And what I'm hoping is with the new administration, we'll see the Marshall's Service relinquish their role and will allow Treasury to do the thing that they do. And I think that's when we'll start to see things make sense and so to account for it's actually really simple, and this is one of the things we've done with one of the agencies already.
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visit the link in the description. Welcome into the Thinking Crypto Podcast. I'm your host, Tony Edward, and my guest today is Les Boresaid, who's the co founder of Wave Digital Assets. Les. Great to have you on.
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. LUs.
You have a very fascinating background in the music industry and of course in the crypto industry, and I have a lot of questions for you and to get your perspective on how things are progressing now with crypto, especially as the United States is looking to build a bitcoin reserve, digital stockpile, and much more. But let's start with your background, where you're from and what's your professional background.
Yeah, so I grew up in Los Angeles and at a pretty young age I lef home. I left home at sixteen, and I had to figure out how to make a living. And the easiest thing I could come up with at the time when I was a little bit older seventeen or eighteen, was throwing parties, and I would borrow warehouses and kind of put a party together and charge admission and charged for beer even though I
wasn't nearly enough to drink at the time. And you know, that ultimately rolled into being the first incarnation of what the rave culture would become in Los Angeles. And just by doing I ended up becoming a concert promoter, one of the large concert promotion companies, and it did become the rave business. So you know, that's where the music
business career started. And I kind of moved into every facet of it in terms of record companies and artists management and a lot of different tech and music was a big thing for me.
Yeah, and in your background, I read here you managed Winona Judge and Jason Maraz, which is really cool. I'm a fan of Jason. I saw him and play live in person. What was that like, you know, managing.
Artists like that, you know, with Jason, you know, my partner at the time was a guy named Bill Silva, who's a great guy, still friends today. And Bill Bill discovered Jason, and you know, we started a management company. You know that Bill wanted to start and Jason was a unique person and a unique talent, you know, so so far. You know, with most of the artists I've ever worked with, you know, there always seemed to be something missing that drove the art and drove the creativity
and the music. And Jason, you know, he wasn't chasing something. He was just this nice kid, and you know, it was fun kind of exploring, you know, bands he had not discovered and watching him grow. But he was. He was just talent from the beginning, and it just made it. You know. He used to say, all those other bands you manage are coffee, I'm tea, and that That's really
what it was. I mean, it was just a good experience with him where others were you know, I tended to manage the bands that were really really hard.
Yeah, he definitely has a different personality and I think that's what gravitated. I gravitated to him and his music and of course, you know, the vibes from his music and things like that. And I was also learning guitar, so I was kind of stuttying what he was doing. So that's really cool. Now, how did you end up going into crypto because I also read you were an advisor to Ripple Labs in early.
Days will Am. So that happened in twenty thirteen. You know, like with anything, I always tended to gravitate towards things that made, you know, that I had an interest for and that I was curious about. And you know, with music,
it became about tech and music the deeper. I got into launching products that you know might have used artist content or artist licensing, and you know, blended these concepts of you know, new technology, like when apps were launching the iPhone store and you know, different ways to digest music. And you know, crypto, you know, was a thing where I was like, oh, geez, bitcoin six hundred dollars, how did I miss that? And I really like had this this goal to go find the next bitcoin, and you
know when I ended up finding was XRP. First, someone had built a wallet called peer cover and introduced me to Ripple an XRP, and at that time it was
just a small company. Brad wasn't even there, Chris Larsen was, and I think somehow I convinced him I would be a good addition as an advisor and and you know, later on, you know, I did some things with them, So I feel like I finally did provide some value because I always felt like I wasn't providing any But at the same time, I ended up figuring out how to do the theory and presale, So downloading the Jason wallet and not really knowing a lot about technology and
especially you know, blockchain at that time. That was twenty fourteen. I you know, you just it was different. You know, you could get into those Reddit communities, you could see, you know, what coins were coming pre twenty seventeen Ico times, and you know, I was just really again just curious about what these things were, and I understood them inherently because I was always kind of a fan of those early cipherpunks, you know, and that culture. So that's that's that happened.
Yeah, to your point of league, the cipherpunks era, maybe the web what you would call web one point oh, crypto one point oh, right, the early days, like the dial up days. It was like I get a bit sentimental about Web one point oh because I was doing stuff on you trying to take computers apart, and I kind of missed that early days. I kind of like what you're feeling.
It was, you know, look the old BBS's and you know, you know, the phone freaking and all that. You know, like people don't remember if you're old enough, you know, you remember, Oh you can get a free phone call by messing with the landline, and you know that was a big deal. And but you looked at like kind of that hack or culture, and it was apparent to
me that I could never be a coder. But I fell in love kind of with the culture of those early guys, you know, like David Chalmer, you know, just all those I mean, it's funny people don't realize Elon was one of those guys way back when, and you know, Julian Assam all those guys you know, were part of that culture and before that. And yeah, I just kind
of was really enamored with it. And I think it just really fit my ethos of you know, disruption and you know, not following this ordinary line that most people follow. And I think crypto offered a lot of that same kind of solution in a strange way.
So, man, you less you're an og because I mean an advisor to Ripple got into the Ethereum pre sale, right, and then tell us a bit more about your crypto journey from there, Oh, how did that evolve?
Well, I think, you know, with the music business for a long time, I realized it was complex and it wasn't a business in a lot of ways, and you were really fighting for scraps and you were fighting for your artists, and the resource was just never there when
tech emerged. I remember I talked about this before, but you know, south By Southwest was a really big deal for musicians, and there was a moment in time where south By Southwest became interactive and I always loved the dichotomy of that because the musician portion was really pretty bare bones, but when you got to the interactive portion.
This is in the early days, it was blown out like this spent so much money because tech, you know, was a force, and it was kind of like in that moment you realized, okay, I know where all this is going. And getting out of music was was important for me because you know, after a long period of time, you know it's not just a business. It's something where
you're connected to people in a personal way. And if you spend too much time kind of in that space, you realize a couple of things that you know, if you want to work harder than the artist, it's very difficult to find success, and you know, sadly that was the case with some of the artists that I worked with. So I wanted to get out and I was fortunate because I had a friend, David Seemer, who was in finance. He was one of the early guys to build venture
up in Southeast Asia. He was an m and a banker, and you know, when the two of us kind of figured out that we wanted to do Wave, it just made a lot of sense because we had such different skill sets. He was, you know, conservative, he understood the numbers really well, he understood the products, he understood finance, and I just sometimes had a different way of thinking. So when you put those two elements together, you can
really do some magical things. Ben, our third partner, you know, came from traditional finance and it really kind of rounded everything out. Now the market didn't. So there's a long story of you know how we kind of survived during those times because to your point, we were really really early, staying incredibly regulatory compliance the whole time.
So tell us a bit about Wave Digital assets and the work you guys are doing. What's your mission?
Well, I mean when we started the company, you know, the mission was was pretty clear. You know Dave, you know, his background was investment, so we were investing in lots of different kinds of blockchain companies at that time. But the thing we really kind of moved into was treasury management for high net worths and protocols. We never did anything that touched retail. We just didn't think it was the right path to take, and for us, it wasn't.
We were immediately in oria with the state of California, and then when we had enough, aum you know, adhere to the sec and we also created products. You know, we were very early doing you know, structuring of traditional
finance products that other people weren't doing. I mean, we've always tended to do the thing that was a little bit more complicated, a little harder, and I don't know if that's just because we wanted to challenge, but you know, we saw ETF's coming and we said, wow, everyone's going to do those. You know, you're going to see the Vanguard ones or the Fidelity ones or whatever. So why don't we do something more complicated and token is whiskey
barrel or you know, create a bitcoin option product. And you know that's how the business really really evolved over time. You know, those were kind of that was the core business, and then it changed over time because we changed with the market. And I mean it's an important thing to realize that in twenty twenty one where everything imploded because we were conservative, we didn't believe the returns that a lot of these promises, you know, that were being made
through FTX and others. Dave, to his credit, created really great risk mitigation and we didn't get blown up by any of it.
That's great. I mean, you guys survived those cycles because it was pretty rough in twenty twenty one to say the least. Obviously, going into twenty twenty two, what are your thoughts on how things have changed? I mean, obviously the industry has gone through an incredible maturation. Wall Streets here,
Tradswise here right, all the names, black Rock, Fidelity. Just this week, Bank of America's CEOs as we want to launch a stable coin cityel Security say they want to get involved and provide market making capabilities and so forth. What are your thoughts on how things have changed?
Well, I mean, I think it's the thing we've always been waiting for, because you know, when we set up the company, it was always meant to be something that touched traditional finance. You know, this administration in particular, having been in digital currencies as long as I have, it's really pretty amazing to see in a matter of months
embracing you know, digital currencies changed everything. I mean you may not think that today because of where the market is, but you know, we've seen a lot of fluctuation in the market over a decade. But what has changed is, you know, with the former regime and Gary Gensler kind of cracking down so hard. I was always incredibly concerned about innovation being driven out of the country, and that's
exactly what happened. I mean, even with us, we were incredibly quiet about what we were working on and how we were working on it because we just didn't want to be a target. So you know, by being quiet, it really benefited us. Now you see with this administration, innovation staying here. You know a lot of opportunity opening up, and that's really what you want. You know, you come from tech. You know, if you embrace you know, a technology in the Silicon Valley or elsewhere, then a lot
of people will dive into it. And I mean, look, what's happened with AI. I mean, it's incredible technology, but now it's a staple, and digital currencies should be the same thing, you know, just based on all of the different verticals you can have with them.
Yeah, for sure. And then you mentioned you guys were more institutional and focus versus retail. So what type of institutions were you working with, like family offices, hedge funds, things like that.
I could say we were more focused there, but I didn't say it was successful, you know, sadly. You know where we had a lot of success was managing protocol treasuries and it's because we did take a regulatory approach. You know, they didn't want as an issuer in many cases, they didn't want to manage their own treasuries, so we could do that. We you know, DeFi as a big focus of Dave's so we could generate returns in a way others couldn't. And it was better than sitting, you know,
on these treasuries and not doing anything. So you know, today we manage a lot of those treasuries from the different kind of Layer one protocols. For me, it was again a next step in understanding of what I'd want to do with government and you know, before government bankruptcies, which is a whole other, big, chunky part of the story. But what happened in twenty one that really opened my eyes is, you know, we wanted to go bid on
this company called Voyager that had went bankrupt. Yeah, and you know, we lost to FTX, and I thought, jeez,
how that happened? And that FTX imploded and we bid again and we lost to Binance and this was Finance USA, and I'm just like Jesus, you know, we saw the writing on the wall, so you know, it imploded again, and I just really thought to myself, it's interesting that the states are you know, doing okay, but it's the receivers and the lawyers and everyone else that was, you know, extracting a lot of value because the more you did the process, you know, the more everyone kind of got paid.
So I got really frustrated after that. And with a Voyager, we went back a third time and we wanted to buy the bankrupt assets only, meaning the alt coins, and that's what we did. So we bought them outright at a discount. And you know, we had already been pretty good at understanding alts and liquidating and learning, you know, a lot of the nuanced detail because there's so many alts, So it really, you know, became our one of our superpowers for a minute to do these bankruptcies, and we
did them all. We did everything from FTX to prime trust. So bringing in back full circle while the market imploded, you know, we found a way to kind of go the other way. That's really where a lot of my government thinking came from. All the bankruptcies weren't government. There were a lot of aspects to the court system and how you dealt with it, and how you dealt with alternative currencies that could be applied to you know, the direction we were headed with government.
So how are you guys custoding the assets that you hold? Are using a third party custodian? Do you have your own customer services?
So as I read sent Investment Advisor, we have to use qualified custodian, although because you know we have some venture exceptions, we could self custody, but that's not our business. There are plenty of qualified custodians who've built up good secure systems that we use. When we did the RFI and the RFP to win the business of the US Marshals Service, we had we actually partnered with several companies and one of them was a qualified custodian uh TO, and that was a big kind of part of the
approach we took with the Marshals. There's so many so to be clear, it's complicated. Coinbase one what they call Class one, which is under protests now, but those are for kind of bitcoin and the big coins. And then there was Class two through four, which were all the alternative currencies. So what we were competing for was not what Coinbase was competing for. We were competing for the alternative currencies in Class two to four. The other difference is Class one had to be a large business or
Class two to four could be a small business. And if you go back and look at the dysfunction of the Marshal since twenty nineteen, you'll see that there were companies like Anchorage that won it and then lost it because of a small business exclusion because it turned into a large business. It's just such an archaic, ridiculous process, you know, when we get started going down that rabbit hole.
Yeah, that's it's wild. So you guys worked with the US Marshals. Have you been advising the different ways?
No, so here's you know, kind of what happened. So I decided I wanted to work on government, and government for me, you know, was more than just the US. It was you know, there's an international component to it. Then there was the federal component, and then there was a state level, and then there was kind of a local level. And so we did we did a handful
of things. I've spent a lot of time meeting with, you know, some attorney generals at the state level, and because of that, we were able to get some contracts to educate different states. So that was like cryptocurriculum that we could build out because there was really not a baseline understanding. And you know, if I care about this industry, the first thing I want to do is make sure everyone has a good understanding of what this industry is about,
what these assets are about, because they're complex. So we built an education curriculum and literally give it away, like I have no desire to earn money off of that. And we were fortunate, we know, did educate some government agencies as well. So I was already into government for about two and a half years before all of this happened with the new administration, you know, and The second part is we did some software licensing and kind of
redeveloping to help with the accounting of digital currencies. So that was the second thing that we did. And then really, you know, the ultimate goal from a you know, I'm not some charity. You know, I do want to make money, but that's where you know, as a registered investment advisor, we have the opportunity to do so. You know, so as we get into the reserve conversation, you know, I can explain that a little bit more. But you know,
where the US Marshall is concerned. They've been putting out this RFP to have someone handle cryptocurrency since twenty nineteen. The way it started was who's going to custody it? Who's going to track and trace it? And they never really thought about the management of these assets. And you know, if you have to follow a regulatory process to manage these assets, there's a good argument that you should probably be licensed to do so and have an idea of
what these assets are. And you know, they really hadn't thought about it that way. No one has. I recently spoke at the United Nations in front of Europe poll in Austria and it was the same thing. It was. There were a lot of law enforcement folks there. There were a lot of people that understood how to track it or hold it, I mean track and trace and you know, custody have been around since twenty thirteen, but
there was no one to manage it. And think about it from a financial perspective of you know, if you have these assets, can they generate returns for the federal government, for instance? And those are the things that the government does with traditional finance companies every day, So why shouldn't they do it with digital currency?
Absolutely? And you know, with that in mind, Just this past week there was a report from coined as that the US Marshall Service they don't know how much of biitcoin to actually hold, and they were saying this could be a roadblock in the United States getting a bitcoin strategic reserving place because it would be two part holding the existing assets they have reserve, but also buying. What are your thoughts on that report?
Yeah, so I was in that article, and you know, again, it's not because I have any competitive advantage here, it's just been I've been doing it longer. The part of that article that's incredibly true is they don't actually know how much they hold because there's complexities and value, so you know, you have to ask yourself, are they checking So let's be clear, you know they know how much
bitcoin they kind of have. But if you look at the way the US Marshal Service works, and we're talking about seizures right now, criminal seizures, well, criminal seizures that kick up to the US Marshal Service come from Secret Service, Homeland Security, and IRS Criminal Investigation Unit, and the IRS Criminal Investigation Unit is probably the biggest percentage of what seizures are today in the federal government. Silk Road is part of that. And you know, then you have another side.
You have the FBI and at F and DA. You know, a lot of that kicks up to DJ. The DJ has a relationship with the Marshall Service. So okay, so now you have five or six seven agencies that are all doing seizures. So you also have pre forfeiture post forfeiture, so that the Marshal was tasked with making the decision on liquidation and who's going to manage the process, so they have no one in place to manage the process.
So with the way they do things, because you have all these agencies sending their assets to the Marshal Service, Well, how are they going to account for it all? Because we're not even counting the states. The states also do federal seizures. So again through those agencies, they do these seizures, they send them to the US Marshal in some cases, some cases elsewhere. And you know, there's something called equitable sharing that happens with the states, meaning on a federal case,
they're doing splits with federal government. Those splits are different per case. Do you see how it gets complex when you're trying to figure out, well, what am I holding? When certain states don't even know if the wallets are empty or not empty. They'll go into court and say, I need to get a seizure order, or you know, I need to freeze these assets. I'll freeze them in court, and they think that that might have froze them, which
it of course did not. It's digital currency. And so when you have all of these different things that take place, and then it's landing, you know, at an understaffed agency that doesn't understand money in the first place. The true answer is that it needs to be moved to Treasury, and Treasury they have an agency and Treasury called t OFF Treasury Executive Office Asset Forfeiture, and that agency has an MoU with the US Marshal Service to allow the
Marshal Service to do this. And what I'm hoping is with the new administration, we'll see the Marshals Service relinquish their role and allow Treasury to do the thing that they do. And I think that's when we'll start to see things make sense. And so to account for it's actually really simple, and this is one of the things we've done with one of the agencies already. And again we're not charging for it because I don't necessarily care
about making money off creating a foundation. But if you are actually tracking the criminal cases with what they're seizing, you'll be able to account for it because you can put all those splits in and it's not that complicated to say, you know, these are the fees that they're taking, this is what the value is, and you know, you get into a whole other thing, which is thoughtful liquidation. So this administration doesn't want to liquidate. They want to
create a reserve. And that's great, But what was happening was, you know, the Marshall Service was just sending you know, these assets out to liquidate them and really not asking anyone's permission. One thing that so we're in a protest with Marshall right now over this, and there's a protest and Class one of a coinbase, and the one thing that's happened is those protests have actually frozen the assets.
And I know this president doesn't want these assets to be liquidated, So good news they're not being liquidated at the moment. While some of this can be figured out, if.
You were advising a Trump administration on setting up this bigcoin reserve or digital stockpile, as it relates to security and custody, what would you tell them, like which custodians should they use? Or should they split their funds up or the treasury specifically, like or should I use I don't know, bny mellon which may be launch crypto custody soon.
I mean, look, there's a lot of great custodians obviously, you know coin based can custody, you know the assets that they hold. But the problem is with Class two through four, they don't hold all those assets. There's many, many, many other assets. And you know, when you start to
get into liquidations of complex assets, there's nuance. One of the nuances that exists is you know an issue or may actually want that inventory back where there's no lookquidity on a coin that isn't that successful, but you can actually extract value. Another thing that's happened in the past, and this is terrible, but the US liquidated bitcoin at the same time that Germany did and they tank the
market about sixteen percent. And you know that is just basic communication and actually having a liquidation plan instead of just doing it all and not being thoughtful about how much your liquidation. You know how much you're going to liquidate and what the impact in the market's going to be. So those are just really simple, basic things that is a dumb record guy you know, could figure out. And again that's why the education part of this is so important,
because you know to not have structures in place. So I guess what I'm saying is there's lots of great custodians. That's not going to be an issue to hold it secure. What is more of an issue is how you're going to ultimately handle it. Because the mistake doesn't necessarily happen with what's being held. It usually happens with what's being moved.
With that in mind, and all the things we just discussed and some of the complication.
I'm sorry that was a lot.
Sorry, no, no, no, no, that's great because I think it's a good segue into will a bigcoin reserve get a proof this year? Because you know, we got to go through all the details and dot our eyes and cross our t's. It's not just simply sign a bill, but can you executing right around? Don't it doesn't seem that way.
Well it does, and I'll tell you why. So there's two ways that the president on the federal side can do a bitcoin reserve. He can buy it, or he can take what has been forfeited and he can hold it. So buying it's more complicated. That's going to require, you know, all sorts of different kinds of approvals, you know, whether that's congressional or not. But taking seized assets that are
forfeitted you have more kind of unilateral control. So solving that problem with the amount that they're holding is a really good start, you know, And I actually do know the amounts because I went to the individual agencies to
figure out what those were. And you know, when we mix in the state element, the states you know, there's twenty states right now that are doing legislation for either still reserve or a bitcoin reserve, and I actually have a pretty good solution of how that can accelerate versus you know, the companies out there that are going to buy for the business or talking to the treasury of
each state. So what we have is something that's a little bit disjointed right now in terms of all of the different states that have legislation, the products that they're going to try to put through. How are they going to try to do it? And you know, it's the same thing. You know, those states have mechanisms where they can buy assets, or they have mechanisms where they can
make a unilateral decision on forfeited assets. And the stuff that's really interesting to me is, well, what about pre forfeiture. Why not generate returns on that? Because they do that with FIAT, They'll put FIAT into t bolls, generate a return, and allow that return to go back to good causes and the agency or the state. And you know, with crypto being kind of so much more robust in terms of what return profiles look like, you can do all the same stuff.
Do you think I think I heard I can't remember it was Jersey City in New Jersey, but they had mentioned possibly buying through the ETFs route. Do you think that's a possibility for some of these states or it makes sense for them to actually hold go buy the actual asset versus the ETF wrapper.
Well, I mean, look, a lot of these states already have relationships with you know, whether it's through their pensions or other kind of vehicles that they have that they've been doing that for a long time. So they already work with black Rock and those folks, so you know that's what they understand. So no, I don't think it's it's beyond our imagination to think that they're going to
take an easier route as it relates now. The thing that is more interesting though, is in the executive order that President Trump put out, he didn't say bitcoin reserve. It was a digital currency reserve, right, And I think you know, Boha, who's incredible, if you don't know him, had a lot to do with that. People don't realize that he has been around digital currency for a pretty
long time. He's a very ambitious guy that really you know, I met him long before he got this appointment, and I was fortunate to meet him, and I was always amazed because he was like such a young guy that he cared about, you know, the overreach of the government at the time that innovation was being squeezed out of this country over digital currency and I was just like, dude,
twenty five, that's not what I was thinking about. And you know, so a lot of people, you know, don't know who he is, but I think you know, his fingerprints on it. Being a digital reserve versus a bitcoin reserve is really telling. So if it's a digital currency reserve, it gets a lot more complicated.
Now with the buying, right, I can't imagine the US government's going to buy let's say that the legislation gets put into place, they're going to buy it top of the market. I'm assuming they would look to buy.
I don't know why they did. Why they buy. They hold twenty billion dollars in crypto today.
Oh so let's say, but beyond bitcoin, let's say ethereum or other stuff, right.
Yeah, I mean, look, you got to remember too, there's there's lots of different pools of capital in government, so you know, and there's lots of different kinds of strategies you have to remember though, with government, they're not that concerned about the upside. What they're concerned about is the downside, you know, depending upon how they're going to approach this. And you know, I don't know the history of Fort
Knox and the Gold Reserve very well. You know, I don't know how all of that, whatever is left was accumulated. But the way government works is they take mechanisms that they understand and they redeploy them. And that's a good way to look at this. This is just another asset class, the same you know, selling real estate or or you know boats, you know from seizures. This is just another asset class. So what they'll do is what they know
how to do. And you know they have enough kind of people around them, and David Sachs and and you know Treasury has brought someone in. You know, you see all of these different agencies gearing up with professionals that are pro crypto, and that'll have an impact.
Yeah, for sure, it's amazing. I still have to pinch myself that we have a pro crypto president, the most pro crypto Congress, Like you said, Secretary Treasury Scott Persent, White House, cryptos are on and on and on. It's incredible. It seems like everybody recognizes that blockchain is the future. Yes, we talked about bitcoin and the assets that run on them, but it's the blockchain infrastructure and we're going to be
in a multichain world. They're launching stable coins, you're gonna put well, the US dollars already on the blockchain, but they want to make it more prominent because that could help in the US dollar reserve currency status maintaining that status. What are your thoughts on the boom of the stable coin market and you know, legislation possibly coming this year.
I mean, again, all of it was well, I won't say it was expected. I think we just hoped for it. And you know, if you take a look at you know, the stable coin, I mean, it's just a natural thing to think about, and you know, how it all comes together and how it all plays together is really the part that fascinates me. Because you're also seeing that at the state level, you know, So the fascinating part is you know, where's it going to be approved of the
state level. I mean, stable coin is greater than any single state, So you know, I've been much much more focused kind of on the operational process of how all this is going to happen. And I think that's a little bit of a different because, you know, coming from a business like the music business that had so much chaos and you had to make sense of it, this is, you know, my bread and butter. I love how broken everything is because with a pro crypto administration you're now
able to hopefully figure out solution. And there's just so much opportunity out there that people, you know, aren't thinking about. And I don't know that there's there's lots of companies yet that are seeing these new opportunities because look, we're talking about stable coin, you know, legislation, we're talking about criminal seizures. You know, we haven't even really moved into
civil seizures yet. And the assets, the digital assets that are going to be seized from you know, non payment of taxes and things like that, and you know, how how's that going to play into what the government holds.
And then you have global perspective on all of this, and not just competitive nature globally, you know, bring innovation back, but you know you have these huge seizures all over the world too that need to be dealt with, and the more it's dealt with, the more important those currencies will become.
You know, you mentioned in music industry. I want to get your thoughts on how you think Web three blockchain tech can help improve things and maybe give some power back to the artists where they can control more of the rights, get more rev share all those things, because a lot there's a lot of streaming online and with blockchain tech you can do micro payments and maybe these artists are launching through a platform that's blockchain enabled and
there's more transparency, accuracy, and more visibility for everybody on what's happening.
You know, in theory, all of that sounds wonderful and is, and there's been plenty of you know, let's just say, there's been plenty of people over you know, throughout the years, going back to things like top Spin that Rogers had done. You know that that created better solutions for artists, and every single one of them failed other than the streaming services. And you can argue that the economics of the streaming
services don't serve the streaming services. And when there isn't you know, an even kind of opportunity for economics with technology being built, then you know that that imbalance creates
lots of problems. So the gatekeepers of copyrights are still you know, publishers or you see all these big publishing catalog sales you know for licensing, and you know the labels still have a lot of ownership, and you know the problem is is if the artist doesn't own it, then then what you know, you're still going to all these third parties that are writers on compositions that you require approvals from to do a lot of this. So if you can't get the approvals, then how are you
going to deploy a technology. If the technology you're deploying isn't going to the person that cares about it, the artist, it's going to someone who owns those assets, that it may not be in their best interest to be transparent, It may not be their best interest to find a way to look I mean, I'm not saying that those folks don't want to make more money for the artists. Of course they do as long as they can make more money. And anything that is worth it takes investment,
time and innovation and commitment. And sadly, you know, if an artist doesn't own what, they're going out there to try to innovate on they may not have the passion to do it. And by the way, only you know, when we looked at the launch of Title for instance, remember all the artists coming together. Yeah, well, I mean, okay, I ended up being another streaming service with higher resolution files. You know, I love using Title, but that's because I love music and at a higher rate of you know,
kind of with the audio that I listened to. But you know, when we look at the broader scope, you really we back up the thing that Steve Jobs did that people don't give him enough credit for it. That was so amazing is he brought the labels and publishers together to launch you know, an iPod, and without that it doesn't work. So it's not that they wouldn't adopt great new technology with digital currencies or blockchain or you know, using treasury, you know, from a crypto launch to redeploy
you know, in a democratized fashion to artists. That'd be great. But who's the guy that's going to put all these people in a room that are the major copyright holders and artist owners to say, let's do this collectively. You know, even when you license out a simple composition that multiple publisher zone, there's problems with the splits. You know, you have this thing called most favored nations. Everyone wants the
same amount. So you really see a business that follows templates that have been in place for a long time versus innovation and kind of out of the box thinking. I mean, what's the last innovation we've seen from a record company?
I can't think, right, yea, So there was.
A time where the record companies did vertical integration and they were the technology, They were the artists, they were the recording, and they were the distribution. We don't see that today. We see third party companies building technology and we really haven't seen much since the streaming services and that changed a lot. But you know, where's innovations and music?
Do you think though? Like? And I just think of it myself as a creator right where I create this content, I'm interviewing you, I own it. I'm not going through anyone.
I'm just publishing on a platform that I can monetize the sponsors and things like that that twenty years from now when the web monetization model has changed and kind of like what the Brave browser is doing, right, you're getting rewarded with a token for your activity, kind of flipping the model on its head that I'm a new artist because we're in a social environment and more digital environment, I don't need to go through a label or anyone,
not saying that they shouldn't, but just it's just the way the things are. Because of the disruption of the technology. I can publish directly the streams and everything. All the tokens go back to me. I own the IP and all that, and then I can sell NFTs and other things or whatever it is that give you access special access NFTs with utility, and I can earn that way like I'm talking twenty thirty years from now.
No, there's no question. But again, you know there is going to be power in the company that allows you to do that. And what we see is you know, you know for what you do, you look your unique voice, you don't have co writers, you don't have you know, lots of different investors in what you do. So as an individual, sure you can go do all of that and really monetize. But the thing that makes music so
great is catalog. And if I sit for a day and listen to music, I can listen the whole day and not get through everything I want to listen to. You don't have that scale with individual creators, you know, doing these models because the ownership of most of that catalog that I've listened to is owned by someone else. It's not just indie artist. And that's where it gets problematic because you need to have the scale for it
to be successful. And yeah, I mean there's lots of technology throughout the years that really were focused on the community of indie artists that owned all their rights, but you didn't get the stuff you wanted to listen to. That's what made it so hard because it wasn't connected to it.
Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, the catalog aspect, it's interesting. I'm fascinating to see how these industries get disrupted with this technology and what happens. And oftentimes, you know, like we have ideas of what it may look like, but it just depends what the consumer wants, right and what they gravitate to.
Well, and the consumer continues to listen to catalog, you know, because consumer feels nostalgic. So as long as that catalog and ongoing catalog is owned by someone else, it again becomes incredibly problematic. I mean, I mean, music is one of the only mediums. I can think of where an actual song has split ownership based on you know, what that master recording is and what that underlying copyright is, and you take that a step further, and that underlying
copyright split many times. You know, when we look at a lot of the hip hop that's come out, or you know, there's so many writers that all on a piece of a song, So to get everyone kind of on the same page at a level of scale becomes incredibly difficult. So you know what has to happen is the innovation has to be brought in house. You know, I did this article and Spin, so I write for magazines once in a while, I guess if you can
call it a magazine anymore. And you know, when AI came out, I was really fascinated with this idea that an artist should write with himself, meaning create an AI version of himself that can be an ongoing writer, because this artist that's still alive will have trained that AI model.
A ghost writer, right.
And what I really loved about that concept was the rights afterwards. Who owns it? You know, is his version once he's passed, you know, is it the AI that owns it? What's the publishing going to look like, how's those fights going to happen? You know, and you can really kind of go down interesting rabbit holes, you know, as that emerges, because it'll change legacy in the way things are written if the writing process is literally adopted from the actual artist.
I know we're coming up on time, so I want to get your thoughts also on crypto legislation. Do you think crypto legislation makes it through this year? And you know, are we about to see a boom economic boom around crypto and blockchain with all these things in line?
I hope so, and I hope so. You know, as someone that cared about regulatory process from day one, all we ever really asked for was more of it, so we knew what lines looked like. But government's slow, not this administration. This administration's fast. But you know, it really is going to depend on the fights that take place, and hopefully there's not a lot of them to see you know, what gets past and kind of what doesn't
get past. So if we continue to see kind of you know, this real kind of embracing of digital currencies at the government and kind of traditional finance level. No, I mean, there's a bright future ahead. You know, you can talk to Michael Saylor about that and he'll say, yeah, there's a bright future ahead for bitcoin, which I understand, you know what his sentiment is. But I really like the idea of alternative currencies and what they represent and
how they can change future businesses and economies. And I think the music business ultimately will be changed when they figure out how to use those treasuries in an appropriate way and they're able to share more. So that's going to be a really interesting time.
You mentioned the alternative currencies. You know, there's a race now for all coin et aps, XRP, Salona, light Coin, dochecoin, h bar, there's a lot of Apple filings with the SEC moving so fast, dropping tons of crypto cases, they dropped coin based Robinhood, all these things. Do you think we get more all coin ETFs this year?
Oh? Yeah, for sure, you know, and it's because you know, the black Rock bitcoin ETF was one of the fastest ETFs in history, if not the fastest, you know, for Blackrock. So what they're what's going to happen is there's going to be this kind of real need for innovative different differentiation and products. So you have it from both sides.
You have the issuers and layer ones that you know, have issued these tokens that want it because again it gives them more credibility and a wider audience to distribute to. And you know, you have the distributors that need more product. So these things are all global and it becomes really really, uh pretty interesting how how this plays out. We we, I think put an E t P. I think it was a Cardano E t P on the Vienna Stock Exchange. Now at the time that we did it, you couldn't
really do it anywhere else. The world's going to change and we're going to see you know, other outlets that we can create these interesting projects for and put them out and that's going to be fun.
Wow, that's pretty cool that you guys were able to get that Cardano et F. Oh, that's that's amazing.
And E T Y.
Remind me because I know the terminology is a bit different outside US, right, A lot of people call it et F here, but outside it's et P, right.
You know, it's so funny what it's an electronic traded fund versus you know, I think an electronic traded Yeah, probably product, but we'll have to ask Dave that question. That's his that's his baby. You can talk to me about music all day long. You know, E T E t F versus E t P. But it's probably product now now now I want to like grab chat GPT
and and look, I don't remember what it is. All I know is it's pretty much the same thing in a different format on you know, uh, the stock exchange for sure.
What are your thoughts on meme coins? Obviously, dosee coin, sheiba, some of these meme coins that have been established for a long time, have a community, have developers, right, no problem with that, but we've seen kind of the abuse of the meme coin system. I can launch a meme coin right now unless and I can rug somebody we got I feel we've got to put a stop to that. What are your thoughts on that and how it's got out of control?
Yeah, I mean, look, I think it's a it's an exchange traded product. Is what an ETP is? By the way, Oh yeah, just just close that topic out. Look, I mean, the meme coins are funny, you know, they're not securities. There's no intrinsic value to them. They're essentially just collectibles that you throw out there without any promise of anything. I always kind of say the same thing. The people that tend to get hurt and rugged are you know, I'm not saying this is the rule, but you know,
it's funny. The meme cooin culture is so different than other product launches because the people that are investing in these things, they understand the liquidity, they understand the percentages, you know, and where those percentages are going. They can see a rug really quickly. The fact that you take a look at at the libri coin and what number in terms of the market cap it went to and
how quick it went there. You know, I think people just have to be really really careful about what they're investing in and understand and the context of it and who's behind it. And you know, in every industry we've ever had or you know, seen e merge, there's scams, there's bad actors, there's criminals, and you know, I don't know that that meme coins are you know, uninteresting. I
think they're kind of interesting. And I think the underlying dynamics behind DEXes that list them, like Mediora and you know, radium and pumped up fun I think those are really again, interesting innovative businesses that have merge, you know, in the decentralized aspect of it is also interesting. So you know, it's terrible that people are getting hurt and there's bad people out there and there's confusion. But at the same time, you know, it's not that different than twenty seventeen when
we saw the icos. A lot of people made a lot of money and a lot of people got hurt. And that's not good that people are getting hurt by any stretch of the imagination. But you know, I think you just see that where there's opportunity and lots of money, you're going to see people get hurt.
It's a great point. I was actually talking to someone earlier that this is this generation's penny stocks the boiler room guys. Right, it happened in the stock market. It's just it is what it is. Bad actors coming in every asset class in industry.
You remember, like when the Internet launched, you had all of these domain squatters. Yeah, and they were making fortunes stealing you know, big domains and selling them back. I mean it was like a form of like electronic blackmail. And you know, you're just always going to see it when when there's new businesses that you know are emerging, and it's really unfortunate. But I don't think you can kind of stay hard and fast, you know. I have lost money and lots of scams, not lots, you know,
a handful over the years. I've been pretty careful, you know, but there's been the occasional email I've clicked on where I'm like, shit, they've just dumped that NFT and there's no getting it back, and an email that looked perfect, you know, and it's like, oh, Okay, I'm gonna be twice as careful next time. And I mean that's that sophisticated a lot of these scams have gotten.
Yeah, I think we're just educating people is a big part of it. So hopefully the industry can start ramping up on that front. In regards to meme coins. All right, last, I know we're really up on time, But so I got some wrap up questions here for you. First, if you could create your own metaverse, what would the theme be?
Oh, I mean I think I'd probably incorporate AI into it. You know, I think I have an easier time with you know, technology and machines than I do with people, So it would probably be surrounding myself, you know, with companionship through AI and my metaverse and a lot of alone time.
Would you be like the first us in the order at Tesla Loot?
Yeah, you know, I don't know. Maybe so yeah, I had a couple of Tesla's and I kind of shifted gears on Tesla's. But I can't keep thinking about you know that I'm old. So there's this television series called The Twilight Zone, and I keep thinking about the one guy who ends up in the world by himself with all of the books and he breaks his glasses, and I'm thinking that's kind of my metaverse probably with the world.
Yeah, I love the Twilight Zone. I shouldn't have probably been watching some of them when I was younger, but great, great show, rapid Fire questions.
Favorite food, oh boy, favorite food that is so tough kids meals? I you know, like little hamburgers or spaghetti and meatballs.
Favorite musician or Bend.
I really like a lot of the British stuff at the jam is someone that you know, Paul Weller's kind of prolific songwriting. I'm also really kind of inspired by some early blues lately. There's a guy named Brownie McGee that influenced Bob Dylan that I like a lot. They used to play with the guy named Sunny Terry, so a lot of kind of yeah blues and funny enough. The Jam kind of was influenced by that.
Nice for every movie.
I like The Usual Suspects a lot. They had this really evil Hungarian character, and because I'm Hungarian, I think I kind of relate to it.
Nice book.
That's tough. You know, if we're talking you know, universe and spiritual, it's probably Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. If we're talking about nihilism, it's probably Choke or Fight Club by Chuck Plaanyac.
And then when you're not working at Wave, what are you doing for fun? As a.
You know, it's not like specific. Usually it's usually I get focused on something and that's the hobby, whatever it is that I'm focused on, and I think computers are great for that to go down those rabbit holes. So I'd say it's a rabbit hole that's the actual hobby and not the hobby.
Less pleasure chatting with you. I really appreciate your insights and knowledge and we'll have to have a part two of this as things progress with Web three and music and much more. But thank you so much for joining me.
I appreciate you doing this. Thank you