The Pomp Podcast - #513: JP Richardson on Exiting The Traditional Financial System

Episode Date: March 16, 2021

JP Richardson is the founder and CEO of Exodus, one of the most popular crypto applications and blockchain wallets.  In this conversation, we discuss distrust in institutions, defi maturation, improving user experiences, the Exodus product suite, and their recent tokenized shares and fundraise.  ======================= Public Rec is the first to bring tailored sizing to leisurewear so that you don’t have to choose between comfort and style. They make leisurewear in waist and inseam sizes because they believe comfort starts with a better fit. And when things fit better, they look better. No tailors. No settling. No stress. Comfort and style, all in one. Check out publicrec.com/pomp and use POMP10 at checkout for 10% off your order. Step into a better fit today with Public Rec. ======================= As one of the largest and oldest Bitcoin exchanges in the world, Kraken is consistently named one of the best places to buy and sell crypto online, thanks to our excellent service, low fees, versatile funding options and rigorous security standards -- but this is only part of the story. We’ve been on the forefront of the blockchain revolution since 2011: http://www.kraken.com ======================= Coinbase Wallets are adding support for .crypto and .zil domains through their partnership with Unstoppable Domains. Unstoppable Domains provides an all-in-one solution for blockchain domains. You can send money using these new domains instead of long Bitcoin wallet addresses, while also storing your domain in Coinbase's collectibles section. Go to unstoppabledomains.com in the dapp browser to register and manage your domains.

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. J.P. Richardson is the founder and CEO of Exodus, one of the most popular crypto applications in blockchain wallets. In this conversation, we discuss distrust in institutions, DeFi maturation, improving user experiences, the Exodus product suite, and their recent tokenized shares and fundraise. I really enjoyed this conversation with JP and I hope you do as well. Before we get into the episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Public Rec. They're the first company to bring tailored sizing to leisure wear so that

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Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. Got JP here with me. Thank you so much for doing this, man. Hey, thanks a lot, Pat, for having me on. Absolutely. I'm super excited to go over all this stuff. Let's just start with your background.

before you ever knew what Bitcoin cryptocurrencies were? Where were you born? Where'd you grow up and kind of what'd you do? Yes, let me just start with our name, Exodus. I think it's really important for the listeners is that our name, Exodus, is an escape from the traditional financial system. And the reason that that is so important

is because money, the most important commodity, is controlled by centralized institutions. And so we felt the need to build software to empower people to control their own wealth. And to date, we have a million customers and we're on track to do $100 million in revenue this year. And if you contrast that to where I was in 2015, I was broke. I only had a few thousand dollars in my checking account. There's kind of a little funny story surrounding this, that I had this old shitty Toyota Camry.

Her name was Goldie, and she was sitting outside the front of my house. And the car got hit twice in the same day. And the insurance company didn't love Goldie as much as I love Goldie. And I was fortunate enough that that money that the insurance company paid out gave me a little bit of fuel to survive, to actually raise money for Exodus. But before all that, my background is I'm a software engineer, born and raised in Nebraska. And, you know, I witnessed what happened with the financial crisis and, you know, in the transition there and then into Mt. Gox and the failures with Mt. Gox and how it was difficult to use. And it wasn't safe or secure. And so this is kind of the origin of how this all got started.

Yeah. And so let's talk a little bit about kind of growing up in the Midwest. Most people who listen to this are going to be either international or live on one of the coasts. But when you think about the Midwest kind of childhood, what were some of the things that stick out to you as advantages having grown up there? Yeah. So the Midwest is really known for having a strong work ethic. And that's how a lot of people around here are. People work really hard. But we knew that to build a company that has a decentralized future, that we were going to have to build a company that is 100% remote and pays salaries 100% in Bitcoin. And that was one of our secret weapons early on is that we were allowed, we were able to, despite the fact that my co-founder, Daniel, who is the design guru early on, he's got design experiences from Disney, Apple, BMW, Nike, and Louis Vuitton, to name a few. And knowing that early on that we wanted to build a tech company quickly. And so we're like, let's pay salaries in Bitcoin and 100% of the salaries and we could recruit from all over the world. And that's how we got started.

And that's how we were able to move so quickly. Yeah. And so what was the original impetus for Exodus? What was the idea? How did you come up with it? And how did you get started? Yeah. So with watching, again, with like Mt. Gox and how difficult it was to use and knowing

that it's not safe because of the hacks. And then seeing that the biggest companies, Coinbase, Binance, they're all centralized. And we see a future where it's completely decentralized. And so that's where this really started. I actually built a Bitcoin wallet called Coinbolt. And it was in the early days back in 2014, I quit my day job at a biotech company. And I was pitching Coinbolt. And somebody told me that it looked like basically a five-year-old designed it. And I knew that I needed to improve my design abilities. And again, that's when I met Daniel. And he had that same shared ethos of let's build something that people can control their own wealth. And we did something different because Coinbolt was originally just on the mobile phone. And we thought, well, let's actually build Exodus. We know that people love to manage a portfolio of cryptocurrency. People love to trade cryptocurrency. Let's build it on the desktop.

because in this moment in time, about 2015 is when most people were trading on the desktop. And so that's where we got started. Our first investor, Eric Voorhees, a lot of people don't know this at this moment in time, but they've been in Denver, Colorado, which is right next to Nebraska. And it's about a seven or eight hour drive. So my co-founder, Daniel and I, we would get in the car, we would drive out to Denver and we would sit with Eric and then we drive back in the same day because we didn't have the money to stay in a hotel. And so that's how we got started here. I love it. And so when you started, you guys wanted to build this desktop wallet. What did you build for? Was it just Bitcoin? Was it for kind of all different types

of assets? How were you thinking about it? So the early version was just Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin. And that's it. And then because that's really all there. I mean, there was a few other ones like name coin and maybe just a few other ones uh but i remember one when dash was released dash was started to become popular and then of course ethereum that was one of the biggest so we brought in ethereum and dash real quickly and those were the two assets in 2017 it was actually february of 2017 it was just daniel myself and then a couple other engineers And we made $3,000 that month, February 2017. We're like, we might have a business.

But it was then March of 2017 where we made $70,000 and we're like, oh, yeah, we got a business. And it was because of people's interest in Dash and Ethereum. Yeah. And when you think through kind of the product suite today, So you go from kind of a single wallet type functionality on desktop that supports three or four different cryptocurrencies to today, you've got an entire ecosystem that you're building out. Walk us through kind of that product suite and what users can do with the product. Yeah, so desktop was where it all started. It's just simply to send, receive, and exchange cryptocurrency. And of course, early on, as you would expect, we got so much demand for a mobile app.

And we knew we would always build a mobile app, but we thought, let's build desktop as a stable base because that's where people are trading. But over time, after we stabilized the backend infrastructure, we got to the 2017 bull run, we stabilized the infrastructure. We knew that we had to bring in additional features. And two of the biggest ones is, first of all, we brought in Tracer support. We knew that there were a lot of people out there that wanted to secure their cryptocurrency in a way where they didn't have a worry and they were very comfortable with a hardware wallet. So we brought in Tracer support. And then around that same time, we also released the mobile app. And so this way allows people to view their portfolio on the go. And today, the product suite has really evolved out into, we've started thinking about how can we make it easy for people to buy cryptocurrency.

And so we introduced Apple Pay support inside the mobile wallet. And so a person can download Exodus on the iPhone, and then they can have Bitcoin in their wallet in less than two minutes. And so that's a very big popular feature for people. And then in addition to that, there's a lot of small things that people aren't thinking about that we brought into Exodus that are really useful once people start using it. So a recent feature that was introduced is the notion of having multiple portfolios on the desktop and then actually have it magically sync with the mobile. And you can name a portfolio on the desktop and it magically shows up with the same name

on the mobile and desktop. And so that's kind of what we brought in. And beyond that, we really are passionate about eventually making DeFi easy to use. That's going to be really important for the ecosystem, you know, making NFTs easy. I mean, NFTs are really hot and popular right now, but it's so on all these different websites

and still with the Ethereum gas fees, it's still, there's a lot of complications. That's how we're thinking about making DeFi easy to use. So, JP, one of the things I want to talk about is you have kind of three core ideas, kind of as you guys keep pushing forward. And one of them is that there's going to be continued distrust in these centralized institutions. Maybe help us understand kind of what you mean by that and how you see that playing out. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, if you go back to the 2008 financial crisis, you had a majority of Americans saying, let them fail, let them fail.

And both political parties went against the American populists and were in support of bailouts for these banks. And so I think that's where the origin really started. And then if you look at the presidential election of 2016 and the presidential election of 2020, doesn't matter which side you're on, either side thought the other side stole the election. And so now you have a majority of people in America who are starting to think, is the electoral process in favor of me as an American? I just saw a statistic yesterday. It said the first time more than 50 percent of people identify as independent, not either party. And so then if we look at kind of what happened with with AWS and some of the issues with Parler and if we look at Robin Hood and GameStop, I mean, that was the most recent one where people were just like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me that Robin Hood is doing this? And so I think these sorts of things are going to continue. And it's only going to cause more distrust for people.

And not to mention that the biggest and most obvious one is the Federal Reserve saying, hey, we're going to print $1.9 trillion, whether you like it or not. And so people are starting to look for alternatives and rightfully so. Yeah. And it feels like a lot of the centralized entities, part of the problem is that they are human led. There's emotion, there's greed, there's fear, there's just mismanagement. And so in a lot of these decentralized products, what you get is you just get algorithmic governance, right? Or you get true governance by the people. And it feels like that's just a solution that people are getting more and more comfortable with. Absolutely. Yeah, I completely agree with that. With the rise of DeFi right now, it's still very complicated, but there's so much interest in these systems and protocols because of the promise that they offer. If we take a look at, you know, like the lending platforms, whether it's Compound or Aave, you know, these things, you know, taking a loan out on the blockchain is really cool. It's just difficult to use today. Yeah. And then when you start to think through kind of DeFi in general, I know another theme that you're really focused on is the idea that more and more people are going to flock to decentralized financial applications. Sounds like you're probably less religious about where

exactly that's going to happen from the kind of the tribal wars of different blockchains, but more so just like decentralized financial applications will be the standard. They will become more popular over time. And so you at Exodus want to figure out how to kind of serve as an interface and a connectivity point to wherever the market adopts those applications? That's exactly right. So this last summer, we had an integration with Compound Finance and then SportX. A lot of people haven't heard the name SportX, but it's a really cool decentralized betting platform, sports betting platform. And so we had integrations with both these platforms and they're both built on Ethereum. And so we all know what's happened

with Ethereum and the rise of the gas prices. And it started to make, if you're going to put a $40 or $50 bet down on a game and you've got to pay $30 or $40 on gas fees, you're just not going to do it. And so for us, we don't have a horse in the race, whether it's Ethereum or some other blockchain, but we just want a blockchain that people find useful and it's cost efficient and it just works for the average person. Yeah. One of the things that really stands out about your product. And I know it's a third focus for you is the user experience, right, with the user interface. It's absolutely gorgeous. And I think that it rivals what people would expect in a non-crypto product, right? So if you had a consumer product in the traditional world that you looked

at, you said, wow, that's really pretty. I really like the way that it's so intuitive and the way that it just works. It seems like you guys have been able to take the best of that design world and bring it into crypto and the Bitcoin ecosystem, where frankly, a lot of the design leaves a lot to be desired in many cases. Absolutely. So everything that we do, we do with the product and customer experience in mind. In fact, there's a little story here that kind of represents this. We call this the bar test or the pub test. And I remember back in, it was I think around 2017 or so, a friend asked me like, hey, JP, I want to get into cryptocurrency. Which wallet should I use? And so at this moment in time, we didn't have a mobile wallet, but we're sitting

in a bar and we're having some drinks. And I'm like, okay, let's start downloading mobile. So we started going one by one through all of them. And all of them required a major ceremony at the beginning to get started, write down your 12 word phrase and do all kinds of things that a person in a bar shouldn't have to do. And so we're thinking like, okay, let's think about the product experience. Let's think about the customer experience. How can we get a person to get started as soon as possible? And how beyond that, how does a person feel when they use the product? And that's what we call emotionally driven design. When we think about feelings, how a person feels when they use the product. And you can see that everywhere in the product. Absolutely. And so when

you start thinking through that product iteration moving forward, what are the things that you want to add to it or improve over time? Yeah. So one of the things that we've done recently is that we This was just announced on Friday. We filed with the SEC so that we could offer our common stock on the blockchain directly inside of Exodus. And so this allows a person to download Exodus, share in our success and use and buy our stock only with cryptocurrency, whether it's Bitcoin, Ethereum or USDC and do this all within Exodus. And so why this is so cool is that we'll show the world that this works well. I mean, if you look at like the old ICO crowdfunding days, like EOS raised $4 billion on a website, right? And so if we can do this in an app that already has, you know, presumably billions of dollars in it, then we should be able to be really successful. And then other companies can come inside and do a crowdfunding option right inside of Exodus. And then everybody can trade their stock. We're going to do an integration with T-Zero and merge.

And this will allow us to effectively have a global IPO throughout the course of 2021. Yeah. And so talk to a little bit more about this, right? You have a business that was quite attractive through 2020. This year, you're on track to do about $100 million in revenue. I'm assuming that there will be profit there off of that. And you're choosing to basically go to your user base and say, hey, you as users, you should invest rather than go to traditional venture capitalists. And so walk through kind of the logic as to why go to the user base, kind of what the philosophical belief that you have as to not go to a venture capitalist and kind of just turn to the community. Yeah. So venture capital, it's a fine way to raise money. But in reality, it's only reserved for the privileged few who are accredited investors or venture capitalists. And so we wanted to create a future where anyone can participate, whether you're a credit investor or not a credit investor.

And beyond that, we see a world where a situation like what happened with Robinhood and GameStop, we see a world where that can't happen. If you have stock in an application and you're not happy with how that application is working, you can just take your stock and go to another platform. Much like how crypto works today, we want to bring that same world to the world of securities and exchanges. Now, we understand it's going to be difficult because there are so much regulations surrounding here and we have to follow all the regulations. But we believe by working with our partners, we can build a system and where it's on smart contracts on the blockchain and we can give the same benefits for customers to have that control. Got it. And so when you start to think through kind of implications of this, right, obviously, one, it provides a lot more access to both accredited and non-accredited investors. but will every company go do this? Is there some obstacle or barrier

that makes it hard for them to do it? Like, how do you just think of other companies and whether they should pursue this? Yeah, so in the 2012 JOBS Act, there are two provisions that make this really lucrative for companies. So one of them is the Regulation A plus offering. That's what we're doing.

It's a little more of an involved process and it costs about a million dollars or so, give or take, to actually make this a reality. And there's also the Regulation CF process that allows smaller companies to get started even sooner, and it's much cheaper. Now, the Regulation A process allows a company to raise up to $75 million, and the Regulation CF process allows a company to raise up to $5 million through pure crowdfunding. So we see a world where a lot of companies are going to start doing this. And so when you look at this, the Regulation A-plus allows $75 million. It's accredited and non-accredited investors, but there's a couple of maybe kind of safeguards, if you will, put on these investors. Talk through for those that are listening that may be interested, what exactly are the kind of requirements or safeguards for those two investor types? Yeah. So as a person would expect for accredited investors, an accredited investor can invest as much as they want.

Now, the SEC or non-accredited investors has said that they have a maximum, non-accredited investors are allowed only to invest a maximum of 10% of their net worth or 10% of their income. And so that's one of the safeguards that the SEC has put in place. Amazing. And so as we kind of continue to see this, talk about the tokenization of the shares as well, right? Because one piece of this is, hey, I'm going to use existing regulations that are in place and I'm going to use it to my advantage. I'm going to go out, I'm going to raise capital. But now what you're talking about is you're basically talking about on the back end tokenizing the shares rather than having them done kind of the more traditional way. What is the advantage to you to do this and what's the advantage to the investor? Yeah. So the advantage to the investor, again, for the future is control and that in having those stocks to actually not have to worry if the system goes down, can take the stocks and go anywhere else.

It doesn't exist right this moment, but that's an advantage in the future. In the short term, one of the other big advantages is transparency. So the cap table becomes completely transparent, at least in how it's distributed amongst people. But one of the things that we're facing with tokenizing on the blockchain is that we were originally looking at Ethereum and we were settled with Ethereum. And then we just found out a couple of weeks ago that it was going to cost up to $9 million to issue our stock on Ethereum. And that's due to the high gas prices. And so we're currently shopping around for other blockchains to do this. Yeah. And so when you think about kind of the tokenization component, are there issues there on the regulatory front or still obstacles and complexities that you need to work through? Or is it pretty straightforward in terms of how regulators think about this and kind of what they'll allow and they won't allow?

Yeah, there are definitely obstacles, but we're working with a great partner over at Securitize. And what they've done is they are a registered transfer agent within license with the SEC. So that means that they have the ability to do this and they have blend through a world of smart contracts. And so there are challenges. It's not as easy as just I'm going to send send my my shares to somebody else that's not registered in the securitized smart contract. So there's definitely challenges. And then it gets even more challenging when we have to integrate this technology with other third parties like T-Zero, which is a trading system, or Merge, which is a trading system for people outside the United States. And so we have to integrate all three of these systems together while following the regulations and use the smart contracts. Got it. And so when you think about the $75 million that's coming in, there's advantages to both you and to the investor in terms of the way you're doing it. So both Reg A plus and then tokenization, but you're still getting $75 million of equity capital. What are you going to do with the money? Yeah. So the biggest thing that we're going to do is we're going to reinvest in the product with everything that we do. And so we're going to make the product so that a person can buy cryptocurrency anywhere in the world. Because as our mission is to exit the traditional financial system and help the world do that, we have to make it easy for a person in any country in the world to actually buy cryptocurrency, whether that's with a bank account, whether that's with a credit card.

And a lot of people don't have bank accounts or credit cards. And so we have to find ways to actually make it legal and accessible for them to do this with cash. And so that's where a big use of the money is going to go to. And then in addition to that, you know, DeFi and making DeFi really simple to use and, you know, making NFT simple to use. That's going to be a big component. and then of course marketing and then finally uh there's going to be i think you'll see some strategic acquisitions that we'll be interested in at some point in time got it and so as you think uh kind of moving forward how big is the team today and what will that how will that change as uh as you continue to invest in the product so today the team is 116 people and it was i think back in December, where we were at just about 70 people. And so it's just we've, I mean, we've just grown so fast. And we anticipate that this thing is going to continue throughout 2021. And all the objectives that we're going to do with the secondary trading systems, and making DeFi easy

and all these sorts of things, we anticipate by the end of the year, it's very conceivably that we could be well over 250 people. And so this thing feels like a rocket ship. And we're just we're we're along for the ride and it's been it's been a lot of fun i love it what's the biggest obstacle um that you're gonna face like what's the thing that keeps you awake at night as you continue to build the company even though you've had all the success and uh things look very you know positive looking forward what's the thing that keeps you awake the biggest thing right now is working with the regulators to make sure that we have a framework that allows people to use these systems and allows people to actually own equity in companies. That's the biggest obstacle

right now. And we've been working with the SEC on this, and we're going to continue to work with the SEC on this. And fortunately, it seems that as time goes on, the regulators have held much more of an open mind about things. And so that's been great to see. But that's by far the biggest obstacle is making sure the regulators are comfortable with what we're doing and how this is all going to work is the biggest obstacle. Yeah, no, it makes sense. And then talk to me about kind of the team in general. Is it, I know it's remote, but is it mostly U.S.? Is it international? How is the kind of team broken down? So most of the team is actually international. We have 40, I think 40 some people in the United States and the rest is completely international.

But the cool thing is, is that we pay U.S. salaries no matter where you live. It doesn't matter if you live in a country with the lowest cost of standard of living. We still pay U.S. salaries everywhere. In fact, we anchor our salaries to the Denver, Colorado market. And so we anchor it no matter where you live, because we don't want somebody to get paid more, whether you live in San Francisco or New York or get paid less. Again, if you live in a very cheap place, you should be paid a fair wage wherever you live. And another cool thing is we have 100 percent transparent salaries and 100 percent transparent cap table. So everybody in the company can see what everybody else is making. And so what that does is that allows or that forces us as a company to be aggressive and ensuring that our people are happy and not, you know, having to feel the need to go get a job offer somewhere else and then get some counteroffer from us because every single person's salary is transparent. Yeah. And how do you keep track of that? Like, is it just posted on like an Excel sheet somewhere? Is there a dashboard? Like that's a really fascinating way to look at kind of, you know, eliminating internal politics. it's just on a on an excel spreadsheet but one of our visions is to actually become the most transparent company in the world and so what that means to us is that you know when we when we have

this regulation a public offering and we become effectively a public company we don't want there to be any difference between you know insider trading or not we want everything to be public so the moment an event happens it goes up on a website everything that we're doing it goes up on our website so that we can be transparent about everything. And we've always found that transparency is a part of our ethos. Transparency really brings in trust. And I think that's really important to building a company. I think it's very important. So I tend to tend to agree with you. Before we get into the rapid fire questions, when people ask you, what is Exodus? Just give us kind of the one or two sentence pitch and then tell us where people can go to download the product.

Now, Exodus is the easiest-to-use cryptocurrency wallet that allows you to send, receive, and exchange cryptocurrency. You go to Exodus.com to view more or Exodus underscore IO at Twitter. That is a pretty concise elevator pitch. Something tells me that's not the first time you've ever done that. I've got three questions for you, and you get to ask me one to finish up. The first question is, what is the most important book that you've ever read? The most important book I've ever read is How to Win Friends and Influence People. That book was definitely transformative in how I approach relationships in both the professional realm and the personal realm. There's some outdated lines in that book about, you know, addressing people like Mr. or Mrs. or whatever. But overall, there's still some really great content in that book. Absolutely. Next question is a little bit more personal. Sleep schedule. I used to sleep five,

six hours, but now I sleep like eight or nine. And a huge part of it comes from our friends over at Eight Sleep. And so their question is, what is your sleep schedule? They've got this thermoregulated bed, which just means you can make it really hot. You can make it really cold. I sleep on literally an ice cube and sleep like a baby. And my Apple Watch tells me, you know, good job every morning after I started using this thing. I feel like I'm cheating the system. But what's your sleep schedule and how's that changed over the years? Yeah. So I used to be one of those guys that I'd stay up till five, six, 7am in the morning. In fact, my wife would come to my office and she's like, you know, my hair is all messed up. I was wearing sweatpants and a big furry sweater.

And, uh, she was like, Oh my God, I can't believe I'm married to this guy. But over the years, and especially with COVID around the COVID time, I started, I'm like, I've got to, you know, I got to fix my sleep. And so I have started religiously going to bed between 10 PM and 10, 30 p.m. and then I get up religiously between 4 30 a.m. and 5 a.m. every single day yeah they say that is one of the biggest things even though you're not sleeping eight hours we'll work on that part of it uh the whole idea of going to sleep at the same time every night is a is a major major factor of uh make sure you get great sleep oh and it helps with clear thinking you know as is the running a company you really got to be thinking clearly and so having good sleep helps

with that. Absolutely. Yeah. Makes, uh, makes sense. Last question that you get to ask me one, two, a wrap us up is aliens. Are you a believer or a non-believer? Oh, absolutely. When I, when I was a kid, I got so wrapped up into, you remember that show unsolved mysteries with Robert stack? You remember that show? Oh my gosh. I would watch, you know, all the stuff about the UFOs. And I was, I was really, I actually got scared of UFOs as a kid. Uh, but these days I'm no longer scared of ufos but yeah i think it's pretty improbable to think that in the entire universe that alien life does not exist yeah i'm there with you i think it's uh very unlikely but who knows uh just big questions whether we'll ever come in contact with them or not uh what's the one

question you have for me to uh to wrap us up so back in in the summer i think i remember on one of the podcasts you said that you owned i think bitcoin only so since then what are your top four assets that you hold now bitcoin bitcoin bitcoin and bitcoin oh come on you don't you don't hold anything else so it's still only bitcoin only bitcoin that's it wow wow okay all right and look and part of it is like i'm not uh i'm not a trader right i am not looking for the greatest financial return right you know so it's kind of like you gotta ask somebody like why right and to me it's just it's the simplest thing right and it's still going to be pretty attractive in terms of how it plays out now in terms of investing right and usually from my

professional standpoint i'm missing all kinds of stuff right and so um you know really really fascinated with decentralized open protocols really interested in a lot of kind of the governance things there's a whole new kind of body of work around merge mining on bitcoin and spending a lot of time paying attention to that right and so like there's all this kind of innovation that's occurring. And so intellectually, I'm really, really curious, and I'm really kind of kind of intrigued by it. And so spending a lot of time, you know, understanding and learning, meeting all the people who are kind of driving this. But really, personally, the only thing that I own is Bitcoin, it's the simplest, easiest thing, I actually suggest that for most people.

And then the other thing is, that's kind of tangentially related, is I own a lot of digital art right and i'm probably you know quickly becoming uh you know one of the larger holders of digital art in the world and and the thought process there is just like i enjoy it right it's more of a game to me that's less of like an investment it's more of a game um and so it's just you know at this point in my life it's just i just want to do the things that make me happy right if i'm happy then like whatever do you anticipate buying any any other crypto assets other than bitcoin or digital art i mean i i never want to say never right just just because it's like you know you'd be pretty stupid to say no for forever um and you know there's things that

uh i'm really really intrigued by so i'll give you a perfect example uniswap is a perfect thing right uniswap today is uh based on current numbers uh a little bit smaller than coinbase right coinbase last year did 1.3 billion in revenue uh uniswap is somewhere between like 800 million and a billion so even if you discount a little bit let's say uniswap's gonna be like 50 percent of of Coinbase? Well, like there's probably a pretty strong argument that the decentralized product is going to be bigger than the centralized product. Now, is the decentralized product going to be Uniswap? Is it going to be something else? Who knows? We'll see kind of a lot of stuff. But I do think that like that stuff is really fascinating. The part that I keep going back to

is it seems like there's a lot of innovation and really experimentation happening around how do you do governance? How do you do like on-chain cash flow? Do you need a token? Do you not need token, like all these different components to it. And so, you know, the beauty of this industry is just we're all figuring it out. Like no one has the answer yet. Everyone's got an opinion. And so when I worked at Facebook, we used to have the saying, you know, code wins arguments. That's what we're watching play out here in real life, right? It's like code is going to win the argument. I love it. Yes, I love it. So I think that that's kind of how I look at it. And, you know, I'm open to other things. It's just like, I'm just learning right now. And then once I've

got a kind of a deep conviction, like I do with Bitcoin, then we'll go from there. Yeah, I think a student mentality makes a lot of sense. I'm not the smartest guy, but I like to think that I am intellectually curious enough to learn from everybody else. So we'll see how that plays out. Awesome. JP, before I let you go, where can people go if they want to participate in the reggae offering that you're doing? Exodus.com forward slash invest. But if you just go to Exodus.com, you'll figure out the rest from there.

But Exodus.com. Awesome, man. Well, listen, thank you so much for doing this. I really enjoyed it. I think people will learn a lot. And I highly suggest people go check out Exodus.com or search in the app stores for Exodus. It's a beautiful cryptocurrency wallet. And I think that JP has done a great job.

And then, you know, when you add in the Bitcoin ethos of paying everyone in Bitcoin, being decentralized, all that stuff, it's just kind of icing on the cake. So thanks so much, man. We'll have to do it again in the future. Absolutely. Thanks, Tom.