Bankless - Camila Russo | Layer Zero

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

Camila Russo is the author of The Infinite Machine and founder of The Defiant, the DeFi-focused media company. Camila has a rich backstory, taking her from Chile to Argentina, Miami, Madrid, Chicago, and eventually New York. With an entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for storytelling and journalism, Cami has earned her reputation as a leader in the space. As the Defiant expands into new territories of both data and content, Camila discusses her story of breaking into the world of journalism and finding crypto. As institutions flock to the space, it’s important to remember that stories and narratives are what capture the heart and minds of the people. ***** 📣 POOLTOGETHER | DEFI LOTTERY https://bankless.cc/PoolTogether  ***** 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🍵 MATCHA | DECENTRALIZED EXCHANGE AGGREGATOR https://bankless.cc/Matcha  🔐 LEDGER | SECURE YOUR ASSETS https://bankless.cc/Ledger  🧙‍♀️ ALCHEMIX | SELF-PAYING LOANS http://bankless.cc/Alchemix  ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 3:30 Cami Russo & South America 9:20 Entrepreneurial Spirit 15:22 Cami’s Start 21:28 Educating 25:35 The Dopamine of Scoops 31:05 Bitcoin to Ethereum 40:00 Why Ethereum? 46:05 Joining the Community 52:40 The Infinite Machine 1:01:23 The Power of Stories 1:07:44 Starting the Defiant 1:15 :08 Talking Shop 1:23:04 Narrative & Subjectivity 1:26:38 Maximally Successful Defiant 1:30:30 Closing ------ Resources: Camila on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CamiRusso?s=20  The Defiant: https://thedefiant.io/  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast focusing on the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but is composed by people. And each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell. Cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it. And Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code because Ethereum is people all the way down and it always has been. Today on Layer Zero, we're talking with Cammy Russo, the chiefs of the Defiant. And Cammy, I think, has one of the most, interesting stories and interesting backgrounds that I've heard so far. She has a very just logical process, and we talked about this, a logical process of like who she is is definitely an A plus

B equals C conclusion out of her parents and her family. She's got that entrepreneurial spirit. She's got a drive to create. She's got an intrinsic interest in journalism. And it kind of has like logically concluded with where she is at now, which is at the top. defiant. But we start at the very beginning. We start at her time as a child in Chile, her when she moved again as a young kid to Miami, then back to Chile for a degree in journalism, and then moving into her time at Bloomberg. And it was overall just a fascinating story. And I'm having a ton of fun doing these layer zeros because I just get to sit back for an hour and a half and hear story time from each of these individual guests. And I think

Cammy's story has been one of my favorites so far. We definitely tap on the differences at the very end between bankless and The Defiant. So that was a fun little thing to hear. And we also talk about, I share my perception as to how Cammy's book that she wrote changed the course of Ethereum for the much, much better. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Cammy Russo, one of the best leaders in this space. But first, before we get there, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Macha, everyone's favorite deck aggregator, has just launched an open beta for gasless trading. So if you're trading more than $5,000 in common eth and wrapped Bitcoin pairs, then your gas fees on Macha are free.

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Follow Alchemics on Twitter at Alchemics FI and join the Discord to keep up to date with Alchemics V2 and to get involved in governance. Hey, Cammy. How's it going? Hi, David. All good. We were just talking before we hit record as two people who both have their own YouTube's and then also consume other people's YouTube. I had to ask you the questions like, wait, have we talked before or have we not talked before? Like it's actually kind of hard after like two years of making and also consuming content to remember if we've actually been into the same Zoom. But we've decided that no, this is actually the first time. Yeah.

And it's so great to finally do it. Absolutely. Absolutely. So congratulations with everything you've built at the Defiant. And I definitely want to hear about that story. But I think I want to get there in the second half. And so the first half, I want to hear just a little bit more about your background. and what about your younger years that cause you to become the person that you are today?

So let's go all the way back. Cammy, where were you raised? I was raised in Santiago, Chile, South America. Yeah? Yeah. Where in Chile? Santiago, the capital. Right, right, right.

Okay, and that's right in the middle, right? Yeah, it's right in the center of Chile, in the middle of the mountain. And so yeah, it's a nice, nice city. It used to be one of the most stable and like, I don't know, like one of the few places that just like worked in South America. So it was, it's funny, like growing up, I didn't have a lot of the issues that a lot of other people in South America had to deal with. like didn't hear about inflation or like currency controls or like scarcity of goods or anything like that. TILA is like actually really close or has been historically very close to the US.

So it has like a bunch of like trade deals everywhere and it's like pretty open. So you know like that's I grew up in this like bubble within in South America where everything was fine, everything worked, like you didn't have that like crazy instability. But then later on, I moved to Argentina. And that's where I got a taste of all that craziness. So it's right. The Argentinian stories, the story that you hear a lot of, right?

Mariano Conti tells this story a lot. Patricio tells the story a lot of exactly what you just described, right? And that's kind of been the kind of like crypto. rallying cries. Like, oh, look at the capital controls and the inflation going on in Argentina. It's interesting that, like, literally right next door is a country that didn't have that history. How would you describe the Chilean economy growing up? Like, what's there, like, for what I'm familiar with, with Argentina, it's very big in, like, you know, beef and agriculture and also tech. What were you surrounded by growing up in Chile?

Well, and before I go into that, yeah, that dichotomy is so interesting because actually when my parents were growing up in Chile, it was the other way around that even more so like my grandparents. Argentina was like the big, like stable or not stable, but just like growing economic force in kind of the southern cone of South America. And Chile was just like this really like poor, like struggling. country. And then the role is like really, really kind of like two generations. So it's, it's like really interesting to see that, how that happened. And it's all because of just like very populous

policies implemented in Argentina. Well, there were more like free market policies implemented in Chile. But yeah, like Chile's main expert is copper. So very much commodity led economy. But my parents were both pretty entrepreneurial my whole family is so that's where you get it from yeah I have a really great example

set with my family so yeah my dad is an engineer my mom studied advertising but never really she was like she started actually a toy importer in

Chile. So like when she had me, she was looking for educational toys for kids. And she couldn't find like any quality toys that didn't have like, you know, harmful like materials and stuff like that. And so she started importing Fisher Price toys into Chile and was like one of the first or like the first person to do that. So she had my dad set up a toy store, which was very convenient for me growing up. Wow. The kid with the parents that have a toy store, you must have been a hit. Yeah. That's pretty funny. So in growing up, were you, were you exposed to any, like, things that you have been able to, like, repurpose now? Like, when did you get, like, your access to your first computer?

When, like, what was, did you ever have, like, an entrepreneurial experience or anything with computer science? Like, anything that is, like, now related to crypto, what was, like, the earliest part of, like, your childhood or growing up phase where you actually is like, oh, yeah. So I was doing this as a kid and now I do this as an adult. Oh, that's interesting question. Well, like just like the computer access, I think is pretty similar to what any like kid in the U.S. had. You know, like I don't know. Like I had my computer room growing up, like had just like got like a Facebook account very early on. And remember like transitioning from like floppy disks to like see.

and like all that like yeah you can I'm dating myself for sure I'm an older millennial here so all of that I don't think is like too different um I think maybe like some of the influences like I said it's just like all of my family is somewhat entrepreneurial um my brother my younger brother he's three years younger than me he never actually he never had an actual job like Unlike me, like I went a more traditional direction going into Bloomberg after starting journalism in university. And it took me like, you know, almost over 10 years to actually start, like, quit and start my own company. My brother never, never had like a full-time job. Like he's always been a full-time entrepreneur.

He started this kind of like Yelp, like early version of Yelp, like early version of Yelp, Chile for restaurants in Santiago. Then he had this like Instagram for pets called Kuf and he was actually part of tech stars which is like a big incubator and he he lived in New York before I did

for tech stars. And now he has a liquor company called Candela and he got the idea of the liquor company in a trip to their Dominican Republic and I was there when he got the idea like we went up to the bar in the resort

and we were like, okay, give us like the, what you dress. Like we don't, pinia galarez and stuff. And so he made us try Mama Juan, which was like, it's like the local rum, like a spiced rum that they drink in the Dominican Republic.

And we loved it. And so my brother was like, I can't believe like they don't sell this outside of the DR. And so that's, you know, what he does now. like he's now based in in Miami and has his own kind of liquor company. So I have like that example, my parents' example. And so I always thought it was like feasible to quit everything and start your own thing.

Like that was like actually like a career path that didn't seem so outlandish to me growing up because I had like all these different examples of people who did it. And then from like the journey. journalism side, I always loved writing. So I moved to Miami for a brief period when I was growing up. I lived there for three years. And I was nine years old. And when I moved, my grandmother gave me a journal. And she's like, you're going to want to write everything down. And I think that's kind of what started it. Because I got to Miami and was like, you know, dealing with all these different experiences and emotions and like missing home but also learning so much and having a good time and like all this stuff and so I started just like writing everything down on on this journal and from then on like I always kept journals and it just like I don't know I think it made me like writing ever since so and then my mom was editor-in-te-in-tive for condens for a bunch of like

Spanish versions of like big magazines like glamour, Vogue, Discover, like a lot of content as magazines. She helped run. So like I just grew up in like the editorial and publishing world. Like I I loved going with my mom over the weekend to the office, like making sure that everything was closed. Like I saw just like the printouts of like magazine covers. And I just love that whole world. So that kind of writing plus that experience really just made me want to be a journalist. And yeah, here I am. That's a, that's such an easy story to have like, all right, like A plus B equal C, right? So like, you know, Cammy, a daughter of a very entrepreneurial family, entrepreneurial brother, grandma gives you a journal, come to America, which is like a very transitional moment. Like you're going,

moving from A to B anywhere, and then you are given a journal to help, you know, deal with the emotions of, you know, a change. And then all of a sudden we have Cammy, the entrepreneurial journalist writer operating the defiance. It's such a very logical conclusion of the rest of your family. Yeah. There's a quote. And actually, my brother said it at my wedding. And it always sticks with me. It's like it's always easy to connect the dots looking backwards. So now it makes sense, right? But, you know, at the time, I had no idea I would end up living in New York, running my own media company. You know, it's like, I never imagined that when I went into journalism in the first place. Yeah, that's fantastic. Where did you go for journalism? What university?

University in Chile University in Chile Catholic is like one of the good ones in Chile then I worked at a newspaper there in Mercurio it's like one of the bigger

or the biggest newspaper in Chile and yeah so I was like working in El Mercurio and I had this woman to me who is amazing I love her but

you know, she had been there, I think, like, at that same desk for 30 years. And because it's like you get to in Rikourio and you don't move. It's like it's an institution in Chile. Like everyone reads it. So I was like, okay, I'm already here. Like, I don't want to be here in like the next 30 years. Like what should I do next? And, you know, having the experience of having lived in the U.S.

when I was growing up. Again, like it didn't, it felt like, okay, like maybe I should look beyond Chile and see what's out there. And so I applied to different journalism schools here with always like the goal of getting a big, like a job at a big U.S. media company. That was like my end goal. And so to do that, I realized that I needed a degree from a U.S. school. because nobody would look at my degree from Universia Catholic and be like, sure, yeah, come join the New York Times. So, yeah, I applied to different schools and got into Northwestern. And from there, I got into Bloomberg and to like the Bloomberg internship.

So throughout that process, when you were writing either at your job or practicing for your job, what was the subject matter that you were focused on? Because we're not at the crypto part of this story, right? Like we're still pre-crypto. So like what captured your attention while you were a writer? I think, let's see. Well, in Enmergurio, I was in the international news section. And I think, you know, that's something I enjoyed.

It's funny. Like before getting to Northwestern on Bloomberg, I never really looked at financial markets or anything. close to crypto. And I got it to journal. I like writing and it's like I like the more, I don't know, like I never saw myself as a like numbers person. So yeah, I gravitated more towards like politics, you know, stories.

It's funny in in Mercurio, they initially wanted me to do like the social pages. And so they called me up and they were like, okay, yeah, you're in. Your first job is going to be in the social pages. And that's been like, you know, like following like local celebrities around. And I like, I turned it down. I was like, no, I didn't get into journalism to do this. And they're like, what? You're turning down a job?

I didn't read studio. Like, yeah, no, I don't want to do that. And then they came back and were like, fine. You can cover international politics. That was a big improvement. So yeah, that's kind of what I did. And then in Northwestern, I had the, I had to choose between different kind of topics for the reporting class. And there was like politics, business, like environment and art or something.

And I thought, you know, like I'm paying a bunch of money to be here. Like I took a loan to go to Northwestern. So it's like this better pay off or else, you know. And so I thought, you know, I need to make this worthwhile and learn something I don't actually know. So I thought like going into like the business reporting class would be the most useful because I had no idea about anything about business. And I discovered that I actually really like reporting, you know, writing about money, like reporting about like, you know, marketing about like, you know, marketing. about like you know market um because to me it it it was nice to find a more objective way of telling stories right like in politics it's like always one side versus the other and he said she

said and you don't have like like a fact that you can present and be like this is what's happening and it's pretty kind of hard to dispute and with with like markets and business stories you know there's like different ways to interpret numbers, but in the end, a stock is going up and it's going up and it's going down and it's going down. And if like countries bond yields actually are like, are a really good way of representing how thousands of people think about one country, you know. So I just thought that was really interesting and, and just like a very like truthful way of seeing the world and presenting the world. So I was really excited. by this discovery and, and I just, yeah, I decided to just, like, focus on that, on, like,

business and market reporting. And then we had this, like, field trip to the Bloomberg office in Chicago, because Northwestern is in Chicago. And I was, like, blown away by the power of the Bloomberg terminal. Like, this, there's this, like, black box that just, like, gets you all the data you could possibly want. And it's just, like, connected to all the, like, decision makers of the world and all of these, you know, big brains are consuming your news and your stories. And I'm like, okay, this is where I, I want to be. So that led me to apply to the internship there. So is all of your like your understanding of like money, business, economics done like on the, is like on the job training. Like you had to do like you never took, you still never took a class.

So you only ever learned about this, this, just by teaching yourself. Yeah, it was it was crazy. Right, like I had this like business journalism class from Northwestern, which I mean, they did like teach the basics of like economics. But that was pretty much it. Like that was my background going into Bloomberg. And yeah, you learn everything on the job and you have, you know, this amazing tool that the like professional like fund managers and like central bank economists all over the world views, and you're just like starting out of, you know,

the first job as a journalist and you have the same tool. It's like, it like really forces you to understand things. Like, oh, like, what is the bond yield and writing about all that stuff? Yeah, it's like I learned really quickly that I just had to lose the fear of asking them questions because, you know, it's like I had to get a story out at the end of the day. And I had to at least like I had to understand it obviously to write it. So I would like get on the phone and just like ask, ask like everything, like explain what what a stock is. And like literally it was like because like I started like calling sources and then they would.

and reporters, like more senior reporters would help me out and just, like, write out questions that they needed for their stories. And then I remember, like, having these conversations where I would just, like, go down the list of questions, and I had no idea what, like, what the person was answering, like, what the answer was. So I could, like, couldn't do any follow up, couldn't, like, follow the conversation. So then I just, like, started, like, asking my own questions and was like, okay, but what do you mean by that? Yeah. And that's, that's really how, how I learned everything I know about finance and markets. Eight years at Bloomberg.

When you started asking your own questions, did that, like, was that really just you trying to educate yourself or is that you learning to be a reporter of your own style? And because for me, sometimes I try and I try and find the question that other people want me to ask, but then there's always like, okay, well, if that's not the question, that I truly want to ask, maybe the question that I truly want to ask is also the same question that other people have, too. Can you reflect on that for a moment? Yeah. And by the way, I think you're an awesome interviewer. Like all these questions, I don't think I've heard them before. So yeah. That's hopefully why people tune into the layer zeros. That's what they're meant for.

Yeah, really great. It was definitely both. I was trying to learn and understand what the story was about so I could write it. But, yeah, I was learning to be a journalist as well as learning about finance and markets. So, you know, it's like once you get a taste of having a scoop, of like having a really well-read story, of like, I don't know, getting like a really, like, cool and important source. It's really addictive, you know? So it's like, okay, like you get that taste and you want to do it again.

So you try to like get something out of your interviewer that nobody has. And I think, yeah, it's like that dopamine of like the views and like just like I'm covering things that that haven't been said before. It's kind of what starts to drive you as a journalist. Yeah, can you go into that a little bit more? I think I find that extremely fascinating, like the dopamine hit of like discovering a scoop. Do you have a story where you like got a scoop and what? You just like furiously typing trying to get the scoop out the door as fast as possible?

You have a story like that? Yeah, yeah. So, okay, the first one that comes to mind in Argentina, there was this period of time where everyone, or it seemed like everyone was leaving Argentina, just like running out the door, because the president, Christina Fernandez had turned like just even, even more anti, like, international companies and anti-free market. So, like, there was like a bunch of storage breaking everywhere about, like, this fund was leaving or this company was leaving. And there was, like, a source that I about like a search from a pretty big hedge fund baser and they were like really big in in

Argentina like they they they were like big really big investors in Argentine bonds and stuff and so you always call this guy and I remember there was like one week where I called him and he just like wasn't picking up and then it called again no answer then I called like not his direct phone but like the the like general number nobody was picking up so i was like i wonder like maybe these guys are like have also left and so like i remember like going through like different ways to try to confirm and so i think i asked him directly but like he didn't say um and then i there was like one one of the fun and guys was based in london and i had like tied with him a couple of times so i i called him up and i was like hey so

I asked a question in a way that assumed that they had left Argentina so like hey so like when are you like when's your last day in Argentina I don't remember what I asked but like it was like a question like that

it was a clever framing is that the gist yeah okay cool like it assumed like the question assumed that they had left so but yeah and he answered something like oh yeah like we we're we're like tomorrow's our last day or something like he answered the question kind of like basically confirming them that they were leaving and so I was like okay um so I'm just wondering

like is is the reason you're leaving because of Argentine's really really bad like unfriendly policies oh yeah totally like they they suck whatever I don't that's not the actual quote but and meaning is there but quote quote's not there but meaning is there sure yeah yeah so like oh my god like I got this good like this big fun is leaving Argentina wrote that up like big headlines

like some of hits and then I got like this enraged call from from the guy who gave me the quote and he's like I thought you were like I didn't come like I don't know

and I record everything and so I had I had the thing and he complained he complained to my boss he's like I didn't mean for that to be the news and whatever. I called. I asked you, this is what you said. I have the recording. I have the quotes. And it was this whole thing. Like my editor had to like look at my notes and my recording. And they were like, nope. Camilla's right. Like, is this like, is this false? Like, are you not

leaving? They were like, well, yeah. It confirms it twice. That's awesome. Okay. So what motivates the scoop? like the thrill? Is it like the possibility of like fame and prowess? Is it just like becoming a better journalist? Like what motivates the scoop? It's, I don't know. It's a mix of all of that.

You know, it's like it's fun. It's fun to uncover stuff. You know, it's like you feel like a detective. Right. And really like if your job is to just, you know, report on what's happening. I mean, what better way to do it if you're reporting something that nobody else has reported. It's like, you know, the ultimate reporting. So, yeah, it's fun.

Finding Barry Treasure. Yeah, yeah. It's fun. It's fun. Though I'll say, like, scoops aren't really kind of my specialty. Like, I love, like, getting them. But I think I enjoy even more just, like, the feature type of story, you know, like having long interviews, going on on-site to see things

and just like be able to like build a narrative around that. And it can still be kind of school be, you know, it can be like a story that nobody else has reported. But I like the more like feature kind of analytical type of story, but just like, oh, like this is. happened. Right, right, right, the longer forms. The stories, not the not the breaking news. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think at this point in your, we kind of went on a side quest to talk about scoops, but where we were was you were working at Bloomberg being a journalist and had just gotten into into markets and business and finance and all that stuff. And I think what comes next is the Ethereum side of things. Is that right? No, not quite. Let's see. Okay. So first comes before Ethereum,

actually comes Bitcoin in my in my timeline. So in Argentina, I was, this was 2013. And I was reporting on like inflation and currency controls and like all the different ways investors had to, you know, protect themselves against it. And, you know, I've told this story before, but it's really like what has shaped my view of the world and why I think crypto is so valuable. And it's my own experience with inflation and currency controls because I was earning Argentine pesos as a Bloomberg reporter in Argentina. So I really felt, you know, the impact of what inflation can do to your savings. It's like 25% inflation at the time that I was there meant, you know, keeping any, any pesos in the bank meant losing out on my savings and my money. So, like, as soon as I got to Argentina, the first thing I was told was you need to convert your pesos to dollars.

And that's how everyone thinks. Like, everyone thinks in dollars. And if you ask any, like, anyone on the. they'll tell you the exact dollar rate that day. Like it's just like very kind of ingrained in Argentine culture. And so to to have like the president one day announced you can't buy dollars anymore, it was just like a huge shock. Like how could it be that like the government can one day tell me what I can and can do with the money that I earn? And that's in like my bank account. So that really shook me.

Like I literally like after the announcement, I still had some like Argentine pesos in in my bank account and before like I had a peso account and a dollar account. And there was just like this very easy way of transferring money from one account to another. And then after the announcement, like I went to my bank and the option just like wasn't there anymore. Like just like wasn't there. So I'm like stuck in pesos for like whatever amount I had. Got rugged. Yeah, rocked by the Argentine government.

So, yeah, so then, like, somebody, actually, like, an Argentine Bloomberg reporter who was based in Spain told me there's this Bitcoin thing that's really gaining steam in Argentina. Like, I have a bunch of friends talking about it going to meet up and stuff. So I looked into it and had to convince my editors of Bloomberg that this was actually kind of. of worth reporting. And that's kind of the first story I wrote about crypto ever in 2013. And then from there, I was just like really interested. I was like, okay, this is really valuable. It's a currency that's independent, that doesn't have any central banks or, you know,

can't be censored and so on. So that was kind of my first look at crypto. That story that you wrote in 2013 right after you experienced capital controls, you said you wrote, that was the first story that you wrote. Was it a story about people using Bitcoin as a result of the capital controls? Or was it more just a story about Bitcoin itself and the only thing that it was the capital control story that motivated this story. What was the actual story? Yeah, no, it was a story about, you know, there's all this inflation, there's capital controls. and there's this, like, growing community in Argentina that are, is using Bitcoin to protect themselves

against inflation. And so there's the story looked at that, like, interviewed a couple of people in Argentina who were, like, buying Bitcoin, I think. And then just, like, gave context, oh, like, Bitcoin this year surpass $1,000 for the first time, blah, blah, you know. So I made the naive mistake of assuming that you. started off with Ethereum somehow. Because I always thought that, like, you had gotten into writing for Bloomberg and then, and then learned about this Ethereum thing and then wanted to write about Ethereum. I actually didn't know that you actually had such an early history with Bitcoin all the way

back in 2013. Yeah, but it was like that one story. After that, like, I just, like, kept writing market stories about Argentina. And then I moved to Madrid. I was there for two and a half years writing about European stocks. Like, like didn't think about crypto very much at all at the time. So the Bitcoin brain virus didn't make it into your head? No, it's just like something like, oh, like this is interesting.

This is like really cool. But no, it didn't like totally consume me. Like it didn't go down like this like rabbit hole that like dragged me in and like didn't let me out. No, like it was like, okay, this is interesting. saying this is valuable. I see that crypto is cool. But then I just kept on with my life. Unfortunately, I didn't even buy Bitcoin at the time. So yeah. And then, yeah, like I kept, you know, writing just like regular trash by market stories. And until I moved back to New York with Bloomberg in 2017. And at the time, I was with this.

team called Markets Live, which just blogged about a real-time market move for the Bloomberg Terminal. And it was cool because we had the flexibility of writing about whatever was interesting in the market. And it was just like, like quick blockposts, like maybe like two like two graphs and like and that chart or something. And so 2017, obviously a huge year for crypto. And because I was already, like, I knew something about it. I had kind of like kept, just like informed about the space. And so I just like kept writing like a blog post for Market Live.

And then my editors were actually interested in me covering crypto for like elsewhere in Bloomberg. Because it was just like huge demand and interest for crypto that year. Like anything with Bitcoin on the headline, jump to most red on the Bloomberg terminal. And there just weren't any, like, dedicated cryptojournalists at Bloomberg. And since I had an interest, they were like, can you cover this thing? So I started to have this, like, like, second job, which was to cover the crypto market. And that's when I learned about Ethereum.

And because, like, a lot of the story that year was ICOs. Right. So I wrote the first like ICO story for Bloomberg and trying to like understand like it was just like very strange to me like all like all these different coins like where do they come from like what are they? Why does every single one pump? Right. Everything is green. It's yeah, it was it was really strange. And then I realized oh like all of these coins come from this like mega. coin. I have never heard of Ethereum. I have never heard Ethereum be called the Mecha coin yet. That's awesome. Yeah.

This is the origin of like all these coins is this thing. I was like, oh, that's interesting. And yeah, that's kind of how I started like really writing about crypto and just like never stopped writing since 2017. That really just fascinated me and consumed me. And then end of 2017, I pitched to write a book on Ethereum. And yeah, like writing for the infinite machine. That's like really, it was like Ethereum was like all I heard about for like two years.

Why did Ethereum consume you in a way that Bitcoin didn't? You know, like, I think the truth is I just thought the stories behind Ethereum were more interesting, just like the people behind Ethereum. I mean, on one hand, like, the story of Bitcoin had pretty much, you know, had been told. And I don't like you you didn't find as much activity then even then like of course like now it's self-evident how much more activity there is on Bitcoin than on on Ethereum than on Bitcoin. But even then it was like pretty clear. You know, like all of this all of all of the like craziness and like weirdness of like the 2017 bubble like so much of it came from from Ethereum like from from ICOs and like all these like crazy projects. And yeah, you can you can like, you know, we don't look down on them and whatever. But of course like so many good things came came out of that time.

Like a lot of the top DFI projects came out from that big boom. So I don't know. I think I think I feel's get an unfairly bad reputation. I think actually a lot of good came out of that boom. But anyways, I think that's what really kind of captured my attention, just like all of these, like, crazy dreams, like crazy idealists, like, just like all the people building stuff or like just like even the scammers, you know, just like all those stories. I thought it was just like super interesting. And just like from like going back to. to the tech, I thought, you know, okay, so Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, and it wanted to be

peer-to-peer money, and that's what it does. But then Ethereum, like, when I started to really kind of understand what it does, so Ethereum wants to be a programmable version of Bitcoin, and it wants to allow for peer-to-peer everything, not just peer-to-peer money. So that, to me, just felt like a fundamental step forward in blockchain history. And, That was just worth documenting. Like I thought, you know, even if Ethereum doesn't make it, it was still the first blockchain to do this. So it's worth telling the story.

Like it was worth like spending all the time to write a book about it. Was there a specific moment that you remember where you were like, oh yeah, I'm all in on this thing now? Like I let Bitcoin come and go just because it is what it is, but I'm not letting this Ethereum thing come and go or this defy thing. come and go? Is there like a moment that you had where like, oh, I don't want, I'm now completely focused on crypto? I think it was very gradual. It was just like, okay, so at Bloomberg, I started writing about crypto. And to me, that was just like the most interesting story in markets and

finance period. Like, you know, going going back to any other market would have been extremely boring. So I did not want to do that. Like, crypto was my space. And so, yeah, I was like writing about crypto every day. And for a while, like I didn't see myself ever leaving Bloomberg. Like, okay, so I even pitched Bloomberg's for, I wanted to be the crypto team leader. And I thought, okay, maybe that's kind of my path, you know? Like I build out the crypto team at Bloomberg. They didn't listen to me back then.

And now they're building their crypto team. I really want to say. We're going to put a pin on that one and come back to that one later, but keep going. Yeah. So it was, yeah, it was gradual. I was like, started writing about crypto, then I thought it was really, you know, it was really a good opportunity to write a book on the history of Ethereum. And then, like, writing the infinite machine, I really made a, like, I really wanted to immerse myself in Ethereum. community because I think what's important about Ethereum is that, like it's, it's, it's strength,

you know, the Ethereum community is Ethereum's strength, you know, like other other blockchings can claim to have faster tech or whatever, but Ethereum is still leading because it has like all these, all these people building on top of it. So I wanted to like see this community, so I wanted to like all the conferences and hackathons and, and so that's when I really, I really, realize, you know, these guys and gals are building something real, you know, this is different from ICOs. Like, this stuff is actually working. It has users and volume.

And to me, that was just, like, incredible, you know? Like, when I started seeing that in 2019, it's like, this actually looks like a parallel financial system. And we're watching it grow from the ground up. like it's emerging in front of our eyes. And I was like, this is incredible. Like, how is nobody seeing this? Like, this is such a huge story.

It's so important. Like, this is making, like, we're making history. Like, this is, this will change the world. So to me, like, just that, when I realized that, I'm like, this is such a huge opportunity to be here at this time. Like, and it just, like, didn't make sense to be a Bloomberg reporter, writing about any other market anymore. It's like, no, like, this is huge. Like, this is where I need to be. Who was the first, like, big Ethereum person that you met when you were going to these conferences

and getting introduced into the community? The first, let's see, I mean, my first, like, interview with an Ethereum co-founder was Charles Hoskinson. This was for the book? Yeah. Charles Hoskinson was the first. Wow. Yeah. I had actually interviewed him for Bloomberg for like a separate story. I don't know. I don't know why. Like I don't know why for some, I can't remember for some reason I got his contact. And of course, like at the time 2017 reported, I didn't know like the backstory or anything.

And Cardana was really like just, still just like a project at the time. Like an. idea. Allegedly, so there's a project, but I'll keep that to myself. I didn't say that. That was me. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. Obviously, you see Ethereum co-founder.

I'm like, oh, like, this guy's a big deal. And so I interviewed him for a story of Bloomberg. And I remember that story went viral. It was like, he was like, yeah, this thing is a bubble. And at the time, like, you didn't really, like, crypto people didn't really say that. you know, at like before the like the peak. And so the headline was like, Ethereum co-founder says crypto is a bubble. And that story just like went nuts because that's exactly what a lot of Bloomberg readers

wanted to hear. So anyway, so I had that contact made with him. And so for like at the time of the book, I interviewed him first to just like start like making my initial initial outline. And then another, an interesting story on how I met one, another Ethereum co-founder is how I met Amir Tetrit. And he's like one of the lesser known Ethereum co-founders of the original kind of eighth. And I don't know, like, I think like I had researched him online. like he doesn't have, he's not on social media. Like he, there's not like an official like company or fund or anything.

Like there's like, there was like no, no way of getting to him. I was like, I don't know how I'm going to interview this guy. And then this was like consensus, 2018 or 2017. It was like maybe like consensus invest 2018 or something like May, March. I don't, well, something around then. And I was getting coffee. at like, I don't know, one of like the side booths. And then, like, this guy comes up to me and just like starts, starts, like, chatting.

Like, hey, like, how are you finding the conference? I'm like, oh, I'm good. I'm here reporting. I'm writing a book on Ethereum. And then the guy's friend, like, starts cracking up. He's like, oh, you're going to want to speak to this guy. I'm like, why? Like, who are you?

And Amir was like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, no, don't. That's exactly what I would expect his reaction to be. Yeah. And the friend was like, no, no, really. Like, you need to talk to this guy. And so I, at first, and he's like, fine. Like, I'm one of the co-or.

Or like the friend told me. He's like, no, he's like one of the team co-founders. Wow. What a lucky line for coffee to be in. That was so lucky. Yeah, I don't know. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying the conversation with Cammy thus far. We're going to get into the second half of the show very shortly here where we talk about

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And if you don't have a Ledger hardware wallet, what are you even waiting for? Go to Ledger.com, grab a ledger, download Ledger Live, and get all of your Defy apps all in one space. Okay, so we got a little bit ahead of ourselves. I want to go back in, you had to pitch someone that they needed to fund this book that you were going to write about Ethereum, right? Right? I've never written a book, so I don't know what this process is like. Can you tell us the story of the genesis of the idea for the Ethereum book and what you had to do to actually turn this idea into reality? Sure. Yeah, that was...

So how... What happened? I was reading the Spider Network by... Oh, my God, I'm blanking on David Ehrlich, early. I'm not sure how you pronounce David Early. And I looked them up. Like I was reading the Spider Network. And it's exactly the kind of book that I always wanted to write. The kind of like Michael Lewis type book.

You know, it's like nonfiction, but told in a narrative way so that it seems like a fiction novel. And it was like written like really perfectly and like with so much reporting behind it. And I'm like, this is a book. this is like this but for Ethereum. And so I looked him up and saw that he was in New York. And I asked him if he could get coffee and he graciously said yes. So I was like, yeah, just I want to write the kind of book you did. How did he do it?

And what should I do? And he put me in touch with his agent. And then, yeah, just like the email was probably like, hey, I want to write a book about crypto, thinking about the story of Ethereum. And the agent was like, yeah. Wow. Wow. Yes.

That was really, that was really lucky. Yeah. Were you surprised that it was immediate, yes? Yeah, I was really surprised because I, like, obviously, Google, like, how to, like, write a book. And I've heard, you know, like, so many horror stories about being rejected by 20 agents. and, you know. So, yeah, no, that was, I was really lucky to just, like, reach out to,

to David and he put me in touch with my agent. And then my agent was, like, instantly, like, into a crypto book. So, yeah, I met with Dan Mandel and told him my idea for this book, which, you know, from the start was meant to be a non-technical book. about the history of Ethereum, there's like the people behind it, the founding story, the like challenges, the founding team met, how they overcame that. It was just like more like a people story about Ethereum. And he really liked the idea. And so I had to write this like very like complicated book proposal complicated in the sense of like why it had to include it it was really like

almost like like a like a business model a proposal um like a business pitch uh it was okay so what what's this book why me why now um a sample chapter like i had to write out a chapter i had to write out the outline of the book with like chapter by chapter like summary, like each chapter had to have like a couple of paragraphs summary. So it was just like this huge document. Like what other like like the competitive analysis? Like what other similar books are there out there? How did they do? It's just like this whole thing. Like it took a like a while to put together. And then with that, Dan sends that pitch out to a bunch of

editorials and that process was like it was so nerve-wracking we had like the tier one editorials so I started like hearing back from penguin and like

I don't know like the other big ones and some of them were like just really mean like no we don't like for writing like and that like really kind of like oh wow Right to the heart. Wow.

Right to the heart. Yeah. Or like, no, crypto is dumb. Which, you know, that doesn't hurt that much because, you know, it's not true. But, like, I don't know if, like, my writing is actually bad, you know. So, but finally, you know, HarperCollin is, like, one of the bigger ones says yes. Like, says they're interested. Yeah, that was, like, one of the best days.

Getting that email, like, Harper is interested. Did you think there was a chance that no one was going to say yes? Oh, yeah. I mean, I thought maybe, you know, like maybe I would, I would still publish the book. Like I would self-publish. I would find out way. Like I never thought that the book wouldn't get ridden. Like I was totally convinced this would get done.

But yeah, I didn't know like who would be interested. I was like completely bored to find that that Harper Collins was. And then, yeah, then it was like they're interested. They made an offer like for an advance on the book. And then the next step was like meeting with the editor and seeing if they liked me. Because apparently like you need to like sell yourself as an author too. So that was. Yeah.

So yeah, that was a really fine. interesting process. Like I, I don't know. I was like pinching myself throughout that whole thing. Just like going down to Harper Collins office in like downtown Manhattan and like this huge like high rights and amazing offices and just like meeting this like badass editor of like, my editor was the head of like the business section for Harper Collins. So that was amazing And then she was just like Really like an amazing editor

Like she had like really good Comments on like Of the book That was like one of my My Like concerns going into the process Because I know like I had the experience of Bloomberg editors And they are brutal

Like they just like take your stuff apart And you know it's like constant like revisions and stuff. So I assumed it would be the same with this book and maybe I would have to like make compromises on what I wanted to say. But no, Hollis, my editor was amazing. Like she, all of her like input was on point and like when I said, no, I actually want to keep this.

She was like, fine. Yeah. So I had such a good experience. with that. I will say, though, like the next book I write, which I hope to write a second book, I really want to do it the disintermediated way, you know, self-published, advanced from the community, NFT cover, whatever. Like, I had my, my, you know, my time with editors and editorials and publishers, and it was great.

but I think we have the tools now that I don't I don't need them anymore. Sorry, Paulus. I really like you, but, you know. Well, when you are literally writing about a decentralized financial ecosystem, it makes sense that you can find a way to decentralize in a decentralized manner finance a book, especially when you already have the record of having this book under your belt as well. Yeah. Yeah, I hope so.

I hope that's okay. I've been like thinking about it for for some time. And yeah, I think it would be a really cool project. As soon as I find the time, which I don't know when, but at some point, I'll find the time to do that. Yeah, that is the funny thing about working in crypto is no one really seems to have any time anymore. I see. No, okay. But, Cammy, I do have to give you all the praise that you deserve because you talk about how the thing that really set Ethereum apart is its community.

and I mean, this was certainly true all the way back to almost perhaps even the genesis of Ethereum, but it's only become more and more true as time has gone on. And I think there's a quick little history lesson of people that weren't around in Ethereum in 2017 versus where it is now. In 2017, the developers of Ethereum and the investors in Ethereum and then also like the whole ICO side of things, those were all very separate communities. They weren't very coherent at all. And slowly over those three years, that community of developers, investors, users, builders became more and more into the same canonical Ethereum community. And I really think it was your book, The Infinite Machine, that we can credit a lot of that too.

Because for me, an individual who came in in 2017, like, I didn't know half of the things that you discovered in the book. And we needed that like documentation as like a, hey, this is actually how this happened. Like this happened two years ago. No one has documented it because like this space moves so incredibly fast. So like for me, reading that book, there was a very much just like a zero to one moment for understanding where we are in Ethereum history. And and my place in it as somebody that came in in 2017 and where we're going now. And so like the books like that book in particular, I think did a fantastic job actually allowing. the broader Ethereum community to identify itself and really, like, cohere around a shared vision.

And so thank you for that invaluable contribution. Oh, David, thank you so much. No, I really appreciate you saying that. I mean, I did not think that would be, like, that wasn't my goal going into writing this book, but I'm so glad that's been the case for a lot of people. Like I, it's incredible to me to just see a lot of the, the reactions to my book and just like hear from people who would tell me, you know, the reason I got into Ethereum was because of your book or, or I decided that I wanted to, you know, start building on Ethereum because of your book. Like that sort of feedback just, I don't know, is makes like the whole experience so worse. it and it's kind of what makes me want to do it again because like you make an actual impact

on people like you you really you know can um can change people's lives a little bit or just like help them like find find their way so yeah no thank you oh of course no you deserve all of it and like you know Ethereum will pull people in it'll it'll pull like the investors in because of its reasons. It'll pull the tech builders in for its reasons. But if we're going to pull everyone in, like it's going to be through stories. Stories are how we're going to scale this whole entire thing out to literally everyone who can't figure out like, why should I care about this whole Ethereum thing?

And like if they're not investors and they don't know how to code, like what really is it in for them? And I think in order to pitch it to them, like stories have to be like the last mile to get everyone into this whole entire like movement. It's so true. And, you know, I think that's where communicators like you and myself and like so many great content creators in this space come in. And I think, you know, Ethereum and just like blockchain, the blockchain space in general has this kind of disadvantage that because it's tech, all of the early. people in it are, you know, developers.

And developers aren't great at communicating. They speak different. They're a different breed. Yeah. I mean, their thing is like building stuff. So they're not there. I mean, it's not their job to do that. Like they're, you know, they're busy creating this stuff.

So I think it's so key to have communicators out there representing, you know, holding up a window for people who are not in this space into what, like all the activity and the potential that there is here. So yeah, I do believe that stories and like stories about the people is what it brings people in. But also just like the growing number of use cases. I think, you know, that's been really interesting to see this year. So before, I think, like, the main use case for Ethereum and crypto was just like investing and financial, right? Like buying and selling tokens and trading. But this year with NFTs, we really kind of have seen this, like, new wave of users that come in. Like, there's creators now and, like,

musicians and artists, leveraging this tech to connect with their audience, to monetize their art in ways that they couldn't before. And so, you know, it's like, yes, like part of it is communicators amplifying this message and communicating what's happening. But part of it is this technology will continue to grow to enable new use cases that will bring different sectors of society in. And, you know, it was like started with finance. We're seeing artists now. And, you know, I think we'll continue seeing other, other use cases and other like sectors of society coming to crypto that way. 100%. 100%. Cammy, I said earlier that we were going to

opinion something and I think I think it's time to go back to that. When did the motivations to start the defiant come? Well, that's like pretty much I mean that's related to what I said before. It's just like writing the infinite machine being immersed in the Ethereum community and seeing Defy emerge. I just thought, you know, like there's a huge opportunity here to to tell this story. Nobody was doing it. Like at the time when I started the defiant in 2019, there were no defy-focused newsletters.

Like I asked around, I was like, how, like, again, like, how is nobody seeing this? Like, even like crypto media like coin this and the block, they weren't covering DFI. Of course, like mainstream media was uncovering DFI. But like, okay, like this is like the biggest revolution in finance, like in I don't know how long and nobody's covering it. And so that's what it felt like to be in Ethereum in 2019.

Everyone who cared about Ethereum and DFI was like, am I crazy or is like, what is going on here? Why don't people care about this thing? Yeah. Yeah. It's it was insane. And so, you know, I thought I had already, I left Bloomberg in January of 2019 because I wanted to finish Infinite Machine in the best way. possible and I didn't feel I could do that while at Bloomberg. And I also thought eight years at the same place was enough time. And I just wanted to be, my initial plan was to become an

independent journalist and just like freelance and write about crypto and fintech or whatever. But then, yeah, like I started seeing the defy and like the huge opportunity there was. And so I thought, you know, I would be a freelance writer and have this defy newsletter on the side. And as soon as I turned in my first draft of The Infinite Machine, I sent out the first defiant newsletter a week later on June 11th of 2019. And so, yeah, I thought, you know, this is going to be something that I do on the side, you know, in the afternoon, like after my freelance work and maybe like, I mean, I obviously had seen how other writers were using substack to turn on subscriptions.

I was like, maybe this will be a good way to like supplement my freelance income, which I didn't expect to be so big. So, yeah, that was the whole plan with the defiance. But then obviously, like, I saw it was, there was a potential for something a lot bigger than just like a tiny newsletter. Totally. Yeah, yeah. You said when you were at the Defiant, you said you wanted to lead the crypto team, right?

Or excuse me, at Bloomberg, you wanted to lead the crypto team. And they were like, yeah, now crypto, it's that weird thing. We don't need that. Which is like the greatest thing about crypto is that, like, we generally don't get any help externally as an industry. Like, no one outside of crypto helps us. We have to learn how to help ourselves. And so the, the crypto native, we have to make our own institutions. like Bloomberg's not going to write

defy stuff on our behalf and so we need to do it ourselves and so like the media has to come from inside the industry and so all right you started the defiant it was just going to be a side gig newsletter to put some excess time into but that's not what it is now

it's something much larger so when did you realize that the defiant could be something much more than a newsletter so I started writing it. And first of all, like, just like keeping up with Defy was a full-time job, you know, like, I was spending so much time between, I was like writing, still writing my book during the day, and then I would start writing the defiance, like, in the afternoon. And I would go, like, really late into the night, like to just, like, get it out the next morning and just, like,

keeping up with all the news. Yeah, it was a lot. So I realized, okay, it's not so easy to, like, run a daily newsletter. And then, you know, it really started to, like, gain a lot of traction. Like, people were subscribing. I, like, I didn't really have any growth strategy or anything. It was just, like, my own Twitter. I was sharing the define that way.

And, like, people were sharing it. And it just, like, started to grow. So I just saw interest there for what I was doing. And people were just like kept giving me amazing feedback. And then I decided to test whether, you know, people were willing to pay for that content. So I think it was like maybe November, October. I set up like the paid version of the defiant, which was basically, you know, I just like, I had two versions and one version had more content than the other.

And, and like, I realized people were willing to pay for the content I was producing. And that was, like, that was mind-blowing to me. Because just, like, putting the defiant out there under, like, my own name without the Bloomberg brand, without, like, a dozen editors, like, looking after my stories. That was, like, that was really scary to start out with. And then like to see not only like I can do this and like and get readers and get people interested, but like people are willing to pay for this content. So that was like kind of the first sign that, okay, maybe there's something here.

And then I started getting like D5 projects and companies who wanted to sponsor the newsletter. So I started just like getting emails being like, hey, like how much is the sponsorship? and I wasn't offering sponsorships at the time. So like, not like, no, not. Was that a conscious choice? As in like, no, I don't want sponsors. It was like, oh, I forgot that I could sponsor this. The second one?

The second one, yeah. I mean, yeah. Like, I didn't, I didn't think about it. And at first it was also like, I wonder, like having sponsors will, you know, affect, like, my journalism. Like that was also a concern. So I was like, I wasn't sure about the whole like sponsorship thing. But like at least I knew that people were interested in in paying for the define, like paying to be featured and paying to read it.

So I realized, okay, there's there's a business here. And I decided to go all in and forget about freelancing. And yeah, just like make sure like that I could build it out into something bigger. Where'd the name Defiant come from? I don't know. I think it was like looking for very anxious of D-Fi. So like I think I have I have the notebook where I put down like all the different names. Like D-Fi Weekly, Defy Daily, D-Fi Standard, whatever.

But then like my husband Chris helped me out with the names. I need to give him credit for that. We were both like thinking about it. I think, like, on a plane, I don't know, like, planes are such good, good places to, like, brainstorm stuff. Like, what else are you going to do? You really can focus. Yeah.

So I think it was on a plane that we were, like, like, going over this notebook of names. And then I thought, you know, I don't want it to be so obvious, like, defy something. So it was, like, with that idea in mind. Like, I wanted, like, yeah, the sense of, like, defying. But not have like like the actual name, DFI. And yeah. But not actually DFI, but close enough. Close enough.

Yeah. I remember in a, it might have been 2018. So this might have been settled by then. But I definitely think it went into 2019. There was a time where me, Eric Connor, Ryan, Sean Adams, we were like, defy is a shitty name. Like open finance is better. Were you watching us have that, those conversations on Twitter?

And you're like, I hope these guys like stop doing. this. I think so. I think so. I know, yeah. I don't know if it's a great name. But whatever, you know, I think like it is what it is. At this point, at this point, Define is absolutely stuck.

Yeah. And the define is a fantastic name. It exude so much of crypto values in a single word, which I think is fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, no, I really love it. And then, like, yeah, I designed the logo on Canva myself. you'll need to get like an actual designer. Right.

No, this is the same thing at bankless. I picked out the font, drew a red line under the word bankless, and then boom, that's been our logo since day one. And it works. It's awesome. Okay. So when did you hire your first employee at the Defiant? And who was that?

Ah, good question. Well, so employee different from contributor, right? So I had... Paid labor. Who was the first paid labor? Yeah. Who was it? You know, it might have been Lucas, who's at Brentless now.

Oh, no way, really? Seriously. I think so. Yeah. I don't know if he was the first. It was definitely one of the first. There was also Sebastian Saldas. I don't know how to say it in English.

But this guy, Seva, from Argentina. He was also writing for the defiant. And then Cooper. Right. He was also one of the first writers. So, yeah, I had kind of that plan. When did the vision change from just a newsletter that you write, realized that you could monetize to a much more grand media company?

Where is there ever an, like, aha moment? Or was that just kind of a slow transition? It was also a slow transition. It was like, okay, I had the day, newsletter. Then I decided I wanted to have a weekly interview. And with the weekly interview, I was already recording it. So I was like, might as well have a podcast. So that happened. And then Robin reached out because he had interviewed me for a documentary while he was at Harmony. And he said, we are looking to like reach the Defi audience. So can I make videos for the Defiance and like Harmony

appears as a sponsor but we just like make videos about Defi and like as long as like we don't have to talk about Harmony that's fine like and so he started like he started

the Define's YouTube channel at first just like doing this like kind of joint partnership with Harmony and then I brought him on full time and so yeah that was like

suddenly I had a lot of content because I had a bunch of contributors writing stories for the newsletter. I had the podcast and I had the videos. And so it just like it didn't make sense. The Define just like started to look like more of like a like a media company than a newsletter because we had like all these like these different types of content. And it just like didn't fit in the newsletter anymore. Like it didn't make sense of like all those stories.

It just like was getting too unwieldy. So so I made a WordPress website together with a designer. And I just started like, you know, publishing on the website primarily. And then the newsletter was the summary of things we had done elsewhere. And with that, then like, like, when all those pieces started to emerge, then I started to have like a bigger vision for the defiant. This was, yeah, probably early last year. I started to see, you know, there's something bigger here.

And, you know, with my background at Bloomberg, to me, information is constant. content and data. Like, you know, it's like you need both of them because, you know, it's like you, you, you tell stories, you, you write and, you know, you communicate stories. But you also need to provide the data for people to, you know, see, see what's happening in the market and on-chain themselves. Yeah, without the data, it's just subjective stories, which is what you wanted to get away from way back when. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I thought, you know, nobody's doing the data part right.

You know, like I think the defy data space is really fragmented. I think, you know, you have like different trackers and websites doing very specific things, but you don't have like one place to get all of the defy data, defy data that you could need. And, you know, there's also, you just like can't get the same user experience you can with a Bloomberg terminal. So it was just like really missing that ability of just like this like magical black box that I described earlier. You know, like, okay, you get to this place, you start typing up something and it comes up and you can chart it and compare it with other things and other metrics. You just don't have that. and it's so needed.

So yeah, I decided, you know, this is what the define should be. It should be the Bloomberg of Defi. So we become the most trusted, like journalistic news source or defy, and we provide the data to track and analyze the fix. And that's kind of when the big vision formed. And it became clear to me, this is what I need to do. Like this is the big vision and this is what's like, really needed in this space.

So you recently launched that data platform. So this just is almost going back to what we were saying at the very beginning, where like who you are seems to be a very logical combination of like all the components of your family. So this also seems to be that what the defiant turning is turning into, it seems to be a very logical conclusion of your history as a journalist, right? Like love journalism, but you love journalism even more when it's grounded in objective facts that no one can argue with, right?

And so like the defiant is turning into this one half, one half story, one half information, one half data to back that up. And you're doing that all in-house. And so you are trying to be like, yeah, both the story behind the data and then also the data simultaneously in all the same spots. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we have the platform to get all the insights that you need from D-Fly. And we have the writers to take those insights and put it into words and into context and tell those stories.

Do you do you? Where does the, where does the, where does narrative come into this or does it at all? Like more subjective, more, you know, yeah, more, more subjective, less. concrete visions of like, because everyone has like visions of what the future of crypto, right? It will be, right? Like, it's completely unwritten. You know, Bitcoin is only 12 years old, but, you know, Ethereum is only six years old. Defi is only two and a half years old.

So there's a bunch of competing narratives as to what the future of defy looks like. Where does, where does, where does narrative fit into, into the defiant or does it at all? No, I think that's Ben Quist job. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah, no, I think, I think. I think the defiance, you know, there is some level of subjectiveness.

So our editorial point of view is that defy is the future. You know, like we believe in Web 3, we believe the world will be increasingly decentralized. We believe defy will become finance. But how that happens on what chain, you know, who wins, whatever, like all of that, we leave it to our readers to, our job is to report on the space objectively. And, you know, to tell the stories that are happening in the way that they're happening in a very kind of data-backed way.

And the reader can decide for themselves what they think is right or wrong or, you know, where they want to trade or what, you know, they can make their own narrative. So of course there's like there's space for opinion and we do have, you know, guest writers and we have op-eds and I think Robin is pretty opinionated in his coverage. So there's room for that, but I don't think the, I mean, the main purpose of the defiant isn't that, isn't to like deliver like a shaped narrative, but it's to give, people, the tools to discover, you know, what their own narrative is, to make, to make up their own

mind. I love that answer. That's, that's fantastic. Cammy, if the defiant is maximally successful, what does it look like in five years? Okay. So, um, I would, I would love for, for the defiance to be, uh, you know, the, the place where people can find, um, all of the, well, let's see. I want to define to be the most trusted source of information for DFI. I wanted to illuminate the space for people just coming in. So like it's for it to be an education source for newcomers and for it to be a very powerful tool for insiders as well. But I also want to make a change in journalism, in general. So, you know, of course, being in Web3, we are looking for ways, we're looking at how media looks like in Web3. So you guys at Bankless have done an amazing job in decentralizing

banquet. I'm also looking at, you know, how that looks like for, for like a news company, for a media company. Because, you know, I do want to open up the defiance. And I want to do it in a way that stays true to our mission of providing, like, trusted information. So, you know, there's like, it is, it is a bit of a challenge there because you need to retain some level of control to have that kind of just like standards and, like, quality for, like, news. But I think, I think there's a way to do that in a more decentralized way. So, yeah, I want the defiant to be the most trusted information source for Defi. And I also wanted to just like push boundaries on of what media looks like in Web 3. And what the ultimate goal that I want the defiant to help shape is just like a better version of journalism.

Like, what if, like, the Web 3 media model improves, like, traditional journalism? You know, right now, investigative journalism is basically dead. What if we can reshape media in a way that we can find new funding mechanisms and, you know, new ways to organize community so that we can create, we can revive investigative journalism. And we can, what if this like new media model makes it so that, you know, the bigger stories come from just like a Web 3 native community. So that's kind of a vision that's still kind of not fully formed, but that's really exciting and inspiring for me and like where I'd want to take the define going forward. well we all know that this whole web three phenomenon is a place to tinker with incentives and where

web two generally all incentives and alignments is kindly broken down and it's like in the world of journalism it's exactly what you said where there's no more investigative journalism there's only there's only stories and narratives left in in the web two world in my opinion and and so that that is a very bullish outlook for the world of of media and I definitely hope that something definitely fulfills this vision of re-orchestrating incentives with regards to journalism. I think we have such a big opportunity here. Like, I think we're all going to make it.

Nice. Nice. Just a last few quick questions. What's it like to be in crypto in New York? Oh, it's awesome. Yeah. Actually, like, I, I, I'm launching this. a co-working space in in Brooklyn.

So it's cool. Like there's like lots of projects and people based here. I think, you know, the city is coming alive again with meetups and parties and just like, you know, just random meetings that I think it's like when in the middle of the pandemic, we kind of forgot how useful those things were. It's like, okay, like we can do everything from, from our apartment on Zoom. But like, those like, just like random conversations and meetings and meetups are, you know, you can't really replace them. So it's good to be in a city that just like has that community and and those opportunities. So that's something I want to enable in the defines converting space

colony. Well, I missed going to your office launch event last time I was in New York, but maybe I will be able to see you for NFT, NYC? Oh, yeah, you should drop by. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, yeah, I'd love to have you here. And I think we're doing, there's going to be like an NFT scavenger hunt. I don't know what that means, but that sounds like a kind of fun.

Yeah, yeah. And I think one of the spots will be the defiant office. So you can also get an NFT out of your trip. Awesome. We all love NFTs. Cammy, one last question for you. Are you a pessimist or an optimist? Absolutely an optimist. Yeah. What about the world makes you optimistic? I mean, look at where, like, look at where we're, what we're doing. Like, we're changing the world. We're changing finance. We're changing, you know, how people organize. Yeah. I'm hugely optimistic that this, this technology. is going to change things for the better. I just think it's inherently better, more efficient.

It's literally cuts out intermediaries, so makes things faster and better. So at its core, it's better tech. And so that means that we have the opportunity of improving how things work. I think that's hugely bullish and makes me super optimistic about the future. and also just very grateful to be part of it, to be here.

Well, Kamie, I'm grateful for you coming on and spending an hour half with me. So thank you for coming on Layer Zero. Oh, it was my pleasure. Again, like really enjoyed this conversation, really unique questions. So thank you so much for having me. Cheers. Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence.

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