But the one thing that decentralization does here, of course, is that the customer base is.
Not open to anyone.
And when you think about what sort of the role of advertising, advertising used to be and still is actually predominantly I push you something and then you look at it, and if you like it, you might react or you might not, typically a very low hit rader, whereas in Web three, because of the whole capital aspect, it's more of the incentive. So in other words, I give you an air drop, or I give you a reward or an experience, and that's the reason why you go with there.
So Web three is much of a pull.
This episode is brought to you by Propy, which is leading to charge in putting real estate on chain. Propy is a game changer. You can buy and sell real estate with cryptocurrencies using the propty platform, which is powered by a blockchain, of course, and they have a native token call pro And I've been an investor in the Propy token since twenty eighteen. So Propy is a licensed three pioneer operating since twenty seventeen. They have facilitated over
four billion dollars in transactions. They're putting titles and deeds on chain. They use Coinbase for their crypto escro service, so this is a great platform. And once again they are ahead of the curve when it comes to putting real estate on chain. And they just launched a great campaign where you can earn some of the Propy tokens and it's simply by doing tasks such as sharing their
vision video, signing up and inviting a friend, and much more. So. If you'd like to learn more about Propy, visit the link in the description. Hey, everybody, welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward and we are recording at Station three in New York's Financial District. And joining me is Yatsu who is the co founder and chairman of Anamoga Brands yacht. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this.
Thank you for having me. It's great pleasure.
You just got off a flight, so thank you so much. And this is round two of us chatting. We spoke about a month ago. We ran out of time because there's so much a talk as it relates to Web three and the impact it's going to have on society. So I wanted to continue the conversation, so let's kick it off. Why should people care about Web three?
Well, geez, start right off with the big one, right, I.
Mean, so when you think about Web three, maybe before we talk about period of the technology, the outcome of Web three, which obviously affects things like decentralization, you know, through blockchain technology and tokenization, which basically creates more democratic access to financial assets for instance. That whole framework opens up all these new opportunities, creates a fair better and
more democratic type of Internet. So we should really all care about it because it's the way in which we can truly receive the value that we generate.
In the digital realm. Now.
When the Internet first formed, the Internet was really you know, we're talking about Web one now like in the nineties, it was really something that was an add on.
To the physical world, right.
It was like an extension to what we were doing. It was not considered our life per se. Most people were still reading magazines and people doing stuff offline as it were, and there was this Internet thing that was extending our services and our ability to buy stuff and do stuff and so forth. But digital sort of digital things didn't have as much intrinsic value back in the day. But today because of the data construct and because of
network effects. And this is the thing. Network effects are the most valuable thing we think in the world today. And the reason why they're valuable is because actually they're a way in which we really create value out of our social connections and out of our networks per se. Like even think about it, just you know, forget technology for a moment, right, what are you as a human without your network, without your friends, without your business relationships?
Like would people talk to you if you didn't have your business connections as an example, would you be a member or have social connections if you didn't have a family, Like I mean, And one of the reasons why nations and society has actually come together is because there's a sense of belonging as well, I'm an American, or I'm Chinese or I'm wherever. Right, they actually create that sense of belonging, and that sense of belonging gives you strength
in the network. Right, that's just as a basic level. And when you think of technology companies like social media companies, which are the most powerful ones in the world, Facebook, TikTok, and frankly even things like Apple. When you think of Apple,
it's really a powerful network. You have an Apple, I have to buy an Apple so we can air drop each stuff to the other, right, Or I use these applications that are generated, you know, through the power of the networks of others, because I'm now joining an application because ten thousand other people are joining it, right. So it's really these network effects that make them so valuable.
But what's happened in Web two is that these network effects actually were completely controlled by these large companies, and we don't have an ability to own a piece of that stake that network, so we're kind of building value on these networks without ever receiving it. Now that means also we deliver data, we deliver information, and then that data becomes things like open AI and becomes CHATGBT, self driving cars, so all that value is generated.
I think about it.
The top companies in the world, they're all companies that have exclusive access to the network effects. But where does that value come from. It comes from us as users, and we don't actually receive fair value for that. But part of the reason is that we weren't really able to encapsulate the value of a network effect. It didn't exist. And the example I like to give for this one is that you know, before, like before sort of intellectual property rights, we didn't have a way to encapsulate the
value of our ideas either, which are equally virtual. Right, and when we were able to have IP rights, copyrights, you know, trademarks, pattern rights. Actually that created an incredible industry which today is employing more than half of I think roughly half of Americans, right, And I think I think about the top top companies in the world, whether it's Microsoft or Apple or Google, these are all companies that exist on virtual value over the Internet, actual property
rights of their trademarks and and their patterns and trade secrets. Right, these are this is this is their value.
And the.
And and again you know they were benefiting from the ability to own this. And now we have this new new new property, right this this network sort of effect that we can now own through tokenization. Imagine, you know, if every user that was on Instagram were actually also a kind of stakeholder of Instagram, and the value they contribute to the network would actually be something that they
sort of gives them a stake in the network. Not only would it be more powerful and would create more sort of sort of a tribal effect between people as we see in blockchain, I would also allow them to participate in the growth of the network, right and and and it would create a sort of a better outcome, and that's exactly what we see here. I think of likes and follows as an example. Even though it's social currency, it's a form of currency and it's a form of
network value, right. I mean, the fact that someone has a million followers and someone as one hundred thousand followers is a clear distinction of the power of your network and the value that you could derive from that. But actually it's really just rented value, and we need to own it. And that's what web three is able to do with digital property rights, the.
Idea of network effects and met house law and reads law. It's so fascinating to me because, as you you know, describe it so well, these networks existed in the physical world even before the Internet, but now it's on the Internet. And to your point, these networks have power because there's actual people participating. It's so fascinating.
And I think the thing is it's deeply human. I mean, we are sort of we are social creatures. You know, why are things like you know, what is the ultimate outside of capital punishment, right, what is the ultimate punishment that we have in our social society? You go to prism and what does it mean? You're isolated from society?
That's the penalty. I mean, just if you think of this, you know, why is that penalty so excruciating because that means we're locked out of our friends, our family, our networks, our social environment. So we're robbing them of their social agency, which and that's exactly why it's such a big punishment. So that means really we crave social attention and we crave you know, I'm not saying that everyone is an extrovert,
but even introverts have strong social bombs. So you could argue that some people have less connections, but they're very strong, and some people have many connections and maybe they're arguably weaker, but the point is that they're still social in nature
and they want that. And so what the social media platforms and frankly, what technology companies have figured out is that we can harness that social energy and that social value that we have as humans and we can make a lot of money from that in the form of advertising. And you know advertising, you know, online advertising today is about a one point one trillion dollar market in terms of revenue that it generates. But it is only possible because of us as humans, And how much do we
actually get paid for having engaged in those networks? And the answers, of course, a big fat zero, and again Web three solves that.
It's so fascinating. So the let's say, the folks who are watching listening to this, what advice would you give to them to prepare for this change that's happening. How can they not be disrupted and you know, be ahead of the curve with Web three adoption.
So the thing that a lot of people, you know, we talked a lot about network effects and the value of the networks, but what blockchain really does is, through tokenization, makes something into a capital acid. So a token could be especially meme coins, good or bad. This is not about sort of endorsing them, but you know, owning a meme coin is arguably like owning a kind of network effect of a certain community, right, And because of the token, it has now become a capital asset of that community.
Right.
Whether it's worth a lot or worth a little, that is sort of secondary. The primary point is that now I own something that has a capital value as a capital asset of a kind of network state or network sort of asset. So that means what tokenization does is it makes everything virtual but also physical in to a into capital acid and it enhances it by creating more
network effects. So for instance, a stable coin, a stable coin is an r WA, so it has it still has a you know, it's it's it has you know, people use it for dollars and spend money and so on. But the moment you tokenize it, you add a new layer making it into another type of network asset on
top of it. So actually it extends the value and the power or more specifically the power and the distribution of the dollar by tokenizing it, and so it creates more network value and has more distribution, which is the reason why stable coins are sort of the number one use case on DeFi because of course you have you're using it in real life and as a value for that, but also it extends it. It makes the the dollar
more of a network asset. So when you look at sort of other token ecosystems, you know, whether this is an ethereum or solana, right, you don't buy them, you know, obviously you hope that there's value there, but you don't buy them because they give you great yield or because there's better yield products Frctally you get better yield from treasuries and you know ethereums taking right.
You buy it.
Because you believe that the value will be more will sort of increase because of what because of the network state, because more people will want it, because more people will use it, It's utility will increase, its network state will increase. And that's the foundation and the formation of that value.
And so the question that companies in Web three who want to enter the Web three have to think of is how do I and what are the type of either networks or products and services or applications that would that I would benefit from if they were turned into a capital assets. So I give you an example for instance in you know, imagine if the music industry didn't have intellectual property protection, there would be no music industry because musicians would have their music gripped up all the time.
There we know Taylor Swift, no Michael Jackson, no Beatles,
no library. Right, And this is by way something that back in history people recognize, which is why I think it was in the sixteenth century it's called the Statute of Ann where they for the first time recognized copyright for authors because back then authors were really the sort of you know, progenitors of a form of intellectual property right in terms of writing books and stories, but the power belonged to the publishers because they're the ones distributing it.
The authors actually didn't have recognition for being creators, so they're basically always kind of ripped off, kind of sound similar to where we are today. And then by recognizing that through the Statute of Anne, creators had a way in which they could now fairly collect the income because
it was their property. They could also sell it on say, hey, you know what I own these book publishing rights, I can sell it to you, or I can share revenue that kind of stuff, because it became a capital asset.
And what happened was it sort of was the beginning in the foundation where you know, all these new authors, you know, whether it's Jane Austen, Charles Dickens or science writers, they all ended up emerging because now it could actually do research, or write books or write stories in which there was a commercial incentive to do so, because now actually could make money from that which then created the
flourishing of that industry. And the same is true for all intellectual property, right, whether this is music, whether this is pharmaceuticals, whether this is technology. The fact that we can protect that actually gave an incentive for people to build and advance essentially, you know, technology in society per se. So now the problem though, sort of a long winded way of saying this. The problem though, is that the cost of doing so is protected only through a legal framework.
So in other words, if I want to protect my intellectual property right as a musician, I got to pay you know, an IP lawyer, and I got a trademark, and that costs a certain amount of money, which means that ILL first have to make a certain amount of money with my music or with whatever I'm doing before it's even worth protecting intellectually. Now, with blockchain, though, I can protect or at least prove the provenance of my creation for less than a dollar, for instance, like in the form of Anna.
And immediately right.
And you know, while some people might say, hey, I had that idea as well, there's a timestamp so you can prove that, or maybe there's some kind of settlement that happens but the point is that you can now prove your origin and so we did this, for instance with one of our portfolios called tiny Tap, which is an education platform. What they did was they created NFTs
out of teaching material from teachers. So a teacher would have created some new teaching content with their platform with AI and then turned it into an NFT that they would then sell on to you know, if they wanted to, because it would make like ten or twenty dollars a yield every year as a capital asset, maybe for fifty one hundred dollars right. And it's only possible because now that teaching content is now become a capital asset through tognization.
So that means you can and it means you can turn anything that was virtual technically virtual into this kind of tech capital asset. So for gaming, you could do this with game items. For instance, you know, your sword could be an NFT. A virtual currency could be tokenized, and you know, whether it has value or not will depend on you know, maybe the utility and the network effects inherent. But the point is now it is a
capital acid. So the question I think most companies should think of themselves is, you know, outsort of from a creation standpoint, like what type of ideas products and services
don't have that could be turned into capital acid. The second one, of course, is that you know Web three is a new wealth class, right, so the people who are generating wealth and blockchain are a lot of people who have never been sort of traditional don't come from banking or don't come from traditional sectors, which means that also you can consider them as new customers, like I see them really like the emergence of a new nation.
It's kind of like, you know, like fifteen years ago, you know, suddenly you knew Chinese tours were coming all over the world because they had money, right, So maybe you haven't business opportunity and how do you service them? So that's the other opportunity, which is you know, there's a whole new wealth class that's coming. They've got a lot of money. You're probably sitting a lot of bitcoin or ethereum maslana or some some some lucky people traded, you know, with a lot of meme coins, like do
you have a product for them? Right, And a lot of that comes in the form of NFTs and digital assets of course, but of course, whether if you're a company and that's what luxury companies really understood. Luxury companies started saying, oh, okay, you know this whole sort of you know, Lambo and Gucci and Ferrari type of sort
of sort of meta. That's one, But of course the other one is, you know, they were one of the first to do things like mashups with like the Sandbox, with board apes, with crypto punks, and they made a lot of money right because they understood, you know, in particular, this is a new wild class. What can we sell them that they would appreciate? And I think you can also look at the luxury companies for some inspiration around how they did it.
So do you think, you know, majority of companies and brands need to start putting together a web three strategy where whether it be NFTs or they do some sort of social token to maintain customers, you know, keep customers coming back, retention and even branching out to your point to the new generation who are more digital focused and a new wealth class.
So there's so many dimensions. I mean, I don't think we can go through all of them. But the one thing that decentralization does here, of course, is that the
customer base is not open to anyone. And when you think about sort of the role of advertising, advertising used to be and still is, actually predominantly I push you something and then you look at it, and if you like it, you might react or you might not, typically a very low hit rate, whereas in Web three because of the whole capital aspect, it's more of the incentive. So in other words, I give you an air drop, or I give you a reward or an experience, and
that's the reason why you go there. So Web three is much more pull. And of course, you know, if you do pull badly, you.
Get lots of bots and so on.
But assuming you do it the right way, you can now actually look at their assets and you can target them. So you know, what would the advertising industry pay for if you could genuinely target every person who owns a Rolex, Like I know you owned it, and I know you purchased it because on chain I can see proof that
you have it. You can't do this in the physical world, right, you know, Like you know, I don't know how many I don't know how many sort of followers Roles has on the Instagram page, but I'm gonna assume it's millions. But there are not millions of rolics owners out there, for instance, right, So you're really when you're targeting that audience,
you're targeting an aspirational audience. But actually, who can really afford a rolics is maybe the customer you want, right, and you are willing to pay much more per user for that because there's an actual target as supposed to distributed value where maybe less than one or two percent is actually the target you want to reach, which is
how advertising works generally today. So if you can do that, then the other thing is that the person on the other side receives an appropriate reward for taking that incentive, and you can prove it because it's on chain, whether he owns the NFT or he has you know, you know, whatever. Way, because of on chanine dynamics, you can prove that you can basically measure his reputation and give value that way.
So again, you know, that means that if I'm, for instance, launching a game and my web two company and I'm launching a game, I could actually target web through users based on what gaming assets they have. So imagine and this is never going to happen because Epic wouldn't want to sort of they have a different view about how
they want to protect their customers. But if all the and if all the skins in Fortnite were actually NFTs, then you as a game company could simply offer utility for those NFTs in a new game.
Right, So you.
Could open up i know, Fortnite Fashion Week or something, and everyone who owns Fortnite skins could try out that experience, and you know, you could make that very fluid that's possible, which you couldn't do in the current framework because the customer could never even leave the environment. And I could also not prove whether you're an actual Fortnite skin owner for example.
Right, it's so fascinating. And then I wanted to jump back to social currency becoming capital asset. And I'll give the example of President Trump and the Trump meme coin. Whether you love it or hate it, right, that's not the point. The point is the technology and where the puck is going to do. You see that celebrities and people are prominence and will have a network of following,
they have a personal brand as strong. We'll start to create these tokens and fundraise in different ways to fund what they're doing, whether they're an entrepreneur, they're doing charity work and things like that.
So my view is that we're going to have billions and billions of tokens. I now, sort of going back to the early days of the internet, what was the way in which we built and gained attention and created profile online. It was the website, and there were millions and millions of website built. And the first website cost millions of dollars to make, and now it caused like almost nothing to make websites. But I would argue that the website has evolved as in from things like blogs
or you know, social media pages. So for instance, your Instagram page that to me is a website. It's an evolved former website. But it's the same thing, right. It's like, you know, I would draw attention, I write my content, I tell my stories, and then I might have more than one social media page. I might have many of them, right, just like I have my my Instagram page for my business, and an Instagram page for me and then maybe my family, maybe my dog.
Like yeah, like let's see it happens, right, So again, we have.
Billions and billions is of online presences in these forms of attention whether it's a website or social media, it's kind of the same thing to me, and so tokens is the same thing, except it's that version evolved because I would also argue that me giving you a like or me following you is a version of that type of sort of currency exchange. It's a social exchange, right, And very often, even though it's unspoken, we actually say, hey,
I follow you, you follow me. You know, let's let's let's let's let's just look like.
I'm your friend.
And then you know, you know, if someone unfollows you, like, hey, why you don't follow me? Like, it doesn't feel just like a technical thing. It feels kind of personal, right, It's like what's going on here? Like, you know, did I disappoint you? Am I not important for you anymore?
Right?
You know?
All that type of stuff is actually just how we operate in real life. And so when you're a celebrity or business or whichever, you're already dealing with this right now, So what to do? And it doesn't just have to be for fundraising, you could if you want to do. All it does is it creates sort of that social energy, if you will. Now it turns into a capital asset, whether you choose to monetize it in different ways or not, it depends on the platform or the person in question.
Because you know, there is an interesting sort of paradox around value and power when it comes to money. So like a lot of people, particularly in the sort of bitcoin narrative, are very obsessed about scarcity. It makes sense because the more scarce it is, the more value it is valuable it is, and so on. But if bitcoin was only held by one person in the world and he had all the bitcoin, it would not be valuable
at all. Nobody would care, right, So it's power actually comes from the fact that millions of people have it directly or indirectly. And the irony if you look at something like the US dollar, is that sure, I think the US dollar no longer really can have the credible status as a store of value, but the fact that it is distributed across millions and millions and actually hundreds of actually more billions of people around the world.
And in fact, the more.
It is in circulation and distributed, actually the more powerful and influential it becomes as a network. So there's something there's something paradoxical but interesting about that and really that's actually the power of mean coins. A mean coin doesn't hit powerful because it has because its value comes entirely based on you know, like some inherent value or even scarcity.
Totally the opposite.
Meme coins become powerful when large bona fide communities flock around it and give it that energy and essentially give it social currency. And whether it's high or low, if you have a strong culture and connection, then actually the network effects becomes stronger, and of course then they actually grow in value as a result of that. And so that to me is how we can think of social
media networks as well and yourself as a personal brand. Right, you're already doing this in some kind of sort of unmeasurable way, like you sort of you don't say, okay, my relationship with you is worth you know, five tokens, and your relationship with you is like ten tokens. But essentially on the back on social media, Instagram is already calculating that, right, they're already giving an algorithm.
TikTok is already.
Saying what they're already measuring that. There's a whole exchange that's happening on the back, and then that value is a form of advertising. Oh, you're this kind of guy and you have this kind of like you know, you might only have a hundred people following you, but if it's people like Elon Musk, he's influential, you could have a million.
People follow you.
But they could be people from all over the world and actually maybe maybe not that relevant, and they might not be nearly as valuable as the one hundred people that follow you, right, Like we see this with the different areas there were, So so it's not it's not to say that every network is worth the same. And so tokens now have a way in which they represent that, and so they can represent and you could trade on that.
That's one way if you choose to, but you could also simply just sort of use it as a way to represent that value and rep and that influence, which means that outside of the buildings of tokens are in the world. We don't expect the future where every token
is necessarily visible to everyone. Like at the back there might be whole sort of trade and exchange of value, you know, between you know, your token and my token and my business token, and there's a whole back in exchange that gives you some kind of it might output it in bitcoin. We don't know, right, because there's also markets and third party markets and prediction markets and everything
that could relate to that. You know, like they know what content is yet, so you're writing next, or you know what is Vitalic thinking about, or you know what's cz doing, Like these are all going to be traded in let's call it our brand tokens, whether we issued them or not. And then exchanges will do stuff in the back and then and it may be entirely invisible to us from a regular consumer experience, but it will be tokenization engines that are running on the background.
Question you mentioned whether they're issued by us or not. How do you see that playing out? Because I had some scammers like issued meme coins off my podcast, Right, how do I stop this? Why do you think that plays out? With law enforce and so for it?
So first, authenticity matters, right, So that means that if you didn't endorse it, and you know there will be things like your public wallet, if it didn't come from that, then you know it's not valid. And I think blockchain is great for that. And again these platforms will make
it easier. We're kind of early right now, but eventually, you know, like at the wallet level, whether it's maybe it's at your meta mask, Like I totally expect that things like phantom and meta mask are going to basically create sort of this is a good token on not a good token. This is authorized, not authorized, not to say that it removes a permissionlessness, it's just it's still permissionless.
It's just that they'll give you sort of indicators. It's kind of like anti like like like anti virus and and and sort of you know, malware protection. Right, So so that to me would be I think what the wallets will end up doing. However, there is a distinction
between that and u GC. So you know, someone launching a scam coin is a form of piracy, which is not that different from someone taking content from a movie and posting on your YouTube, right, And so so the question then becomes and this is again why tokenization is interesting.
And you see this happening in imperfect ways. Someone could launch a token with your brand but everyone knows it's not you, but you're okay because he gives you revenue share of the token, right, And that's what basically content ideas on YouTube when I'm sort of taking content that I'm copyrighting. So before or you know, like the whole DMCA thing, everyone was trying to shut down all this content and they said, oh, my goodness, is piracy is party.
But then you realize, wait a second, it's powerful distribution. I'm getting all these people watching this content that's usually generated even though it's pirating my stuff. So you know what, I'm okay with this because today, for instance, you can't launch a successful movie without mashups from from the community.
But the user in.
This case says, I can use his community to get some fame, but all the revenue I generate from this will go to them. We'll go to the original ip creator. And so there's a trade off that happens between you being allowed to use the content and me receiving the revenue for it exchange or maybe revenue share. It kind of depends on that bargain. And so I expect that completely that that happened with tokens. I mean famous examples like like Chill Guy for instance, right, like, obviously he
resisted and hated it. But if people say, hey, you what, take fifty percent of the supply of the token or twenty percent of the supply of token, might it change his mind?
Right?
And so so there's a whole there's a whole dynamic around that, which which I think is which is again, tokens make possible. So I think that's a dynamic that will tame is. You can't stop I don't think you can stop people from issuing tokens. But if you endorse it, which you can do on chain because you have commercial benefit or you trust them, that to me actually becomes interesting as well. So I don't see it as as
just a sort of one dimensional thing. And blockchain allows you to sort of verify that and give authenticity towards it.
That absolutely makes sense. And I didn't think of that. You know, where you have the rev share or there will be validation on these platforms to say this is a quality token issued by the Tony or whoever. Right, So, but I guess the platforms have to catch up to have that infrastructure.
But I mean, you know, how long did it take before the Internet really had functioning antivirus right and spam filters? I remember, you know one of our you know, from our early days of the early Internet. I mean, we started an ICP in Hong Kong and then later on, you know, had an ASP that stands for Application Service provider. That really is just a fancy way of calling cloud computing.
Right.
Cloud computing wasn't a turn back then. And we were one of the largest email companies back in the day, and we were constantly fighting spam, right, constantly fighting spam, right, because the cost of sending spam was zero, and we were absorbing all that cost, and so we had to sort.
Of figure out way to do that.
And you know, it was fairly primitive, like literally you had sort of just basic word filters, and you know, with AI and stuff, it just got a little smarter and the same thing here, right, and so you can you can do the same thing, and I expect that process s happ and think about all the advancements we
see in AI today. You could probably very easily port that in to wallet that gives you sort of indications of that looks kind of scammy based on inference, right as supposed to just based on verification, And then there could be and today we see this sometimes you go into a website and your sort of filter will say this is a scam site, and maybe that's incorrect, But then whoever says that needs to go improve it right, So again I expect a similar type of model to develop for sure.
So on that note, right, where our lives are more digital, the blockchain is going to be integrated on different platforms. We'll be able to see the dat stamp and do a lot more verification, trust people better, and transact better. But we as individual. Web three gives us ownership of our data. How do you see the future playing out with us controlling our digital identity? Interacting with ya? You're on Instagram? I love your content, I keep liking How
do you see that all playing out? It's on our mobile phone and we're getting different tokens, some different platforms because there'll be so many.
So the thing that I find really interesting and it just kind of goes into when everything turns into a capital asset, which by the way, for some people in the world might sound like a horror right, they don't like that idea, but uh, you know, and I want to just touch on this because as humans, we are designed to measure and value things, right, and money has just become an easy metric, but we still try to value them in some form of fashion, right, like you know, do I spend time with you.
Do I have dinner with you? Right? Are you doing? You know? You know, could we be friends? Should we not be? I mean, you know, there's no dollar.
Value, but we're still creating a value. We're still creating a measure, right, There's there's something that we're trying to sort of equate. And then from a social standpoint, also we're trying to create a status. So you know, I live in this house and you live in that house.
For instance, Right, I have this car, you have that car, And it may seem from a pure utility standpoint, a waste of time, because in reality, the car takes you from point A to point B. You know, you know, my backpack is just as good as a Gucci right or or or a broken back. But yet we do that because they denote forms of value, and we can say it makes us feel good, but it's still.
A form of value. Right.
So I think I think this, this idea, is this measure of us basically wanting to sort of sort of compare each other, is actually I think something innate in our human nature that also then pushes us forward because there's a there's a desire.
To sort of you know, basically sort of grow and develop.
And and again I'm not trying to say that you know, it's all about money, but it's more about trying to measure like it's a it's a it's a it's a measurement. It's a measurement quality. Right, Sorry, now I lost my train and thought, what was the question about the.
Digital world and how our digital identity and interaction with different folks?
How is that?
How do you see that playing out?
Yeah?
So so okay, so exactly so.
So when you now have that, I find it a way in which you can then start to enumerate forms of value and relationships with each other. So you know, when you saw what happened with the early days of the internet, like NBA top shots in earliers of NFTs with NBA top shot, when someone started buying an expensive top shot of a particular athlete, the athlete would give him a shout out on on on X and say
thanks for buying that. Right now, that's again very crude example, because he may have shelled out thirty thousand dollars.
For you know, recognition.
Okay, you could say that's not you know, but as an example of I can now measure whether you are a real fan or not. So all the musicians who have millions and millions of you know, like streams and you know, I don't know, let's call it a million people who listen to their music, they have no idea who is their super fan. They don't know who is there a thousand true fans. They only know that of a million people sort of you know, maybe listening to me.
They also don't know that, you know, you, Tony, are listening to this song ten thousand times a year versus this song one time. And by the way, the platform doesn't want to share that because that's their value and they can monetize it and then they can say, oh, Tony, you like this music, let me give you another musician that you might like.
Right.
Meanwhile, the musician where you are actually the true fan will never engage in this manner.
I don't know.
So in Web three, through tokenization, I have a way in which I can demonstrate that, right, and the demonstration comes in the form of token accumulation, which doesn't have to mean that I paid for it. It could be also ways to earn it, right, It could be actions, you know, like So again, we don't have to necessarily say it all has to have this particular capital outcome. But I can still measure the result of that.
So if I listen to it ten thousand times, I can get an NFT or something like.
That, exactly right, and you get a badge.
But that's really a relationship you have with him or I know, for instance, you know, and maybe someone else says, I really love you. I don't have time to listen to you ten thousand times, but you know what, I'm going to buy ten thousand tokens to sow that I love you that much.
Right now.
What that creates is a tighter bond between and again this is about the network effects, the tighter bond between the creator and you know, the fan, and this is the evolution of fandom. And this is why I actually fandom originally really had a good home for tokens, except and this is I think partially the problem of not understanding Web three, and also the creator problem is that they looked at it from the from the pure lens of money, because from Web two the user is abstracted.
I don't have a relationship with you, so I'm used to just merch, so I treated as merch but there's actually much more than that. And so in a way, when they started abusing this, they actually started to hurt their community because they viewed the tokens as an investment in our relationship. Now not saying that, they're saying that,
they're thinking that it's an investment purely for capital. Of course they hope it goes up in value in some ways, but they viewed it as a portrayal when you dump on them, right, And it's not it's not just a dollar money loss, because maybe it's not material for some of them. It's more about the portrayal of is that how you value my relationship?
Is that? Is that? Is that all it's worth to you? Are you like?
And and and so you see relationships, for for instance, with NFTs, where tokens may have gone the value of d NFT may have gone down almost to zero, but you still have a loyal following because they know the builders were serious. I've made friends on the network, and i still have the NFT even if it's not worth as much as it is, because I've created bonds and social networks between and friendships between them and or and it could be also the relationship with the art artists
and creator. Whether this is an NFT or whether this is a token kind of to me is like more secondary because they're both sort of ways in which you can measure it. One's just more fungible than the other. And you know, if you look at sort of if you look at you know, some some very popular forms of how we should look at capital, you know, I think Borderer basically measures have been four types of capital, right,
So you have economic, cultural, social, and symbolic. So economic capital is just how much money you have, right, and and you know, with that economic power, I can just demonstrate that there's some there's a capital value. You know, I have a million, two million, whatever. But notice how if you're a millionaire, it doesn't matter if you have one million or five million. You're still a millionaire, right.
And you might have ten or twenty million, but you're still a millionaire, right, You're not you're not like a tens of millionaire.
Right.
Maybe you know you're a hundred millionaire, but again you're still a millionaire.
Right.
You have to be a billionaire first in order to be moving into this new distinction, which I mean logically is ridiculous, right, because frankly, there should be a distinction, which is why things like cultural and social and symbolic capital come into play. For instance, I live in this place, or I have this you know, education, or I went to this area.
You know, these are other.
Forms of capital that actually denote social status and also the kind of relationship you have within them. So for instance, in physical world, it could be owning a broken bag, but in the virtual world, it could be owning a board ape or a pudgy penguin. And when you own ormokeaverse and if you own any of these type of NFTs, now actually you gain cultural status, and it's a form
of cultural capital. And notice how in those environments, if you sell your NFT, you know, you sometimes have to actually very often you have to apologize for it, right when you sell the NFT, like oh my grandma was sick, or I got to pay for my kids tuition or you know, like right, whereas with mean coins, if you make a lot of money, good for you, right.
You succeeded.
Right, It's still social capital. It's just a different form, right, And and I think that's h and that's that's I think, you know, how we should think about the space. It's not one dimensional.
Yeah, that's a great point. It's not one dimensional because I sometimes get caught in that mindset where I just look at it from one lens. But it's it's different.
I just want to add one another thing. For instance, if you are a business that wants to entweb three, what's the best way that you can build credit?
You think for a newcomer?
I think trust is is definitely important. And trust could be maybe you extend some sort of offer or they get some reward or something like that.
Like so I go to the measurement.
Okay, if I buy ten board apes today, every board AAP member knows who I am. If I go buy a million dollars worth of bunk and I declare the wallet, every bunk person is going to look at you and say, oh, okay, right. If I buy a million dollars worth of pengu Mocha, it doesn't matter. So this is the point, right, which is that we can now measure our conviction, our relationship with some form. I know it's not possible to just throw money at everything. I get it, but you can
earn your way. The point is you can measure that. And that is a point about blockchain. It's not just authentic, it's verifiable. It's proof, right, It's like you know, I you know, I have a lot.
Of bitcoin, do you mean? I mean? Right?
It's something you can actually test now, right, And and that authenticity is what I think people really want to then create an authentic relationship with you because of the fact that you it's verifiable.
Oh absolutely. I wanted to ask you about your partnership with Sony and this Sonium blockchain because I'm so fascinated by Sony. I've had Sony devices all my life, right, and now.
It's not a big enough story because I think people in the West sometimes just don't talk bout it enough, which is I mean, you have maybe the largest electronics company from an entertainment standpoint in the world launching their own blockchain, Like why is this not headline news everywhere?
Right?
Right?
Obviously it's early days.
We work with them, you know, with the anime id. You know, we launched I think something with Solo Leveling, which is a big IP brand, anime IP brand with them, and we're doing a lot more with them, So I think, you know, sonayim Is is a great example of enterprises going on chain and for Sony you know what, you may have to also remember that Sony isn't just an entertainment company. They're also one of the largest financial organizations
in the world. They have a big sort of you know, they have a big finance team, and of course they have a lot of assets and they have.
To manage all that.
Right, even when you think about things like, you know, Sony Pictures, there's a huge financing element everything around that as well.
So and of course Sony Music and IP right.
So like IP value money, intellectual copy right protection and you know, consumer engagement. It makes a lot of sense for Sony to launch a blockchain, and I think it's an interesting learning case for other major, particularly consumer entities
to consider launching their own blockchains or tokens. For instance, I expect that every gaming company that significantly a sort of size gaming company in the world will eventually launch tokens and will eventually maybe even launch their own chains because they have communities of networks that they can do. And you know, because of the previous administration hostile stands towards crypto, it was just not a good idea for them to even talk and utter the word. But I
think we should expect that to evolve over time. Certainly we know that they're looking into it now, which they couldn't do before.
So I know you probably can't give details, but I'm going to walk through a snare in my own head how I envision Sony is doing this. They have their own blockchain, they can enhance IoT functionality maybe with their devices.
So if you have multiple Sony devices in your home, they are all SYNCD in a certain way to their IP stuff, they can put it on the blockchain issue and have to and Web three type of incentives for is maybe get outsiders to come build under blockchain if it's not a private network, but that could benefit of their network.
It's a public blockchain.
Yeah, yeah, Do you are those on point or do you think any of those are off?
I don't think any of them are off. I think the whole idea about building a blockchain for any network and any any company or business is it extends the network to others and that's where the value comes from.
So let's take an example of another traditional business, let's call the traditional Web two business that then launched a blockchain and had a token around it, and that's Telegram and ton Telegram was not a blockchain before huge social media, so huge social social network you know, billion or close to billion users, and then they launched on and they had the ton blockchain, and what they really did there was they extended their network to other people to part
take in the Telegram ecosystem and the Telegram users through the homeb blockchain in a permissionless and open way. So we can think of blockchains in this case basically almost like public API extensions, which are basically permissionless. When it's permissionless, it allows companies to build and composed in pretty creative
and interesting ways. But because there's a token component attached to it, there's a way in which values exchanged, and of course that value then goes to the entity that you know, gets paid to support.
Right.
So that is the reason we think it makes sense for a lot of entities around the world to consider their own chains as a better form of essentially extending their APIs. You know, API extension works just fine, but it becomes more limited because you can't compose freely on top of them, and you're it's also not secure. I mean, Facebook's not just going to open up the infrastructure to
everyone just dabble around with it. And figure it out right, Like someone's going to do something that really could sort of screw up the network, for example, so they need to have that permission structure because otherwise they get full access. The second thing, of course, is that because you don't have those frameworks, the negotiation for having access is a
negotiation that takes time. So in other words, you know, I can't just have a thousand developers just onboard on a web two platform just like that, because it's it's complicated and any permission and maybe I need to sign a contract, you know, whereas in blockchain, I don't need to talk to anyone. I could just start, here's a documentation, get going right, and there's a public note infrastructure, and
there's security and everything attached to it. So again I think, I think blockchain is just a really really powerful way to extend composibility on anything, which includes networks, companies, ecosystems, you know, you name.
It's so fascinating, it's like a brave new world. So yeah, it's fifty years from now, it's twenty seventy five. My math's right there. Am I walking around with my mobile phone? Where my passport, my driver's license, all my verifiable documents are on there, my digital identity. I have a wallet that supports multiple blockchain, multiple tokens. I have tokens from Sony, from Facebook and so on and so forth. I can sell those tokens. I can use them to get unlocked features.
I can lend them out in the open market or along with NFTs. Is that something realistic?
It's realistic, But I don't think it's fifty years out. I think it's more like ten years out or something. And the reason, well, first of all, I don't think we'll be using mobile phones that way. Okay, fifty years will probably have implants and stuff, and I don't know, like whatever that may be. But I don't think I think that, you know, like because when you look at the sort of history of sort of what really gains traction, particularly when it comes to technology, it's.
The ease of use.
And the UX basically gives us the fastest possible experience in which we can sort of really input and process data, right, And the reason why the smartphone in particular and the phone works so powerfully is because you know, the fastest way in which most of us absorb data is through
our eyes. And that's why that interface hasn't really changed for like basically thousands of years, right, And so what's faster than eyes, right, It's going to have to be something that eventually sort of plugs into our brain.
What do you think glasses might be?
No, I mean.
Glasses are an extension to our eyes, right, So yes, it is.
It may be more efficient.
That's why people talk about sort of you know, the goggles and so on. But but as we know more about the brain, and as we know more about sort of you know, the world, which of course and science which you know, again this is not my field, but if you look at the progress of you know, and what's happening with AI, we should expect that we will
probably have some form of brain implant. Now what that means though, is that more than ever, you need to be able to basically have things that you can verify whether this is real or not, whether it's fake, right, whether this is authentic?
Right.
And again blockchain is great for that, right, you know, because now you have and this is the next part, which you know, part of the thing isn't about necessarily meat trading or me honing tokens and doing stuff. Everything will be agentic, so an AI will do everything for you, probably speaking right. So that means the AI has to have emission, and that means that you need to also trust the AI. So again, blockchain is actually quite good
for that. Many of the interactions that you will take place will be literally maybe you interact with like for instance, I think the future wallet and token wallet is not going to be a sort of meta mass style interface. It's going to be literally you just talking to the wallet like that kind of mass adoption is simply going to be hey, you know what I need to go and you know, like I need to go here, and maybe I need my Sony tokens. So the AI agent
will just take care of that for you. And if you don't have Sony tokens, he's going to just buy the Sony tokens for you to go there and say, well, you know, sir, you don't have you know, Sony tokens, but it's going to cost you ten dollars to do this, go for it, right, whatever that may be, right, like whatever currency they're exchanging or so, the AI agent will take care of all of that for you, and you would have And also I think there's not gonna be one a agent I think it's going to be you
might have like at least dozens of AI agents who do specific things that will advise you right as well, and they're going to be all in this interface, which may initially be on the phone, but we'll probably extend. But I think blockchain what's powerful about blockchain is that now you can build a public reputation framework as well that you know, with through ZK, I can attest essentially who I am and verify with that necessarily even really my identity. And in a way, we kind of do
this in real life. You know, like if you go to the supermarket and you're buying stuff and or to a bread store and he gives you bread and you know you'll pay. Notice how you know he gives you the bread first and then you pay later, because there's some kind of trust that is already there between at
least a social trust. I don't know who you are, but you know, I think you have a reputation and I can trust you, so it's okay for you for me to give you the goods first and then you pay later, right like literally at the end of it, because you know what, you can take them a bread and run, right which happens in some countries, right, and which is why you have to lock stuff up, like
in say San Francisco. Yeah, and you can see what happens when you suddenly can't trust anyone, right, right, And so with bock chain, imagine you go in and you know, you verify this is the citizen. I don't need to know your name, right, but I can verify that you know, you pay your taxes or you're like you know, a good person, and I can trust you and immediately everything is available for you to just browse and take a look and buy, and I don't have to worry about that.
I mean, that's obviously a much more extreme example, but it's just to say that I like, I can, I can build frame ups of trust but while still preserving my privacy.
Yeah, with ZK and all that. Yeah, now Elon at SpaceX and the other folks are in the space race, who can build the best rockets to go up reusable eventually? Yeah, we're gonna get to the moon again. We're gonna get to Mars, as Elon is saying, I don't know how long it's gonna take, but we're gonna get there. But these all world economies will require digital money, digital currency,
digital uh, you know, in that level. So do you see this technology getting more adoption that way because we can't try zacting cash and space and things.
That first, you know, I think most of the transactions in the future will be done through AI agents, and the natural currency of A agents is going to be basically crypto in tokens. There's an interesting parallel, by the way on this. It's not just the fact that AA agents more naturally trade in tokens, it's also the fact that agents also have the ability to create tokens, right, so you know, a bit of a sort of a secutor.
But what we should expect therefore is that we will not only just be in the future employed by humans or organizations, We're going to be employed by AI agents because they have the ability to generate tokens which have a form of value, which therefore gives them a sense of power as well, which you know, again, AI agents
haven't had that before. Like the moment you give someone the ability to create or trade or make money, you're actually giving them power, right, And it's entirely possible that a really smart AI trading bot as we have seen, can make millions of dollars, and then it can use that millions of dollars as a way to incentivize use it behave if you're a user action that is human. Right, So we're entering a world where we're not just working
for other humans. We're going to be working because in a way, I think we're already working for protocols, you know when you think about sort of air drops with thousands. But talk about the space question. So first, because I believe that most of our transactions are going to be sort of agentic and basically through AI. So tokens is actually naturally a way to do that. And to your point, you need something that is authentic and permissionless as well
that can trade that way. More importantly, though, we also have to think about how communications will be done. So what's the what's the way in which you can sink in a both permissionless and scalable way sort of you know, like call it off world transactions that might be literally light years away, right, And actually blockchain is a good way to do that again right, So, so again I would say that there's some interesting mechanisms. Of course, you know a lot of things will by the time we
achieve that a lot of things will have changed. For instance, I think we you know, you know, we probably will have cracked quantum computing at that point in time, which is which is going to change entire frameworks about how
we think about sort of, you know, computational power. It's going to also create much more extensions because if we have the ability, if we solve quantum computing, then we will probably also be able to better take advantage of things like entanglement, which means we can also deal with frankly, you know, you know, let's not call it communications, but certainly forms of ways in which we can distribute and share information or states to be precise states, right, sharing
the state in which you are literally across the universe.
Right.
And so I think that's the future that we will see and know. And again I think blockchain technology ties very neatly into that, because you need ways in which you can sort of, you know, prove those states and accept it will be done in a quantum way as opposed to in a classic computing way.
Folve question on the AI agent aspect and the AI agents being able to create their own tokens. Do you see AI agents replacing vcs and hedge for ones and traders like well why do I need a financial advisory?
So I don't know that they're necessar you're going to replace them, but I think they're going to certainly be in competition with them, and I think there's going to be angles and perspectives that will take that creates maybe competition, coopetition, and also basically partnerships. And that's because I don't think that an AI, as good as they will be, is really ever going to completely emulate our copy sort of
the human dimension. But by the human dimension, I mean the relationship so and by the way, I mean we've seen this within like Mitsuko, what's the name the the the virtual idol? Forgot forgot the name, but I think it's Escape the name. But anyway, you know, like you could have virtual characters that you have relationships with or do you think you have relationship with and and and yes, that's right, that's right, you know, like like with with
with that as well, so that that's possible too. But I think of it more as I invest with you or I follow you, or I want to give you money because of who you are, as opposed to necessarily just how much returns you make right in an environment where you know, you compete for returns, because hey, I'm going to invest in this way, but I'm going to help society for instance, right, you know, Or I'm going to invest in things that does something that you know, like an AI bot could say I'm going to just
make money. Great, I'll put money here, but I also want to make impact. And maybe there'll be other AI agents that say I will do impact too, But I want someone who actually, let's say it's let's say let's let's let's take Nepal as an example, right, and I want to you know, like I want to help Nepalese in this investment profile. An AI agent won't have the experience necessarily of having lived through Nepal, so an individual in that area would be able to do.
That as well. Right.
So I think it just extends it, it expands it. But the key thing is it makes it more demoral and more open because in the past it was very much and still is investing is very much.
An exclusive club.
It's like a small group of people that sort of you know, really get to participate and benefit from that. And I don't even have access now in an environment where so many AI agents can emerge. Suddenly you have a lot of pretty good investors and investment agents that actually are now going to be able to do it for the masses as well, which means that you have much more I think, better wealth distribution and wealth opportunity
because of it. Because really one of the biggest challenges, and this is why blockchaining organization is so important, isn't the fact that there aren't wealth opportunities in the world. It's the fact that the majority of the world is excluded from even participating in them. And that's why tokenization is so powerful, because you basically allow people to participate
in it. In so doing, they learn more about money, they learn more about financial literacy, and they just become better investors and frankly, you know, I think become happier and more sustainable over the long term.
I wanted to ask you about bitcoin's place in web three. So toci's Knockamota's vision was bitcoin as digital currency. It's kind of evolved the network and the network says, you know, the network effects of the market has said this is more digital goal. And there are slow transaction speeds at times, I fees and when I send people money, some stable coins, you know, if they are open to doing it. So I'm not using as digital currency, but I whole bitcoin
and I have it as digital goal. Where does this fit as the web three grows?
So first, I think bitcoin has really really nailed its value proposition as a store of value, and I think every other endeavor, frankly, is a little bit sort of I wouldn't say a waste of time, but it's a very difficult one because you just have to talk to any person who owns bitcoin and say, would you please spend your bitcoin? And the answer is a resounding no, okay.
And and I think I think the reason why is because it's your savings account effectively, right And and so I think bitcoin will and I think it's value proposition will will never change as a result of that. I think it's, you know, like I think we shouldn't, you know, e theorem has this problem where it's you know, trying to be both a store of value and that currency. So I feel like bitcoin doesn't need to be the currency per se. I think it should be that store
of value. Uh And and and that's why it, you know, is really sort of the reserve currency of our industry, and it also extends beyond basically just just Web three, but also everything that's happening in trad file world as well. Now, I think there's this very interesting thing that I think it was Taler, but in his Nobel Prize research that basically described and behavioral economics, there's construct of sort of mental accounting, right, And in mental and you can see
this in real life. For instance, you know, if you win money in a lottery, you'll probably just go and spend it a lot. But yet if you worked for it and you got your salary, you save it and you treat it very differently. But the dollar is still the dollar. So what's the difference, right, right, So that's mental accounting, And I would say in crypto, we definitely
have mental accounting for bitcoin. Bitcoin is your savings account, right, and you typically every time you dip into your savings account in real life, it's like, well it's painful, right,
and I don't want to touch that. This is for the long term, right, And if you do dip into it, it has to be freaking serious, right, like all my kids' education, or my grandma is sick or whatever that kind of stuff, right, So you'll never dip into that, right, And then you have things like air drops and like tokens that you earn, and I think this is the other thing, because it feels like you didn't work for it per se as much or in some cases right.
So that's why people treat tokens they work for it differently than tokens that are just simply given to them. And then they literally just dump it in the market because they But then also but the flip side is that they may dump it in the market, but if you have something, they should use it on it. We saw differ instance, with a launch of things like Mocha and ape cooin, then you would spend it on something
as well. So you're much more likely to spend your let's call it sort of a sort of spending money, which is your air drop money, into something like an NFT or something that might seem expensive. So you know, like I actually just recently, just just just a few days ago, I did a poll and I said, would you pay I think it was twelve point seventy five eth for board ape or would you pay thirty two seven hundred dollars for a board ape? Which one would you prefer?
Right?
And you know, the majority went for.
Twelve point seventy five eth. What's the difference one is eth one's dollars. They're exactly the same, right, And it was just a mental accounting because because I bought eth maybe at a lower price, it went up in value.
It feels more spendable. And I think the entire industry that we're in comes from the fact that when it comes about meme coins, all coins front from the mental accounting perspective, are very very disposable in ways of course, as cashould be made too, but at the same time, we're more have a higher propensity of spending that because of the fact that it comes from our disposable sort of account as supposed to our savings account, right, like
like a current account, shall we say, right? And I think that's the that's that's that's another sort of reason why I think I don't think bitcoin should ever go in that camp, right. I think if pitcoin goes in that camp, I think it makes it weaker. It's like the dollar, is it a store value or is it a means of exchange. It's much more valuable and powerful as a means of exchange. It should not be a
store value. And I would argue even when you talk about QE, QE certainly destroyed the construct that the dollar is a store of value, but it did make it more powerful because it became went into the hands of more people and was used more and more.
Right on that note, and this is a it just came to mind because you mentioned QE. Obviously Bitcoin, it's really great propositions. And because the value is that scarcity, you can't you know, create more of it. It's algorithmically set twenty one million. There's that scarcity asp but you have to work for you get to mine it, spend
a lot of energy and things like that. And then you have fiat currencies, which is the lingering problem that different regimes and countries and folks have dealt with for a long time, manipulation by government. Do you see blockchain in any way fixing that fiat regime. Maybe they're able to, I don't know, put some sort of algorithmic set up.
Yeah.
So first as a store value, I think bitcoin has, as I said earlier, has nailed at and I don't think you know, and the fixed supply mechanism, which is a very common sort of tokenomics meta right, makes sense because you say, okay, there's a very easy way to determine that it could be valuable over time. If a lot of people want it, then there's a value increase and sort of goes into the whole scarce sity aario. So it kind of depends what your purpose is.
So if you want to.
Sort of a crue value into something, then a fixed token supply may make sense. But if you want to create a lot of utility and usage, sometimes that's hard because there's a cost issue. Like for instance, if ethereum you know, went up to I don't know, ten thousand dollars right, then the transaction fees would be very expensive. And when the transaction fees are very high, then it
actually limits its utility in terms of the cost. Now we do this in different countries, like for instance, you know, we pay high taxes or high vat because there's value.
That comes from it.
So I'm more than happy to spend let's say fifty dollars per transaction if I know that it makes me you know, five hundred dollars or something. Right, Like, the context doesn't matter, and we see differ instance with NFTs, people still trade most NFTs on ethereum, despite the fact that the gas fees are lower elsewhere because you can make money or there's that, so it doesn't really matter. But there's a there's a balance there that needs to happen.
And because we're still in the growth phase of our industry generally speaking, where you know, things will rise. But when you get to a point where we sort of have more adoption, mass adoption and billions of people are using it, there's going to be a very interesting dilemma between the ones who want mass utility and reduce cost and then at the same time say, oh, it has to be very very valuable, right, because these are two different things. And I think for mass adoption utility, I
think inflation is actually a fairly healthy mechanism. The reason why is because we're not all born with equal means, right, and we're you know, we have maybe let's call it equal opportunity, we would say, but that's not really true, right, And that's why governments have things like taxes, and that's why I have social services, that's why they give education for free in those areas, or you know, like if you you know, that's why you have you know, like taxes.
Supposedly people who make more money pay more taxes, and people who depends where you are, and people who make less money pay less taxes. Because there is an area in which you want to try to create sort of a cohesive society in where you have opportunity and where you can sort of you know, I have you know, the the dignity of opportunity and the growth prospects that come with it.
And when you have something.
That's fixed, then you basically create that scarcity that really makes it harder and harder and harder for new.
People to enter the space. Right.
So, and I would also argue that that makes inflation so sorry, that makes fixed supply at least philosophically, philosophically sort of against I guess, against nature. And the reason why is because you know, we're always expanding. We're always growing, whether not necessarily as a population, but we are, we live longer, like as a species, we're expanding, right, like you know, the universe expands, right, right, it's time moves forward,
doesn't like it's not fixed. Right, So this whole idea that there would be something fixed and never more is it's actually unnatural now again for things that have to store val value and we create an agree in their scarcity things like you know, historically gold or that kind of stuff, there's an understanding because that's how we measure around that. And so I think, you know, bitcoin is
great for that. But again, if you want utility and usage, you will not be able to grow the usage and the power of the network if you make it more expensive over time and more exclusive and more scarce, because you simply can access that. Now, there are societies where you say, that's all I want to be. So, for instance, Switzerland has no ambition to be one hundred million people. It's cool, right, And and the people who live in Switzerland don't want to be one hundred million people. They're
more than happy with what they have. Please do not invade our place too much. You know, we'll invite the right kind of people and it's happy. And there's many countries like that, right, So so, and each of these countries reach a kind of state that they like and that preserves whatever value and aspect they have, and there
could be growth, but that's that's what they are. And I think blockchains are kind of the same thing, right, And because we're at this state where you know, like when you think about especially on chain, it's less than a hundred million people on chain, that's maybe four in
a million people own tokens and trading exchanges. You know, there's eight million people in the world, right, so from a mass adoption standpoint, we're still very far away, and so we're all just simply experiencing growth from macro, right, which is why generally ambullish on the sector, because I think billions of people will have crypto and will use tokens and will be in web three.
Right.
But once we reach the point where we reached a point of saturation, which is a while away right then and wheneveryone sort of, then then we need to talk about the construct differently. And I would say, you're not going to bring on more people unless you have something that is inflationary. So so I think, you know, I think the problem when you think about sort of you know, gains in economics, which is really sort of the inspiration between QE, right, the problem isn't per se the fact
that there's QI. It's the fact that after you have basically succeeded, you're supposed to then pull back. And from a political standpoint, you know, it's very unpopular when when you kind of got addicted to you know, basically just pushing it out and and and so so that's the issue, right, The issue is is that you know, sort of we're not willing to sort of pull back from from from from the q E side of things and and reverse
back to it. So so, but there's a lot of debate between there's a lot of bit of it between sort of there's a big topic between sort of obviously Austrian and Chicago School of Economics versus change and and so on. It's a that's another topic.
So yeah, no, that just great. I and yeah, I love I mean, I've learned so much and the fact that you know what you're saying, the ability to print money into a que is not necessarily a bug but a feature. But the problem is what I think Elon is trying to do put government spending on the blockchain so we can all verify where's our tax dollars going.
But that's the different that's transparency. And I'm I'm I'm and I think that's a great thing because the other problem that all societies have basically, and and the US is no exception, is basically corruption, right, and the more corrupt society is actually.
The less efficient.
It is because there's an intermediary in the middle that then negotiates and basically uses their power to do an outcome that is not actually market spaced. So you know, generally, if you're in blockchain, in web three crypto, you're basically typically a free market maximalist, right, which means that you believe that the market has is the open and free market is the best way to determine actual pricing, demand, supply,
and and the sort of resulting utility. Right, So if if something is cheap, then there will be more demand, or maybe it's indicative that is not important or interesting anymore, right, Like these all these type of things. I think the one thing that that type of economics often does actually miss is the fact that as humans, you know, we're not fully rational, right, and so the utility isn't the
only reason we do it. We sort of put emotional value, control and symbolic value into it, and as a result it may be valuable. Like for instance, you know, why do we still have horses? I mean, you know, like like the utility the horse is all gone and today polo is a luxury sport. Right, then we watch horse races and stuff, and to keep a horse is way more expensive than to keep a super expensive car because it's become a status symbol.
Right, You've got a central park here in New York and you go riding your horse character.
Exactly right, So so you have those you have those type.
Of elements, right, Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I know we're coming up on time, and I wanted to ask you about this. Last week there's a report that Animoka Brands may come to United States to do a public listing. What can you tell us there? And if you are playing to would you do IPOs back? How would you go?
Yeah?
So, first of all, Animoga Brands, it's not a secret that Animoco Brands has been looking at being a public
company and can and that's listed and traded. So for those who may not know, we were once a listed company on the Australian Stock Exchange and as a result, we're still a public company and we're all common stock still to this day we have like three thousand shareholders and Animoko so and we kind of operate almost dowlike you know, obviously in a traditional sort of shareholding perspective,
so we're quite accustomed to that. And when we look at some of the market, right, I mean, I think last year we report our results, we had like three hundred and fourteen million dollars in revenue, close one hundred million year bit dah sitting on like four billion dollars worth of assets or doing cash cryptos, table coins, bitcoin and so on. We feel that actually, you know, we're in a pretty good position to be a public company again, right,
and now we haven't decided on the venue. There were some other news media out there that basically made some comments around US potentially being in the US, and it's not untrue to say that the US is in consideration, but it is not a you know, it's not something that we can confirm, right, So generally we could say no comment on market rumors. But the fact that we do want to be a public company is, of course, you know, something that we have said many times already.
Final question here before we wrap it up. What can you tell us that's on your rope app you know, as far as maybe investments, how you're plan to handle the remainder of this bull market and planning for like a bear market twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven, things like that.
It's interesting how our definitions of bull markets seem to change. So because it was definitely bull market in Q four, especially after Trump got elected, and now we're seeing a little inkling pricing, a little bit of a ball market, right. I mean, I love the optimism in work three and I think I think it's one of the most powerful things that we have in our space, which is relentless optimism and building in this area. So first, we obviously
are very bullish on gaming. We actually think maybe I'll come to that thesis a little bit towards the end because I think it's a it's a macro thesis. But let's go into new areas that we're you know, people might not be aware that we're building on. You know, we have over five and a seventy three portfolios that the three areas we like a lot outside of the usual stuff like aid pen and of course we really like digital identity. So with mocha Vers, we're very focused
around basically creating a big reputation stack for us. Digital identity is the key for digital reputation, which is the key to creating a safer and better and more trusted Internet. And I think if I you know, like one of the challenges that we have in our space is that I'm dealing with a lot of We're all dealing with a lot of anonymous wallets, right and it's okay to
be anonymous. I don't need to know your name, but I need to know your reputation of that wallet, and I understand that I don't want to share what that is, but I should have some kind of score that's attested from another credible wallet that is some example of something where I can sort of still preserve, you know, sort of the privacy while actually doing trusted business because right now, you know, there's so many bots and stuff out there, and this is just an evolution of space. This will
get solved, but we're very focused on that. The second thing that we are focused on is education. So with open campus, you know, with with the with Eedu chain. Why because there's a five trillion dollar market one hundreds of millions of students in the world that are basically for the first time wanting to be onboarded basically into the world of web three. And the way to do that we think by providing things like student loans. So we basically backed a company called Pencil Finance that was
building on du chain a student loan platform. And again what does blockchain do. It makes these things better, faster, cheaper. Now that means you can basically reduce the cost of interest to the student, you can create better returns for
the person who's providing the loan. And of course when the student actually has a digital wallet to repay his loans, then guess what he's seen Crypto for life, right, And if you think about sort of you know, how we create the sort of adoption for things like PayPal or Venmo, it all really started with students, right, So that's kind of you know, some examples. Of course we're doing a lot of other things there. And then the gaming thesis, so it goes generally to the way that we think
about tokens broadly. So when we think of tokens, they're not only as I said, it's their network effects. And these network effects are reflections of not only because of financial in nature, not only of what's happening in the
web three space, but in the global space. They're memta like for instance, I got to know about ChIL guy because there was a token, but you know, the people who actually cared about ChIL Guy as a token was not that many compared to the people in TikTok It was just an example of how that influenced that impact. And I think of tokens broadly as like an open polymarket.
If AI is hot, AI tokens do well right like gaming, Last year, Chloe closed with close to I think I think it was close to like six point six, if not seven million daily active users in blockchain gaming in web three gaming, which is more than any AI utility. And yet why has sort of web three gaming tokens done so badly and poorly in comparison to AI tokens for example, And that's because the narrative on gaming has
been broadly negative. So a lot of people felt that gaming was going to grow post COVID, but it didn't. It actually stayed flat, right. Also, the other thing about gaming is that it's not actually had any price increases for over ten years, which means that gaming is you know,
like you know with QE. During that period of time, the cost of their salaries, the cost of milk, the cost of everything has gone up as a game studio, but the cost of making revenue, I mean, the revenue opportunity has stayed broadly flat, right, which means on real money terms, they're actually making less money than before, which means that less investors are investing them because those studios aren't doing so well anymore. And the stock market prices for many gaming companies isn't.
Doing that well as well.
Like for instance, you know, Roadblocks I think has three hundred and eighty million active users, three hundred and eighty million, right, and its market cap is I think last ed look forty or fifty billion, maybe sixty yet some good days. I mean, just compute that if this thing was called TikTok or had a social network of thing in there, ten times a value. Right. It's narrative, right. The gaming the gaming narratives aren't as powerful because of the sentiment.
During COVID, though, gaming was the narrative because it was like everyone's playing games, We're all gonna be virtual, we're going to live in metaverse, we're never going to travel again, you know that kind of stuff, right. That didn't quite turn out true, but and so so that effect gaming
lost over the last three years. And that's why token prices are down because generally investor sentiment is down, right, and we think this because we think this impact will have it will impact other tokens as well, right in terms of other industries, whether there's AI or like you know, sort of I know, sort of sort of DCI or deep in like, if those topics become popular in the broader meta of the world, the tokens will have an
impact as well. So there are really a few things that are going to we think, grow the gaming meta overall. One the launch of the Nintendo Switch to this summer. That's a big one, already sold out. That's exciting. And when people buy a new console, they tend to buy twelve to fifteen new games in their lifetime, which means more revenue, more growth space. Second thing is that Mario
Karte pricing for the physical copy is at ninety dollars. Now, for those of you in gaming, you know, it's like, oh my goodness, I would never pay nine dollars for a game. Turns out that being an away, right, it's still the cheapest form of right. And you might say that seems expensive, but actually, in the context of everything you spend on in life, you can spend like forty to fifty to sixty hours playing it's actually nothing.
Actually life is long. You can exactly play the game.
That's right now, which then leads on to the next thing, which is the biggest, biggest, biggest gaming thing ever and also frankly cultural phenomena. It's Grand Theft Auto six. GTA six is going to be massive, and now given all the pricing, sure it's been delayed again until next year, but you know, people are thinking it might even go
up to as one hundred and twenty dollars. And while that seems expensive, I can tell you no person is going to decide not to buy GTA six just because it's twenty dollars or thirty dollars more expensive than sort of
murri Kart. But what that means is that is a license and permission for every other game company to increase your prices as well, which again will create a revival, be a stock market prices bet a sort of support for that, and of course, from a meta attention standpoint, you know, when everyone's going to start by buying a console to play GTA six, then everyone's going to talk
about gaming as well. And the final point I would say is that you know, with Grand Theft Auto you can run ARP servers, and we do expect that we
have a couple of companies in our portfolio. We do expect that people are going to start running crypto rails on these servers, and I know in the past Take two has been very negative about this, but we also think they've been negative because you know, because of the sec Right now that you know this regime is no longer that hostile towards it actually not hostile at all towards it, we expect much more flexibility what will be necessary, and I think the US will eventually get there is
a definitive definition of what is and isn't a utility token, and once that happens, I think it opens the floodgates for all sorts of things, including running crypto on RP service on GTA six, which I think will be massive.
Oh my gosh, I can't wait to see that. It's going to be like the convergence of two major markets, and the gaming industry is huge as like, I.
Mean, if there's one game where crypto just fits in just easily, it probably.
Would be GTA.
Oh man, well, well yeah, when that comes out, we have to have you back on to talk about all that, how that's going to impact gamers and much more. But thank you so much for taking the time to do this.
Thank you for having me