Yeah, and it's twenty Like I've built across bitcoin, XRP and ethereum. And you know, obviously, when I was like at Ripple, I was doing like far more work, Like I don't know if you know David Schwartz, but I like co authored another protcol with him. When I was there, I was like deep in the Ripple ecosystem. Honestly, I like still am. I know a lot of the like people who are more like leadership positions there and touch base pretty regularly.
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So if you'd like to learn more of by Bitgo, go to bitgo dot com. Link will be in the description. Hey everybody, welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host, Tony Edward and my guest today is Austin King, who's the co founder of Omni Network and the CEO of Omni Labs. Austin. Great to have you on.
Yeah, I appreciate you having me on. Looking forward to this, Austin.
Excited to chat with you because you and the folks at Omni are trying to solve the fragmentation issue that is caused by roll ups on the Ethereum blockchain. So lots of questions about what you guys are doing, but let's start with your background. Tell us about yourself, where you're from, and what's your professional background.
Yeah, So I grew up in Indiana originally, and I've hopped around a decent amount since then. So I grew up in Indiana, I got into Harvard, So I was living in Boston for like four years. Then I moved to San Francisco. Then I was nomadic for a couple of years, and now I live in New York for the past three years. But New York saw them. Now at this point, I love living in New York. Our office is here where I'm at right now. Yeah, I really love New York. My professional background, I've always been
in crypto. So when I was studying hmmuier science in the university, I really fell down the rabbit hole. And I always planned to build a company after I graduated. So during my junior summer, I was like, I'm building a crypto startup. I don't know what it's going to do, but I am going to build a crypto startup. And so most of my senior year I was exploring what I was going to build. And so this led to my first company that I ran from twenty seventeen to
twenty twenty. I sold that to Ripple, worked at Ripple for a year so I could vest, and then yeah, I started Omni after that, and so Omnie's been in progress through about like three and a half years now. So it's like a pretty rapid fire of a view of like where am I from, what's my professional background?
What was the company you built and sold to Ripple?
So it was called Strata Labs, but it built a network called the inter Ledgery Network, which in many ways honestly was like a technical predecessor to me. So I kind of took like a first lap at this already in the like twenty eighteen to twenty twenty era. But it's cool to see like how much the technology has advanced since then and like we can do so much
more with it now. So yeah, it's interesting like in many ways, like I've actually utilized a lot of learnings from my first company to help us scale up on me.
And were there any major learnings from a company like Ripple. Obviously it's pretty high profile in the crypto industry to have an asset now XRP. I think it's like in the top four. They've had their SEC lawsuit, a lot of high profile things.
Yeah, honestly, a lot of learning lessons for sure. I mean, Ripple's hundreds of people. When I was there, I think it was four hundred people. Now I think it's around one thousand people. But for me, because I built a company right after school, I didn't like join Facebook like a lot of my friends or something, so I didn't have the experience of being at like a bigger corporation.
But yeah, getting deeper into the XRP GO system and kind of like understanding how the community thinks about XRP and like Ripple as an entity and the opportunity that Ripple has has a larger organization, especially with like a
ton of capital firepower. It was cool to kind of like jump straight from just being a few people at a small startup to a much bigger corporation with like a massive asset and like huge firepower to make things happen from the like talent perspective and the capital perspective, and then switching back into it and like building another company a ton of like really interesting experiences there.
You may have hinted on this or touch a bit on it, but what was your first encounter with bitcoin or blockchain or either or whatever it may be, and what was your ahamam? And when did it click for you?
Yeah, honestly, it clicked pretty soon after I got into it. So it was twenty seventeen. This was before the Ico era where I just like I had a job at Microsoft, but for whatever reason, my boss just it was an internship. He just told me that the main part already was that I had a good summer and not that I like did anything, and so he told me that, like, yeah, just make sure you like enjoy the summer. So like, okay, And I sent the entire summer learning about crypto, and so, yeah,
I didn't really do anything for myselft. I don't know why they paid me, but yeah, I dove deep into the ethereum ecosystem, and I started like mining ethereum, buying it, and I started programming or like teaching myself how to program in solidity, and honestly, it clicked pretty quickly. So it's kind of strange. My first exposure wasn't Bitcoin, it was actually ethereum. But the thing that really clicked for me was I built what we would probably call it
dow today. It was a system where a bunch of different people could like vote on what this like smart contract does, and to me, it just kind of clicked. It was like, oh, we can run governments on this scene. Like we're seeing like a very infantile, like toy version of what this will become. But it is a way for people to socially coordinate across the world. It doesn't
matter like where you are. And so I don't know, for whatever reason, like my values, like my background is like really clicked with me, Like wow, this is like a super empowering tool just for anybody across the world. So I was pretty sold once it like clicked, once I first started diving into like programming smart contracts, like wow, these are going to be super impactful systems for just people everywhere.
Wow, that's pretty amazing. You were really ahead of the curve there. As you mentioned, it's kind of like doos and dows. We see growing an adoption and some local governments I believe are building dows. I think Wyoming if I'm not mistaken, And it's fascinating you know that thought that the future of government and people participating and maybe keeping their government accountable could be through these DOW models, right.
Yeah, yeah, I mean at this point in time when I would like tell people that I went back to Harvard after this and I would tell people like, Hey, this is incredible, like we're going to run governments on this. They're like, you're insane like that, like, what are you talking about? That's a ridiculous thing to say. But obviously we're still like Wyoming has published a framework for legally recognizing doallnas at this point, so we have made tremendous progress.
But still I think we're very early in the journey of crypto at large. There's a ton of like huge opportunities for growth that I still see. So yeah, I still think it has a lot to like prove, But I am very grateful that we've made a ton of progress since twenty seventeen.
Absolutely, all right, let's talk OMNE. Give us an overview of OMNIE. What you guys are trying to do? What's your mission?
Yep? Cool. So the original reason we built OMNIE was actually because we built a DeFi protocol on Ethereum in the first place. So we built this DeFi protocol. It went really well. We hit fifty minutal TVL in like two days after launching. And this was earlier in the Ethereum ecosystem was like twenty twenty one, so there weren't
really any large scale roll ups out there. It was like Arbitrum and Optimism had just recently deployed, and you kind of had to be more deep into the research to understand that like this, this roll up stuff is the future of Etheroereum. If there is no roll ups for the future, there is no Ethereum. Like this thing's just not going to work compared to like these alternative networks. And so effectively, what we were trying to do actually was scale it so that we could bring our own
defive protocol across these different role ups. We still wanted to access all the users in liquidity from the entire Theoryum ecosystem, So we were trying to solve this problem for ourselves. In the process of this, though, we were talking with other teams and basically any other team that saw success on Ethereum L one was trying to think about how they don't get sidelined in the process as
L two has become more prevalent. So it became like pretty clearly was like, oh, Okay, any team that has seen success on L one is thinking about this, and this is not a problem that just we are facing. It's the problem everybody is facing. So this is gonna be a core problem for the future of the ethereum ecosystem. So that's really where it came from. The north Star was like, make it super easy for people to build
for all the users in the ethereum ecosystem. I think where we're going at large, though, is kind of like a few steps past that. That's you know, we've grown a lot since then, and where I think the entire crypto industry at large is going is we're kind of like stepping to a point where it's gonna we're gonna be able to onboard far more users because we're lowering the technical complexity to accessing blockchains today it's a mess. You have to think about wrapped assets, gas tokens, bridging
different chains and stuff. It's like people, those of us in the space, you know, we can all were like, oh, we we we know that you shouldn't use like this version of wrapped USDC because it's actually this like that's because we're deep and we're like djens and stuff when we get it. But onboarding more users, like it's crazy to actually expect people to like think about all those
different things. And so where we're going at large, this really started with like abstracting way the reality of like different roll ups. But directionally, where it's going to go is like accessing crypto is going to look just like using web too. It's going to look like just using a website. You're not going to have to think about sea phrases, gas or chains or any of that. You're just going to like kind of accumulate assets as you
navigate the web. So directly, that's where we're going as a company, and that's where I'm super excited about.
I want to make sure we break this down for the folks who are new to the technology and asset class. So when we talk about rollups. We're talking about layer twos on Etherrem right, like you're arbitrum and all these others, right, yeah, correct, And you guys are helping to bridge all of those together to make it easy for folks to build on on on etherorem or any of those respective rollups.
M yeah, yeah, that's correct. So we have we created like scaling solutions where it's kind of like you have build computers on top of the computer like instead just a theory amount one, you have like optimism arbitrum based, and you have these other like individual scaling networks. The difficulty though, is that now people have to think about all those different computers, arbitron, optimism base, they have different versions of assets, they have like different gas tokens and stuff.
So what we're really focused on in the short term here is making it so that people don't have to think about that. But where that really positions us to like excel in the long term here is taking that one step further and making it so that people don't have to think about chains at all or any of the complexities associated with this.
So let's walk through a mock example. Let's say I want to build some NFTs, right and I want to do it on ETH, but I'm going to go through OMNI what's that process like and is the NFT going to sit on all the respective roll ups?
Yeah, so you as a developer, the really cool thing is you can decide if you want it on all these different rules. You can do that. You don't need to though, but with OMNIME there's like decoupling where you can still source. Like let's say people have to pay one ETH to get one of your NFTs. They can do that on base Optimism arbitrump, even if you're even if your NFT project is only deployed on ethel one. So it kind of like you can do whatever you
want as a developer. You can build your application the way that you want to, but that doesn't force the
complexity onto the users. The users like you can go get the users who have the ethon Optimism, same thing with arbitrump, and they don't need to think about the fact that the application is technically not in that same goal in many ways, like honestly, the best way to think about this is when you go to Google dot com, do you think about the fact that you might have just hit a server that is running in California and I might hit a server that's running in Asia. No,
we like don't think about that. Google dot com is powered by thousands of computers behind the scenes, but we're not forced to think about that like in the weeds technical reality because it's abstracted way. That's where crypto is going in the same way.
I've been thinking a lot about this and you mentioned it earlier, the Web two interface, but Web three technology behind it, and we need that so badly to bring in like the next billion people or hit a billion users because there's a lot of friction and a lot of people scared of the seed phrase items. So I love I love the idea, and I love the mission you guys are want to solve that. So definitely definitely
makes sense. Now, once again, I want to make sure I break this down for people who it's a new concept to them. So, are you guys a layer one blockchain or a layer three blockchain?
That makes sense?
How do you guys feel.
That's the question? Yeah? Which layer is it? Yeah? So it is a chain. It is the way that the omni network runs. Is it is a chain? Is it a chain like the staying network? Though? Are we trying to build up our own DeFi ecosystem on the OMNI chain itself. No, that's not what we're trying to do. Omnie, in many ways, aggregates these other smart contract platforms where these applications are deployed. So in many ways you can think about it as like an orchestration, aggregation layer, whatever
you want to call it. Like, at a literal technical level, yes, it is a chain, but it is not like an all l one It was specifically designed so that people didn't have to think about all l ones. They just like wanted to use an application, they can use the application and they don't have to think about where that application is running. But yes, it is a technically it's an l one chain.
Yes, okay, And then I noticed you guys have a token call Omni. Tell us a bit about the tokenomics around that.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's a pretty unique model because downstream of this fact that we're not trying to build like an all l one ecosystem on our chain, the business model of the network itself. You know, every network has like a you know, a model for like pulling in fees, right, A lot of these are mostly just like what happens
on the chain itself. Omni is unique in the sense that, like, yes, you can transact on Omni's chain itself, and a lot of these like intermediaries that like coordinate activity across these different chains do that. But the additional way that it can accru fees is by passing messages across all these different networks. So it kind of has like an additional line and like opportunity to accreu fees compared to like other chains that are out there on the market.
And then how are you facilitating growth like getting developers to come participate in people to build on on me.
Yeah, honestly, the answer to this one's pretty simple. I've been in space for like seven years at this point, I know a lot of the biggest projects, and so we're kind of just like we kind of have a pretty deep network to any team that we want to work with, like we have an open conversation with them.
We don't really have to market to like pull in developers, because all the teams that are like building the highest leverage projects, like we just know them at this point, and if we don't know them, we're like pretty good at like being nimble and getting in touch with them pretty quickly.
M Yeah. And to your point, the Ethereum ecosystem and network, there's a ton of building happening. I mean you just see enterprise folks like even black Rock right issuing their first token I spun on etherorem There's so much happening, you know, do you do you envision that Etherum will be able to maintain this status as king of the hill when it comes to smart contract blockchains?
Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's a great question. I and I don't know the answer. I think Solana is doing incredible work. But at large, honestly, I think where things are going is people will care less about specific chains. I think they're actually going to become far more attached to like applications large and those applications downstream are just going to use whatever smart contract development platform best fits
their needs. So I think over the long term here economic network effects like liquidity, network effects and stuff will fade away because everything will move so seamlessly across these chains that like those barriers will effectively be broken down. If I had to bet on one horse right now, yeah, it would be Ethereum. But it's honestly very healthy, and I am excited to see that the Salama ecosystem, for example,
has pulled in like so much attention. And then you know, there are also kind of more like dark horses at this point, like XRP. You know, they have captured a ton of the kind of more traditional mind shared there. So there are like these more younger, more creative, like
playful applications being built on Slana and ethereum. But if you go if you're thinking more about these like black rock types, there are these institutions like Ripple that have been around for a very long time and have like deep relationships with all these entities, and I think that is like a huge point of leverage that they have.
You know, it's funny. There's an interesting backstory which I'm sure you know about with Vitallic and Ripple. And Ripple I think back in the day they were working on Codius with the XRP ledger, which I would have enabled smart contracts, but Eating to go that direction, and Eat, you know, obviously boomed with the smart contract technology and the ability to do a lot of great things. So it's fascinating if they had one the folks that Ripple
had went in a different direction. What the world might have looked like in a crypto space.
Yeah, you know, some deep lore man. So, uh, Codius actually, like my first company built the inter Ledger network. Codius was an original idea for like smart contracts, and so Stefan Thomas was one of the like ripples old CTO who was like a mentor of mine in my first company. And yeah, I worked super close with him in my first company.
I interviewed him a couple of times, so it's pretty cool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So they had the idea for Codius and like, okay, if we don't want to bind this tightly to XRP Ledger, we should create some like currency neutral way to pay for smart contracts. And that was Interledger. So that actually was like the network that I built that was like originally designed so that it could power this smart contract platform Codius. But when I built Interledger, we actually ended up tying together like bitcoin
ethereum and the XRP Ledger. So yeah, you know, some deep wre man that's a while back.
Yeah, it's fascinating and you just in hindsight you look at and you're like, wow, I wonder if they went the other way, Well, how things would have changed. But yeah, yeah, it's pretty pretty incredible. And you know, going back to the Solana Ethereum comparison, you know, we're seeing a lot of adoption, maybe more on the retail side for Solana. It's it's quick and it you know, does what it needs to do for retail and meme coins and things
like that. Yeah, but I see a ton of enterprise adoption on Etherorem, which I think the enterprise and you correct me if I'm wrong, they want the security and maybe the pedigree that Etherorem has.
Yeah, and I think it's also anytime you're looking at these more larger like enterprises, takes a long time to get these people moving. And also, above all else, they seek stability. And Solana has done great work. I honestly have immense respect for the engineering work that has been done in Swana. But last cycle it was like a meme that it would break every three weeks, you know, And so if you're black rock, you can't have something
that breaks every three weeks. And I actually don't remember the last time that's Galana like halted as a chain. I think maybe it happened like six months ago, but like I don't know I feel like it was like at least a year before that. But you know, Ethereum, I don't think it has ever halted. I don't think it ever has had like a breeze like that. So yeah, they seek stability above all else, and so that is definitely competitive advantage.
Do you think the theorem move from proof of work to proof of steak was the right strategy and it's a better off now?
That is a Honestly, I would have probably nine months ago I would have been like, obviously, it's great. But in hindsight, I think proof of steak was probably the move for Ethereum. But I do find myself finding like a beauty in bitcoin. I've always loved bitcoin and just the simplicity of like how it works compared to these more complex mechanisms. There is like niceness in the like static nature of bitcoin, and so I think it was the right move for Ethereum. But I do love bitcoin.
I personally, like I buy bitcoin every week. I love bitcoin.
Yeah, you know, it's funny, I have the same sentiment because at first I looked bitcoin and I looked at E and x RP, and I was like, well what does bitcoin do? But then over the years, it became more educated and understand the dynamics of blockchains and understand the beauty, right, yeah, the full circle because it's so decentralized, and they tried to stop it, they try to ban it, and then the miners move and there's something just amazing
about that that you can't kill it. And it's that hard money, right and and that's its major use case, you know, and in line with the Bitcoin white paper and the ethos of why it was created. So I really appreciate now that as I understand how the economy works and the world works and why Bitcoin is the lead horse.
Yeah. Yeah, And it's funny like I built across bitcoin, XRP and ethereum. And you know, obviously when I was like at Ripple, I was doing like far more work, Like I don't know if he even David schwartz By like co authored another procol with him. When I was there, I was like deep in the ripple of ecosystem. Honestly, I like still lot of the like people who are in more like leadership positions there on touch Base pretty regularly.
Like I like the Ripples squat. I think they get a lot of hate and especially from the Ethereum community. So I'm kind of like in between worlds here because I love the ethereum community as well. But then there's like Bitcoin that I leaned away from for a while because I was like, you can't build, like I want to like build and contribute to this, and it's hard
for me to do that on Bitcoin. I like integrated Bitcoin's Lightning network into the Interledger protocol, like I authored like that part of the protocol for example, So I like got pretty deep with Lightning network. This again, this was all back in like twenty seventeen to twenty twenty era. But yeah, I've been across these different communities over time, and it's funny because they all tend to like hate each other sometimes, but I respect them all all for
like quite different reasons. But they all have like some really nice properties to them.
Yeah, and I'm the same way, Like I appreciate the uniqueness of each of these blockchains and what they do. But you know, the human nature element comes in because of value in the tokens, So they fight each other. You think, oh, if you promote this one, it takes it's taking something away or value or something liquidity. I don't know, but it's funny to watch that and I'm self aware to know that, Hey, man, I appreciate bitcoin,
I appreciate you theorem. I appreciate the XRP ledger because I see the pros and cons of each.
Yeah, and it's funny. I like, for a while I posted like very heavy eth research because of the work that Omnie is doing, but like long term where omni is going, And this is kind of why I was saying, like talking more about how you're just going to go to websites and do things, You're not going to think about chains. Like the goal here really is create an abstraction lner for the entire crypto economy so that like you don't have to think about any change. It's not
going to just be roll ups. It'll be like Solana, you know, XRP and stuff like. You'll be able to like use all these different platforms so you won't have to think about So that's like really the way that I'm looking at the world right now. It's just like they all have their purpose. They all have their purpose. Ripple is going to be heads down trying to like land these banks and FinTechs, and I am glad that
they are there driving that Ethereum. You know, they have this like stability that they can offer there, and that's like fantastic. But the Ethereum Foundation is not like out there hunting like cross border payments companies to like build on it. So they're all bringing collectively like value into the on chain comy, which ultimately is what I care about. Just like open permissionless networks for people to engage in commerce with each other. That's really like what matters to me.
Absolutely. You mentioned, you know, the expansion omni. Are you planning to do anything for Bitcoin from a scaling standpoint?
I would love to do something for bitcoin. Yeah, so like, uh, this will be you know, we're exploring allbms right now. There's like some work being done on this with Bitcoin, though it's a bit more difficult because honestly the space is still learning. There a lot of these Bitcoin l twos are just multi SIGs right now. They're not actually like inheriting Bitcoin's properties in many ways, like if any.
There are a couple that I have seen though that do seem more promising, And so if we can get to a point where these are actually like Bitcoin l twos and not multi SIGs branded as like writing the bitcoin wave. I would love to see that. If we can like contribute to a greater bitcoin economy, I'm all for that. That would be super cool to see.
Yeah, for sure. I know a lot of people are trying different things, lightning that work and all these things, so that'd be awesome if we can get some better solutions for bitcoin to scale. We who are some of your investors? I know Pantera Capital is one. Tell us a bit about some of the other folks.
Yeah, I mean there's a range here, so we're pretty intentional about getting a range of investors.
So I'm one end.
You know, Pantera was our lead, and they're like, obviously they were the first to make like an American like bitcoin fund, which they had a hilarious email about they sent it out recently. They're like, cool, the bitcoin fund is officially up a thousand decks, Like we uh men, that's not But they're like the native ogs like have a ton of capital, can like really swing. So there
are leads on the other side of that, though. The second biggest like venture capital holder of the OMNI network is two Sigma Ventures, So two Sigma is like much closer to this like black Rock type where it's like this is like a big institution in the US, Like this is like a massive trading firm that has like a very big traditional footprint, and so we really wanted to like balance that out, like cool, let's get the cryptonatives, but let's also make sure that we have a put
in the door into the like existing traditional financial system. And then totally on the other side of that, like Chris LARTs and the founder of Ripple is on Omnie's cap table as well, because it's like cool, there is like surface area to like work collaboratively here. So yeah, I was pretty intentional in designing like a diversified cap table for Omni so that we have easy ways to kind of like break into these different growth verticals.
And what's on your roadmap as we head into twenty twenty five.
Yeah, twenty twenty five is going to be a fun year. We'll see what happens with the market. I at minimum, it'll be crazy. I can guarantee that. I can't guarantee whether whether it'll be crazy going up or down for like bitcoin the industry at large, but it'll be crazy where we're at from a product perspective, though, so you know,
the main net December seventeenth. I don't know when we're going to drop this but before or after that, but it'll be released on December seventeen, so super excited for that date. Like the core foundation of Vomiting Network will be out there, and like you'll be able to communicate
data across these appearium roll ups. Where we're going though throughout twenty twenty five Q one Q two, we're going to be stepping deeper into this like distraction for just like using apps in the IR your in ecosystem, kind of the first step in this is like you'll be able to use an application that's on ether one even if your funds are on optimism, or like you'll be able to use an app on Arbitrum even if your funds are on base and you won't have to think
about this. So that's kind of like the first step in this like abstraction idea that I'm talking about, and the latter half of point twenty five though, what we're going to be really focused on is obviously leaning further into this abstraction idea, but also expanding surface area. So this is more kind of like the XRP the Bitcoin, the Salona type of like expanding like access to the entire un chain economy so that you can have the similar experience where like it doesn't matter where your money
is held. You can just use apps that are everywhere and it just kind of happens without you needing to think about it at all.
It's exciting. I love it. We're gonna have to have you back on to talk about all those things in person interview.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe we can do it here in the office.
Yeah, that'd be awesome. Great. I want to get your perspective on the markets overall, you know, not necessarily the price predictions, but the growth and the adoption we've seen. We kind of touch a bit on it before, but you've got ETFs being issued by Wall Street firms, tokenization happening by some of these big firms like black Rock. Crypto has become mainstream with politics, and we've got a prop pro crypto president and Congress. It's amazing. What are your thoughts on all these things?
I honestly to answer this, maybe I'll answer it as like my experience as a builder in America, and so I don't think people understood at large how aggressive the US stance was towards crypto builders. So when Tyler and my co founder and I decided to build this company, we had a very serious conversation where it's like, look, we might need to leave America if the US decides it hates crypto to like a certain degree that we just like can't build here. And we're both like fanatically
like we're we're gonna make this like happen. So we were like, cool, if we need to leave America, believe America, that just is what it is. But now, honestly, I feel it, like so deeply because I'm very American, Like I grew up here. I love living in America. I'm honestly so grateful to be an American. I definitely drank like a decent amount of the American like kool aid whatever, but like I am, like genuinely very grateful to be American.
Now that Trump is going to become president, Gary Gensler is stepping down, I feel like I can just like vocalize like, hey, I build as I build in crypto and I work in New York City, like and I can say that without like concerns about like the government like having some opinion like you know, like the government is going to embrace crypto. So that the fact that the US government, the largest economy in the world, is
embracing this technology, is honestly unbelievably bullish. It is. I in all the years of that I've been crypto, never have I seen anything that like exciting for the industry at large. And so this is positive both for the rate of technological development. Things are going to speed up here. It's also positive for the rate of like institutional capital
flowing into it and the real outlier here. This is like I think this is I don't want to say it's like underpriced, but I think it's something that people don't really understand the implications of that If the US starts to accumulate a national strategic reserve of bitcoin, it is going to set off an arms race for the
accumulation of BTC across the entire world. Like if you see the issuer of the reserve currency start to dump their own currency to accumulate some Internet coin, you are obviously going to pick up that internet coin as well, because they're the issuer of the reserve currency, and if they believe they should sell for this coin, you are going to do the same thing. And so obviously that's
like a crazy outcome. And I could have never imagined that when I first got involved in crypto, But here we are, you know, like seven eight years later, it's like wow, like he's talking about it. Some might just like dump some USD for bitcoin, like he might do it. And if that happens, I think structurally the game will change, like in order of magnitude here, like we won't really never go back to where we're at right now. If governments start accumulating bitcoin in a way that's like kicked
off by the US. It is already happening with like El Salvador, Utan. China has a giant bitcoin reserve as well, but if the US starts actively buying bitcoin honestly like not financial advice, but like that's gonna be insane.
Yeah, it's amazing that this dialogue, there's even a bill on the table that this is happening. Yeah, same thing. I wouldn't have believed if you told me even a year ago that this would have definitely a year.
Ago, I'd be like, what do you mean the government hates crypto?
There's no way yea yeah, And then you know, I look at what's happening with the ETFs and Blackrock And you know their accumulation is going to pass to Toshi and and you know Blackrock is putting a lot of their client's money into this thing, and they're accumulating at such a rapid pace it almost seems I don't want to sound conspiratorial, but you know, Blackrock has worked with the government in many ways as the world's wealthy as asset manager, even after two thousand and eight, they push
certain narratives. So if they're all in on bitcoin and you have this bill, it's kind of like the writings on the wall. Maybe it doesn't happen this cycle, but maybe the next cycle, but it's coming, I think.
Yeah, yeah, No. I actually was speaking on something earlier today and they were asking me, like, hey, what was it like building in like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, Like you know a lot of people join in like twenty twenty one era, but like we don't chat as much with people who are around and like actively building at
that time. And the thing is at that time, you know, it was like maybe this does like like it's not locked in that crypto is like going to really succeed but I feel like at this point, it's like like we're locked in like this. The future is going to be crazy. We're going to have these like open financial networks, and you know, there are different paths here. Some are like a path of like greater celeration and adoption than others. But at this point, I feel like it's just like
very clear, like this is not going away. Human society is accepting digital assets and the future is like open permissionless global economy, or like an open permissionless platform for the global economy, which to me is just like beautiful. Like that's why I got involved. Like people deserve to be able to like engage in commerce with whoever they want, Like we deserve that as just like people. We don't need governments or banks to like tell us who we
can work with. So I don't know, I'm loving where we're at right now. I'm super excited where we're going.
Yeah, you know, I've been talking to a lot of people about what the future looks like, and we're only going to get more digital and the generation that's coming up now, in future generations, they're not going to come up in a analog world. It's going to be digital and They're going to transact and dig digital their profiles, their life and so forth. And look there's a maybe a bit of a dystopian aspect to that, but this
is the evolution, I guess, of civilization and blockchains. And I've been telling people who are living in the fourth industrial revolutions blockchain, crypto, AI, robotics and all these different things. It's fascinating.
It's it's wild. And I think one thing that I really did not factor into like growth projections was AI. We now have rich ais. That's what's hit. When I explain my like to my hometown friends, what's one of the cool things happening in crypto right now, I'm like, so people made AI's and they have crypto wallets in their rich now and they tweeted people and and like explaining it that way instead of talking about like agents
and stuff, like they just get like what do you damn? Like, like ais are rich, yes, dude, and they talk to people on Twitter. It's crazy. But I think like AI is going to get to a point where I, you know, you were talking about having a kid, Like I'm excited for like the opportunity to have a kid when like it can have an AI tutor that like will help it like grow and like learn at a faster rate than like we have the opportunity too. So I don't know.
I'm obviously like very much a techno optimist and the super excited for like how technology can like better human lives. But I mean, this stuff is objectively insane. The Internet was an unbelievable thing that we created as a society. But having like native digital assets and AI like things are gonna they just gonna get way weirder, way quicker than they did previously.
Yeah, it's it's like scary, but it's also exciting at the same time because I'm I, like you, I'm passionate about tech and I'm just curious to see how this changes our lives. And you know, I'm an optimist, so I look at it from the positive light. But you know, well, I guess as humans we figure it out. You know, it's ebbs and flows throughout human civilization and the history of it, and you know, sometimes things may go the
wrong direction, but then we course correct. So I'm curious to like you, I'm thinking, like, what can I do with my daughter, she's he's seven now, and with AI and get her started ahead of time. Not to be too immersed, but just get out of the curve because I see the direction we're headed in.
Yeah, totally, I would be thinking the same thing about the kid right now.
I didn't want to ask you about Ripple's stable coin r l u s D and the growing stable point market. Stable coins are one of the killer use cases or apps a blockchain. What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, bullish. I actually let's see if she emailed me back yet. But I don't know if many people. I don't know how public Monica is these days, but Monica is the president of Ripple, and I used to work with her when I emailed her to day, like hey, let's cook on r l USD. Let's let's see if we can expand that throughout the rest of the Ontan economy. But yeah, I mean to me, this is an example of kind of what I was talking about with Ripples
ties to existing like FinTechs, banks, institutions out there. Yeah, I'm really excited for them. They just have the relationships there, like they have been building this company, like I think a lot of people don't know it's been around since like twenty thirteen. It's been around like longer than the Theoereum. You know, it's been a super long time that they've been pushing on this, and they have like offices throughout the world and stuff, and they're like pretty deeply in
bed with the existing financial system. So RLUSD as like a technology. I'm super excited to see them have this like asset that they can drive. For a long time. Even when I worked back at Ripple, I was like, this makes sense to have a stable coin, Like, honestly, I think we should launch a stable coin on top of this, and saying now that they're out a point where it's like cool, this thing is going to happen.
I think there's a ton of synergies with their existing like partnerships and product adoption, but on top of that, and you know this is like this is more of my omni brain thinking, but like there's stuff like omnie that can use to expand our l USB throughout the rest of the yon chain comedy. So yeah, this is something I'm watching like pretty closely, and I'm like chatting with Ripple people about.
Well, awesome, Like I said, we're going to have to do another interview for sure, maybe come Q one or Q two, we'll plant it because I love what you guys are doing, and I mean, your background is incredible and the fact that you worked on inter Ledger and all these things is fascinating. And Bitcoin and now you're building here with the theorem, it's pretty cool. I got some wrap up questions here for you. First is if you could create your own metaverse, what would the thing be?
I think metaverse? I really like what's this called solar punk energy? Know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I like I like sci fi glass, but like water in like overflowing greenery like that that if I could build myself a home, it would be a lot of like hyper modern glass, but then like flowing water and like greenery. So if I can get a world like that, that's uh, that's a that's where I want to go in the metaverse.
Nice rapid fire questions.
Favorite food, Uh, it's tie food. Actually I almost said pizza, though it's definitely tie food.
Favorite musician or band.
Uh, honestly, Boris Brasaw. He's a he's a house artist. I might even be saying his last name wrong, but he's phenomenal. Favorite movie, favorite movie. This one's more kind of a niche one. I don't even think it's like objectively a great movie, but I love it. It's called Mister Nobody. It's it's have you heard this thing?
I haven't, but I'll definitely check it out.
Yeah, it's it's a very trippy movie. It's about a kid who, like you know, his parents get divorced, and you see one version of him go with his dad and one version go with his mom. But his life keeps working, so by the end you see you're seeing like sixty versions of him. I don't know, very trippy movie. I love it. Not that many people know.
With that fascinating Ill to check that out. Favorite book.
I love the Dune series, but actually my uh, this is we're talking crypto. So The Ascent of Money, Uh, that is a book that fundamentally changed the way that I think about what money is in human society, and it really helped me understand like the impact of the systems we're building.
And when you're not working at OMNI, what are you doing for fun?
Honestly, man, I I work a lot, so I don't have a time. I used to surf a lot though, before I moved to New York. Surfing was like, how I would relax, So I'll go with surfing.
Hmm, Austin, I love what you guys are doing. Like I said, we have to have you back on, but thank you so much for joining me.
Yeah. Likewise, man, thank you so much for having me on.