E75: Animoca Brands Chairman: How Crypto Will Fight Poverty

25:25So the point being that you have basically roughly similar values, but pegged closer to US dollar values than it is pegged to, say, ETH values. Also, NFTs have become more distributed. So in the pre-21, 22, it was primarily an ETH narrative. Whereas today, it's really divided between mostly ETH, quite a bit of Bitcoin with ordinals and inscription, and some Solana and other ones of them. So it's become a much more distributed ecosystem. And I think in time when there's more ability to have interoperability, where these NFTs are able to sort of cross across basically layer one, layer twos, that sort of volume and liquidity will increase.

26:05In the same way that, you know, because you have cross bridging with fungible tokens, because these network effects can basically form in multiple L1, L2s and you can form liquidity elsewhere and then just move them across, whether it's through using layer zero or wormhole, whatever, you basically have more shared network effects. So I see that happening. So I think NFTs are not, you know, and then when you look at collections like Mochaverse, a year ago, we launched Mochaverse basically a year ago. You know, it started at$100 or less. And today its floor price is, you know, roughly 4.4 ETH. So it's gone up.

26:37If you take a look at, for instance, Pudgy Penguins, right? That's another example of an NFT collection that, you know, basically was down and went up. So I think you can't sort of, if you pick and choose one collection, you say, yeah, look at this, it's come down. Sure. But if you basically look at it as a collective, you have ones that have grown a lot and you have ones that have come down a lot. And that, to me, is just a reflection of a natural capital market, particularly a capitalist market. But it's not a reflection of NFTs itself. I think NFTs is rising. It's actually one of the biggest narratives that has brought on people during the bear market because they didn't join, basically, at least in Asia, because of fungible tokens or meme coins because those don't exist or even Bitcoin.

27:18Remember, in 2017, 2018, still most people joined crypto because they want to have Bitcoin. Actually, in the last few years, most people joined the whole Web3 world because they wanted to play blockchain games or be in NFTs and so on. Like if you look at, for instance, what happened in the Philippines with Pixels and Axie Infinity on Ronin, you actually can see that, again, it's a gaming NFT narrative. It's not a token narrative. So I think it onboards a different sort of set of people. But I think both NFTs and regular tokens, both of them still represent the same thing, which is they are representations of the network effects of their communities.

27:54One of them is a little bit more focused because they're essentially more concentrated like NFTs, whereas fungible tokens are more broad. But they both are still representations of the network effects. And if the network effects of the token ecosystems grow and accelerate, then the value itself will also represent that. And I think this will be the same way NFTs is for fungible tokens. As you probably know, we are teaming up with Astar Network on this show. Astar Network is a decentralized blockchain platform that aims to bring billions of people into Web3. And the Astar team has a very specific strategy to make this happen, to partner with the biggest conglomerates in Web2 and help them onboard their customers into our world, the Web3 world.

28:37If you want to check out for yourself, I invite you to watch the candid podcast I recorded with Sota Watanabe, the founder of StarTail Labs and Astar Network. And now on to today's episode. You tweeted a few days ago just at the 10 amazing Bored Apes, which in my opinion are still as one of the most important NFTs of Web3. Why do you believe Bored Apes are still here? So first, I mean, it was quite undervalued, I thought. But also, you know, for me, and this goes back to my earlier point about sort of, you know, good fortune and sharing good fortune. I think all of us in the NFT industry owe the Bored Apes an incredible amount because the Bored Apes were the narrative.

29:20At the end of the day, when a, you know, non-Web3 person hears about NFTs, it's probably thinking about a Bored Ape. That's true. Right. And so that narrative brought out the celebrities bought Bored Apes. You know, we wouldn't be here, I think, in the way that we are if it wasn't for Bored Apes. And I know there's people out there saying, oh, you know, some people like to hate them and, you know, people are maybe envious of their success and so on. But at the end of the day, I think, I believe very much in giving back. You know, that's also why we invest as much in, you know, we're probably the most prolific investor in Web3.

29:50And we don't think of investing simply from the lens of how much profit we make from it. We also think that as we keep investing in our ecosystem, we're actually generating goodwill and more value because we've had the good fortune. How do we share in that good fortune? So me buying 10 Bored Apes, basically, you know, at really low floor prices. And now I think the floor price is, you know, up almost two years since the purchase, which is nice. But also I tried to create a message to say, we all owe a debt to the Bored Ape community for getting us there. And I think other people started to sort of feel the same way and actually evoke that feeling and that memory and that empathy to say, actually, that's true.

30:27You know, for as much as we want to say that maybe you guys had some missteps, which they certainly have had, you know, everyone has had them, we still owe them a whole deal. You know, this thing about giving back, I mean, if we do a thought experiment, you know, Apple is sitting on over$163 billion of cash, give or take, and it's mostly sitting in Ireland, probably collecting interest. Imagine if they took 10 % of that cash and made a VC fund. It would be the biggest VC fund ever. And maybe they only invest in the App Store ecosystem. You know, if you make an app on the App Store, we might be your investor, which is kind of what Animoca is doing, right?

31:02If you build in Web3, we'll invest in you, or at least take a look at you. And they might give seed funding and they might give Series A funding. First of all, it would completely accelerate the App Store ecosystem and reinvigorate essentially the SME base of the App Store ecosystem, right? No game company that is small, an indie game developer, can make money on the App Store today. Only the big guys can. So that's one issue. Two, I think everyone would be very happy to pay 30 % because again, there's value coming back in the ecosystem. And finally, I actually think Apple would generate much more value from the equity that is generated from the investments.

31:38Like if they invested in these companies rather than the shares, right? So my point is that actually giving back to the ecosystem is always better than just simply extracting. And I think that this is the Web3 nature. Like in Web3, all the exchanges, all the larger companies, I mean, not just us, we all invest. I mean, Coinbase has a VC fund. OKEx has a VC fund. Binance has a VC fund, right? We have a fund, right? We're all investing in the ecosystem. In Web 2, how much is Facebook or Apple or Google or those guys investing? Scarcely nothing. And then we ask ourselves the question, why is the world so unequal?

32:10And I think a lot of this in the past came through taxes. And I think what we need to do is encourage people to invest back. Because if they're not going to pay taxes, then at least they have to give something back to society. And I think investing is the better outcome for everyone involved. Absolutely. And you see a lot of people who are doing individually well in crypto and then become sort of angel investors. Absolutely. And I think that's a great example of how value shifts and value is shared. What do you think Bored Ape should be to be valued correctly? Well, first of all, I mean, you know, not financial advice.

32:44But generally speaking, I think of Bored Apes as the warhols of our generation. So, you know, they'll go through swings. But if we believe, which certainly we do, that billions of people are going to be in Web3, they're going to want to own the artifacts of their time. And to me, CryptoPunks, Bored Apes, those are great examples. If someone's going to say, I owned a piece of Web3 history, there's not that many that you can think of owning. And Bored Apes is definitely up there. There's many others as well, but I would say that they have that reflection. So I think, to me, over time, they'll be priceless.

33:24I think, again, I personally think, for instance, that Bitcoin will be worth a million plus dollars, not because it's a store of value, but because, again, if billions of people own crypto, then the people who own Bitcoin are not going to do it because they want to trade it or because they treat it as a currency. It's because it's going to be the ultimate status symbol to say, I have one Bitcoin, because there's only 21 million of them, right? So it's that kind of thing we think Bored Apes will represent as well. There's another project you mentioned before, Pudgy Penguins. What do you think about what Lucanetti is building with Pudgy Penguins?

33:56I think it's amazing. I think they understand narrative construction very, very well. They understand building. And I think what Luca and the Pudgy team is doing is pushing essentially Web2 people narratives into Web3 from a different perspective, from the retail perspective in part. I think they're great storytellers. And I think that's what the ecosystem needs. approaching it in a different way. You know, the look and feel of Pudgy is specifically something that really works for their narrative, right? Because everyone owns different types of narratives. It's not a narrative that Bored Apes can do, for instance, because Bored Apes is a little bit more edgy and a little bit more sort of risque in structure versus Pudgy, which is really cute and broadly accessible, for instance, right?

34:41So I think it's important what they're doing and I think it's fantastic to see all the progress. obviously you mentioned animoka before so we have to talk a bit about animoka sure what is animoka and what's your mission our mission is to deliver true digital property rights and we think if we succeed in doing so we can ultimately reshape and save capitalism as it is right now i think web3 is the kind of engine that can provide a more equitable framework because everyone becomes a stakeholder. So we believe that the way that we can solve many problems in the world is if everyone becomes a capitalist, as in becomes an equity holder of some form, right?

35:20Because imagine if your 401k or whatever pension fund wasn't cash, which was being sort of diluted out of, but rather it was receiving a share in, a fractional share in your real estate that you're living in or in the city or country that you're in. we might have a completely different circumstance for every citizen that's out there as an example instead you know we give the cash to really bad money managers who basically can just basically sit there on a very lazy basis earn earn interest i think it's a crime right because people are putting the hard-earned money for their future pension that future pension will not pay their their their life going forward so that means they can't stop working as they hoped for because they don't own equity versus if they had owned even a slice of real estate, they would have been a lot better, right?

36:07So I think that's one of those things. And I think with Web3, we can finally provide a framework where you can actually have mass distributed ownership. So the promise of digital ownership isn't just, you know, like, yes, I can own my virtual sword and I can own my virtual land and have a board ape and digital sort of status symbols. Yes, that's obviously one angle. But it's the fact that you can scale that to a billion people, right? There's probably almost no method in which a billion people can become sort of asset owners in the physical sense. Think of the paperwork, the administration. Government systems wouldn't be able to manage that, right?

36:43I was trying today to, I mean, for this podcast, actually, one of the sponsors is paying in shares, right? There you go. Fuck me. Like, just to get access to these shares, the amount of paperwork they're asking, I'm like almost abandoning. I'm like, I need two proof of that. I don't have them. Yes. I don't have them. Oh, therefore, we cannot do anything. Yes. It's ridiculous. No, absolutely. And I think, again, these were systems designed for a different era. So we're a public company. Animoca is a public company. We have over 450 investments in the space. We have 2 ,800 shareholders. And so we have only common shares, which means we kind of run like a DAO indirectly because we have to, big decisions, we have to go through sort of public share levels.

37:26Animoca has 2 ,800 shareholders. Yes, today. and you can buy our shares through OTC, we're not listed but because as common shares it's your property so we can't stop you from trading and selling we respect that but imagine as we grow we would have maybe 10 ,000 shareholders, 100 ,000 shareholders a million shareholders we can't manage a million shareholders we still have to print a prospectus that we have to send to our shareholders about major decisions We can't print a million prospectuses. That doesn't work, which is, by the way, true for a lot of companies around the world. But with tokens, if you think about token holders, you can have a million people own Ethereum, own Solana, own Sand, own Ape.

38:13And you can actually do, with ApeCoin, the DAO, a lot of people like to dunk on it. But it's still a$1.5 billion DAO or$2 billion DAO, depending on which day you look at it, that's run fully decentralized, that has the ability to have hundreds of thousands of token holders that can basically decide on sort of, you know, the future of the ecosystem through a common vote that basically you can't do in real time in the physical world, but you can do in the digital world, right? So again, you know, how do you manage, to your point, you know, an organization that might have a million shareholders or even 10 million shareholders?

38:46You can't, except through Web3. And that's why I think, you know, digital ownership, the future of that is so, so powerful, because that actually is a realistic framework where every citizen, for instance, in your country could become a stakeholder in one form or another and basically partake in sort of the growth of a capital asset. You know, the future of work is going to be such that, you know, we don't need drivers. We don't, I mean, we don't need people working in factories, right? Robotics and AI and machines are going to be taking over most of the job. So what do people do? They have to be sort of creating and inventing and basically doing the kind of things that people are good at, which is not going to be common labor, right?

39:21and that means they need to own the intellectual property. And again, how do you scale to protect your intellectual property? Again, I think only Web3 and blockchain today can do that at scale. I have another question regarding NFTs and coins, right? Sure. I read the tweet by this guy, Sid Fraze, was saying that the kind of next big wave in NFTs is going to be from NFT project launching coins, right? which makes a tough sense if you think at least if you think short term you would think how do i attract people's attention if i'm a project i'm going to do an airdrop right use my protocol i'll airdrop if i'm a nft project because i have let's say i have 10 000 nfts it makes the incentive of launching a token even like it gives you even more incentive right because thinking because it's supply sure i'll just and then if every project does that could be like a big wave right the first question is actually from a friend of mine who just sat with me the other day and he was like i understand a crypto project launching a token fine he's like you know you have you have stocks if you're a normal company i understand a project launching nfts but why would an nft project launch a token what's the logic behind it except to get more money right and i asked the question to sebastian yesterday actually and he had a great answer but i wanted to hear from you what's the logic of a of an nft project launching their own coin right so i mean the first counter sort of question i would say what's the logic for them not to do it right like in the classic sense because meaning that in Web3, you can compose and be creative in any level or degree.

41:09Like who decided that what you can and cannot do, right? So I mean, that's the same thing I think is the argument of meme coins. Those people who, and again, I'm not a big trader in meme coins. I mean, I own some, but I really don't, like I'm not a day trader, like whatever. I've just fun with it. But the point to me is that, you know, the same people who might say, well, why do you need a meme coin? Like it seems like a waste of time. Well, the point is that it's someone's free will to decide to make a meme coin. And if a community adopts it, then it has existence because it has a shared reality right i mean humans live on stories right i mean money is a story right who decided that you know we end up basically sort of trading notes for value for actual tangible goods right we can't eat a banknote right but yet here we are willing to exchange it because we shared a common story so to me basically whether it's an nft and the pursuing and ensuing tokens thereafter.

42:03It's about expanding network effects. So when you think about network effects, everything is around sort of creating more community. So when you have an NFT collection, you might have thousands of NFT holders. And then basically when you drop a token, you actually can expand the community, but you benefit basically the ones who are loyal to that. And to me, that's no different than the airdrop campaigns that we think of in terms of the expanding of the ecosystem, because you have to advertise your ecosystem. So you've got to pay someone to do it. In this case, may as well pay the end users who have become your champions.

42:33You know, the NFT holders who basically get the benefit from this, they're the ones who are basically promoting you. They become your champions. They become your marketing agent, and you don't have to hire them because effectively you've paid them to do the job, you could say, in many cases. So I think of this as an expansion of network effects, right? In Web3, I said this earlier, tokens are network effects, right? So they basically represent the value of these network effects. What often happens, and I think, you know, people sometimes confuse this, is getting money? Well, if you give a free airdrop to communities, like I think I shared earlier, like over$21.7 billion was basically given as airdrop tokens to the communities in the last three years, right?

43:12That actually is money to the community. That is not enriching the business itself. And in many cases, you know, people would drop the majority of the value to its community first before, you know, and they give liquidity to the community first. Like for the ApeCoin, for instance, when that was dropped, right? VCs and investors, actually there were no investors, but basically, you know, launch partners and so on, basically had all of their tokens locked. It was the community that had the ability to sell first. And that model has been basically sort of adopted by almost every project thereafter, right?

43:45So again, value was given to the community first and they created the network effects for that ecosystem itself. And also, by the way, I feel that there is no limit in the number of tokens we could launch because I think of tokens as representations of the specific network effects. And because it's Web3, the liquidity is shared across. So for instance, if one project does really well and brings more people in, it ends up moving other people into other ecosystems. The fact that meme coins, whether they are silly ones like Bonk or Shib or Doge or whatever name you want to put out there, if they bring in new members into the ecosystem, they will translate themselves into other ecosystems because they're in Web3.

44:24In Web2, you can't do that. Makes me think about two questions. The first one is, therefore you believe that seed phrase is right. Most of the NFT project at some point will probably launch a token. It's to expand your network effects, right? I mean, I think you have to, unless you're more than happy to have a limited network, which is okay too. I mean, it depends what you're looking to do. Like not every project wants to be McDonald's, right? Some projects would like to stay a Michelin star restaurant and that's okay too. And they serve a certain audience and generate value that way. So it really depends on your goal and your mission, I think.

45:01You know, I think one of the things that, you know, tokens represent, some people talk about tokens as currency. And I think that is fair in the sense that currency is a social network. Like money, I would argue, is perhaps the biggest social network in the world. not in the sense like a Facebook but in the sense that it has created a system in which we create this credit-debit relationship a social relationship between strangers where I can now transact not knowing who you are anywhere around the world for some value because we agree that this US dollar has some kind of value perspective which creates sort of the social environment and I think basically when you think about tokens you need essentially the fungible aspect as well because the non-fungible is scarce, right?

45:40If I give you a non-fungible aspect there might be traits and features that I treasure. And I don't want to give up my membership, but I want to be able to sort of share my distribution and share my social connection in a manner that comes from my network without having to sort of give away my NFT. And I think fungible tokens do this quite well because they are fungible by design in the sense that they're meant to be something that aren't as personal as an NFT. I'd like to take a short moment to introduce our partner, Mento, who helps us make this show possible. Mental was created to hyperscale the Ethereum network with what we call a layer two that helps users like you and me transact much faster and at a fraction of the cost of the Ethereum network.

46:27Mental has over$2 billion in total value locked. We actually had Ignace Ternus and Jordi Alexander on this podcast who both are key figures in the mental ecosystem. them. So I invite you to watch these two very candid and in-depth conversations to develop your own opinion. Thank you so much for your help. And now onto today's episode. You mentioned that you own a few meme coins. Can you share maybe two of them? And the question is not to say, oh yeah, it owns this meme coin. No, it's really to understand what's your framework on when something gets interesting enough to basically acquire it. It's more that, right?

47:11Like this one, there's nothing behind it. I mean, there is a kind of culture, but the reason why it's interesting to me is that, right? So we understand. And for me, it's more, I'm thinking about the classic TradFi person who moved into crypto and is like, what is this shit? I don't understand. Like it makes no sense, right? So maybe if you can share, maybe just one example or two and say, I can give a few examples. Your reason is that. But let me just sort of highlight. I do not think of meme coins as an investment. So my involvement is either fun, curiosity, or support. Meaning that I think that what they're doing is important.

47:48I don't think of it necessarily as making money, but I think it's valuable for the ecosystem. So I'll give you two examples. So Doge to me is a cultural icon. So I have Doge, not because I think it's worth a lot necessarily, but because I think it's just fun, it's interesting. but it's also more importantly something that's part of the culture. I think owning a little bit of Doge is a little bit like having a laugh and sort of having fun. And there's a good reminder that we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously. So that's one example. But then, for instance, MemeCoin, which is basically sort of meme land.

48:18It's a Hong Kong-based project. And we're a Hong Kong-based company. And so I don't remember how many, whether I own 50 captains or whatever. Maybe it's 20. I don't know. I own a lot of NFTs from that project. And as a consequence, I also own a whole bunch of tokens from them. And to me, it had everything to do with the fact that they were a Hong Kong-based project with a great Hong Kong founder that I wanted to personally back and support, right? And so the signaling was in my public wallet. So they could see that I was out there publicly supporting them. That was another thing as well. And so you'll see, for instance, us or me particularly do this as well.

48:52For instance, I'm not an investor in World of Women, but I bought a whole bunch of NFTs in Women's Day because I wanted to support the movement And I wanted to sort of create a narrative and a messaging around that as well, as an example, right? And I think all of us in the ecosystem sort of, you know, who believe in World 3 sort of share that ethos. So you've been doing quite a lot of things successfully in the last 10, 20 years? You only hear about the things that work, though. So basically, I wanted to ask, what's something you believed a few years ago that has turned out to be completely wrong?

49:27Gosh, so much. Where do I start? Well, I mean, maybe I'll start with something that was a bit more spectacular. This was, I think, 2006. So we really invested a lot in AR. And this was way before. In 2006? 2006. In AR? Yes. Already? Yeah. We did AR in 2006, 2007. And I think we kept fighting until 2011, 12. We just said, you know what, this is too tough, right? And this was before Pokemon Go and so on, right? And even then, post-Pokémon Go, I think AR hasn't reached its promise. And back then, by the way, we didn't even have mobile phones, right? I mean, there was smartphones. It was literally, you know, basically the camera on a desktop, not desktop, on a laptop, or basically cameras on a desktop.

50:15And we basically thought that people would interact, you know, by reading picture books and, you know, sort of literally a quasi-phigital experience where you could experience your virtual and your physical because of, you know, back then it was a form of a QR code or a symbol. to do that. And I think the vision was the same idea in terms of, well, we think the physical and the virtual are going to completely mesh. And what I think at the time, maybe we lacked the imagination to think that actually the virtual reality is going to be infinitely more powerful than any construct that basically binds it to the physical.

50:50The physical is important because it maybe it gives you a sense of touch and feel, but the virtual is boundless, right? So the things that we can imagine in our mind, or the things that we can dream of, have no limit, whereas the physical ones have limits. And I think one of the challenges we see in AR right now is that, you know, we're reflecting our virtual aspects in the physical world, when in fact, when we close our eyes, we can imagine most of this quite well already. And so I think AR itself, while it's a powerful tool, I think is an add-on to our life experiences. It is not a transformative part to our life experiences in its current transformation, which is also, by the way, why we think VR is a nice add-on to the metaverse, but we don't think it's going to be sort of the metaverse itself, which is what a lot of people sometimes think when they think of metaverse.

51:36They think of VR goggles or spatial computing. Again, they're enhancements, but what makes sort of our virtual experiences so powerful, we think, is what we feel for them, which comes from the ownership aspect and from what it means to us as a story and as a person, not from the fact that I can see it a certain way. You know, like, you know, I often give this example of, like, it's similar to, like, you know, why NFTs have certain kind of emotional values, like a wedding ring, for instance, right? If you have a wedding ring, you know, it's not valuable in terms of dollar cents, but it is immeasurable and invaluable from the relationship you have with your partner.

52:11If you sell it, well, that's probably bad news to your relationship. More importantly, though, there's a story that's embedded that is entirely emotional. That ring, when you look at it, will look the same to every other person in the world. And yet when you see it and when you experience, you feel a whole set of emotions and feelings that no visual experience can replace because it's entirely in your mind and in your heart, right? So I think the same is true for our virtual experiences. We make friends online. We make partnerships virtually with people we've never met before. They don't look anything like that in real life.

52:45They might be a bear, they might be a dog, and yet here we are, we create strong bonds because we tell these amazing stories as humans in our mind. Do you have an example in crypto of what you believe that proved out to be completely wrong? Well, I think one of the things that perhaps we believed in the early days, I think there's two things worth mentioning here. the first one that I think we believed was that gaming utility alone was going to be, you know, like digital ownership was going to be sort of, and by the way, that is the number one use case why people want to play blockchain games.

53:26But that was going to be enough to carry, essentially, Web3 adoption for gaming. But it needed DeFi Summer to happen, right? Because the liquidity in DeFi actually created the engine of growth and the validation that ownership had meaning. because that actually allowed for things like play to earn to come and emerge, and basically the trading and the volume and all of the additional sort of financial constructs. Whereas you can see, for instance, certain other NFT collections that did not partake in sort of DeFi adoption, say like NBA Top Shot and what happened with Flow. And they actually suffered because they didn't actually move quickly enough in sort of taking advantage of the liquidity that DeFi would offer.

54:05So that's kind of a, you know, it was something that we switched very quickly on, right? But it was just an assumption we had in 2018 and 2019 narratively because we didn't come from a financial lens at the time, and so we didn't focus enough on the financial strength of Web3. Today we totally believe that you must have strong financial rails in Web3 gaming and Web3 anything. Otherwise, it's not really, really Web3. The other thing, I think, which has really changed in our belief is when we think about Web2 to Web3 adoption. I think, like many others, they believe that giving people wallets and making them move from giving them basically access to digital assets will help onboard at scale.

54:46I think that turned out to be completely wrong. Meaning that a Web 2 user moving onto Web 3 can only happen when they become more financially literate, when they have an understanding why these assets mean something. So when people talk about Web 2.5, I get a little cynical. Not because I don't think the intention is nice. is the fact that, well, are you actually really making them a Web3 user or are you hoping that they stay a Web2 user and you just build Web3 backend? I think that doesn't work. Because even though a person might not understand anything he's doing and just interact with the Web3 backend, he won't understand the reason why he has ownership.

55:19He won't understand that there is a perspective of sort of financial literacy needed to advance himself. So I think Web3 games today must focus on adding financial literacy into the program, into the tutorials, rather than just simply here's your wallet, good luck, and let's go. because they wouldn't know what to do, for instance. And I think that was a big learning. And so we're focusing more on Web3 nativity rather than basically pure Web2 adoption for people who don't know anything. I mean, Web2 users are basically a labor class, right? And you need the investing class, which is the Web3 user.

55:51Absolutely. What's something that is non-consensus today but that you believe in, that you think in hindsight in three to five years will be very obvious to everyone? Education. I think education in everything, and especially in Web3, is going to be one of the most important things, not just from a, let's call it, societal adoption standpoint, but also from a use case perspective. Because what is the one thing that we do, even in games as humans every day, we learn. We never stop learning. You go to TikTok, you go to YouTube, you go to every social network, you're not going there just to meet friends.

56:32you're actually learning something. In fact, learning is a key engine of our human development. And education is actually a$5 trillion space. Today, it's much bigger than gaming, which is like$200,$300 billion, which is impressive, by the way, but it's not nearly as big as education. So moving basically the financial rails of education, creating more value for our teachers in the ecosystem, I think also creates more value to society. Teachers are underpaid, but actually in Web3, just like what you saw with NFT artists or with gaming, you can actually create more value for those ecosystems and more value can go directly to the teachers rather than these sort of extractive intermediaries.

57:09And so we started doing this with Open Campus, TinyTap and with the EDU token. That was a way for us to basically try to build that. But we're the only ones doing it for the time being. But to me, it's no different than when we started talking about Web3 gaming. A lot of people today probably forgot that when we started talking about Web3 gaming in 2017, 2018 and 2019, basically most of, in particular the crypto community, was not very optimistic about it, right? Because they didn't understand it. And they thought gaming was for kids and they thought that nobody would do that. And okay, everyone's talking about Web3 Gaming.

57:41So again, I think of education the same way. You know, just like we did with gaming before, we're pretty patient, we'll keep building. And I think that moment will eventually come because, you know, at the end, we have to sort of think, at least we like to think, what is our human construction, right? What are we looking to do in our life as humans? and I think if you can solve these things and target them in any industry, whether it's Web 3 or Web 2, then I think you'll see opportunity. We love to play games. We learn through play. That's one of the reasons why gaming and generally games are such a large industry.

58:16We need to learn. It's not just education. We're wired to be learning. Our whole dopamine receptors are sort of trained towards motivating to making us learn. So again, these are mechanisms. I think the big social networks have hacked our learning systems. And I think if you focus that in the Web3 manner, we can create these powerful incentives to basically rewire our learning brains for more optimistic outcomes and better outcomes for people. An industry that has been doing that pretty well, also gamifying the industry's health. Yes. I see you have a new ring. I do, yes. Well, I think health is a major industry as well.

58:53I mean, we've invested in companies like Olivex, for instance, and so on. and they launched things like the Dose token as ways to basically sort of improve people's sort of, you know, awareness and sort of health data, for instance. To me, you know, health is another form of wealth. Maybe it's an even more important form of wealth. When people talk about wealth, it's not just about money, right? It's about mental, it's about fitness, right? Because at the end of the day, if you make a bunch of money, what's the point if you basically have to go around in a wheelchair, right? And so this is just another form of data, right?

59:25This data basically helps you generate information about who you are and how you live and how you can optimize that. And that data can be valuable to other people as well down the road. Like we believe in Web3 that we own our data and therefore the derivative and network effects of this data can then be shared. This data that I'm generating today is only valuable to me. Eventually, this data will be valuable to others. I mean, imagine what would happen if medical health records were basically shared across the world in a zero-knowledge way. then we would have a way in which we could analyze problems more deeply without having these silos of data where we have to seek permission.

59:57I mean, have you tried sharing your medical records from one doctor to the other? Good luck, right? Never mind cross-border or cross-whatever, right? Which means that every place has to start all over. And again, maybe people cite privacy laws and so on. And so again, I think that when it comes to blockchain and zero knowledge, this is a perfect way to do that. When did you realize that health is wealth? Is it something you always understood? Or did you have some personal struggle? Oh, I definitely had a personal heart. With mental health and physical health. You didn't say, now I need to do that and take this more seriously.

1:00:31So most people don't probably know, but I used to be pretty fat. I had a waist that was 36. And, you know, this is what happens when, I guess, you have young kids. And I think the thing is when you are in your 20s, your natural metabolism of your body moves quite adaptive. So you feel you're invincible. but then when you turn in your 30s your metabolism actually kind of drops and you kind of forget about that and you still eat and function like you think you are in your 20s and then you have kids as well and that ends up being your focus and by my by my i think it was late 30s or like close to 40 basically i had a spine issue i was i was i remember very clearly i was in scotland and my um and um i guess the weight of my belly including the fact that the bed was really really soft because in especially i'm in europe people just like really soft beds i don't know why and so i you know i couldn't get out of bed because i basically just sank into it and my my l5 basically got pushed into my my my spine and i was semi-paralyzed or at least it felt like it right i couldn't walk it was painful uh and and that was sort of the trigger point right and um i think most people hopefully would take over their health before they reach a trigger point but that was that was a wake-up call uh and then um you know um and my wife obviously was super concern.

1:01:47So she's like, okay, here's your exercise regime. Let's do stuff. I went on keto. Basically, I went extreme to lose weight and then basically try to maintain a certain lifestyle thereafter. You're still on keto? No, no, no, no. I lost too much weight on keto. And so I'm not on keto, but I don't need nearly as much carbs as I used to. Interesting. What's your biggest prediction for next 12 months? Biggest prediction for 12 months? I mean, first, I think the market to me is going to continue to accelerating growth. I think, you know, I had actually predicted earlier that Hong Kong would actually launch an Ethereum spot ETF.

1:02:23They already just did a few days ago. So that prediction is out in the sense that it really happened. But I also think many other countries are going to be basically launching Bitcoin spot ETF, which I think is going to be a bigger driver for value for Bitcoin. Then I think we're going to see with the halving, right? I think to me, the halving is more like Christmas. It's something we can celebrate on, but I don't think it has as much of a material impact. It's like a tradition. So we can all remember that Bitcoin is still around and has a meaning. And of course, today it's, of course, super relevant.

1:02:55And I think Web3 Gaming will continue to drive the narrative for this year, just because so many gaming projects are launching. And I think we'll bring, in their own ways, new communities into the space. You know, my hope is that education will become more mainstream, but I think we need to give it a little bit more time before that develops, because narrative. and I think also when you think about like Weir for instance the largest validator in Ton so we think basically networks like the new L1, L2s that are emerging are also creating really powerful new narratives for community growth I think we should be expecting to see a ton of airdrops which I think we're going to drive a ton of new adoption into the ecosystem driving more value broadly across so yes I think 2024 is going to be a really powerful growth year for Web3 and hopefully we'll extend in 2025.

1:03:44Last cycle we had the crypto lending and borrowing that basically enabled to create, I mean every bubble is basically when you have a lot of leverage building up in the system and at some point there is you know an unwind of the leverage. What do you think is going to cause this cycle? What do you think is going to, I don't want to say mark the top but that's kind of potentially dangerous for the industry? I mean, positive in the beginning, and then people will get too kind of excited. Yeah, so I think, first, anytime you go through sort of cycles like these, there are lessons from the past. And the lessons of the past, I think, will be heeded.

1:04:31Meaning that I don't think we'll see another FTX, knock on wood, right? I think we've clarified the situation in Binance, which is great. I think we won't see another Terra Luna in its current format. I think we've got some interesting experiments that we see with Athena, for instance, that have variations of this, but still it's ETH-backed, for instance. So I think we still have innovations from those periods and those cycles that will both push the industry forward, but will also set things back because that is the nature of capitalism. So I think one of the things that people often don't appreciate is that capitalism is inherently volatile.

1:05:09If it wasn't volatile, then you wouldn't have progress. Capitalism is a proxy for change, right? Without it, you wouldn't have disruptive technologies like Tesla, green energy, or, you know, companies like Facebook, Google, or even blockchain, Bitcoin, crypto. All these things wouldn't have happened if capitalism and the capitalist incentive didn't happen. And so to me, therefore, volatility is a part of it. So rather than think about sort of when is that moment, I mean, we can predict and talk all day, but rather prepare yourself as a business or as an individual for inherent volatility as long as we live in a capitalist system.

1:05:46Which means you have to manage your risk, which is what we do all day. And if you happen to be too greedy, then really that means you haven't managed your risk that well. We just reported our financials a few days ago and we reported$100 million more cash than we had in the previous one year ago during the start of, I guess, that bear cycle. proving the fact that if you manage your asset base well, you can still make more money in a bear market, even though, you know, things are tough, right? So there are lessons there, but I think the key is that you have to learn to live with risk and volatility.

1:06:23I think the only constant, and it's a cliche, but it's true, the only constant is change. There isn't anything about that can be stable. And if you want to have a true stable economy, then you can go over to socialism and go for state-controlled systems that tell you how to live your life. And I think most people, given the choice, would actually choose freedom, which does come with some volatility.

1:06:45My pleasure. Thank you.