E52: James Wo: The Youngest Crypto Billionaire!

0:282015, right? he proudly owns more than one percent of the total supply so you discover bitcoin you're 21 years old you think oh man this is solving one of the biggest problems that we have in china which is money printing when more people realize the bitcoin could be a potential solution then the bitcoin value also if we want our business to become big industry has to become big then we have to do more options besides bitcoin it's nft so nft still have a lot of value right you invested 20 mil in 2015 how much was it at the peak of 2017. it was definitely more than 100 mil what's framework for investing in early stage crypto projects it's super hard to manage more than 100 portfolios i feel like if i have to gain profit which potentially can move the needle i have to own a certain percentage of the network when i was roughly 10 my father randomly pointed out a building and asked me can you tell me the value of that beauty so i tried to learn in the skill about why this building was that much money that's probably the first thing i learned about you're valuating one thing.

1:25Whatever amount you have, it could be a thousand bucks or 10 ,000 or 100 ,000 or 20 million. When you really understand Bitcoin, you want more Bitcoin. That's when you start to make mistakes. What are some of your biggest cups in the last nine years in crypto? Yeah, I think that's a big cup, right?

1:51I go to Dev Connect in Turkey. When is that? November. Second week of November. We host some events there. It's a big Eastern conference, I guess. Okay. You travel a lot for conferences? Yeah, I guess so, yeah. Do you like to travel? Yeah. What do you like the most about traveling? Traveling, I think the conference itself is very... you know, useful because you're building a lot of portfolios, building a lot of new projects. And, you know, you meet all these kind of people with different ideas. That's super helpful. And actually bring you a lot of thinking about what is the industry going in the future.

2:31This is actually very important to us. When you travel, do you mainly spend your time in conferences or you spend some time learning about the culture and doing some other stuff that are not crypto related? I think I would probably do both. If I have time, I would love to do both. Because a lot of conferences itself is important. Usually it takes about a week to go to the conference meeting everyone, talk to them, and that's useful. But on the other hand, usually, you know, if a conference holding a certain country, this certain country have a certain policy, whether that's probably not too negative toward a cryptocurrency, right?

3:08Sometimes, you know, in some countries, they are actually very positive policy toward a cryptocurrency. Then we're thinking deeply about, OK, is this a, you know, country with a large population with great kind of buying power in the future? Then I think about this in a more jurisdiction perspective. Is that going to be a good project, you know, in that certain country? And that actually helped me a lot because, you know, sometimes, you know, we are talking about the globalization, right? But we are talking about decentralization. But sometimes the reality in crypto is, you know, if you are based in a certain country, you are doing the same thing with other project.

3:48You're actually doing better in this country because you are localized. You know how to make things work in that country. So that is actually something we need to take into consideration when we make the investment. If the market in this area is big enough and the project dominates the market here, that could be a good investment for us. How can you know that if you're not from the country itself? Because you're from China, right? Let's say you're going to Turkey. You have no idea what the Turkish market is like. Absolutely, that's right. So that's a great question. So I, you know, because I'm not from Turkey, I'm not from, you know, the other country.

4:27Usually I would actually do is trying to ask other people to help us. You know, for some certain country, we have people there, right? So we actually have people in New York, in Hong Kong, in Singapore, in Shanghai, in other places as well. We're actually trying to hire a new guy in India, another guy in Japan. So we're trying to hire some, you know, people there to help us do the deal sourcing and help us analyze whether that's a good deal or not. That's one way. The other is, you know, previously I may work, you know, I may work with some partners or invest into some projects based in that country.

5:06I was seeking for the advice, see whether this is a good project or not. How do you find the right people? Because you, again, you don't know anything about the country. and you don't know anything about the people i mean maybe someone you know knows them but like how do you how to maximize the chances of hitting right the first time when you hire someone who is going to be responsible for making investment decision in a country that you have no idea about yeah absolutely a great question i think uh track record is very important we we try to hire more experienced a lot. If you are new to crypto, you don't have any track record, right?

5:48So this is very hard to analyze whether you are good or not. I think that's very risky. So we want to hire the guy who has at least probably one to two year experience in crypto. And the track writer already proved that, okay, you can find, you know, good project, you have experience there, then I believe in the future, you can bring good deals to us. So, you know, this is, I think, important to us. Regarding the events because you say like you travel to go to quite a few events every year, how do you approach these events that we talked about before and kind of like probably everyone who's been to one of these huge events, these thousands of people, it's very easy to go there and actually get zero value out of it because you're just lost in the middle of all these people and you just don't even know where to start absolutely i think you know if you talk about conference or event there are actually two type of different conference the first is more like commercialized conference you know uh they have good speaker actually their size of the conference are very big but they're trying to sell their sponsorship at a very high price they try to sell the ticket at a very high price for this type of conference you know it's more about building the brand awareness because you have a lot of people attending conference you try to spread your spread your brand and there and talk to people about you yourself that's that's going to be useful but actually this is not the builders conference the second conference type of conference actually buddhist conference it it's more like the conference are not that much people but you have a lot of real builders there which usually uh combined with a different type of hacks so you know there's a lot of hacks on in their conference and and to be honest in most circumstances you know the second type of the conference actually hold by the layer one foundations you know either is a certain or website foundations or solana foundation or or tenement or whatever you know usually that com that type of conference are more about builders conference so the the purpose about us to go into that conference is more about you know finding a good project and invest them before we before we dive deeper into this podcast can you tell me more about yourself are you what's your background mm-hmm where did you grow up and how was your childhood like sure so So I'm studying right now.

8:32So I was born in Shanghai. So my family background actually, you know, very traditional. You know, my parents, they operate in all kind of business in the financial sector in China. So investment businesses? Investment business, most like a private equity business, and they all do different kind of investment, but more traditional. So when I was very young, I actually started to learn different skills, knowledge about how to make investment. Of course, I'm too young to make the right decision, but I get a sense about how to maximize our return, but also try to make sure the risk is within your expectations.

9:17So they were kind of actively pushing you to start to invest from early on or is it because you had like this interest yourself and said, hey, I know you're doing that. I'm interested into that too. I want to try. I don't think they pushed me to do that. First, I'm interested in learning more about the knowledge. The second is my parents always talk about these things at home. So I hear about everything about how to evaluate the asset, right? so yeah that's that's their you know the background so but I'm very interesting see how you know I can do very well in the future so that's also the motivation for for me to find in cryptos and digging into it and finding the value of it I see how old were you when you did your first investment oh I think when I was roughly 10 you know my father asked me a question about you know can you tell me you know he just randomly point out a beauty and just ask me can you tell me the value of that beauty so I try to learning a skill about you know giving the answer and why you know the disputing she was that much money so that's probably the first thing I learning about you know evaluating one thing about the first investment it what happened that day did you say something that was completely off or yes in somewhere I think close within probably I mean, it's not exactly the right number.

10:49It's probably, I mean, it could be somewhere like around that. So if the building is$300 million, let's say, I'd probably say somewhere like$250. Okay. So it's not that close, but it's close. How did you that react? It is more like about I analyze, you know, because the building in a few blocks away, sale at this price and this one compared to that one is bigger as more more than or not and they're you know then then i can analyze what how the value of the building um so how did your dad react sorry was proud your dad how you react was he proud or was just like this is my boy like i expect you to be right at 10 years old about building valuation he seemed like he cannot do this in when when he was 10 years old okay but that's a different story because i was born in this you know you know yeah but you just don't have the condition about doing that so that's totally fair but his reaction is pretty pretty positive to me i guess so then afterwards i start doing investment into stock gold back to high school and for fun for fun it's a small amount of money and actually my my parent lent the money to me so i just doing a little bit they lend you money or they gave you money to be like this is your trial and whatever you want i return all the money back so it's it's more about borrow the money they lend it to me and then i just keep the profit it's it's really small number but you know they just you know uh give it to give all the profit to me which i think you know very good at least for students that's that's not not that small right i'm not i'm not losing the money i i again some profit but not too much Do you think it's luck at that age or do you think there was already something else?

12:44For sure, that's half luck, half skills, I think. How much do you think it would be today, being very transparent and very honest with yourself? How much of your success is luck and how much is skills versus this 50-50 back then? Right. I think probably still somewhere like one third of it is still luck. One third. Yeah. Just imagine if I didn't notice Bitcoins from my schoolmate when I started my undergraduate degree, then I won't enter into the crypto industry. So you're at high school, you do stock training, right? Yeah. Your parent lend you some money, you kind of return some money. What do you do after that?

13:34I graduate from high school then I go to college What did you study in college? Mathematics Math, okay It's pretty hard Why did you study math? Did you want that or is it like something that's pushed in China because to be able to be seen as a brilliant student you have to have been able to have great grades in a in a math or mathematical subject? I think for a few reasons. The first is my parents, they both studied mathematics. So that's probably one reason. And the others, I'm actually interested in learning more about math. So I think this could be related to the financial industry in the future, like quantum trading and other stuff.

14:23So I think this is important. I have interest in truth mathematics as my undergraduate degree. And I feel the other, not offensive, but the other degree is not kind of stupid for me. So if I'm learning about other degree like Chinese or English, I'm not interested in learning that. So you don't really like languages? I'm okay about studying language, but I don't have a lot of, you know, enjoying, you know, I don't enjoy learning. How was the journey with English? English was good because I started in Columbia University for the master's degree it actually pushed me a lot to about talking to people in English this is a very good experience so you did undergrad in China in Shanghai yes in math and then you went to Colombia right for masters or yeah for the master for one and a half years by in the August of 2015 I go to New York study statistic in Columbia University for one and a half year.

15:31Why Columbia? Because I think it is a good school. I think the other thing is if I study for a master's degree in China, it's way too long. I think it's for three years. All the master's degrees have three years, you know, time for the Chinese college. It's too long for me. I think I feel very motivated. I was trying to start a new business. To do something. Yes. And I want to see what's happening outside. So I got to the U.S. I have a very similar experience. I wanted to start a business right after my bachelor. My daddy wanted me to do a master because he thought that in case things would not go well for me, I would have a master.

16:13Right. Right. So I chose the only, there was two or three masters in Europe where it was only one year. Actually, it was 11 months or 10 months instead of two years. and I went for one of these and then started a business right after. Good story. It's, I don't know, it's just, it made much more sense to me. I was like, okay, it's going to be a 10 month master. So I'll do it and I'll choose a cool place in Spain. So I have like a really cool master. And then the second year of the master, which I'm not doing, can you help me for the first year by giving me some money so I can fund my life when I'm building my company and I was really lucky that they did it and it's actually probably the best investment they ever made in me much better than any school year master or bachelor because it gave me this this basis that I could start a business of that's a good story I have many other great stories but we're here for you today.

17:18Not for me. No but I made a story again. I think you do very good business. So and this is not the business the business is actually data analytics nothing to do with crypto. I see I see. But anyway we don't care about me we're here for you. So you do a year and a half in Colombia. Right. Right. And then back to Shanghai. Back to Shanghai Yes. What for? So you said in Colombia actually you discovered Bitcoin? No, in Fudan actually, when I started in mathematics, in Fudan University, I discovered Bitcoin from my schoolmate. So during your undergrad? Undergraduate school. All right. So how did you, 2013?

17:56Yeah, 2013, yes. So how did you discover that? And what did you do back then? yeah we we just talked i mean it's just like her you know schoolmate we know each other for a while right we just talk about what's you know what's the update what's your up to and then one of my schoolmates told me about bitcoin and at first i just you know you know it's a new thing to me right and i i would love to learn then i just take a look and see what's going on there first at first I didn't see anything like behind it. But by digging into further and read the white paper and try to find some book in the bookstores about Bitcoins, then I really spent probably a few months about reading that materials.

18:47Then I started to learn this is actually a very good innovation. So I started to buy Bitcoin back to 2014. So that's nine years ago. So you're 21 years old. Yes. How at 21 years old do you realize that Bitcoin is an innovation? It is actually, it is, you know, I think at first I just think Bitcoin solved the problem of the traditional financial system, right? Because I have a few trading experience about investment experience in the high school. And I also, my parents told me a lot about, you know, what's going on, what's the problem of the financial system right now. What was it? It was like, you know, first it's high inflation, right?

19:32It's high inflation. And, you know, the M2 in China at that time is like probably 15 % or 14 % a year. Basically, printing 14 % or 15 % a year, more money in a year. That's a crazy number, right? So even during a non-crisis period, China was printing that much money every year. Yeah, you can see the growth of the GDP. That's true. but on the other hand you print way more money right so actually uh they stabilize the the price for the food because all the people need to eat and drink right but all this uh price of the asset it goes up crazily but this is unhealthy in the long term so i'm thinking about you know uh for this for this problem and i compared it this to the solution potentially bitcoin provide it's actually a perfect solution for solving the problem for the decentralized systems with reasonable inflation and no no one can change the rules and that's that's a great innovation what percentage of chinese people do you think today understand or even back then understood what was going on uh i don't think i don't think most people understand because that you know outside of china a lot of people see china as like an amazing success story right in terms of how it grew that fast, right?

20:58But there is obviously a flip side or something that's not talked about, which is exactly what you're talking about. Right. How do you finance this growth? Right. I think for the first question, I don't think most people understand their costs. Unless you have a very good financial background, you won't understand the logic behind it, right? So you only care about actually, you know, whether you can buy enough food, buy enough drinks, deliver very well what you can do but what they are missing is order fear they got actually getting you know diluted every year right you cannot fall into buy good asset that's a problem but most people cannot realize that so you discover Bitcoin you think you're 21 years old you think oh man this is solving one of the biggest problems that we have in China which is money printing Yeah, potentially in the world, I guess.

21:54Exactly, but you're 21, so you're probably not thinking... There's already this problem in your country, right? So you're like, oh man, like... So what did you do? I just buy Bitcoin. I think this is a great innovation. It could be a good investment when more people realize the problem, more realize and the Bitcoin could be a potential solution, then the Bitcoin value will go up. But you'd buy with your own money or you're already like... Yeah. What are you doing? are you already considering building a fund or business or are you just saying oh man i'm just gonna buy this thing and like see where it goes yeah i just buy some bitcoins at first with my own money you know i get some profit from the previous trading and i actually talk to my parents about this and they actually started supporting me so then i have idea about you know can i start like a small investment firm which is separate from the company my parents own which specifically investing to Bitcoin and other businesses building around it so my family actually they're supporting me after I graduated from from from school in Shanghai that was actually in 2015 so they told you okay here is some money that you can invest yeah for the family yes into growing a fund yeah they say crypto because we don't understand it but we trust you yeah that's right that's right they think that what they say to me is okay we can we can share order you know profit basically you can get a piece of the equity of the company we can get a piece but you you we provide the money you're doing it how much money do they provide uh at first it's 20 million dollar so they give you 20 million and they say okay you can start do whatever you want yes what do you do with the 20 million you're 22 years old yeah I just you know you receive 20 million like why do you do that especially in 2014 15 the liquidity was not the same as now absolutely but for Bitcoin's fun because at that time you know there's no trading fees initially so liquidity for trading Bitcoin is actually super good and I think if you buy 20 million dollar of Bitcoin at it's do you know fit it's very feasible in a day so so I just use spending the most of the money to buy Bitcoin Bitcoin Bitcoin yeah Bitcoin because there's no other currency at it there's like coins but there's not a big difference about Bitcoin we think still I still think Bitcoin has the value so I just buy in Bitcoin 2015 this is bear market this is very bear market Bitcoin price is somewhere like around 150 to 300 dollars how did you keep conviction until the next bull market which happened in 2017 i actually don't know when the bull market will come but i think you know since i have the money it doesn't seem to expand expensive right now i just buy it but concretely like i'm trying to like think very practically concretely if you say my main thesis is buying Bitcoin.

25:01I have 20 minutes. I'm going to buy Bitcoin. And then Bitcoin obviously doesn't go up directly. It goes sideways, maybe down. It takes a lot of time. What did you do all this time with your day and your life? And how did you, because your parents, they trust you, but they don't understand the thing. And it's last, you know, after one, two years, like what's going on here? Nothing. Like, did they really still trust you after two years? Or were you like, okay, what are you doing like what's your day looking like or your week looking like when you're in a bear market and all you do is putting a chunk of money in bitcoin and waiting yeah i think uh first i think for there's not too i mean i do have some pressure but not too many pressure from the parents about i have to gain so many profit you know based on the money you you gave me more about I want to prove myself right but I don't have that much pressure about my parents directly gave me that you have to gain profit in the short term so that's not the case so since I don't need to uh have a deadline about you know you know I need to create a lot of return on that I think it gives me actually more room about waiting and see what's going on here so and luckily in 2016 already the market start to go stop.

26:23So I don't, it's very lucky for me to enter into Bitcoin back to 2015. If I start as firm and talk to my parents back to 2013, it's actually more risky because I will see two years of the bear market and give me a lot of pressure. And then probably I can still holding that. But I will be justified. Yeah, it will be a different story. How many, early mistakes did you do because whatever amount you have it could be a thousand bucks or ten thousand or hundred thousand or twenty million when you really understand Bitcoin you want more Bitcoin after is never enough of it right right so you that's when you start to make mistakes because you say how do I make more Bitcoin with my Bitcoin right so I think if I keep holding that much of Bitcoin.

27:17I think that we're probably what's more right now. So then I go to Columbia to study a master's degree and start to see, you know, I understand there's second market here, right? There's primary market. I want to take a look and see what kind of business we have in the crypto industry. And I go to West Coast a lot, you know, most of the business at that time my base in the Bay Area. Yeah. So I talked to people there, and that was 20, more like 2016, and 20, you know, early 2017 maybe. So I talked to a lot of businesses there and see whether I can make a few investment, not just holding the Bitcoin in a second market, but, you know, whether I can invest the business in the primary market, which can potentially outperform the Bitcoin.

28:03Which turns out it's not the case, but, you know, at that time, I have no idea. the equity business yeah which one is better just buying and holding bitcoin was better yeah for 99 % of people that's the true story yeah I talked to the business there I invest I do a couple of investment at that time you know I think they are good investment but compared to bitcoins I mean they give me less return but it actually educated me a lot about how to you know you know because all my background before is more about second market right I trading stock gold bitcoins but I never know how the primary market work so in 2016 and we're not doing these kind of primary market investment I start to understand how you know the VC works yeah that was actually last for probably two years 2016 and 2017 and another big mistake i i i made it as in 2017 there are so many uh tokens here at a time called ico i don't understand the model and the value of it i think whether you know you you you you are the same project you do do the crowdfunding then suddenly your token have value i really don't understand the logic about it and i don't understand the value about why we need these tokens right so when you still invested no actually we invest the actually the most often invest but I'm investing the premium market actually actually deals so investing to exchange other business infrastructures more like traditional business but I don't make any token investment at time that that was a very big mistake for me if I invest in ICO I have private gain all over time in 2017 Okay, so you're saying the mistake was not investing in those.

30:02Absolutely. Absolutely. I know a lot of people being very rich about investing to these ICOs. So mostly a Bitcoin holder for 2017. Right. Bull cycle. Yeah, but I have to sell some Bitcoin for the investment in the primary market. What happened afterwards? After that, it goes to bear market again. um it was it was pretty pretty bad actually you know the but we we are a but i'm able to actually manage some risk one when the market is super crazy in by the end of 2017 actually de-risk a little bit holding a a bunch a bunch of cash i think because i have no idea how bitcoin will will be you know in the future what's the price but i have one idea about i have to manage my risk i have to you know de-risk a little bit that's the idea i start to thinking about based on the previous experience about trading stock and the gold so that's that's pretty good i de-risked a bit see some bitcoins but primarily market as i can never say it right i just holding these securities holding some of the bitcoins and holding a lot of cash you know in 2018 and 2019 that was actually the most i think right decision i have ever made if i don't de-risk my position at at you know 20 2017 at the peak it would be a tough two year for me because i don't have cash i have to maybe i can also borrow again or ask my father parents to give me more money that's feasible but that's a different story.

31:47That's going to be a different story. So how much you invested 20 million in 2015? How much was it at the peak of 2017? It was more than, it was actually more than, yeah, it was definitely more than 100 million, but I can't remember the detail number. Yeah, it's definitely more than 100 million.

32:10So then you basically realize, oh man, I kind of missed out on these ICOs doing this following bear market, but I have cash. Yes. So you probably don't want to make the same mistake another time. Absolutely. That's how I start, you know, make the right decision about investing to layer one protocols. But a lot of projects we finished already, the fundraising in 2017. But, you know, there's potentially, you know, I learned that there's primary market, second market, but there's OTC market, right? somewhere between like a permanent market and their second market so there's some some people trying to sell some the asset um i think one thing i dig into very further is the mistake i made in 2017 about the tokens i i learned you know at 2017 i didn't hold any ether so but ether goes crazy like the at the peak is the value of ether is probably two-thirds of the value of bitcoin one.

33:10That's crazy, right? So I dig into why Ether was that much money, why other token was that much money. So I decided to shift the focus about, I don't need to invest too many into Acti. I need to invest into a lot of tokens. That was a very good decision actually. So I started to understand the value of it. I think because of policy, I see actually that, but I think the tokens still have value. There will be other ways about the token to came out get listed whatever that is so i invest into tokens so the good decision for me on otc markets i buy dot solana in the near these three projects right how much was sold actually if the valuation for for let me break it down valuation for that is somewhere like 700 million dollar to 800 million dollar.

34:07Solana is actually cheaper. Solana is probably 300 mil or something like that. Nier is even cheaper. Yeah. So that was actually a very good deal for us, for my firm, basically. How did you size these bets? Did you still realize, oh man, it's much more risky, right? Yes. but I feel like if I have to you know gain profit which potentially can move the needle I have to own a certain percentage of the network probably let's say one to three percent or whatever that is you know I need a certain percent I actually set up the goal is one to three percent so I actually trying to buy but that actually definitely more than one percent and Solana is it's almost 1 % so you're earning more than 1 % of DOT definitely 1 % of Solana yeah I'm still only one more than 1 % of DOT right now yeah yeah Solana no Solana definitely no so actually that's that's the goal I set up and I decided to do that that was actually the a few most important investment in my investment career I would say that was the layer one protocol investment and then in 2020 then the market started to it was pretty well so I decided to kind of that's DeFi Summit right I do some allocating part of my money into DeFi monies sometimes you lose a little bit but in most time you you get a lot of profit which is great luckily it's the profitable for the d5 summer but i were doing these investment yourself we had a team that were kind of d5 dj and specialists doing that for you because there's a lot of risk that are involved when you start to play with all these d5 stuff hacks and all that stuff right i actually i have only to be honest i only have one guy okay who's pretty decent in in d5 djans but not not top tier but okay but he he he's very she's very tired about monetizing this to me probably 24 multiple seven at that time so yeah it is i don't know how you can do that but that's the that's probably everyone too at the d5 somewhere it's monetizing everything super closely so we get some profit but not that enough not not big enough but the more important thing is polka dot and so on that get listed on the market but I make pretty good decision about that because I am more familiar with with that I know a lot of people there in Paris in website foundations because you know because of the relationship is making investment start to talk to people there I make more deep relationship I don't know a lot of people in the Solana foundation and so when I get listed actually I holding dot and I say all my Solana and probably less than$3 which you sold him which is a crazy bad decision and there is almost made a hundred X from there yeah you can still made a hundred X if not probably at least 50 X from there a crypto classic yeah but luckily I made right decision about that I holding on the dot until the peak so that was actually the main main return and profit for my entire firm um this is 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 polka dot have a pretty good performance actually ranked number number three on the market it goes to like 50 dollars yeah i remember that yeah that was a very very good time for me and uh simultaneously i i think when you have a you know i mean this is the main investment which is great but I need to make more investment in the primary market starter and investment team which I started building more about a team we have probably potentially six seven people potentially for on the investment side and invest into a different project so we invest into program ecosystem a lot we invest otherwise in the first infrastructure a lot um you know we think these kind of deal also also make a lot of sense um you know we basically invest all the projects in the program ecosystem on the other hand we advance into a lot of core infrastructure after deals like corn list republic chance safe you know every bank all these kind of license if i've been since as well i think that also have value because you need more mainstream come to a capital coming to the place and this is the infrastructure so these are actually the two type of investment we do of course we invest into other you know um token deals outside poker because it's on a little bit as well so it become very heavy actually invest more than a hundred different projects so far i believe you invested in perjee penguins last year last Yeah, that's, that's the equity.

39:27Actually, but that's more like a later story.

39:32Why? Because Luca said, he was on the podcast two weeks ago. Right. And he said that, I think he went to 100 plus VCs who said no. What did you see that the other VCs didn't see? I feel like, you know, first of all, at the time I do the investment in Pagipan once, it's actually a super bear market for NFT. No one believes in that. But I think this could be a good opportunity for the investor to actually buy NFT, whether on a second market or investing do the firm which have great potential. Because you have nothing to lose, right? The trading volume of OpenSea goes down 97%. It's super bear market.

40:16It's only about one thing, whether you believe in NFTs do have a bright future or not. If you think NFT dead, completely dead, then you just stop stop making investment related with it right but i think you know nft is a good way for us to do massive adoption you know probably one of the best yes because my friend outside the crypto industry will ask me okay what is your photo why you have this photo then i can explain to them and they will understand this okay this is nft this value of the cryptocurrency if you ask me to explain what is Solana what is Polkadot to them they will stop listening after two minutes yeah so this is great way about doing adoption so all everything we have to do right now if we want our business to become big industry has to become big then we have to do more adoption besides Bitcoin it's NFT so I have to still have a lot of value right but there's a lot of NFC's out there yeah what's so special about Luca Nets that made you invest in his company absolutely you bought the equity right about equity and I buy some some Puget also if you check my telegram you know it's bought Abe and Puget so I think I think two things first yes already they are top ten at a time they already they are already top ten so I'm seeing a super bear market but they actually you know already famous and they have a lot of traffic actually if you check about how many people talk about pagey parents it's way it's way more than azuki right it's it's somewhere close to perfect body so they have a lot of followers on instagram which is which is amazing and the other things i believe in luca and the team is you know i think this guy can know exactly about how to building community how to make things work yeah i don't know the yoga labs guy maybe they can do it as well but i think lucas is amazing guy yeah exactly yeah there's this project that raised so much money but there's not much behind it whereas they do you have this this dude 24 25 years old yeah who is working 24 7 and like you start to see the results now it's really impressive yeah i know more about probably azuki community i don't think the guy can make things work i just have a feeling i mean at that time so actually on a lot of azuki but i see very quickly so i think you know but not offensive but i i i just think you know it's different level luca can make things way better than than than azuki azuki guy um it it it it's actually proved right right now at least for now right yeah and if it's approved now in a better market imagine a bull market how crazy things will go yeah pecky penguin should be top three in the bear in the bull market next time how high do you think it goes in east oh in in bull market it could be 100 but that's probably too optimistic but i guess it will go way higher than than the price right now what's your framework for investing in early stage crypto project actually that's a very good questions we trying to at this stage we're trying to avoid investing to too many early stage because that was also a mistake we made in the last bull market because we feel like we invest into too many project it's super hard to manage a hundred more than hundred portfolios you basically cannot you know catch all the update of the portfolio then they will complain about why you don't care about us it's actually not we don't care about you but we just have too many portfolios to spread out yeah we have actually at the peak we have probably three people who manage on on a post investment side but still not enough so i think that was a big mistake instead of being too diversified i want to be more focused and supporting the mainstream ones what's the optimal portfolio size in terms of number of projects i think somewhere between 50 to 80 is probably the maximum okay but you know that's a lot already that's already a lot it's a lot but already i think that's the maximum you can do it cannot be more than 100 i think that makes no sense um yeah we can still fix that because some of our portfolio already become too big like solana polka dot you know we just talked about but they don't need our hands-on kind of communication to help them they are already multi-billion dollars of valuation and some of the project to be honest already dead right they don't have the lack of funding they go out of business so there only a bunch of them we still need to manage that but we'll be more careful about making new investment so our ticket size for the new investment is more like a middle to latest deal is invest somewhere between one to five million to that one to five million no less yeah it could be less but unless it's a super good deal otherwise it we will probably stick to that

45:25what are some of your biggest fuck ups in the last nine years in crypto oh

45:35yeah I think it's about just bad decision right if you're holding Solana it query was 500 mil or whatever at a peak right if you're calculating that way that's that's that's that's a big fuck up right why should i listen to people actually the other story i i told you is you know a few i um but that's not bad thing but i talked to a few because i invest into amber group yes the market making friend actually a few co-founders i i you know i talked to them a lot about you know you know what do you think of the market back to 2020 they told me because it's a huge lock you should have your risk you should show solana on a second market you know use about you need binance to show solana and de-risk a little bit but which is a fair probably suggestion at that time but you know if you check what happening later it's totally the wrong decisions What do you think about Solana now?

46:38I think it would be a very hard time for them. I mean, the technology is good, but if you check about the industry right now, it will be super competitive, right? You are basically trying to solve the scary issue of Ether, but Ether already have so many layer tools which can potentially solve the problem. So where's your edge? There's no pure innovation in your ecosystem, right? A lot of projects actually leave your ecosystem. So it's very risky. And also you have new competitors coming into place, Aptos, Swiss, Linaria, all these move language protocols trying to solve the same thing. So you will be super competitive.

47:15How could you regain all this momentum you have in 2021? It's a tough, you know, I'm not saying they cannot make achievement, but I think it would be very, very tough for them. how was 2022 for you it was there it was it was a bad year for me it was a worse year for everyone else i guess um you have a few stories to share yeah absolutely and both on like financial kind of losses and problem but also how it affected your mental health because at the end of the day you're a human with a mental health and we're all tied to that right and you even told me i think that you had tickets to go to the world cup in qatar and you're not even going because of i don't remember what was it ftx or usdc i don't remember what was it but like how taxing this crypto lifestyle can be and kind of fuck up your mental health yeah sure so So actually about Genesis, I mean, this is tough.

48:23First, it's a tough year for everyone because so many businesses go bankrupt. You know, people have money in FTX, in Genesis, Voyager, all these kind of platforms. So we actually have nine figures of money at Genesis and eight figures of money at BlockFi at the first because I did de-risk my position again. I mean, at the peak of the 2021st, which is the right move, I have a lot of cash on my hand. I just want to, you know, i see what happens in 2017 i i know this is going to be a a bad year so i mean the market cannot always goes up so i did risk a little bit in 2021 which was the right decision so i holding a lot of cash on my balance sheet both both in the bank and stable coins um but on the same time i think okay so I holding my money cash should I probably get some stable you on these kind of stable coin which make perfect sense right D5 is very risky because I see think all these kind of story about hacks so I think I probably just use banks and the bank is super complicated right you sign these deals you know it's just complicated we do have banks but complicated I still have most of money in stable coins so i landed a lot of money to genesis and blockfi um and so you're 100 million plus to to genesis more than that way more than that actually and then uh blockfi but in in in in uh what is it in may actually 2021 22 it's it's happening luna right the club of luna happens it's pretty bad for everyone.