Bankless - Cooper Turley | Layer Zero

Starting point is 00:00:00 My skill set is knowing everyone and knowing everything about every project. And if you try and put me into a box and say that I can only work on this parameter of work, it's never going to work for me because my skill set is being everywhere. Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with 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. Cyphopunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it.

Starting point is 00:00:29 And Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code, because Ethereum is people all the way down and it always has been. Today I'm talking with Cooper Turley. And Cooper, and I have a pretty similar timeline for when we got into crypto. We were both at the ETH Denver 2018 conference. And that conference was pretty, I think, impactful for both of us. It's funny that we didn't actually meet there. And Cooper tells a story of learning how to grind through the bear market.

Starting point is 00:00:56 And overall, learning how to grind inside of the crypto industry, and the fruits that can be born out of grinding. And so I think there's a lot of lessons that can be learned here with just getting a grasp over one's mental functioning, mental abilities. Cooper is a big fan of mindfulness and meditation, and then using that to just funnel energy into building and just contributing value. Cooper also tells a story of rather than building something in specific and doubling down on one specific project, Cooper spreads himself horizontally over a large number of projects. And that's enabled him to be a great connector of many, many people and just come to know a lot of people. We also get into his move towards L.A.

Starting point is 00:01:43 and helping grow and build out the crypto scene in L.A., which is a very unique and different crypto scene than anywhere else that we've seen and very emblematic of where we are with NFTs and culture coming into crypto. And Cooper is definitely leading that effort for sure. So let's go ahead and get right into our conversation with Cooper Turley. We recorded this in person at Metaverso. So hence the kind of echoey conference room in a hotel. So sorry about that.

Starting point is 00:02:08 But I think you guys will enjoy this conversation no matter what. So let's go ahead and get right into it. But first a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Arbitrum is an Ethereum scaling solution that's going to completely change how we use Defi and NFTs. Over 250 projects have already deployed on Arbitrum. And Arbitrum's DeFi and NFT ecosystems are growing rapidly. Arbitrum increases Ethereum speed by orders of magnitude for a fraction of the cost of the average gas fee. When interacting with Arbitrum, you can get the performance of a centralized exchange while tapping into Ethereum's level of decentralization and security.

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Starting point is 00:04:44 It has been a fantastic time. It's the end of the conference circuit, so we're running out with the bang here. Yeah, end of the conference area, I mean, for 2021? I think so. No more conferences in 2021? Yeah, I got to go back on work. Yeah. For people that are following you around, they might think that you work at conferences. Basically. I pretty much do it this way. I think it's a part of the game is just being present at all the events that people are at.

Starting point is 00:05:05 And I think that's something that you are uniquely, what you are a unique contribution to crypto is. Like, you are the guy that's there. You are the guy that's present. I definitely want to end there. But let's just go ahead and do the casual all the way back. Where did you grow up? Grew up in Philadelphia outside the city. I grew up playing a lot of sports. a lot of video games. I was really into collecting Pokemon cards actually. So back in high school I started selling Pokemon cards on eBay. Got a really big knack for music at the time and was really into curation, finding early acts, finding, you know, new collections.

Starting point is 00:05:35 You know, it's graduating high school and I kind of wanted to do something new. A lot of my friends were going to state schools and getting ready to join a frat and whatnot, but I kind of had this passion for music and sort of creative activities and that brought me out to Colorado where I went to school and just got a lot deeper into the music game. When you were collecting, everyone kind of collected Pokemon cards as a kid, but with like the other trends or fads or things that you were into was that like you you picked those out yourself you discovered that yourself or was it like things that other people were doing how did you curate your own interests yeah it's a close friend group of mine um me and my friends had a lot of ugeo cards

Starting point is 00:06:07 growing up but i think the unlock for me was realizing you could buy other people's collections on ebay i was like oh it's not only me in my collection in my basement it's everyone's collection in their basement around the world and a lot of the times people wouldn't think about it they were just wholesale be like i have 10 000 cards they don't want to sort through them uh starts at 99 sense, go ahead. And there was this game to be played of finding the best collection, knowing which cards were hidden in that one corner of the photo that were worth like $20, which was a big card, and then kind of taking a guess on it. And so you would go wholesale, buy a whole collection for $400, break it down on its parts, have a great reputation on

Starting point is 00:06:37 eBay, list each card individual with like name, price, condition of the card, series it's from, and just getting to understand the game became really fun because when you were doing it with friends, it was very easy to collect it and, you know, just have a fun time recording it, basically. So I think people listening to that will be like, oh yeah, he's an NFT guy. And you are an NFT guy. But you were in crypto well before NFTs too. So I think that's kind of interesting that you have like a very like NFT conducive background. But you got into crypto and before NFTs are really what they are today.

Starting point is 00:07:06 Yeah, I'd say my first way in NFTs was Roonscape. You know, it's a game that I got very good at. I had a really awesome inventory. I had a Santa Hat. I was grinding fishing all the time. I had like billions and billions of gold and was just doing all these fun games that were essentially NFTs. You know, obviously you couldn't export. I've never done, earned a dollar from my Roonscape account, but that act of kind of grinding and collecting rare items in a digital game was always

Starting point is 00:07:26 fascinating to me. Dude, Roonscape was where I learned farming. I farmed the, like the essence things that you had to turn into spells. And like, I was a warrior guy, but I didn't, so I didn't use any of those stuff, but I had to farm that stuff because other people had to buy them. And that's kind of what we're saying now with HACC infinity, which is kind of interesting. Yeah, and it's multifaceted. I mean, Rooscape, you had combat, which you could train, you had like, you know, magey, you could train, you could do prayer, and then there was like herb lore and then there was obviously fishing and wood cutting and firemaking and sort of even like later as the game developed they had like hunter and stuff like that and so the

Starting point is 00:07:57 cool part about that game is you can go so deep into one character's story arc it wasn't just like main objective like play this one storyline and then just like finish the game just infinite you know design space which is what i think we're seeing with nfts where nfts is a sector is so big there's so many ways you can go into you go on music nfts you go on to photo nfts you can do pfps you know and i think what we're seeing now is regardless of what skills that you have there's really room for you to grow and develop your skills. Yeah, I think people need to be reminded more and more and more. The NFTs is just a token format.

Starting point is 00:08:25 Like, it's just a format. Like, it's up to you. Like, people's like, oh, yeah, I do NFTs as in like it's a profile picture or an art NFT, but like, no, no, no, no. Like, that's just like what we're talking about NFTs right now. Like, it goes off in every single direction. Totally. Another one that just came to mind for me was Call of Duty and how you can do prestigious

Starting point is 00:08:44 and get gold guns. Yeah. I think that's an interesting example of NFTs where it was like played to earn, but in like a very like a social capital type way. When you had gold guns, it was like you were just legit. Like they had no financial value. You could never trade them or anything like that. When you saw someone with a gold gun, especially when the games came out, you know,

Starting point is 00:09:00 it was a race to get to that first gold gun. I would go to a game stop with my friends at midnight on the release parties and do completely degenerate stuff. But I remember it was such a social experience to be like, get the game, go home. And then you just see who played the most the next day. My friends would skip school and then you wake up it. How are you first prestige this game came out 24 hours ago, you know? It was just a grind.

Starting point is 00:09:19 you know, better off your friends. I think that's a lot of what we see in crypto today. Cooper, I think a lot of people will know you as a grinder. So when did you learn to grind? Was this something that you were born with? Or like, what was your first grinding experience? Sports, 100%. My dad was always my coach growing up. And so he installed a really hard discipline around like training and work ethic. And so starting back as early as football, you know, in like fifth grade or something like that, my team ended up going to Disney World and I was the quarterback of that team. And so leading up to that season, we were training every single day outside doing sprints and ladders and whatnot. Baseball, Little

Starting point is 00:09:51 League, I was always going to the bounty cages, doing like ground balls, pitching workshops, you know, and then basketball in high school was the main sport that I stuck with. And so I'd be shooting in the gym every single day doing two-hour sessions, got an amazing jump shot, you know, and do different routines with people on my team. And I don't know, I just kind of learn that there's, there's time that you put in where other people aren't watching. And I think that's what really, like, develops your skills and makes you go that extra mile. And me being able to have that experience from something like competitive sports to be able to take that and go to that next level and really be able to demonstrate that at a public setting was really fascinating to me

Starting point is 00:10:22 because I love this idea of playing with my friends and everyone's like I'm not the most athletic guy you know I'm pretty skinny it's like I'm not super fast like I don't have like great athletic abilities but I just work hard you know and I think what I learned is the harder that you work at a specific skill irregardless of what it is if you put in enough time into it you're going to get good at it so it just taught me that there's beauty and being bad at something because the more that you work on it, you're going to get better. And when you are going through those early steps of learning something, it's okay to be terrible at it because you know that so long as you keep putting in time and effort, there's a highlight load you're going to be pretty good at eventually.

Starting point is 00:10:53 Putting in work while no one's watching, I really like that line. What really matters in my mind for people that engage in that sort of behavior is they have to have this internal dialogue because people can grind and get good at sports. And like if you practice at anything, you'll get better at it. But like, if you don't have the internal motivation to do that in the first place, then you're actually not going to make it. right yeah so like you clearly you can grind and clearly that you're you're talking about um just like again creating a work ethic but why like why do what motivates you do you do you want do you just like to beat people or you're competitive or just like what's up do you just like performance like why do you why do you

Starting point is 00:11:28 want to be the best you know everything that I do yeah I think um I'm really driven my people that care a lot about what they work on what they do and I think that it's less about beating other people I am competitive than what I do but I think it's about being the best version of myself I think there's something that I'm passionate about. I want to perform with the highest ability of whatever that is. So when you're taking, you know, free throws and you miss a little bit more than average, you're like, oh, I could have done better. Like, I have my own personal record that I could beat.

Starting point is 00:11:55 That's what you're benchmarking to against yourself. Yeah, in high school, I was 93 out of 100 for free throws. Holy shit. I think I would do three throws. If I under 90, I'd be really, really best. Nice. Yeah. Was that property, a character that you were just born with, a characteristic?

Starting point is 00:12:08 I think that I grew into it. I think, you know, like, going back to the earliest memories I have of playing sports, I was always good at like soccer, like indoor soccer and stuff like that. But I think it wasn't until I started to be like social systems in schools that I kind of started form an identity around being good at sports and not just being part of like my identity. I think when I realized that that was part of my identity, it was like if this is going to be what I'm known for, I might as well be good at it. And I think from there it just kind of developed. And what I'm really thankful for is in high school, you know, middle school and early high

Starting point is 00:12:34 school was sort of like the instilling of grinding. But then towards the end of high school, I was still practicing every day, but I started to have more creative friends come into my life. So the ones that I was playing video games with, the ones that I was trading Pokemon cards with, and eventually going to concerts with. And that balance of like during the mornings in the gym, like in middle school, I would go to my middle school gym before school started. It was like 6 in the morning and I'd be shooting hoops before school started for 20 minutes and then school would start and I'd go to class sweating.

Starting point is 00:13:01 And then in high school I would come out of that and had friends that we could just go to concerts with and just do fun stuff. And I think that that balancing act of realizing like, okay, it's okay, to not be grinding all the time and find somebody that you're really passionate about and enjoy. I think that that was a great way to balance both of those lives that I was living at the time.

Starting point is 00:13:18 Do you remember your first like dopamine hit when you were like trying to get into grinding on something and you're like, yes, that was awesome. Like fuck yeah, I want more of that. What was your first moment like that? My most memorable one was hitting a home run in the All-Star game in baseball

Starting point is 00:13:31 where it was like... Oh, in the All-Star game too. Yeah. Nice. Like all the best people in the league and just like ripped it because I was having just a really fun time with my friends who were all there I was very social.

Starting point is 00:13:39 My friend had a new bat that I'd never used before, and I just picked it up and I was like, this thing's pretty sick, you know, and then came out and just fucking cranked one. Absolutely cranked one. It was such an electric feeling. I'd say baseball, the one that had the most memories.

Starting point is 00:13:51 I remember we were in the playoffs one year for districts, and we were playing the team that ended up going on to the Little League World Series. It was the year prior to that, and they had their best pitcher playing, and cranked a home run off of that. One of my best friends from high school growing up, he was pitching, he was this incredible pitcher.

Starting point is 00:14:05 I ended up being the quarterback at Harvard, and I had home run off of him, And it was just these kind of examples where, like, I was put in a position where I don't think I was expected to perform as well as I did. But then something just happened and like that extra, that extra grind. You know, where it was like an incredible pitcher who was just throwing darts. And it was like, everyone was striking out. And then I just like pray. And I'm just like, I'm just going to swing on this one.

Starting point is 00:14:25 I don't know what's going to happen. Just knock out of the park. I'm like, what the hell? Like this small puny kid and just like banging out home runs. Like, how's the even possible, you know? Like those moments to me were the ones that just stuck with me very, very much. And I'm sure there were hours of. at bad and cage time behind that home run, huh?

Starting point is 00:14:40 Yeah, 100%. And it was when no one was there, like, bless my dad, because he would go with me, like, hours every day and just, like, allow me to hit as much as I wanted, you know, buckets and buckets of balls. We'd pick them all up, run it back again. And it was just fun. You know, it was just fun.

Starting point is 00:14:53 When I'd be able to bring people with me to do it, some people would, like, complain or they wouldn't be there. And then I think it was good seeing, like, who really cared? Like, who was my age, like, 10 to 15, but wanting to be spending hours of their free time in a summer day, going and practicing and getting better rather than just, like, doing some other stuff and just blowing time off.

Starting point is 00:15:08 Is this genetic at all? Is this a property characteristic that your parents have to? My dad was a professional tennis player, so yeah. Okay. All right. So it definitely runs in the family. Yeah. You went to college in Denver.

Starting point is 00:15:23 Yeah. Yeah. What was that like? It was fantastic. That was my music chapter in my life. So like I said, end of my high school career, I was getting more into music. I was captain of my varsity basketball team. But the whole time I was playing basketball, I was also developing a friend group in music.

Starting point is 00:15:35 So we were going to festivals. We were going to shows in the city. I was going to see like Avicche Zed's Dead You know a bunch of these like early EDMAX And just having such a fun time like on the side of sports Because my sports friends were my sports friends And I had my music friends and my music friends And that's why I kind of got more into like my creative self

Starting point is 00:15:51 And so we were going to these shows and like talking about like art And you know just music and just kind of getting into a different culture And when I heard about Colorado and specifically this venue called Red Rocks I got really excited about it I went out to Colorado, went to a show for an artist named Pretty Lights Just had this awesome awesome experience there And I was like, there was none of my friends going to Colorado, not a single one of my close friends. And I was like, you know what?

Starting point is 00:16:12 Like, I want to change pace. Like, I don't know what it is, but something there just feels right to me. And so I just full on sent it out there and just totally carved out this new identity for myself around music and sort of being in that scene. How did sports come with you to college or did you kind of just, you know, do that on the side as a hobby? Just as a hobby. I would go to the rec center in bowl. And my rec team won, like, one of the championships. And I was just so good in my freshman year of college because I kept growing up.

Starting point is 00:16:37 I was like six, six foot, six foot one, six foot two, my senior year of high school. You're still growing in college? Yeah, and I got to be like six five my freshman year of college and so I was off the backboard dunks like just like doing insane stuff, you know? So like when I play rec with like everyone there was super super fun. What did you go to, what did you major in? I majored in music business. I started in accounting, my mom's an accountant and I loved math.

Starting point is 00:16:59 Like I think it's very fascinating to me. So accounting was something that I was very purposefully inspired by. Like it seemed like a great career choice, you know, obviously CPA that pays a well it's a very stable career and so started out in the business school in Colorado Boulder as I spent a couple years there I kind of realized like I'm way more driven by this creative side of my life and so I ended up transferring to music business degree which I graduated with from Denver what you what was a year that you chat swapped meters I'd say my sophomore junior year probably my junior year yeah because I remember the first two year um got really into smoking weed

Starting point is 00:17:28 got my med card and just got very into that world like uh had an operation with my friends and we were learning how to grow and stuff like that and then I was going to shows on the side and just like very much in this like hippie crypto you know like weed world that was like all this Colorado vibe yeah and so it took me a year or two to really find like balance in that because I came fresh out of like varsity basketball team like grind every day like pretty straight edge didn't really do that much stuff to like go to Colorado like smoking weed every day and like I'm completely sober now I don't do any drugs I don't drink but that period of my life it was like every day and it was very social experience I think that was the takeaway from it is like I was meeting so many new people

Starting point is 00:18:03 I kind of came to this new school and I realized no one knows anyone. And this is all a blank slate. Like, how do I meet the most people possible? I was like, oh, wait, everyone in Colorado loves to smoke weed. And so I got my med car and just became the guy to hang out with if you wanted to smoke. And so they'd have like 10 people coming in my house who do these like big circles, I had like this volcano vape and just go like super deep on like all this stuff. And like, great, I don't remember 99% of what those conversations were.

Starting point is 00:18:26 But I think a lot of my social skills that I have today and be able to meet new people are largely attributed to me being comfortable, going into new environments and just completely chilling out with people I'd never met before on a very deep level. Interesting. How did you get your grind fix if you kind of put sports, not completely down, but kind of deprioritized sports? Did your grind fix go somewhere else? Yeah, it definitely did. I think my grind fix at that time was just meeting as many people as possible and becoming one with myself spiritually.

Starting point is 00:18:55 I got into meditation at the time. I started to meet a lot more people. I started to think a lot more about myself and my standing in the world. And whereas my grind phase in high school is very much I want to be the best at this specific sport. my grind phase in college was like I want to be the best version of myself and so I would wake up every morning feeling fantastic I was practicing meditation I was doing a lot of hikes and getting out into the wilderness I was stargazing and going to see shooting stars and stuff like that and I think I just got to see a lot more of the world from that side of things whereas like physically I performed well at my life at one point spiritually I want to work on myself I want to understand what it means to be one in touch with myself with myself like understand my feelings understand how to connect with other people and just get to have a better relationship with myself in the world was this something that you felt was lacking or was just something that you just wanted to optimize for regardless? I think everyone's lacking it. You know, I think that it takes a very specific type of focus to recognize that spirituality is important in your life. And granted, that does come from a place

Starting point is 00:19:47 of often taking drugs to get to that point. But I think that for a lot of people, they're not very awake. You know, like, I think they go about their day to day, but they're not in touch with how they feel about themselves and how they think. They just are on autopilot all the time. And that point in my life was like, I want to understand why I'm thinking the way that I am. And I want to understand why I'm feeling the way I am. And I want to understand why things. set me off in the way that they do. And through that process, I just got to a point of being very comfortable with who I was. And through that, I was able to just make a lot of friends because I had this very vibrant

Starting point is 00:20:14 energy to myself and was very excited about sharing that with the world. Interesting. So having a goal of just being in tune with yourself is fantastic. But also, that's kind of like having a goal of being happy. You can't actually have the goal to be happy. You can't go straight for happiness. You have to like enjoy the guitar and then get good at the guitar. the guitar makes you happy.

Starting point is 00:20:36 So after the plan was to become closer to yourself, was that a means to an end for something? Or was there anything else at the time that you were thinking about while you were on the search to understand Kube? I think that's a great way of putting it. I don't think I was striving to be happy. I was aiming to be present. And by being present, I was often very happy.

Starting point is 00:20:53 You know, especially going to these shows, I developed a crew of people that were always going in the same concerts and I would see them at these shows and I would go and dance for, like, hours on end, and have really intimate connections with the artists and the musicians and started to really understand their, career and the culture behind it. And I think my, you know, as I said earlier in the conversation, I want to be the best of what I do. At that point in time, it was music as a topic. And music

Starting point is 00:21:13 as a topic meant finding the best artists early on in their career. And so for me, going to five concerts a week and getting to know everyone in that scene and all the up and coming artist, that was my end state. It's like, I want to be able to find all the best music as soon as possible and be known as the guy that always has the best taste of music. How has, focusing on, just identifying yourself for your own personal understanding of who you are, how is that impacted how you meet and understand other people. It's taught me a lot of empathy, you know. I think I'm able to just like really connect with anyone on a very deep level. I love this saying you should treat the CEO the same way that you treat the janitor. So regardless of who I'm talking to whether or not

Starting point is 00:21:48 someone offered me, I want to be very present in those conversations. When people are acting in certain ways or as I'm building longer relationships, it's allowed me to just really see them for who they are very quickly. And so as I'm making decisions about how to spend time with them or products to work on. I think I'm able to delegate focus and attention very well because I understand kind of what drives people and sort of what they're good at and what they might need some help with. I'm going to how what about concentration? How's concentration with you? How does that look like? It's amazing, honestly. I mean, meditation is literally the reason why I'm able to stay so focused in what I do. Um, started about five years ago. I've missed five days over the course of five years.

Starting point is 00:22:21 I meditate twice a day at this point. And that period of sobriety, I feel more focused than I ever have in my life. Uh, what's how long, what's a meditation look like for you, 20 minutes, sitting on a pillow, just thinking? Yeah, basically. A lack of thinking. Yeah, lack of thinking. Thinking about thinking, I think is the way I put it. Metacognition, yeah.

Starting point is 00:22:37 I would say around 10 to 15 minutes is where it generally ends up. I have a playlist called Peaceful Meditation on Spotify. Throw that on shuffle, sit there and just kind of feel myself. You know, think about the thoughts that I'm thinking about. Think about what I have on the plate for that day. Often think about a pretty good tweet, if I'm being honest. The tweet's always gone. Yeah, it's actually funny.

Starting point is 00:22:56 Most of my meditations these days, I'll have one kind of core topic. that's like in my head and throughout the course of that meditation I'll have like the crafted words in place that I come out of it and just bang it and just rip it right away but more generally I would say yeah the goal of it is just to recognize that I'm thinking and recognize that I need to just be centered in my thoughts and so even if I am having thoughts whatever they are it's okay to have those and just make sure it's coming from a point of like relaxation you know concentration and sort of like self-fulfillment and from there I think I'm able to operate at a

Starting point is 00:23:22 pretty high level I want the listeners to notice that Cooper speaks quickly and never really ums or odds and never pauses to think and is very surgical in what he says and i'm going to go ahead and guess that this is a result of that 110 percent yeah so when you were a kid before you were meditating was were you not able to speak in this fashion i think i've gotten better at it through practice you know doing these podcasts and writing helped me a lot with that you know writing really helped me distill my thoughts into very clear and concise thoughts and as i've started to go from writing to speaking i think those two things are directly correlated but i would say more broadly you know my uh my meditation has been the focal point for everything that I've done in my career so far.

Starting point is 00:24:01 You know, I know it's a really small thing to pick up, but I'm a very big fan of this book called Atomic Habits that talks about instilling very, very powerful habits in your life. And even before I read that book, this was five years ago, the fact that I found meditation as a focus for me to do every single day, regardless of where I am in the world, I've traveled so many places in the world. And even if I'm at a hostel with 30 people, I will make sure the very first thing I do after I get a shower in the morning,

Starting point is 00:24:23 it's Papa Medi. You know, get in there for 10 to 15 minutes. Yeah, get focused. You know as all my friends have traveled with, they're like, all right, you're ready to go for the day. I'm like, no, no, I got to give my meditation. And it's like a thing. And if I don't have one, you can start to see like a tiny bit neurotic. And so I'm like, yeah, I need to have this every single day in my life.

Starting point is 00:24:39 Okay, so every morning after you shower, you one, one med. Yep, one med. And then another one later in the day? Yeah, later at night. So basically my call every day looks like waking up, getting a shower, meditating, and then doing calls from about, let's call it at 930 until 6, basically, 30 minutes back to back, maybe a gap in between. as I start to notice that I'm slipping a little bit in my mental focus, I won't generally grab a bite to eat, something really, really light, like a smoothie, or an assable, as I'm sure you've seen.

Starting point is 00:25:04 Yes, I've seen them all. And then meditating and getting into deep work. You know, I think that second shift is really important because I think for a lot of us, we tap out around that, like, five to six hour, and then we just kind of go do something else during the night. But I see that second shift as the time to really, like, go that extra mile. And so for me, I don't spend it talking to people on back-to-back calls. That's when I do my deep work. So I do my writing. I do a lot of the project management.

Starting point is 00:25:24 I do a lot of governance. I do a lot of things that are digital first. So like being in Discord and stuff like that. And I really try and separate my time from active interactions and talks to more like deep work, kind of text-based work and anything that is on the computer. When did you get into crypto? 2017. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:25:42 And you were in college at the time, right? Yeah, I was going through my senior of college. One of my professors had a class about future of music, and he started talking about something called Smart Contracts. And at this point, I don't know why the hell this was in the intending. I don't know why I was talking about it. But he was like, yeah, there's this cool stuff for the listeners that don't know. Music World's system is very long right now.

Starting point is 00:26:01 If I play your track on Spotify today, you're going to see a third of a penny in six months from now. And so when he talked to me about this technology where you got paid in real time directly to the artist with no middleman in the middle, made a lot of sense to me. You know, I had been exposed to Bitcoin earlier on from like different stuff on the internet, we'll say. And, you know, this was the way for me to advance that thinking to something more practical. And so as I started to look into this thing of crypto, I saw, new shiny object to curate. Same way that I saw Pokemon cards, same way that I saw music,

Starting point is 00:26:27 I was like crypto. Here's a new sector, not a lot of people are talking about it. There's a lot of opportunity and a lot of different information to shuffle through. When I see that as a surface area, I get really excited about it.

Starting point is 00:26:37 And so I started from a lens of music got me curious about this, but very quickly I was reading every white paper that there was for every project. I was on ICO drops every single day and just fully in the mix. And it was a game. It was a culture.

Starting point is 00:26:48 And I think online you could find that people were just really excited about finding the next hot project. And I think the thing that really clicked for me, is unlike Roonscape or unlike, you know, music where there was social capital associated with it, there was real financial value to be earned here. And so that curation could go a level above where you could actually make real value and real money

Starting point is 00:27:04 out for the curation that you did. I think that's why I just ended up diving in so fast, becoming so consumed with it so quickly. So after you realize that there's something here with crypto, a lot of people come into crypto and they're like, oh, I can make a bunch of money. Some people move on from that and then they think about other things. But most people start there. Is that where you were at the very genesis of your crypto career? Like, oh, I can get my, like, my blockfolio number really, really high.

Starting point is 00:27:26 Yeah, I think I was graduating college. I had a music business degree. That degree was setting me up to go into tour marketing or something that felt very, you know, maniacal. Like, I was basically just a human putting things in a spreadsheet. And I never was excited by that. I was doing some artist manager on the side, but it wasn't really paying a lot of money. And so I was picking up a lot of odd jobs on the side.

Starting point is 00:27:43 I was doing Uber driving for a long time. I would drive Friday and Saturday night, 9 to 12, 9 to 2 a.m. Because those were the best times to drive. You would have high surge rates, and I could make a lot of, of money. I was picking up delivery driving hot hours. So instead of it being like, you know, just door dash during the day, there was an app that allowed you to go work at different restaurants for one to two hour intervals for 15 an hour plus tip. And so I was making like $50, then I would hop on Uber and I kind of had a goal at some point just to make like $100 a day.

Starting point is 00:28:11 So like if I can make $100 a day that I can make this much a year and that I'll be, you know, set off. And when I came out of college, I was like, okay, I'm making $100 a day. This is great. But like, what am I doing? There's no upside here. Like, I'm just kind of driving and like what is the end goal of this work that I'm doing? And there was no ladder to climb really. So when I saw crypto, I saw two things. I saw one a way for me to just get the number of my bank account up. First and foremost, it was the best way for me to make money and be practical with my time. And two, there was an infinite design space. I was like, I don't know what this is going to net out at, but I am 100% confident that spending my time in crypto over delivery driving is going to net out

Starting point is 00:28:41 in a better result. Do you have a 2017 like token that you just like have a place in your heart for? Lots of them, yeah. Lots of lots of ICOs, lots of the neo-ICOs that. really good on. Neo-I-C-L. Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. So I was doing a lot of the Asian exchanges and just like kind of going about in these

Starting point is 00:28:58 weird directions. Trying to think like there was one called like Red Pulse. I just remember there was like a peak point in 2017 where there was like three days in a row where I just had huge bags of the top gainers on coin market cap like consistently for four days and I was like I'm the goat, you know, this game over. Like I went to know the game. Did you get in? I want to say like June 2017.

Starting point is 00:29:20 Okay. We got it in the same time. That's pretty funny. Was it crypto that really resonated with you? Or was it one specific part about crypto? Was it like, for me, I got pulled into Ethereum like pretty damn quick. Yeah. Was there any sort of like thesis or theory or just culture about crypto that you're like,

Starting point is 00:29:36 oh yeah, this is my tribe or this is what I believe I resonate with that? I didn't find Ethereum really until 2018. I was using it to do ICOs, but it actually was something that I came into pretty late because I was doing Bitcoin first, then I was on Bitrex. And then I started doing ICOs. And when I started doing ICOs, you need to have Metamask with Ether. But I remember for the longest time, I was like, I understand why people would want ether, but it's just used to buy things, other coins.

Starting point is 00:29:57 I was like, I don't really get this. And we're in 2018, but I do remember very vividly doing ICO culture. I love the telegram chats. I don't know if anyone remembers, like, ICA days of telegram chats. My favorite thing ever would be when an ICU would drop, and it would be like one of the most popular ones. And so the telegram chat, like the thing would break. And then it was just full water.

Starting point is 00:30:15 Like the most insane messages you've ever seen, like thousands and thousand for a second. You couldn't mute it. So there's all this profane stuff in there. I was really messed up, but it was like, just that idea of there being such a concentration of power and energy on the internet. And one specific chat was like so exciting to me. I was like, there is such a community here around this idea of just making money on the internet.

Starting point is 00:30:35 And even if these projects are complete dog shit, which most of them were, the fact that all of us are just mobilizing to different like little pockets of the internet consistently was the funnest thing in the world to make. Did you, how did that, did you start like changing what you wanted your career to be? Like, how did you know that like, oh yeah, I want to do this crypto thing professionally for my job or at that time was it more just like, oh yeah, these are fun tokens and fun means? I think when the run-up happened in 2017, I saw my net worth skyrocket from what it was at that time. I was really excited about that fact and I was like, okay, there's clearly a

Starting point is 00:31:04 financial opportunity to be played here. I saw that there was a lot of room to grow. You know, things were very immature and there was a lot of just BS out there. And I loved that I could be independent and autonomous. You know, I graduated college. I was doing trading in ICOs. Eventually, I got good at trading them. And so I was like, okay, what does it look like to do an ICU? So I went on Angelist, found a bunch of random projects that had some conceptual vision of doing an ICO. Was he able to convince them to either give me tokens or give them like $5,000 cash or just like some really, really marginal amount just to be involved in some way, shape, or form. And through that process, I went from being like speculator to really an early contributor. You know, what that looked like was me just writing a bunch of white papers, me writing a bunch of blog posts.

Starting point is 00:31:42 I would tell these projects, here are the listing sites you want to be on. Here are the good ICO sites to be on. You know, here are the people on Twitter that matter. And just sort of like getting away of the land. And for me, coming out of college, these CEOs, if you can even call them that, these older individuals were just so fascinated by me thinking that I had this knowledge of how the space worked, that just gave me an opportunity just to be present. And I think the reason I'm most successful for that, and I'll caveat that not a single project raise a single dollar,

Starting point is 00:32:07 none of them launched their token ever. I worked for exposure, basically the whole time. And I probably earned $5,000 cash over the course of like six months. But they flew me to South East Asia to go to crypto conferences. So I went to consensus Singapore. I went to Beyond Blocks in Thailand. I went to PundiX and Bala, you know, most of random conferences in the world

Starting point is 00:32:25 and I just started getting in the mix. I was like, what does it look like to be around these people? Clearly, I'm, you know, really involved in this, but am I crazy? Am I operating on an island or like, am I kind of in the right direction? I think as I started going to more of those conferences, I stumbled upon this thing called ETH Global, you know,

Starting point is 00:32:39 and DevCon and sort of like these Ethereum conferences. And I remember when I started to go to those, then I was like, oh, wait, this is way different from consensus. This is way different from like these boothstand conferences where there's some ICO project with like a person at the front, ended up changing for me just kind of walking around to boost and being like, hey, I saw that update you have. Like, good job to me being like,

Starting point is 00:32:57 but you guys like are doing this full time too. Like, I'm not like crazy because I'm like this kid out of college. It's just like randomly like doing crypto full time. Like you guys care about this. And like this was when Eath was coming back down. And so it started the bear market. And you just started to see like real people.

Starting point is 00:33:11 You know, it was like, sure we all are knowledge about this space. We probably made some money in 2017. But we're here for something bigger. And I think that was when things started to change from it being. fully speculative to at least being very intentional and me starting to actually find a family in the space. How did you make it to the fair market? Traveling Southeast Asia. You know, I'm fortunate enough. I graduated college. I moved back home for a bit and then immediately just started traveling. And so me and my good friend Lucas Campbell, who you work with Daly,

Starting point is 00:33:35 went to Southeast Asia for three months. We went to all these conferences, just sort of putsed around. We were doing like odd consulting jobs for projects, like writing white papers and just giving them like blog posts and stuff like that. And it was fun. I had friends around me. We were kind of it together at that point. And it was just good having a couple people in my orbit who were kind of in the mix with me because even though we weren't doing good by any means, we knew that we were doing something together. And I think that vision that there was going to be a brighter future and that there were going to be things like maker and un-swap that started popping up, we were like, okay, we might be insane. We lost all of our money. Our parents don't know what the

Starting point is 00:34:09 hell we're doing. They think that we're crazy, but at least we have the freedom to just try it, you know, fresh out of college, not a lot to lose, you know? As we stuck through it, I think we started to notice there was real stuff there and as defy started to come into the picture I think that was when things started to really get formalized into being like we're not crazy there's real stuff here you know this is a topic to cover and this is something that again back to my point of curation this is the next thing this is the thing to really start covering very very deeply was calvin james involved at this point no they weren't that was actually a year and a half later and so me and lucas were working closely we were doing consulting for a bunch of projects we started

Starting point is 00:34:41 writing for a bunch of defy blog so one called defy rate um started contributing places like Bankless and the Defiant and just really started writing out everything that there was to do with Defi. You know, at that point, I remember I was cranking out like three to five articles a day. It was like fundraising announcement, token launch, you know, new update from the decks or something like that and just like really getting as much of a layland as possible. And I really pride of myself on on Twitter. The second that something was tweeted from a project, I could write up an article in literally 10 minutes, 500 words, get a post on the site and just have it out there. Rip a tweet and that like consistency to just go from this happened to Cooper covered it, just like merge that as close together as possible.

Starting point is 00:35:15 And then I think over time I kind of started to gain a falling in the space as someone who's very knowledgeable about everything that was happening. So I think that where you started writing and tweeting, I think that is the start of your, the rest of your trajectory. Right. And so like everyone plays around with tokens. Everyone thinks they can do the ICO, Defi, you know what I'm going to call them Defy tokens back then. But like everyone played tokens in 2017. And then we all kind of like, you know, sobered up in 2018. It sounds like that that was the moment where like Cooper's crypto story really began.

Starting point is 00:35:45 The thing that actually started is at the beginning of the story that actually has coherence to where you are now. Is that a fair take? Totally fair. I would say one interesting point to add on is when I was in college and getting deep in the music scene, I was actually doing music journalism. And so I was doing artist interviews. I was traveling to festivals. I was meeting different acts and covering different shows. And that early writing practice I had in college ended up being extremely beneficial for this defy era

Starting point is 00:36:07 because I was already a somewhat decent writer at that point. You know, it wasn't like I was coming out from scratch. Like I had been writing for three to five years. I was doing white papers as we mentioned. And so when I started going to like a news reporting and an editor standpoint where I was delegating articles to people, I had a basic conception for how media worked. And I think that that trajectory of being able to take a topic and breaking it down into here's what it is, here's why it matters and here's what you do to act upon that. Like that three-part process, like really refining that, allowed me to just get very practical about my writing and really allow me to start building a brand for myself.

Starting point is 00:36:36 How did you make it through the bare market financially? Through writing. Right. Yeah. Really thankful there was an angel out of Silicon Valley who started defy rate and he was paying me a dollar a person. word basis to basically just pump out articles and then I was just turning out three to five week and so I was earning maybe $500,000 a week just from writing immediately putting all of that into ETH picking up some odd jobs here and there writing white papers doing like small consulting

Starting point is 00:37:00 gigs which is basically just project management and through that you know just survived I don't think I was excelling but it was enough for me to be comfortable at that time I was living at home with my parents and so I didn't have any expenses and that kind of rolled into defy summer I think that was the time that really ended up being like the big change for me. I started going like it was like, I remember I went to DevCon. I started meeting some people that were like met James there and started doing some like of the fire ice stuff.

Starting point is 00:37:23 That's where that was born. Had joined Metacartel at that time. And so I was very deep on the ground on the Dowfront. And quarantine when that hit and COVID was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I feel really fortunate to say that because I know for a lot of people was really bad. But for me being able to be at home with my parents,

Starting point is 00:37:38 lock myself in my room, work 14 hours a day and then go to the basement and work out and work up and do it all over again. That was the biggest grind. period of my life. And that's when I saw the most success because I was working harder than anyone else around me. And I knew that for a fact. And it really drove me to just keep going harder and harder. So what was the first thing that was beyond writing? That was like, that was next in the story of just like actual grinding and being part of just crypto. Like after writing, where you

Starting point is 00:38:01 graduated into? Governance. Governance. Yeah. I was on Discord forums. I was, uh, in Discord chats. I was doing work with teams. So like I remember I was very involved with, um, Obase v2 launch. I was working on with the balancer team at the time, started to just kind of work for like more legit and legit projects. You know, 2017, I was working for just anyone who had hired me. As Defi Summer started to happen, as I started getting a little bit of following on Twitter and had like outlets like Defi right to offer, I could start working with more high caliber teams. And I think that period of time, I was starting to give value added insights to very important projects in the space and starting to gain social capital by doing governance proposals.

Starting point is 00:38:35 It went from me just being someone around, to me actually playing a core role in the things that were making meaningful influence in the space. So the way I got through bare markets was by working for companies. I worked from one company which blew up to another company, which blew up to another company, which blew up to another company, which blew up to the hot. It kept on going down the line until defy summer. And then I was like, okay, I made it to the other side. Yep. You never had the safety of a company.

Starting point is 00:38:58 You were on your own. Was that, was that scary? Was that stressful? Like, what was it like to be a lone wolf while, you know, in 2018 and 19 and the beginning of 2020, it felt like just ashes was coming from the sky because the cryptocurrency. with burning over and over again. Yeah, I think it gave me a lot of freedom. I think that it takes a very specific type of person to be comfortable in that regard. I'm very thankful for my parents for just supporting me in that. You know, they knew about the products I was working on. They kind of knew about the life I was living. They knew that I was traveling a lot. They knew that I was

Starting point is 00:39:27 living at home. And so I had a nice pillow. You know, I had a nice cushion where I could never really fall too far down. So even though I was a lone wolf and I feel like I was like going to be on the street or anything like that. You know, it's very thankful and fortunate for that position. I think as I started to see a little bit of success through working with these projects, I was like, I'm starting to get paid in tokens now. You know, there was a period of time when I remember it was like I would just take any amount of payment to get by. Like I said, with writing, I was getting dollar per word. So I'd get die sometimes or get USD and then I would choose to buy ether, I'd choose to buy this. But as I started to do governance, it was like, I'm going to get paid in AVE tokens or lend at the time.

Starting point is 00:39:59 I'm going to get paid in balancer tokens. As I started to earn governance tokens, I was like, okay, not only can I make money from writing from doing freelance stuff, I can now parlay that to start getting paid in ownership. And I think that transition allowed me to start carving out a stake that felt really meaningful. And so as I started to play more of the speculation game, so through DFI summer, we all know about the tokens that launched, we all know about liquidity mining, we all know about yield farming. And I just got really good about being practical in those situations. So I'd be the first one in the farms. I'd be the first one trading the tokens.

Starting point is 00:40:26 Like, Uma, ICI was like there on Uniswap, the day that it happened and stuff like that, you know? And through those experiences, it felt like 2017 what happened, but more legit and more formal. and now instead of me playing follow-on to like, you know, pump on Binance that's up a ton, it was like, oh, you're day one. You know, and I think that's when we started to see these real big wins in crypto, because not only was ETH acting as a vehicle for that, but there was sort of this underbelly underneath it where you could really go deeper on those relationships. And I think that freedom to be agile across everything,

Starting point is 00:40:55 rather than being like specifically focused on one coin in particular was something that I really, really loved. So if anyone that who knows you now, they look at you, like, oh, yeah, of course, Cooper would never work for a company. When you graduated college, would you have been able to predict that? Yes. Yeah? Never about what you are you going to work in a company? Just like, company who's not going to make it. Why? Yeah, I think creative freedom and control. You know, I think I have a lot of respect for talented CEOs and I've had a lot of, I've learned so much by working deeply across the number of projects, which we'll talk about shortly here. But I think for me, you know, my skill set is knowing everyone and knowing everything about every project. And if you

Starting point is 00:41:34 try and put me into a box and so that I can only work on this parameter of work, it's never going to work for me because my skill set is being everywhere. You know, it's not being focused on one thing. It's being across everything. And I think by nature, a company is directing you to be focused on one thing very deeply. And I think me being across everything is where I've been able to shine in my life this far. When did that strategy become defined in your head? Like, when do you say like, oh, I am going to be the guy that knows everyone? Was that first subconscious? And then you realized it. and now it's defined?

Starting point is 00:42:05 Or were you like, oh, no, I want to be the guy that knows everyone, and then you started doing it. Like, what happened first? I think subconscious. I think it just kind of happened. You know, in the same way that I said, I started picking up projects in 2017. I remember I was juggling, like, five clients at the time,

Starting point is 00:42:17 five just, like, ICO projects, and I was balancing around all of them. Then on top of that, I was still trading, and I was, like, on Twitter and stuff. I was like, I'm actually pretty good at, like, you know, multitasking and project. And I started to be really directive about, like, this time of the week is for this project, this time of the week's for this project and started building on my own internal calendar. and through that I sort of developed like my own routine and schedule that felt very good to me. You know, I'll be very chaotic to everyone else, but I just had a system for myself that worked well and everything else just fell into place.

Starting point is 00:42:43 When did you have the aha moment about owning being paid in ownership? It's a great question. It was the writing stuff, honestly. It was like getting paid in dye into my metamask wall and then using that to buy Ethan on Uniswap and doing that consistently over time. And then just doing like shit coin corner with my friends. And so every call we would start when we're doing governance or something like, that we'd spend the first 15 minutes being like this token's going up why is it going up why is it cool

Starting point is 00:43:07 Lucas and I were writing something called token Tuesdays at the time so we were covering different coins and projects new defy protocols I mean like here's a you know DCF of some maker protocol or something like that and it was still buying but I remember even before I was earning these tokens I remember when I was buying these tokens I was like it's not only about you know them going up in like a speculative sense and like them pumping like you were buying you were buying ownership you know like we were using this to participating governance, we are governance forums. I remember that we got delegated a lot of comp when comp launched. And now to me and Lucas was like the best thing ever. Like we got 10,000 comp delegated to us from last year. We're like, let's go. Like we're in the mix, you know. We have governance power now.

Starting point is 00:43:47 Like we wrote this whole post about why we're a big delegate and why we're mattered and whatnot. And I was like, there is such a difference between just like moon boy Twitter who's like plotting out charts with like lines and stuff. And then just like on the governance forum like actually participating in meaningful discussions. And even before we were earning any governance tokens for doing that, that sense of purpose and feeling like you're one with the community was just really, really powerful to me.

Starting point is 00:44:07 About the Moonboy chart people, do you feel like those are your like your opposites? Because you have the people that look at the charts and be like, oh, like if I go, if I do this, I can maximize the profit that way. And then you're like, well, if I grind here, I can maximize that way. Do you feel like these are just the opposite ends of the spectrum? Yeah, I think that I try and see everyone's viewpoint very clearly. And so I understand this archetype of a trader. and I understand that people find a lot of value and, you know, purpose that would be incorrect in trading.

Starting point is 00:44:37 I think it's something where I trade more on vibes than I do on, like, you know, specifics, I guess. And so for me, it was always just a very weird point of reference to spend your time on. I've always found that, like, traders, you're just permanently a speculator. You know, I don't think that traders ever turn into contributors. And I think my biggest learning in the space was the more that you become a contributor, the more success you're going to have. So I wouldn't say that they're my opposite so much as I am, that they are stuck in a phase that I think. think has a limited upside, even if you're financially rich. I think that there is lacking a big opportunity for you to be a meaningful contributor

Starting point is 00:45:08 or something that matters. And then also missing out in the connections. Yeah. I mean, I guess traders get connected to other traders, but contributors get connected to everyone else. Yeah, it's exactly right. And you're seeing a lot of traders now become really involved in NFTs because I think they like that sense of connection that comes with NFTs that you didn't really see with fungible tokens.

Starting point is 00:45:27 Ooh, that's a good take. Yeah. I like that. How did fire start? started through devcom yeah yeah I met a James very briefly there and then we went to SF and then Alex Mademaz had a Meta Cartel meetup it was like Audius

Starting point is 00:45:40 James was speaking from Axia Labs Avey guys were speaking Dowhouse guys were speaking on Pokemon and I went to this like little SF meetup and I remember they were just like hey we're talking about like consumer facing applications we're talking about how does crypto go mainstream we're talking about culture and all this stuff and I was like wow this is fascinating

Starting point is 00:45:57 me and James sat down for lunch and then that was kind of like this conference circle that happened. So it was DevCon to San Francisco to East Denver to East London to ETHC all in the course of about a month and a half. And James was on that circuit too. And so me and him just got really close at that time. We sat down with a project in London and started talking about doing a project together. Lucas and I were doing like consulting over here. James and and Cal were doing consulting over here. Lucas and I were building this brand around D-Fi with the writing that we were doing. James and Cal been working for a lot of legit projects in that time.

Starting point is 00:46:29 and so we were kind of able to merge, like, bring in the skill sets that Lucas and I had on the writing side was sort of legitimacy that James and Callum brought and just started leveling up our community interactions, consulting, whatever you want to call it, to what, you know, then became Fire Eyes. Is Fire Eyes the thing that you feel like the most responsible for? Because you work for so many different things in so many different directions, it's hard to, like, when I wake up, I think, oh, it's bankless time because that's all I got. Is that, is it like when you wake up, like, oh, fire eyes first, or is it just like one of the many projects that you work on? I give fire ice pool credit to James. You know, I see that as kind of his child and his baby. And I think that he came from a spot of really legitimizing that vehicle. You know, like coming out of Metacritel, me and him had done this thing called MediClan very briefly at the time, which was like an e-sports down.

Starting point is 00:47:15 So we were just like starting random dolls and random projects. And I think that he was very much intentional and saying like, I know you guys had consulting before, but like you need to step your shit up. You know, he's like, you need to stop getting paid like $1,000 in tokens. He's like, if we're going to work for these products, we're doing 20K,000 and $30,000. engagements. And I wrote the time, I was, I'm so notoriously bad at underpricing myself. Like, my whole crypto career is be like, I write your white paper for like 500 bucks. And then like, you know, some dude would be like, what are you doing, man? You're fucking the market. It's like, white papers are 10 grand. All right. You can't be coming out here and writing him for 500 bucks. I'm like,

Starting point is 00:47:46 sure I'm gonna, it's like 200 or $2 an hour. I'm like, no, it's like, no, it's like, no, it's like, no, it's not about the time you put in. It's about like the value of the output. I think those early projects with James, he was like going in very forcefully with these clients to be like, no, our rates are like this much. Like, oh, but how I was only four of you guys here at college. I don't give a damn about what we look like or who we are. We have so much context and value to bring to you that's like, you're in or you're not. And I think that that growth process ended up becoming a very valuable skill for me as I started to do more in the space

Starting point is 00:48:10 because I learned to teach me to just over-price yourself and overvalue yourself and start to get paid in what you earn. And so I guess to answer your question directly, I think that I was an extremely valuable member of FireEyes and still on today. But I would say that the inception of it was definitely due to James and I still give him full credit for that. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying the conversation with Cooper thus far. In the second half of the show, we get into the more recent timeline of Cooper's story, moving to L.A., the getting the celebrities into crypto, all of that good stuff. And what is just like to know a little bit about everyone in this space? Because everyone seems to know Cooper. So we'll go ahead and get right into that second half of the show. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. The Gemini Exchange has been my exchange of choice ever since I got into crypto. I used Gemini to be. both buy the dips and also manage my regular automatic monthly purchases of my preferred crypto asset. On Gemini, you'll find over 50 different cryptos, including many of the top defy and Metaverse tokens, like Wi-Fi and Axi Infinity. Using Gemini Earn, you can earn yield on your various cryptos,

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Starting point is 00:51:03 switch to the Brave wallet. Download Brave at brave.com slash bankless and click the wallet icon to get started. At some point in time, you started to get into the world of, outside of crypto, but people that were like, you know, the Hollywood types, the celebrity types coming into crypto, and all of a sudden, it seems, from my perspective, that when they did that, Cooper was there. How'd that happen? I moved to LA in the middle of quarantine in September. I started talking to a project called Audius, which is a music streaming app. Obviously, as you've heard in this conversation, music played a big role in my life.

Starting point is 00:51:33 And so Reniel reached out to me and he's like, hey, we're thinking about doing a token soon. Do you guys want to help? Runeal's in Meta Kartel Adventures and so we had just kind of seen our work that we were doing. And I was like, hey, not only don't want to do this token, but I want to be really involved in this project, more so than any of the ones that had been in the past. And so it actually ended up being the most formal relationship with the team I've had thus far. I signed a contract to start working 30 hours a week. I was in the Slack channels.

Starting point is 00:51:55 I was doing all hands meetings. And my entire objective was crypto and Web3 for like a consumer-facing platform, basically. And so we launched that token. We started doing a lot of NFT features. And long story short, through that process of working at Audius, I was like, I need to be somewhere that's more culturally relevant than Philadelphia where I was at the time. I was doing traveling over to these conferences, but I always come back to Phila. I'd come back to home base, back to my parents. And I was like, this isn't going to cut it.

Starting point is 00:52:19 You know, if I want to really go to the next level and I want to make crypto cool again, I need to be somewhere where this is going to be meaningful. And so just up on a whim, got a one-way flight to L.A., stayed with a friend for a week and then signed a lease. I ended up flying back driving across country with my brother and my two cats in my car, my car. 48 hours after signing a lease, and my parents are like, you can't go to L.A. What do you mean you're going to go on Saturday? It's Thursday. Like, you're not going to go to L.A. And I was like, yeah, I think I'm going to do it.

Starting point is 00:52:41 Backed up my whole room, put everything in the car and just sent it out there. Had no idea directed of what I was doing. but I was like, L.A. feels like the best spot for me to develop a community for myself around music and crypto. And so we're just going to wing it. And I think the rest is history from there. Have you ever spent any time in L.A. or California at all before that? No. Really? Yeah. And you were just like, L.A., that's where Hollywood is. Like, yeah, that's probably the right spot.

Starting point is 00:53:03 Yeah. Because through the SoundCloud era, I saw that all of the artists that I had followed were spending more and more time out there. Like, that was just the area where if you were in music and you're in electronic music specifically, you eventually move to L.A. if you made it or if you were so unrelevant. And so I just saw like through this whatever glass, I was like, all right, if I'm going to make it and whatever I'm doing, I need to be in LA. It's just a spot to be. So backing up a little bit, people that know Cooper and I meet you in real life, you have a funny, not a funny, what's the right word, distinct sense of fashion? Yeah. Did that come when you moved to L.A.?

Starting point is 00:53:34 Or were you also, did you have that kind of fashion style also in high school? Like, when did that happen? I had never bought a piece of designer clothing prior to L.A. Yeah? Yeah. Actually prior to four months ago. Okay. Four months ago.

Starting point is 00:53:46 So this is new as it four months ago. Yeah. Four to six at this point, but definitely very, very recent. So what resonated you with that? I think in crypto is this really funny, and I love it, by the way, but just like in crypto, everyone is rich, but no one wears anything but like a t-shirt, you know, and just like shorts, and it's like, I have a ton of money, but I'm never going to show anything. But for me, I was like, well, what if I show that I'm doing well for myself?

Starting point is 00:54:10 You know, what if I, like, bought clothes that represented the success I've had and sort of, like, the vibe that I represent, and really. go from being like, you know, wealthy on the internet to like showing that a little bit more in person. And it's something that influenced a lot of this for me is there's a great book called Hashing Twitter. It's about the history and origin of Twitter. And there was a distinct chapter where they talked about Jack when he left Twitter the first time to go start Square. They said the biggest thing that changed for him is he started to wear Dior clothing. He started to buy a lot more shirts and would come to the office looking really fresh. And in that book, they depicted that his employees

Starting point is 00:54:37 started taking a lot more seriously by the way that he dressed. And when I started hearing that was like, what is this brand called Dior? I've never heard of this in my life. And everyone who knows that I was listening now, knows that I fucking love Dior, and it's my favorite brand. But that was the inception out. So I went online, and I saw this cool shirt. I got it ordered, and I was like, $600 for a T-shirt. Like, what the hell? Like, this is insane.

Starting point is 00:54:54 Like, why would I ever spend this? And then I wore it like once or twice. People started commenting on it. I remember then someone was like, wait, you bought it online. You got to go to the store. Started to develop a relationship with the brand manager there, and she was fantastic to me, invites me to all these private events. And saw this new world.

Starting point is 00:55:09 You know, keeps coming back to this new industry, new shiny object. That's really exciting to me. Fashion. a design space is incredibly interesting. You know, the caliber, the people that you meet there, the relationships of the representatives at the store, the different designers and creative directors, I'm starting to see this map of like the way that that world is starting to operate. I think that combined with like Web 3 and what's happening now around digital identity,

Starting point is 00:55:30 I think there's a very interesting intersection where not only be proficient in tech, but you can also show that you're up to date with like mainstream culture. And I think that intersection is something that I want to be very, very skilled and well versent. So this is you just applying your ability to multitask? be personable, know a lot of people, and now you're coming into L.A. and there's this, again, and what you're saying,

Starting point is 00:55:49 a new shiny object, and you're just like, well, let me just like copy and paste that strategy into this new thing that I now care about. Yeah. Fortunately, with a backing

Starting point is 00:55:58 that allowed me to be present in that conversation, you know, I don't think if it weren't for crypto and sort of the gains that I'd seen there, I'd be able to participate in fashion nearly to the level

Starting point is 00:56:06 that I have now. But now that I am at a point where I've developed a brand for myself on the internet. I'm in L.A. I'm seen as someone that's at the intersection of culture and crypto,

Starting point is 00:56:13 me being able to represent myself physically with that feels very on brand for me and I've had a lot of fun out of being that guy that goes through a crypto conference when everyone else is wearing a t-shirt and wearing a chain and wearing Dior and wearing a fucking nice watch and just being like happy about that

Starting point is 00:56:27 be like you know what guys it's bull market we all know it's all mania it's definitely gonna crash and this is definitely coming back to zero but for the time being we're gonna enjoy this and we're gonna have a great time with it one of my friends who has been around for two cycles I've only been around for one cycle And you and I are just are one cyclers.

Starting point is 00:56:44 He is a big fan of buying nice stuff during the bull market. Yeah. Because, I mean, if you're not going to do it then, like, you might not be able to ever do it, right? So you've got to grab the bowl by the horns. You've got to cloud yourself up during bull market. Yeah. I think there's a... I'm starting to recognize that there does need to be a rebalancing of sort of the way that we're living our lives in the bull market

Starting point is 00:57:04 relative to how we're going to live it more long term. You know, I think in the last couple months, I've been spending a lot more than I normally have. I've been developing habits that I don't think are. very sustainable and I need to correct that. And so being able to see that around the corner is very important. And so I very much enjoy going out and having shopping sprees. And honestly, the reason why I've loved it the most, I've been developing connections with very competent people around fashion.

Starting point is 00:57:25 And so artists and DJs that I know in LA, people who are very successful in their career, young kids who are 20 to 25 but have gotten a million dollar advance from a record label. I really have a lot of peers that they can just go like enjoy stuff with. So me being able to be like, let's go to Rodeo and drop 10 bands on some clothes. You know, and just like having that be like a vibe that we connect around. It builds such legitimacy in a way that I've never seen before that it's something I very much appreciate But to that same tea, it can become dangerous if you don't understand what you're doing in that regard And so I'm definitely been overspending and doing a lot of stuff there,

Starting point is 00:57:54 But I want to make a very clear distinction that it's not sustainable And it's not something that I should think I'm going to be able to do forever Because it's very unhealthy to have that type of mindset So I will say while I've been going very ham in recent months, I do want to put this as a public statement to myself to chill out a little bit because I think we're all getting a little bit too control with the bull market and it is definitely not something that's going to last forever.

Starting point is 00:58:14 Well, people that came out of 2018 and 2019 definitely had like people that stuck around they kind of knew that this was coming because like there will be this time in my future where like I get to like cash in on all the suffering that I have in 2018 and 2019.

Starting point is 00:58:28 So like it's that very much a reaction of going through the bear market but the bull market's been around for almost like coming up on two years now. So like it is like I do resonate with that. It's time to like Oh yeah, let's chill for a little bit. I remember $400 Eath thinking that was insane.

Starting point is 00:58:42 Yeah. Yeah. And we had that run-up going to ETH Denver, and it was like $3.50 Eath. I was like, bull market, baby. Let's go. Like, defy coins are all off like 10x at that point. You know, the portfolio was looking pretty good. And you're like, yeah, this crypto thing, man.

Starting point is 00:58:56 Like, let's go. We're going to make it. We're going to make it. Spike down to 80 drops, like complete crash. I remember being working out of my basement when that happened and just laughing. Right. Or just like, are you kidding me? Maybe we almost had it.

Starting point is 00:59:09 Yeah, I was like, how is this still possible? I thought we were over this. Like, minus 45%. And I was just like, how is this possible? The redness of red days. Yeah. It was a good shell shock. I know that some of my friends got shaken out there.

Starting point is 00:59:21 I remember a lot of my friends were on leverage. And an interesting point for listeners that I never trade on leverage. I only trade on spot with everything. If I want to be on leverage, I will earn larger ownership stakes in something. But I don't trade on FTX. I don't trade on D-YDX. I don't do anything that's, like, crazy leverage. I just am in spot in all the positions I'm in.

Starting point is 00:59:37 and really want to work for everything that I own. Do you borrow stables to farm with? You lock up any money in compound or Ave? Or you just completely stay away from collateralized to any of your capital? I have like a very small loan on a, I want to say, AVE right now. Or I have a maker vault that I have like some Ethan and maybe like 50K and die. And then I have some stuff on Ave. I have a lot of USC and ribbon finance actually.

Starting point is 01:00:01 And so I farm with a good amount of stables. But typically those stables are the result of me taking profits and not actually taking collateral against something. Okay. So the way that you have upside's exposure is by finding projects early-ish and then just grinding. Yeah. And I would say the best thing that I've learned from Bankless, and I'll give you guys a lot of credit for is teaching people how to be responsible with their defy risk management.

Starting point is 01:00:21 So it's not about going and doing a 10x long on something, understanding that you can put collateral in Avey and properly manage that and then do stuff like the ETH-Eth fly, like, liquidity farming thing, you know, where it's like you're on leverage but you're like earning fees and like the impermanent losses less like those tactics that are like you can be risky in defy but not be like full on dgen like that sweet spot i think is really valuable for people that are actually experiencing crypto yeah surgical risk yeah um okay uh getting back into the la conversation you started at audience which is perfect la material i'd say is that kind of where you started to meet a lot of people that were out external to crypto 100 10% yeah my friend uh gradi that's here at the

Starting point is 01:01:03 conference now actually. He connected with him on Instagram because I'd been following his music for a long time. He was like, hey, I'm starting to look in crypto. Does anyone here know what's going on? And I messaged him and I was like, I will know more than anyone that you message. And he was like, he's like, you actually know crypto? And I was like, top, top 0.01%. And I said something just like really like verbose about that. And it got his attention. So he invited me over his house. We had a conversation immediately hit it off. And then from there, that was when things started to change from me in LA. At that point, I'd been there for three months. It was middle of pandemic and so I was still in my grind. It was like 10 hours a day. I would not leave my

Starting point is 01:01:34 apartment more than one day a week and just like fully inside. When I started hanging out with that crew, it went from like me being online in LA to me being like physical in LA. Like there was cool people coming over to their garden house. They were doing album listening parties. They were dancing and like it felt like 70s vibe. People were taking mushrooms and it's vibing. And I was like this feels this reminds me to Colorado again. This reminds me like creative culture, but it's coming from a point of very talented creators. You know, I'd say Colorado was creatively inspiring to me. But it was. from people that were just a fan of culture.

Starting point is 01:02:03 And then I started to go to LA where people were creating culture. You know, they were putting out albums, they were putting out movies, they were photographers, they were shooting for Halsey and Ian Dior and stuff like that. And I was like, wow, like, this is the pinnacle of it. I was like, this is not only a way for me

Starting point is 01:02:15 to like enjoy the culture, but actually be a part of it. And the thing is I started to get deeper in those circles, I started to bring a lot of this music context they had. I was like, of course I know your music. I'm listening to it for 10 years. You know, I've curated it back and stuff. I'm people like, wait, really?

Starting point is 01:02:26 Like, you actually know my stuff from that long ago? and having that additional context with this new angle of crypto like layered on top allowed me to just have such this like interesting skill set where I was like I was relevant in the conversations because I knew it was happening

Starting point is 01:02:38 but then I had something of value to add to every single person that I met which was such a rare thing in LA because it's very much the opposite. Most people are always on like this social climb type game where they're like looking to get a favor out of someone and I was like I just love your work and oh by the way I can actually amplify that by 10

Starting point is 01:02:53 if you want to give me an hour of your time a week. I think that combination just started to really snowball And today, I say absolutely love LA and I have a lot of unfinished business because I've been happy and lucky enough to build relationships with some of the most influential creators in the world. And I think that we are at the very early pinnacle of what they're going to be able to do in Web 3 over the next couple years. I think that's pretty emblematic of crypto at large, right? And I remember thinking in 2017 a little bit too early, but beside the point, I'm like, oh, I just hopped on to this building. I've hopped onto the roof of this building that's getting just grow. And once crypto is finally here, I'll just be at the top.

Starting point is 01:03:27 And all you ought to do is know about crypto. Because maybe people think ICOs are weird now, but like something about crypto is going to be the most mainstream thing possible. I just don't know when. And so long as you're writing that ride, you just get dropped off at the very top. I'm sure there's a lot of people trying to make it in L.A. Right? They're trying to just do their grind of like making good music

Starting point is 01:03:46 or just doing the normal route. And crypto is just this hack where it's like, well, I'll become an expert of crypto and then it'll just get dropped off at the top at the end. Perfect example. And I think the biggest thing I've learned from the past couple months in LA, this is not going to be the case forever, but for right now, the amount of time you need to invest in crypto as a creator to have success from like a financial and a social standpoint is very, very small. If you start spending 10 hours a week investing in crypto meaningfully with your time and not your money, being on platforms relative to your career, joining Discord servers relative to your community, joining a Dell that's relative to your interest, those three things combined. I have so many friends in L.A. that have spent not a lot of time, but are now selling. have sold 40th worth of work over the course of like three months.

Starting point is 01:04:29 And that's more than they've seen in like years. You know, I have friends who are able to now quit their day jobs because they just are financially sustainable on the back of doing like NFTs and whatnot. And I think that was the thing that really motivated and inspired me about this run is 2017. I was trading with music people. It was just like, here's the ICO. Here's the shit coin to buy. Like it was only a trading group.

Starting point is 01:04:47 Now it's very different where it's like it's not you investing with your time first or with your money first. It's you investing with your time and your creative work. And you can now earn to get into crypto. rather than having to buy to get into crypto. I think that difference is why we've seen NFTs become as prominent as they are today because there's an entirely new section of creators that's coming in that doesn't know what Uniswap is.

Starting point is 01:05:05 They don't know what Dye is. They don't know what Discord is. But they have this beautiful creative talent. Now they can put that on Web 3 and start to earn on the back of it. I think that's an incredibly fascinating topic. So I don't think anyone that listening to this podcast will not think that you are an absolute grinder and deserve all your success. Some people out there in the world,

Starting point is 01:05:23 and this is just not just for you, a certain cohort of people in the crypto world that spread themselves horizontally. And from the outside in, some people are like, well, Cooper's famous because Cooper's famous because Cooper's famous. Like, it's just like, oh, the meme of just like he's the guy that knows everyone doesn't actually do anything. But just like that's just kind of what is, it's Cooper. Like that's the brand.

Starting point is 01:05:45 What would you say to something like that? I would say that it's a very accurate assessment. I love the quote, here works on everything works on nothing. I think that's a great quote. My next chapter is figuring out how to consolidate my time and focus. into investing in myself and paralleling everything I've done this far into something way bigger. And so I think that my skill sets so far have been very fruitful to me. I think I've done really well at what I've done. I think that's a very acute and accurate challenge and I look forward to doing what I can to

Starting point is 01:06:07 level that up. Love it. Love it. We haven't talked about this yet and then the answer reminded me of this. You never say anything poorly about anyone. Why? No point. If you don't want anything nice to say and don't say anything at all. I don't have beef with literally anyone and I want to very much maintain that mentality because even if you have something that you don't like about me or whatnot, I look forward to trying to change that perspective of you. People are going to disagree on things. Respect the pump, great mindset to have. Even if you aren't riding the thing that's doing well, I wish you nothing about the best.

Starting point is 01:06:37 And I think inviting that positive mentality into your life surrounds you with abundance. What about, does that mean that no one out there in the world has deserved of any sort of ire or criticism or, I don't know, negative sentiment? They definitely are, but it's for someone else to criticize and not me. And I've actually found in my life that is much better to build a positive relationship with someone first, then be very direct and feedback with them because they will listen exponentially more than trying to criticize someone before you have prior context, because most times they won't listen to that. And so if I'm able to come in, and I think this is something that people appreciate with me or what they've told me is once we are friends, like, I'll be direct with you and be like, you're fucking up here. Or you know, you need to fix this or like you need to do this better or like, okay, all these ideas, they kind of suck, but like, what are we doing here?

Starting point is 01:07:21 like stop thinking about bullshit and me being able to just be very direct with people that I know and trust has been very helpful for me and so I always start from a point of before I try and influence someone I want to make sure that we are on the same page and I know where you're coming from what you're working on so that when I do try and give you advice it comes from a point of love and respect rather than you know me thinking that better than you're and be thinking that I have all the answers which I absolutely do not um what about this industry bugs you the most what would you change be good. It's a good question. Probably just like maturity. You know, I think that for a lot of people in the space, we've all done very well for ourselves and we've not had to really experience

Starting point is 01:07:59 a lot of the hardships that other people have had to. And I think us being able to take success and really point that in something meaningful and being respectful about our success, I think is very important. I notice a lot of people in crypto, when we are enjoying luxuries in life, do not take the proper time to respect the service people around them. And that bothers me a lot. You know, having started from a position of being a delivery driver and sort of working like odd jobs here and there, I remember, you know, the days when I was like stoked for a $5 tip. And I think in crypto, we all have done well for ourselves financially to the point where we forget how hard other people work around us that aren't in crypto.

Starting point is 01:08:31 And there's this sort of assumed assumption that everyone should be in crypto. And if you're not, you're just NGMI, which is true to a degree. But you need to be respectful of people, irregardless of where they are in life. And you need to say thank you. You need to say please. And you'd have manners. And even if you're taking a private chat or in a club or something, something like that that does not give you any reason to be disrespectful to anyone.

Starting point is 01:08:51 And so just like mannerisms and being polite and being respectful of where you are, I think are the biggest things that we can work on as a whole. How do you think crypto culture can positively change external culture? I think it can be more inviting to people who don't have the same opportunities that all of us did in 2017 and 2018. You know, I think right now we're in a very growth period of the bull market. I think that giving back is really important. So buying, you know, up-and-coming creators works, buying things with no intention of there being a profit in it, donating to get coin grants, doing things like this that feel very positive sum in nature.

Starting point is 01:09:24 I think that needs to be a very meaningful part of your investment strategy because it's not only about conserving your own wealth, it's about creating wealth for other people. And so as I spend my time now, I think about how do I invest both my time and money into other people so that they can go and expand the vision that we have today? And rather than trying to just one-up your own stack, use your own stack to give another people a stake or a playing card to go out and make a meeting. meaningful influence. Do you have a, have you thought about 2022 goals? No. Not at all? Not yet.

Starting point is 01:09:52 Is there anything on the horizon where you're like, damn, I really want that achieved or done or wouldn't be dope if that happened? My 2020 goals are to better formalize what I'm doing. You know, I've operated very much from a yellow standpoint where it's like I'm earning tokens, I'm doing trades, I'm flipping NFTs, I'm doing well for myself, but it's all very fast pace. I want to set a foundation for myself that feels very strong and very tied in. So as I start to do bigger products in the space, I can feel confident that I'm operating from a point of leverage.

Starting point is 01:10:17 Because at a certain point, and I think everyone in crypto realizes this, when you want to make meaningful change on the world, you need to have a foundation in place that allows you to do that. For a long time, you can operate as lone wolf and as a freelancer and just kind of fuck around and just earn tokens here and there. But when you want to start hiring people, when you start building a team and growing something bigger, you are now responsible for their livelihood. You're responsible for their families. You're responsible for their income. In order to do that, you cannot operate from a point of complete freedom because it's going to be. break down. And so me being able to better realize what those processes look like and set up standards and networks around me to thrive in those environments is something that I'm very excited about

Starting point is 01:10:52 for 2022. Am I hearing that Cooper is perhaps leaning into the idea of starting his own organization? Something that likes, yeah. I mean, that's the five-year plan. I think that we are in the my space air of crypto right now. I think that the Facebook and Instagram and Twitter's not been built yet, and it's very much my intention to build one of them. Cool. Like the jackdoll or is he founder type? Yeah, probably. Yeah? I think it's going to look very different, though.

Starting point is 01:11:17 You know, I think what I'm realizing now is, like, this whole culture around, like, Dow's and giving ownership early on. We're getting closer and closer to that being at day one. We're doing, like, air drops after Series A. Five years from now, I think it's, like, some version of, like, a fair launch, like, you know, day one ownership type schema. And I think the founder role will not resemble direct CEO. I kind of see it being more like a, it's going to be a big analogy,

Starting point is 01:11:38 but, like, someone like Gandhi, you know, like, someone who's just, like, one with the people where it's like, you don't have, like, the biggest ownership, stake in the world, but like you have the most social capital. I think that's a position I would love to play where it's like I can be a leader in whatever I'm building, but it's not by, you know, my net worth or my ownership allocation or something. It's by virtue of the social stake I have in that. And there's actually such a large pie around me that everyone else feels so empowered that my empowerment has grown as there was a lot.

Starting point is 01:12:02 So it sounds like you went from DFI summer to conference season, pretty quickly. As soon as COVID was over, it's like, oh yeah, conference season. How is your life changed from, you know, like you said, being in your apartment six days out of the week, like in your, in your den? Everyone was in their industry during DFI summer. It's like in their den. Yeah. Some people broke out and started doing conference season pretty damn fast, and you were definitely one of them. How have you been able to juggle all of your commitments and obligations while being on the road and doing conference stuff?

Starting point is 01:12:32 And why do you like conferences so much? Just building legitimacy with people. You know, I don't have my expectations of getting real work done when I'm on the road. But I think being present in the environments that matter for this industry is how you, real trust. I think that's the thing I value the most about my brand right now is if I'm affiliated with a project, I think that you can trust that it is not a scam and you can trust that it has some degree of competency with it. So me being at these conferences and showing that this is my life and I will continue to be on the ground floor of anything that happens irregardous of

Starting point is 01:12:57 how well I do for myself is very, very important to me. You know, going, you know, Heath Global is expected to have three or four events this year. I'll be at every single one of that. You know, I can say that very confidently because I don't want my brand to become big enough to the point where I'm never there. I have this mentality, GA for life. So in concerts, there's general admission, there's VIP, and then there's all access. A lot of people, when they start going all access, they'll never go to the crowd. They'll never buy a ticket again, and they'll just kind of only be all access. And if they don't have the highest level of access, they won't be present. I think it's extremely important for you to remember why you're there in the first place and to be there, you know,

Starting point is 01:13:28 on the ground floor. And so for me being in these conferences, it allows me to just say, I'm here. I'm one of the people. I want to be with you. I want to shake a million people's hands and I think that's a big part of my job on the road now is not only just being present to go to the club and party to Chris Lake at 3 a.m. in the morning, which is fantastic. It's to be at the conference during the day and shaking the hands of people and being like, what are you working on? How can I help you? I'm never too big for anyone and I will always give someone the time of day. If I can get my facts straight, your first ever conference was East Denver in 2018. Yeah. You're looking for to Eat Denver 2022? Absolutely. I got some spork tokens staked on kickback right now.

Starting point is 01:14:03 I meant to a few buffercorns yesterday. I'm speaking at the, the Shelling Point Conference that Kevin O'Waki's organizing. I'll be there with you. Yeah, it's going to be a good one. Eat Emper's home. Yeah. Well, yeah, you went to college in Denver, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:14:15 It's especially home for you. Yeah, I remember 2018 being fascinated by the fact that there was an Ethereum-specific conference, the idea of tokenomics, and it was me, Lucas and a couple of their friends, and we were just going to completely blind and just being like, whoa, like Ethereum, like super cool. Like, yeah, like, what is this crazy space? And so it's been a long way. Heath Denver has always organized a great conference

Starting point is 01:14:36 and I think generally speaking I'm starting to see that there's like an opportunity for new type of events in crypto I think that Ethan would be fantastic all the global events will be fantastic one thing that my friend Grady brings up that I think is very important is crypto is cool right now but it lacks the cultural relevance of it being

Starting point is 01:14:54 like hip to like everyday culture and so a great example of this is the ratio at these conferences 90% dudes 10% girls at best right every single conference like even like crypto parties that are being thrown as like the cool crypto things to do, same type of thing. You know, like, how do we get to a point where beautiful 23-year-old actress

Starting point is 01:15:11 wants to come and hang out with crypto people and not feel like they're going there because they want to learn about NFTs but want to be there because they're the coolest people in the room there? I think trying to shape these events and these conferences into a point that those can coexist with sort of the ethembers of the world. That's the kind of culture that I want to incubate.

Starting point is 01:15:26 And to give a quick antidote, no filter history of Instagram, another fantastic book. Kevin Sistram, when he was building Instagram, would do curated dinners with all the most high value people in the world. People like to think that Instagram just got big out of nowhere, but he was very calculated and onboarding people in a select manner where he would do a public Instagram meetup where you could just come and talk about taking pictures. He would do like a pseudo-private

Starting point is 01:15:46 one that was like a VIP happy hour, and then he would do curated dinner with 20 high-profile individuals. He would bring you together and really talk about the future of Instagram. We're all at a concierge service to make you feel like you were in the mix. And I'm starting to see early examples of that crypto now. I think especially with me being in L.A. over a three-to-five-year horizon, I want to start building a culture where going to a crypto event is not only going to hang out with a bunch of nerds, it's going to be with the most prominent people in technology and culture. And starting to create those pockets, I think is what's going to take us from today, where it's very much a, if you know, you know industry to this being a meaningful part of

Starting point is 01:16:17 everyone's lives, irregardless of how deep you're on the rabbit hole. So crypto has a trajectory through space and time going forward. How does Cooper's presence there, how do you want it to be changed by you? I want to be someone that can inspire other people to make meaningful change in their lives. When I think about what I want to do in the world, I want to create technology that allows people to meaningfully impact their lives irregardous to me spending time with them. My current bottleneck is that I can only be in one place at once. And so I feel very confident if I sit with you and work on a project over a long time horizon,

Starting point is 01:16:49 we're going to do something great, but I cannot be there for everyone. And so what I need to do next is build technology that allows me to take the same templates and materials that I'm doing in one-on-one sessions and scaling that out to an infinite number of people. And so over a five-year time horizon, I want to try and export my mentality and sort of ethos into technology that allows other people to carry the same attitude with them. Is there any internal lines or phrases or ideas that float around in your head that you think listeners should know? W-I-G-M-I-W-I-W-G-M-M-M-W-I-M-M-B-M-T-A. Yeah, I'd say, you know, like I said earlier, be kind to everyone that's around you. I think find ways to be happy

Starting point is 01:17:29 about how you spend time on the internet. I think that one thing that I noticed a lot is people hate social media. I think social media is fantastic. I think if you can learn to make social media a tool and not something that controls you, it's extremely, extremely valuable. So even if you hate Instagram, even if you never post, please find a way to make it feel good to you, because it's meant there to be curated. The algorithm gives back what you put into it and the ethos that you put into it. And so regardless of what platforms you're on, I think there's exponential value in building a brand. And specifically in niche communities, I think this is the thing that's going to make crypto really succeed is you having social capital in a niche community. I was at a

Starting point is 01:18:02 festival in Cancun this weekend for an artist named Millennium. 3,000 fans flew out to a destination festival all to be around this one artist. They were all wearing jerseys. This guy was a deity in his local community, but there was 3,000 people there. And recreating that environment where it's like family-type ethos in different pockets of the internet is how I think that this space succeeds. And so if you are getting started in crypto today, find a local community to spend time in, find a way to become a contributor and not a speculator, and find ways to be comfortable with yourself online because I think your digital identity

Starting point is 01:18:29 is going to be more important than your physical identity over a 10-year time horizon, and it's something that you need to start thinking about today. Cooper, thank you for coming on later zero. Thank you for having me, man. Fantastic conversation. Cheers. Cheers. We hope you enjoyed the video.

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Bankless - Cooper Turley | Layer Zero

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