E103: Delphi Digital CEO: Life and Crypto Frameworks

27:40But I am glad I put it out because I got a lot of like meaningful messages from that uh for people who said you know it either helped them thinking about some pains that they were currently going through or had experienced in the past or just had something that they were going to bookmark to go back in the future right um so yeah i mean i guess to a certain extent sometimes playing the game you don't know when you are helping out people so maybe it is something i got to play more but yeah i kind of took a backseat for a while and you know i've done a few podcasts in the past few i actually went on good game you know with chow and the lifestyle guys recently went on empire with gano who's a good friend too um and you know there are great conversations but also with people who i consider friends and you know this podcast was super exciting for me because exactly that like you know you wanted to talk more so about the human aspect and i think that's something that you know people in crypto are so financially like motivated and everything like that like we really forget that like we're building side by side by people who you know have you know histories traumas and and things that they're still working through and trying to be you know ideally the best person you best version of themselves possible um so yeah i was i was excited to kind of talk about that so let's talk about it yeah the thread yeah i have a big chunk on that actually nice you got married recently and took some time to reflect on 10 frameworks that have guided you so far in your life as a founder and as a man that you that hopefully can help our listeners become better at their craft and at the game of life let's take them one by one the first one is so good and it In crypto, it's so not present.

29:11I would say the more I kind of like network or became friends with high quality people, the more I started to sense it. But the majority of people are not high quality people, right? So be happy for others. Celebrate the successes of those around you. Their victories do not diminish your own. Instead, they contribute to a collective sense of achievement. More importantly, try to help people succeed. success is not a finite resource. Yep. Yeah. I like to do my core, believe that, you know, at Delphi, I believe my only core superpower is just believing in people. And it's like, it's free, right?

29:50Like that's the best part. You know, you were saying something earlier where it was like, you know, your parents' support and parents' belief in you is so important. I 100 % believe that. It's probably the two most important people who can believe in you. But I believe like anyone believing in you is important. I think a lot of the conversations I have with people, you know, no matter who it is, you know, for example, Gabby Dezon at Yield Guild, when I had a conversation with him, he said he wasn't even able to get on a phone with like anyone that he, you know, looked up to or thought had made it in the space, let alone have someone that, you know, believed in him, right?

30:24For us at Delphi, you know, on the other end of the stake, it was Ari Paul. Ari Paul was a big influence for us in the early days of Delphi. Him and Kyle Simani were basically the only two people who were writing about fundamentals. And we went to some meetup and we were talking. He had a panel. Afterwards, he was talking to some people. And a lot of these people were at, this is 2017, so a lot of people were asking really bad questions. And my partner, MJ, and I actually were there. And we actually helped him answer some questions. right um and uh he was like kind of like you know a little bit impressed and kind of like oh like who are these guys and so he asked us afterwards like hey like where do you guys work in this space and we said hey we don't work there yet but we're trying to build this research company this is how we think about it etc and you know there was no pause no nothing all he said was that's a really good idea that's all he said those few words and i remember when we left that was something that we're like man like that was the only faith of confidence by the way we got before launching Delphi.

31:22No one else had given us any sort of credibility or anything like that. And those few words changed our trajectory and been like, all right, we can do this. Like, this is something that we should do. So yeah, I think it's, you know, be happy for others is like something that is so simple, so basic, but I think people really forget. And, you know, in this day and age with social media and everything like that, I think, you know, it's obviously with ego and stuff, it happens to me, it happens to, you know, close friends, sure, it happens to you. You'll see maybe another podcaster get a guest and be like, oh man, like how come I didn't get this guy or this interview?

31:54You see this person put up a picture traveling or, you know, doing something somewhere and like, oh man, I wish I could be doing that. And I think it's like really good to take a backseat and just be like, man, like that person's probably going through a lot too. That person probably worked really hard to get to where they are or did something, right? And yeah, I think it's like just very easy to just, you know, be like upset or anything like that. But when you're happy for others, you're winning too. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, 100 % believe in karma first, but second, something that was really shocking to me was two years ago, two years and a half, when everything went to shit, Luna and then all the rest of the time.

32:34How everybody was happy for you. I mean, they're probably happy for you as long as you don't do better than them, right? But then when everything turns into shit, no one is there anymore. All your friends gone, right? And I got massively wrecked on Luna. Yeah. Like$7 million, that turned into$5. We can actually talk about Luna because I knew you guys were big in Luna, right? For sure, yeah. So I was probably the most hurt one in my group, group of friends, but I was the one asking them how they're doing. Yeah. And I was like, and it disappeared. God. A hundred percent. And probably now, like, barely any news.

33:08Probably now jealous, right? And I don't understand. I'm like, why? When I needed you, you weren't there. Yeah, absolutely. For us, it was, you know, out of the three divisions, Delphi Labs spent so much time. They built two projects on Astro Port and Mars on Luna, right? And we had sunk a lot of money, time, and so much energy from, you know, some of the smartest people that I, you know, still am able to work with. And that's kind of the beauty of it. Even after that, we, you know, even after the whole Luna crash, basically no one really left, right? And I think that's like a testament to our culture and kind of like our mindset too.

33:42But, you know, what was interesting is, you know, after the lunar crash happened, which, by the way, you know, we did a whole retro. We, you know, this is still on our site last week. Learnings from last week. I advise anyone to go read it. I think it's just like one of our best reports, even though it's not really a report. It's just talking through our thesis, how that changed. And then what we, you know, what our involvement was, right, mostly on the lab side. I think, you know, I remember, you know, that was actually the week that I turned 30. So it was May 5th. It was my birthday. and then literally the day after the Unpeg happened.

34:14And then every day that week, Luna went down by 99%. So it was not the best opening into 30. I remember that week being both really difficult and then really motivating. Difficult because of course, people were taking victory laps. There are a lot of haters out there that were excited and clapping that Luna fall. They were happy to see Delphi get hurt and everything like that. That definitely like, you know, really hurt me. I was kind of surprised. And what hurt me more though was exactly what you said. There were so many people who, you know, we had considered friends in this space and, you know, a lot of them did speak out.

34:53And I remember, you know, so many of those people, you know, it's hard to forget people who stuck up for you when it was not easy to stick up for us, right? There were a lot of people who, you know, we had helped or we had worked with, et cetera, who, you know, didn't even send us a message privately. Right? And I think that was like, you know, maybe they were going through their own stuff or maybe they wanted their own brand. They were thinking about that. So that's totally fine. But a message. A message. A message. Yeah, for sure. And meanwhile, we were talking to everyone. And what was motivating was us talking to the team.

35:28And it was, again, probably to date, like one of the hardest weeks of my life. but you know as it was happening I remember myself and the other founders we all hopped on a call with a team and we weren't in great shape honestly you know we had a lot of our network or our own you know personal net worth in the Luna fortunately the research and ventures business were okay but obviously when any division of Delphi gets hurt it impacts the whole thing right because it's a you know a bigger brand at the end of the day and you know we were able to you know myself and the other founders, we were able to just talk to the team and, you know, answer questions.

36:05And, you know, a lot of people were like, Hey, is like, you know, is Delphi going to be okay? And that was never a question. We knew we were going to power forward. Um, it was just like, Hey, like, you know, sometimes you get knocked out and like, we're going to get up, but right now we're lying down a little, we got to lie down a little bit, you know, we gotta, we gotta take this punch. Um, and, uh, you know, like, I just remember, you know, talking to the team and, you know, even having like good friends like you know just reach out we just wanted to check up and then like you know we went to dinner you know went to a spa with one friend one day and like it was awesome just to not have to look at Twitter or anything like that and those little breaks were you know so great and yeah I mean today like a lot of the people who you know both you know stuck up for us as well as people who you know didn't send messages still are you know supporting us now loudly proudly when it's, you know, cool to do it again, right?

36:59The punch, man. Took me three months. Yeah, yeah. To recover mentally from the punch and not be in my bed dead in the morning, like, took me three months. Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. Hey, man, I mean, for us, we - That's why I'm lasting. I'm like, remembering myself. No, honestly, for us, like, you know, it was a big learning. And honestly, like, I'm not glad we went through it by any means, but there are things I am grateful for. For example - It made us way more resilient. Like us going through that, us seeing that, us navigating that. And you're still there. Like what else is going to kill me, right?

37:33Yeah, exactly. And by the way, you know, I told you this before, like everything, every time we needed, we thought something had to go right for Delphi to be successful, that thing never ended up happening and ended up making us better for it, right? Every time in Delphi's history, when we expected or needed something to happen, it didn't happen. It ended up turning out for the better. You have other examples than the lunar one. Yeah, I mean, how much time you got? Let's take one, the main one. Maybe some funding stuff you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. So I've told this story on a couple of the recent pods, like Empire and stuff, but I'll give a TLDR.

38:08And if anyone wants to go check that out, it's more so about the Delphi story. We essentially tried to raise 20 million. And we had an investor that was going to give us five of that 20 million. And this is 2019, so we're still trying to build the company up. very poor, but very also time poor. And essentially, it took a lot of time, but essentially we found our first investment through our chain at like 7 cents and we tried to call down 10 % of his capital and he just went MIA. Today, we ended up using 0 % APR cards and starting the fund ourselves. Today we managed 600 mil, all basically from that one mil, right?

38:46And what's beautiful about that is like - All your own money. Yep. So basically it's all prop capital. we have around like you know maybe 10 percent outside investors but also what's cool about that is we're able to start new funds um and only let people within delphi invest so the only way you can invest in a delphi fund is by working at one of these three divisions being like a top performer so i think that's like you know a huge blessing in disguise where otherwise we'd be stuck playing the lp game and you know there are people who are way better at that than us um we'd be terrible at it to be honest um we don't have and the benefit of you know not having any investors really and being able to do this ourselves is we get to do whatever we want whenever we want it and being very super deep.

39:25We don't have to spend any time being like, hey, yeah, this is what's going on with Ethereum and Solana to an LP who's nervous about giving us a couple mil or something like that. At the end of the day, we're just focused on making the biggest impact in crypto. And I think one thing I'll say more on the failure, embracing failure is whenever you read a book or you're, you have a good podcast, you know, discussion, you know, no one's really like, you know, you're not sitting around talking about all the things that went easy, right? Like we, like, oh yeah, like this happened, this happened, et cetera.

39:56No, you're always talking about the failures and that's what makes a great story. Great. Right. Um, so I think like, that's kind of the way that I've seen it. Um, and you know, even doing that, you know, Luna crash week, um, I remember saying it to the team and maybe I didn't fully believe it at that time, but I was hey guys like listen this is just gonna you know this is gonna be a blip delphi's gonna be around for you know for decades and like this is gonna be a story that we look back on and be like wow like these guys survived and pushed past it right um and uh yeah it'll be just like an interesting chapter in the book fall in love life is too short to pursue anything less than what you love fall in love with not just what you work on but with who you work with this is key people often say don't go into business with friends i'm glad my best friends and i ignored this advice founding delphi with them and going into this roller coaster journey has never truly felt like work we don't have to outwork anyone we outplay this is only possible because we absolutely love what we do so my question is you guys are five co-founders right how did you build one of the most successful companies in the space without killing each other yeah the truth is we We did.

41:06And by the way, like there are five like main co-founders Delphi, but I considered it seven actually, because Jose and Luke came and co-founded Delphi Labs, right? So people kind of laugh and say seven co-founders is ridiculous. To be honest, that's been like a huge superpower and there are trade-offs to everything, right? I think other people will say, hey, governing by committee and stuff is crazy. Fortunately for us, you know, we do kind of like separate out the divisions. So you really have like one or two leads in niche for example i spend most of my time on research and ventures um jan and tom focus on ventures um and then uh you know josie and luke focus on uh labs and kevin works with me on research side because maybe it's more like two kind of co-founders yeah exactly business or yeah and the cool thing is um you know and that's why like having all these you know divisions um is you know wasn't a grand master plan or anything obviously there's a lot of synergies and the fly wheel is really powerful and it's been you know a big blessing having kind of this unique bird's view of the market.

42:03But honestly, like it kind of came from just us having, you know, professional curiosity and then having ADD, to be honest, we just wanted to, you know, do as much as possible in every vertical as possible. So yeah, working with, you know, and by the way, you know, I said this earlier, MJ and Jan and I, we lived together for like 10 years and stuff. You know, you can ask any of the other co-founders, like they've seen us and even people on the team, they've seen us get into huge, huge fights on a call. And by the way, Like the fights, you know, got to a point where people were scared about the future of Adelphi.

42:34Like, you know, our CEO Rashmi would always ping me after. He's like, Anil, you guys can't do this on a call. Like this is like you're doing this in front of the team and stuff. And I was like, hey, Rashmi, like this is how we work. And also like I want them to see that the passion. We care about it so much because there was never any ego. That was my favorite part about working with, you know, my best friends. It's like there was never any ego. we always were just fighting because we thought this was the best decision for the brand as a whole right um so at the end of the day we would get very passionate about it but like if anything i would be more scared if we didn't fight you know like it showed me that we all cared at the same extent what does a big fight look like or did look like is it like swearing on each other in front of people uh never like never attacking one another it's attacking one another's ideas and you know there's a lot of swearing in that too it's like that's a fucking dumb idea because the xyz it's never hey i know you're fucking dumb or anything like that right um so yeah it was always about the idea what's the dumbest idea that ended up working out amazingly well um man man there's so there's so many um so well i'll tell you one that didn't work out well um you know we pre-Luna collapse, pre-FTX collapse, everything like that, we wanted to build a big data product.

44:00And we thought it was a natural evolution of the research business. But we didn't want to build just like a skin on Dune or anything like that. We wanted to build something that was almost like a cross-chain Dune that had easy UX where no code UX. And I was just chatting with the Dune CTO and Alex from Nansen actually just earlier this week. And I was just laughing and telling them like, hey man, that was such a hard part of our journey where we had sunk so much money, right? Almost like a million, I'd say, just into building out this product. And how we were building it was all from the ground up.

44:36And we thought about this a lot too, about how to do it, but we wanted to do it right. And we wanted to invest the capital and time to do it right. And we hired the right people and everything like that. And even they told us like, guys, what you want to achieve is very, very, very, very hard. But we're like, yeah, like we don't want to shoot for, again, like earlier, we don't want to shoot for a mid thing. We want to go for the best experience possible. Eventually, we, you know, especially after the Luna collapse, we kind of like had to make a decision and cut that off, right? Cut that decision off.

45:07But we learned so much, not just about, you know, getting the data. Getting the data was actually the easy part, but like maintaining it and standardizing it to be able to like be interoperable with all the other data sets that we're getting was so hard and so costly. And again, it made me respect, you know, all the hard work that all these data providers do that, you know, people say, think data is commodity, et cetera. But all the hard work that goes into making that data as a commodity, super important. So even though I don't have any product, you know, I was talking to the Dune guys and the Nansen guys and Missari and stuff and like do such a great job.

45:38So the big shout out to them. Some ideas that, you know, worked out was, you know, this, we had this thing on our portal called Alpha Feed. We launched this probably seven, eight months ago at this point. It was one of my co-founder Kevin's ideas. And I had other ideas that I wanted. We just launched this other feature called Inline Comments, which basically turns our reports into, in our member portal as like a live breathing Google doc. So like all our members can like highlight specific things, ask questions and everything. It's awesome. But alpha feed was something that Kevin wanted to do, which is basically like our internal Twitter, you know, where our research reports are very deep dives, right?

46:14Like you need to know about something. You read this report, you know everything about it, and you get the alpha. Our alpha feed are a much shorter post. And it was basically an internal Twitter. And I was like, Kev, I was like, this is a dumb idea, man. Like we can't like like we're going to expect our analysts to work on research reports and work on this alpha feed. And then we're expecting people to read it. Like I was afraid that we were going to spend all the time, you know, building it out wasn't hard. but making our analysts do all that work and then um you know having our members go to it to even read it um you know because our site is more so i'd say like a hotel and over time we are trying to make it more of a condo what i mean by that is like how i think about products is like a hotel is a place where you go you know maybe once a week or something like that you really don't know your neighbors you just go get what you need and you leave a condo product is basically you know you live there you use the amenities you know your neighbors and everything like that so more of a community product.

47:04And I think that feature, AlphaFeed, became a huge success. It's probably the most visited section for our members right now. And now our analysts are writing three, four AlphaFeed notes a day. So it's been awesome to see. And that's more a recent one, yeah. Let go of things quickly. Some things are too important to be taken too seriously. Remember, nothing is as dire as it seems. Learn to let go of trivial matters. Embrace impermanence. What's the hardest thing that you learned to let go more quickly over time? Yeah, this constant pursuit of perfection. And I think we started out Delphi, everything had to be perfect.

47:55We spent just as much time on the design. By the way, when we started, we had no team. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good enough. Yeah, pretty good, actually. Yeah, now that I think about it, it's pretty good. I knew I'd get you on that. But when we started, myself and other co-founders, we watched YouTube videos to figure out how to code the site. We used YouTube videos to figure out how to use Photoshop. But we weren't doing it to just get the bare minimum. We wanted to make it perfect. So we were basically training ourselves to become like designers, web developers, everything like that while trying to start this research firm.

48:33I think over time, you know, our you know, what's more important is getting your work out there, getting that feedback loop. And, you know, in crypto, people like, you know, people love reading these threads just as much as they like reading this deep dive where our analysts spend, you know, so much time going into every little detail, making it perfect. And very often, honestly, there are a lot of reports that, you know, the main feedback we get is from the project saying, hey, this is like the best, you know, writing we've seen on the project, right? Like, Calidora from Ostium just said that, you know, a few weeks ago to me.

49:05And yeah, I think like that's something that I feel very proud about is even though we're not in this constant, you know, we do aim for that perfection as much, but we're like, I don't get stressed out about it if we don't obtain it. You know, if we make a mistake or anything, it's just part of the process and we're going to continue to make mistakes. Yeah. The devil is in the detail, but there's limits to that, right? Otherwise you're not moving forward. Absolutely. Be bullish. Be bullish. Life isn't the zero sum. As zero sum as people make it out to be. Embrace optimism. What's the best way to become hyper bullish on life?

49:41Honestly, spend time with people, touch grass, you know, do things like this, have conversations with people about their journey, their story. I think, you know, we're at token right now, right? A lot of these conversations I'm having, I think a lot of people are trying to schedule meetings and stuff, and they're trying to talk business and everything like that. And, you know, of course, I'm always down. More than that, though, I just want to know, you know, who are you at a human level? What do you care about? Why are you here? Why are you working on what you're working on? Why do you believe in crypto, etc?

50:10So it's cool. And I've gotten this feedback a lot this week is, you know, we'll have 3040 minute meetings. I don't even talk about, you know, what, you know, the business part. And they're like, this is a weird conversation. They're like, I enjoyed this more than, you know, most conversations I've had this week because, you know, we just kind of like got to know each other. I was like, hey, we can do all the details later. We're face to face. Let's actually like, you know, spend some time, get to know like what similarities we have, what differences we have, what I can learn from you, what you can learn from me.

50:37And I think that's beautiful. That makes me super bullish talking to people and, you know, their passion like really energizes me. Right. Absolutely. That's what I'm trying to do with this podcast. More human conversations. If you want to have more details, there is enough podcasts out there. Absolutely. For the crypto bros that are more technical. Yeah, yeah. That are great, but are just much more technical. They're trade-offs of both. Yeah, those are great too, obviously, right? But yeah, I really like this format. Health, people, and time. This is a good one. Confucius said, a healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one.

51:13You said, you should prioritize wellness, your relationship and your time, these investments yield the most significant returns.

51:25I think a lot of us watched the podcast from Naval Ravikant a couple of years ago. His tweet thread, right? How to get rich without being lucky. In one of them, he says, you have to make yourself miserable to get rich as quickly as possible to focus on what really matters. So I'm going to challenge you a bit. Isn't focusing in health or on health, people and time a luxury that only rich people can afford? 100%. I could not agree more. And I really wish it wasn't that way. But it's the truth of the matter. And to be honest, I'd be a hypocrite if I gave other advice. When we started Abdelphi, I was not healthy.

52:00I did care about my time a lot, but honestly, I was doing things that didn't scale and was doing things that I didn't know what ROI on that time was going to be. And I definitely wasn't as committed to the relationships that I am as I am today, as you know, I was back then, I still was, you know, seeing my family every now and then, barely, you know, was seeing my friends. And, you know, you know, my wife, and, you know, at that point, girlfriend, you know, would only really spend nights and stuff with her. You know, she's the best, she, you know, was working banking, and basically, we were too poor to really get dinners.

52:33And so when some nights, we'd obviously get Chipotle by ourselves. But some nights when she'd work late and would come over, she would buy sushi with her banking credit, and then she wouldn't even eat it. She'd bring it for me, I'm Jane Yan and we'd all eat it. And that'd be like us getting treated out by her. And so that's obviously a very important relationship to me. But yeah, I totally agree. I think like for me, I wasn't able to focus on my health till I somewhat made it or had like a nest egg where I could have that luxury to be able to spend time on it. And now that I do, it's such a, it definitely is such a luxury, but I realized how important it is.

53:08And if I was to go back maybe I would have you know tried and by the way when we started Delphi I you know the one thing that I did pay for because there was an Equinox right next to our WeWork was an Equinox membership which was very costly right that was my biggest expense by far but I still wanted to go to the gym in New York and by the way it has like sauna steam a big spa guy I tried to go there when I was in New York a couple of weeks ago but it wouldn't let me in for a day oh yeah yeah yeah you're saying it's$75 and I was like I'll try one day yeah yeah yeah usually I would pay max$50 for like a session and I really value health and I like to find a nice gym, right?

53:45But they were like, no, no, no. If you don't know someone, I recommend it. Now I know someone. Next time you remember, yeah. I'll always tell them like, oh, my friends might be moving here. And one of my friends is one of the managers of the Wall Street Econox. He's like, yo, you've referred so many people who have come who have been moving here. None of them have signed up. And I was like, yeah, sorry. I'm the next one who is moving here. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So yeah, no. And, you know, I think I still did pay attention to it, but, you know, it was an hour a day max, right? But even that was such a nice break.

54:18Now I'm very, you know, focused on it. You know, even at my place at home, I have, you know, a sauna, cold plunge, steam room, everything set up. And it's like, you know, I do that every day. I want to ask, how often do you do it? So you have them, but you use them actually, right? Use them every day. I mean, my steam room is still like kind of getting built right now. There's a missing glass door, so I technically can't use it. But cold plunge and sauna, yeah, every day. Cold plunge is good. Yeah, it's a great way to wake up. My team will be able to know if I did it before a call or not. They'll know I'm hyped energy.

54:53Otherwise, I'll be like, oh, man, a little bit down, waiting, still checking through messages and stuff. So yeah, I start my morning basically off with cold plunge. My wife brings me fruit. She makes amazing juices and stuff. will do some stretching and look at the sun, just like Huberman prescribes. And doing that for 30, 40 minutes in the morning is my favorite way to start the day and really gets my day off right. There was the Don't Die Summit yesterday from Brian Johnson, actually. I have a bunch of friends who were in this cold plunge. But I'm talking about that because, obviously, Brian Johnson is this billionaire who is now focusing on longevity.

55:31And I feel like in crypto, there is a lot of this crowd. I mean, people who were really successful are now focusing on longevity, but it's kind of a trend, right? I would argue a lot of them, they say, yeah, I'm doing longevity, but they don't even go to gym, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what I'm saying is they would never have thought about that before making a lot of money, right? Yeah. They would not. Yeah. You just focus on something else, right? Yeah, which, by the way, like, it's not even just about that. And obviously, you have to think about the basics, right? Water, sleep. I'm huge into sleep.

56:04I try and get eight hours every day, which this week has not been good to me. And, you know, exercise. And exercise is so big. And then also just eating healthy food. And it's so hard to do that if you don't have some type of money, right? Absolutely. It's so expensive, especially in America. It's insane. How crazy. It's insane. Even Singapore, it's very expensive. If you want to eat clean, it's very expensive. Yeah, of course. I'm not that much into clean food here because it's more like the culture to eat. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's expensive here. I went to New York, SF, like, a couple of weeks ago.

56:34Holy shit, man. I was eating this sweet green every day. Takeaway, like, on Uber Eats. I would pay$55 for a fucking salad. Yeah, I know. For once. So twice a day, 110, 120 bucks. Insane. Two salads a day, right? Insane. I would do it because I want to eat clean, right? But I'm like, how do people? I know. So that is why it's a luxury. Crazy. Right? Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I think like, you know, you say it's a trend. I hope it's not. I think it's such a good habit. Like we should be supportive of people trying to think about longevity. And obviously, you know, everything has, you know, everything has trade-offs again.

57:12But like people will take it too far, right? But that's, and that'll always happen. But honestly, like I'm glad that people are getting into it. You know, for me, when, you know, I'm in New York and stuff, I have a membership to Bathhouse there in Brooklyn. Great place. And also shout out other ship at Robbie Bench has opened this up in Flatiron. I do meetings there. And by the way, amazing meeting spot. Because like, you know, you have to be vulnerable. You're basically, you know, like just in your swim truck, you're naked and stuff. And you have no phones. You're just like, you know, going to sauna, steam, whatever.

57:42Best way to do meetings. Absolutely. Do the same here, actually, with the guy who created the Pepe NFTs. No way. Wow. That must have been fun. He actually was like, hey, let's go to, it's actually close to here. Nice. Fairmont. I might have to go afterwards. Yeah. Let's go to Fairmont and let's go do ice bath and so on. I was like, fuck, fuck yeah. I love it, yeah. You're like, ah, there's some room for more abs here. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. Still love you, Dan. Write as often and freely as possible. Why should everyone journal every day? Yeah, honestly, it's something that my wife is actually really good at.

58:20And it annoys me. Like before we go to bed and stuff, she'll be writing. I was like, just come to bed, Tadj, please. but you know it's something that you know this thread came out of you know and by the way it's pinned on my profile if anyone wants to go read it but essentially like you know writing like allows you to really you know you have to think about what you're you know talking is so easy you can say whatever the fuck and you can also not remember what you even said or think about the words that come out of your mouth right writing you have to have some type of purpose or some type of like reason for putting and jotting those words in by the way you can write whatever you want.

58:56Obviously, I'm biased here. You know, writing is so, you know, embedded in the DNA of Delphi. And it's how we learn, right? Like when we first started, we started a research firm, obviously, given our backgrounds from TradFi. But also we thought, you know, we could get paid to learn about this industry that we were super excited about. It'd feel like cheating. And, you know, we were able to build up this like intellectual capital and this knowledge just by doing these reports. You know, right now we do a lot of consulting for protocols and stuff too. That's our favorite way to learn. It's actually working with these teams and then writing about what we're thinking and going back and forth.

59:28Same thing with, you know, ventures and our due diligence. But even just like, you know, I think doing that just for work is like probably the worst thing that adults do. You know, when you're a kid, you, you know, have creative exercises and everything like that. I think that's so awesome. I think it's something that adults need to do now too. So for example, you know, right after this, I'm going to Japan for a few weeks. I'm going with my wife and I'm flying out my sister actually. She's coming to meet us too. She's a doctor so it doesn't get much time off. And we're already really excited because what we're going to, what I've already talked to them and what we're going to do is either in Osaka or Kyoto or something like that, we're going to buy a bunch of postcards.

1:00:06And then we're going to spend a few hours at lunch or something and just write postcards to family, friends, everything like that. Because no one does it anymore. No one does it anymore. So they're going to be so happy. Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, I'm excited for that. And, you know, when you're writing those things down and then when they're reading it, it's such a special moment. And it's ingrained forever. Right. So I advise everyone to do that. Just give me a good idea for what I'm going to do probably in my next trip. Just write a bunch of cards to people. It's the best. And they're going to be like a month later.

1:00:35What the fuck? Just unsure where to find the stamps. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Honestly, yeah. That's been hard. But my wife's been figuring out the hotels are very helpful. I'd say that like you know all these things though like are embedded in each other right be happy for others be bullish etc All these things are embedded they're all like one stream of thought really just broken out into how I can describe it in different ways It's like you know the blind man feeling an elephant right at the end of the day I think like the grand vision is just like It goes back to you know your first question Which is like my mission is just like hey You know have people believe in themselves and then like, you know, hopefully get them to be you know work on whatever they're passionate about and be as happy as they can right life is too short to be sad i'm just gonna stand up i'm gonna go get my phone i'm gonna write down in my calendar for next week because i'm going to bali yeah buy a bunch of postcards yeah because otherwise i'm gonna forget it and i'm not gonna do it yeah yeah it's it's it's awesome it's a lot of fun it takes time though man by the way writing takes time so uh you know do it over a lunch I mean, I'm supposed to get some holidays for a couple of days.

1:01:41to have an excuse to just nerd all the time. And put your phone away too, right? But what I would do too, and this is a hack, start texting some of your friends and the people that you want to send it to and get their addresses. Because otherwise it's going to be kind of weird. We asked before we left, and they're like, what are you sending me? And stuff like, yeah, don't worry about it. And now hopefully they don't watch his pod and then get the postcards after. Or worse, they watch the pod and don't get the postcard. No excuse anymore. Everything that's in the cal ends up happening. I'm really surprised about how many people don't know how to use a freaking calendar, man.

1:02:21Yeah, yeah, no, man. My calendar runs my life, honestly, unfortunately. Fortunately and unfortunately, right? Even dates, whatever, like everything is in there. Like go to a gym, like everything. Yeah, no, for sure. I use it as a tool for sure. I'm, you know, looking forward to and also curious if I'll ever have a time where I don't use the calendar at all. And it sounds freeing, but it also sounds kind of scary. But yeah, we'll see. Maybe we record a pod in like five, 10 years and see what's up. Empty calendar. What am I doing with my life now? Yeah. Actually, there's a bunch of people who came on the pod who said, you would be surprised, but my calendar is empty because it gives me space to breathe and think.

1:03:05Especially the investors. Yeah. They say I need space to think, right? Yeah, so on Tuesdays and Wednesdays on my calendar, I just block out. Basically, I don't take any calls on Tuesdays, Wednesdays. And my CEO, Rashmi, she sent this big calendar invite that just said, let a meal work, please. And so those days are my days to really think. Fridays, I'll accept some calls, but usually I try and just have that blocked out too. But Mondays and Thursdays are a shit show for me. But even then, right, the day fills up fast. There's so much to do in the world. So little time. And, you know, a lot of my job at Delphi now is, you know, it's dealing with fire drills, right?

1:03:43Like, you know, at the beginning of the week, I really don't know what I'm going to work on. It's really just what breaks, you know, in some part of the division. What's needed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What breaks and requires the most attention right now. Yeah, 100%. So, you know, the next few weeks I'm off because I'm going to Japan. But honestly, our team is so good. Like, even when I went to my honeymoon, that was the first time I unplugged in a while. And, you know, I told my team, I was like, hey, if anything goes wrong, like, you know, you had the bad phone number, like, you know, dial me or anything like that.

1:04:13Like, and they all laughed. They're like, you know, we're not hitting you up at all. I almost felt FOMO, you know. How much time did it take you to disconnect? Disconnect, yeah. How many days? Didn't take me much, honestly. Wow. Because, you know, our wedding was in India. So it was like a four-day, like, festivity event. So it was very tiring and everything like that. And I think that was the process of me disconnecting because, you know, my mind had other stimulation. I had like so many events to go to. I had all my favorite people. Yeah. And then, you know, by the time I reached the honeymoon, it was like so nice to just like not do anything.

1:04:48Like my mind was just like, all right, now you need a rest. Usually, I'm sure you're the same way. Like I need stimulation. You know, like 24-7, we have these dopamine machines and everything like that. It's like rewired our brains. The cool thing is, I mean, obviously crypto is worldwide, 24-7, but if you guys are mostly in the US and you are spending time in Japan, the time difference is so big that you feel like you're in another world. It's a feature, not a bug. Yeah, exactly. I'm not giving a fuck. Yeah. Singapore has been super tough too. Fortunately, we have around 23 people from the Delphi team here.

1:05:23So it still feels like we're working and obviously in meetings and everything like that. but um yeah you know 12 hours is a lot yeah yeah it is a feature not a bug though you know like that's also why Japan's cool India was cool for that too and you know we honeymoon in Sri Lanka and Maldives which is where a lot of that thread came out um and yeah honestly like you know by the time I woke up you know of course I would check the phone every now and then and like you sneak away and just check telegram and stuff but nothing when she's taking a shower yeah yeah yeah exactly shower or she was like you know getting a massage and stuff I was like oh like I'm good on massage right now.

1:05:58I would like just go on the computer and stuff. I feel relaxed already, baby. Yeah. It's okay. We're all the same. Seek meaning over prestige. You wrote, in an alternate version of my life, I would have continued down the prestige path. Yeah. I have nightmares of that, to be honest. What path were you on? And what made you seek meaning instead? Yeah, man. I really do get nightmares of this What's the worst nightmare you're getting? The thing is just being average I think The worst part about it is I've seen it in a lot of good friends A lot of people who I used to work with They're living out I don't mean to say this in a bad way But they're living out what would be my nightmare Maybe you're living out what Would be their nightmare 100 % this is chaotic This is not for everyone for sure right um and I think like uh yeah absolutely I think like for me when I was growing up super excited about business obviously fell in love with like Apple you know Steve Jobs and everything like that but also like you know Bobby Igor and Disney and everything um and you know we basically my dad uh you know as an Indian immigrant I basically had a couple different paths like realistically the doctor medical path that my sister went down never was really interested in that or the engineering path, which I was actually thinking about computer science, but I really loved business because I felt like I could do anything, whereas computer science felt so obviously technology related, which I do anyway, but business felt like I could do anything.

1:07:35I could sell like coconuts, you know, like whatever I cared about. So I went down the business path and obviously went down finance, majored in finance and entrepreneurship and worked at Bloomberg doing research for a bit, then went to Deutsche Bank doing leverage finance. And that was the path like you know when I was in college um and I thought hey what would be a good path towards what I saw as success that was it I was checking off the boxes but um you know and I'm generally a very happy person uh you know my friends describe me as like not you know cup glass half full they describe me as glass overflowing um but uh you know that was the time where I started really questioning like you know why was I what was this rat race that I was on and why was everyone telling me that this is, I should be happy about what I was doing because I didn't feel very happy.

1:08:22You know, at Deutsche Bank, for example, like the job was interesting, leveraged finance, but only 20 % of the job was what I, you know, I was learning and doing things and like working and understanding companies and everything like that. 80 % was just, you know, politics with, you know, old people. And then like, uh, also just learning systems that like wouldn't transfer anywhere else. Right. Um, so I think like that was really scary. And, you know, the path there would have been after that either leave to go to private equity or venture capital. My MO was to get into venture capital eventually.

1:08:51But even I think traditional venture capital, you know, they play a whole different game. And I have friends who are, you know, working at traditional VCs right now. And, you know, a lot of them are very happy. But, you know, I wouldn't be, I don't think. I like, you know, I like the craziness and chaos of crypto. I like how, you know, we think we have the balls to think that we can invent this whole new parallel financial system and, you know, have this technology kind of be embedded in every industry and facet of everyday life. And I like working on hard things and I like people betting against me.

1:09:25So, you know, that is, I think, really key. And I think the other crazy part about like, you know, crypto is, you know, I've met obviously some of the dumbest people in the world in the industry. I've also met some of the most smartest, passionate, and interesting, unique people. And I think that is one of the biggest hacks and underappreciated of this industry. There's no banking conference that has this energy. And another thing is even in Japan, I am unplugging, but I have a few, there's some people on crypto, Twitter and stuff I've never met in real life that I'm meeting up with to have a dinner and stuff.

1:10:02My wife's not too happy about it, but I was like, hey, we'll go to dinner with this guy and everything like that. And you have friends all around the world who all think, you know, have some similar type of thinking as you. And you can learn from that. So yeah, it is a nightmare because, you know, I feel like crypto allows me to live like what I see as my dream. And I'm super grateful for that. And, you know, no matter what the timeline says or anything like that, it's never going to be able to be taken away from me. You said I was not really you happy are you happy now yeah honestly I I could not be happier I think um why um I'm just at peace kind of like uh you know I know there's still so much to do I think Delphi's still getting started I think I'm still just getting started you know but what I'm really happy with is like what we've done so far what I've done so far um you know the man that I've become today and like how much time I spend trying to help people and do exactly what you asked earlier, which is like what I view as my mission.

1:11:07And my favorite part about it is like knowing this, you know, I'm 32 right now. And I know a lot of people, you know, in crypto especially will say that that's old. I still feel young. We're boomers. Yeah, yeah, right. The boomers of crypto. Yeah, exactly. And I have been in here for six years. So I feel very, very old. I have a 60 year old run par today on the podcast. Karamochi. Oh, wow. We have people who are almost at our age, right? Please don't you on this. How does it feel to be 16 crypto?

1:11:43We kind of touched upon that before. But let's dive a bit deeper. Be more present and grateful of what you've achieved. This is a tough one, actually. How the hell do you do that? No, I say it in the thread. This is the one that I struggle with the most. My wife helps me with it a lot. You know, yeah, like, honestly, I'm so focused on what's next. Always. You know, and that does drive me. I'm always excited about it. And I think it allows me to, you know, do what, you know, I consider and, you know, other people consider as like accomplishments and successes. But yeah, I think like, you know, the honeymoon was such a great time for me.

1:12:29That was probably the most present I've ever felt because it was like right after the wedding. And, you know, everyone always says, you know, your wedding is such a special time because, you know, all your favorite people are in a room together. And, you know, I was like, hey, this is just gonna be a big party. It's gonna be fun, whatever. What was so special was seeing all my favorite people talking with all my other favorite people who had never, you know, it wasn't just like, you know, the crypto crew over here, my you know uh college crew over here and my family over here and her family over there it was all of them talking to one another and like all of them like being able to you know their one commonality was that they knew me and my wife right and um you know they saw our love and you know they knew that we had so much love for each and every one of them and it built so many like even today even like this week and at this conference i was hanging out with some friends and they were like, oh, like your uncle said this.

1:13:19And I was like, oh man, I didn't, oh yeah, you know my uncle from that. And those little relationships and those little sparks were so like, yeah, I was so grateful and like so blessed to be able to see that. And I think like, you know, going on the honeymoon and just being able to be with my wife and us like really appreciating like what we had seen was like really special. And by the way, I think being able to be present every day is almost like, I don't know if that's good for me. I like always thinking on what's next. I like working. I like grinding it out. And then, you know, rather than being present, what I think I'm better at than being present is being able to reflect back.

1:13:56And maybe that's kind of like, you know, my cope for it or something like that. But I'm able to, you know, work really hard and go on these stints. And then when I am either relaxing or when I'm talking to a friend about something that they, you know, either were with me for or saw me do, able to reflect on that moment then is actually, you know, where I get a lot of, you know, fun and enjoyment out of. For 10 seconds. Ah, not too bad, actually. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. But by the way, this is what's happening next week. Yeah. You gave us some solid personal growth and life alpha, but we are here to do crypto.

1:14:32I love it. What are three, four, five frameworks that you think are really helpful for people to become really good at crypto investing? Yeah, I'd say again, not financial advice or anything like that. And by the way, I don't think - Not financial advice. Oh, wow. I love it. No excuse. Amazing. I might need that shirt. I have a bunch. Amazing. And by the way, I don't think anyone has the perfect answer to this. Everyone's still figuring it out. And I think that's probably the most bullish thing is that everyone's figuring it out from day one. Even Delphi, who's been here for six years. If we, you know, my favorite part about this industry, if we, you know, turn Delphi off or go to sleep for like three or four months.

1:15:12And there's other, you know, younger kids or people who come into the space and spend every waking minute of everyday learning and getting caught up to speed. Within six to nine months, they'll probably be ahead of us in a lot of different sectors in a lot of different ways and perspectives. Right. So just be very close, be very on the pulse, be very deep. And I think this goes back to what I was saying earlier, which is one of the biggest blessings that Delphi's ever had is we don't have any investors or anything like that. And again, there are trade-offs, right? It's all our own money. We maybe don't have people who are financially motivated to root for us.

1:15:45But I think what really helps us is just we gotta be as deep as we want, as much as we want, and never have to come back up to the shallow waters to kind of like, you know, explain, you know, why NFTs or what DAOs are or anything like that, right? And of course, we do that with some like consulting clients for like Fortune 500 companies and stuff. But it's way easier to be able to, you know, do that and go way deeper with those opportunities rather than having a comfort like an LP every, you know, six months or something like that. So yeah, number one, be as deep as possible and be in the trenches, stay on the pulse of it.

1:16:23Like that is probably the biggest one, I'd say. Number two, I'd say like the space is, you know, obviously this conference is massive production, right? It's crazy. But it's a much smaller space than you realize. So everyone you talk to, make sure you, you know, leave a good impression and then, you know, build a good reputation with them. I have to say something about that. To more of the steady lads guys. Yeah. Right. And I was preparing the, I mean, we ended up talking about shit for like one hour, so I was not really preparing. They said, I think it was Taiki, I was saying, there's 30 ,000 people in this conference.

1:17:03Yeah. There's all these booths, right? Yeah. But they say, we are deep in the space and we don't know 95 or 97 % of all these even project and booths. Yeah. Who the fuck are these people? Yeah. And so when you're saying the space is much smaller than what we think, it's actually to the people who are really deep in the trenches and the real crypto native people. There's not that many. Yeah, for sure. It's like one to five percent, right? And I think like, you know, even if you don't know someone specifically, you would definitely have, you know, one mutual connection somehow. That's how I get everyone on this podcast.

1:17:45Yeah, a hundred percent, right? And I got a lot of referrals for you afterwards. Not that you asked. Um, but I think, uh, you know, that, that's definitely how we've been able to build, uh, you know, the Delphi reputation up, um, is everyone we work with, we really kind of give care, love, and like respect to, right. Um, we handle with care. I think one thing that I spent a lot of time on, and I was just talking to a good friend G money about this yesterday. I think he's the same way too. And essentially the way that what we were talking about was, you know, with Delphi, because I have these three divisions, one thing that I, I get this feedback a lot.

1:18:18So I know there's something here is, you know, a lot of these people will say, oh, you know, you know, Anil, it's I appreciate you taking time to talk to me because I've reached out to, you know, XYZ big fund or XYZ big protocol or XYZ firm and was left on read or was never replied to or was never able to schedule a meeting. And to be honest, maybe I'm a little bit more free with my time. But the reason why is because I think I have way more leverage on my time than most other people because I have these three divisions. So more often than not, maybe this project's not the best for investment vesting, but maybe there's something else that we can learn from.

1:18:53Maybe there's a, maybe there's something that on the research side, oh, it's a mechanism that we find interesting. Or maybe there's something that we can help on the consulting side do design for, or, you know, build an ecosystem with on the lab side. And so for me, I've been able to, over the past few years, say yes to a lot of conversations I think most people say no do. And I think like, and I hate these terms, somebody, nobody. You know, I was on a podcast with these two guys from Pivot, these guys I met in India who I wanted to support. I met them, you know, last year when I went to see the venue and everything.

1:19:27And they were like, hey, Neil, like, thank you so much for giving nobody's time as a somebody. And I was like, man, I hate that you said that. like everyone is a somebody and you should not think that way at all. I'm, I'm a nobody, you know, like all of us are nobodies and all of us are somebodies. Um, and I think there's so many, you know, but if you want to use this terms, I think there's so many people who are working so hard to become what they quote unquote think are somebodies. And, um, I think giving them that time of day and then believing in them, which again, goes back to my first point and is free is like such a small, like thing that you can do.

1:19:59Um, there's so many people who I've talked, talked to who have ended up at starting big protocols or joined big funds and everything. And they'll say, Anil, you were like one of the first people who took my call. And I was like, that's super surprising because you're super smart. You were hustling. You were in my DMs and everything like that. So maybe my DMs will get, well, my DMs are always a shit show, but I always make it a point to try and answer basically every one. And yeah, this is a whole other point. But, you know, like, I think people just want to be felt and seen as humans. And, you know, back when I used Reddit every day, something that stuck out to me was there was an Ask Reddit thread.

1:20:40And it was basically like, hey, you know, homeless people, what are some things that, you know, people who haven't been homeless don't know? And it's like people who have been homeless, what are some things that, you know, people who haven't been homeless don't know? And one of the comments, like, really stuck out to me was like, hey, like, you know, I was homeless for a couple of years. now I'm all good and everything like that. One of the things that like was the most difficult part about being homeless was like when I would, you know, ask someone for money or even like just say anything to someone, even if I wasn't asking for money, they just walk past me and not like look at me or like treat me as a human or anything like that.

1:21:12I think what people don't realize is they're doing that a lot, you know, on digitally. And I think like that's one thing that I even, you know, in New York - You're ghosting. Yeah, you're ghosting, yeah. And of course, man, you got to be valuable over your time. I understand that for sure. So I can't, you know, like I'm not trying to, you know, down, put down anyone or anything like that. But, you know, whenever I see homeless people, whether it's in New York, obviously there are a lot over there and anything like that. They ask me anything. I always, you know, even if I'm in passing, like, hey man, sorry, like don't have anything right now.

1:21:41Or, oh, hey man, like that, you know, this is where it is. Do you have a Bitcoin wallet? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me a QR code. No, no, no, horrible. I don't do that. I don't do that. Oh, maybe there's a way that we can, yeah, I mean, there's something we can build for the homeless. but you know on Twitter and stuff like same thing right like I want to make sure that I'm because all these people are working super hard and like I remember when I was starting up Delphi you know there's still messages from people who I'm actually really good friends with now who you can go back to our histories and you'll see a bit like a big like cold email or something like that that they ignored or something like that right and we laugh about it like Neil like you were trying to like slide in my DMs and stuff I was like of course I was like I was trying to I was trying to make something I was trying to like put Delphi out there I was working really hard etc and you know I want to be supportive of people who are trying to make their dreams come true and if me replying and even if I'm saying hey sorry this isn't interesting for Delphi but like keep it going you know like I like the hustle I love the grind that's the least I can do I think so be on the pulse be deep and the space is more than you think leave a good impression yep anything else yeah let me think I'd say like one more Yeah, I'd say like, this is kind of a hack.

1:22:55But maybe I can like extrapolate it out to more people is like, at Delphi, we have this thing called Hive Mind. So every division of our research, ventures, labs, it brings a totally different perspective, right? We have this analytical perspective via research, we have the builder's mindset via labs, and then obviously the investor's perspective via ventures. that hive mind is like what really powers Delphi to its core for every decision so what does that mean for other people is find your tribe doesn't have to be a big group you know Delphi is huge but like you know even five a group chat of five or ten people and be motivated to help each other I think so much of crypto is again PVP right oh I gotta out trade everyone oh man you made that trade you made oh you sold soul here fuck I'm still bag holding whatever I'm round tripping whatever, be happy.

1:23:42That's good for them. That was their own decision. Maybe you can learn from that if you do. For me, I'm a permeable. I round trip a lot of stuff, but I want to hold a lot of these assets for years to come, right? And maybe people will dump on me. Maybe some of those will be my friends. That's okay, right? I think finding your tribe and being able to build that trust is so important. And I think that's what really makes Delphi so magic is internally, there's no PVP. We have this chat called Pure Alpha, which basically everyone at Delphi is in. And it's just trade ideas and investment ideas and stuff like that, where you just share a thesis.

1:24:20And that chat is always so active. And then there's a chat even more active than that called Reads. And this chat is basically just us talking about the space, sometimes sharing tweets, but very philosophical. And so many good debates happen. I actually really try and stay away from crypto Twitter. I only read Delphi reports, Delphi chats, everything like that. So I get so much more knowledge from, you know, all the hard work that these teams kind of put into it. So yeah, I'd say find your tribe is definitely like a big one. You can't do this alone.

1:24:51What are your top two favorite crypto teams in the space and why? Wow, that's, that's really good. So this is a hard question for me, because, you know, there are a lot of Porcos that I'm probably not the lead for. Right. But I'll bring up a few teams that I've worked with closely that I can like very easily, confidently say there are some of the best teams in this space. One of the teams is Axie. And, you know, I think people would say, oh yeah, that's from last cycle, et cetera. No, no, no. They're going to be here for a while. These guys are working day in and day out. I think they've, you know, unlocked something that games and culture and non-crypto projects will learn from.

1:25:33And there will be case studies on for years to come. So, yeah, I mean, the effort and the work that these guys put in. And by the way, the resilience is like second to none. And, you know, in that year of Axie in 2021, we were on calls with them a bunch because, you know, there was so much going on. And, you know, like in a DeFi protocol, you can make certain upgrades and stuff, make certain sinkholes to like help with supply and everything like that. In a game, you can't do that, right? But they were very well aware. And at the same time, they were balancing so many different things. And I think they did a really good job, all things said, you know, done.

1:26:08And I'm really excited about, you know, how hard they've been working and what they've been working on next, which is, you know, really having their community use their IP to build projects. Because I think this is going to be a first of its kind. And, you know, we're investors in a lot of games. I'm super excited for a lot of these games that are coming out. in the coming months and years. But a lot of them will need to build a community up and do what Axie did four or five years ago at this point. So I think Axie will be a really, really cool one. Second one that we work with really closely is Synthetics and the Aave guys, Stani and Kane.

1:26:47I know you're having Kane on soon. Those guys give us our first break. And of course, they were still small and getting started then too. So it didn't feel like they were giving us a break. It was felt like a good, you know, meetings of minds and everything like that. But man, we're working with those guys and, you know, how exciting and how, you know, that was like, you know, having that infected in me so early on, maybe so like bullish on crypto for the rest of my life. Like being able to work with these guys I had never met in person, being able to come up with mechanism design or, you know, safety modules, like going through risk and stuff And then meeting two, three years later in person, being able to pick off right where we left off.

1:27:28I was just with Kane at Karate Combat. And it was great to give that guy a hug after I haven't seen him in so long. I think those teams are super underappreciated for how much work and effort they put into the space. And I think, again, there are going to be learnings from that for years to come. Lastly, I'd say our lab team, Astro Port and Mars. these guys you know again their protocols they built it on you know luna which obviously you know blew up and then they ported it over to cosmos which funny enough did the opposite did not blow up right um and i think uh you know like those guys the resilience that they've shown is inspirational um and like you know i think mars and asper were two of the best like uh developed projects in the space the attention to detail like we open source everything from the design to the legal frameworks that Gabriel Shapiro led for us.

1:28:20And, you know, the storyline, everything was so, like, the attention to detail was second to none. Like, and, you know, they're working on some really interesting things. Like, I'm always going to be bullish to those guys. Obviously, very biased, right? But, yeah, I think, like, being able to be in the front seat and seeing, you know, in the war room with them and seeing how they operate and how they didn't even flinch. you know when Luna was going down Astroport was the only real exchange that you could offload so it helped save a lot of people and you know those people those guys were losing their whole networks and they were working to make sure other people could get their networks out I think that is something that like man I fucking yeah what's something you believe in that most people would not agree with in crypto or just generally general general damn um i'd say i i'd do this to crypto because it feels like right now and i'm i'm you know the energy in the conference is really high for sure but um i think you know a lot of conversations i'm having people are so you know questioning you know whether this industry is going to build what they think is important and everything like that and when is it going to happen and i really hate that people always ask like when is crypto going to deliver something but like we've already delivered something pretty powerful.

1:29:38This parallel financial system, most of my net worth is still in it. Most of my net worth is on chain, right? It's not in a bank account or anything like that. That, if you had told me that even 10 years ago, I don't even understand what that would have meant. And I think like that needs a pause. That needs a round of applause. And obviously, again, we're not good at celebrating. We should always be moving on next. And of course, there's so much left to do. I think when people think, you know, crypto's early and it's not happening fast enough, like, you know, with this TikTok and everything, our attention spans are so short that everyone wants something right now.

1:30:13Everyone wants to get rich quick. Everyone wants this. One thing, you know, Delphi, we've done so many different things. And one thing I've realized, building is obviously very hard. Running a research company is really hard. Doing consulting is really hard. Running a design agency, we just started that earlier this year, really hard. Obviously, being investors is really hard. Everything is hard. Everything takes time. Nothing is easy. And that's the fun. That's like something that should be fun. So I think what people should be thinking about is like have fun while we're working on this stuff because in two, three decades, when we look back and say, wow, we were right, that this did change the world for the better.

1:30:49This is the time. And if you're just sulking and, you know, oh, question the space and stuff, it's not gonna age well. And you're not gonna, you know, you're not gonna enjoy like your life, you know, being that pessimistic. And when people say crypto is early, of course it is. but the internet is also early. The internet's like 20, 30 years old, right? Like it just started, it was just able to drink a few years ago. So yeah, I'd say, you know, just take a step back, you know, realize what we've already accomplished. Be proud of that. Realize what we're working on is probably the most important thing you can work on.

1:31:20I remember when I did get crypto pilled, it, for me, it wasn't a question. Like I had to work here. There's no, you know, I saw the charts and everything, right? Like money was just going to be inflated. There's nothing else that I could work on that could have an impact like this. And I still work on that today. Take a step back and be bullish. What's your biggest prediction for the next 12 months? Wow, fuck. I hate this question. You know what? I'm a permeable. So my predictions are always crazy. And I've been wrong many times. I'll say that at a start. I'm blindly bullish. I think right now is, you know, obviously there's a lot with macro, everything like that.

1:32:00I think if you do get this regime change and you get, you know, regulatory, not just clarity, but like regulatory support for crypto, it's going to be the most insane thing we've ever seen. So when I first got into crypto, like probably around the same time as you, like I think like ETFs, you know, Bitcoin ETF was like crazy idea, right? But like something that we would still joke about, like, oh, that'd be cool if we got an ETF and stuff. We got that. We have a neat ETF too. Like the government supporting us in our mission to kind of dethrone them was never anything we even joked about. I always thought crypto was going to persevere without the government.

1:32:41Right. And the opportunity and which, by the way, it's not definite. There's a very good chance that, you know, Camelot or the Democrats win and maybe they are just as anti crypto as they have been in the past. But if we do get a change and all of a sudden the regulators and government are not in our way and actually supportive, I think that is the craziest, most bullish thing I've ever heard in my life in crypto. And I think what's amazing for that is we already have really smart builders in the space. There are a lot of smart people who are building in tech, who are obviously working in fields like AI or biotech or something like that, that are crypto curious, that are risk averse and don't want to join this industry that the government is constantly attacking.

1:33:25And if that changes, not only does it, you know, allow those, you know, builders to kind of join us, it also allows them different ways to build projects. So, you know, one thing I talked to Jason Yenowitz at Blockworks a lot about is the IPO marketing crypto is terrible, right? It's really been Coinbase, maybe they'll be cracking, maybe it's fireblocks, who knows? You can name it on, you know, one hand. IPOs are actually really important for business building. It's actually, you know, before tokens, and I know crypto people aren't aware of this, IPOs were really the way to, you know, liquidity for not just, you know, the investors, but the teams, the employees, the founders.

1:34:05And there are a lot of people who probably want to build strong projects, strong products on top of these crypto protocols that don't want to have a token, don't want to go through all that stress. Having a token is super stressful um so like uh yeah i think like you know that change would be you know really kind of change the whole you know kind of like big inflection point for crypto the industry at large and you know by a matter of fact the world thank you man thank you so much for what you guys are doing at delphi working so hard to push the space forward and thank you for taking some time today out of your crazy schedule to make this happen.

1:34:45No, man, I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much for what you do, man. I think these podcasts are super important, just generally. I think, you know, podcasts are obviously a great way for people to like learn about the space, et cetera. What you do is so special because, you know, this is probably my favorite podcast I've ever done because like - Bam, another one. That's a clip, I love it. And I think like, you know, being able to talk about the human aspect will let a lot of, you know, hopefully whoever listens to this help realize that, you know, what they're working on is always going to be challenging, but like nothing's easy and nothing's worth doing as easy.

1:35:17Right. So yeah, man, I really appreciate the time. Amazing.