E160: Paradex CEO: A Crypto Founder Exposes How Token Launches Really Work

28:12Or it's like, oh, they start asking about, oh, but what about work-life balance? What about, like, you can tell, like, they're trying to see, you know, how much leeway there is, and they're like, okay, no, this is not the person that I want, right? So, yeah, I mean, this is, it has had a very profound and like real impact on how I think about who is the right person to come along for this role, right? And, you know, I'm never going back to hiring the other way, right? This is the way. This is the only way, right? Very honest way. Yep. Thank you to our friends at Paradex for supporting this show.

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30:01Be honest with me about your deepest and most fundamental belief. What are we doing in this crypto industry right now? What does crypto represent and what should it be? It's a great question because I feel like in the last six months or year or so, And, you know, obviously this last year started with crypto being kind of like in fashion, right? The regulatory environment started to change and, you know, all these institutions now coming in, talking about tokenization and Web3 and all of that. But I feel like we ended the year and even like the start of this year with like people, like at least crypto native people talking about like, hey, or at least feeling like there's this battle now for the soul of crypto.

30:50which is like, oh, are we just going to stand by where all these institutions come in and they kind of re-intermediate crypto, which was supposed to be decentralized and it had all these principles and these cypher-funk principles, etc. And so I do think that that is a very real force, which is there is always going to be this force where people are going to come in and they're going to try and take this vision of crypto or this force that is crypto. And they're going to try and mold it in a way that works for them. It might not necessarily be what is in the long-term interest of the vision, etc.

31:34But it works for them. And they will sell it to you as if it is, oh, actually, no, no, this is the same thing as the thing you are talking about, but it's just in my way. And they'll use nice marketing and so on so forth. I do applaud people like Vitalik for staying true to what the original ethos of crypto is, right? I think he just put out a post maybe a couple of weeks ago where I think it was something to the effect of like, hey, guys, let's not forget that like, yes, I mean, there's all this nice thing about finance coming on chain and, you know, long term for the world. I think we all agree that.

32:17But let's not forget that we can't compromise on our principles of decentralization and censorship or freedom of speech, etc., etc. And I think that is something I deeply, deeply... And that's why, honestly, that's the reason we build on Ethereum, is because I think he is so deeply committed to making this a force for good in the world. And I know that unless he goes away or like gives this up in some way, Ethereum will not change, right? So I think that, so your question was, you know, what do I think? What do I think is effectively what I'm saying, which is, hey, there's this battle for the soul of crypto that is constantly being fought.

33:02With every new wave of, as crypto grows, there's going to be kind of like a reassertion of like new force comes in and then tries to change this thing. And it's really up to us and people like Vitalik, like you, me, entrepreneurs in the space, who I think are like right long-term builders. We have the right values. We have the right vision for what crypto needs to be or wants to be. And that's the reason why I signed up, for example. But we have to constantly fight this battle. I don't think it's a given where you can just say, oh, cool, Ethereum is good now, right? Like even when Ethereum is big, like there's going to be some new force that comes in and says, oh, no, no, no, no.

33:36Actually, this thing in my way, and actually this is also the same way, and it's good for the world, and kind of it's blowing smoke in your face, right? and you're like, no, not really. You know, this is the way. Let's stay this way. What do you want crypto to be?

33:55It comes from what our personal vision is and what my personal mission is, which is to build this wealth creation engine for the world. Right? And every single person in the world needs to have permissionless access to this wealth creation engine. Right? Now, permissionless access means, okay, it needs to be kind of, you know, permissionless and, you know, nobody can censor you. It truly means permissionless in the sense that like, oh, nobody can use to gatekeep you or needs to find out your information, privacy, things like that, right? So I think the original, which is ultimately the original ethos of crypto, right?

34:32Which is like a decentralized kind of self-sovereign money. And our thing, Paradex, is really an app that sits on this foundational vision of crypto, not just ETH but also Bitcoin and so to me these are the two core principles of crypto, self-sovereign money and permissionless access and whatever comes with these principles, like I'm just building one app but I'm sure there's other manifestations of apps that are building with the same intention and so in everything we do we try to make sure that we never kind of move away from these core principles Tell me more about the privacy aspect of Paradex.

35:17So Paradex is the only DEX at scale today to introduce privacy. And privacy happens basically at three layers. One is at the L1 layer. So we are an L2. So we are an app chain that is built on Ethereum, just as a refresher. But it is an actual blockchain, which is on the L2, and then we settle on that one. Now, if it is a blockchain, that means everybody's accounts are kind of visible on-chain. And then two is, if you're publishing some state to Ethereum, then technically you can see people's position on Ethereum as well. So, when I say privacy is three layers, Paradex is the only exchange, or DEX, where we encrypt positions on Ethereum, So you cannot actually see people's positions, or if you see it, it will be encrypted.

36:10At the L2 level, which is the blockchain level, you actually need authenticated access. So that means if you want to pull your position, then you can see your position, but everybody else, unless they have your credentials, they cannot see your position. So again, it's basically masking or authentication. And then number three is your orders. Our orders are off-chain. So basically, you can think of it as something that's not on-chain, or it's not visible, but it's in the sequencer, but it's like it's not, or it will be in the sequencer, but it is not on, it is not on chain, right? And so this guarantees any person that if I'm trading on Paradex, I don't have to worry about getting liquidation hunted or my, you know, my position's known so I get squeezed in some way.

36:54It's just, it's not possible. You mentioned before you said that's why we're building on Ethereum. Yeah. Have you ever thought of building Paradex on Solana. Yes, this was a battle that I had to fight internally when, if you remember 2023, the Solana sort of heyday 2022, 2023, right? When Solana was doing, of course, was doing amazingly well from a price perspective. Which has a massive impact on the people's perception of the ecosystem, obviously. Yeah, price does matter, right? Anybody that tells you that price does not matter either has a very naive understanding of how this works. Price absolutely does matter.

37:44And when price is going up in 2022, 2023, and Ethereum was not scaling, right? So you had this kind of perfect wind, storm of one ecosystem doing phenomenally well and scaling plus price going up and the other ecosystem price going down and not scaling because the infrastructure was not there. And so at that time we made the decision that was like, no, hey, we're actually going to build on Ethereum and we're going to build Ethereum. Because why? Because this was the long-term vision of how I think blockchains and applications on blockchain should be built. Specifically high throughput, low latency applications, I don't think you could build them directly on the L1, right?

38:28That was a driving kind of force around why that was my thesis or our thesis. However, at that time, this was so hot and all the engineers in our company were like, hey, we need to build on, we need to build on Solana. The whole world is moving on, you know, building on Solana, why aren't we building? I'm super proud of myself that no matter the pressure kind of internally, I said, no, I said, no, this is not the right long-term choice for us, technically. And I pushed back for all these reasons that I mentioned. A, I think the monolithic way is not the right way to build applications at scale, specifically applications like us, high throughput, low latency.

39:16And at that time, actually, even though the price was going up, Solana actually was having a lot of problems. You had a bunch of RPC congestion issues. I don't know if you remember back then. And oddly enough, that data point was powerful enough where like, okay, I think people less believe me for saying this was the right long-term technical choice. And they more believed the fact that like, oh, this actually, yes, this thing actually does have problems. Like we couldn't build an exchange on a blockchain where that was basically just like down every few days. right and so people but i think that's the job of an entrepreneur in some sense as a founder you're supposed to most people only look at the short term they only look at the things that are visible and they're like okay i'm going to make my decision on the things i can see right and then in in i i think like as a founder your job is to be almost like looking to the future right and say yeah this data point might be right right now but this might happen and that might happen and this might do this thing and actually this might not work out, right?

40:22So that's just from like, okay, you kind of like extrapolate into the future. But I think more than anything, for me, it was always like, okay, what are the first principles? Like, what are our first principles? And we just keep coming back to that. Like, if we believe that like, hey, the monolithic way was the better way to scale and unbuild, then we would do that. For us, it was always like, no, the modular way is better. And so no matter how good the monolithic way was at that time, from a first principles perspective, I was like, okay, this is not going to be the right long-term choice for us.

40:53So then we said no. So there was actually a time when there was a lot of pressure internally for us to build. And I said no. And ultimately that choice, we persisted. And I'm super happy for it because now, I mean, if we had done that, we would not be in the place that we are today, for sure. Did you ever regret not being building on Solana?

41:20Regret is like a... Like, shit, we should... Yeah. Maybe we should be doing... Yeah, I mean, there's always this... Look, doubt is an inevitable part of this game, right? Like, as a founder, I'm sure you've been through this as well. You've probably made some choices here and there, and then have to be like, hmm. I don't think any founders can get rid of doubt that's always going to be a thing so yeah I think in 2023 there was I can tell you there's probably every single investor conversation that I had that year 2023 and I can specifically recall one investor conversation when I was visiting New York one of our investors in Paradigm And he was like, this makes no sense.

42:09Like, why are you doing this? Like, this makes absolutely, you have a captive distribution on the L1. There's already there. People are already trading there. And you were saying you want to build on something that is maybe a year or a year and a half away. And Ethereum at that time was saying like, this is a year away, but Ethereum timelines are always like one plus you add another two, right? And so it was like pulling tape in these conversations because you had to defend this position. and so yeah absolutely you know at the time i mean obviously i knew that okay this was the right long-term choice but like at those times i feel like when literally every single person is like telling you that like no this is this is a dumb move at that time you you feel like you know what i just wish i just wish you shut up right so it's like when you're buying bitcoin in a bear market instead of buying a house or whatever you say oh shit i wanted to buy the house but now Bitcoin is down so much I need to allocate the money to crypto and Bitcoin and your family and your friends are again once again they're like what the fuck are you doing with your life shut up yeah I mean trust me or you just don't have this conversation you don't say anything you don't say anything because I think I don't have money I can't buy it the best like look in a situation like an investor conversation it's unavoidable because you know you're making these decisions you have to explain yourself right but in I won't put myself in a position where like, if I don't need to say something and, you know, because like, why do that?

43:35Right. Like why just open, open it up for, for, for scrutiny when, you know, most of the times it's like, it's just like, if you believe something that strongly, like, yes, definitely debate, but like, don't just invite scrutiny for the sake of scrutiny, because it's just going to add stress to your life. Right. And you don't need that. Why 25 days fast? Well, I'm going to do five. I'm going to do five. Well, that was a different reason. The reason was more out of desperation. But yeah, it is along the same lines. What's the unshakable North Star that drives you every day?

44:15That we want to build this wealth creation engine for the world. That is the thing that I get up for every single day and I measure like where are we you know, in this journey? Like, how far have I come? Have I just started out? Am I, you know, 10 kilometers in? So the answer is, no, I haven't gotten that far. Then I need to keep going. Why are you so bullish on the perp space, specifically?

44:52I think, you know, people call, perp dexes is, you know, perp dex is a perp dex. There's a bunch of other perplexes out there. And I think the word perplex is almost like a disservice for what this thing really is and what it really can be. Because I truly believe that perplexes are really the financial super centers of the internet economy. I put out a tweet some time ago about how I think DeFi is going to take over the world, but specifically perpdexes are going to eat all of finance. Because for the first time, you have one entity that has a bank, a clearinghouse, an exchange, a brokerage, a custodian, all in one.

45:40So you effectively have the total available market of all of these five entities into one entity that is basically seamlessly composable. You don't need to like, you know, I have JP Morgan, but then I need to move money to my Fidelity account. Oh, then I need to move money into my retirement account or somebody else needs to have a custodian. No, it's one account. It's one unified account that you have instant permissionless access to any financial opportunity and asset in the world, right? That the TAM of these businesses, like if you just think about that, right? What is the total TAM of all the banks, all the brokerages, all the clearinghouses, all the custodians in the world combined?

46:20and we find ourselves one out of, let's say, the top five exchanges in the world or top five entities in the world that can go after this pie, like the total time of this is in the trillions, right? Like even if you say that like, hey, I am 1 % of this market, that is still an insane amount. That is a massive amount, right? So I think that, so there's one part of it, which is like, okay, how far, how, there's one part of it which is like, have I achieved my mission or like how far have I come, you know, on this path to achieving my mission? The other part is, holy shit, this is a massive opportunity.

47:00And we find ourselves one out of five teams that is in the running to basically win a majority slice of this pie. Like, man, that's, but how many teams in the world, you know, how many founders are lucky enough to get up and say, man, I have a shot at this. I have a shot at winning a huge slice of this pie. And that's, you know, I think it's a privilege. So I think there's two sides to it. A is the fact that you have this deep unshakable belief in this mission. But two, also, this is exciting. This is very, very exciting.

47:35Quick one. I want to thank our partners who help us make this show possible. Thank you, Trezor. My favorite cold wallet to store my crypto and make sure I sleep well at night. If you want to order a Trezor wallet and sleep well at night too, you can use my promo code WSH10 to get a 10 % discount. Big thank you to Bitwise Asset Management for backing today's conversation. Bitwise is a crypto specialist asset manager with more than$15 billion in client assets across 30 plus crypto solutions, including ETFs, index funds, alpha strategies, staking, and more. However you like to invest in crypto, Bitwise has something for you.

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48:32For anyone who wants to learn more about this financial building, rebuilding this financial center of the world, you can have a look at our last conversation together. We detailed that in much more depth a couple of months ago.

48:51What do you think happens to the per space in one year's time? It's a bear market now. Things are supposed to be slower, less exciting, but you are omega bullish for the year. You're born bullish. This unbridled optimism. You know, I don't think it's possible for me to be bearish. Like, I honestly have thought about this. It's like, I think in any situation, you know, whether it's work or not work, like, I think it's just, I'm just wired. I think we are wired differently in that, like, you always see why it could work rather than why, you know, all the reasons. Of course, it's not that we can't see the reasons why it will not work.

49:36Of course, you can see that. But you can always see the reasons why it will work. and then you say, ah, but this is maybe 10 % probability, but with a little bit of love and a lot of effort and discipline, maybe that's 50%. Maybe that's it. You know, with enough effort and good execution, I think anything, you can change probabilities, right? So for the PerpTech space in this year, I think why I'm super bullish is this year, metals have had a breakout run, right? Not just in crypto, but in TreadFi, right? And for the first time, you saw metals trade in huge numbers, not just on centralized exchanges, but also actually was led by the decentralized exchanges.

50:21And so we have now shown the world that this is not just a casino on Mars for some magic tokens that we've created. Like, A, we can tokenize real world assets. We can put them on chain. And liquidity, we can basically bootstrap liquidity for these things very, very quickly. and there's a ready market for this to trade it, right? And now, so it's like, you know, so this vision of alternative financial system that is permissionless, it's self-sovereign or self-custodial and there's deep liquidity for you to get what you need to with immediacy. This vision is like, you can see it now. It's not something in the future that you're talking about.

51:02It's just like, it's there. It's right now, it's right here. And so if that is possible and we've taken, let's say, 1-2 % of the market, I think in a year's time, I mean, this is probably going to come off as being super bullish or over bullish. But I think by the end of this year, we will not just be 10 % of crypto volume of the centralized exchanges. We will be 10 % of real world assets. For the assets that we list, let's say FX and commodities, these two specifically, I think we will be at least 10 % off the global C5 market. If you aggregate all the exchanges, not just one or two, but if you aggregate all of them.

51:42Yeah, I think what people didn't understand was how people were thinking, oh, this is crypto. People are kind of fooling around. There's a new shitcoin. Okay, these decentralized exchanges can list the latest trendy shitcoin faster than a centralized exchange. Yeah. Well, now if there is something else than a shitcoin that is moving fast, a trend, they will lift it first. Exactly. People will go there to trade and it's probably going to get bigger and bigger. Exactly. And so I think a bit like the Trump launch was kind of for me, like the aha moment on decentralized exchange versus centralized exchange.

52:27now this this was precious metals right yep was probably a moment for some traditional finance people to say oh you know we can add other things than just a meme coin or a coin and this is being used yeah and there's not just not just magic internet coins right they're real world assets and they're trading in significant size

52:55There are two types of TGs, token generation event and team is going to exit. This comes from you actually. Paradex is launching its token very soon. You are the right person to ask. How can your community or a potential community member spot as early as possible? Who is there for token generation event in terms of teams? And who is there for teams going to exit? So, by the way, that acronym or the alternative kind of explanation of what that acronym is. Actually, I got to give credit to one of our community members, Lazarillo, who came up with this thing where he says, you know, TGE is teams going to exit.

53:44So I always thought it was funny. So I shared with you. So I don't want to steal his thunder. but just for newcomers here who are not super familiar with crypto TG means? Token generation event which typically means when the team launches a token and the token becomes freely tradable in the market and then you can freely buy and sell it on exchanges that's usually what it means right it's basically the equivalent of what an IPO is in some sense but for you know projects with tokens because we don't have equity right so it's like it's a big moment it's because you've been working for a long time you're trying to bootstrap a product you bootstrap the community and then now you're saying okay hey you know what now we're going to list this thing and we're going to see what the market thinks it is worth so it is a pretty big deal but as you said there's two types of teams right there's teams that do this in a bid to actually use this new because it's a wealth creation event right for people and so they quit it event so you can either use the fact that the token now has value to further accelerate your mission, right?

54:48Which is, I think a lot of the serious teams understand that. And they kind of intuitively follow this, like, hey, this is the path we're going to follow. Or you can do what most teams we've seen in crypto, and that's why crypto gets a bad reputation, is they follow the team's going to exit route, which is they use the token, they launch it at a high valuation, they find some kind of back channel way to dump the token or cash in, and then boom, they're gone, right because like there's no kind of alignment between the team's tokens and the community right most of the time you will see these downly charts for the next let's say 12 24 months and then and then the founders they basically shut shop and then they start another project or they just go away right so because the ipo here traditional startups right they need to build a product, make a lot of money.

55:42I mean, arguably some companies IPO without making a lot of money, actually by losing a lot of money, but you need to build a product, product market fit that takes a lot of time, but in crypto you're able to make crazy money as a team without even building a serial product. And that's the big problem here, right? Yeah, I mean, that plus there's no regulation. There's no regulation, there's no real accountability for if you scam someone. In fact, almost oddly enough people repeat founders in this space somehow get you know all the attention like oh you launched a token like what did you do i launched a token like that that's your claim to fame but somehow in this market's that stupid sometimes they're like you you see these these stories keep coming up and i've tweeted about this stuff where like these repeat founders launching like their third token and somehow people think that's bullish which to me is crazy but I think in some sense obviously crypto gets a bad rap there's a lot of bad stuff in this space and we've just talked about that teams go to exit, repeat founders, they launch their token they pump and dump, listing high and then bouncing but that same environment has also basically allowed us to differentiate which is like I think the serious teams can look at that and be like okay, how do I differentiate?

57:04Okay, I just don't do that. So, from our tokenomics perspective, we came up with this thing internally. And this was the guiding principles around how we designed just the token mechanism for DIME. And we call it the Transparency Alignment and Governance Framework, basically. And it's based on four key principles. One, you need to have alignment. So, team and community alignment. Two is investor and community alignment. Three is radical transparency. And four is value accrual. The first one is pretty self-explanatory, which is team and community alignment. In our case, we've done something that I don't think any team in crypto has done voluntarily.

57:56We have locked 80 % of the team's tokens are tied to performance milestones. So every year post-TGE, the foundation and the board will effectively come out and tell you, hey, here are the milestones for this year. And then if the team does not hit those milestones, we cannot sell our tokens. So this down-only meta, which you see, right, you list high, and then there's teams have time unlocks, where there's like, no restriction, it's just time, right? Time is the only kind of measurement, which is like, okay, a year passed, cool, you can sell now, but it doesn't really look at, okay, how much value did you create for the community?

58:32And so we are now saying, okay, no more. We're not going to do that. We're going to say, hey, we're going to say we're going to create this amount of value, and that may be through revenue. Like Elon Musk's pay package, if you remember, he tied it to, I think it was tied to some effect of the equity price plus revenue in some way. So similar, where your revenue or the token price in some way, and it's not one or the other, it could be both, for example. But we We explicitly tell the community in advance that like, hey, this is what we're going to try and hit. And if we don't, we can't sell. So nothing signals alignment with your community more than us contractually effectively telling the market that, hey, actually, we cannot sell if we don't hit these milestones.

59:11So alignment is a very, very key part of this. And I think most teams have not done that so far. But I think the tokens that will do well in the future, their hallmark will be good governance. through transparency, alignment, and some of these other things, right? Your previous business, I mean, you still have it today, right? Paradigm. Is an option business? It's an institutional options exchange, yes. So you understand the option game. How do you ensure people that we will not use this type of instrument, which is done a lot in crypto, by team that... say they don't want to sell the token, which they actually don't really sell, but they use other instruments to cash in?

1:00:00Good question. So it's a fantastic question. So there's a lot of this right now, right? Which is teams say one thing. In our case, we've gone one step further where we actually said that we cannot sell unless we hit milestones. So if we don't hit those milestones, we know we cannot sell, right? But you're right that people can still find a way to basically back channel or some sort of derivative with some sort of OTC desk. People do this all the time. So what we've done is in our, basically like the grants that the foundation has given us, right? It is actually one of the clauses where you say that as one of the requirements for accepting the grant, we have to basically attest to saying we cannot basically, the use of all these derivative instruments or hedging is not, we cannot do that.

1:00:46If we do that, it's in violation of the agreement and basically we can avoid it. So it is not just the fact that we've gone one step further and locked ourselves up to public milestones that the community can observe, and then also look at how much tokens there are on the contract and basically say, okay, these cannot leave. But not only that, we've also done this on the agreement side, which is there's a clause explicitly that says, hey, we cannot use derivative instruments. Otherwise, it will be basically in violation of the agreement.

1:01:19what are you trying to prove here? I think it goes back to that, the transparency and alignment and governance framework, right? Which is, I don't think we're trying to prove anything as much as we're here to tell signal to the community that like, hey, we are real serious long-term builders and like we are committed to our vision. And we're not just saying that because there's a lot of founders and projects in crypto that just say this. We're showing you, right? Don't just like, you know, there's this phrase, right? Don't just show me or don't just tell me, show me. So this is the show me part, which is like, yeah, I can talk the walk, talk the talk as a founder, but I'm actually walking the walk by, and the team is as well, by locking our tokens up and we're aligning them with basically measurable, public, transparent milestones that the community can see and observe, right?

1:02:11I think that part is super, super important. There's other parts to that framework as well. I just only talked about the alignment between team and community. There's also investor and community. Our investors are locked up for a year past TGE, which is very similar to what you see in IPOs. It's like private investors, they tend to need to be locked up past the public markets because they tend to have more information and more sophisticated, et cetera, et cetera. so we've done the same for ours we've basically locked them up for a year right beyond that the other two pieces one is radical transparency so we plan to be very very transparent with sources of cash and users of cash in the sense that like this much revenue was generated here are the costs of the foundation this much rented marketing why because it's like an income statement it's like and it's like you know we want to basically signal a new chapter to to crypto to say hey you know what, A, we're serious builders, but not just that.

1:03:10If we do it and we do it well and our token does well, people will start basically mentally associating the token price and price doing well with this kind of good behavior that we're showing. And then hopefully other people on teams after that will adopt that and that becomes a market standard.

1:03:30It's a bear market and you're launching a token. Why do you guys think? I mean, we're not here to talk about token price too much. Not even recommended, I think. But why do you think you guys will do well despite launching a token at a terrible moment? I think, look, I think when companies have launched in the long term, is immaterial to your long-term trajectory, right? like whether I launch in February or March or in October. It's like, and I'm trying to time the market, right? You never launch. Yeah. If you try to time. Well, first of all, I think it's stupid because nobody can time the market.

1:04:21Because if we could time the market, then we'd just be investing or trading. Why would we be building a project or a company? So that's not our job. That's not our core, what we should be doing. But over the long term, in like five years, whether we're successful or not will not be dependent on which month of that year did I decide to launch my token in, right? It's going to be determined based on how good is my product? How, you know, how much users love my brand and my community and how much do they actually, how much value and utility do I provide to them, right? Ultimately, that's it. Did I build something valuable?

1:05:01Did I build something valuable? People who are just so focused on like looking good at TG because there's no product. Yeah. There's no revenue. I think that's actually the reason why there's been so much over-indexing on timing and things like that because they have nothing else. Right? You don't have a real revenue generating business. We have a real revenue generating business. You mentioned before we're going to be transparent. Yeah. Can you be transparent with us already now? Yeah. I mean, in revenues, there'll be your, what are your costs? Are your blockchain costs, your marketing costs? Can you give us some concrete numbers now.

1:05:34Oh, no, not yet. But we will share them very soon. Post-TG, that's one of our first things we could share. I don't want to prematurely share something that I'm not prepped for. This is something we intend to do, but we will do it right after TG.

1:05:50What does the little voice in your head tell you every night when you go to sleep and every morning when you wake up?

1:05:58This little voice talks a lot. So the context is important. In what context? tell me the one that talks the loudest the one that we want to win if I'm not winning then that voice every night is you're not winning what can you do better where are you why are you not winning is it that the plan is not right is it the product that is not right Or is it that you're not executing correctly? There's this constant kind of criticism or optimizing that you're kind of going through every single day. And I mean, you're always optimizing as a founder, first of all. Even in the little things. Your job in some sense is to not worry about optimizing the little things, let your team take care of that.

1:06:56And you just focus on the thing that has the highest value impact and focus on optimizing that thing. so for me it's just like if I'm evaluating every day like why are we not number one why haven't we built a brand that lives in the hearts and minds of people yet that is resonating so winning means being number one winning means being number one by what metrics volume, revenue users open interest, there's a bunch of different metrics but ultimately like if you're the number one like Binance for example there's the number one volume by volume in crypto but they're number one in revenue as well they tend to be highly correlated that's the obvious one but also the da use how many users use you use you every day etc how many you know open interest you have there's like other secondary form of metrics but but those are by and large the main ones we're here to win i mean if we're not here to win then why am i putting why am i putting myself through this you know eating glass and just you know crawling through mud and dirt just like No, that's just eating glass and drinking water.

1:08:00Yeah. It's just stupid. Like, you know, it's irrational. Like there's no, you know, if we're not doing this to win, then like, why do it? Thank you so much for doing that. It was another great conversation and I really enjoyed. Thank you so much for opening up like that. I think that's one of the goals of this podcast, but, uh, people are not necessarily as open. I mean, I think we spent almost 30 minutes talking about the health, which is probably a record on this show. probably one of my favorite parts I mean I only mentioned it because you we started the conversation with like hey I have this thing I'm going through and I'm like man I have to share this with you because like I'm going through something kind of very similar and it's definitely made a difference so like where I can't share I should share it so well I might have to do another extended fast we'll see thank you so much no man my pleasure thank you for having me as you probably know by now I host some of the biggest names in Bitcoin and crypto on my podcast.

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