Bankless - 179 - The Bankless Origin Story - Raoul Pal

Starting point is 00:00:00 Something truly magic is happening here. And yes, we're in this bare market phase of it all, but there is total magic going on. And that just gave me another shot in the arm to think. You know what? What comes out of this is going to be massive. Welcome to bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better, and how to front run the opportunity. This is Ryan Sean Adams.

Starting point is 00:00:28 I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless. Guys, this is part two of our conversation with Raoul Paul, and the tables have turned. This time, Raoul is interviewing David and myself. So we wanted to publish this on the Bankless podcast as well. I hope there are some good takes in here for you. This is really an opportunity to talk a little bit about the founding of bank lists, our early theses, where we got our start, how we met. We're not usually interviewed.

Starting point is 00:00:57 And I don't think neither David and myself are a place to kind of ask each other questions, as well as a third party would ask us. So that's what you're in for today. David, you have any reflections on this episode? Yeah, like you said, I always enjoy being on the other side of the microphone. The times that you and I both have been on the other side of the microphone are very few and far between and nothing of this caliber of like Rao Paul. I'm pretty sure the Bankless Nation will thoroughly enjoy us being interviewed rather than doing the interviewer.

Starting point is 00:01:27 So yeah, like Ryan said, like the early days of Bankless and Genesis of Bankrupt. Like maybe you came into bankless during 2021 or later and missed mine and Ryan's trajectory up to the genesis of bankless and then also the early years of bankless. Like this will probably provide you a lot of context and probably illustrate how we got to be the way that we are and why we say the things that we say. So I think this episode is going to be pretty fun for a lot of people. It was also an episode, very, very rare episode where we were recording in person, like literally sitting beside each other. So there's that dynamic. Never would have thought possible. know. Can you believe it? So guys, that's the episode today with Raoul Paul talking to, I guess,

Starting point is 00:02:08 David, you and I are guests today. Yeah, we're the guests. Enjoy this one. But first, a moment to tell you about the fantastic sponsors that made this possible, including our number one recommended crypto exchange and tool for going bankless, Cracken. Cracken Pro has easily become the best crypto trading platform in the industry. The place I used to check the charts and the crypto prices, even when I'm not looking to place a trade. On Cracken Pro, you'll have access to advanced charting tools. real-time market data and lightning fast trade execution, all inside their spiffy new modular interface. Crackin's new customizable modular layout lets you tailor your trading experience to suit your needs. Pick and choose your favorite modules and place them anywhere you want in your screen.

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Starting point is 00:05:06 more to manage their token complexities. So, if you are interested in signing up with Toku, check out Toku.com slash bankless or click the link in the description below. So double trouble today. David and Ryan, great to see you. It's good to be on this side of the table, and that should be a bit of fun. Not only are we in frequent. on the other side of the microphone, but we are even more infrequently actually together in person. So this is unique. Yeah, this is just happenstance. And David, you just put on your Wells Bankless T-shirt.

Starting point is 00:05:38 I noticed, I see there. Yeah, we got the Bankless America as well. Fantastic. So as ever, I always like to start with people's journey into the space because everybody comes in different ways. There's a different hook that brings you on and then you're understanding, from there. So, I don't know, David, do we want to start with you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got hooked. I'm a class of 2017 crypto graduate, so came in, bought the top of 2017, as one does. Networth went to

Starting point is 00:06:09 zero in 2018 and again in 2019. But I was immediately compelled by just... What were you doing beforehand? How did you get into this? My first job out of school was in social work. After that, I was going, trying to figure out my way into the world of health sciences. The three, the three, the three, The true line between that and crypto was that I was in search of trying to find the way to improve people's lives in the biggest bang for your buck. So like, how do you do these smallest things that produce the largest net outcomes in people's just well-being? My major was psychology with a focus on positive psychology, and the TLDR of that is just

Starting point is 00:06:49 like, hey, psychology as an academic study is all about improving sick people to be normal. what if you apply psychological principles to normal people to just make them feel stronger, more self-actualized, just better? And so in pursuit of that, I was like, okay, that's great. But in order to make people feel more psychologically sound, you need to also improve their fitness, right? Like, you can't be psychologically sound without, like, exercise. And then once you do those two things, you might as well round it all out with nutrition. And so these, there's just a bunch of low-hanging fruit to make the average individual feel a lot better. So on my search, for how to find a private practice role in that. I discover Ethereum because of 2017, and my mind

Starting point is 00:07:32 gets opened up to the world of money and finance as an economic substrate for all humans. And so understanding, like, how do we improve everyone's lives very simply and very easily? Well, money and finance goes down to the root of all things. So, like, very far from psychology, but the through line of just, like, how do we improve the most people's lives and the easiest, most systemic way possible. As soon as I kind of, you know, had the aha moment of like money and finances at the root of all things. And Ethereum is a new platform for producing that. I was just immediately compelled and there was no going back. I think David is one of the, the only people I've ever heard who came through to crypto through route of psychology and nutrition.

Starting point is 00:08:14 My wife's a behavioral psychologist. Really? She just thinks my NFTs are just ridiculous. But does she understand them? No. And I've tried. She's just like, this is ridiculous. There's no psychological thesis behind why humans collect these sorts of digital objects. She just doesn't want to accept it. She's too much about science brain. She's like, no, this is stupid. Yeah, I mean, and full credit to David, too, I think one of the things that I've observed,

Starting point is 00:08:43 because I've got to see him since 2017, we probably started working together more in 2019 and then beyond to start bankless. But this guy has taught himself everything. and he's gotten up to speed, you know, just so quickly. And to not like know, I don't know, how much do you know about finance? Zero. Like, how much did you know about money? A lot of my friends in college took business, like went through business school.

Starting point is 00:09:07 Yeah. Is this the antithesis of what you were doing, right? It's like the money was root of all evil when you go through kind of sociology, psychology. It's like, yeah, yeah, I wore a CCCP shirt in middle school for sure. Oh, God. So, so, but this, I don't know if you've, observe this, Raoul, but sometimes the most trad-fi deepest economists, people who have gone to graduate school and pursue their PhD, they miss this crypto thing for some reason. It's because

Starting point is 00:09:35 I think they learn bad habits. Right. And so you almost have to enter crypto as a child. A blank slate. Right? And like, and like kind of go back to the basics of let's build out from based principles what this money thing actually is and then work from there. And that's what I observed David doing in this space. I was going to mention when we were speaking to yesterday, but I've now on my screen got the bell curve of the mid-twit. And I was speaking to Meltem about this, that we both realized that it's the single most important thing is never be in the middle. And that's why most of these guys, like you saw Talib yesterday on C.M. NBC, right? He's squarely being the mid-twi. And it's the simplicity of the idea is what can

Starting point is 00:10:28 drive much better results, I think. Yeah, I tease all of my business school friends that, you know, I was the one psych friend and much much the business school people. But I was the one that discovered crypto well ahead of the curve and did well for myself well at an accelerated pace in comparison to them. How do they respond to that teasing, David? Do you enjoy that? You guys I had to unlearn all of this stuff in order to understand crypto. It's about like the unlearning that I never had to do. I never had to unlearn anything because I never taught me out of your job. Because you could come in as a total moron.

Starting point is 00:10:58 Exactly. Yes. Right. And then move to Jedi Master over time, right? Is that much easier? Are you on the left side of the mid-twit then, David? Are you in the right side? I don't know what I am yet. I'm definitely not in the middle. That's all right, as long as you're not in the middle.

Starting point is 00:11:12 So, Ryan, what's your story? How did you get into all of this? Not by way of nutrition, not by way of psychology. I actually did the business school kind of thing, right? And so somehow I unlearned the lessons of Keynesian economics and everything they kind of teach you in business school. But I would say I kind of came at this through the, you know, technophile, startup, entrepreneurship kind of thing. I remember sold a healthcare tech company in 2014, and the co-founder, the guy I was working with said something to me in passing. He was like, have you heard about Bitcoin because I have set up a bunch of Bitcoin mining machines in my garage?

Starting point is 00:11:53 And this was 2014, right? Of course, that was never profitable for him, unfortunately. But I was like, what? Like, the idea of mining using machines, using computers, the idea was so foreign that I had a holiday, like kind of a Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. where I had some time. And I just went deep down the crypto Bitcoin at the time rabbit hole in 2014. Spent the entire weekend, didn't spend as much time with my family as I probably should have. But I was just everything Andreas Antonopoulos had written or said on the subject, I absorbed that. I read everything I could on the subject. And by Monday at the end of that weekend, I was ready literally to kind of quit my job.

Starting point is 00:12:38 It was a crypto person. I opened up five exchange accounts. I had no idea what I was doing. And these were some shady exchanges at the time, let me tell you. And I was just starting to invest. I wanted to go all in. After that, I must think of that as sort of a manic type of weekend for me. Because after that, I kind of woke up on Monday.

Starting point is 00:13:00 And I was like, okay, back to work, back to what I am doing. And the idea, you know, crypto kind of left me until Ethereum really entered. 2016. And now there's the idea, if Bitcoin was money over IP, which was so incredibly important, money over the internet, digital money, as a bare instrument, that idea is so powerful. Now the ability to program it, this ability of smart contracts to actually build a, didn't use this phrase at the time, but a bankless money system, that totally gripped me and totally captured me. And this was in 2016, 2017, still had no idea what I was. was doing in the space. And actually, I wanted to start a crypto fund. So, you know, your assets

Starting point is 00:13:46 appreciate a little bit. And you rode Bitcoin up. You rode ether up from Simulose. And you're like, I'm an investor now. I can do this. I am brilliant. So let me manage other people's money. Did you ever put blockchain expert on your LinkedIn? No, I'm not that cringe, David. I'm kind of, I kind of cringe. But so I didn't do that because I went down the path in 2017 and I realized, one, there was so much I still needed to learn. Like, I didn't have an underlying thesis of where value would accrue in the space. And so I had no business managing someone else's money.

Starting point is 00:14:27 Like, absolutely none. I'm pleased you realize that. I think a lot of people didn't in 2017 because that was the time of like crypto hedge funds. and everyone was kind of launching one. And, you know, another reason I think a story arc of my life and my narrative has been this pursuit of freedom and kind of autonomy, right? And I saw in crypto a technology that would deliver that not just to myself, but to society, to self-sovereign money, this concept of once you own private keys,

Starting point is 00:14:56 no one can take that away from you, right? Decentralization really kind of captured me almost like spiritually as well, if that's a way of kind of capturing it. And so I knew if I took other people's money at that time, I didn't know what, that would be a shackle as well. And I was here for freedom. I was here for kind of, you know, everything that that entailed.

Starting point is 00:15:17 So I didn't do it at the time. I'm very thankful. And I spent the next few years really trying to understand and develop my thesis for this space. And it turns out, David was doing that at the same time. We kind of met and converged in this path. When was that, 2017, all of that? later.

Starting point is 00:15:34 2019. So before we get to 2019, I just want to hear the genius to idiot phase of suddenly the space collapses. It's the first time you've fully gone through it. I want to hear your mindset because a lot of people are going through that now. Right. And I was a class of 2012, so I've gone it through a few times. But it's never fun, but you kind of get used to it.

Starting point is 00:16:01 So Ryan, I want to go with your first. I'll tell mine. Okay. So, you know, you watch the price of a Bitcoin appreciate to, you know, above 20K, right? When you'd purchase much, much lower than that, obviously. And then you watch the price of Ether appreciate, you know, to 1,120? Is that a number you remember, David? Yeah, 2017.

Starting point is 00:16:24 1420. Just hit that very briefly. But, like, that was it, right? That was the top. And then you watch it fall over the preceding months, right? And fast. And fast. Okay.

Starting point is 00:16:36 So, you know, down, down to 800. Okay, you can hang with that. It's just a dip, right? It'll pass. Down, down, just like a massive flood at this time. You know, Ethereum's only kind of a... Had you marked your net worth in your head, the classic... Don't you?

Starting point is 00:16:51 Everyone does. Don't you? I mean, and you're kind of... I don't now, but I used to. And that's when you think you're sort of a genius. And you do things like one mistake I certainly made on the way up is discovered this really cool, you know, D-5 protocol called MakerDAO and opened up a, you know, a nice CDP. Right, row.

Starting point is 00:17:10 Of course, right? And I'm protected because Eith can't go below 100. It's great cloud. It can't go below 100, can it? Of course not. That would be impossible. It hit, you know, 1420. We're in a new paradigm.

Starting point is 00:17:23 And then what happened over the months and, and even years to come is this massive amount of flood, this kind of dark period where, well, maybe it was all. a bubble, just ICOs, and they have ethon and their treasured. Is you selling anything? Or did you just ride the whole thing? I rode the entire thing. And you know what, though? It was not easy. It's not easy to do that. And particularly, I spent all of my waking hours trying to figure out if I was crazy or not. And I don't know if people can identify that right now, if they're kind of first cyclers if they're just sort of wondering, am I the crazy one? Because that's what the world tells

Starting point is 00:18:05 you. And not only that, Raoul, in crypto in 2018, that's what the Bitcoiners would say, Bitcoin Maximus would say. It was crypto too. Yes, it's not only, like the outside world is saying crypto is dead. But inside of crypto, Ethereum is dead. Ethereum is dead. There's no, like, D5 wasn't a thing. It's just, I feel, ICO's flash in the pan. And so what I spent that year doing was trying to figure out if I was crazy or not. And in 20, I didn't sell during this time until I had some kind of conclusion of whether I was crazy. And why sell when you're down bad, you know, that much anyway? And so 2019... Good risk, man. This is why you shouldn't be a hedge fund. Exactly. So 2019, I realized that, you know what? I don't think I'm crazy. I think everybody else is

Starting point is 00:18:52 wrong, all right? Like, I've spent enough time looking at this technology, like doing the pattern, a matching thing. Everyone is missing defy. Everyone is missing what's going on in Ethereum. This is actually bigger in impact than just simple money over IP. This is an opportunity for a bankless money system. And then I started to find others that thought the same way. David was one of those. I want to hear David. Yeah, what's your 2017 story? The hero to zero. We need to hear it. Thankfully, I didn't have too much capital going into 2017. So like my high watermark, even though like relatively was super high for me, like going back down to zero after that.

Starting point is 00:19:29 And it was like, well, okay, here I was. I'm familiar with this. Like so let me tell you, social work does not pay quite a lot. And especially as you're a student, you're already faced with debt. And so like for me, going into crypto is like, hey, either I go to four plus years of grad school in debt or I go into crypto and no debt. And so like that threshold was already nice. So yeah, so did the whole thing that just like Ryan said, went up to 1420, thought I was

Starting point is 00:19:54 genius is a bull market uh tokens were doing crazy things got my got my first like taste of what capital markets and crazy capital markets can do uh then that's psychology 101 right yes 100 percent like definitely learning about herd herd mentality and all that kind of stuff um and then so like yeah 20 2018 came i got my first job in this space being like a blog writer community manager for an i ICO advisory company, which retroactively, retrospectively, I'm like, okay, that's a shit coin peddling company. But you don't really think about that at the time. Then got a job at a security token company because all the ICOs rotated into security tokens and then I got a job at a tokenized real estate startup. And so I was going from just like, I was just like holding on by my fingernails,

Starting point is 00:20:39 like job to job to job getting through the bear market. And meanwhile, I learned that I can speak pretty well. And so I started my first podcast, POV Crypto with a Bitcoiner co-host. And so I was the Ethereum, had a Bitcoiner co-host. And we were kind of like this bare market darling podcast. I think that's probably where Ryan heard me. I loved it. Yeah. I enjoyed this. Every time you guys published an episode, I would listen to this. Yeah. And I'd be cheering you on, David. It's like. It was funny because like all the bitcointers that listen to it for because of my co-host were like, man, I really like POV crypto. But your, your host, David is a complete moron. And then all my friends tell me the same thing. It's like, man, I really like P.O.B. Crypto, but your Bitcoin or co-host is an idiot.

Starting point is 00:21:18 Yeah. And we were like, yeah, like, this is my college friend. We like each other. It's great. So that's where I learned, that's when we learned to, like, be open and share ideas. And so even though we were, like, fiercely debating with each other, we were friends. And so it was with love. And it was also, like, honest and integral and, like, trying to get down to the, to the basement of things. And so, like, while, like, trying to hold my grip on to actually having a drive throughout the bear market. I was also doing the whole side gig. Because my first job, the company blew up and I was laid off. And so I was like, okay, I never, like with Ryan's freedom things, like I never want to have that be outside of my control ever again. I want to work for myself.

Starting point is 00:21:58 No one's ever going to lay me off ever again. And so I started to make a podcast just like that, that's mine and like learn how to make a podcast into a business. And so that was like my bare market like endeavor. Can I ask you a question there, David? So, um, a lot of, lot of people left during that time. I stayed just to figure out if I was crazy or not. Why did you stay? My conviction about crypto just did not waver in this light. It's like it wasn't even a question to me. It's just like I didn't get why people didn't get it. And I was the annoying one of my friends. It was like, guys, like this is this is real. And they were like, we're going to the baseball game. Like, whatever. What do you think you saw that they didn't? Like what was it?

Starting point is 00:22:42 I don't know. I always, I grew up with a computer in my room, so I was always like tinkering with computer stuff and internet things. And so I understood that, like that was more familiar to me. I also got in via mining myself. So I was mining Ethereum. Yeah. And my father's bathroom. How many rigs did you have? I had four rigs. 2417 D. Do you know electricity, water, not the best of mix. Yeah, yeah. I was well aware. sticking with the moron thing. It worked out. The rigs actually are still gathering dust. I turned them off for years ago, but I still have them. Why did I have such conviction? There was just some things, like, from first principles things of, like, scarcity on the internet.

Starting point is 00:23:26 Like, why wouldn't you have conviction about that? Like, Bitcoin never broke. Ethereum never broke. The things, maybe people lost faith in them, but the systems worked. Yeah. I was like ICOs are still great. Right. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:23:39 there's still a thing. I don't know. It's like, people say, like, why, why did you have conviction throughout the 2018 to 2020 bear market? Like, I don't know. Why didn't you have conviction? Like, why did you leave? Yeah, why did you leave? Price is not, people have to learn, and you guys obviously learned it, was that price is not an indicator of the overall value of the network over time. Right. It's just where it is that day, you know, and that's psychology and that's network activity and other stuff. But overall, you know, you just look at, I've always, just looked at the lows and realized that always higher. Right. Yes.

Starting point is 00:24:14 I think that's the value of the network. Therefore, the network is more valuable each time you go through a cycle. I mean, that's all you need to know, really. For me, I think there's definitely a very strong personal element as to like why I stuck around. I was learning to write. And in my opinion, I was learning to write very well. I was like, not only was I writing what I thought was like pretty on point thesis,

Starting point is 00:24:35 but I was also going back and editing the piece so that I knew people would, effing read it, right? And so I would write a 3,000 word long piece and I would trim it down to 2,000 words and then I would trim it down to 1,500 words. And then I would read it. It's like, man, this is a really good piece of article. So it was, for me, it was like a part of like creativity and expression. Yeah. And that kept me going because I was, I was tuning my own brain at the same time. So like not only is like we can talk about all the fundamentals of crypto and why it's here to stay and like why I had conviction, but also I learned personally to like self-actualize and improve myself and become a better person because of what I had to do to get through the

Starting point is 00:25:15 bear market without losing my sanity. He developed the talent. Yeah. What Ryan was doing with trying to figure out, is he insane or not? Right. It's the same thing. It's that. And it's at that moment that you really make the breakthroughs.

Starting point is 00:25:28 It's that it's in the dark days and you're like, you know what? I've done my thousand hours and I'm building on that. Right. And I'm more sure than ever. Mm-hmm. It's that moment is a really magic moment in this whole crypto space. And once you get that, you know, you're never going to leave. It is.

Starting point is 00:25:46 And you know what gave me the most confidence. And I think the reason I concluded a big part of the reason I concluded I wasn't crazy during that time was I was spending the thousand hours actually using these protocols and using these tools. And I was looking around me at all of the critics and all of the naysayers, all of the people saying crypto was dead. and realizing that they weren't, they had never opened a collateralized debt position in Maker Dow and seen in a few clicks what you can do without any trusted intermediary. I was refinancing my house at the time. And the amount of documentation I had to sign to get a collateralized loan. And I was able to do this on chain in Maker using ETH as my collateral.

Starting point is 00:26:33 And in a few clicks, as clunky as that interface was, make it happen, get a collateralized loan. that to me was magic. 2019, uniswap coming aboard. The ability to swap assets without a centralized intermediary, that was all new. And so it was putting in the work

Starting point is 00:26:52 to actually use these protocols, and it just showed me how hollow the critics' arguments were because they weren't actually doing this stuff. They weren't spending the time using the protocols, even kind of the notable VCs. This is why, I don't know what you believe

Starting point is 00:27:08 about like the efficient market hypothesis in this idea that everything is always priced in. I'm like, that's complete dog shit. Like that does, that is not my experience of the world. Like, I think the rewards go to the people who stick around and research and put in the hours and put in the work. And so like one message I would say is you're never going to make it through the spare market if you're lazy, right? Like you have to put in the work to actually use the tools and,

Starting point is 00:27:38 develop your thinking based on first principles, not relying on a YouTuber, TikTok or someone on Twitter to tell you what to think. And that is the meta skill. I think all good investors eventually learn. It's something that I certainly learned during the last bear market. Tell me the story of bankless, because you know, you guys have, you really do produce some of the best quality content out there. It's very thoughtful. Tell me the story. How the hell did you two get together? Well, I saw in 2019, I saw this guy writing all sorts of fantastic articles that I started reading. One of them, a notable piece was on Maker Dow and sort of explaining how that works to the layman. And I think, David, you and I started a DM conversation at the time. And I was, I had started a

Starting point is 00:28:25 newsletter called Bankless in 2019. And the idea of this newsletter was, was very simple. It's to expose more people to defy tools and to help the world go bankless. We can all go on the bankless journey. And it starts by getting more of your net worth out of banked money systems, fiat in your bank account, your Wells Fargo account, and more into crypto systems. And to the point where you stop using banks, right? And I can say over time, I have a much larger percent of my net worth that's bankless over time that that has happened to me. And more of my transactions are on chain than or in kind of the bank money system. And so it's a journey.

Starting point is 00:29:06 Anyway, I wanted to build a community and provide an information resource for people who are going on the journey, on the bankless journey. And so I met David and I was like, I have to work with this guy. He's a fantastic writer. I want this person to write for bankless

Starting point is 00:29:23 because it was very hard at the time to publish three to five articles per week, just myself solo, and keep up with the space as well. and so I needed some help with that. And that's where we started. He was just kind of a contract writer on bankless. And then over time it evolved.

Starting point is 00:29:43 And he's like, hey, Ryan, we should start a podcast. Hey, Ryan, hey, we should start a podcast. And he kept saying this over and a hour. I was like, David, we're not going to have enough to actually talk about. Okay? Like maybe five episodes worth, it's not going to be a thing. And you've both got faces for radio. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:30:01 That's what I told him. Especially me. And so, but, but he, I don't know, I don't know how you did it, man. But like, it took me a while to convince Ryan that a podcast was a good idea. Yeah. I had been a podcast consumer, but didn't think that I at least had the skills to produce. And then we just hit record one day. Somehow you convinced me.

Starting point is 00:30:21 We hit record. And that was episode one. I think in May, sorry, March 2020. Right. Was it before or right after COVID hit? Episode number two. was the day of the COVID dump. There you go.

Starting point is 00:30:35 And so that's where we started. And then we just kind of grew up from there. And of course, this is, this, for the last couple of days, it's only the second time, David and I have met in person. This is true. No way. Yeah. So we had, we developed this entire thing through COVID and met for the first time last year.

Starting point is 00:30:54 It was over two years of working together before we met for the time. Yeah. I mean, we had like a 10 plus person company at the time before we ever met. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, is that how you remember, David? What's your story? Yeah, that's right.

Starting point is 00:31:06 I had my own medium. And so that's where I was writing all my articles and publishing all my articles. And then I had that other podcast that was called P-O-V-Crypto, point-of-view crypto. And so I had never really meaningfully considered about like branding and business. Like, yes, POV-C crypto was a sex joke, even though it was about like two percent. Was it? Yeah. I'm just learning this.

Starting point is 00:31:27 What the hell? It was like point-of-view crypto, point-of-view with your name and also Bitcoin, but also ha-ha-sex. I never really put on the like, hey, let's be professional and turn this into a business and scale this out and like lean into a brand. I was like writing on my medium just because I wanted people to read my stuff. And I, because I didn't go to business school. I did not have that part of me to actually be able to build a foundation that was like in that mindset, right? Like a self-sustaining, hey, we can scale this out. We can do this better and more intentionally. And so I'm just like writing on my medium, producing my content. And then Ryan makes the

Starting point is 00:32:02 bankless newsletter and he's like, and I kind of like get it. It's like, oh, distribution, like consistency, brand. Oh. And I'm like, okay, what if I just take all of my writing and deposit it into the bankless newsletter, right? And then it's like Ryan and I are saying the same words anyways. And so it's not, and there's no like misalignment there. And not only that, but like the more I talk to him, the more precise both of our words become. And so like we're just sharpening each other's sticks. And so it goes from a little bit of just like, hey, can we work together and be like, oh, this is working out. Can we do a podcast together?

Starting point is 00:32:38 Oh, this is working out. And so it was just like bankless for me has just been this like bastion of creative expression that I think always just like gets me going. And like gives me like what a reason to like, hey, what's the next bit of content I can produce? Like what's the next thesis I can spit out? What's your what's your guy's vision now for bankless? That's a good question. I mean, I think what you've been talking about you guys because now you've had some time together.

Starting point is 00:33:02 But, you know, where do you want to go with it? I think bankless started in a way that, you know, Dave is talking with, it's just an exploration, a discovery. We've always called it kind of going bankless is sort of the journey west, right? Where you, you know, you set sail and you go try to discover undiscovered lands. And I think that's why the podcast has been for both of us, just energy producing, because we're both learning as we go. And so... And you get to meet amazing people and have fantastic conversations. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:33:37 And then you're developing your thesis in kind of real time based on conversations with some of the smartest people. I do think that crypto, yes, crypto attracts the scammers and the grifters and we have some of the worst of that. It also attracts some of the most brilliant, humanitarian, wonderful people that I've ever met. and to have an opportunity, you know, being David and I, at least myself, on the left side of that bell curve, to have that opportunity to talk to some of these crypto geniuses, these kind of researchers, you know, best in their field is absolutely incredible.

Starting point is 00:34:15 And so the cool thing about this now, using obviously media as a tool, is we can open source this entire journey and this entire pursuit. And so it's an open sourcing of that journey to go bankless. and it's inviting a community to come along with us. And that's really what the newsletter has been for us and also what the podcast has been for us. And so I think in the bankless community, there's now about 300,000 members

Starting point is 00:34:43 who kind of subscribe to the newsletter. And, you know, that was growing. I remember in 2019, no one was noticed. I remember the first time I hit 10,000 on the newsletter. And I was like, what could be better? I can't believe 10,000 people. That's like, yeah, that's it. And so, I mean, what is kind of the end state ambition here?

Starting point is 00:35:07 I think the end state ambition is similar to, you know, the ambition of crypto, which is private keys in everyone's hands. You know, every citizen on the planet, ideally, has the ability and is going at some level, at some point in the spectrum, on the bankless journey. So I think the end state for us is sort of how do we get a billion people into crypto and provide kind of the open source journey, the tools, the media to do that, and podcasts that they can turn to and jump aboard. I think we still have some limiters, though, in crypto, like in terms of our scalability. I'm trying to think. I don't know how you would answer this question, but lately, David, I've been thinking about

Starting point is 00:35:54 2023 and kind of reflecting on it. And I feel like crypto has gone a bit more passive in terms of it's a little bit different than the previous spare market, I would say. Like, you know, 2019, there were crypto natives using all of these tools. And, you know, 2023, I feel like we are we're caught in this rut almost where all we can talk about is regulatory. All we talk about is Gary Gensler. We talk about price. We talk about the investing side. There's tons to do in crypto. Don't get me wrong. But it almost feels like some of us have been content to sit a little passively and watch prices. And I'm just hungry for more on-chain stuff to happen. And I do feel like the community has to build the apps in order to get us to the next level so that we can,

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Starting point is 00:39:31 as like, here's the killer app, to a broader understanding of Web 3, which is the application's layer of a lot of this. What was your Web 3 journey? Why did you suddenly start to see the bigger picture? I mean, you know, there's ownership of crypto dick butts in this now. David's sporting, well, a Solana NFT. And, you know, you've clearly got something. I mean, I've been down this route for a while, but there was a magic moment for me. I was at Ian Rogers House in Paris and it was having dinner and next to me was like artists, musicians, technologists, finance people, just this eclectic group of brilliant, talented people. And I'm like, this does not happen in your lifetime.

Starting point is 00:40:20 Yeah, right. It really doesn't. Something truly magic is happening here. And yes, we're in this bare market phase of it all, but there is total magic going on. That just gave me in the, I don't know when that was last December, it just gave me another shot in the arm to think, you know what, what comes out of this is going to be massive. What's your, how did you start thinking about Web 3 more, well, not more than, but, you know, as another layer to what you guys do at Bankless. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:40:48 Well, I think one of the neat things about crypto is that it seems to present some sort of like singularity about many different topics and, and like areas of focus, right? typically there's the contrast between defy and nfts right like either it's defy or it's nfts but the t and nfts token and a token is a financial instrument and that's defy and and then we have like the relationship between protocols and community and this is where um it's i think just like everything kind of weaves together so to understand deeply whatever this thing is defy like NFTs, Ethereum, Web3, Crypto, internet, money and internet, what words do we even use to explain this thing in totality? I don't know.

Starting point is 00:41:37 I kind of like the digital nation state. I mean, that's... Sure. Yeah. But I would also say that's another way to approach the knowledge, right? There's, and this is why I always say crypto has something for everyone, and there's 10,000 ways to find crypto and what you see in it. But to stop at Defi is to only paint in, like, a certain corner of the picture. Maybe it's towards the center of the picture, maybe, but maybe that's up for interpretation. But I think a holistic understanding and why people really enjoy bankless, because we try and go down every single rabbit hole that crypto presents us. And so we go down the defy rabbit hole. We go down the Web3 rabbit hole. We go down the NFT rabbit hole. And we also

Starting point is 00:42:19 try and do our best to weave them all together to tell the grand story that is this movement that we're all like on together. And I think perhaps like one of the reasons why bankless is what it is because I think we've done a bangup drive like weaving it all together. But it's still like there's still corners and dots and data to connect. And from a content perspective, it's very, very rich, right? Like why are we able to produce three episodes a week at minimum?

Starting point is 00:42:42 It's like, oh, it's because there's so much data and data points out there to connect and know so much knowledge to share and weave together. And so we started in defy just because like like Ryan said, like first off, no one in 20s. 2018 to 2020, no one believed in crypto. And then even inside of crypto, 90% of people didn't believe in Ethereum. And even inside of Ethereum, like half of Ethereum didn't even believe in Defi. And so it was the contrarian bet layered inside of a contrarian bet layered inside of a contrarian bet. And being right about that, like put many, many people on the map and

Starting point is 00:43:16 bank this specifically. But then it just grows from there. It's like, okay, now that, now that we have this foundation of like, hey, defy is real. Tokens are a thing. Smart contracts are a thing. That just makes so many other downstream technologies also a thing, right? And that makes Dow's a thing. That makes NFTs a thing. That makes layer two is a thing.

Starting point is 00:43:36 And so everything kind of spawned out from there. And after that, it's just been like trying to capture a lightning in a bottle because like there's so many conversations to be had about where this thing goes. Yeah. I mean, for me, it's sort of a few mental models that really clicked. to kind of understand this and understand NFTs. And, you know, one of the mental models is the digital nation state, as you said. And a cornerstone of any nation state, digital nation, or sorry, any kind of physical manifestation

Starting point is 00:44:06 of a nation is this idea of rule of law and property rights. And what we have created kind of the mental model to unlock with something like Ethereum or even a Bitcoin is we have created a internet-based digital property rights. system. And so that can be any type of property. That can be fungible property like tokens, either, you know, could be stocks and bonds or currencies in kind of the, you know, the nation state world. Those are all forms of property of the nation state. We can have that and register those as assets on something like Ethereum. Or it could be non-fundable elements of property. We see that, of course, in the physical world, too, you know, your house, your apartment, a collectible that you purchase. These are also forms of

Starting point is 00:44:51 property that are kind of registered via the nation state, you know, through rule of law. And so it's all the same side of the coin. But you were mentioning that, that meal you had where you saw kind of like artists and, you know, finance people and everyone kind of collectively together. Another mental model unlocked for me was we did an episode with a historian. His name is Josh Rosenthal. And it's probably my favorite episode that Bankless has ever produced just because it was so pivotal to like my crypto journey. And he basically went through the Renaissance. And he talked, he compared where we have been to sort of the feudal system where, you know, there was no democratization of property. It was sort of, you know, our fuel lords kind of, you know, we worked on

Starting point is 00:45:43 their land and toiled for them. And that's sort of the kind of the present day internet. And then we unlocked a couple of things that led to the Renaissance. And these were technical. We unlocked the printing press, Gutenberg's printing press, and so this enabled mass distribution of communication. It was a communication technology. And we also unlocked, you know, Medici and others double entry bookkeeping, right? And so you have a communication technology and you have a ledger technology and what do you get? You get the renaissance, this splash of human creativity and science and progress. And man, the roots of everything that human. has achieved up to now, a lot of that was rooted in the Renaissance. And so now what do we have?

Starting point is 00:46:27 Well, we have a communication technology that democratizes communication. That's called the internet. TCPIP. That's the protocol for it. Okay. That's like the printing press. And we have a new triple entry, bookkeeping system, a general ledger. That is crypto. All right? So we've got these two technologies. And I think why you're starting to see what you're seeing, Raoul, is we are starting, we're seeing the early phases of unlocking a new renaissance, almost like a crypto. I've been writing about this myself, this whole exponential age thesis. Yes. Just builds on that. It's where AI fits in, robotics, the Internet of Things, genetic sciences. All of this is building on an entirely new system that has the opportunity to be a renaissance that we can be

Starting point is 00:47:12 optimistic about and not fear. People fear change, right? It's a natural human thing. But if you embrace it and go with it, that's the rewarding journey. 100%. And I think that that is the opportunity for everyone, I would say, listening to this, consuming real vision content, consuming bankless content. We are at a very unique place in history, right? Where we've just had the, we are just, I think there's a tendency, particularly among younger generations, to be almost nihilistic about their place and time and history, right?

Starting point is 00:47:45 And you could certainly go down that path. And there have been, you know, points in my life where I've got. We've all been down that path. We've all been down that path. Look at the flip side of this. Like the massive exponential opportunity that is available to you. Like the tools that we have at our disposal right now in this period of change, the old institutions aren't going to take us to the next stage in human progress.

Starting point is 00:48:09 And so we have an opportunity. This is sort of what we're talking about yesterday, Rao, with the fourth turning. We have an opportunity to set up a new, you know, set up. of institutions that will help humanity coordinate better. And that's kind of the 21st century technology. And what a gift to be born and to be alive at such a time and a place. That's the flip side. I mean, to me, I know David has talked about this with his own sort of journey, but to me, that is the nihilism killer is when you see the pie expanding opportunity. That's going to get me into another thing, is I really worry about.

Starting point is 00:48:48 about this, the abundance mindset that many of us have. And then there's the tribalism. Yeah. And it is, I mean, I left the Bitcoin ecosystem. Yes, because Heath was outperforming, you know, as an investment guy, but because I fucking hated the ecosystem. Right. You weren't treated well.

Starting point is 00:49:10 If you want to join a digital nation state and they don't treat you well as citizens, you want to leave. And I think we're starting to see that, but the tribalism is still immense in the space. And something has to change there if we're trying to onboard a billion people. It can't be a group of people throwing poo at each other. Let me ask you, do you think because there have been those that argue that the tribalism is actually a feature, not a bug? Yeah, I get that, but you don't have to be nasty about it. You can protect your own and be somebody who wants their ecosystem to succeed, even above other.

Starting point is 00:49:48 But it doesn't have to be a pie mentality. It can be an abundance mentality. If we all do this together, we all succeed. I just don't get it. My interpretation on this, we use this line at bankless a lot. It's like we're speed running the history of money and finance. And so like the compression of time in crypto, if you want to extrapolate it out and layer it on actual human history, like Bitcoin invented in 2009, that's like us discovering gold on the internet. It's, like, Bitcoin's great.

Starting point is 00:50:19 It is primitive. And so it makes sense that Bitcoin looks and feels, and if you, like, which I do, accept Nick Carter's interpretation of this. It is a religion. It is not like a religion. It is a religion. It acts like a religion. It quacks like a religion.

Starting point is 00:50:35 They have religious purity tests. And so, like, the, and so that is where, you know, crypto is in the landscape of time. Like, Bitcoin is the earliest discovery of Bitcoin. And so it's like you have your high priest of Bitcoin, you have the word of Bitcoin, the word of Satoshi, interpretations of the word of Satoshi. And so this is where crypto was when we discovered it in 2009 where Bitcoin is. And then we move forward in time and space and very rapidly. And then we also move forward in technological progress of crypto.

Starting point is 00:51:07 And then all of a sudden we have something more advanced that looks and feels more resident with modern technology and modern values in modern society, which in my mind is a theory. Yeah. Do you think, though, that like the religious aspect of it, like, is a product of stagnation more than anything else? I think it's a product of valuation. Because valuation in the space is Metcalf's law. So it's about trying to get the most activity on your chain. I guess stagnation plays into that. When the market is stagnant, there's no new capital coming in. So you're fighting for your share of the capital. You can see an NFT space as well. It's got the exact same thing is going on because there's a scarcity of capital so people become more fanatic about attracting that capital.

Starting point is 00:51:57 And they coalesce tell themselves different stories to try and attract capital via narrative. Once the space starts growing again, it does drop a bit. But it's particularly bad in bad markets. Yeah. Yeah, there's always the, hey, let's grow the pie conversation versus just splitting up the pie. And that's why I like to talk about Ethereum's roll-up-centric roadmap in the conversation of that pie, whereas layer twos on Ethereum, optimism competes with Arbitrum, competes with Polygon, competes with ZKSink. Yet, when an application deploys on any one of those things, it's very easy to transfer and spread that value around to the other layer two's.

Starting point is 00:52:40 And so the layer twos of Ethereum exist in this harmonious equilibrium between competition and collaboration. And so it's, hey, we can grow the pie, but we're all trying to take our larger slice, but we're still going to grow the pie. And I don't think other communities have that. Like that balance between that design philosophy, like Solana and the monolithic architecture, it is just like Salana, the layer one. They need to capture a larger share of the pie. That is their wind condition. Same thing with Bitcoin is like they don't have this. this harmonious balance tug of war between competition and collaboration that the Ethereum

Starting point is 00:53:15 layer twos have. Like Bitcoin, the win condition for Bitcoin is that it eats the entire damn pie. And that's the same thing for almost every layer one. Like I think Ryan agrees with me that like layer ones are maximalists of themselves. Like they want to dominate. And so how do you as a layer one win? In my mind, do you win by having a harmonious balance between collaboration and competition? And that's why I see layer twos. And so like, the reason why we are so tribal is that I think layer ones themselves, if you apply agency to layer ones, they know that they need to dominate. They need to be the biggest layer one. Like this is a competition of empires and layer ones are, you know, warring with each other. And so I do understand

Starting point is 00:53:57 why we are also tribal. It gets worse in bear markets. But I think the layer one competition kind of induces that. I think that's right. I mean, I'm working with Kevin Kelly from Delphi to try and put together a research piece on analyzing eth as a digital network state, comparing it to traditional economies using similar metrics. So kind of dropping all the crypto-specific stuff, looking at that, and then looking at these other economies. And look, the story of economies is also the story of competition. And it depends how you compete and how you work together.

Starting point is 00:54:32 You know, that's the interoperability layer that can drive some of this nation, this too. Holland is a small country. Holland benefits massively from being in the middle of Europe having a same currency and borderless. Okay, so there's a lot that's going to apply. We've got a bit more work to do in it, but I think I want to try and reframe the conversation in the market about understanding for the next phase forwards because I think people who are coming into the space, particularly in the institutional investment space, need a framework to understand that these are emerging markets. We've got emerging market.

Starting point is 00:55:10 Credit systems. We've got emerging market. We've got business layers being built on top, infrastructure layers being built. It really is an economy. People just don't see it yet. 100%. 100%.

Starting point is 00:55:21 That is the best mental model, I think, for these crypto networks is as nation states, is as emerging economies. That's essentially what you're sort of investing in. And I do think that's why we see some of the tribalism, too. It was a Supreme Court justice, I believe.

Starting point is 00:55:36 I can't think of, you know, the person's name right now, but called America's 50 states, 50 experiments in freedom. And I see at their best, that's what we're doing with all of these layer one experiments, right? And even the layer two experiments, right? Because you see now in 2023, there's a lot of tribalism between different layer two ecosystems, even in Ethereum, right? And some of that is good, though. I think it's great. If you can just ignore, delete crypto Twitter, for a few months, right, or for a year. Just ignore all of the noise and the, like, the yammering and the claim back and forth.

Starting point is 00:56:14 Ignore all of that and actually see the outcome is we're, the alternative layer one ecosystems are making Ethereum better and Ethereum is making them better, okay? The layer two competition, this experimentation at kind of the state level inside of the, the federal nation state of Ethereum, they're all improving each other, right? They're all making, like, it is actual evolutionary progress. survival of the fittest experiments. So we get to let all of the experiments play out. So while I think tribalism is kind of negative and toxic,

Starting point is 00:56:47 and when you're in the moment, you know, like it is all of these things. You know, I agree. Actually, I still kind of argue, would argue that it's more of a feature than it is a bug. Yes, we don't have to be toxic. Yes, we don't have to be nasty. It's fine to be nationalistic, but don't try and invade out of the country.

Starting point is 00:57:06 You know, it's like, it's fine to be a nationalist. I agree. It's not fine to invade somebody else based on your own. Let's compete in kind of, you know, the right way. And let's have a healthy competition as between sports teams or as between, you know, healthy nation states that aren't going to war. That kind of competition, I think, is healthy. Once you kind of declare a jihad against another, you know, crypto community, then it starts to get into unhealthy territory, certainly. But the net is we get to let all of these experiments play out.

Starting point is 00:57:39 And that's a great thing for the progress of this space. And that, by the way, is why I think crypto is absolutely unbeatable. Like we're going to win. Like this level of experimentation is not happening anywhere else. It's not happening at the nation state level. This speed and this scale? No. Right?

Starting point is 00:57:58 Nothing is like it. It's not even close. So this is why at some points you have to kind of step back and ask again that question, like, am I crazy, right? It's a valid question asking. I keep going back to, like, with all of the experimentation, the rapid pace and the acceleration of all of these things, it's all open source, we're trying all of these things all at once. It's almost feels, this could be, this could sound hubristic to say, but it feels inevitable is my conclusion on crypto. Like, it is going to be absolutely massive. This is absolutely going to be the property

Starting point is 00:58:32 rights layer of the internet. The internet, a communication network completely needs a property right system. And that's it. That's crypto. And so if you can kind of zoom out, when it down, zoom out, zoom out above what's happening in 2023 in the tribal crypto battles and kind of see the big picture here. And like, look at, I mean, you've been here since 2012, Raoul. So look at the progress. Look at how far we've come. Over a trillion dollars. It's like, this is, it's happened. It's weird because my hypothesis when I first saw Bitcoin and blockchain was like, oh, well, here's the future of the financial system. We need to put all financial assets on chain to start with so we know who owns what. Here we are 11 years later.

Starting point is 00:59:18 We're not even close. It's true. Other things I didn't imagine happened, which was smart contracts and NFTs. We don't know how it works, but it kind of just finds its way like mercury. But it's very much like, I mean, we've seen this before, haven't we? Even in all of our lifetimes, that's how the internet emerged. Remember the internet of the 1990s? People predicted all sorts of use cases that really, you know, didn't happen. And it evolved in unexpected ways. I mean, no one predicted kind of the rise of social networking. Because it's evolutionary, I think to your point, there's an evolutionary element that's organic about it. Yes. Which makes it less predictable. I think there's two halves of this conversation. We have the technology of the pre-existent. world pre-crypto. And when we see and then invent crypto, we can be like, oh, we can improve our

Starting point is 01:00:05 old technologies by applying these new crypto things. And that's totally true. But the problem is you're fighting against a like a massive ship that is that you have to turn, right? You have incumbents that you have to fight. You have regulations that you have to fight. You have like old companies that are doing things in old ways that you have to convince to pivot. And so, yeah, eventually the whole world will be built on crypto. But in the meantime, while the whole world adapts to this new crypto paradigm, we have these new digitally native use cases that have no incumbents to fight against, like brand new startups that can capture that real estate. This is something I learned when I was at that tokenized real estate startup. It's like,

Starting point is 01:00:42 oh, tokenizing real estate is trying to get the old world to adapt to a new, a new system, and you have to get new regulations and like, man, like houses already exist. And regulations already exist. What's going to happen faster and what ultimately did happen faster is JPEGs, right? Like Uniswap, like, Obbe. Digital things. Digital things. There's a fertile landscape out there, and it's going to be a hundred times easier to build digitally native things that have zero competition. Yes.

Starting point is 01:01:10 Versus like trying to get the old world onto crypto. Because also you're then doing show not tell. So you're showing people, okay, here is the efficiencies of using this new system, and eventually the old system migrates, as opposed to telling them the need to go on chain and then fighting tooth and nail for decades with you. Plus if we bring the old world on chain, they're going to be like, but we need this and we're going to like, but you don't need that. And they're going to bastardize the nature of these crypto platforms. Yeah, they're not going to use the tools as well as crypto-nations.

Starting point is 01:01:40 I just want to switch a bit. One of the things I want to see your thoughts on or how it's impacted you is, look, you guys are public, like me, like a bunch of us who were trying to help as many people as possible, understand the narratives, and then suddenly hate coming. Right, you, I mean, I spoke to Scott Melker about this as well. Yeah. We've all been down. How did that affect you? Because you know, you go from your mission doesn't change. You do the best you can.

Starting point is 01:02:12 And suddenly the narrative about you changes as people get angry or lose money or upset. Talk me through how it affected you guys because it can't not affect you. There I go. No, you go. Yeah, it's definitely not the thing that I expected. I'm a content producer. One thing that we made a decision very early in bank lists is that we are investors. We're investing in this.

Starting point is 01:02:38 We built bankless from the early days on a thesis around ether and defy. And we invested in those things and then wrote theses about why we're investing in those things. And that in the start of bankless for the first like two years, I was like great. I was like everyone loved that. Now there's not as much acceptance of like Ryan and David as, investors in this space while also being content producers. Like we have to like, I feel like we have to fight for that a little bit more. It's like, hey, we also want to be investors in this crypto thing is why we're here in the first place. I don't think people as readily accept the

Starting point is 01:03:11 relationship as like Ryan and David as crypto investors that are also content producers in a way that they once did. Like the OGs understand it because they've seen our track record through and through and through. The newer, the newer comers into the crypto space are like, oh, Ryan and David are their bias, they have investments, which I mean, it's totally true, but like it didn't, it never used to be so critical or toxic or like mean before. And so that's something that I'm like trying to figure out how to navigate. We've been, does it affect you at a personal level? Yeah, sure. It does. I think where it affects it because we've been, um, we've been attacked at, you know, multiple stages of this journey. You mentioned the tribalism. From multiple like places too.

Starting point is 01:03:52 Yeah. So, I mean, there were, there are a few notable, like, attack. you know, one was Danny. Danny Sesta. And kind of a, we call them frog army attacks because it's often kind of like, either it's bots or it's people, human beings behaving as bots. Or both. Saying the same thing, not responding to, you know, rational thought. And of course, Raoul, like the social media algos reward this as well.

Starting point is 01:04:18 So that doesn't cause the problem, but certainly amplifies the feeling of it. And so we had a frog army attack, Danny Sesta, and that entire ecosystem. That kind of the, was it, the magic ecosystem? Wonderland, yeah. It's all magic. Yeah. And so that seemed to us to be scammer-laden, fraud-laden. And, you know, we said as much, we didn't talk about that content, got attacked for that.

Starting point is 01:04:46 We got attacked because we weren't hosting Danny Sesta on the show. Yeah, I've been through that as well. Yeah. We got attacked at one point in time by the Tara Luna community. And I think we actually presented a very fair take on Tara Luna, which is basically, is this a ticking time bomb? Let's do the bear case and the bulk case for this. And even posing the question, even asking that at that point in time in the market,

Starting point is 01:05:12 subjected us to a massive amount of attack. By the way, one month after we got attacked by Danny Sessus Frogs, Like a month later, it was exposed that Zero X-Fifu was the old Quadringa X, like, co-founder. And so then that whole ecosystem, like, crumbled. And then one month later, after we had the Is Terra ticking time bomb episode? Like, Terra blew up. I've learned. I try and step back from the anger and think about the motivation.

Starting point is 01:05:38 But now the market's a little bit different. I think 2023 is different. But what my feeling on 2023 is the crypto community is in a mood. And they're in a mood that's been caused by on the back of 2022, which is a whole bunch of public figures that they trusted. That segments of the community trusted. Alex Mishinsky, SBF, Suu, Three Ours Capital, even, you know, like the GBTC, that whole kind of empire, putting money in Gemini. Right. Like all of these things, betraying and trust.

Starting point is 01:06:12 And so we are now white blood selling, attacking everything. And the reality is the time. to launch these attacks and for the white blood cells to come, like, you attack kind of the, you know, the invaders and the bacteria and the viruses was actually 2021 and 22. Right now in 2023, predominantly, there's a bunch of good faith actors that are still here, that are still building during the bear market. There's always, you know, kind of the oddball people that are not doing that. But, and yet the, it's an autoimmune disorder because still the immune system is kind of now attacking some of the good faith actors. And that's what I see.

Starting point is 01:06:52 But honestly, Raoul, it does get me down, particularly when the attacks are coming from the in-trib kind of group, right? And they're coming from inside the house. And you're like, wow, you know, but it's, it just goes with the territory. And I think getting off of social media for a period of time and zooming out and looking at this, you know, has been helpful for me personally. I mean, I've had the other line of attack, which is interesting, from the old sort of. school, they're like, you're a macro guy, why you've encrypted. I'm like, I've been even crypts longer than most people, and it's all part of macro. And then it's like the market goes down and it's like you're a scammer, you've ruined people's lives.

Starting point is 01:07:29 I'm like, no, I've always explained my thesis, how long term it. You know, it's people just want to find reasons to try and unsettle you for various reasons. And it usually is their own insecurity that's driving it. Yeah. So the reason the Terraluna community was so angry with you guys. is because they were feeling insecure, right? Generally, it's a lack of security or the feeling of security that creates that behavior. That's why try and step back to do and try and think, why are they being like that?

Starting point is 01:07:59 I mean, I never do that. It's just not part of my personality. But I guess I'm less insecure about certain things. I probably do it with my wife if she threatens me about something, that she notices that particular point that's going to upset me. Your NFT collection. Yeah, exactly. The NFT collection.

Starting point is 01:08:16 There we go. Yeah, I do think the insecurity angle is the right one. That's also like the laser-eyed Bitcoin Maxis, the ones that are really loud and tribal, they get insecure because there's like things about Bitcoin that are worth like talking about and they just want to rush that, brush that under the rug. And like you get that about every single loud, loud people, loud tribes on crypto. I've just learned like those are loud and insecure are like almost the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. So finishing off, you guys have started another chapter as well, which is the VC fund. Talk to me about that because that's super interesting. Yeah. So over the course of, I would say,

Starting point is 01:08:53 the last three years, as David mentioned, we've always been crypto investors on the journey. And so we've obviously, you know, back that up with investments in some of the publicly traded tokens, let's call them, in kind of the open markets. We've also been angel investing over this time, too. And so unfortunately, because of accredited investor laws, and all sorts of other reasons. There are projects that don't have anything that retail can kind of invest into. And so they're kind of in the pre-token, pre-public type phase. And so for the last three years or so, I think David and I have been involved in 70 or something,

Starting point is 01:09:33 different investments. Again, this is crypto infrastructure, building in the future. And so what we decided to do is essentially parlay all of this into more of a structured VC fund. It was becoming unwieldy to manage. David and myself, you have spreadsheets of kind of your investments and tracking all of this. So we decided to formalize this and spin this up into bankless adventures is what we're calling it. And so we brought on a partner who's absolutely fantastic. His name is Ben Laykhov. And he has helped organize all of the activity. We've recruited a team. And so we are staying on kind of the frontier of what crypto is building and some of these

Starting point is 01:10:15 early stage seed level crypto projects, and that allows us to do that. So I think we've already invested in or getting ready to invest in four to five different things. And we just finished a $30 million fund raise, which was difficult-ish to do in this type of 2020. Although it's brilliant timing to launch a VC, but as ever, it's the hardest time to launch to raise bloody capital in the middle of that. Yes. So it's just complimentary with everything we've been doing as investors in the crypto journey trying to build tools to help people go bankless. It is a crypto fund, VC fund. So it's got a 10-year time horizon. So again, you know, one of the ethics that we've always observed at bankless is long-term games with

Starting point is 01:11:01 long-term people. So this isn't a type of a fund that receives tokens and then dumps them on the community. We have very long-term time horizon. So it's just complementary with everything that we've been doing the space up to date and keeps us sharp from a from a content and thesis perspective too because we get to see what's happening in the very early stages yeah the long-term goal of the ventures is to that like like ryan said there's a lot of activities that we were already doing right we're already doing angel investing this conversation about ventures really got started we were talking about like hey we're doing a lot of angel investing what if we just hired an analyst to help us just research these angel deals a little bit more and then we're like oh that's more than half of a

Starting point is 01:11:39 VC firm that we already have we've got the deal flow we're writing the checks if we hire an like we might as well just do this this thing outright. And so the idea is like we we spin this thing up. We pass all of our deal flow in through ventures. We hire out a team to turn it into a professionalized streamlined operation that is dotting eyes and crossing T's in the ways that maybe Ryan and I weren't when we were doing this individually because we didn't have the time, but now we have the team to get that done. My long-term idea for what Ventures does is that actually hopefully informs the podcast about these frontiers that we are, exploring. So the idea is like, well, the podcast and the newsletter and bankless media grows the

Starting point is 01:12:17 network that bankless ventures can latch on to and get deal flow from just because that's our network, right? Monetizing the network. It's a 360 degree kind of flywheel that you can build from this. And then because of the information and education that we are able to scale through the research team of ventures, like we are able to be more informed on the podcast. But I do want to draw a very clear line that the podcast and media entities are very much firewalled from content from the venture firm. Like, just because you're a deal that goes for bankless ventures, doesn't mean you just get to waltz onto the podcast. You have to earn it just like everyone else.

Starting point is 01:12:52 So there's no, there's no like back and forth there. I'm just laughing myself, knowing that this time in four or five years time, in the bottom of the bear market, that's exactly the stick you'll be beaten. Oh, we're, yeah. I know. People are already doing it and it hasn't even like been an issue. Yeah, yeah, right. I think one defense against that, and I don't know what, what you guys

Starting point is 01:13:09 have done at Real Vision, but I'd be curious to kind of compare notes is have the best disclosures in the business. And so that means basically like wherever possible, we are fully transparent with our crypto holdings and our crypto wallets and what BBC owns at any point in time. The great news about this, lack of privacy on chain also means anyone can look at your address and see exactly what you're holding. Having a disclosures page that is continuously updated so that people know exactly what David holds, exactly what I hold, exactly what members of our team are holding at any given time. So we just say, like, you know, we're, we have a thesis. Of course, we're investors on the bankless journey. We're pursuing that thesis. Of course, we're going to, we're not journalists.

Starting point is 01:13:56 Like, we're going to invest in things that we believe in, right? As should you. Like, that's our encouragement is be an investor in the space. That's how to kind of maximize the opportunity. And So as long as we have some of the best disclosures in the business, I think that is the ultimate kind of shield. And we can always direct people to there. It's all fully transparent. You can see it at any point in time. You know exactly what we're holding. And then we disclaim them, you know, as we go through the content.

Starting point is 01:14:23 Yeah, I just tell people, as you know, I just tell it. Because I don't trade a lot. I don't do special situations. I'm not involved in stuff. So I just tell people, this is my rough weighting and this is what I'm doing and this is what I own. and that's it. I think it's pretty normal for people to be like skeptical at front. It's like, oh, the biggest podcast in this space is doing a VC fund.

Starting point is 01:14:44 Like what's going on with that? So like the gut reaction, I think, is totally justifiable. But we're going to do the same thing that we did with bankless, which is like nothing's going to change. We're going to be here. The podcast won't change. And we will earn the legitimacy once again. And also you will find a way over time, because I know you believe in it,

Starting point is 01:15:02 to allow regular people to invest in this company. of opportunities. That's what we're working on at Real Vision as well, even for the asset management firm, which is separate to Real Vision. Everything is all the same thing. And it's this democratization of finance. And that's what we're trying to get to. Guys, listen, it was fantastic to have you. I really enjoyed the conversation. It was good to turn the tables and hear your stories. Because I think, you know, your stories, because you have so much the other side of the camera, they're as important. You know, you play an important part in this ecosystem. And just hear that. I think it's fabulous. So thank you, look, thank you for showing your time with us.

Starting point is 01:15:38 Thanks, Rao. Thanks, Rao. Thanks, Ralph. It's been fun.

Bankless - 179 - The Bankless Origin Story - Raoul Pal

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