Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Arthur Falls: From Lobster Fishing to Blockchain Podcasting

Episode Date: August 17, 2017

Prior to hosting his ground breaking podcasts Beyond Bitcoin and The Ether Review, Arthur Falls had left his home country of New Zealand to fish lobster off the coast of Maine. Like many people in the blockchain space, his unlikely journey into the world of decentralized technologies is a fascinating one, and he shares it with us in this episode. Arthur recently traveled to over a dozen locations around the World, conducting interviews for an upcoming documentary. He shares what he learned and his favorite experiences from this trip. Topics covered in this episode: Arthur’s unlikely journey from lobster fisherman to blockchain podcaster A brief history of his past projects and what he has going on at the moment His recent blockchain world tour and what he learned from that experience His views on the state of the ecosystem and institutional investment money now flowing into the space Episode links: The Ether Review Ether Review Legal Discussion #1 — Challenges in Blockchain Law Initial coin offerings now surpass early stage VC funding Hedge Funds Investing in Cryptocurrencies 'Exploding' - 62 in Pipeline This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/196

This is Epicenter. Episode 196 with guest, Arthur Falls. This episode of Epicenter is brought you by Shapeshift.io, the easiest, fastest, and most secure way to swap your digital assets. Don't run a risk of leaving your funds on a centralized exchange. Visit Shapeshift.io to get started. And by Jax. Jax is the user-friendly wallet that works across all your devices and handles both Bitcoin and Ether. Go to JAAWX.io and embrace the future of cryptocurrency wallets. Hi, welcome to Epicenter. The show is talks about the technologies, projects, and startups driving decentralization

and the global blockchain revolution. My name is Sebastink with you. And my name is Brian Krohn. We're here today with Arthur Falls. Probably many of you do know Arthur Falls, especially if you are avid podcast listeners. I have known Arthur Falls or Arthur Falls' majestic voice for many years. I remember hearing he did this podcast back in maybe 2014 called Beyond Bitcoin, which was really excellent.

He did very this in-depth interviews. Actually, one of the people who was on that podcast once was Mayer Roy, which was a really good episode. So I remember Mayer from that as well. This is actually, I think, part of the reason why I wanted him or we wanted him as a co-host. I remember listening to that episode of a, in Berlin actually running in Berlin

and when we met for a conference at some point and then thinking we should have this guy in the show. Oh, guys. Well, it's a pleasure to be here. I mean, I think it's probably exactly the same. You find yourself having like a content creator crush on all the other podcasters around who are doing good work.

Exactly. And so since then, since beyond Bitcoin, which doesn't exist anymore. But then he started, Arthur started some other podcasts. One is Ether review, which again has become, you know, certainly the leading Ethereum, you know, purely Ethereum-focused podcast. And then state change, which is kind of a consensus project. Yeah, that was consensus-specific, that one, yeah.

And he's been doing this world tour to explore all things blockchain. He was in Berlin, too. we met up there. Actually, randomly, Simaacier was there at the same time. So yeah, we're having on Arthur on to talk about lots of things, blockchain and his amazing lessons from his trip around the world. So many lessons. Hey, it's really good to be here guys as well. And it's funny you mentioned that episode that had Meher Roy on it because he wrote that white paper an architecture for the Internet of Money, which was about actually using

like permissioned blockchains, or in his case he was thinking of hyperledger or like the original hyperledger before it was an IBM thing, or a ripple ledger and also their codius project, which had like all these cool things, like smart oracles and stuff like that. And I think they might actually be rebooting that.

But it was a really cool, his idea of a permission blockchain world was like pretty, pretty on point, I thought. at least at the time. And that was actually the last episode of Beyond Bitcoin. And that was like, that was like, it's a permission world. It's going to be it.

This guy's figured it out. Well, and then Ethereum came along. And, you know, it was time for a new podcast. Out came the microphone again. How did you become a podcast? What was your journey towards that? Well, I got into Bitcoin in 2013, start of 2013.

I was in Melbourne and I was unemployed. I was just there because sometimes you can get a good job that pays well in Aussie. And I had a bunch of friends there, basically economic refugees from New Zealand. And so we were, which is a mean thing to say, New Zealand's fine. But we went there, we were all there. And I just could not get a job. And I wound up on the couch for a year, just learning about Bitcoin, basically. And then come 2014, it was like, man, I've spent so much time learning.

about this weird internet technology money thing, I've got to do something with this. Otherwise, that was a completely wasted year. And so I created Beyond Bitcoin. And the rest is history. No, wait, wait. Now, you're totally jumping over the part where you used to fish lobster.

Right, I am. That was actually when I'd stopped. I'd stopped lobster fishing then. Just because it was like, what am I doing with my 20s on a frozen island in the middle of the Atlantic? and 60 people out there. It was like the most isolated place ever.

But what was really good about it is you had all the spare time to do strange hobbies and research. And so, you know, I used to read a lot. And then actually after 2015, 2014, I made beyond Bitcoin and I was working as an arborist. And then I, 2015, I went back to fishing because it was the only thing I'd ever been financially successful at. But I also started a little arborist business. An arborist is somebody who, like, grows tree. What's an arborist? Like tree surgeon, so climbing, felling, like, problem tree removals.

Not someone who, you know, takes advantage of arbitrage opportunities. No, no. I'd never even conceived of that as a potential income stream before all this carry on got it got really interesting, yeah. So why podcasting? Like, well, you know, from being interested in Bitcoin and wanting to sort of podcast about Bitcoin, like, did you have a, do you have, how you done podcasting before? Did you have some kind of interest in podcasting? No, but I did speech and drama when I was in high school.

Not when I was, I must have, actually, I think it was before I was in high school. And then I got like some diploma after leaving high school and that. And honestly, it's, I mean, it's a bit different. for you guys because you're in Europe, right? But if you're in New Zealand, like, there's no way you're ever going to meet anyone who knows anything about this stuff. So it was actually 18 months after I first got into Bitcoin that I met the first person who actually knew what it was. And that was actually Bitcoin South in 2014, which is a, this conference we had. And it was suddenly, it was like, oh my God, all these people, you know? But yeah, just to meet people, basically. And

also I don't have any relevant skills to the industry. So I just had to make one up. And it's funny, if you just like, pick an area where there's a skill shortage and you don't even have to be particularly good in order to excel. So that was kind of the thought process behind it. And access, right? You want to meet the people. Right.

So even when you were producing those podcasts, you're still working as an arborist and then you're working doing fishing as well yeah i actually used to was fishing during a break from from the podcasting well no no so i um let's see when did i do it i finished up in like january or february 2015 and then i moved out to the island again and um honestly i was broke as well this is like it was like i it was because new zealand you can't really you don't earn that much money there especially not if you're at the bottom of the uh kind of labor ladder and I just got a credit card with a $2,000 limit, bought a ticket to Maine and got a chainsaw and just started failing trees and got on a boat and I used to record out of, so they have terrible

internet out there, but they have a high speed connection to what they call the neighbourhood house, which is like a, it's kind of like a sort of like you might imagine a town hall, it has a little library in there, it's kind of there in case something terrible happens to your own house. You've got this kind of large assembly area where you can go. And so I used to go in there and just and record using that connection because it was really fast. But it was hilarious because it's just so completely isolated and alien and environment, especially to the relative luxury of kind of high-speed connections in the developed world. So where is this island? Where are you in me? It's off. So, you know, Mount

is at island you know Acadia National Park it's like same uh same latitude as Nova Scotia yeah and so you've got like tons of islands just up there and um and they're all they're all lobster fishing islands yeah well i mean i i am from that part of the world so i mean i'm my family's from from new brunswick so yeah it's actually uh that's right you're right there yeah i mean it's a little bit more southern but yeah this is pretty actually this is a good image though so so you were like 2015, you were there in the middle of nowhere, going out in your boat, fishing lobster, you're coming back, and then you took the next island to this little library or something, and then you did these interviews with people producing this podcast episode about Ethereum and...

In a nutshell. In a nutshell, that's what it was like. It was interesting. I mean, it's a hard life out there. I mean, it's like the simple life. And you know, the simple life sometimes is just amazing, but sometimes it's your own personal hell. And that was, it was like a constant oscillation between that, living out in those, in the main islands. But yeah, no, it is, it's a romantic image. Did you, at the time when you're, you know, producing these podcasts of this little community house like in the sticks in Maine, did you, do you think that, you know, what you were doing, you know, could you gain some traction and become influential as it did? I never, I never thought about it like that. It was just a way to meet the people and get closer to the technology. I kind of

had an inkling that something might happen with it one day, but it was never, I never conceived of it. I was on actually like, I was on a bit of a five-year plan. I was like, well, I'll go out here, I'll start a business, I'll save some money, and then, you know, and I actually got a tattoo. I actually got that tattoo. Can you see it? It's kind of like hard to, like right when I kind of decided to give up and become a fisherman. And that year, and then I got, I was hired by consensus like about a month after getting it and it's never seen the deck of a working boat. So for those listening, that was an anchor tattoo on, on Arthur's forearm. It's a typical kind of fisherman thing. It is a very romantic image. You know, he's, you know,

for those who haven't, those who have never seen Arthur, like Arthur's this pretty burly guy. Like, he's got a plaid shirt on right now with a beard. has a freaking anchor tattoo in his arm. There you go. Like, you know, of course you're fishing lost. Well, I mean, it's, you know, everyone needs to earn a crust. Yeah. I mean, it's funny.

The difference in experience that you have coming from different places in the world, like, and just even generationally is massive. I mean, if you come from these, like, these big nations, like the US or like these large, like, like large kind of unions like Europe, you have so much opportunity. So, you know, you can kind of, you can do just about anything and then find your niche. But in New Zealand,

you're one of four and a half million in a really small economy with nothing around it except for Australia. And you've actually got to go out and find your fortune, really. And so people do it all different ways. Like a lot of people go to the mines in Western Australia. and a lot of people go to London and yeah I went to Maine for some reason it's a pretty similar similar picture to where I'm from a lot of people you know just get up and leave and go work in mines or something out in Western Canada so so you know right now you're you're still what are you still producing now as a podcast so I'm I've canned um I've can't state change because part of the reason I did the two podcasts was I didn't want to have that I didn't want people to think that the ether review is going to be corrupted by the fact that I was working with consensus.

But at the end of the day, so much great stuff is happening at consensus that it doesn't really make sense to, you know, I wound up not putting so much consensus stuff on the ether review as I normally would, which is totally not in the interest of anyone. So I, so I've canned that. I'm doing a lot more, a lot more ether review now. I have a, I have this editor who's, helping me up. She's an audio, she has a master's in audio journalism. Her name's Alexis Kenyon. She's from the States and she just does an amazing job and I'm kind of thinking that it might be time for a slightly more ambitious content strategy. But for now I'm just doing extra, extra ether review. It's kind of weird. You get on these threads, one thing I find about content creation, you guys might identify with this, is I was never aware that there was

even an audience, really. I was just interviewing people and using that as a tool to pursue my own interest, which is kind of why it's never been sponsored. Part of the reason that it's so rewarding, making content, is that you can use it as a way to, it's like as a personal exploration of a subject. And recently, I just became really interested in the legal side of all this stuff. And I started asking people if they'd want to come on this legal discussion call and they a whole bunch of people said they did and a lot of them from actually Australia I found like a lot of great lawyers in Australia were interested but I got a whole bunch of random people from all over the place and then I started just kind of networking in the law space in the legal space and and I was

like wow I've got so much legal content I'm going to actually have to kind of brand this slightly separately because otherwise people are going to be like what is this like a law podcast now or something. So I started making Ether Review legal. It was, you know, that's the title. It's not that Ether Review was illegal in the first place. But I, and so I kind of categorized those episodes differently. And I've got a whole bunch. I've still got a bunch more to come out with awesome lawmakers from Australia and all this stuff about how they're, about their approach to blockchain. And it's, they've recently had a bipartisan initiative, a lot like they have in the States to push it in Australia, part of the big race, to become dominant in kind of a new

technological field. And so it's kind of, I found that serialized content, if you split it off and do a whole bunch of, whole bunch of episodes about a single subject, is a really good way of getting really deep in a specific subject. And I'd like to pursue a bit of that, actually. Look at like different things, like your interleger protocol. and some of these more obscure consensus protocols that are out there, like Snow White that they have up in Cornell.

And there's MIT's got something, and there's a university in Australia that's got something as well that I just keep meaning to go and really dig into, but you just never get around to it unless you make it a mission. That sounds really great. I mean, yeah, of course, I agree. If you're going to do something that's going to be extremely valuable, to a niche of people is producing a specific type of content about one topic.

And then you get, you know, you get to be super well-averse in that, in that one specific area. Which is something that, I mean, we've never really done, I guess, probably for, because of lack of time or, you know, it's, we've always kind of focused on interviews, but doing this type of thing, I can see it would be extremely valuable to the, you know, just to the ecosystem in general. general lens for people coming in, you know. This episode is brought to you by ShapeShift, the world's leading trustless digital asset exchange, quickly swap between dozens of leading cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin,

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Or what are the things that you've learned that have been most valuable to you, either as a personally or as a content producer or just as someone working in this space? one thing I always look for is or one thing I always make an effort to do is just to always be trying to change my mind you know because what I find is it's so easy to be dogmatic and it's so easy to be seduced by a lot of there are so many smart people in this place in this space you know if you're just a normal guy and you're trying to figure out what is actually going on you find that even of large volume of information won't necessarily mean that you get it right I thought the end of Beyond Bitcoin was really interesting because when I was really unimpressed with, I didn't really think that like Bitcoin or any of the stuff that was being built back then was ever going to work. And it was just because of usability. I didn't even anticipate the scaling problems. I mean, that I just kind of presumed that it would be fine.

You know, surely you would scale, right? But there was just such bad usability back then. and there still hasn't been a lot of improvement. And so to me, it was very clear that Bitcoin was never going to be a payment, a successful payment system. And the rest of the stuff was still just kind of, it was still science fiction. And then when I read Meheroy's white paper,

and I also spoke to the guys at Ripper Labs, the codious team, and it was like, man, this is, this is, and also the hyperledger guys, like this is how it's actually going to happen, right? Because this whole decentralization thing is actually building something, thing in parallel to a very functional system. So if you take, for example, New Zealand and maybe Canada, but maybe not, I don't know, let's just say, I trust the government here, like, I trust them. They're sweet. I don't really trust the police quite so much, but I mean, you know, they're still great. I mean, I can't complain. And so I'm quite happy for those guys to be running the show

and managing identity systems and all this kind of stuff, I trust them explicitly. And so when we think of like the decentralization paradigm or model, if you think of it as a trust network, you're building something so that you don't have to trust people, but I do trust people. So it's like, why don't we just get the government to run a node? And then, you know, maybe a couple watchdog agencies.

and there's your scaling. Why do we have to rely on this? What do we have to circumvent trust? And so coming from that kind of background, obviously that doesn't apply everywhere. And I know it's the absolute antithesis of this space. And I mean, you know, I'm an anarchist, right? But I'm also a pragmatist.

And so I just really thought that at the end of the day, this was going to be that model, the federated model was going to work out in the end. The permission model was going to work out in the end. And Meher did such a great illustration of it in that paper. And so I just kind of, and Tim Swanson as well, I was talking to Tim Swanson too much. I was hanging with a bad crowd, guys.

And so I kind of decided that, yeah, that's what it's going to be. But then when Ethereum came out, it was so great to just have my mind completely changed by everything that was going on there. And honestly, it continues to change all the time. All the time. More today than ever before do I find myself changing my mind? Just every day.

Yeah, I know. I had a somewhat similar thing where I also felt like, okay, public blockchains, Bitcoin and stuff weren't really going to work around 2014. And then I joined the Ares Industries, right, which later became Monax, you know, kind of out of this idea as well because I felt like, okay, permission blockchains is really kind of the way to go. But, you know, I mean, we're going to get to speak about this a little bit later. I think especially ICOs and crowdfunding have just turned this on the head again and have unleashed so much funding for public blockchain stuff that it's just, you know,

it's not even, there's no even way to compete with the pace of innovation at all, I think, when it comes to the permission blockchain world. Yeah, it's not although, although having some slightly, some insight information that probably I shouldn't be too liberal with because I'm not 100% sure what is, what's for publication or not. But there is some huge money going into the development of public blockchain tech.

Because the thing is like, a lot of people I think who have all of this. You mean private blockchain tech? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, private blockchain tech. Because all these guys, they, they have all of these tokens, you know, be it, be it ether, Bitcoin or whatever the hell coin. Pardon my French. It's, no offense, Sebastian. They, they, I think that there's some hedging of bets going on. You know, there's some investment in different paradigms. And there's so

much money now. Yeah, there's unlimited money now. You know, there's no way you couldn't spend money as fast as this thing is gaining speed. And I think a lot of people are recognizing that. A lot of big players are recognizing that. And I think that that is really what differentiates a successful platform from an unsuccessful one is the ability of the investors to effectively deploy their capital. And a lot of it is going into these, a lot of it is going into kind of technological diversification and these and these permission systems. So let's let's talk a little bit about your world trip. How long was it? How did you decide to do this blockchain world tour? Yeah, well, that's funny because this is where we actually finally met in person. But, you know, there was conference

week. There was the Coin desk consensus conference, Ethereum, the consensus conference. And And then there was also Token Summit was going on. And right before all that, there was going to be a, there was this series of events in India. And so it was like, that's sort of on the way, right? I mean, not at all, but like, may as well give it a go. And so on the way over, because I was going to go over, record some podcasts, whatever, you know, meet some people.

You'd reconnect with the mothership that is, consensus at large. And I was like, you know, it's going to call it. me a lot of money to do this. You know, to go from New Zealand to the other side of the world and, you know, accommodate yourself, etc. It winds up being five grand or something for two weeks. So I'm like, why don't we just, you know, why don't we just extend the trip as long as I'm actually flying to that part of the world? And, and interview everyone. And so I just, I pitched the idea to boss man Joe, and he was, he'd hate being called that. And he said, yeah, sounds like a good idea. I think he was just like whatever man on that day.

Whatever you're doing, Arthur, just go for it. And so I flew to Mumbai with my little, give him a little DSLR camera and all my recording gear. And interviewed a few people there, kind of got my, caught my feet about me and went to, then went on to New York. And I just kind of got the idea that, yeah, this could be a really great. mini documentary series about a whole bunch of different subjects and so I wound up booking all around the states through Europe and then back through and then back through Dubai and then Singapore on the way back to New Zealand and and yeah interviewing I interviewed about 90 people or just about 90 people on the whole trip and how many countries um let's see it was US

US, Iceland. I went there accidentally. That's a hilarious story. Holland, Germany, London, which is in Britain. UAE and then Singapore. And I always meant to go to Australia, but I just never got around to it because it's right there and you never go to what's on your doorstep.

So how did you accidentally get into Iceland? Well, so I was at the airport and that, you know, it was Newark, you know, so I've done that classic thing where I was going to JFK. and I was driving to JFK and it was just like, oh no, no, no, I checked on my phone and it's in bloody Newark. And so I had this $150 taxi

from just about at JFK to Newark Airport and I got there and it's like, there's this huge line and there's only one person at the desk and it's just like, are you guys all going to are you guys, because I was going to London but I had a stop over in Iceland.

And it's like, you guys all going to on this Iceland flight? And it's like, yeah, I know, I don't know that we're going to get on. Like, this is taken forever. And then this guy comes in behind me like exactly the same situation. like totally exhausted, running in, carrying all these bags.

And it was this, and he was kind of behind me in line and we were just talking about it, and, you know, how we were probably going to miss his flight. And I was like, so what do you do? And he's like, oh, I'm a data center engineer. He's like, what do you do? And I'm like, oh, I'm into this kind of data sentry stuff. Yeah, I just didn't know.

I just didn't want to get into it. And he's just like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What, cryptocurrency? And I was like, yeah. He's like, yeah, I work for Genesis mining. I'm there my data data center engineer actually and it was this guy Chris Haast and he was like you should come to

we were just talking about you know just yarning and he was like you should come to come to Iceland just don't go on to London I've got there's this great place where I stay you should just crash there and I'll show you the facility and I was like sure why not I mean that's what I'm here for

and so hung out with this guy for a few days and just had hilarious adventures in Iceland sun never sets it was awesome and to see the inside of those mining operations is really eerie you know it's kind of we're in this ivory tower where we just enjoy the the fruits of all of that

pointless computation but to actually go down there and see it happening was really awesome so what does it feel like in what way was it eerie to see them it's just a totally different side of it and also I've never seen so many graphics cards you know like I've got a graphics I don't know where it is

I've got a graphics card around here somewhere and I'm do you remember when you're a kid and you bought a leaves like you built your first computer and you had all the components and it comes in the box and it's like oh wow the CvU this is so cool it's a core two duo you know or like like all those when you get it and it comes and it's so exciting and you open up the graphics card and you look at it and you hold it and it's just like wow this is so

so powerful. I'm going to play so many games with this. Yeah, this is going to be great. Like, what a weight. This is going to use it all my time. Like, you know, one billion transistors. That is crazy. Just blows the mind and you look at it and you're like, wow, that is a, that is a marvel. And you just get this warm feeling. Meanwhile, they have hundreds of thousands of these to spread out. Like, it's just a commodity. So many. I mean, it's really weird. And it's actually the, one of the weirdest things to learn about with mining is that it's all about sourcing graphics cards and how quickly you can hook them up. Because if you expend that capital and then you're comparing that capital expenditure to the

performance of the highest performing asset in the world, right, which is Bitcoin or ether. So you need to actually get that stuff hooked up and you need to get the fastest gear, the most cost effective, hooked up as quickly as possible because everyone else is competing with you. And I remember speaking to... Actually, that's... Oh, yeah, so here's a tangential story. So, I mean, that's what makes it really... That's what makes it really eerie is because you see all this stuff and you see the inside of these operations that are so competitive.

So competitive, it boggles the mind. This guy, Timo Hunker, who's... He works at String Labs. He's a cryptographer. He developed ASIC boost, which was part of this big controversy, you know, the scaling controversy. Yeah. So, Timo Hunker, he's a guy who's been around. And he was working for Terra Hash.

He was one of the founders of Terra Hash back in 2014, or I think they found it in 2013. And they wanted to design their own ASIC. And so they did this. They got it taped out. The engineering company that did it for them basically said that it was going to perform, have half the heat consumption that it wound up having. And because it was so competitive, they paid to have all of the PCBs and packaging

sent to them, you know, assembled and sent to them in advance of actually receiving the chips. And so the power supply hardware on the actual PCBs couldn't support the performance that they'd projected. And so they wound up with all of these slow A6s and that they're trying to sell and then a major investor pulled out who had like

who was going to buy 10 million ASICs or whatever $10 million worth of ASICs and so suddenly they're in the situation where they're like wow we've got to plug these damn things in and so they started flying all around the country plugging the stuff in and he described

the sensation of feeling like wow I mean I've got to get these things plugged in because if I go to sleep it's going to cost me $100,000 And that is the, you do see how efficient and how well refined those, that operation in Iceland is compared to, you know, the light coin miner that you ran in your bedroom, you know, over the winter. Yeah, it's definitely a weird side to this, and especially if you think about where this industry is going to go. And let's say proof of work continues to have, you know, this role.

well with Bitcoin, right? If Bitcoin's going to succeed by definition, unless there's a huge change, it will continue having this dominant role. The idea that this is going to scale to... I remember, I think somebody told me that the Bitcoin network now consumes as much electricity as San Francisco. And if you think of the scaling another 100 times

and all of a sudden a huge amount of the global resources, it's just like putting out these pointless hash to compete in this crazy race. It is such a weird concept and a weird image to think of. It's not that much power, actually. I mean, that's also like a ridiculous statement to make. I was interviewing this guy,

David Serenzobo of Iota. And for one, it was just, you know, it was actually on the trip. Actually, it was in Berlin at Dimitri de Jung's house, who works for Big Chain DB. Anyway, I'm interviewing this guy. he is describing putting ASEX in in IOT devices and it sounded

ludicrous to me for Iota and it still does to be honest but when we were talking about it we kind of realized or I kind of realized that if you divide that power consumption the power consumption of San Francisco over all IoT devices you wind up with you can actually reduce it

to a kind of battery life limitation or something and it's probably not that much if you think of all of the IOT devices in the world and what they consume in terms of electricity, even though they're very small, there's so many of them. It winds up being spread out so thinly that it doesn't even really matter. And there's so much power in the world. There's so much electricity being generated. And I mean, so for example, I know it seems like there's an aluminium smelter in the bottom of New Zealand

down the bottom of the South Island. And it's not profitable. but they built all of this infrastructure in order to run the damn thing and if they turn it off, all of the pipes go freeze up with aluminium and it's just it's got to be demolished. And so they've got the situation where they're like, wow, we really don't want to shut this thing down, but it's costing us a lot of money.

And they have nothing else to use all of this power for, maybe 10% of New Zealand's power generation. And I think there's a lot of that because it costs a lot to transport power. You know, you think of it as just plugging into the wall, but it's not like that at all. So there's a lot of surplus power around the place that can be directed toward computation. And so those kind of little nooks and crannies in the world

are going to suck up all of that power consumption, I read. All right. Not sure that entirely makes sense to me. But... Well, because the thing is, right, when you lose power, you lose a lot of power in the transmission of electricity. So like for that aluminium smelter, they've built a huge hydroelectric dam and the smelter that has to be also next to the ocean.

And then what they found is that Australia can do it cheaper than us. And so we actually have all of this infrastructure around an ultra high energy consumption industry that is not competitive in our environment. And so what you have is this kind of sweet spot where what are you going to do, shut down a couple of turbines on the hydroelectric dam, shut down this huge facility, and then you're going to have, just lose a bunch of jobs and not be creating any economic benefit. And there are little pockets like that all over the world where just through weird admin, you've got an opportunity to get super cheap power or even free power. So it's... Yeah, I mean, you think that's the story largely also what's happening in China, you know, that at least as how I've heard, right, that they have a lot of subsidies to build things, right?

So build resources and build infrastructure. And then they would build all these hydro, you know, all these power plants in all kinds of places, anticipating that some city is going to spring up or some development, and then that doesn't happen. And you have all of a sudden a power plant there that's already been, built so the kind of the cost is written off for that but then you know the electricity is not being used so you can go there plug in those bitcoin miners and you can use that but of course you and you know to some extent sure that's true but if you think of the value of bitcoin going up and up and up right then

presumably at some point also this free excess electricity will be uh kind of used up and and you will actually have, you know, real, real costs there. Yeah, real costs. It's weird to think that those, you know, you think about it as just plugging it, plugging it into the wall socket, you know, plugging your mind into the wall socket. But really, it's, that game is so competitive.

It's about finding, it's about finding little places in the world where power is cheap and it has low humidity and the right climate and all these kind of little things. So, Arthur, you, you traveled all around the world, right you saw all these different aspects of blockchain which you know we also see in kind of different ways reading about it and and quite obviously I think to anybody listening here you know we are at a very special moment and at a

historic moment in this in this industry it has really gone mainstream to an extent that I guess many of us anticipated right we thought this would come but when it actually happens it still feels strange and very different So what are the kind of surprising aspects in which this has expressed itself during your trip or the things that you think like, okay, you know, this is, it's happening here in this way that I didn't, wasn't aware of before and I can only really see because I'm here physically and I'm seeing this and I'm not just reading on CoinDesk or speaking with people on Skype? I think it's the awesome question. So many layers to that one.

I think what I found really interesting was actually meeting a lot of the people who do this work. And the two most interesting groups I found, or the two most interesting things to compare were the investment funds and their investment thesis were really interesting. And then the actual teams that were building the technology and how healthy those teams were the actual culture. and the general enthusiasm and happiness of an office. And it sounds quite weird, but so when I saw one team that I really liked, so consensus is like this awesome place. It's like this giant, like, it's like a hive of activity

when you're there. I mean, the Brooklyn Consensus offices. And it's a really exciting place to be, but everyone's working on these different projects. So sometimes you can't tell exactly who's doing what. But to go to see a team like Big Chain DB or the String Labs guys, and they're just grinding it out. I wanted to see the Protocol Labs guys.

I just missed them when I was in Palo Alto. I just didn't have time to catch up with them. But they were on my list of people to see. Just to see these guys just smashing stuff out. And I remember I was in String Labs, and they're having this meeting in their hacker house. And Ben Lin, the L and BLS signatures, Bonnie Lynn Shacken signatures, which is like awesome, really interesting cryptography, right?

Like those threshold signatures where you can have, you know, 200 to 400 pieces of a key to create a signature. Really interesting stuff. And so this is like the guy who figured it out, or one of them. And so they're having this meeting. And then he runs into the room. with a beer like, guys, guys, I've got some crazy idea. I don't know what it was.

It was something to do with maths, which I, you know, I never did well at maths. But it was really, really cool to see those guys, like actually having ideas and kind of critiquing them and getting into them. And then being like, oh, no, that won't work. But it was your classic like geniuses, you know. And like Big Chain DB, those guys are really interesting just in that they have such a healthy team environment. you know it's you know I'm a laborer right I don't get how you guys work you know like people who work in front of computers my first day in consensus I it was weird I actually nearly had a panic attack because I'd never been in a room where people are sitting down and working before and it was really eerie and a hard thing to actually come to terms with and learn that these people are actually doing work and and to see like the big chain guys um and how like team oriented they were. That was, it was hilarious because people do all this team, team stuff,

they get like excited and then they go sit at their desks. It's just like, where's the activity guys? But that's it because we're making software. So that was really interesting. And the other one was, yeah, the different attitudes that people have to investing in this space. So polychain capital is really interesting and that they see a multi-protocol future, right?

And that's kind of like, that's like an obvious, and pragmatic view on all this stuff. But it's also how you actually, how do you select what you think is actually going to work? And what actually makes for a good investment? And there are lots of, people have a lot of ideas. Like, I've always been really good friends with Jake Bruchman of coin fund. I disagree with a lot of the ideas that he expresses about what's going to be big

and what matters and stuff. but at the same time he has an amazing view into the space and quite similar to the polychain guys but then Outlier Ventures is this great who is a they're like Outlier Ventures is another fund like Polychain but they focus entirely on the convergence of technologies so they look at IoT as an emerging technology

for example and then blockchain as this other emerging technology they're like okay put the two do put the two together, you get aota, you get an investment, you know, you get an investment that fits their investment thesis. And that was really interesting to think about it like that, to actually think that rather than trying to predict how this is all going to play out, why don't you just find places where there's going to be high alpha, right? You know, places where you have two exponential technologies as pulling a term as that really is. And, and, and, and, and, seeing how they can provide like kind of this multiplicative effect on investment, which,

I mean, I've never thought about it like that, right? I'm like a buy and hold kind of guy. And then panic sell and then buyback, guilt-ridden and sorrowful, you know, for breaking faith. But yeah, it was cool to see all of those different approaches to investment. And there are different communities actually, right? So there's these different communities as well, like the academic community, totally different from the enterprise community, which it's cool, again, working at consensus. You get to see the enterprise guys alongside the product guys and the kind of DAP makers. And yeah, they just have their very, very different sensibilities.

And everyone thinks that they're the best. Everyone thinks that their kind of, their ilk has the best view of this stuff. But, and everyone does have it in their own little way. And the, um, hanging out with, uh, I was in, I went to Cornell super hot. Like, I mean, it's just like, just beating down the, um, the, uh, the sun over there. And, um, I was hanging out with Gunn and, um, you know, Emin and Gunn Sire. And who's hilarious, like, just hilarious. And some of his students. And he kind of gave me a tour of the place. And we talked about all of the, um, all the various going on that they have.

I interviewed him like, extensive. extensive interview and just well touring around Cornell University and those guys are so smart and they see stuff that you never even thought about in these like in these the designs of these protocols you know you look at stuff and it's like oh that's that that's that you know nothing to under the sun but it turns out some of these tiny little tweaks that people make things like the ghost protocol and its specific implementation in Ethereum we had like endless discussion about that because I wouldn't know, you know, I wouldn't know. I can see how it works

and I can say it looks plausible to me. Palsability is right, that's basically my measure for truth here. I don't even have the word truth. I just have plausibility. But to see those guys really like dig down and and kind of explain the advantages and shortcomings of all of these like meticulous these, all these little designs and a lot of stuff. And in Iota, which I've obviously been looking at recently just as it's just a great illustration of the of the DAG you know and and also in and the threshold relay chain which is what string has been working on because that of course becomes your own little your own little research project because you go and you see these various various teams and you become obsessed with the work that they're doing so that was another really interesting

thing was to meet these different communities especially the academics because I've never had anything to do with academics before so that was really cool really cool to run into. Let's take a short break to talk about Jacks. Jacks is your wallet, your complete user interface to cover all your blockchain needs. I've been using it and I've been loving it. Jack supports a lot of different cryptocurrencies. I suppose Bitcoin, Ether, Lightcoin, Ethereum Classic, Zcash, Augur rep, and they're adding many more key responding to users' needs. Now with Jacks, a nice thing is that you can manage all of those coins within a single wallet and you are in control of your own private keys,

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One thing that strikes me is really interesting out of everything you just went through there is how how interesting it must be to meet all these different teams that, of course, all think they were the best. You know, because I mean, when you work for a company, when you're working at a startup, like, of course, like, you're the best, you're doing the best work. You're doing the most innovative stuff. But not necessarily recognizing that, you know, there are other really passionate teams that are doing really good stuff, you know, basically. maybe a couple blocks away from you. And then one thing also that must be really, really kind of fascinating to see is moving from team to team and seeing the different cultures in everyone of those teams.

So like the company culture, but then also in the context of like a broader like, you know, geographical sort of culture of that country where you're in, it must be really cool to see like how, say, for instance, consensus is so different from like big chain DB or any of the other teams that you're in. worked with. Oh, totally. Yeah. One of the funniest things is how, you know, the US thinks it's the center of the world. And then you go to, and I love, I always make fun of the US. I'm a citizen,

by the way, so I'm allowed to make fun of the US. You guys aren't allowed to make jokes at the expense of that great nation. But, you know, Europe has so much diversity that there's a different understanding of how the world works in Europe, to how it works, to how it is in the US, you're bombarded with endless US propaganda, right? And endless US-centric viewpoints. And people, there's so much there that you don't have to look outside the walls of that of that country to get a lot of what you need. But say Europe, I mean, there's so much diversity there.

People have these really hold a lot of different viewpoints simultaneously, that you just don't have, you don't see that same thing in the US. but at the same time the US has this like epic pioneering culture and drive just so much hard work you know I mean like those guys are it's almost pathological

probably not almost it's probably outright pathological they work so hard there and I mean not that people don't work hard elsewhere but just that is something it really characterizes that that space and then you go to you go to say countries like Australia and I've been trying to figure out why is Australia why is Sydney so big in blockchain and why are why is why are

Australian lawyers so interested because if there's one thing that Australia is leading the world in blockchain law and that is a really like they they're also the secretariat of the ISO technical committee for blockchain standardization is as standards Australia so they're actually hosting the standards, the, you know, the standards body that is that is figuring out these, the ISO standards. And that's, it's bizarre. They don't even have, they have a lot going on there. They have a lot of great people. But in that, like, in that room, I remember actually being in an ISO meeting and there's like no technical people. It's all lawyers. And, which is fine,

because law is just a different, it's just a different standard you interoperate with. It's the right way of thinking actually about stuff. But yeah, those guys and then who else was there? Even eastern, even the different coasts, you know, like San Francisco and Palo Alto have a totally different attitude to stuff than New York does because presumably on the New York side, you've got this finance orientation and this enterprise orientation. And on the West Coast,

you have this kind of snooty, oh, we're in Silicon Valley. We make, you know, we're billionaires every day, you know. And so there's these two different, two very different cultures there, yeah. And I guess just sort of doing your trip as well is when this whole ICO thing continued to explode, or maybe that was even a bit afterwards. Because I think this is just one of the things that is incredible to watch currently. And I was reading this article. the other day, which we discussed before the show briefly, but it was on CNBC, where the claim is that in the last two months, June and July, more money was raised through ICOs globally than through venture, then in seed rounds and angel financing rounds. And this is not just for the blockchain industry, but for all Internet technology.

which is completely crazy. Did you already see that? I guess that wasn't so much the case yet that everybody comes up and you says, I want to do an ICO2. This is funny because it happened, right? I remember, so the whole trip started actually with blockchain NZ,

which was a conference that was put on in New Zealand, awesome conference. And that was right when I think Ether had hit like, I don't know, 20 or 30 dollars and everyone was just glowing. People just couldn't like contain their smiles, you know? People looking like smug and like, yes, finally I picked and went up. I knew this was going to happen. I knew this was going to happen. I told you, man. There was a lot of that going around. And so it was this trip actually coincided with that whole with that whole rise.

And I remember being in, after that, I was in Mumbai. And I was with Andrew Keys, who's your classic kind of trader, enterprise guru. He's actually one of the most important people in blockchain, in that he is good at speaking with finance people. He's one of the principal architects of Enterprise Ethereum. He started the Microsoft relationship. So he's like a really key figure, but he's this kind of hilarious roly-poly trader guy.

And I remember we had like these really, bad hotels and he's at one point he's like that's it I'm moving us all to the Taj and so Andrew Keyes moved us to the Taj Mahal Palace which is one of the nicest hotels in India and you know we had these rooms overlooking like you know the gateway to India all this stuff it was incredible and sitting by the sitting by the pool and talking to him about how this was going and the momentum of all this stuff and then subsequently you know this, an absurd luxury, and then subsequently going on that trip and watching, and watching the price rise and the enthusiasm and the different attitudes that people,

again, yeah, this is funny. Seeing different people's attitudes to the price rise was really interesting. And I don't know, though. I don't know about a lot of the ideas that people have about this. There's something fishy going on with it. I think, you know, I don't like the, you know, the fat protocol. investment thesis? Yeah, sure. Is that right? You know, it seems so logical, but it just seems like it might not be right, you know. It seems like it might be the case that the protocols are really just a

payment gateway to this stuff. And because all the money is kind of going in, just for the listeners, maybe who are not aware of this, we should do a podcast about this at some point. I think we talked about it actually with Olaf in the polar chain episode. But basically, it's the idea that in the In the past, you had these protocols like HTTP, SMTP, et cetera. And they create a lot of value, but it wasn't, it wasn't, you know, monetized. And then all the value that was really monetized was built on top, you know, people building Facebook and Google and Gmail and all that. And basically the argument of that protocol is that you have this kind of switch where the protocols

themselves get monetized. Most of the money gets made there. And then people build that. applications on top, but not so much money is in that. So I think that's essentially also the investment thesis. I think that's driving, you know, Paul Jane and many of the investors in all these protocols. Right. But is that really the case? You know, that's the Union Square Ventures are the guys. I was just reading that blog post yesterday who kind of really champion the FET protocol idea. But I don't know, you know, it just, there's something about it.

just doesn't jive with me. There's a few things. One is the cyclical nature of it. Like how many people are really cashing up? I mean, honestly, I bought a secondhand car and a boat that's very, very secondhand. You know, I mean, not much money from, you know, I have not cashed out much money at all. I mean, that's like, that was like $50,000 in total. And that's my present to myself for New Zealand dollars.

So probably that's like $34,000 US dollars. And that's it. Like, I've done it. I've made it big. I've got a secondhand boat and a car that's less than 10 years old. I don't actually think it is less than 10 years old. But, you know, people aren't actually cashing out big time. Some people are.

But a lot of people are keeping it in there. And it's just a merry-go round, right, where they make money in their ICO. So they, you know, then they cash out of that and back into ether. But they don't sell it, you know, or Bitcoin. and then they invest in the next thing. And so you inflate these prices, but there's very little sell side pressure to remove value from Fiat,

from crypto into Fiat. And so I think that this, when people look at those market capitalizations, that's, those are not, comparing those with, say, the valuations of companies or industries. It's not apples and apples. It's not well understood.

what these valuations, what these valuations are that we're seeing. That kind of incestuous nature of this ecosystem where that capital stays in there and it just goes on this kind of this hamster wheel of moving between these products and looking really plausible is kind of affects how, it affects how this is actually how this appears and how the price dynamics and the price dynamics of all the stuff. and I think that's a big part of the ICO bubble, although you should call it a token launch because that does not imply a contract of any form.

Specifically, it does not imply that it's a security. But the one thing that I found really interesting, and I've had actually tons of mixed reviews talking to all of these legal people that have somehow made friends with recently, but it does seem really influential, and that's the SAFT that the PollyChane guys came up with, the simple agreement for future tokens,

And what is interesting about it is that with the way they did that on Coinlist, people were incentivized to invest Fiat, heavily incentivized to invest Fiat. And it looks like that might be a new avenue for Fiat to enter the ecosystem. And I think through this weird roundabout way, the SAFT might be one of the driving forces behind kind of future value gains in the space in general, especially in the token launch space. Yeah, no, I mean, I spent a lot of time looking at the whole final coin and coin list and all that was going on.

And I agree it's very interesting and we are seeing some new developments there. And I think you're totally right. I mean, what's happening there also, what happened, I think, with Falkoan is that they really reach a very different investor base in that they did, you know, a lot of traditional VCs to put in money, I think, in traditional Silicon Valley people. And then of course, because of coin list being essentially tied to angel lists, which again is like a place where all these people do invest in basically Silicon Valley startups and do these angel rounds.

So that's essentially how you can kind of link those two together. So I think you're totally right. And, you know, I was last week, I was some lunch in Berlin where, you know, some VC, they need to do something on ICOs. And it seems like. Everybody is kind of getting into that. And I wanted to speak about this a little bit more in detail, actually, from a few angles. One is I saw this article the other day, which was also very interesting.

So some hedge fund administrator said that they had 62 of their clients, 62 of those hedge funds, were all preparing to put money into cryptocurrencies. And that's just, you know, that's one hedge fund industry. Now there's a few thousand hedge funds in the world, right? I don't know what percentage of head funds that administrator is managing. But let's say now 10% is, does that mean 10% of hedge funds are getting into like investing in cryptocurrency? I think it sounds very plausible if it's one single one and 62 of those. And this is just going to take on a crazy dynamic.

Because also if I'm a hedge fund, right? And if I know that the other hedge funds are going to get into this thing and it's still a pretty small, total market cap, you know that the price is going to go up, the more people go in. So I rather be first. And I think we are really at the point where it's become common assumption, I think, in the finance world, that this is happening and money is moving into space in the big time. And of course, that means you want to be, you want to join that trend and you want to be before the others in that same trend.

So, and I've also, another thing that I've been. been thinking about in that aspect is the sort of weird dynamic that's going to create because all of a sudden the amount of money that's there is just orders of magnitude bigger than the amount of actually quality projects right so i think you're going to see and especially if you take this kind of portfolio approach where you say okay you're going to put a little bit of money and diversify and lots of assets it just means huge amounts of money you're going to flow into all these different projects that don't necessarily have any um any merit because also people don't know, right?

They don't understand the details. I mean, it's already like that, you know. It's already like that. I mean, there's so much garbage. I mean, even in the big protocols, I see a lot of great technology, but just because there's great technology doesn't mean we need it. Zcash, you know, I don't, you know, I know lots of people like that. I don't really get it.

I mean, you know, zero knowledge proofs. It's not like a, it's a useful thing to exist. I don't understand why Zcash would exist long. term when you could just, you know, build zero knowledge proofs into a smart contract-enabled platform. But, you know, because it has value, people will pump it and develop on it and build a plausibility structure around that value and kind of treat it as a lightning rod, I think, to attract some of that investment you're talking about. And I think, yeah, it is weird. It is weird, And I don't know.

It makes me uneasy because it's just, I want the money to go to the right places. And it seems, you know, it's uncomfortable seeing, you know, too much money go to dumb money go places, you know. It's a strange time. It's kind of, it's becoming too mainstream. I wish it was weird still, you know? Yeah, my thoughts exactly. And it's interesting to see how, you know, if this is the case that money is coming in through these, and sort of more institutional avenues.

You know, like a few years ago when we're talking about Bitcoin and Bitcoin becoming massively adopted, it was always unclear how the money would start coming in because of these frictions with the existing payment system. But now, what does it mean if all of a sudden all this money coming in is just coming from the same, you know, institutional investors and hedge funds that have been funding technology for the last, you know, 20, 30 years? Are we just coming into, are we just creating the same system once again, but on some somewhat more decentralized rails?

Yeah, and are they even decentralized? I mean, you know, like I was just at a bloody, you know, a mining factory in Iceland, and that thing is tiny compared to what Genesis has around the place. They're very, very tight-lipped about it because it's so competitive. but I bet they have 20 times that facility elsewhere, probably even more. And so that being the case,

what if you're controlling Genesis mining's, not Genesis mine, they're just called Genesis. Genesis is also a mining company in Western Australia, so it's easy to trip over your companies. But they have this mining farm management software called Hive. where you spin up your mining farm, you build the mining farm,

and then you manage it using their software. And because Genesis makes the best software, and they can tweak your miners and everything and make it all real, real, make you the gravy, they wind up in control of your miners. And so I bet Genesis mining is the biggest miner on every network. I bet, you know, you have these pools and stuff, but I'll bet they hold the keys,

to, I mean, actually, of course, Bitcoin's in China, but I bet they hold the keys to a lot of a lot of cryptocurrencies, especially with all their graphics cards. Of course they do. They could totally just totally attack just about any cryptocurrency, any public blockchain with all of those graphics cards, you know. So it's not really, it's not really decentralized. It's notionally decentralized, and I suppose that's probably all you need. You don't need to be really decentralized. You just need to, everyone just has to believe that it's decentralized and it seems to work. So before we wrap up, I'd like to come back to your world tour and just get your thoughts on, you know, who was the most interesting person you talked to or who were you most excited to talk to in all of this, all these people you met and that you've interviewed.

Wow, that's hard. I mean, I spoke with a computer science professor whose name alludes me at this moment who explained to me that blockchain was about the coming of a new age of Brahman. in India and it was we talked about it for ages like yeah man this is crazy this is like straight out of the betas and stuff or something like that I don't know I'm not I'm not schooled up on

Hinduism or anything but that was a really really interesting conversation to see another really interesting one was with this guy in a similar vein this guy Ben Vickers who runs a who's based in London

and he operates a art gallery. And he was really, really interested in religious texts and texts and the relevance that blockchain had to, or the comparisons that could be made between blockchain and some other and some other, and some other, and some of the, some cultures around like copying text and stuff over the years. He was like obsessed with the stuff. He was, this was his thing that he was researching and had been doing really hard for an extended period. Super smart guy. And, and so it was actually,

encountering the opinions that you never thought you'd run into, right? That is weird. You know, the whole religion thing, comparing it to religion is strange, but it's an easy comparison to make. And so, like, those were the really interesting ones. Honestly, it was a real pleasure to hang up with the polychain guys. I've talked to those about that so much. But that's just because they're real cool guys and they have, I had some really productive conversations with them. I had a great discussion with Jake Bruchman at that EOS party. We guys at that EOS party. You know, that huge, you know, they had stilt walkers and stuff. It was like, on a roof.

It's like, guys, I don't know, you should stay away from the edge there. I mean, it was a strange choice of, strange choice of footwear for a rooftop party. But I was talking to Jake Bruchman about value of cryptocurrency and these tangled hierarchies that are represented in this book called Gerdlisher Bark by this guy, Douglas Hofstadter. Awesome book, real tripped out. It's one of the coolest. It's the best book. It's as good as the Bible, honestly, even better. But that was a really, really great conversation, one that stood out. You find it's not the people. It is, it's the conversations and those encounters that you have with crypto people that

you can't have with anyone else because no one else is in a state of such a state of disbelief and excitement. And I think at the end of the day, that's what makes this place, this whole space so interesting. I mean, you could, I could find so many people who just blew my mind, who I never would have, never would have thought I'd even run into, never knew existed, but gave me insight that I didn't have before. I mean, I spoke with a ton of people. I spoke with Italic. I spoke with, who else did I actually speak with who was famous? Probably no one. Pretty much the only famous person I think I spoke to was Vitalik.

And, you know, we had like really great conversations. It was really insightful. But it's just those weird things, those weird little encounters you have with crypto people that really stand out. Always. I mean, that's what makes this space so great. Cool. Well, Arthur, thanks so much for coming on. It was a pleasure hearing about your journey.

And hopefully I will see you again soon, both in person and online. Hey. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it was great to hang up with you guys, actually. It's hilarious to see people in the flesh you've only heard, heard or seen on screens before. So yeah, no, absolutely. It's been a pleasure.

And yeah, thanks, heaps, Brian. And thanks as well, Sebastian, for having me on and keeping me entertained. Cool. Well, of course, we're going to link to Arthur's podcast in the show notes and people can check that out. Actually, I really want to check out this legal series because that sounds interesting.

So, yeah, thanks so much. for coming on and thanks so much for a listener for once again tuning in so we're going to be back next week but in the meantime if you want to support the show you can do so by leaving an iTunes review for us to help new people find the show and makes us happy too so thanks so much and look forward to see you next week