Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Camila Russo: The Defiant – Laying Bare the Story of Ethereum

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Camila Russo is a financial journalist, starting her career writing for Chile's largest national newspaper. She then spent 8 years at Bloomberg covering the Argentine market from Buenos Aires, the European stocks from Madrid, and analysed macro emerging markets moves for the Markets Live blog in New York. She is the founder of the Defiant and recently wrote and released a book on the foundations of Ethereum, “The Infinite Machine”. This tells the story of how 19-year-old coding genius Vitalik Buterin led a “ragtag group of feuding hackers with no business plan and no live product” to pioneer a whole new way of raising money, on a platform that’s grown to a value of $27 billion. It is being hailed a complete hit and we highly recommend you give it a read. Camila joined us to chat about how her journey through journalism led her to crypto, and how she became a successful author.Topics covered in this episode:Camila's background and how she got into the crypto spaceBecoming involved with Bitcoin in Argentina back in 2013Her move to the US and the introduction to Ethereum in 2017What made her decide to write a book and the process involvedSome interesting stories that didn't make the final cutCamila's views on the Ethereum narrative and how it has changed over timeCamila's view on the current DeFi situation and the risks of regulators becoming more involvedWhat is The Defiant?How to follow CamilaEpisode links: Camila RussoThe DefiantThe Infinite MachineExcerpt from The Infinite Machine“The Infinite Machine” reviewCamila on TwitterSponsors: Algorand: To learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications, visit algorand.com/epicenter - http://algorand.com/epicenterThis episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/358

This is Epicenter, Episode 358 with guest Camilla Russo. Hi, I'm Sebastiakutia, and you're listening to Epicenter, the podcast where we interview crypto founders, builders, and thought leaders. On this show, we dive deep to learn how things work at a technical level, and we fly high to understand visionary concepts and long-term trends. If you like Epicenter, I'd like you to pick up your phone, your iPad, or your Mac right now, and go to Epicenter.orgs slash Apple so you can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. is the easiest free way to support us, and it really helps people find the show

and establish Epicenter as the leading technical podcast in the crypto space. And I'll tell you a secret. I also love reading them. Today our guest is Camilla Rousseau. She's an author, a journalist, and the founder of The Defiant, a newsletter and podcast about the DFI space.

She recently wrote a book called The Infinite Machine, which tells the story of Ethereum from the very beginning to today. And it's a fascinating read. I had pre-ordered this book many months ago, totally forgot about it, and then I received it while I was on vacation. And I read it as soon as I got back. I really loved this book for a couple of reasons. One, it's an accurate account of the entire history of Ethereum from the very beginning to today through the white paper, the early days of Ethereum, Vitalik going out and finding co-founders, to the crowd sale, to the ICO boom, and all the stories.

that happen in between. And the other reason I really like this book is because it's, if you've been in the space long enough, it's such a trip down memory lane, like, reminding you of, like, a simpler time in the blockchain space to some extent. So if you hadn't read it, go out and buy it, and you'll blow through it in, like, a day or two. She's also the co-founder of The Defiant, which is a newsletter and podcast about the defy space. She puts out the newsletter every day, which is really impressive. not that there's an absence of content to talk about in Defi,

but it is a feat to be able to write a newsletter every day. So we talked about the book, obviously, and the process of writing the book, which was also really fascinating. And we had a conversation about Defi, and we looked at what's happening in the defy space at the moment, all of this exuberance that we see, and discussed whether or not we think there's actual value being created here and what the prospects might be for the future.

Since we're on the topic of Defi, I'd like to mention Algarand and the platform that they provide that is purpose built for DFI. In fact, all the primitives that you need to build sophisticated DFI applications are built right into the layer one protocol. I'll tell you a little bit more about that later on during the interview. But for now, here's my conversation with Camilla Rousseau. So I'm here with Camilla Rousseau, who is an author now, but a writer and the founder of the Defiant, which is a newsletter, a podcast, a YouTube channel about Defi. She's very present on Twitter as well and very present also Ethereum and CryptoConferences.

So thanks for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here. I just finished reading your book a couple days ago. I thought it was great. It was like a really interesting and kind of fun read, you know, since I've been in the space. I was around the time that Ethereum was launching and everything. So it was like cool to go.

back and think back about those times. And it was just like a nice walk-through memory lane, I guess, in a lot of ways. So that's kind of fun. But we'll talk a bit more about the book during our conversation here. But first, I, let's talk a little bit about you and share with our listeners a bit about your background, where you came from, and how you got to where you are today. My background is obviously in journalism. Before going full-time, The Defiant and, you know, writing the Infinite Machine. I was at Bloomberg for eight years covering markets. So, you know, I started with an internship in New York with Bloomberg. Then they sent me to the Buenos Aires office to cover Argentine markets. I mostly focused on the currency and debt. Then I spent there like four

and a half years in Argentina. Then I asked to move to Madrid, where I covered European stocks. which wasn't so exciting after covering the crazy Argentine market. So I took the chance to move back to New York when they opened this new team called Markets Live, which covered like macro markets real time. You know, that's really when I started to cover crypto day to day. I had written about Bitcoin before in Argentina in 2013. that's where I wrote kind of my first story on Bitcoin and when I became interested in crypto. But, you know, I was in New York in 2017 covering markets.

And so, you know, I had kind of remained interested in crypto since I first wrote about it in 2013. So I took the chance to really, you know, start focusing on crypto with the boom. There was just like insatiable appetite for Bitcoin stories from Bloomberg readers. So that's kind of how I got into the... the space. And then end of 2017, I decided I wanted to write a book on the history of Ethereum. Then early 2018, I got the deal with Harper Collins and just started kind of focusing on writing the book almost full time. And yeah, then 2019, I left Bloomberg to finish the book and also because I wanted to be more independent. And then June 2019, I founded the defiance.

So, yeah, that's where I am. Let's talk a little bit about you mentioned you're from Argentina and that you started covering Bitcoin in, I guess, 2013, so quite early. What kind of activity were you noticing back then in Argentina in terms of Bitcoin use? And how has that evolved in your view since then? Just one small clarification. I'm actually from Chile, from Santiago. Oh, I'm sorry. No, that's okay.

But yeah, so I was covering markets with Bloomberg in Argentina. You know, the reason why I pitched this story on Bitcoin when I was mostly, you know, writing about Argentine bonds and effects was because like a big part of what I was doing was, like the big story was inflation in Argentina. Like there was 25% inflation and the currency controls, which, you know, this was Christina Fernandez second term and like two days into or like a few days into her into her term she decided to like ban all dollar purchases so that was kind of like a big ongoing story and so I was covering you know the different ways that Argentines had to

protect against inflation and currency controls and so that's how I got to Bitcoin like a colleague said hey like check out this like weird digital currency. that's gaining steam in Argentina. I saw there was like a Bitcoin meetup with like over 100 people going. And so I said, okay, so this is like a real thing. I spoke with, you know, some of the people leading exchanges there, you know, just some like Bitcoin holders in Argentina and asked them why they got into Bitcoin in the first place.

And, you know, it just like really opened my eyes that there was this. possibility of having a completely independent money that didn't rely on central banks and financial institutions and couldn't be influenced by governments. And there's like this active kind of ardentine community within crypto. And it's because they, it's very easy to understand the value proposition of cryptocurrencies when you've been living through that kind of economic mismanagement with your local currency. all your life. I lived through that as well. I was earning my salary in Argentine pesos. So as soon as I got to Argentina, like the first thing I was told by my Bloomberg colleagues was

when you get your salary, you need to exchange it for dollars or else you're going to lose money. And so I was doing that and then, you know, just dealing with all the hassle of having to kind of, you had to like pay your rent in dollars because property owners weren't taking pesos and it was just like all like a big hassle to be living with that high inflation. I went to kind of that that same process of like discovering Bitcoin and just like getting it right away. And I reported for this particular story and it was like hard to convince my editors to actually take it. It was like really early for Bitcoin and Bloomberg was like not really covering it. And so half of my editors didn't really understand what it was.

The ones who had heard about it really thought it was like some sort of scam. So it took like effort to convince them to actually take this story. In this context of hyperinflation and you mentioned that at some point it became illegal in Argentina to convert pesos into dollars, even in this context, it was hard for you to convince your editors to write about this alternative currency that would allow people to essentially have more freedom with what they could do with their money? Yeah, because you have to kind of like put yourself in the shoes of a Bloomberg editor. They're like sitting in New York. The readers are like from very obviously like traditional markets. They're not investing in crypto. And so they're obviously

serving those readers who they'll understand buying dollar bonds from an Argentine investor's perspective or buying some sort of Argentine stalls or something to protect their savings. But that's kind of as far as they would go. Like they, to venture outside of like the traditional assets and consider that this like really new currency that's not backed by anything other than its own system. that could be kind of a legitimate, viable investing alternative was like really hard for them to understand. Even outside of our, you know, of Argentina or places with, you know, high inflation, it was hard. I mean, even I'm here in France and I remember, you know, for years and even now, I mean, I had lunch with someone yesterday who is still with whom, you know, I had to explain with crypto was.

And this is in 2020. It's hard sometimes to kind of like think back to those times and how difficult it was to explain these concepts to people. like it was just so novel. Like I said, I think it's easier when you're in Argentina and you can understand how hard it is to deal with inflation. And it's a little bit kind of mind-blowing that somebody can tell you what you can and can't do with your money. I don't know.

If I hadn't lived through that, I think I would have like a hard time understanding it as well. But it's not like some like abstract concept because it's like it's something that people are, we're already doing. like a normal average person was already taking whatever they could save and buying dollars with that. Like it's something that every Argentine does. And so for the government to one day just say you can't do that anymore. And the options are literally gone. You had the option in your online bank account one day to take your pesos from your local account to your foreign currency account and buy dollars just like online.

and that like from one day to the next was just simply not there. And if you went to a bank and said, I want to buy dollars, they just like wouldn't sell them to you. It's really mind-blowing. If you're sitting in the U.S. and you've never had an issue with your bank, you never had kind of this crisis where the bank tells you know your deposits are locked in, or you never had double-digit inflation, you never had currency controls, like you have, you trust your government. you trust your financial institutions, it's even harder to understand why cryptocurrencies matter. And at Bloomberg, I was like dealing with people who, you know, they're like, bread and butter is covering the traditional market. So it was just like even harder.

When you moved to the U.S., then you were covering crypto there in the U.S. as well. What was the reception there? Of course, you know, it had been some time had passed. like crypto had gotten more into, I guess, like, you know, people's minds. What were your editors' views on crypto and how is it being covered? By that time, it was completely different. So I was in the market's live team, which, like I said, it's like a live blog of like running market commentary. And we were a small team and like people in the team had freedom to write about whatever seemed interesting. So I started to write posts on Bitcoin, and there was like talk about a Bitcoin ETF at the time.

So I was writing about that, about like ICOs. And my kind of the managing editor for like markets noticed that I was interested in crypto. And at the same time, there was like rising demand for stories on Bitcoin and crypto. So this time it was the other way around. like my editors came to me asking for more crypto coverage. So that was a big change. Like it was, I think, a reflection of Bitcoin becoming more recognized, like, more accepted as like an actual investment. And, you know, just like recognize that it's not a scam.

Like it's an actual legitimate thing, which some editors might be more skeptical than others. But in the end, like, they saw the value. of covering it. So that was a big change from 2013. So they came up to me and asked me to, you know, help with crypto coverage on just like the wider Bloomberg news, not just for the blog. So I started, I divided my days with like, I need to have at least two posts for markets live in the morning. And then the afternoon was just to write about crypto. So I had kind of those two jobs. When did you first hear about Ethereum? In 2017. covering crypto for Bloomberg. The first time was when I wrote kind of one of the first stories

on ICOs for Bloomberg. And I remember just like trying to wrap my head around what these things were. It's like Bitcoin, but it's different digital currencies and anyone can issue them and they're on top of this other blockchain called Ethereum. And, you know, I was coming at crypto coverage from like a market's perspective. So I didn't have like a lot of technical knowledge about how blockchains work or crypto works or anything. I understood kind of the value proposition of Bitcoin from having it covered like in Argentina back then. But that was my extent of knowledge about it. So it was like writing that first ICO story was I think when I started looking at Ethereum for the first time.

And then just like as I kept covering the space for the rest of 2017, I started. to learn more and more about it and understood, okay, Ethereum is a blockchain like Bitcoin, but why it's valuable, it's because it tries to be more flexible than Bitcoin. And that's why it's easier for people to issue all these different tokens on top of it. And so, you know, that's kind of seeing all of this kind of frenzy around ICOs and these tokens and this like millions of dollars pouring in. I was like, there's something here, you know, this kind of decentralized way of raising money. And Ethereum is kind of the platform enabling this.

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one, and smart contracts are first-class citizens on Alligrant. So with these essential building blocks at your disposal, you can build fast and secure defy apps in no time. To learn more about about what Al Garan brings to the table and how to get started, I would encourage you to check out Algaran.com slash epicenter. That lets them know that you heard about it from us, and it takes you where you need to go to learn about their tech. And with that, we'd like to thank Al Garan for supporting the podcast. What point do you, does one say, I'm going to write a book about something? Like, that's never something that's ever crossed my mind or I think a lot of people's minds. what point do you decide to write a book? And then what is the process? I mean, forget about the process of writing the book, but like, what's the process of figuring out what kind of book you want to write? Because you could have written this book and, you know, all, I mean, it's very kind of, you know, descriptive account of what happens. It's mostly in the third person. You could have written a fiction. You know, you could have written a firsthand account of your interviews. What was the process for the creative process, I guess, of like figuring out the kind of book you wanted to write?

For background, I always wanted to write a book. Like, that's been kind of a goal of mine forever. I got into journalism because I like writing. I guess, like, growing up, one of my favorite books was in Cold Blood by Truman Capote. And I think, you know, that was the first time I realized, wow, you can write about real life, like nonfiction in a way that reads like a novel. and that idea to me was really powerful because going into journalism and especially business journalism, which is usually so dry, I found that, okay, stories can make these very kind of complex dry concepts come alive if you tell them in the right way. And so getting the example from Truman Capote and then especially Michael Lewis, I saw, okay, wow, like this is a really powerful.

way of speaking about nonfiction. And obviously, I love fiction. It's what I personally read the most. But I just thought, you know, if I was ever to write a book, I would want to provide, like, value to readers by bringing something from the real world and making it colorful and read, like, a story. Because I just thought, you know, there's like so many interesting stories in the real world, you know, that need to be highlighted. So, like, why should I, like, go and invent another story from my own imagination when there's already so much to tell in real life? At some point, I guess, like, I think it was probably when you get into the Bloomberg internship,

they give you, like, a list of recommended readings. And, I mean, one of them was Michael Lewis's books. I think it was liar spoker. And so when I read that book, I was like, okay, like, I need to find a story that I can pick up. and tell like Michael Lewis does for his books. So I was like always on the lookout for that. Like what can be a story that I can tell in this way? Like in a something I can make into a nonfiction novel.

And I think with crypto it was kind of the first time that I thought, okay, this is it. Like this is where I need to find my story to tell. Sorry, I meant to say when I said fiction earlier, I meant to say like a dramatized version of like something a little bit more like, of course you could make a fiction of the story of Ethereum, but like something akin to the Bitcoin billionaire's book, right, where it's like this kind of more dramatized version of the facts.

But like the way you wrote the book is like this very kind of factual account that it reads like a novel. It does read like a story, but it's like this very factual thing based on your interviews, based on your conversations. When you're reading it, you really get the idea like this is how things happen. This is exactly what happened. I love Bitcoin billionaires. But, you know, reading kind of the whole.

forward where the author says, you know, some of these things were fictionalized. There's always like that kind of question in the back of my mind as I was reading the book. Like, okay, what part of this conversation actually happened? Yeah. And it's like, I don't love that, to be honest. Like, I love the book, but I think it's just a personal preference that I wanted everything in my book to be as factually accurate as possible. I don't want to make this interview entirely about the book. But like, I'm just curious about the creative. process that goes into writing a book like this. And there are passages in the book where, of course, there's conversations, right? You're citing people. You're citing conversation. You're citing Skype

exchanges or things like that. And so she interviewed this person and this person gave her the account, but like, how does he really remember exactly what he said? Well, then there must be some kind of like, you know, this is the account of what that person said that they thought they said at the time. So it might be a little bit stretched, but generally it's sort of like an account of what happened based on people's stories, right? Definitely, yeah. As accurate as possible. And I think kind of the way to make sure I'm not straying too far from reality

is just to verify, to make sure I'm not using just one person's version, for example, a conversation. So getting both, like, everyone's accounts who were involved, and just like contrasting that. And the process involved many interviews and just making sure that everyone involved in a situation or conversation was interviewed and I got their side. So in that way, it could kind of reconstruct what happened. One thing that's interesting about this, and like you came into the space or like I guess you came into Ethereum a little bit later. So like around 2017, you said.

and you've now become like this personality in the community. Like you have your podcast, you have your newsletter, you get this YouTube channel, you speak at all these conferences. It reminds me of Neil Strauss and like what he went through when he wrote the game. So like he went into this kind of wanting to understand this community of like pickup artists. And then by doing so, he himself became a pickup artist and like well known for this thing. And like you went into this wanting to write a book about Ethereum and then you became like this kind of personality within the theory of itself and like obviously like more of a journalist in the space

did you anticipate that by writing this book you would kind of like become this personality and like go and build the defiant and be like a voice in the community or was that something intentional no i could have never anticipated anything of what happened later with this book the reason for writing it first and foremost was kind of achieving this lifelong goal that i had of reading a writing a non-fiction novel. And then my plan was to, after writing the book, to just like continue doing journalism. Like I thought, you know, this book will be great in kind of, I don't know,

like cementing, I guess, my journalism skills, my writing skills, like just adding to my, like, profile or whatever, just as a journalist, right? And as a writer, not like as someone in Ethereum. And my original plan was, once I think, finish this book, I would go on freelance and, you know, my, what I wanted to do was just write more kind of magazine type stories and start writing like tech and like finance features for different magazines and then like see what I wanted to do. I mean, I always had wanted to like start my own

media company or just like my own venture at some point. So that was like still in the back of my mind, but my original plan when I left Bloomberg was finish this book and then freelance. And freelance in like general tech and finance, like not specifically on Ethereum. So it wasn't part of the plan. But I think, you know, as I was researching and like I was like in the Ethereum community at all these hackathons and conferences and just talking to people, I really saw this like defy ecosystem kind of blossom. And for me, it was just fascinating what was being built.

And it just seemed like a huge opportunity to cover because nobody was doing a great job at it, I thought. So I just saw that opportunity. And I was really fascinated by what was going on. So I would have covered it, you know, anyways. But I also just like always wanted to have my own thing as well. So I thought, you know, I'll start with a newsletter and see how that happened. Let's get into the nitty gritty here. So give us some juicy anecdotes.

Like, what are some kind of interesting stories that happened on the sidelines that you could share that aren't covered in the book but are kind of like meta things that may have happened? One story that I had to cut from the book was, you know, that I think is really interesting. But it just like I had so many characters that my editor was just like, I'm getting lost with all this. like you need to cut some people out. I had like in the ICO part of the book, I had Peter McCormack's story. What's the story? So his story is that he got into the space because he started trading tokens. And it's funny because now he comes off as this like big like Bitcoin maximalist, but he came into the space kind of trading Ethereum tokens and, you know, obviously Bitcoin, but just like writing this ICO boom. And I don't remember.

remember how much money he actually had at the top, but it was a large amount, like, I don't know, say a million dollars. Or don't quote me on that, but he started out with a relatively... I think I've heard the story before also like where he had quite a bit and then lost quite a bit. Yeah, he refused to sell and then just like lost it up. And in that process, you know, he started, because in the beginning, he was just like trading coins and not really learning about crypto or anything. But in the process of like the crash, he started to actually learn and understand more about Bitcoin and his family and friends were always like asking him to teach them what was going on. And that's how he initially started. I think it was initially a newsletter and then then became

a podcast. And so that's how he started his business. And now obviously like his main business is his kind of communications media company. And so I think, you know, it's, It's a fascinating story of, you know, going, earning all this money or getting all this money from tokens, losing it all, but then just like still being able to build an actual business out of it. That was like one interesting story that I was like really sad to cut and had to kind of leave and be editing. Are there any other stories that you had to leave out? There are so many people involved in Ethereum. I mentioned a lot of them in the book and, you know, there were, you know, names I had to cut out. But that was just like a big piece of the book that I, like a chunk of it that I had to cut out.

Another anecdote is my interview with Joe Lubin. The first interview I had with him was really weird. Like, it was really hard for me to get him talking. I know what you mean. Having interviewed Joe a couple of times and, you know, he's great and everything. I love talking with Joe, but like he's a bit hard to read sometimes. That's for sure, yeah. It was so tough and I was just like so intimidated by it because all the interviews or like most of them were like super easy like conversations flowed and I always began the interview by just like asking the person to go back and just like tell me basically their life story.

Like I was, you know, really looking to learn about the person, not just what they did on Ethereum, but just like understand them and be able to kind of convey their personality. and kind of their back story. So all the interviews started in this way. You know, just like, tell me about your childhood, like how you were brought up, your family, like all of that. And Joe, I think it was like the wrong approach with him because he's like more private person. So he just like closed up at the beginning of the interview.

He's just like, why are you asking me this? Yeah, I could see how that might go a bit awry. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things I like to book the book. Because, like, there's so many people in crypto. Like, we know so many of them. We see them on Twitter. We meet them at conferences, et cetera.

But I think one of the most fascinating things about the people in crypto are their background stories, like, because there's just so many fascinating ones. And one of the things I've loved about doing this podcast is, like, asking that question we usually ask at the beginning, which is, how did you get involved in this? And, you know, a lot of times people have similar backgrounds. But there's sometimes, there's like these little nuggets of people that, how did you end up here? And that was one of the things about the book that I really like, too, is getting to learn about some of the background stories of people for whom I didn't really have the background story.

Like I said at the beginning, like, I thought it was a really great read. You know, I wasn't like in the weeds of Ethereum from the beginning, but I was following it, you know, pretty closely and, you know, hanging out at the Brintland office once in a while and, you know, like getting to meet some of the people early on. I felt like I kind of knew this, like, as I was reading the story, like, oh, yeah, I remember that. I remember this. Like, there wasn't anything that was particularly kind of surprising.

I would have wished that you would have went more into the kind of like the juicy details or some of the background stuff that like people didn't really know about or may, you know, you may have been revealed. Is this something that was intentional or are you trying to like protect people? Were you kind of mindful of like not disclosing too much or? Yeah, I think, you know, I definitely tried to my best to get like all the main parts of the Ethereum story and uncover as much as possible. And I think maybe, you know, if, if you, if you You're obviously like in Ethereum and like involved in it. Maybe a lot of this stuff isn't surprising.

But, you know, I would hope for most people in crypto that weren't as involved in Ethereum, they didn't really know like all the all the backstory. But, you know, about kind of the more like juicy, like backstories and stuff like that, like I said, like I really followed really the like Bloomberg standards. with this story. So if there was like some like sort of gossip that I, I heard from from one person and they didn't want to go on the record and like nobody else would verify on the record or like somebody would kind of hint that that

was a case, but not really provide any evidence. I wouldn't include it. Yeah, you wrote a book as a journalist. Yes, yes. There you go. Yeah, I really wanted it to be kind of like airtight. you know, like that nobody could come at it and be like, this is wrong. Like what, you know, like my, my biggest fear was that somebody would just like take down the book and like,

and ruin it because like they had some issue with, if anybody has an issue with the book, I want to be able to kind of defend it and be like, here five on the record interviews that I did backing this up. Like here is the documentation backing this up. So I guess like that's why maybe you didn't have like all the gossipy stuff. One part that was like totally new to me was the whole part about the house. And like I didn't know about any of that. Like what I mean I kind of knew that there was a house at some point. But like I didn't know who was there.

You mean in Switzerland? The house in Zoot. Yeah. Let's switch gears a little bit and talk a little bit about theorem and defy. Of course it's a very, you know, hot topic at the moment, I guess one could say. Yeah. You know, how would you describe the arc of the Ethereum narrative and how that's changed over time? And what is the current Ethereum narrative, you know, if there is kind of like a canonical narrative.

Yeah, it's interesting. I think the narrative of Ethereum, like I guess when it first launched, it was meant to be, the narrative was like world computer, right? kind of this extremely flexible platform for developers to build whatever they dreamed of, and that included all the crazy applications. It was like, name an application, put blockchain on it, and this is what we're building on Ethereum. So it was just like full of crazy ideas. Then, you know, 2016 was more about obviously the Dow and just like decentralized organizations, and the narrative was more kind of focused on that.

And then I guess like in 2017, it was ICOs and just like this decentralized way of raising money through tokens that, you know, would later be added to these different applications and platforms mostly as a kind of like payment currency within the platform. And then kind of that narrative got or like ICOs got a really bad name because not many of them delivered. Obviously, like many were scams and regulators came in and then there was this market crash and people lost money. So nobody wanted to have anything to do with tokens and ICOs.

Then I think, you know, 2019, the narrative started, you know, went from Ethereum in the bear market. which from the outside just looked like a barren land. You know, like there wasn't a lot going on, at least like on the surface. If you went to like hackathons, you would see there were more like builders and activity than ever. Like around DevCon4, like that kind of time. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, there was like a new narrative starting to rise from kind of the ashes,

which was decentralized finance. And I think that's been the narrative so far. And it's kind of evolution of ICOs. I think ICOs were maybe the first iteration of DFI, because raising money is still a financial application. But now instead of having just like one financial application or financial service being built on Ethereum, you have a whole kind of ecosystem of financial applications.

So I think that's kind of the main narrative now. And obviously there are other sectors being developed on Ethereum, games, reputation, I guess, like identity, you know, other things, not just finance. But I think finance has, you know, definitely kind of taking the majority of attention and not just attention, but also usage, obviously. Ethereum. If you look at kind of applications and tokens, coins, taking up the most gas and transactions, they are related to defy. There's also a bunch of like scams in the top gas users, but, you know, so, so yeah, I think you can definitely kind of say that defy is the, the main narrative on an Ethereum right now. Yeah. When you spoke with all the people that you interviewed for the book, And yeah, I'm thinking specifically, more specifically, I guess, of like the people who were there at the beginning, the co-founders, like the early team and everything.

What was your impression of their impression, I guess, of how things had gone? Like, did you get a feeling that they were okay with where Ethereum had landed, which is now this kind of crazy defy space, like this kind of degenerate farming, as people call it? were there any regrets or is like everything kind of fine and this is the way things should be? Like what was your sense of the general, yeah, impressions about where things had taken us? When I spoke with the kind of early co-founders, I spoke with them in like 2018, early 2019, maybe. like defy really hadn't taken off when I did those interviews

and you know this like degen variation of defy is even like more recent so you know I wasn't like all this stuff hadn't happened yet so I you know

I wasn't able to get their their opinions on all that but like in general I think you know their views on Ethereum you know thinking about kind of what Charles said what Anthony

he said, what Gavin said, Vitalik, you know, they were all, like, hugely proud to have been part of the project of, like the early kind of founding team. You know, even, you know, Charles and Gavin, who went off to

do, to build their own blockchains, they were all, like, very proud of what Ethereum had become. I think, you know, at that time, Anthony was a little bit kind of disappointed of, you know, it was like I interviewed him in the middle of the bear market.

He was kind of investing in all these other tokens and like layer ones or looking at them. So obviously he was very proud to have been part of the founding team. But I got a sense for him that he would have wanted more for Ethereum. But then I talked to him recently for a consensus event. conference and he was like, now I'm like more bullish than ever. So he came around. So yeah, I think, you know, for everyone, it was like, yeah, an amazing project to be a part of and everyone was kind of happy with how things had turned out for Ethereum. But like for Gavin and Charles, they were kind of, yeah, happy to see how far Ethereum had come since the early days.

but they're also kind of trying to do something better at the same time. I'm curious what, you know, being so connected in Defi and like reporting on Defi, what do you make of what's happening in the space? And is it something that coming from, you know, having reported what's what was going on in Argentina and covering sort of the excesses of global finance, do you think that yeah like what's your position on the defy space and the exuberance that's happening in defy right now so i think you know what's happening in in the defy space to me is it's really encouraging to see that there is an alternative financial system being built with using these decentralized

networks, taking out intermediaries. I think it's really amazing that these protocols are not disrupting yet, but laying kind of the foundations to disrupt or to try to replace, at least for some people, traditional financial services. There was a column by Ian Lee from IDO in the Defiant yesterday, which really laid it out really clearly and said Bitcoin and Ethereum allowed kind of the finances base layer to upgrade because we've been using kind of the same infrastructure for decades and like centuries even. Like money's been transacted in kind of the same way for years and years. And it's hugely

inefficient. Like it's, we're using networks that are not meant to carry value. And now with, with blockchains, public blockchains, we can have this kind of global network for money. And so Bitcoin and Ethereum were able to upgrade the like base layer infrastructure of money. But now with DFI, we're getting to kind of the application layer of financial services and, you know, having more more open, more transparent financial services than we have today. So it's obviously very early days and there will be huge kind of improvements and a big evolution from where we are today, but it's two years old and I think the progress so far has been amazing. I mean, we have ways to exchange and swap tokens in a decentralized way. We have ways to lend and deposit

assets and gain passive interest, ways to take out collateralize. loans in a permissionless way and all these more kind of exotic use cases like you know this like no loss lottery and like yield hopping and all this you know more crazy things that you couldn't even do with traditional finance so i think that's amazing um it's hugely encouraging i think you know with the recent speculation um with yield farming and like all the meme tokens I think that's kind of the nature of the space, which is open and permissionless. And so, you know, people will experiment and will try crazy things. People will try to take advantage of others.

Like, humans are motivated by greed, I guess, making money. And that's what they'll do. And it's because the space is open and permissionless that this is happening. I think, you know, hopefully people involved in Defi so far are, more or less, I would think, more experience in dealing with cryptocurrencies. Like, I don't, I don't think just like mainstream people are getting into yield farming right now. I think the space is still small and still very niche, that you don't see kind of like, you know, kind of this cliche of like the shoe shining person or taxi driver talking about defy. And that's a good thing because it's so

risky right now. So I think hopefully people risking their money in these unadited, crazy yield farming experiments know the risk that they're taking. And if they do and they know the risk and they just, you know, it's their money to do what they want. So I wouldn't like judge all the DGEN farmers for experimenting. And I think in the end, what we saw with ICOs is there was a huge inflow of capital and also talent to Ethereum. Some people left when the bear market came, but many people stayed. And a lot of the big projects in DFI and Ethereum today came out of that boom. So, you know, if we happen to have like this huge DFI-fueled bubble, I believe that it

will be a net positive for Ethereum and for decentralized finance. in the long run as well. I mean, I have different points of view about this. And, you know, I think you kind of sum a lot of them up. But, you know, my position is that I'm fascinated by the experimentation that's happening in defy. I'm fascinated by the sort of permissionless nature and these new financial instruments that people are just like coming up with out of thin air. I think like liquidity pools and all these things are super interesting and like the yield farming and all that stuff. I mean, at some point it gets, you know, even for someone who's, you know, in crypto, it even gets complex.

And it's really hard to grasp, but it's nonetheless interesting, and it's like an interesting technical and philosophical thought experiment to think about this stuff. And I love that part of it. When I think about the actual tangible things that are happening, though, I question the actual value that exists in defy. And so, like, however you want to count it, like those, you know, like take Ethereum and Defy combined is about $50 billion in market cap today. or something like that, you know, how much of this is overpriced in terms of like the actual value created. And you could say the same about Bitcoin. You could say the same about like other cryptocurrencies. But like since we're talking about Ethereum and since like Ethereum is kind of

the place where everyone's kind of investing in their money right now and there's lots of speculation and having, you know, that's the one that I'm mostly concerned about. And in the best case scenario, you know, Ethereum and crypto does take over a lot of the financial, infrastructure that exists today. You know, if you listen to guys like Jim Bianco, you know, they'll say that, you know, it's possible that, you know, in the future we have a crypto reserve currency and that would be great, right? Like, I mean, I think that would be great. But in the worst case scenario, what ends up happening is that we have all these very financial instruments that are even more complex than the ones that exist today and that are reserved to

a very small elite of people that are able to understand them and manipulate them and create them. And we end up with, you know, even more inequality than that exists today. And, you know, that's maybe very far out, you know, this would be like a hundred or, you know, 50 or 100 year prospect. But like the totally uninhibited free market, I think, you know, probably would produce something similar to what I described, like this, this kind of very dystopian future. And yeah, I do worry about that. And when I see what's happening in Defi, like, I do question so the value that that is actually being created. And, you know, I think Vitalik was kind of, you know, Vatelic, when he kind of called this out, you know, during the ICU boom, I thought

it was, it was very noble of him to call it out and say, like, okay, how many unbanked people have we unbanked? Or have we banked? And do we deserve all this, all this? this value, you know. Yeah, I don't know what the point of that is. But I guess it's just, just to kind of, you know, take pause sometimes and to really think about what it is that we're creating and what do we want to create. And I think like most people in the Ethereum community are well-intentioned people and like perfectly, you know, smart people. But, you know, the, when one is creating a tool or a new financial instrument should also consider, you know, this kind of human aspect, right? Like, what were people going to be using this for and what's what's the point of

this, right? The difference that I see with ICOs is that there is actual value being created. Like, it's not just like tokens flying around going from one bag to the next. Like, there are actual working products and project protocols behind underlying these tokens. You know, take something like compound finance, which on one side, yes, there is speculation and people are taking collateralized loans to borrow crypto to buy more crypto and speculate. But the other side of that trade is people depositing their, you know, part of their savings to earn passive income, like passive interest. And I think, you know, financial systems across the spectrum work because of speculators.

on one hand and non-speculators on the other hand. You need speculators to create activity and liquidity and to allow kind of this fluid transfer of value. And on the other hand, there are non-speculative use cases and that's happening in DFI as well. I think it's hugely valuable for anyone in the world to be able to have a dollar-based savings account gaining interest from people in Argentina, like I said, who simply cannot buy dollars to be able to freely buy dye

and put it in compound or buy seed die and start gaining interest on that, on their savings. People in Venezuela, the same, and not just people in emerging economies, but people in developed countries where, you know, interest rates are zero or negative and you have to pay the bank to store your money, they can also see you. from this. So I think, you know, there's definitely speculation, but there's real, real value being created. And I think, you know, it would be hard to create a more unequal financial system than what we have today with DFI just because of how it's structured. I think, you know, the current financial system, one, is fragmented in geographies. Like, each country has its own financial system and it's

close off to the rest. So you already have, like, because of its very architecture, you have, like, casts of financial systems where you have, like, the developed nations, the U.S. is its own kind of economy and people from outside can't really access those markets in, like, DFI or, like, an open economy. It's a global financial system that anyone can access. And the fact that it's for missionless, like, you don't need to ask anyone to use these applications. So I think just like by their very architecture, they should create a less unequal financial system. And I really, you know, I see it that I see that it would be very hard to to have something worse than what we have today with traditional finance. Obviously, it won't be

perfect. Like there will be whales, people controlling large amounts of tokens and, you know, having more control over protocols and, you know, using it to vote in their way and we'll have all those problems. But it would still be a lot better than what we have today. Like right now, yeah, like there are like governance whales in compound. But right now, like you can't even have that option with the bank you use. Like you cannot participate in governance. It doesn't matter if you're a whale or not, you know. So I think, you know, I, I've really, I'm encouraged with where this is going, even if there is speculation. I do see actual value.

I certainly hope so. So after the ICO boom, we talked a little bit about this earlier, you know, regulators kind of came in and started clamping down the ICOs. And, you know, that now ICOs are much more structured, like security tokens or as utility tokens. And, you know, there's like some regulatory arbitrage going on there. But at least in Europe, like, it's pretty clear cut. like what is a security token offering and what is not, and I think also in the U.S. Do you sometimes worry that the exuberance that's happening in the defy space at the moment might tip off regulators to what's happening in DFI, and they might see it as, you know,

this is very kind of dangerous, speculative environment and start heavily regulating what people can do in Defi regulating, say, things like stable coins, making them illegal, for example. What are your thoughts on, like, the risks that this exuberance might be the demise of Defi? I think that that is a really kind of valid concern to have because effectively, you know, regulation is what killed ICOs. And I think, you know, right now, Defi is small enough that maybe it hasn't kind of caught regulators eye. also there I don't think a lot of like

mainstream people are involved so not not there's not a lot of risk of just like knowledgeable people in in crypto losing money so that's kind of protected the space a little bit

but I think it's only a matter of time really for regulators to really you know start watching the space I think you know there is certainly a risk that regulatory reaction could dampen activity and Defi. I think, you know, steps that teams in Defi are taking to decentralize themselves as

much as possible might protect them somewhat, but I'm skeptical that it's kind of the kind of, you know, like perfect solution to, to like regulatory risk. I think it can help, you know, to have a decentralized organization and, like, token holders controlling a protocol. because in the end, if you want to go after someone, like, how do you decide who you should go after? So I think, you know, maybe that does offer some protection. But in the end, you know, I think regulators can say transacting in stable coins is illegal, right? And then what do you do? Like maybe, and, you know, as we've seen, the way that regulators work is dealing with kind of the bridges from

crypto to the real world. So maybe you can kind of continue using DFI, but you can never really cash out or you can't kind of transfer that to U.S. dollars or your local currency. So I think those are kind of the ways that regulators can come in. But the other kind of argument that I've heard from like lawyers in DFI is that the U.S. is being more. more open to crypto innovation because they don't want that innovation to go elsewhere. So I think, you know, there's a lot of lobbying for this from, from crypto people, talking with regulators being like, this is going to happen and it might as well happen in the U.S. and not elsewhere.

Like, if you really start clamping down on this industry, you'll get, you know, really kind of brilliant developers and entrepreneurs go outside of the U.S. to build this. So I think maybe that's one way that DIV can be protected. I don't know what's the state of the ongoing or pending regulation in the U.S. I'm one of the staff members of the French Association for the development of crypto assets, and we work closely with the industry here. And we've been following and working with European regulators on regulatory regime that's coming to Europe. And I don't know how much I can talk about this yet, but we got a draft of the regulation that's coming that will be presented to the commission shortly.

And it does not look good for stable coins in Europe. And, you know, of course, this is just like a draft that's going to be presented to the commission. then it has to go through the entire legislative process, etc. But, you know, stable coins would definitely get a big hit here in Europe. And if that happens, then it becomes very difficult for, you know, regulated exchanges to deal with stable coins. You know, one of the things that this good signal, though, however, is that things really go decentralized, right? So then you basically have more decentralized exchanges, more decentralized platforms. And so, like, the trading happens there.

and then, you know, maybe centralized platforms are able to trade an ether or, you know, some of the layer ones, but most of the rest of the activity happens on the, on the centralized exchanges. Hopefully we can do an episode about that when we know a little bit more and when we're able to talk about it more. Wow, that's so interesting to hear.

So would they regulate kind of centralized exchanges dealing with, like, offering stable claims? Well, if, like let's just take a hypothetical here where stable coins or some sorts, some types of stable coins are illegal, then regulated exchanges would not be able to, to list them, right? So if you have like a type of staple coin that is illegal in the EU, then obviously exchanges would have to be listed. Right. Yeah. So then you would have to go through, like, say, ether in a regulated exchange in Europe and then take that ether to... To uniswap, for example. Yeah.

Okay. And then buy through there. Yeah, I guess. I mean, yeah, it's kind of early to tell, but... Wow. And do you think people would be, like, liable for just holding stable coins on their, like, decentralized wallet? I don't know. I think that's hard to do. Right. Yeah, I think that's really hard to do. but then, yeah, I mean, projects could also be held liable, right? If you create a stable coin that is illegal in Europe or in any jurisdiction, for that matter,

then I think you can be held liable for issuing that stable coin and making it, or issuing that asset and making it available to people in that jurisdiction. But yeah, I mean, it's still very like early, early information that we have yet to really digest. Like we just got this like a couple days ago and so we're still like reading through it. Right. I wonder how they would view that like. So say somebody, you know, creates a stable coin and it's not based in Europe. But obviously the stable coin is available everywhere in the world.

Like how do you regulate that? It's like because people in Europe can access it and yeah. Yeah, that gets tricky then, right? Like it gets tricky then. Like who is the issuer? What is their responsibility to those who are holding it? Do they have to do K. Y.C. when, yeah, it's like it gets really tricky then when you're talking about it at the acid level. I do want to talk about the defiant a little bit before we wrap up. So, yeah, tell our listeners, what is the defiant and what is it about and what can people learn at the defiant? Sure. So, yeah, like I said earlier, I started the defiant in June last year after seeing, all this activity in decentralized finance picking up and not a lot of good coverage around it. So I started it as a daily newsletter.

You know, I said, I'll just have this medium for communicating all the latest, like, most important developments in DFI. And my goal would be just to kind of explain it in simpler terms because everything is so complicated and provide additional analysis with it. That's kind of where I started, and I said, I'll try to keep it to a daily newsletter. If not, I'll go to a weekly one. But in the end, it was like more than enough for me to keep on doing the daily. And so, you know, I started doing it just like not really knowing how I would do it.

Like I had never done something like that. it was really scary to be putting something out there without the Bloomberg name at the time. Yeah. Like I had always been kind of like protected by that and now it's just like my own name writing without an editor. So that was super scary. But you know, after like the first few issues, I started getting really good feedback. Like it started really kind of growing quickly without any marketing other than my own Twitter. So that was really exciting to see. And it just, like motivated me to just keep going. And so I added a podcast because I was already doing a weekly interview for the Defiant and

recording it. So I was like I might as well just do a podcast with this. And then recently I started a YouTube channel. And the idea with a YouTube channel is to bring kind of defy to a wider audience, just like make it more digestible. because right now the newsletter is more kind of for people already who already know something about Defi. Like it can get very specific at times. So the YouTube channel really wants to get at that kind of broader audience.

And yeah, I've taken on a small team of contributors who write for the Defi and very frequently. So it's really turning into a small media company. and my goal is to grow it from here. I get your newsletter. I think I may have listened to one or two of your podcasts. I didn't know about the YouTube channel. And as I was researching this, I looked up the YouTube channel. It's like some really good content there.

And it's like really well produced and like high production quality. I think you're working with, you're partnering with another project to do a lot of this content. But it's like it's really well done. Like it's at the, you know, Vox level type content. it's great. Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing what Robin can do. I mean, this partnership has worked out amazingly. Like Robin from, from Harmony came like he, we met because he was shooting a documentary last year and so he interviewed me for that. And then he came up to me and said, hey, like I, we want to

do Defi content at Harmony. So like, what do you feel about partnering up for it? And so basically it's, it's like a sponsorship, it's like Harmony is sponsoring my videos for YouTube, but instead of kind of paying me, like the sponsorship money, they're producing the video with Robin. So it's really worked out. Great. Yeah, it's fantastic. Congratulations. I mean, as someone who has a small media company and, you know, knows about the struggles of having a small media company, I think you're doing like really fantastic work. And how have you, I know, I think you have sponsors on the on the newslet. and you're also selling like through substack. I'm also curious, you know, kind of a metatopic here,

but you know, what's been your experience with monetizing the content? Yeah. So for me, you know, when I saw the defiant really picking up on growing, I realized this can be my full-time job. Like I was thinking, should I keep doing this on the side and do like freelance work? But then I decided, you know, let this be my full-time job. like this is going to be my business. And so I started with, you know,

Substag makes it very easy to add like paid subscriptions to it. So, you know, one day, like late last year, I just decided to turn on like paid subscriptions. And my idea is to still kind of have most of my content be free, but to have like group of subscribers receive added value. So like some one newsletter, a week has kind of blocked off content that's just for subscribers they also get like a full transcript of my podcast and they get access to a like subscribers only discord channel where kind of

we chat about what's going on so so yeah that's worked out well and then earlier this year I started kind of getting emails from from defy companies wanting to sponsor the newsletter and so I saw that as like, okay, this is like another way to monetize a newsletter. So yeah, I started kind of accepting sponsors for the newsletter. It's helpful to have that journalism background because for me, it's just like very much rooted in how I think about media, that there needs to be kind of this Chinese wall between sponsors and content. So like, I will never take payment for, the content itself in the newsletter. When people like want to pay for like content in the newsletter, it's clearly marked and separate from the rest of the content. Like this is a sponsored

post and it's written by them. Like I'm not writing it. So, you know, I thought about this for a long time. Like should I take sponsors? Like is it going to kind of ruin or like taint the defiant? But I think, you know, I'm happy with the balance so far because I obviously have or I think I have maintained and improved the quality of the content and just like really have kept it separate with the sponsors. And, you know, it's really making this a viable business. And I'm just like really happy to be able to do this full time. And where would you like to see it in the next, say, five years?

Where do you hope to see the Defiant? Well, my big vision for the Defiant is for it to become the Bloomberg of the Open Economy. So I want to be kind of trusted. place for decentralized finance and yeah just like the open economy in general you know finance and dows nfts like all of that and just you know provide quality journalism and content and also like data and information about the space cool well thanks so much for joining me today where can people find you and where would you like to send our listeners to yeah on i'm active on Twitter. My name on Twitter is Kami Russo, C-A-M-I-R-U-S-S-O. And yeah, you can subscribe to the Defiant at

the defiant.com. And you can find my book on Amazon. You search for the Infinite Machine there. So yeah, it was a great conversation. Really, really happy to have come on. Thank you. Yeah. And actually, I'm looking at you get your book in the background. And someone was, someone on Twitter was asking, what is on the cover of the book? And I think I know the answer, and I think it's a unicorn. But it is, it is. Ah, yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. It's like a pixelated picture of a rainbow and unicorn. Okay. There you go. So the secret's been unveiled. Thanks, Camilla. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us on this week's episode. We release new episodes every week. You can find

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