Like, one thing that we made a decision very early in Bankless is that like, we are investors. We're investing in this. Like, we built Bankless from the early days on a thesis around Ether and DeFi.

1:06:03And we invested in those things and then wrote theses about why we're investing in those things. And that, and in the start of Bankless for the first like two years, I was like, great. I was like, everyone loved that. Now there's not as much acceptance of like Ryan and David as investors in this space while also being content producers. Like we have to like, I feel like we have to fight for that a little bit more. It's like, hey, we also want to be investors in this crypto thing is why we're here in the first place. I don't think people as readily accept the relationship as like Ryan and David as crypto investors that are also content producers in a way that they once did.

1:06:37Like the OGs understand it because they've seen our track record through and through and through the newer, the newer supercomers into the crypto space are like oh ryan and david are they're biased they have investments which i mean it's totally true but like it didn't it never used to be so critical or toxic or like mean before and so that's something that i'm like trying to figure out how to navigate we've been does it affect you at a personal level yeah sure it does i i i think uh where it affects because we've been um we've been attacked at you know multiple stages of this you mentioned the tribalism from multiple like places too yeah so i mean there were there are a few notable attacks you know one was uh uh danny uh danny sesta sesta and uh kind of a we call them frog army attacks because it's often kind of like but either it's bots or it's people human beings behaving as bots or both saying the same thing not responding to you know rational thought and And of course, Raoul, like the social media algos reward this as well.

1:07:38So that doesn't cause the problem, but certainly amplifies the feeling of it. And so we had a frog army attack, Danny Sesta and that entire ecosystem. That kind of the, what is it, the magic ecosystem? Wonderland, yeah. Spiral magic, yeah. Yeah, and so that seemed to us to be scammer laden, fraud laden. And, you know, we said as much. We didn't talk about that content, got attacked for that. We got attacked because we weren't hosting Danny Sesta on the show. Yeah, I've been through that as well. We got attacked at one point in time by the Terra Luna community. And I think we actually presented a very fair take on Terra Luna, which is basically, is this a ticking time bomb?

1:08:24Let's do the bear case and the bull case for this. And even posing the question, even asking that at that point in time in the market. subjected us to a massive amount of attack. By the way, one month after we got attacked by Danny Cesar's frogs, like a month later, it was exposed that 0xSifu was the old Quadringa X co-founder. And so then that whole ecosystem crumbled. And then one month later after we had the Is Terra a Ticking Time Bomb episode, like Terra blew up. I've learned, I try and step back from the anger and think about the motivation. But now the market's a little bit different. I think 2023 is different.

1:09:02But what my feeling on 2023 is the crypto community is in a mood. And they're in a mood that's been caused by on the back of 2022, which is a whole bunch of public figures that they trusted. That segments of the community trusted Alex Mashensky, SBF, Suzu, Three R's Capital, even, you know, like the GBTC, that coal kind of empire, putting money in Gemini, right? Like all of these things, betraying trust. And so we are now white blood selling, attacking everything. And the reality is the time to launch these attacks and for the white blood cells to come like attack kind of the invaders and the bacteria and the viruses was actually 2021 and 2022.

1:09:49Right now in 2023, predominantly, there's a bunch of good faith actors that are still here that are still building during the bear market. There's always kind of the oddball people that are not doing that. And yet it's an autoimmune disorder because still the immune system is kind of now attacking some of the good faith actors. And that's what I see. But honestly, Raul, it does get me down, particularly when the attacks are coming from the in-tribe kind of group, right? And they're coming from inside the house. And you're like, wow, you know, but it just goes with the territory. And I think getting off of social media for a period of time and zooming out and looking at this has been helpful for me personally.

1:10:33I mean, I've had the other line of attack, which is interesting from the old school. They're like, you're a macro guy. Why are you doing crypt? I'm like, I've been doing crypts longer than most people and it's all part of macro. And then it's like the market goes down and it's like you're a scammer. You've ruined people's lives. I'm like, no, I've always explained my thesis. How long term? You know, it's people just want to find reasons to try and unsettle you for various reasons. And it usually is their own insecurity that's driving it. Yeah. So the reason the Terra Luna community was so angry with you guys is because they were feeling insecure.

1:11:08Right. Generally, it's a lack of security or the feeling of security that creates that behavior. That's why I try and step back to do and try and think, why are they being like that? Yeah. I mean, I never do that. It's just not part of my personality. But I guess I'm less insecure about certain things. I'd probably do it with my wife if she threatens me about something. She notices that particular point that's going to upset me. Your NFT collection. Yeah, exactly. The NFT collection. There we go. Yeah, I do think the insecurity angle is the right one. That's also like the laser-eyed Bitcoin maxis, the ones that are really loud and tribal.

1:11:44They get insecure because there's like things about Bitcoin that are worth like talking about. and they just want to brush that under the rug. And you get that about every single loud people, loud tribes on crypto. I've just learned those are loud and insecure are almost the same thing. Yeah. So finishing off, you guys started another chapter as well, which is the VC fund. Talk to me about that because that's super interesting. Yeah. So over the course of, I would say, the last three years, as David mentioned, we've always been crypto investors on the journey. And so we've obviously backed that up with investments in some of the publicly traded tokens, let's call them, in kind of the open markets.

1:12:30We've also been angel investing over this time, too. And so unfortunately, because of accredited investor laws and all sorts of other reasons, there are projects that don't have anything that retail can kind of invest into. And so they're kind of in the pre-token, pre-public type phase. And so for the last three years or so, I think David and I have been involved in 70 or something different investments. Again, this is crypto infrastructure building in the future. And so what we decided to do is essentially parlay all of this into more of a structured VC fund. It was becoming unwieldy to manage.

1:13:10David and myself, you have spreadsheets of kind of your investments and tracking all of this. So we decided to formalize this and spin this up into bankless ventures is what we're calling it. And so we brought on a partner who's absolutely fantastic. His name is Ben Lakoff, and he has helped organize all of the activity. We've recruited a team. And so we are staying on kind of the frontier of what crypto is building and some of these early stage seed level crypto projects. And that allows us to do that. So I think we've already invested in or getting ready to invest in four to five different things.

1:13:46And, you know, we just finished a$30 million fundraise, which was difficult-ish to do in this type of 2023. Although it's brilliant timing to launch a VC. But as ever, it's the hardest time to launch to raise bloody capital in the middle of that. Yes. So it's just complementary with everything we've been doing as investors in the crypto journey, trying to build tools to help people go bankless. It is a crypto fund, VC fund. So it's got a 10-year time horizon. So again, one of the ethics that we've always observed at bankless is long-term games with long-term people. So this isn't a type of fund that receives tokens and then dumps them on the community.

1:14:28We have very long-term time horizon. And so it's just complimentary with everything that we've been doing in the space up to date and keeps us sharp from a content and thesis perspective, too, because we get to see what's happening in the very early stages. Yeah, the long term goal of the ventures is to that, like Ryan said, there's a lot of activities that we're already doing, right? We're already doing angel investing. This conversation about ventures really got started. We were talking about like, hey, we're doing a lot of angel investing. What if we just hired an analyst to help us just research these angel deals a little bit more?

1:14:56And then we're like, oh, that's more than half of a VC firm that we already have. We've got the deal flow. We're writing the checks. If we hire an analyst, we might as well just do this thing outright. And so the idea is we spin this thing up. We pass all of our deal flow in through ventures. We hire out a team to turn it into a professionalized, streamlined operation that is dotting I's and crossing T's in the ways that maybe Ryan and I weren't when we were doing this individually because we didn't have the time. But now we have the team to get that done. And my long term idea for what Ventures does is it actually hopefully informs the podcast about these frontiers that we are exploring.

1:15:33So the idea is like, well, the podcast and the newsletter and bankless media grows the network that bankless ventures can latch on to and get deal flow from just because that's our network, right? Monetizing the network. It's a 360 degree kind of flywheel that you can build from this. Yes. And then because of the information and education that we are able to scale through the research team of ventures, we are able to be more informed on the podcast. But I do want to draw a very clear line that the podcast and media entities are very much firewalled from content from the venture firm. Just because you're a deal that goes for Bankless Ventures doesn't mean you just get to waltz on the podcast.

1:16:10You have to earn it just like everyone else. So there's no there's no like back and forth there. knowing that this time in four or five years time at the bottom of the bear market, that's exactly the stick you'll be beating. Oh, I'm where are you? I know people are already doing it and it hasn't even like been an issue. Yeah. I think one defense against that. And I don't know what you guys have done at Real Vision, but I'd be curious to kind of compare notes is have the best disclosures in the business. And so that means basically like wherever possible, we are fully transparent with our crypto holdings and our crypto wallets and what BBC owns at any point in time.

1:16:46The great news about this, lack of privacy on chain also means anyone can look at your address and see exactly what you're holding. Having a disclosures page that is continuously updated so that people know exactly what David holds, exactly what I hold, exactly what members of our team are holding at any given time. So we just say, we have a thesis. Of course, we're investors on the bankless journey. We're pursuing that thesis. Of course, we're not journalists. We're going to invest in things that we believe in, as should you. That's our encouragement, is be an investor in the space. That's how to maximize the opportunity.

1:17:26And so as long as we have some of the best disclosures in the business, I think that is the ultimate kind of shield. And we can always direct people to there. It's all fully transparent. You can you can see it at any point in time. You know exactly what we're holding. And then we disclaim them, you know, as we go through the content. Yeah, I just tell people, as you know, I just tell because I don't I don't trade a lot. I don't do special situations. I'm not involved in stuff. So I just tell people this is my rough waiting and this is what I'm doing and this is what I own. and that's it. I think it's pretty normal for people to be like skeptical at front.

1:18:00It's like, oh, the biggest podcast in this space is doing a VC fund. Like what's going on with that? So like the gut reaction, I think is totally justifiable, but we're going to do the same thing that we did with Bankless, which is like, nothing's going to change. We're going to be here. The podcast won't change and we will earn the legitimacy once again. And also you will find a way over time because I know you believe in it to allow regular people to invest in this kind of opportunity. That's what we're working on at Real Vision as well, even for the asset management firm, which is separate to Real Vision.

1:18:33Everything is all the same thing. And it's this democratization of finance. And that's what we're trying to get to. Guys, listen, it was fantastic to have you on. Really enjoyed the conversation. It was good to turn the tables and hear your stories. Because I think your stories, because you're so much the other side of the camera, they're as important. You play an important part in this ecosystem. And just to hear that, I think it's fabulous. So thank you for sharing your time with us. We hope you enjoyed this episode. At Real Vision, we arm you with expert knowledge, time efficient tools, and a powerful network to help you succeed on your financial journey.

1:19:09Get a taste of financial freedom with our free offer at realvision.com forward slash free. That's realvision.com forward slash free.