An IRL Store for a Digital Blockchain

and its own native token called saul. Salana's developers say their blockchain is a faster and cheaper alternative to existing technology. Solana's critics, on the other hand, points of frequent outages, downtime, and outright hacks that have plagued the platform. A recent hack in August drained more than seven thousand crypto wall

it's tied to the Salona blockchain. But despite these challenges, interest in Salana remains high, so high, in fact, that there's now a real life retail location at a mall in New York City. So I'm at the front of the Salanta store. The first thing I've really noticed there's a stick at the very bottom the ce Salana pay accepted here. It really looks like you've ever been to a mall and seen an Apple store or a um like an Xbox store where they sell technology. It looks

like one of those stories, but it's crypto. So it's called Salana, Spaces and Bloomberg reports Emmanuel. John Milton went to the mall to check it out. Manuel, thank you so much for joining us in the studio here in New York today. Of course, it's it's a pleasure to be here. Let's start with what is Salano. So Salana is a blockchain and on applock chain, slant offer is and f T s um. They have their own token and they also have smart contracts that people can use.

So you went to this mall, you went to Hudson Yards for Salana, which is a blockchain. Why does a blockchain need a store? So crypto is very ethereal to many people. It's something that isn't easy to understand. It's something that even if you understand, you're not sure if you understand. So for many people, having someone walk you through that process might be really helpful. This is somewhere where someone who is new to crypto can walk in

and really see what Salanta is trying to build. That's kind of the idea behind Salanta's store to have a big Salana logo in the middle, with three bars for their logo out a little stations. It looks like you can do tutorials on them as well as just merchandise, so like hats ole, like Fannie packs, almost jackets. But it's not a store that's run by the sal on

a blockchain itself for the Slanta Foundation itself. Right, this is somebody who's affiliated or like part of that ecosystem, but not the developer, So they're not they're independently operated and they receive funding from the Slanta Foundation. And how they do that is they have grants that they give out. So the actual Spaces store is not run by the Slana Foundation, but it's run instead by Slant of Spaces,

who's an independent operator. Got it. This sounds to me like kind of like an Apple store in the sense of a lot of you know, Apple's retail experience isn't only about here's an iPhone, here's a watch. It's also about we're going to teach you how to use our very expensive and fancy equipment. But in the meantime, we'll teach you how to droll, or we'll teach you how to do photography. Is it, Like, is that the kind of educational experience? Like what did you do one? Like?

What was that? Like? So, there's a couple of tutorials they have and if you complete the tutorials, you get USDC, which is a digital stable coin that's packed to the US dollar. So how many like how much money are you really getting? It's to USDC? Two yes. And I talked to the CEO of Salanta Spaces and he said that they had a thousand tutorials that were completed, and

that's a lot of a lot of people. And and he said that a lot of the people, like the people that came in, the only crypto things that they might have would be those USDC or the n f T s that they might win from going in. So um, the guy that started the store is someone that has retail experiences, a veteran, and he's like when I was talking to him, he basically was saying that I like, they designed it for this. They they're like store designers, and that's kind of the way they came into it.

They were they said that They were new to crypto UM, but not new to like a story detail experience exact. It was it full when you went, like how many people were there? So I went twice. I went there the first time. Sometimes when you come in as a reporter that people look at you differently, So I thought it could be fun to just go with my friends and just observed and see what I saw. So I went on Saturday, I think that weekend. The opening week ended up on Thursday. I went on Saturday and it

was full. There's people are everywhere in the store. There were Sauna, spaces ambassadors, who are people that are just in the store. You can kind of think of like the people at the age were they what were they wearing? Were very cool, very cool lacture, its um sauna, the Space store has a lot of cool merch. So I went in there and I was with my friends, were just walking around looking at tutorials. They have murals on the wall that can display n f T s and

also just normal pictures which is interesting UM. And then they had a visualization of the sawna Blockshane in action. So that's another example of Salanna saying, Hey, I know that this is hard to understand, let's bring this to someone exactly, let's show you. And and then I went on Tuesday morning with your reporter, had on with my reporter, had on favorite movies. Okay, the reporting of the recording. We talked, and that time there were two people that

came through. The store was there for four years. Minutes right after it opened. It was pretty empty that morning. And then right after that happened. Interestingly enough, the the Salana hack happened that morning. And the CEO that of slat Space that I was talking to you about earlier, he said he he was worried that I was in there asking people about the hack, and he's like, these

people don't know anything about crypto. And I can kind of see his point because he's like, these people are customers, were really new. He doesn't want them to be scared off by oh my gosh, I put my money on this fall out now it's all gone. Well, that's interesting. So when when we're talking about the Salana hack, because there's a lot of hacks, so I feel like every week I'm like, this is the specific hack we're referring to.

It was, you know, nearly eight thousand wallets, so kind of like your bank account for crypto were compromised and totally drained. And these were wallets that were linked to the Salana blockchain. But it's interesting to hear you say that the CEO was worried people would get booked because bad things happen in krypto, but actually, yeah, bad things definitely happened in crypto, and it is that part of the educational experience that they're offering, like are they helping

people understand the risks? From what I saw, it wasn't about risk. It was more about, hey, let's learn this. Look at all these cool new things. So was there anybody you know when you were talking to these ambassadors, was there anybody that you kind of talk to about Merged or any of the other things that you're describing. Yes. So when we walked through the store, there's a Slanta

Spased ambassador named Cameron Survey. What's going on? My name is Camera Manuel And he was great, what do you think the most popular item is here to buy for someone? People just love love the swag the n F team Merged like the DJ and APE Academy stuff that we have and are they're really good at figuring out what customers might want, and that's probably the appeal of that store and why Salana because they have to differentiate from an ethereum from bitcoin, and that seems to be a

way to do it. It's a it's a really good way for Salana to just see their product out in the real world. A lot of companies don't get to do that, and like, for example, if you get it taken home, you don't like, you have no idea how that customer might interact with it. But they're they're just watching these people do these tutorials. If someone keeps getting hung up on the same part of a certain tutorial, then they're like, oh, this is something that's really confusing

for people. So this is a definitely a great opportunity for Salana to look into what people are struggling with and it kind of just ties in with their theme of being close to the customers. It's a vote we're just here to reach out to people and break down that barrier because being in front of the screen sometimes it is a little intimidating when it's the deep, deep

dark web. Right coming up, you'll hear more from Bloomberg Reports to Emmanuel John Milton about Salana's I r L strategy and whether we'll see more of these kinds of stores representing digital asset firms cropping up in the future. So, you know, one of the things you've really emphasized is the like educational elements. People come there, they make a

couple of books, they learn some stuff. Is this also a way for you know, the CEO and the folks behind the store and perhaps tangentially the Salona Foundation to do some market research on customers for sure? So we spoke with Salanta employee Anna Un who was in the store, and she works for strategy and the payments team at Salanta Labs, which is part of the Sana ecosystem. I've been observing for the day. I think it's pretty nice that people get to learn about a WHAT three company

and an in real life. And she was there just collecting research about people. She was talking about what she was seeing, what people engaged with. People showed up super excited about Salana. So a lot of people probably came here because they knew about us. Um I would say fifty fifty I write down like how people interact. I sometimes go up to them and asking, how do you do you have any feedback for the tutorial for the station, like,

do you have any questions? And I the most interesting thing is I've been a couple of Salona activation about. As well as speaking with Anna, I also spoke with CEO of Sauna Spaces, the Boon Rby, and he said that the company plans to open spaces all over the world. And he said, with a certainty, there's another space opening. Even if you're not trying to get into the crypto space. Sauna Spaces offers people the opportunity to walk in and just experience crypto and learn about it. Even if you're

not taking necessarily any financial risk with this. You're just going in and just checking it out. The thing that they don't tell you, though, is about the possibility that you'll get hacked and lose all your money. Correct if if you do those tutorials that you the two s TC far you have to open up a platform wallet, and I don't think those have been hacked, but it's

definitely a risk that you have to account for. And this is, you know, I think very much a criticism that folks have levied against crypto companies at all levels, which is they're very happy to tell you about the benefits. But it's like you know, pharmaceutical advertising, where maybe in really tiny print at the end or somebody reading super fast in the commercial will be like may cause death. Which is not to say that crypto is you know,

going to cause death imminent or otherwise. But I do think it's a missing piece in some of these conversations. Is this idea of making sure that people really understand the risks as well as any potential benefits of what they're getting into. Well, thank you very much for joining us today, Manual. It's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you for having me. You can find more of a Manual's reporting on the Bloomberg Terminal on

Bloomberg dot com or follow him on Twitter. He's at emmy underscore j N. That's at I M M y underscore g N on the next episode of Bloomberg Crypto. The fair of missing out, often known as FOMO, can be a driving force for some casual crypto investors, especially when it's their close friends and family who are encouraging them to get involved. Personal relationships are often key in bringing new people into crypto, and that's especially true when the market is doing well, but what happens when the

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