E68: Coinsilium CEO: Why You’ll Regret Not Owning Bitcoin

29:25I think VanEck too, right? Yes, VanEck as well. VanEck, which is more kind of like traditional. So it shows almost the opposite is coming. It's like these people will understand that in order to sell billions of dollars of ETF shares or units, they need Bitcoin to work, right? They need Bitcoin to be doing what it should be doing. And at the beginning, for the first years, only a few core developers and a few newbies to Bitcoin were the ones worried about it. Now we're going to have these huge companies, trillion dollar companies, worried about the state of the network, the state of the evolution of Bitcoin.

30:01These people were not involved in the early discussions, you know, size and block size and mining, et cetera, mining standards. You know, they were not involved at all, you know. And now slowly we see, and there was also an example of Société Générale in France, which has done, I think, a proposal on MakerDAO, you know, et cetera. So we see this kind of new work of banks in crypto. And yes, crypto may use, let's say, may have to go through traditional regulatory doors, of course, for certain things to happen. Of course, we know that from the beginning. So I think it's interesting now that we have products that rely on the Bitcoin network and not the opposite.

30:49So also, crypto is not only Bitcoin, obviously. I mean, Bitcoin is an origin. Bitcoin is very important. It's, as you're saying, a digital gold. But if you look at what's going on in Web3 on any blockchain, you know, Ethereum, Solana, etc., you know, Polygon, you know, L2s, etc. You have a lot of creativity. You have a lot of innovation. And it's not necessarily in a financial space. It could be social media space, could be identity, could be IP, it could be many, many other spaces where finance regulation is not that important, basically. So the logical next step to this conversation is actually what we talked about the other day, which is it's great, this Bitcoin ETF for many reasons that we talked about and more, but the problem is it's not really, I mean, Bitcoin and Ethereum, I mean, Bitcoin now, but probably Ethereum in the next six months, if there is an ETF approved, is not going to be where the real opportunity lies anymore for crypto and blockchain entrepreneurs.

32:16Why? I mean, yes, in a way, again, there is a certain, you know, when there's a certain degree of maturity comes, there is obviously less opportunity, you know, in terms of, first of all, the community is much larger, there has been acceptance into certain circles. So, so entrepreneurs tend to look at sectors which are underrated, you know, sectors which are still like the Bitcoin 10 years ago, where nobody wants to touch it, nobody wants, nobody cares, et cetera, the community is small. And of course, innovation. So I think, I think there are other opportunities in crypto now. And of course, working in the investment space, we always look for the next, you know, the new cycle, the one, the opportunity that will mature and that will become, that will represent a return, possibly an asymmetric return, maybe in five years from now, you know, for example.

33:14So obviously Bitcoin at this level of maturity is a good asset, an asset I would encourage everyone to hold. So what are the big opportunities? where do they lie for crypto entrepreneurs now that Bitcoin and Ethereum have been validated by big institutions and therefore became an asset class rather than a sort of true technological playground? Well, I mean, to be clear, Bitcoin from the start was and is a payment mechanism. I mean, the whole financial digital gold came on organically in a way and because people realize, well, let's rely on math instead of relying on politicians or central bankers, et cetera.

33:58So I think that is doing its job very well. And Bitcoin was not necessarily meant to become the infrastructure of a very advanced technology solutions. So for example, I think anything to do today with the ownership of data, I mean, it's something that has been going on for years. I mean, it's not new, but I think there are solutions today where personal ownership of your data. And of course, today our life is much on social networks, on internet and on social networks. So today, very clearly in the Web2 time, if you're using the regular social media Web2, each of them has your data. Each of them is centralizing your data.

34:45There is no portability, no interoperability. You cannot do anything with that data. It's in their database. And you cannot monetize your data because it's in their database. They are making money from it. They're making money from the content you generated. So there is a misalignment here between the interests. And also this lack of portability prevents a lot of positive things to happen and prevents a lot of opportunities of you to use your data for building communities, building a business, maybe building an image, et cetera. So basically, in a way, a lot of the influencers are kind of hostages of these platforms.

35:28Because if tomorrow, you know, Twitter, Facebook decide, oh, you're saying something I don't like, you're out. And maybe you have one million followers and maybe that's how you were making your, you know, earning your revenues. You're out because you said something, you showed something, you made or you just made a mistake or we made a mistake. We got hacked and we lost everything. So I think clearly there is an opportunity to go into what we call decentralized Web3 social media and primarily for owning your data, porting your data where you need to, sharing your data with whoever you want and monetizing your data and the content you generate.

36:12Instead of having the platforms, having the lion's share of that, you have the lion's share. You share some with the platform because they enable you, but not in a crazy way that is happening now when these companies make billions of dollars of advertising and, you know, a user get basically nothing. Just the fact that they can use these platforms. So I think we're going there. And identity is not really a byproduct, but more what we call, you know, primitive. A foundation block of this is that we have to look at identity differently because we have an identity on the internet, on digital applications.

36:51And identity becomes very important in that space as well. So that's why there is a project, for example, Bizant, in which we are investors and we have an interest in it. And with Byzant, what is important is the fact that the Byzant applications are going to help their users to share their data, monetize their data, and use tools that are available today to Web2 platforms, but use it in a Web3 decentralized context. Do you want to give an example or two of how a Byzant network and one or two of these tools really help users have a different and much better experience with social media that they have today with Web2 social media?

37:45Well, in terms of user experience, to be clear, you know, Bizant is using tools that are, I think, great and evolving, like Lens Protocol, which is enabling this portability, which is basically a social graph for Web3 apps. and has hundreds of applications already. But still, user experience will take time to get us moved because, of course, centralized is always smoother, as we know, because everything is in a database fast. Here, we have to connect with the blockchain, so that always takes some time. You still need smart contracts. But beyond user experience getting to the point where it's getting closer to what you experience in Web2, What is very important is, yes, there are these tools that are getting built to give you a different experience, not necessarily a better in terms of speed or, you know, but a different experience in terms of controlling your data, owning and monetizing.

38:45So one example is advertising. So the Byzantium is working on Adbazar, which is a decentralized advertising network. also programmatic in the sense that it's going to look at the assets on a wallet. But this is public information. There is nothing special there. It's going to look on assets on a wallet. And if, for example, a user has certain NFTs or gaming tokens, gaming NFTs, et cetera, it can change the type of advertising that this user is going to see or going to be served. But with this model of advertising, users can also become publishers and can also earn money from advertising directly, without the need of going through centralized intermediaries.

39:32So this is one example of a tool. And you have to remember that Web2 is built on advertising, basically. So earning money from advertisement, that's great. But how is the first part better than what we have today? because today Facebook or Instagram, they even listen to me, right? They know everything. So they kind of like predict what I kind of want or not just want because I don't like advertisement, but like they can predict extremely precisely what I am going to buy in the next three weeks. Right. So it's very precise. So how is the, the, the showing me advertisement based on what I have in my wallet kind of better for me as a user?

40:19Because the reason I would use Web3 is because it's better for me as a user, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, the difference between what you're describing, I mean, first of all, there is no idea of listening about anything. But here, everything is around the wallet because that becomes kind of your identity, right? So your wallet has transactions. Now, if you don't want people to know, you just connect on a different wallet. It's not that complicated. But if you want to continue having different interactions through that wallet, and that wallet has participated to some airdrops, to some ICOs, has done transaction on certain DeFi platforms and so forth.

40:57Actually, you may want to show that because you know you could benefit from it because the advertising could be for something useful for your activity on chain. So I think in the sense that it's better is that you decide first if you want to give the information or not. If you don't want to give the information, you can even create a wallet on the spot. You know, there is a company we have invested in indoors. They have the Bastion wallet, which is also part of this Byzant ecosystem. And on Bastion, which is an account abstraction wallet, you can create with your regular Web2 platforms like email, Google, etc.

41:34You can create on the spot a wallet. And obviously that wallet would have no history at the beginning. So if you want, you can just choose a more pseudonymous type of solution. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to take a short moment to introduce our partner, Mentor, who helps us make this show possible. Mentor was created to hyperscale the Ethereum network with what we call a layer 2 that helps users like you and me transact much faster and at a fraction of the cost of the Ethereum network. Mental has over$2 billion in total value locked, has a mega treasury of$3.7 billion in Bitcoin, ETH and stablecoins, and has the largest eco fund of the industry with more than$200 million to invest into new projects that want to join the mental ecosystem.

42:26The team behind mental are extremely smart people who I personally trust with some of my money and who I personally know outside of crypto. We actually had Ignace Terenus and Jordi Alexander on this podcast, who both are key figures in the mental ecosystem. So I invite you to watch these two very candid and in-depth conversations to develop your own opinion. And please, please, please, if you enjoy this show, hit the like button, leave a comment in the comment section and subscribe to this channel. The more subscribers, the better the guests. Thank you so much for your help. And now onto today's episode.

43:04So that's social media. You talked about decentralized finance that you think is still very early and is probably where a lot of innovation is going to happen in the next five years until it becomes more widely adopted by institutions, kind of like Bitcoin and Ethereum are now. Yeah. Elaborate on that. Well, I think, you know, the great thing about DeFi is that it's really a playground. I mean, you know, if you like financing strategies, if you like financial engineering, you can do a lot with DeFi. It's called composability, the fact that you can use, reuse many tools, build on existing platforms.

43:45I mean, it's very exciting for people in the financial space. And it has this kind of freedom attached to it because at the moment, as long as you have a wallet, you can build any kind of strategy you want. Do you want to define composability a bit better? Yes, composability meaning you can pick and choose different tools that have been built by other teams, other, you know, protocols, projects, and so forth. And you can use those, integrate those in your own design. You can integrate either, you know, because open source code or because maybe they have APIs, SDKs, et cetera. Or, you know, you have different ways to do that technically.

44:26but it means that basically any new DeFi is supposedly or at least normally should be a little bit better than another you know because it's basically learning from the other experience they call that the DeFi Lego right yes the DeFi Lego or I think there is correct I forgot his name it's not Mark Anderson he's another of these dudes he said probably two years ago he said

44:58composability is to finance. No, composability is to software what compound interest is to finance. So basically that it's incredible. Building on each other, yeah. Exactly. And also building on each other. Yeah. Okay. So it enables you to build applications one on top of each other that are much more powerful than if they were kind of like segregated or on their own. Yeah. And so DeFi is, and it's very interesting because the way I have been defining smart contracts, and especially in the context of DeFi until now has been function specific applications, meaning a smart contract is a program, which means, of course, there is no character to it, right?

45:48I mean, a smart contract does whatever it has been programmed to do. But the interesting thing is that DeFi platform should be the same, but actually somehow you have to choose. As a user, you choose validators, you choose DeFi platform. So you choose programs. So these programs today, like for example, in the whatever blockchain we look at, Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, these platforms, although they do something very function and there is no human, there is not a clear human uh implication in in in how it works we of course it has been designed by humans but i mean how it works is is basic is very deterministic right it gives you this this result but you still have to choose so you're still in a way sensitive to branding community the overall vibe so for example it's very interesting to see this uh these these platforms uh recently i was looking at the solana uh defy platforms so you have many and they basically all do almost the same right i mean they are certain that trying new things over and over so so so for example i use many of those and one of them uh stands out a little bit is camino camino finance why to me just because i like the way the community uh is is the vibe of the community i like the way they communicate as well and there's always something new like a new token almost daily you know and and the way they explain what how they do but it's very interesting to see that we are always drawn back to to branding uh despite the fact that this pro this the all these programs are all basically doing the same thing so uh there are certain differences for example there is a company called Fibonacci Finance.

47:37They help these DeFi platforms mitigate the risk and they highlight certain that are doing this. There is one called MarginFi as well on Solana. So actually, if you do your own research, famous words in crypto, you can go and try to find the ones that are less risky, right? So that's very different from branding. But still, it's interesting to see that there is still an element that is a little bit emotional. You also talked about infrastructure. And in that context, you said that internet was very open source in the 1990s. Yeah. A bit like crypto, but that we need to learn from what happened as the internet world got fully absorbed by huge monsters, such as Amazon, Facebook, Google.

48:30Yeah. And there's not much left today in the internet. That's open source, right? Yeah. And so you told me regarding infrastructure that the same seems to be happening in crypto today. You know what happened 30 years ago in Twitter internet, the magnet of centralization and finance, and everyone is the same platform. So essentially Coinbase is becoming the Facebook of crypto. Yeah, yeah. Sort of, right? In a way. When Web 3 is supposed to be decentralization of the internet and break down the monopolies, and actually what's happening, or at least what's been happening in the internet and what is at risk of happening in crypto again, is that the small ones who disrupt the big ones, they become even bigger than the monopolies that they disrupted.

49:23Yeah, yeah, there is this, well, maybe it's called a natural cycle, but it's true that the internet, you know, the vision that we have now for Web3, I mean, initially Web3 was a vision for the internet, not just Web3 for crypto-related internet, you know, but it was still a more decentralized vision for the internet. Going back to the original vision of internet, which when it was created was supposed to be a very, you know, hands-off type of network for scientists to use and then anyone to use. But we found this layer of centralization that has been built on it. Domain names is a good example.

50:06You know, domain names, ICANN, all that. All that became very centralized, very arbitrary, you know, like, okay, you can have this name, you can have this name, You cannot do this. You cannot do that. But why is that? Is it for a business opportunity? Because people, I mean, people who are powerful maybe realized or if we don't find a way to centralize that, we're not going to be able to make money out of it. Because the underlying infrastructure doesn't allow, you know, the TCP IP would not allow you to own a part of like something kind of decentralized, whereas now it's different with crypto.

50:43So is it that or it's more government that came in and say, hey, like, this is how we're going to do that because we need to keep some sort of control? Yeah, there's a bit of everything in the sense that, of course, you need standards. But then once you get a country, in the case of the Internet, obviously, the U.S. is a country that has mostly determined early standards and that has influenced how it goes. I have a whole story that maybe people don't know, but one of the artisans of the internet is actually a French man who unfortunately was not supported at the time in France in the 70s. But his name is Louis Poussin.

51:18He created the Datagram, which was the basis of TCPIP. And then in France, they told him, oh, you know, we're going to go for another solution, which became the Minitel, which kind of delayed the internet in France by like 10 years or something crazy, maybe more. So we have certain countries have taken internet more seriously. And obviously the US has been the countries that are taking internet more seriously. And yes, standards helped the internet grow to where it has become, but at the same time created decentralized points. And today, as we see, today it's interesting because most countries are trying to control not necessarily the internet, but parts of the internet, parts of the network, parts of the content, parts of, you know.

52:07So there is a political element, of course, to it. There is a political element. In the case of crypto, we have the same degree of kind of institutionalization, which can lead to removing a lot of the advantages, decentralization, et cetera, on top of it. That's why we're talking about, you know, new entrepreneurs, new blockchains, etc. So it's a very difficult balance because yes, small companies in the internet have become huge and they have replaced incumbent centralized monoliths by basically themselves. And they may, and they have, or they may apply the kind of same rules. I mean, Google is an example because Google has become, you know, has become extremely, extremely present, let's say, in the internet, omnipresent on the internet in a way that's difficult to avoid.

53:04And once it's difficult to avoid, of course, it's good for business because you get fees from whatever you do. But at the same time, where is the competition? Where is the innovation, et cetera? So we need a good balance. And crypto could go that way. So hopefully crypto will be... The interesting thing with crypto is that it's very wide and there are kind of pockets of innovation a bit everywhere. And until now, it's almost impossible to control it entirely. But would you go as far as saying that we should decentralize everything?

53:45We should try to decentralize everything because we should try to decentralize everything, but that doesn't mean that we should remove, we should replace everything by smart contracts. You know, there is a risk to that. You know, smart contract is great for finance. You know, we're talking about numbers. Finance is definitely already a social construct. It's a virtual, you know, we have created finance. We have created rules. We have created accounting, et cetera. The man, humans have created that. Now, so that's why for deterministic type of processes like finance, smart contract is great. It's basically doing better what centralized companies are trying to do.

54:29But there are many, many other instances, for example, justice, law, things that are closer to human nature, where I would say smart contracts are not the solution. So I know that in crypto, there is a strong movement for, you know, code is low and so forth. And I think we have to be careful that we don't push it to the dystopian future we're trying to avoid. You know, because crypto in some parts of the ideology is we're not going to go in a world where the dystopian type of world where everything is controlled, etc. But at the same time, if tomorrow we want everything on smart contract, there is a risk that we get actually closer to that.

55:14I agree that we all know that human is imperfect. There is corruption. There are many vices that can come in. There are many personal interests that can come in to designing systems, models, etc. But replacing everything by math, I don't think is a solution. because there are instances where the human input actually can make a positive difference and definitely a positive difference. And we cannot remove it. Do you have examples? Well, to be honest, the example is where we are today. We are not here today because of a programming, unless you think you live in the matrix, but that's something that's popular on crypto Twitter.

55:57I let people decide. but have their opinions on that. But we are here today because of human evolution and millions of decisions that we have made. And of course, some of them have been disastrous. You know, they have been, we all know history. There have been disastrous events. But we're here and we are evolving. And I don't think we should be as, let's say, arrogant to think that, oh, we have found a new way to rule everything. And that way is, you know, programming. I mean, in a way, it's a problem of the hammer and the nail, right? You know, when you hammer, everything is a nail. And I think, for example, the Mark Anderson piece on software is eating the world, you know, I like it.

56:39I think it's interesting. It's probably a true approach. But pushing it to the point where we really want everything to be controlled by programming, I think that's dangerous for human evolution. What does this world look like? well exactly i think it would look like a world where we no longer have the capacity to to to take decisions right because i i mean don't don't get me wrong there are still many many ways data can help us and there are still many ways that we are not using data as efficiently as we should we can still learn a lot i mean in health in uh preventing accidents of all kinds i mean data I'm not saying we should stop processing data.

57:28I mean, I think there is still great areas where we can improve our lives through data management, through data efficiencies. But then compiling this and creating programs that are going to rule the way we live and what we should do, I think that would be a mistake. We still need a very, you know, at core we need a human element to our lives. So from today onwards, we're adding an alpha part. we kind of touched upon a bit before, but I'd like to go a bit more in detail. Okay. So we're adding an alpha part where I ask the guest what specific project he or she is the most bullish on and why. And I know what you're bullish on.

58:13So I'm going to ask you one by one. The first one is a project called DLO Network, which is a decentralized clearing network built by an amazing team led by Alexei Sirkia, who is the co-founder of GSR. I know you're an early investor also with Coincylium. In Yellow, yes. In Yellow. So why are you so bullish on Yellow Network and Alexei Sirkia team? So it goes back a bit to what we were talking about, infrastructure, right? I mean, what I really like about these projects is they don't look at the problem in a superficial way. They look at the foundational reasons of maybe problems. So for example, crypto trading, we're talking about DeFi.

59:03And of course, we all know that another way to trade crypto is centralized exchanges. And Yellow Team has realized there are flaws in these different methods that we know. Centralized exchange is kind of a black box. They may or may not have the crypto you think you have because they suddenly become like a credit on your screen. DeFi, we know there are risks of vulnerabilities in smart contracts, hacking, et cetera. So the yellow team looked at the infrastructure and they decided why not create a new network on which you can trade and even trade better, faster crypto than on these two solutions that we are used to now, which is, well, There are three, really.

59:50There's also OTC, which is much slower, of course. So basically, OTC trading, centralized exchanges, and decentralized exchanges, and DeFi. So they create a new infrastructure for that, which is kind of a mesh network of broker nodes, and a bit working like Lightning Network in the sense that you have this kind of one-to-one node transactions. and this enables these transactions to happen very quick and at the same time to create, you know, if you look at the world of finance, there is a protocol called the fixed protocol, which is around basically exchanging data, messages, information between Forex traders.

1:00:37They are basically recreating that in the crypto space on a decentralized network. So I think that's very interesting. And it's a kind of project where if they do it well and if it works, it can become really massive because it's crypto trading. And what we know until now is that the most valuable and the most lucrative activity in crypto until now has been crypto trading. And the team, well, the team is great because they have experience in finance. They have experience in already the matching engines for the exchanges. So, yeah, if the team could do it, I think it could be them. And so we like that challenge that they are taking.

1:01:28Alexei, who, by the way, also came on the podcast a few months ago. Yes, that's right. Amazing guy. The next one that you really like is Lens Protocol that we kind of mentioned before. Yes. Why should people pay attention to Lens Protocol, which they're building, but we don't hear about them too much at the moment, right? Yeah, I'm not sure that's a bad thing, to be honest. Fair enough. Again, infrastructure. You know, social graph is what you build social media apps on. and obviously you need someone to build and also to think through and to improve social graphs for Web3. Because again, in Web2, we have, there are thousands of tools.

1:02:19Social graph is, well, basically the network of, the network, the infrastructure network of social media, right? So it's, but in the sense of Web3 is a bit different because social graph is kind of this web of relations and data, right? So in the Web3, you have to make sure that the social graph is adapted so that portability is possible, so that you can actually use this data, your own data, have ownership of your data and use it easily on other, you know, I was talking about primitives like an entity, et cetera. So on all applications that use the social graph of Lens protocol, you can easily you know on board you don't need to redo the whole thing like who are you no because you have a wallet your wallet has already recorded certain information of data so social graph is for this but also lance is working on you know actual data storage uh you know data data efficiency as well for this for these new social media web3 applications I said before Ethereum is sort of like the Android or iOS for this Android application.

1:03:35How could we make someone who doesn't understand anything about Web3, help them understand Lens protocol? What's the equivalent in Web2? Or is there an equivalent? Because, for example, Facebook or LinkedIn are built. what are they built on on the internet right yeah is there something underlying because because lens is basically that protocol where yeah but in the web2 space the the difference is the web2 space is we we are used to we're used to use it we're not used to you know i'm not a web2 well i've been in a way a long time ago but i think the difference is why do we look at infrastructure in Web3 is because it hasn't existed for, you know, it's getting built now.

1:04:26In Web2, these big companies, they either created their own, or they used existing ones, but nobody knows about them because we're just users. You know, we're not active players in that space, or at least I never built a social media in Web2, right? So, yes, they are equivalent in Web2, of course, but you cannot say lens protocol is a facebook because obviously lens protocol is a layer under facebook right so so facebook would need a social graph to build on um but we can imagine that a company like facebook probably have their own basically yeah so essentially there is no need for portability in facebook because each of them have their own database so they don't need to be able to share it with anyone else.

1:05:16So if Ethereum is the iOS or Android for decentralized application in general, we could almost say that Lens protocol would be a sort of Android or iOS for decentralized social media applications. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. It's the underlying protocol of the future of social media, which is needed. Otherwise, we can't have any of the Web3 benefits in these applications, right? Yeah, yeah. Of course, they are competing propositions, but I think it's a good move. In a very new space like Web3, it's a good move to go for the infrastructure part. I think it's very important because then you have all these applications building on you and they rely on you, but it's very similar to L2s and Ethereum.

1:06:09L2s rely on Ethereum to be working so that they can thrive as well. So yeah, in that sense. But Lens Protocol, interestingly, is building on an L2, which is Polygon. So we have these multiple layers here already. Do you want to say a few words about the team of Lens Protocol? Yeah, basically, when I say we, I mean, the community knows Lens Protocol because they developed Aave, which is a very successful, very large DeFi platform. I think 10 billion plus value locked on Aave and, you know, active platform and on different blockchains, by the way. So not just one, several blockchains. So, yeah, so they have the they have know-how to build that.

1:07:02So, I mean, again, Lens Protocol is, you know, for example, the Byzantium, I know they sometimes talk to the Lens Protocol team, you know, they have to, you know, they're building on them, they have to find out solutions to problems, technical problems, etc. So I think it's all, you know, it's all work in progress. It's not like Lens is not perfect yet, of course, because they are building and they are learning as new applications develop on them, right? So that's the nature of crypto as well, ever evolving. You mentioned Camino and Solana before. Yeah, just again, I don't know them, and I haven't invested in the platform itself.

1:07:50I use it, but I haven't invested in it, or Concilium hasn't invested in that platform. just to highlight the fact that again even if these platforms are all more or less doing the same thing it's interesting to see they have different communities, different approaches and some of them are just more interesting for some than others so you know there is still this choice coming so yeah very active very dynamic, they seem to roll out cool products, interesting product things that basically make your life easier because they they are already you know it's like on DeFi sometimes you start doing certain strategies and then you find these platforms that actually have automated the strategy for you so it basically does it for you so Camino is one of those and many are coming in that direction So Camino is built on Solana Solana which had the existential crisis about a year ago like Ethereum had in the previous cycle and that seemed to have emerged as kind of like the new darling of this cycle what are your thoughts on Solana?

1:08:57Especially based on all your experience, 10 years in crypto, you've seen this over and over again. You've seen the Bitcoiners thinking kind of like they're the king of the world and then hating on Ethereum, which then became something really big. And then you have the same happening to Ethereum maxis saying that Solana is shit, doing like a sort of like death party at sort of the bottom. And then Solana, that comes back out of the blue. Yeah, when I discovered Solana, not that early. I've discovered when probably most people start hearing about it. Again, the test is very simple. You start using it and very easy to use.

1:09:41You know, Phantom Wallet, but there are other wallets, SoulFlare, etc. You know, I'm not, again, no investments there. But, you know, you use it. It's easy. It's fast. They had issues. all blockchains had issues at first uh they had problems at some point where where yeah people couldn't use it for hours you know i remember that but but yeah that hasn't happened recently but anyway so yeah i i think i think the the fact that you can use it simply not as easy for me to understand because you know i'm used to i'm used to looking at on the blockchain or blockchain explorers i'm used to look at bitcoin or i'm used to look at ethereum so i'm not that familiar with For example, the way the Solana Explorer, Scanners, Scan Explorer, etc.

1:10:28show the transactions and so forth. But as a user, I think it works fast. It works well. So, you know, again... And it's cheap. Yeah, and it's cheap. Super important. I think the important thing is we're going into this space where we need applications that can be easily used by newcomers. uh so we're talking about you know web3 social media that's one space advertising etc but if you look at defy it's the same you know defy on certain platforms let's say curve not that easy you know i mean uh you you need some experience on solana on on camino margin five meteora you know it seems a bit more intuitive it's a bit it's a bit easier and uh there are less steps there is less yeah so again you have to be careful because you know it's defy is money right but but you feel that these platforms are using solana in a way to make it easy for users and that's extremely important for the future of these platforms you know so it's not only about you don't need to be an insider you know to use it it's not only about you need to learn of course but maybe it's a bit quicker to grasp it.

1:11:46You don't need to be an insider and you don't need to be a whale spending hundreds of dollars for every transaction. Yeah, correct. Which is definitely extremely important. Yeah. So we had some crypto alpha. Let's talk about business building alpha. You've not only built businesses, but you also invested in quite a lot of entrepreneurs and you've seen it all. So let's get some entrepreneurship alpha. You told me that the number one thing that is extremely important for people who want to take the leap in the entrepreneurship world is to understand that question, which is basically, are you ready to sacrifice everything?

1:12:31Yeah. Why do you think that sacrificing everything is required for an entrepreneur to be successful? I mean, I don't think it's required. It's not the same to sacrifice everything or to be ready to, or to have the mentality, the strength to actually be able to sacrifice. But my personal experience, and as we know, the experience of many entrepreneurs, famous ones, for example, is that at some point they had to sacrifice a lot. you know everything is is hard to define but a lot and and anyone who wants to think who think they're going to have some kind of comfortable journey or entrepreneurship is easier than salary work or easier than it's actually harder than anything else and there is this expression that we see on twitter now these days which i agree is the is a 10-year overnight success and I agree with that I think there is no overnight success and everyone has had difficult time especially the ones that look the most successful today and unfortunately the kind of things you cannot you cannot explain because you have to live it you know it's like you cannot tell people oh you should be in the mindset of sacrificing but until they get there, then you find out if they are or not really.

1:13:59So I think that's one important element. And the other that we discussed is persistence, which is kind of hand in hand with sacrifice. It seems to me that often, and I've seen that in crypto very clearly, often people give up because at some point you feel like, For example, mid-2017, 2014 to 2017 was almost like a crypto desert. I mean, we call it crypto winter, but this case was almost like a desert, so long. And I've seen very talented entrepreneurs give up, move to another industry, stop their whatever they have built a few months before the largest hype bull run cycle that was coming. so we always feel that there is this time where really some people feel okay that's too much and that's where persistence and sacrifice comes in if they continued six months more they could have been successful you know clearly so i think um yeah this is a patience and patience and persistence patience and persistence you told me so some people work 10 years yes and then made all their money in their 11th year yeah yeah even in crypto which is interesting because crypto you know if you look at bitcoin you think okay people made a lot of money before etc but but there is a big difference in this space between holding bitcoin and building a business in that space and and therefore you know well you could argue that even holding bitcoin and not fucking up and losing your bitcoin yeah is also also much more more difficult than what people think, or just not selling them too early, or not being caught in a hack, or not leverage trading your Bitcoin and sell, you lose everything.

1:15:52Yeah, yeah, yeah. The many risks. Which I know a lot of people, me included, who've done that. In this case, passivity was actually the best answer. So on entrepreneur, you have to be extremely dynamic and active, but holding assets, passivity probably helps. but but not too passive because then you have maybe your ledger screen doesn't work at some point which happened to me as well happened the other day uh i think even i mean obviously steve jobs was saying the same was saying i'm convinced i don't remember the exact numbers but something like i'm convinced that 90 percent of what separates successful entrepreneurs from non-successful entrepreneurs is just perseverance.

1:16:46Perseverance. Never, basically never stopping. And I read something on LinkedIn the other day about a guy who I know who built a mega business and he was saying something along the way. It was the same. And essentially it was, you can't fail if you don't stop. and that's something that people don't really you know especially when you start a business or whatever you just think it's kind of like all black and white either i'm successful either i'm not but the truth is no if you find a way to like at least pay for your very simple life that's why starting early is actually a good thing starting very early is bad because you don't have network you don't have experience you don't understand anything but one of the good thing is with 1k a month like you can leave like you eat some pasta you have like a shit room somewhere and you can start building and then at some point you realize oh man actually being on this journey is not that hard and as long as I can have a roof like and have some food I can continue forever until I find the right thing and again exactly as you said before the 10-year overnight success is exactly that many people on this podcast were mega successful one of the last ones we had is uh Johan the co-founder of winter mute winter mute is his fourth company i mean fourth real company but he also saw a lot of side projects invested in a lot of projects and he he was saying and he's super intelligent 148 iq and everything so like kind of really gifted but like it's a lot it's just perseverance and just and some luck at some point but as we always say luck is when preparation means the opportunity and so if if you just never stop you preparing you preparing yourself along the way to when the right opportunity happens you just take it and you just go all in and at some point it's as you said the other day it's very unlikely that if you sacrifice everything and are patient and persistent it's almost impossible not to be successful at some point it's just that it's going to take much more time than you think and people are not willing to sacrifice that much for that long yeah to be successful yeah and i think many very big companies names that we know have been built that way you know i've been being late i've been built after a lot of efforts going through a lot of problems.

1:19:19You know, even in my, I remember, I don't know exactly the time, but in the late 90s, I was looking at, you know, entrepreneurs and I remember some early entrepreneurs struggling, you know, you know, the famous, you meet 200, you know, potential investors, you know, et cetera. it's it sounds yeah it sounds daunting but they have gone through it you know they have met you know 200 maybe more 300 people before they they can get their project off the ground and that's also you know perseverance patience uh and and yeah and and also crazy ideas i remember one which is quite known in Singapore now uh Dyson you know Dyson I remember when he started um he's based here or he was based here and then he's yeah I think he was yeah but but they have but they're quite present as a brand as a company here and and I remember when when he started his is a bagless vacuum you know it's it it it sounded both a good idea but at the same time a bit you know like why is that important or whatever and and um it was again not an overnight success we could feel that a lot of work had been going into that that enterprise which is today you know i don't know billion dollar company right yeah so so i have a lot of i've been following a lot of entrepreneurs a lot of uh companies and i we can see that this is the usual cycle it's a lot of struggles to get there.

1:20:59Another one I want to talk about is, I love it, this one, doing the thing versus talking.

1:21:09Especially if we think about doing the thing versus talking in the new world, which is social media, and in this entire world of fake it till you make it. because it basically means that you're talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, and hoping that you're building a momentum that at some point is going to work. And if you think about it, starting a company from scratch, you need to have a bit of that, right? You need to build momentum. So it's part of like kind of the sales and like building this momentum with employees or partners or investors or potential clients. But I know you are someone who doesn't talk too much but does things, right?

1:21:51So what's your take on doing the thing versus talking? Well, yeah, I think you're right. I mean, talking is part of the equation and good communicators, yeah, they do well as well in terms of selling their project and so forth. I'm always reticent to talk too much. I really prefer people who do and show results. And it's true that you're right. There are different cultures, you know. There are cultures in Europe where people like to talk. In Europe? Yeah, in Europe, you know. Which ones, for example? Well, the ones I know the most, right? But tell us more. Give us some Europe alpha. No, I think the whole world knows.

1:22:40It doesn't need for me to say which countries. But the interesting thing is that there are two possible ways. Some people talk and talking helps them. I mean, it's true. It always helps. Bouncing ideas and getting feedback if they listen. I mean, talk and listen. Then that could be good. And by talking, they can fine-tune their ideas. You know, it can be helpful. I agree. It can be helpful. The problem is when talking becomes, you know, 90 % of your activity and then basically you don't have time to do it or you forget about doing it, which is quite a danger as well. And as you were saying on social media, you know, these days it's funny, you have this post around LinkedIn where people have a normal job and it becomes a tense sentence on LinkedIn and makes it sound like, you know, and that's where you go a bit too far and you start forgetting, you know, what you should be doing.

1:23:38But yeah, I'm in favor of less talk, But I know that talking helps some people to get there as well. And in the social media world, there is some really big examples of people who made, build massive wealth very young in their 20s. Even late teens or early 20s, talking about, you know, 50, 100 million by talking, talking and showing and saying, hey, look, look at my life. I'm driving a Lombo. I'm with all these hot girls. I live in Dubai and most of it is not true in the beginning. And then it's, hey, look, I have this social media agency or whatever kind of business, e-com or whatever, like could be anything.

1:24:20And then you will start to sell courses for people to kind of be able to replicate your life saying, hey, thanks to my social media agency, I'm able to have this life because I can make a hundred thousand a month or a million a month, which is not necessarily true or maybe for some it's true but probably not for most right and then the younger people will buy this dream and buy all these courses and the person actually is making a lot of money from selling from selling the courses it's an older model right to be honest i mean in the in the in the 70s 80s maybe earlier i don't know i wasn't born but in the 70s 80s this is something i could see in magazines.

1:25:02In magazines, you had people ads advertising, I'm doing fine, I have a secret method, send me 100 French francs, that's the secret method. It's the people who are going to buy the secret method. And it's exactly the same as what you're saying, it's just a different medium, because social media is, you can reach out to the world. It was also the model, if you remember, of the bodybuilding scene. That was funny advertising in the same, 70s, 80s, where you see, but you still see this today, you know, like before and after, you know, like maybe a little bit overweight, you know, and then after extremely fit person, maybe the same guy, we don't know.

1:25:52But that was the same in the magazines. Hopefully the same. That was the same in the magazines before, right? And what they were selling were either methods or products. Yeah, it's interesting. It's kind of the, it didn't change that much. Bigger reach. Do you think that people who talk a lot, essentially bullshit a lot,

1:26:16can, how can I say that? Can pass the bullshit filter of people who are extremely successful, which we both know are usually fairly low-key, don't talk too much. and have a kind of nose and feeling for these kind of people. Yeah, they do. They do, of course. Yeah. I think they can. I mean, we have some examples in the world, right? Because in the world of investment, there is always, first of all, as we know, and interestingly, it's also something we were speaking about before, you know, the human part, right? Financial investment like DeFi and yields, this is a sector where you want to avoid human bias, right?

1:27:06In trading, you want to avoid human emotions, human bias. But if you talk about startup, that's all it is. It's human emotion and human bias because there is no number, there is nothing that can tell you this deck, this 12-page deck will become LinkedIn or Facebook. Nothing can tell you, right? Because there is nothing precise there. So you don't have the data, right? So interestingly enough, in that world, which is a world that has grown tremendously, the startup investment field, right, is a world that you cannot take decisions on data only. You have to feel the person. You have to trust the person.

1:27:48So I think in that field, definitely people who can talk well, who can explain their idea well, can convince experienced investors because experienced investors have seen cases where people who talk well as well have done well. I mean, and have other reasons to like or trust someone. So definitely, yeah. And they are, and I know, but I won't say names in that context, But I know people who have done that successfully and they are Fortune 500 companies today. Because then once you have passed a certain stage, a certain level of investment, you have reached a level where you get the actual professional help you need to actually do it.

1:28:39Right. So, you know, you talk, you talk. But if you're smart enough, at some point after having raised millions, then you hire the people to actually do what you were aiming to do. It's basically back to this notion of building momentum, becoming a master at building momentum. And like the talking really helps in the beginning if you do it right. But you really need to understand that at some point you have to be able to fall back on your feet. I mean, someone like Vitalik, I remember reading his articles in the Bitcoin magazine and also the way he was arguing. I don't know how old he was, maybe 18.

1:29:16I don't know, 2013, whatever old he was then. Very clear arguments, very good arguments. And of course, that helped a lot when he came up with his project, Ethereum, because, you know, he had a history of good arguing and good responses on different blog centers, posts, etc. Where people could see, OK, this guy knows what he's talking about. You know, he was doing very good arguments, very well-constructed arguments. And I think that helped him a lot. And, of course, Vitalik, after then we realized, actually, he can do things. He's not just somebody who talks. But that helped him, definitely. It helps all entrepreneurs, obviously, to be able to clearly and concisely express your opinion.

1:30:07But he wouldn't be in the category of the one who speaks too much. But he was explaining very well what he meant. And he still communicates very well, I feel. So, yeah, communication is important. but at the end of the day you need people who do the work it's not the only thing that you can have in your entrepreneurship tool I wanted to thank you not only for being here today but also for being the very first person who really believed in us when Shift Happens, the podcast and supported us all along and yeah we could definitely not have built what we've been building, which is, by the way, just the start, just beginning.

1:30:55If you didn't jump in and gave us the extra push and the financial help to make this happen. So again, from the When Shift Happens team and from the audience who is growing by the day, thank you so much. No, you're welcome. And looking forward to the next steps of When Shift Happens. Absolutely. And your next steps. Thank you. Thank you.

1:31:21Thank you.