Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Laura Shin: The Cryptopians – Uncovering the Secrets of Early Ethereum

Episode Date: March 23, 2022

After more than three years in the making, Laura Shin has just released her first book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze. In it she dives into the history of Ethereum and the 2017 ICO craze by telling the tale of the early tensions and power struggle that defined Ethereum's founding. It gives the inside story of The DAO, and depicts 2017's global initial coin offering tidal wave that boosted prices and fortunes. Laura Shin, former Forbes journalist, podcast host, and now author, joined us for a fascinating chat about the research that went into the book (including the 200+ interviews), revealing the infamous Ethereum hacker, and how the book has been received and her future plans for another.Topics covered in this episode:Laura's background and how she got into cryptoWhy did Laura choose to write this book?Researching for the book and the people she interviewedLaura's takeaways about the Ethereum foundersThe reveal of the hacker and the reactions from those close to themThe Ethereum 'Shadow Government'The importance of Vitalik to Ethereum today and where he might be headed nextWhere are the other co-founders of Ethereum now?What's next for Laura?Episode links: Buy the bookLaura ShinThe Unchained PodcastLaura on MediumLaura on TwitterSponsors: CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity - including other dex aggregators such as Paraswap, 1inch and Matcha - offering the best prices on all trades. It provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV. - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswapThis episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/436

Hi, welcome to Epicenter. The show we talks about the technologies, projects, and people driving decentralization and the global blockchain revolution. I'm Sebastian Quizio, and I'm here with Fredike Ernst. Today, we're speaking with Laura Shin, she's a journalist, she's a podcast host, and she's been around the space for a long time, and also the author of a new book called The Cryptopians, which I just finished reading and Federica also read.

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Head over to cowswop that exchange and start swapping today. Laura, it's a real pleasure to have you on. This is the first time you've been on the podcast, surprisingly. But yeah, I think it's a good time now that the book has come out. I'm excited to be here. So give us a little bit about your background and story and what's your pre-crypto life like and what drew in? And what got you to where you are now? So I have been a journalist pretty much for all my career, not

literally 100% of it, but nearly all. And I was covering personal finance when I had been covering it maybe for four or five years and was feeling like, you know, kind of ready to move on and do something different because I didn't feel like I was learning a lot that was new. And so my Forbes editors said, hey, we have an idea to do a Forbes FinTech 50 list. Do you want to head that up with another reporter. And so she and I divided the list into subcategories, and I took the category of digital currencies and became completely obsessed and fell down the rabbit hole, as we all say. And about a year, so that was almost seven years ago.

And then a year after that, I launched my podcast, Unchained. And that initially was a Forbes podcast. And after the first season, they said, we're not going to continue with this. And so I found my own sponsor to keep it going. And that sponsor said that they would take out the exclusive ads on it for the year 2017. And that was the year that crypto totally blew up and then downloads on my podcast blew up. And so they got just like the steal of a lifetime. And what happened was that.

And then during 2017, I got hired full time at Forbes to only cover crypto because previously I'd been a freelancer for them. And finally, in January 2018, somebody who was helping me with the podcast said, hey, I have been doing research on a bunch of crypto podcasts. And, you know, you could make X amount of money selling ads on this. And you have like way more downloads than everybody else. So I was like, oh, that's an amount of money. That's more than what I make at Forbes. So I had always had an idea to do a book and or rather had the desire. And because we had, you know, just been through this massive mania and bubble, I felt like that topic would be a good subject for a book.

And so when I, so basically I quit Forbes and I probably spent like, I don't know, maybe two days a week on the podcast. and then the rest of the time on my book. And the book aims to describe how the 2017 ICO craze happened. But since Ethereum was the main platform for that, and you kind of need to understand the origins of Ethereum and understand the Dow and all that because that all really led up to the ICA craze and was kind of, yeah, just without that context,

the ICA craze doesn't make sense. So about three quarters of the book really is kind of like a history of Ethereum and how it got started. And then at the end is when you see, you know, how this all blossomed into the ICU craze. Very cool. Yeah, I remember when your podcast came out, like, I think we had we started probably about a year or a year and a half before Unchained. And I remember your podcast coming out and thinking like, oh, this is this is a person with like a journalistic background coming into the podcast space. Like, you know, myself, like, I, you know, people would say like, oh, you're a journalist.

Like, you need to be objective about stuff. And I'm like, no, I'm just a guy who's interested in crypto. I couldn't care less of it being objective about stuff. And I thought, oh, this is a person who's actually going to bring some sense into this conversation. And I really also appreciated the fact that, you know, because, you know, you didn't have this technical background or you came at the subject of crypto from a much more kind of higher level visionary and also perhaps. you know, with the financial background, that it just framed conversations much differently than with Epicenter. So, you know, I would sometimes kind of like listen to episodes that you had done,

like prior to doing episodes on Epicenter because I kind of prep myself for, you know, for those episodes or like send people to the podcast where I thought like interviews that we had done would be too technical. Like Laura Shin's podcast is going to give you more of like, more of like the business aspect of this or like this sort of thing. So, yeah, I've always really, you know, enjoyed your work. Yeah, and I was doing the opposite. I was listening to Epicenter in preparation for my own interviews to, like,

understand the technical science better. Yeah, so, you know, the book just came out. And, you know, it's an interesting book because a lot of the other books, I think, that came out, you know, recently were much more like, you know, those like Bitcoin billionaires, for instance, which is more of like a fictional account of what happened. And then, you know, Camilla's book, I think, also has a little bit more of that aspect, although it is more of like an investigative journalism type of piece. But like your book is like a factual account of like what happened. And I wonder if this is the book that you had always wanted to write or if it just felt, was this the book that you felt needed to be written?

Or is just more like your style, like your more journalistic style that shines through here? Oh, it's probably my style. I very much wanted this book to be a history book in the sense that I want people 100 years from now to reference this book when they're trying to understand how did blockchain technology get started and how did crypto get started. And so I really was striving for accuracy on every level. And the book is very rigorously fact-checked for that reason. I had to hire my own fact-checker to go through everything. And that poor guy, I mean, I need to give him a shout out because he learned about blockchain technology in a month.

And he, you know, helped me fact-check stuff where I had to write about the technology in a way that I myself had never uncovered before, like the kind of technical details that I had to understand to explain the Dow and the Dow. How hack and it's just so many things like, especially during the Dow Wars episode where the White Hat group was trying to rescue the funds and all that. Like that definitely was a level of technicality that I just had not encountered in my years of covering blockchain. So for my fact checker to then have to go through that.

I mean, granted, of course, we relied a little bit more on the sources at that point, but still, I mean, there was all that. Then there was the fact that the prices were changing throughout. this whole period, right? And so for every transaction, we were always in parentheses putting what the dollar value was. And then it's like, okay, well, then out of all the prices on that day, right, there's the open, the close, the high, the low, like, which price do we use for the conversion? And so, you know, just kind of walking through all that for each of those, like figuring out what is the best price. And then on top of that, you know, there's a lot of people in the book

and they don't all say nice things about each other. And so, you know, just like if someone somebody says that they remember that this thing happened, then you kind of go around to all the other people that were there. Like, do you remember this thing happening or that person saying that thing? And then if it's like a negative thing that somebody said about somebody, then you like have to get their response. And like, I mean, so it just was like an insane amount of reporting and fact checking. Like, like, I truly, I called it a hazing and this other interview I did. And like, that's what it felt like I, there was a period of like about six months last year when I literally didn't do anything. except eat sleep, exercise, work. And then I left to do other things like five times in a six-month period. And two of them were my vaccine shots. So like I just went like for the first pass of the fact check. I was averaging a page an hour.

And my book is like 400 pages. And there were times when it would take me a full hour to do the fact checking for. Sorry, it would take me a full hour to do. Yeah, the fact checking for a single paragraph, like a whole paragraph, which was just taking me an hour. So it was like just kind of a mind-boggling amount of work. But, you know, since I went through that, I feel very confident about what's in the book. You know, I feel that like most people who lived through these events and have read it have been tweeting like, oh, it feels very accurate to what I experienced. So I feel, you know, very confident

that I got the big picture story right, that I got the little details right. Like, you know, I mean, there might be a few things here and there. But, you know, that's a lot. to be expected just from something this huge. But I don't feel that there's probably like anything majorly wrong or factually inaccurate. And so that feels really good. Reading the book, it's very clear that it was this mammoth task. I mean, just the amounts of conversations that are kind of relayed in the book, he said so and so, he said so and so, why doesn't remember this conversation and so?

and so on. So basically, obviously, a lot of interviews actually went into this book. Can you give us an idea of how many people you interviewed and how many times you spoke with them in total? Oh, my gosh. Oh, wow. So I can't, so I can tell you it was more than 200 people, but, like, for the number of interviews, oh my gosh, I mean, for somebody like Vitalik alone, like, I don't only remember. was like minimum eight. I'd have to look it up. It's like minimum eight interviews and then on top of that like a lot of text chats, you know, or yeah, somebody like, yeah, Griff Green who helped me a lot with the Dow section, just constant stream of chats or like the various people and companies that were helping me with the Dow Hack investigation like reams and reams and

dreams of chats and emails and Google Docs. And I mean, it was like, honestly, I have to admit, for some of the sources, I was hounding them so much that I was just like, these people are never going to speak to me again. Like, they're going to hate me. They're like, and there would be certain people where they just would ignore me for a while. Like, they just wouldn't respond. There was a moment where I think Vatalik was unhappy with me. And so he just was not responding to any of my emails or chats are like nothing. And this was going on for months. And I still had more questions.

So I saw he was going to be at Eath, Denver. So I literally flew to Denver, just like show up in his face and be like, hey, so I have more questions. And that worked. He did finally, you know, agree to continue the interviews. But, yeah, I mean, it was, it was like, it was a little bit ridiculous. And there were so many crazy things that happened. So I did tell the story.

but I'll just tell it once more. There was somebody who did not talk to me for years. You know, I sent them multiple emails and requests and whatever, just no response. Finally, I don't know what happened. I think maybe somebody who was interviewed for the book, like encouraged him to talk to me or whatever. I don't know. Anyway, finally he's like, okay, I'm going to talk to you. And then it was like stream of information, just tons of information, very talkative, hours on the phone, blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, wow, this is awesome. You know, getting all this great information. I can add all this color to my book. Okay. And then he's like, okay, just so you know, I have a hard drive with all kinds of material from that time. I'm going to, you know, decrypted and like I'm going to give you all this stuff. We're going to do this transfer of data, blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, awesome. So we schedule this time to meet up. And I'm there, like, waiting for him. No response. I'm like texting him. I suddenly realize I am blocked on every single platform. He has just completely blocked me. everywhere. And I never figured out what happened or like why suddenly he went from, you know,

like not responding to then giving me just this fire hose of information to then completely cutting me off. During the fact checking, he did talk to my fact check. He still wouldn't talk to me. But anyway, so all kinds of crazy things like that happen in the reporting of this book. But yeah, I talked to many, many, many people. So, I mean, having been in the space for a number of years before this book, you of course already knew the history of Ethereum, at least in broad strokes. So when you did the research for the book, what surprised you most about how it actually went down?

Oh, my gosh. Oh, so many things. I mean, so to say that I knew the history of Ethereum in broad strokes is like, you're like really, it's literally out. So if I have like a million strokes in this book, I knew like one. You know what I mean? I mean, I really barely knew any of what came through. You know, I mean, as you read in the book, I did have an inkling in 2017 that people, you know, kind of were wanting Ming to leave as executive director.

but I barely, barely knew, like, even just a fraction of it. And obviously, that's a storyline that goes over years in the book. So, you know, I really barely knew any of it. And just whole entire storylines were complete news to me, you know, in terms of, for instance, like, you know, this issue about kind of Vitalik's inability to assert himself. and how that created a lot of problems. I didn't know any of that. This issue around, like, difficulties, you know, trying to figure out who to trust.

And then at the end, kind of this new group of people that were quasi helping him with that, but then other people are, you know, unhappy about sort of who they are and the amount of control they have and influence they have. Or, you know, like, just certain of the actions of Ming that are just really, frankly inappropriate for an executive director, you know, all those things. And, and, you know, I have to say, like, I think, like, very early on when I started reporting, people were talking about her in such an extreme and almost exaggerated way that it was like hard to believe, you know? Like, it just felt like unreal and unbelievable, like not a real person. And so when I was able to get the text chats and the logs and stuff like that, then, then I understood.

finally, kind of like what they were talking about. And so I felt like having that in her own words really kind of explained like how this extreme description can even be real. But then once I saw that, I felt like, okay, so they're not, they're not just like, you know, exaggerating or making things up or, you know what I mean? It just felt like, okay, I have evidence and now I kind of understand what they're talking about. But yeah, beyond that, I mean, there were so many more things like, So I don't want to give too many spoilers, but you probably know that little subplot in the Dow, that was a huge shocker to me. We won't go into that, but it involves a person who was not known to be in crypto as famous outside of crypto. And they did come on my show, but we didn't go into too much detail because I want people to be delighted and surprised by that crazy, crazy, crazy story.

Then also things with like Jeff Vilka, one of the main architects of Ethereum, I didn't know his whole story. I mean, there were just so many things I didn't know. So, yeah, pretty much I was surprised throughout the reporting. Yeah, I think for me, too, like, I mean, I was telling before the interview that there are a lot of moments in the book that, you know, where I felt, oh, I was there or I remember that moment. Like, I remember being at that party or, like, meeting this person or, like, interacting with this person in this context. But there's a lot of things also that I hadn't followed, you know, just because, you know, I wasn't in. in the weeds. I wasn't working at an Ethereum company

or working at consensus or any of this. I think for a lot of people, this is going to be eye-opening to a lot of the stuff that was happening behind the scenes. I was curious, so you know, you were talking earlier about like all these Skype chats and stuff that a lot of,

I think a lot of the information in the book that's interesting comes from these Skype chats. Where did you get all these? Like, I mean, I don't have Skype. history from like 10 years ago or seven or eight years ago. How did you fall upon these great Skype conversations? So I can't reveal too much about, you know, where I got these things. But obviously, I wasn't in these Skype groups myself. So I was able to obtain this material from people who were willing to share it with me. Who had saved them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because a lot of the Skype

material from that era has already been deleted, but there were certain people who had records of it and shared some of it with me. So I, frankly, I think there's probably more that people didn't share, but, you know, at least for certain things, I was able to convince them to at least give me some. So what if you know, earlier talking about like how in a hundred years from now you want this to be kind of the historical account of what happened, And would you consider open sourcing some of the material and a lot of like all of the interviews and stuff like that you did at some point in order to really have all of the background also out in the public space?

I probably can't because one of the conditions, usually for the interviews, was that they would be mostly on background, meaning that I wouldn't reveal who gave me the information. So you'll notice, you know, information is attributed. to certain sources only in very specific cases. And I generally would ask them, like, we would kind of negotiate, like, can I say that you did this or said this or that this information came from you, like, whatever? Or you'll notice it other times it says things like, you know, according to a source close to the matter or, you know, whatever.

So we kind of negotiated all of that language. But, yeah, that means. Because if I were to even release the interviews, but without the context, would be very obvious who was talking. So yeah, I can't, I can't really do that. As you said earlier, a lot of the book is about the very early Ethereum days. So basically Vitalik pre-Etherium, the white paper, the foundation, the yellow paper, the launch of Ethereum and so on. So when we think back to the people who were involved in the early days of Ethereum, it is somehow a pretty rag-tag group.

I mean, it's like it's not a very coherent cohort in a way. So I think it's pretty natural to kind of feel drawn to some people in particular. Did you find yourself rooting for anyone in particular? Did someone turn out completely differently from how you had imagined them? Did I find myself rooting for somebody in particular? That's a good question. You know, honestly, it was probably Vatolic. He, so earlier when you asked kind of like what I knew in advance or what was a surprise to me,

one thing I didn't realize until kind of I had all the material was that the book would end up being a coming of age story for Vatolic, which I really think it ended up being. but I didn't know that that was going to be part of the storyline until after I'd reported so much of it. And, you know, you see him in the beginning where, first of all, he's a teenager. Second, then you see all these people being like, oh, there's going to be money here. And they kind of like descend and, you know, a number of them are sort of self-interested. And, you know, he's basically just too young to deal with this. And he, like, doesn't understand enough about human nature and about, like, people who may

not have the best interests of his project at heart. And so you just end up with, yeah, I mean, people will read there's a lot of conflicts. But frankly, you know, imagine that this had happened when Vatollic was like 26. Then it just would have been so different because he probably would have been more able to assert himself and do things like, because initially he didn't want a pre-mine. He wanted to be more like Bitcoin. But he was overruled by people who, you know, wanted to make sure that they got their allocation. early on. So, you know, just a lot of things I think would have been different if he'd been able to have a more assertive presence, but he just was not capable of that. And like, frankly,

you know, didn't understand that some of these people may not be doing what was best for Ethereum. So when you when you kind of see somebody, and I describe him in the book as sort of like being pure and naive and idealistic, when you see somebody like that who is, you know, is being manipulated or used in the way that he was, you can't help but want to root for them, you know? And, you know, is he a perfect person by the end? Clearly from the way people were criticizing the way things were working at that time, obviously not. There were a lot of people who felt that by the end of the book, which ends in early 2018, that a lot, there were still a lot of issues, but at least some of the major issues early on had been resolved.

Maybe not to everybody's satisfaction, but in a certain fashion. And to echo that, I remember an AMA with Vittalik maybe a few years ago when he was asked what he would have done differently if he had a do-over for the early days. And he said that he would handle the eight founders situation differently and he would be more selective about whom to actually take on as a co-founder. Which is interesting because as you know you read in the book, that's more similar to Gavin's views at that time. So it's just funny that he sort of came around to what Gavin had been advocating. for from the beginning. One thing that I found kind of fascinating about the soul story is that even though it was a very

eclectic group of people who didn't have, who weren't interest aligned perhaps or like whose interests were so divergent. And on top of that, all the chaos with the foundation for a couple of years, it's a wonder that like Ethereum still exists. Like, you know, how many near-death experiences did you count in your reporting for this? Oh, I think only two, really. Obviously, the Dow was the biggest crisis in Ethereum's history, just no question. But then the other one was, you know, before then, I guess that was in the fall of 20th century.

And then the early winter 2016, the foundation looked like it was going to run out of money within a few months. And so that was another issue at that time. But it very quickly got resolved and was like fine after that. So I don't know how much that was in near death because, yeah, it just, you know, it became clear very quickly that they were going to have a lot of runway. So maybe looking back to the founders again. So basically, if you look at the eight founders, I mean, obviously Vittalick is still around, but Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson and Joe Lubin, they all went on to found their own multi-billion dollar companies.

I mean, statistically, that's super unlikely, even in this space, right? So what do you think, or do you think it's unlikely? And basically, if you look at the founders as a group, what set them apart from, you know, most people? Did anything set them apart? You know, honestly, my opinion is that what set them apart is that they were just early. I mean, yeah, frankly, I just feel like anybody who is involved in crypto at that time, they're all extremely wealthy. I just, I don't even know if you need to, like, have done anything that special.

Obviously, Gavin has really strong technical chops. There's no question. Like, even the people who dislike him in the book, which, you know, there's a fair number of those. They all would say, like, okay, he's brilliant and, like, a really strong coder. And, you know, even when they kind of didn't like if he was constantly trying to force his way, they would even admit, okay, you know, often he was right. Like, he had a lot of force aid.

He, you know, so they'll kind of, like, grudgingly admit, like, he's very strong technically. As for Charles, people, you know, they had more person. issues with him. According to them, he was constantly telling tall tales. Just, yeah, that's like a big theme around Charles in the book. As for whether or not he's technically strong, nobody really talked about that. So I can't really say, I will say, that now my sources tend to not think that Cardano is the most technically interesting blockchain, I will say, but. But I've, yeah, I will just say for the period of the book, the main themes that I heard around Charles really were about his tendency, were really around his tendency to embellish his stories and whether or not they're factually accurate is, it remains to be seen because I don't think anybody's seen any evidence that any of them were accurate. it. But yeah, my take is really, they were just early. So. And you have since been attacked pretty viciously from the Cardano community about the light that you portrayed Charles in, right?

So basically the pulling into question his credentials and basically painting him as highly manipulative. You know, the funny thing is actually they're only. So I don't even know if they're upset about the portrayal because I don't think they've read the book. So I don't know if they know what the portrayal is. They're just upset because I did a fact check on his education claims. And I just pointed out that his claims about his education don't match the school's records. And I consider the school like what we call an original source.

That's, I mean, I checked. It's not like I only checked Charles credentials. I checked everybody is because that's what fact checking is. you go to the original source. And, you know, there was another person whose education claims did not match the school's records. People can read the book to find out who that was. But, you know, since Charles tweeted at me that my book was a fiction and many people told me that Charles has told many fictions, I thought that was a little bit rich coming from him.

And then, you know, I had this evidence that the schools say he was an undergrad and dropped out from undergrad, even though he has told not only me but multiple other media outlets and tweeted that he dropped out from a PhD program. But I would love to fact check with any school that could verify that he was enrolled in getting a PhD from them. So, well, I think that remains to be seen. Very early on, he was also booted from Ethereum after someone had compiled this dossier about him with, kind of claims on his background or it doesn't really say in the book. Do you know what's in the dossier? Because I'm dying to find out. So I know what people say was in it, but I can't say that. People said that they did not have a copy of the dossier. I definitely obviously tried to

get a copy of it. But definitely either people are not willing to share it or they really still, they they really just don't have a copy. I kind of frankly find that hard to believe in the age of, you know, like Google Drive and whatever. Because even though these events were from 2014, in terms of like the internet, the internet was like well developed at that time. And so it just surprises me that they wouldn't have a copy of this. But, you know, people were like, I don't have it. I don't have it. I don't have it. So yeah, I can't, I can't even prove what what it said. I just know what they all say it said. So another big piece of, I guess, juicy gossip that came out with this book is revelations

about the Dow hacker. So the book doesn't actually name the Dow hacker, but on the day that the book came out, there's an article that was published in Forbes with some video and like, you know, this well-produced article identifying the hacker. Can you tell us? So at this point, you know, is it well established that this is the hacker? Has it been corroborated or is it still alleged? Has the hacker responded to your requests for interview?

Give us the kind of overview here. What's going on since this article came out? So I presented my evidence. My sources and I think that the evidence, is very strong and the community seems to have accepted it. People aren't pushing back. The person that I believe is the Tao attacker is somebody named Toby Honish, who was a co-founder of 10x, which had an ICO back during the height of the ICU craze. And he did send me a statement saying that he said, your statement and conclusion is factually inaccurate. And then he offered to provide me

more details. And when I asked for them, he did not respond. I asked for them multiple times. I very clearly gave him a deadline down to the hour in a specific time zone five different times, no response. And that was all for the book. And then when we did the Forbes article, we reached out again because the Forbes article has a lot more information than the book does. I can explain that in a moment. But again, no response to multiple emails with a very clear deadline. So I think the one statement of denial is probably, you know, what his statement is. And then just to explain why there's less information in the book than we released in the Forbes article, all of this happened very last minute, like very, very, very last minute.

So when you publish a book, you do what are called three final passes. And it takes place over the course of a few months, You know, the publishing house has it and they'll do things like legal and copy editing, proofreading, whatever. And then they make their changes and they pass it back to you. And then you kind of review the changes and like, you know, fix whatever kind of made things inaccurate or whatever it might be. And then it goes back to them.

Then they do another thing. And, you know, so anyway, so you do that three times. Okay. So I got new data that I wanted to explore more right before having to turn in the second pass. And I remember that my fact checker and I were like, what should we do? Because so just, you know, the state of the manuscript at that moment was that I had pursued an investigation that somebody at Poloniacs had started. And they had identified kind of like a group of people. And I followed everything through like, you know, what made them suspicious, like what actually was happening at those moments?

Like, what did those transactions mean? because they had kind of made certain assumptions or judgments about like what was happening with those transactions. But I tracked it all down and kind of figured out what was actually going on. And then I interviewed all those people and I included the information, you know, with my interviews in the book. And it was just going to be like a presentation, like kind of showing I did the homework. Like here's what the evidence is, but not making any conclusion. Just like here are the reasons why they came under suspicion. here's what they're saying, like, you know, whatever. And so there came this moment where, like I said, I had extra new data that I wanted to keep

like exploring, but I had to turn in the second pass. And my fact checker and I were like, what should we do? Should we tell them that we want to keep, you know, investigating this or what? And so I did. But of course, the publisher was like, no, no, no, no. They were like, no more time. Like, because actually at that point, we'd already delayed publishing the book once. So the publication date had already been pushed.

And I sent it on anyway to this other company that was working with, which was chain analysis. This, again, was another one of those moments where I was hounding them so much. I was like, chain analysis is never going to speak to me again. Because, you know, it was like, I sent like four or five emails with no response. And I was just like, oh, my God. Like, like, because they helped me so much with the book already. They had given me, like, detailed information on like the state of the Ethereum multisig at any given time or just like all kinds of things.

is like about all the different crowd sales and just I don't know just like tons and tons and tons of information so it's like oh my god I really did it now they're like never going to talk to me again but they did finally reach out and you know as you know I'm very grateful to them for this they claimed credit for demixing the wasabi transactions that the hacker had done to obscure the trail of their coins. And then they tracked the output to four different exchanges. And so this is a difficult part because, you know, exchanges have privacy policy. So you can't just call them up and be like, hey, like, whose name is on that account or, you know, whatever. However, I did manage to have one of the exchanges did confirm to a source what happened to those deposited funds.

and that was what led us to the identity of Toby Honish. But what I just want to say to fill in, you know, what I was explaining about why there's less information in the book. Once I did finally have an identity and it was like a really good one and, you know, this just seemed, it was definitely, yeah, I knew this was strong evidence and needed to be in the book. The publisher was like, okay, it's so late in the process that what you have to do, is you have to describe it all in the same number of words for the previous Dow section. So we're just going to take out what you wrote. And we're going to, like, you cannot go over this word count. And you're just going to slot that in because it will change too many things if you make it longer.

Like, for instance, they were saying, like, even the book jacket would, like, might be a different size or whatever if I added pages. So there were just things like that. And so then when, so they said, you should. should release the news. And also, frankly, book publishers, they're not used to releasing big news like that. And so that's why also the name isn't in the book. They were like, you should release it in a news outlet. It's just going to be so much easier because they're well equipped to do that. And we as a publisher are not because literally closing the book was like months before the publication date. So then that just ran all kinds of risks, like if that information was

in the book. And anyway, so that's why, yeah, it's, it came out in two places at once, basically. That's super interesting. Yeah, and I mean, there were actually several pieces of information that were, I mean, so basically, I mean, the identity, to me, it makes perfect sense. But I also didn't know that chain analysis can demix wasabi wallet transactions. Did you know that? I mean, that was not generally known, was it? No. So I did not know that.

And the funny thing is, I'm pretty sure this wasn't the first time they had done that kind of thing. and so, you know, there was a question of like, are they going to claim credit for it? Because if they didn't, then I would have to learn how to, or not learn how to, but like, so they did say, you can recreate this and we will tell you how. Like back when it wasn't clear whether they were going to claim credit, but then eventually since they did, that I feel made everything better because otherwise I kind of don't know how it would have gone down if it would. have been like, oh, by the way, I demix the transaction. Like, people might have been like, what the hell. You know what I'm saying? Like, it just might have gone down a little bit differently. So I'm very grateful to them for taking credit of that, for that step. Yeah. So that was, thankfully, it didn't end up being too much of a negotiation. I actually, you know, I'm not sure

what happened internally there that made them be like, this is a moment where we're going to reveal this. but I'm grateful that they did. How did it feel to reveal this information? I mean, because you're revealing something that's, like a critical point in Ethereum's history that nearly caused Ethereum to fall apart. But a fork happened as a result of this. Like, you know, it could have sparked like a lot of anger.

And so, you know, there's like a big responsibility to make these accusations. Yeah, what was your kind of reasoning behind it and how do you, you know, justify, like, making, making this person, you know, known? Well, so, I mean, I wouldn't have done it if I didn't feel extremely confident about the evidence. And, I mean, we can see from the response, like, people have been tweeting at me that I'm the goat. Like, that day when I released news, they were tweet, like, multiple people tweeted. did that at me. And there's been no push. Greatest of all time. Oh, okay. Yeah. And like people, there's been no pushback. Nobody's, you know, saying, oh, she's definitely wrong. She got this

wrong. You know, I think people recognize like, okay, the evidence that I have, you know, on the other side of these transactions, the cash outs, to get the identity, that that's all very strong. But then also, when you go back to the moment of the hack and you fill in, like, what was he doing at that time? Like, how closely was he involved? And, oh, like, he was very, you know, involved in the Dow. He was looking at the code. He identified some flaws in it. He reached out to the creators about it.

He then was blogging about it. Like, after the hack happened, he was tweeting things that were kind of, like, anti-phoric and pro keeping the hack, like, that kind of stuff. Like, it all just sort of fits, right? So I think because the evidence was so strong, That's why I felt confident about putting it out. And, you know, it's newsworthy. I mean, I'm a journalist.

That's like, that's what I do. I, so in that sense, and I got his response. I gave him like plenty of opportunity to have his side heard. He did give me just the one statement. So I feel like, you know, I had extremely strong evidence. I also felt that my process was unassailable. Like, nobody was going to say, like, you didn't do enough to get his response or, you know, whatever. Like, like, I mean, he had, I don't remember maybe, because, because, so I, I sent him, maybe I forget, like, let's say four emails or so to request the interview.

Then when I didn't get a response, I sent him multiple emails with the fact checking. Like maybe I'd have to actually look. Maybe it's like another four or five. Then when the Forbes article came out, and again, another round of emails, like, you know, there were like dozens of opportunities for him to have his side presented. And so I just feel like, yeah, in every respect, I didn't really have any qualms about revealing the name. What were the reactions from people close to him? I mean, people like Julian Hussp, the CEO of 10x or the whitehead hackers or the Sloket people. What was their reaction?

So the Sloket crew, so Christoph and Lov and Leverest definitely remembered him. Leverteris, even before, so I just kind of like asked him a little bit about this person before mentioning like, you know, why. And his first response was, oh, God, I hated that guy. Like, you know, just kind of this like massive groan sort of like, oh, he's. He was so annoying. He, like, kept reaching out to us about these problems, but they weren't, like, urgent problems.

And, you know, he, like, seemed to think that he, like, it was super important. And so Lifteras kind of just, yeah, found him a little bit annoying. But then once he found out, he was like, oh, wow. He said, you know, he had every opportunity to set this right, because there was a month after the hack when the money was kind of trapped and he could have, like, returned it. or he could have just set things straight. And he didn't. And so left Harris was like, wow, that makes me really feel that actually this is kind of like a bad person.

You know, because they had plenty of opportunity to rectify things. And then Griff, you know, pointed out, oh, he totally screwed this up because if he had instead saved the money, sort of like the Sam son of 2016, you know, kind of like, you know, the way Sam right now will. always identify vulnerabilities and then like rescue the money before telling the community what happened. Like, so Griff said that, oh, if he had done that, then he would have an amazing reputation. But now because he didn't, he definitely doesn't have a good reputation. And Griff was like, oh, reputation is way more valuable than money. And, you know, and the hacker hasn't been able to really do anything without money. There's a hundred million dollars worth of ETC

that is just trapped, you know, if he were to try to cash it out, like people would know what that money was, that was stolen money. And then as for, wait, I'm sorry, so you asked me about the Sluck of Creators and the reaction from, oh, Julian Hoss. Yeah, so that was funny because when I went to write my, finish that section of my book, I really debated whether or not to reach out to Julian. But, you know, I saw that they had been co-founder. at the time of the hack.

And so I didn't know, was he in on it? Was he not? And I knew that they weren't talking now. But I didn't know if saying anything to Julian would, like, cause, you know, because already I ran the risk of Toby himself doing something between when I finished the book and when the book came out, right? Because, you know, I had to do all the fact checking with him. But then I was just like, oh, Julian's a much more out there person with, like, all his videos

and whatever. And so I just was nervous about, like, also doing something that would alert him if he had in on it or whatever because then it just creates an extra wildcard element. So I didn't reach out to him until the Forbes article came out. And then hilariously, we ended up having a three-hour phone call because the first two hours, I literally spent the whole time kind of casing him, like trying to figure out, was he in on it? Was he not? Like, does he know? Does he not? And then I kind of sort of satisfied. Like, he clearly doesn't know. But, you know, I still asked in a way where if that were the case, then I, you know, would know that. But no, he would. He would. He would,

was absolutely floored. He was just like, wait, what? He, you know, he kind of didn't believe me, frankly. And then he checked a bunch of his emails. And then he said, oh, actually, I came across this. This is kind of interesting. And then he did say, you know, actually, the funny thing is, I remember at the time of the hack, when I asked him about it, that he seemed to have more information about it than anything I'd found online. So it was like pretty funny. But anyway, yeah. Basically, he definitely was shocked. He didn't know. And yeah, frankly now, because they're not on good terms,

I actually think he is, like, very happy about the information. So in the book, you talk about the Ethereum Shadow Government. And I thought this was the, you know, perhaps the most, like, the juiciest part of the book after the Dow hack. It has a different taste to it than the revelations of my own. what the heck. So yeah, what is the Ethereum shadow government and who's a part of it? And what does it do? So a lot of people who were working in Ethereum at that time, kind of late 2017, early 2018, felt that some of the organizational issues in the Ethereum Foundation had to do with the fact that there were

a number of people who did not have official roles at the Ethereum Foundation, but had a lot of influence and could kind of like change decisions and frankly just affect the direction of the EF, even though they sort of worked in the shadows, as it were. And so the main, there's really one main person that they talked about the most, who was somebody named Thomas Greco, who started off as, I believe he was an advisor to Omizago, and maybe at some point was even, I forget, I, I don't, sorry, I didn't brush up on all the details about this, but, you know, he was involved, basically, in the crypto world in different ways. But he essentially just became kind of like a close friend and confident of Vatolix. And since he did not have an official role of foundation, but was

kind of hanging out with Vitolic all the time, and people said that he kind of like managed Votelic's schedule and sort of, in that sense, like, vetted who Vatelic was interacting with and things like that, that just gave him a lot of power. And they would say things like that. because so for instance I asked one of them oh well why if he didn't have an official role at the foundation then how did he have so much power at the foundation and this person said you know that sounds like such a logical and good question however it was just this thing where he was just a part of it and he was just there and you don't question it and he this person said it's sort of of like when there's Trump, there's going to be Jared Kushner. And you can't, you can't,

you know, kind of point out like, what is this person doing here? And so it was, you know, and then I had other people say like, oh, when I first started working at the EF in my first week, like somebody who was working on DevCon, what, DevCon 4, I guess, said, oh, you know, I was on the event planning team. we had decided on Copenhagen as the city for the conference. And we had a blog post ready to go. We had booked the venue. Like, everything was all ready.

And the night before we were going to announce the city that we had chosen, it got scratched. And I later heard people whispering, oh, it was Thomas. And so this person kind of got this impression of this person being this, like, invisible puppet master and thought, oh, you know, he must have a lot of weight to do something like that if, you know, the blog post is all ready to go, the venues books, like, you know, all that. And so, yeah, just there were like a lot of stories like that or even things like, you know, there would be kind of momentous events happening. And even people, people would even be scared or nervous to mention that he or this other close friend of his that people also kind of talked about. Wendell Holmes, they would be kind of scared or nervous to even mention that they were there, even if they weren't doing anything, but they just happened to be there when this big event

happened. They would be scared to mention that to me. So it was just, you know, or even like when I asked Vitalik about it, he whistled. When I mentioned Thomas's name, he whistled in the interview, like this kind of like, oh, you know, oh, she kind of like is asked me about this sort of secretive person thing, you know, whatever. It was just, I don't know. So there was just a lot of people acted very strange about the whole thing, frankly. But a lot of people said like, oh, they make me uncomfortable or, you know, I don't like how, you know, they sort of work, yeah, in the shadowy way. But it's just, you know,

like they were saying for a blockchain project where transparency is supposed to be one of the values, like this goes against that. And so I think, you know, that's part of the reason why people talk to me about this. Yeah, I mean, so like I think anybody who's been at blockchain conferences or like DefCon or whatever, you know, has noted, have noticed, uh, uh, uh, Ethereum, um, italics entourage. And like Thomas definitely has been part of the entourage like for, for a while. I don't know if, you know, if you still is now. And there's other people. So like Wendell Davis, uh, also in Joseph Poon. Wendell Davis, not Holmes. Wendell Holmes is like a judge.

You know, maybe as I was reading this, I thought, oh, like, this is, this is kind of interesting and juicy. But like another way to frame this would be that, you know, these are close friends of Vitalics. Maybe they share, you know, they share as like similar worldviews. And, you know, Vitalik, you know, as you mentioned earlier, like being as young as he was and I think perhaps at that time having to deal with a lot of, a lot of issues. with the foundation and, you know, the management of the foundation, you know, perhaps found some comfort in, you know, people that were able to, like, spoke to him on his wavelength and were able to give him advice about this thing that, like, had made a bunch of people millionaires. And, like, we're making it, like, you know, totally changing people's lives. I don't know. I looked at it as

more of, yeah, sure, perhaps they had some influence and maybe some people felt that that influence was, you know, unwarranted or, you know, wasn't, you know, shouldn't have been so powerful. But I don't know. I kind of always thought that these were just like people that he placed a lot of trust in. And, you know, we all have those people in our lives. Yeah. We're just not all running, you know, multi-billion dollar blockchains. Yeah, I'm sure that from Vitalik side, that's what it felt like.

And that's why that was happening that, you know, I mean, as you read in the book, he definitely had an issue early on where a lot of people that he shouldn't have been trusting were kind of, you know, exerting a lot of influence and, and, yeah, just kind of having a lot of sway in Ethereum. And so I'm sure that was sort of one of his methods later on for kind of learning how to deal with that, sort of shielding him from a lot of people and just having certain trusted advisors. So that part about the Shatter government is definitely from the people on the outside who felt like, oh, this caused a lot of problems for the foundation and for them. But yeah, I think you're right. And I think I make it clear that the reason at the end that he finally feels he has a close group of friends is because of people like that.

So, yeah, I think it's both. I think from Fatalic side, that's what it is. from other people's side on the outside, like, yeah, they're like, this is not appropriate for a foundation. Yeah, I mean, when I read that section of the book, I was like, oh, yeah, Thomas Greco, that's the name I haven't heard in a long time. And it did really bring back memories of, you know, the time that O'Mezygo was so dominant in the ecosystem, you know, other different plasmas.

And basically it kind of, it just, they faded out. And I hadn't thought about them in at least two years or something. So it's crazy how things change. Yeah, I think he's kind of out of crypto now as far as I understand. Because I tried to reach out to him, of course. But he's very difficult to Google because, I mean, obviously, Thomas Greco is probably not a real name. So, I mean, yeah, I actually tried and I failed. But then I'm also not a professional fact checker.

Yeah, the other thing about these people is just want to mention, like, so like Thomas and Wendell is that they're, you know, I know, I know. Wendell a little bit. And like he's like super privacy like privacy minded. Like I once I once you know, talk to him. I think it was in progress something. And I was like I was trying to meet with him and you know, he doesn't have a phone or he only uses encrypted email. And I think what he said to me was like I just walk around life living like it's the 80s. Right. So if like I have to meet someone, we give a meeting point and we meet there. And if you're not there, then it's like too bad, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I also try to reach out to Wendell.

I did not manage to get through to him. Or if I did, he didn't respond. Yeah. Mind all if you're out there, I'd love to chat sometimes to reach out. If you zoom out now. So obviously, we kind of know that kind of things took a turn for the better. And basically the Ethereum Foundation is now a lot cleaner than it used to be. But if you look at the mess that the first couple of years were with Ming, who I will spoil this now, who was the other person who,

misrepresented her educational credentials. And, I mean, she was, I mean, she was clearly incompetent and at least incompetent. I'm not, I'm not going to go as far as kind of attributing malicious intent to her. But, I mean, clearly she was not a good person to run the foundation. what do you think we would be at a different point now had the foundation early on been more together? Because I mean now basically it's I totally see how it was a disadvantage years ago. I mean the constant insecurity and funding and yeah. So basically I mean obviously that was a complete mess.

But now arguably it's quite good for the Ethereum ecosystem that there's no one central force at the center of it, right? Yeah. So one thing actually that I don't know if I totally agree with you on is when you said that she was totally incompetent. Definitely people credited her with cutting the budget early on, which is what kind of helped them live through that period when it like lean times. But for sure, I think her usefulness was pretty limited, maybe to just a certain time period, because I do think that the problems with her began to outweigh whatever benefit she was bringing, like, pretty quickly. But, you know, it's so hard to run the experiment again in my head of, you know, what would it be like if there had been a more competent executive director. You know, one thing I will say is that, like, again, it goes back to Vitolik's judgment around people.

You know, he kind of quickly distrusted this, like, professional board that they had hired. But, you know, I've spoken to those people. And actually, I think their hearts were in a good place. And I think that they probably were pretty smart and actually competent. And they sort of identified some of the problems. But, you know, for whatever reason, Vitolic didn't trust them. Part of it, frankly, was that Ming was sewing seeds of doubt about. them in his ear, you know, which they sort of suspected, but then actually Vatelic, you know, said to

me like, oh, yeah, you know, she was telling me, blah, blah, blah. So he confirmed that. But, you know, whether or not Ethereum would be even more dominant now than it is. I mean, that's that, you know, like people haven't asked me in these interviews if I think that all this stuff that I uncovered detracts from Ethereum in any way. And like, personally, I don't. I feel like, okay, clearly it succeeded, despite all this. the drama and the messiness and whatever, you know, do I think that because all this happened that it means like Ethereum won't be successful or isn't successful? Like, no, I mean, it's definitely successful. There's no question. You know, when you see that electric capital

report that they issue every year and it's like Ethereum far away has the most developers. It's something like 4X, the number of the second largest ecosystem. They're bringing in 20% of all new developers to crypto every month. I mean, like, no other blockchain can claim that, not even Bitcoin. And Bitcoin, obviously, just the asset itself is, like, so much more successful even than Ethereum and has, like, you know, greater brand recognition and liquidity and whatever. But still, despite all that, the developer activity in Ethereum just, like, blows every other crypto out of the water. So, no, I don't actually think that any of this that I uncovered means anything negative about the technology itself, frankly.

That's just my opinion. So how important do you feel Vitalik is now to kind of the direction, setting the direction and setting vision for Ethereum? Like, you know, through your reporting, how has his role evolved and like, what is it now? And I think one of the things I was wondering when reading this is, well, one, I'd love to have at some point, like, someone write a biography. a Vitalik Bueyter in biography. But, you know, what, what's his, where do you think he's at, like, in his life right now?

Like, you know, where does he want to go? Yeah, it's kind of a nebulous question, but like, is he good? Yeah. Yeah, I haven't reported on this latest period. But just from random things that he said, I think that he's kind of struggling a little bit with this level of fame that he's, has now. You know, I think that that's probably a little bit challenging for somebody with his personality in particular. You know, I mean, his heart really is in more like the research and that kind of thing. And so to have people come up to him on the street and want a photo or to, you know,

kind of, I mean, you know, he's famous. So he just gets a lot of human interaction that he probably isn't too excited about. I think he, you know, he's, here's the thing about Vitalik. Like, despite all his like social awkwardness, whatever, like, he's, he's a pretty mature person. You know what I mean? Like, some of the other co-founders, even though they're older and they were able to manipulate him at that young age, there's something about them where, because of sort of how greedy they are and, like, self-interested, there's something that just, seems less mature about them. Whereas Vatalic, okay, yeah, he didn't maybe have all the interpersonal skills at that young age, but he had sort of a level of wisdom about, you know,

what should the purpose of this blockchain be, like, kind of an understanding of, like, how it could be used in a very idealistic way to benefit a great number of people and not just himself. And that really is like a more wise and, yeah, it's just like a more mature perspective than some of the other people that were like, oh, like, I'm going to. to make a lot of money off this, you know, which was the perspective of, frankly, like, older people than him that were some of the co-founders. So, you know, I do think that, yeah, he's grown in that interpersonal way. But, yeah, he, like, there's something about him. He's just, I feel like probably in his heart, he's more like a monk in a researcher, like a scientist,

than he is, yeah, you know, this person who feels comfortable with this level of fame. But, you know, I can't claim to have reported a lot on his current life or anything like that. We were just interacting a lot during that period. But, you know, for sure, I would say that even just for the years that I covered, 2013 to 2018, he changed so much in that time. And people will read about it in the book. And I'm just certain that he's even more mature now. Yeah.

Having interviewed him a few times and interacted with him over the years, I think like that's, the thing that I've always been so impressed with is that this guy who's like, I don't know, 10 or 12 years younger than me and yeah, has a level of maturity that, you know, I've like rarely seen in people that age. And, and just also the, the amount of change that he's gone through in terms of, you know, like his social, social interactions, being comfortable in situations and, like, that perhaps are, you know, very difficult for him. And he's just like, he's such a, He has a way of expressing himself that is so clear and that is rare. And yeah.

Yeah. So let me actually just say one additional thing about his level of maturity, which is that most people, if they became that successful and famous, they would become kind of arrogant. They would let some of it go to their head. Vitalik remains like a humble person. Super humble. Yeah. And his heart is in the right place. He's just, that's what I mean when I say that.

He has a certain level of maturity, like, despite all the issues with, like, his inability to, you know, kind of, yeah, assert himself with interpersonal relationships. He just has this, like, other level of wisdom. Like, yeah, okay, maybe it doesn't apply in social situations. But, like, the core of his being, I feel like is definitely more mature and evolved than, like I said, these other co-founders that were a lot older than he was. So this is the part of the credits where, you know, the part of the, you know, the part of the show where you roll the credits and it's like at the end of the documentary or at the end of the thing where you have like all the names of the people like what they're doing now. So yeah, what's like where are, you know, people like Stefan Tuol and Anthony Dioreo and

and Ming and, you know, some of the characters that have kind of faded out of the space a little bit. So Anthony announced that he was leaving crypto last summer. This happened roughly a month after we finished the fact-checking for the book. And you probably read in the book, he didn't react very well to finding out kind of what people were saying about him. I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not. He said he's going to focus on philanthropic things. And Ming, I'm not sure. She obviously was fired slash left the Ethereum Foundation.

And her LinkedIn just says she's the former executive director of the Ethereum Foundation. And I had minimal interaction with her. She only emailed me once just to say that that time was not a good time for the interview. But even though I continue to email her for more than a year requesting an interview, I didn't get a response except for one response that people will read about in the book, which was kind of crazy. But anyway, so who else did you ask me about? There was someone else.

Oh, Stefan Tuol. He is working on another venture, which I'm just blinking on the name of it. I feel like it has something to do with film or I don't remember. It's not in crypto. I do know that. But, you know, I think he's, yeah, just kind of moved on and is doing other things. I do know he's also had kind of, you know, just. other things that have kind of had to take a big focus in his life.

And so I think for a while he wasn't too focused on work. But, yeah, I mean, there's, you know, one other person I just want to mention is Jeff Wilka or Jeff Wilkie, we would say in English, who created the Go Ethereum client. He was one of the three original coders, him, Gavin and Jeff, you know, architected Ethereum. And he left crypto, I chronicled that in the book. and he's working on some like new game with his brother. And I think he's frankly, yeah, I don't think he pays attention to crypto at all anymore, which is kind of fascinating.

So, but yeah, there's a lot of, yeah, there's too many characters. There was also this list of like ICOs at some point that you mentioned in the book. It's like Civic and Block Mason and Ether Party and all these things. None of these things exist anymore except maybe for Civic. It's quite telling about how fast things move in the space. Yeah. No, the whole thing at the end with the ICOs was, I mean, we all lived through that, right? And it was kind of hard to capture in the book.

The only way I could do it was through Taylor Monaghan because since she was at my ether well, she was sort of in the middle of it. But like to jump from each one of them, it would have been too confusing for people. But yeah, I almost feel like it is just too hard to kind of cap. the enormity of it. I tried my best, but yeah, that's just like this crazy phase where, yeah, it all just sort of blows up. But it's really hard to capture through like a personal story. Yeah, I mean, even as someone who kind of lived through it, it seems surreal now. So, Laura, I mean, now that you've kind of birthed this book, what's next for you? So, I mean, I mean, you said earlier that You had a year where you had five social outings and two were for getting the vaccine.

So I assume this has changed again. I hope this has changed again. I mean, kind of. Let's just say, ever since the book came out, I have been so busy in a way that I did not anticipate. I get just a flood of emails and messages and requests. And I definitely need to hire more people. It's definitely getting like I just cannot keep up right now. But in terms of what I'm working on, I do have something cool, but I am not ready to announce it yet.

I'm very excited to announce it though because I think it'll be fun. I think people will really like it. And let's just say that working on this book was the most fun I ever had professionally. So I will definitely be doing another book. I just loved doing it so much. But in general, this kind of, this kind of storytelling, you know, where you can kind of like really dive into the story into the people, into, you know, just like, yeah, telling it like a story. That is so fun for me. I love it.

So I will be doing more of that in various mediums. Let's just put it that way. And, yeah, I will keep you all posted on my Twitter, my newsletter, you know, et cetera, et cetera. I would love to, I would love for you to do a book about like, like, cosmos and the implosion of tendermint and all the drama that happened there. Oh, okay. That's my personal preference. I will have to look into that.

Yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, it's really great to have you on finally. And yeah, good luck with everything. And we'll keep following your podcast and you're a great work. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me on the show. Thank you for making the time.

Oh, yeah. This is incredibly fun. I just really enjoyed chatting with you both. Thank you for joining us on this week's episode. We release new episodes every week. You can find and subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you have a Google Home or Alexa device,

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