Raoul Pal: Why Self-Custody is Key to Adoption with Ian Rogers from Ledger

27:04So the other product I've always followed because you built it was Ledger Live. Where are you going with that? Because you keep adding new features. It's becoming a really powerful tool that I think is still underutilized. A lot of people don't use it as much as they could do, but where is your vision going with that? Because it's becoming the whole world of crypto all in one app. Yeah, we think it's quite underutilized as well. So Ledger Live, just for those who don't know, is it's the companion app to your ledger. So you buy a Ledger Nano or ultimately a Ledger Stacks, and then you set up your device with Ledger Live, and then you can use it, whether, you know, just every day to check market prices or to send, to receive, to buy, to swap, to stake.

27:48And then we have a whole section called Discover, which gives you access to the world of DeFi and apps by connecting automatically to all of these, all of these web three products. So where we're going with that, you know, again, it really is a bit of a Swiss army knife. That's the thing about ledger that people forget as well is that being cross chain is, you know, it, it adds a lot of power. It adds a lot of complexity. You know, look at something like staking, you know, if, if we were an Ethereum only wallet, that's a, you know, it's a very different proposition than if you're really, you know, supporting all chains, uh, which, which we, we attempt to do, you know, we, we, we support, you know, the, the, the vast, vast majority of the market cap, uh, of, of crypto and ledger devices.

28:33And that's where, you know, more than 20 % of, of the entire crypto market cap and, you know, more than 30 % of the entire NFT market cap is, is secured on, on ledger devices in some way. Um, and, and so, you know, ledger live is meant to be that Swiss army knife that helps you do whatever it is you want to do, whether it's portfolio management, secure, send and receive. One of the major things is just security. You know, you want to be able to clear sign, and that's something that you generally can't do with a, with a software wallet. In other words, you want to be able to, you know, if you're signing a smart contract, you know, what, what is it I'm signing?

29:08What's the, you know, let me read the contract before I sign it. And, and also, you know, read it on a secure screen because you can trust the display on a Ledger device in a way that you can't trust a display on your phone or on your computer. So, you know, Ledger Live gives you the ability for that clear signing in a lot of those circumstances as well. Now, where we want to go with that is really more and more exchange connectivity, because I think we're fans of the exchanges of the world. I think, you know, and especially in light of what's happened over the past year and a half, you know, Jesse from Kraken has always had, um, the right approach was just, which is, he's always been a believer in self-custody for his customers.

29:52You know, he, he wants you to do your business with Kraken and, you know, keep your, keep your coins in self-custody. That is, I think a responsible, um, approach for, uh, you know, for, for a service. And I think increasingly there's, you know, there'll be a separation, um, between custody and trading, just like there is in the traditional finance world. You know, if you look at Ledger Enterprise, um, different product, you know, geared at enterprises, but we just announced a product called TradeLink and TradeLink is basically that exchange connectivity component, um, for enterprise. So if, if you want to trade, you can keep your coins in enterprise self-custody and then through an agreement with, uh, with that exchange, you can go ahead and, and trade and then settle later, right?

30:40Just like you do in the traditional world, because you've got a lock or a look on the funds that are in custody and access to the trading platform. And you can actually have this separation and have all of the power of a trading platform without the risk of having your coins locked up and also without the risk on the other side of them you know, having, having the risk of you and, and your custody. So that's what, that's what trade link is on the enterprise side. I think on, on the retail side, on the, on the individual and the, and the self custody side, you know, there are similar things. I think again, you know, right now you can, you can trade through a number of, of parties using your ledger and go from self custody to self custody.

31:27Um, and yes, you pay on-chain fees when you do that. Um, but you also don't have the risk that you have if you, you know, if you're keeping all of your assets, on an exchange to do that same thing. So I think, you know, where we'll go is, you know, I've bought my ledger. You know, how do I, if I'm one of those, you know, 425 million and growing people who own crypto, how do I go really painlessly from, you know, buying crypto or wherever I started in crypto to self-custody? And now just how do I accomplish the things I want to do with my assets? You know, of course, I want to follow them and follow their growth, but I also want to stake them and earn yield.

32:06I want to swap, I want to buy, et cetera. It's essentially a fintech app for crypto, right? And for self-custody, it's a fintech app for self-custody and security. Another way to look at it is like our mission is to improve the ease of use in the world of crypto without ever compromising on self-custody and security. And I think if you hold yourself to that, it's hard not to end up as Ledger. If you look at, you know, almost any other company, they've almost always compromised on either self-custody or security. Um, and they'll, they've got, they'll give you a thousand rational reasons that they did that.

32:49It's not possible unless you have to do this ease of use. They will always have some rational answer for it. ours has just been, you know, like someone who will, you know, never take a drink or never eat an animal product or whatever, you know, pick your kind of idealistic poison there. But, you know, that's just it. We just say, no, we will not compromise on self self-custody and security. We believe that, you know, you know, self-custody is, is crypto. And we believe that if you have digital value, then you must have security without compromise. um and and so ledger live then is you know meant to be the companion app that runs on your on your insecure phone that does what you need to do so that then you can do the secure operations on your ledger without the sounding infomercial for ledger but but it's just because i'm fascinated i've been following this whole journey and i'm obviously a ledger user just talk talk us through stacks and when the hell it's coming out for most people i think so waiting for that yeah us too i was there at the launch party and it was it's fucking cool but you know okay so for those who haven't seen it yet stacks is new ledger device has the same architecture um as the ledger nano uh it's it was designed by tony fidel who was the inventor of the ipod and co-inventor of the of the iphone and founder of nest and what tony had in mind when he when he built this device there's a podcast with tony and i that you can go listen to if you want to hear it in tony's words which are much better than mine, um, was to, to have a device that, you know, A says value.

34:29So that's hence credit card sized. Um, and, but, you know, but B, it really feels like a consumer device, right? Something again, that, that maybe not our 80 year old moms, but, you know, certainly, you know, my sister would, uh, would want to use, um, and has, has, you know, real ease of use. So instead of a, you know, a teeny screen, it's got a much bigger, um, e-ink screen. And then what this is, is the world's first curved e-ink screen. So the, the screen goes all the way around the edge. Um, and you know, it's, it's really, you know, quite, quite a, a beautiful device. Um, he also designed them so that they are magnetic.

35:11So if I have two of them and you put them together, they, they stick to one another. what Tony was sort of asking himself is what does a future like stack of ash with the band around it look like um and and that's where where the where the design came from but the magnets also give it a bunch of cool features like these are these little folios um that we made and and and you can put it inside there and it magnets in and you know you can you can even stack them up with the folio if you want like there's they're they're really it's the design that the Tony did is is so clever I mean, I always say like Tony is the only person I've ever worked with who can design, you know, both the circuit board and the billboard.

35:49You know, he, he really has, has, you know, the, the deep technical, um, knowledge as well as, um, the vision. Now, the good news is that we had planned to launch this in, in March. And by not being able to do that, we, we really have a, have a product that we're extremely proud of. You know, we're at version 1.2 of the firmware. We've managed to extend the battery life, you know, fix some issues with the button sensitivity that we weren't happy with at the beginning, et cetera, et cetera. But that's because this is the world's first curved e-ink touchscreen, and they are difficult to produce in number.

36:32So, you know, a large percentage of my day every day is spent. We have a team right now in Taiwan as well as Shanghai who is working on getting these screens, getting enough screens to meet the demand for the device. So my hope is I will have an update on this for everyone who has already ordered a Stacks within the next couple of weeks in terms of timing. And the issue is simply getting yield on the screens. So, um, you know, we're, we're so close and what I'm trying to avoid doing is saying something, you know, before I, you know, really can, can make the promise because I don't know what I don't know.

37:18Um, but this is, you know, it's a, it's, it's absolutely the number one priority for me and my whole team is, is getting these things out the door. And like I said, the good news is, is that, you know, having this time, which we wished we hadn't had, um, has allowed us to do tons of things that, you know, that we're, that we're, you know, that we are proud of. And hopefully it'll be a great experience when it, when it gets into the hands of the customer. But, you know, again, you know, I think that having, having a great device like this for 2024 will prove to be incredibly important if the market goes where we think it is.

37:54I do not like the position that I'm in at all, where, you know, I'd wanted to ship these devices to customers in March. And here I I'm sitting talking to you in July and I'm still not shipping them to customers. You know, at the same time, you know, the, the number one thing for us is making sure that we're ready for the next, you know, the next big run. And that's, that's what we're trying to get ready for with this device. So talking of the next big run, what are you interested in right now? You always, you always find some cool shit. What are you, what's interesting to you? What are your observations kind of NFT world?

38:24I think that's your favorite space. What, what, what are you, what are you looking at? Well, I think what's interesting in the, in the NFT world overall is that so little is interesting. Um, you know, and, and it has been a pretty big shakeout. Right. And, um, you know, I think that you've, the, you've been a big separation of, you know, wheat from chaff, you know, so in, in my view, you know, you've, you've got, and this is my personal view, by the way, this is not a, not a ledger view. I think there are a lot of people at Ledger that, you know, wish I'd shut up about NFTs, because I'm sure a lot of the audience does.

38:56And I recognize that. But, you know, you're asking me what I'm interested in personally. For me, I think, look, if you really look at it, there's punks, there's art blocks, there's bright moments, there's one of ones, and there's not much else, right? A lot of the other stuff has really, you know, proved to be, you know, either nothing or, well, let's see where it goes, right? um you know let's let's see what these teams do over time like like a lot of startups right they're they're fun to talk about and you get a tech crunch headline when you launch if you've got something interesting um but to get that you know to get that that um you know to get that headline a year that a year later you know three years later five years later you have to have you know users innovation growth revenue you know etc so i think that that that same thing is is true for for NFT projects.

39:46I think that's why that's actually why, you know, bright moments and art blocks are interesting on different scales from one another, but, you know, they've amassed a, you know, a real audience and reputation in their very specific space. Um, and, and they've got a, they've got a lot of breadth, you know, there's a, there's a lot that they can do. Um, you know, they've got a lot of license to go pretty broad in, in what they do, which I think is what makes them interesting. I think, you know, the bigger story in the next run, I think that sort of the NFT hype is probably over. I think in the NFT space, what you're going to have is, you know, things that are real and work and go someplace, maybe a bit unexpected.

40:32I think if you look at what Nike and Ticketmaster are doing as an example, you know, they would probably never use the word NFTs. They're very Web 2.5, intentionally so. Um, and you know, they, they will be, you know, they'll, they have a, they have a community and it's the community is their customers and, and, you know, the communities around their products. So in Ticketmaster, that might be the bands or the shows or the festivals. And, and for Nike, that might be the various, you know, pieces of Nike, whether it's basketball or skateboarding or, or, or whatever it is, there's, you can imagine there being a lot of, um, a lot of space for them to operate in.

41:09I think if you look at what Vuitton has done, Louis Vuitton, it's actually quite interesting, much more interesting than people realize. They've done it in this very Louis Vuitton way, which is we don't really care that much about what the bigger trend is. We've got a new tool in our toolbox, and we're going to use it the way that we see fit. And if you look at what they did with the Soulbound token, I think most people went, oh, my God, why did you use a Soulbound token? No one can resell it. And they went, exactly. And so, you know, let's, we're going to sell this to people who really believe in the journey.

41:48We're going to make sure that the conversation is not about the floor price or, you know, the resale value or lack thereof. And then we're going to give ourselves, you know, three to five years to deliver for that buyer base. That's very outside of the world of NFTs. and you could argue, wow, you know, NFT is a minor player in the whole piece. You know, they're using a soulbound token and they're selling a physical trunk and a physical bag and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But I think, you know, this is what I've kind of always believed is that, you know, just like any technology, this is just another tool in the toolbox and, you know, great teams and great people will use these things in really clever ways that are specific to their brand.

42:33And I mean, for me, I think, you know, you know, I look, I, I, I do a, um, you know, I do a DCA, uh, of, of, you know, Bitcoin on a weekly basis. And, you know, I've, I've 10 X that this year, right. Um, I, that's, you know, I think that's a lot of the story personally, um, that, that, that that's going on this year. I think that, um, you know, if you look at, if you look at what's how we were in, in DC, um, Pascal and I were in DC a few weeks ago. And that actually might be interesting to share with you what I learned there is a tweet thread that I've been wanting to write on this that I haven't managed to find time to write yet.

43:08And I'll just say it to you instead. But I think that, you know, there's a, what I feel overall is that there's a lot of acknowledgement of, you know, of Bitcoin as the asset, what it means. And I think that that is really going to be the story the next time around. I think the other things will be, you know, roll-ups, privacy, account abstraction, you know, these things where they're things that have been, you know, technically difficult, but we've all believed were necessary. and some of those technologies really, you know, coming to, you know, to, to prime time, you know, uh, ZK account abstraction, the, these types of things, which are, you know, that we've, we've always believed in them, but the, the horizon was a little ways off.

44:01Um, I think these, you know, these things will probably be, you know, a big part of the next, the next go round. Um, but let me, let me mention really quickly what I said about, about DC, because I think that there were a couple of, a couple of takeaways there. You know, I always, I always say that my, one of my favorite sayings is I know what it is I have said when you respond. And, you know, DC is a great place to, to do that because you're, you're walking around trying to explain relatively complex, um, you know, topic, you know, subject matter to, to a wide variety of people, um, with, with really different backgrounds and exposures, um, none of them are dumb.

44:40Um, they all have very smart people around them who are helping them understand these things. Right. And you're trying to find the words that kind of get you to the punchline the fastest, right. And get you there. And what, what we found work, what worked was explaining ledger as a digital safe, right. Especially when you're talking to, you know, American Congress, people and representatives, you know, nobody in Washington would tell you that an individual American, you know, shouldn't be able to have their personal stuff in their personal safe. You know, that is, there's no controversy around that.

45:12Then you explain to them like, and you know what, it's a connected safe. And that actually offers you not only more security, but more utility. And let me explain to you what I mean. You know, I'm visiting you in your office and on Capitol Hill right now. And my passport, which got me into this country is in my backpack in my hotel room. You know, that's a pretty bad place for such an important document of mine to live. Now, imagine if instead that passport was in my connected safe, you know, I would not only, um, you know, be able to safely carry it around with me. Um, but when I produce it, I could produce only the part that the person who is seeing it needs to see.

45:51You know, if I need to produce my passport, uh, at a hotel in Europe, they don't need to see all of my visa stamps. You know, they, they don't even there, you know, there's, there's a whole bunch of, of parts of my identity that they don't need to have access to. They, they want to know who I am and they want to be able to identify me, you know, tell the authorities that, that I'm staying in their hotel. You know, if I'm, if I'm going into a club, they may need to know that I'm 21. They don't need my name and address or my, or my visa stamps. So the ability to, to, to keep our possessions, not only secure, but private to the degree that we need to, and for users to have control over that privacy.

46:30I think that's the way to think about where this technology is going. Did that resonate in DC? It really did in a very surprising way. Wow. I really think that that's why I mentioned it. That's why I've been meaning to write this tweet thread, actually, because I think it's a great way to demonstrate that self-custody matters, security matters, that this goes beyond simply speculation on a new token, right? And ultimately reaches other parts of our society in ways that are important and potentially transformative. And so I was super impressed with, you know, the ability of people to understand that.

47:14And I think Ledger is actually a very interesting vehicle for that, right? Like that story that I told is not a story that an exchange could tell in DC, right? It's where Ledger is actually quite a unique player in the space because what we are really in the business of is security of self-custodied digital assets. And while you and I both believe that Bitcoin is the main event, ultimately that touches many, many, many other parts of our lives. And that's what we're here for. And I think that, you know, I think we're in a place where we're getting people to understand that a little better. Have you spoken to the EU about it?

47:58Because they're further ahead with their digital wallet strategy and obviously CBDC and other stuff, which is going to accelerate all of this within Europe. And there'll need to be a storage methodology. Have you, where were you with that? So Seth Hartline runs global policy for Ledger. And so he's, you know, he's really a man on the scene in DC. and increasingly in the EU as well. And I think the thing to remember, and Seth would be great for you to talk to about this. You would really enjoy it. I mean, he's incredibly well-spoken and well-respected in these places or on these topics. I think that the thing to...

48:39So the answer is yes. I think the thing to be cautious of is that the EU is really a regulation machine, right? And you could say in some ways is that the U S is kind of an anti-regulation machine in a way like the, the, you know, the system, when the system works, nothing happens, you know, I, the, when the system works, everybody just argues and, and, and things don't move forward very quickly. You know, the system is designed so that, you know, so that things are very difficult to get done. Like, and that is by design, um, you know, because sort of less is more, uh, in, in many cases. And so I think the, the thing that's a bit worrying on the EU side is that, you know, it is a regulation machine.

49:18So yes, they've, they've moved things, you know, more quickly, you know, but, you know, more regulation is not necessarily good in the longer term. So what we have in the U S which is regularity regulation, unclarity or regulatory, you know, unclarity, is that a word is certainly not, not good. And we're experiencing, you know, the throes of that, I would say. But I think that the, the other side, which is, you know, regulate everything should also worry us. So yeah, we're, we're involved in, in, in conversations on both sides. I think, you know, what, what we all really need to, you know, be cautious of is, you know, like I said, it's, it's not a, um, it's not controversial in Washington today, um, to say that, you know, people should be able to own their own stuff and lock it away in their safe.

50:06Um, you know, and then of course, most of us would, would, would say, well, there was a time when it was illegal to hold gold in the U S right. So we just want to be, you know, we want to be careful of, of, you know, what we are, you know, what we sign up for, uh, when it comes to our, when it comes to our digital assets. Now, here's the other thing I think though, that, um, that really worked in Washington and I had this, I, I, I had this, I was able to have this conversation more than once and man, it's, it's really fun. And you just see the light bulbs go off when you, when you have this one, which is to say, okay, you know, here's a, here's a heady statement that a lot of people would say, oh, I don't really have the technical expertise to have an opinion on that.

50:48But you say without decentralization, you cannot have security. And that doesn't ring a bell for most people, I would say. Now, the way that you get it to ring a bell for everyone is you say, and, and to demonstrate that, you know, just tell me whose database you would like everyone's information to live in? Which one, if not decentralized, then well, which database should it go in? You want it to be in Apple's, in Google's, in Facebook's, in the US, in China, in the EU? Whose database do you want all the information to be in? No one really has an answer to that question where they say, I mean, I think there are some people in the government that would say, well, the U S government, of course.

51:35Right. But I think really anyone who really understands democratic values, um, stops themselves before those words come out of their mouth. Right. Um, because the fact is, and I like that this is both a technical fact as well as a, you know, a societal one, you know, without decentralization, you cannot have security period. And I think that getting people to really, really understand that and, and not understand it the hard way. A lot of what we've been through in the last 18 months is people coming to an understanding of that the hard way. Um, and so really understanding, you know, and, and being specific about where we would like there to be centralization, you know, around what applications is centralization.

52:25Okay. You know, maybe, you know, my Amazon account. Okay. It's fine. Right. Um, So I'm not saying that all applications must be decentralized, but without decentralization, you always have a honeypot. And I don't know if you've ever read the book, This Is How They Tell You The World May End, This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends, Nicole Perle-Roy. Yeah, that's right. You read that book and you realize without decentralization, we are truly fucked because the attack vectors are so high. And as quantum compute comes in as well, it becomes virtually impossible to protect, you know, single source databases.

53:05Yeah, no, you, I mean, and I don't say it to be scary, but I think, you know, we should be, we should be concerned about this, right? I mean, if your local water treatment plant runs on Windows 95, you should be worried. You know, it's, it's material in your life and, um, you know, it's easy for, uh, you know, for, for somebody who would like to, to take control over that, you know, and, but, and, and this is actually in, in some ways why ledger exists. It's not, it doesn't exist to fix this problem. That's not, we're not going to, we're not the solution to this problem, but we exist because we realize that anything that can be hacked will be hacked if there is a, a will to do it.

53:42Right. So you've, you've got, you know, kind of, you've got, um, effort and reward and, you know, on certain thresholds, everything that can be hacked will be hacked. And if anyone listening hasn't yet read, um, Nicole's book, this is how they tell me the world ends, you know, really please do because it, you know, it gives you a sense of, of, of the fact that, you know, cybersecurity isn't just about, you know, the photos that are, you know, in your iCloud account or, or your Bitcoin, right? It's every, oh, using a VPN and I'm going to be fine. No, exactly. It's every aspect of your life. And so I do think that, you know, we talked about that book quite a bit in Washington.

54:23And surprisingly, many people in Washington, you know, had read it. But, you know, one of the follow ups that, you know, we would like to do is to basically, you know, have a talk about those issues broadly, you know, in DC. You should interview her on Real Vision. I would love to do that. That's a great idea. I would love to do that. It's really important and you're exactly the right person to do it because, yeah, let's try and make that happen. Oh, I would love that. Yeah, let's figure that out. Nico will help us with that. So a couple of other things for you. One is, I think it was you. I can't remember.

54:57Might have been you, might have been 6529. Somebody wrote about form factor of NFTs are likely to change. It wasn't me. No, it was 6529. talking about just because we understand it to be this now, an image of some sort, right? And I've seen you, you know, you've been an early adopter of photographic art and then we've seen the AI generative photographic art that's been some really amazing stuff. But then we're starting to see stuff like Rafiq where you've got 3D movement. And it feels that if there's innovation to come from the space, it's the form factor. that we we still so driven by a picture we put on our wall or a photo that we have and now we can enable everything and as apple develops that technology as well and everybody falls into line it feels that something there is going to be interesting who's going to make the breakthrough in that i completely agree i think that you know fundamentally this is just about digital ownership right um i also feel i i feel so often you know that i'm i'm so lucky to have grown up with the Beastie Boys as my mentors.

56:05That was my other question. Why weren't you in that film? And what did you think of it? I'll come back to that. But what I always said, look, when the Beastie Boys did that book, we were talking about the marketing. And I said, look, they were like, look, we just don't, we're not interested in Instagram or anything. This is just not us. I said, look, you guys should do what you always do, which is abuse the medium. So when you say that about a form factor of NFTs, I come to the same thing. It's like, who's going to abuse the medium, right? Who's going to do with it something that it wasn't, you know, meant to be done.

56:42What mischief does, you know, with, with everything that, that they do. I think, you know, I was lucky enough to get a walkthrough of, of people's, um, you know, kind of museum and studio down in South Carolina earlier in the year. And, you know, I mean, he's, you know, he's taking his art and like then turning it back into like, you know, giant format, oil paintings, right? He's like, he's completely using it for as just canvases for different things. I think, you know, one thing you can point to in that that is very specific is MetaLabel, which Yancey Strickler, who used to be the CEO of Kickstarter has built.

57:20And they're solving really two very simple problems, but they're very real things. One is it's a packaging format for digital media, right? So, you know, you can make a zine or an album package, or, you know, it's a book or what is it? It doesn't matter. It's a package of things, right? So what is the packaging format and what does it mean for that package to be sealed? And what does it mean for that package to be opened? And, you know, do the contents all kind of go together or can they be sold off separately or whatever, you know, the issues around, around packaging are. The second is the, is the, the, you know, the fact that most creative endeavors are done by a group of people, not just one person, you know, so, but oftentimes those groups are so short-lived and the, and the revenue is so small, it doesn't even make sense to hire a lawyer and make an LLC or register the publishing or whatever it is you need to do to, you know, do it.

58:08It's just a, it's a creative collaboration, but you can, you know, easily kind of form a partnership online. That partnership could be two people. It could be 500 people. And the mechanics of that partnership could be, you know, could be judged, you know, could be driven by a smart contract in perpetuity, right? So I think about Grand Royal Magazine, which we did with the Beastie Boys. And if we did that as kind of a meta label package, you know, we would still be seeing activity. Right now, you just go buy Grand Royal Magazine on eBay and somebody sends me the link and they're like, isn't it funny?

58:41This magazine is 500 bucks. You know, that would be a completely different thing if we had done it, you know, kind of in the, in the meta label way. Um, so I, I think that there are definitely sort of, you know, innovations of format as well as, you know, innovations of, of just the way that people collaborate creatively. And it's not just a quote unquote DAO, right. There are, there are, you know, groups of people come together to form a partnership to, you know, to create something, you know, in the, in the seventies, we would call that a band, you know um you know in in the 2000s we'd call it a website i don't know but but you know it could be anything um so i think i think that's that i mean the beastie boys i mean and the film on uh apple on apple tv yeah i mean i loved it obviously the film you know i i i loved it they they did um you know the way that came about i don't want to speak for them but just just quickly you know they made the book beastie boys book um which i think is fantastic i love even the chapter that they didn't write, which is just like a picture of New York in the eighties.

59:43It's such a, it's a reminder of what New York was culturally, internationally at that moment, and also kind of what the internet took away from New York as, as being that real center of, of culture. Um, I, I did write a chapter of that book. I'm proud. I read the chapter in the audio book. If you read, if you, if you listen to the audio book, then you can, um, if I heard enough of my voice, if you've made it at this point in the interview, um, but you will hear me, hear me read the chapter in that book. But then after the book, they were, of course, asked to like, go do a book tour. And they were like, what are we going to do?

1:00:14We're going to go to like - No white book tour, yeah. Book soup and like sit and read from our book. And so they said, that's not what we want to do. So they got together with Spike Jones, longtime collaborator, and they built up sort of a live version of it. They're like, okay, if we took this book and we put it on stage, what would that look like? And they did it, I think they did it first in LA. Um, we went in LA and then I went again in New York. They did a couple of nights in Brooklyn. And then we also went in London. I know because I went to those, I don't remember what, what other ones, um, they did.

1:00:51And then after that, they kind of reworked it, um, to do, uh, a version of it that they ended up releasing. I believe it was on Apple TV. Yeah. Um, but anyway, that's, that's what it is and how it all, how it all came about. So. Yeah. Cause I was looking out for you. I thought Ian's got to be in there somewhere. Yeah, no, it was really just a recording. You made the boat, but not the film. I think maybe it was the one of the new, I think it was the New York ones. Yeah, it was the New York ones that they filmed that I was there, but nowhere to be seen on camera, thankfully. Ian, listen, as ever, fantastic to shoot the breeze with you.

1:01:29We covered a ton of ground and as ever, really interesting. So hopefully I'll catch up with you. we will try and make that interview with Nicole happen somehow. We'll have to figure that one out. Thank you so much. It's always great to see you. Really an honor to be able to talk about these topics with you. And, you know, I would actually like to do the reverse and interview you about what you think 2024 looks like. So maybe we do that on the Ledger podcast. Love to. More than happy. Excellent. All right, my friend. Take care. Cool. See you soon. Great stories from Ian. Lots of great insights.

1:02:02I think it was important to clear up the Ledger recover and some elements of Ledger. I'm a huge fan of Ledger. I use it myself. You know, this is not a paid promo or anything. I'm just, I love it. But also just hearing his perspectives on everything, even DC was really interesting. And how the broader opportunity is this digitalization of everything and that all of this digital identity or the things of digital value need to be stored that is much broader than just a cryptocurrency or just your NFTs. It's a vast, vast network of things that are going to unfold in this exponential age that lies ahead of us.

1:02:36And also I had to ask him why he wasn't in the Beastie Boys film because I was surprised because he bigs himself up for that. Anyway, great interview, always good. And we'll get him back. And obviously there's a follow-up interview to find out about cybersecurity because that's really important. I think everyone should understand it. This episode of Raoul's Adventures in Crypto was sponsored by Token 2049 Singapore. Get 65 % off regular ticket prices with the code realvision at t2049.co slash realvision.