The Pomp Podcast - Ben Askren, UFC Fighter, and Martin Floreani, CEO of RokFin: From The Octagon to Bitcoin

Episode Date: June 25, 2019

Ben Askren is an olympic wrestler, and current UFC fighter with a 19-0 record in his MMA career. He is joined on the podcast with Martin Floreani, the founder and CEO of RokFin. In this conversation, Ben, Martin, and Anthony Pompliano discuss what it takes to be a UFC fighter, what drew Ben to Bitcoin and crypto, what the current issues with content platforms are today, how RokFin is attempting to solve some of those issues, and where Ben and Martin see crypto evolving in the future. -----Curious about Cryptocurrency but don’t know where to begin? Storm Play is a free and fun way to start earning in exchange for you time. Simply download, register and discover microtasks that meet your interests and be rewarded with Storm Bolts. These Bolts can then be converted and withdrawn into your favorite cryptocurrency, including Storm Token, Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC.).  Earn cryptocurrency rewards by playing new games and trying out cool products! Download the app to start earning crypto here! https://bit.ly/30pSxh9 (Available for iOS and Android). -----If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe.This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off The Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Ben Askren is an Olympic wrestler and current UFC fighter with a 19-0 record in his MMA career. He is joined on the podcast by Martin Florini, who is the founder and CEO of Rockfin. In this conversation, we discuss what it takes to be a UFC fighter, what drew Ben to Bitcoin and crypto, what the current issues with content platforms are today, how Rockfin is attempting to solve some of those issues, and where Ben and Martin see crypto evolving to in the future. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well. Are you curious about cryptocurrency and you don't know where to begin? I've got a great way for you to try.

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new games and trying out cool new products. It's worth a try, and it's a great way to get started. Remember, go check out Storm Play in the App Store today. 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. Maybe tell us a little bit about your background, and then we can get into some of the stuff you're doing today.

Sure. I grew up in Heartland, Wisconsin. I live five minutes down the road from where I grew up. Right now, I started wrestling when I was young. I developed a passion for it. I got better at it. I ended up going to wrestling at the University of Missouri, where I won two national titles and two Hodge trophies. I went to the 2008 Olympics. I found my way into the sport of mixed martial arts, and then I decided to come back home. My brother, I, and my high school coach ended up starting Asuka Wrestling Academy, which we have three of those now. They're doing really well, and I'm still fighting mixed martial arts and doing a handful of other things, podcasting and doing a vlog and staying generally very busy. Absolutely. I'm fascinated by the training that goes into competing in the UFC and mixed martial arts.

Maybe give us a sense of just what do you do on a typical day? How much training are you doing versus the podcasting, the wrestling academy, et cetera? Sure. Well, I don't really know any other way. I mean, this is what I've been doing since I was 13. So I can't really think of it any other way. You know, one of the things as I get older, I realize my body can't handle the volume that it did when I was younger, you know, when I was 21, 22, 23. And I could just train and train and train.

So now, I mean, I'm really, I do four days where I do two days, two days where I do one, and then I have one day off. But even on my on days, I mean, it's, you know, it's an hour to 90 minutes tops. I'm getting in, I'm getting out, I'm refining my skills, I'm getting in shape, keeping myself healthy and that kind of thing. I mean, I've been building skills for the last 20 years, so I don't have to do a huge amount of skill development like I used to. So now it's just preparing myself for what I have to go execute on in the competition. Absolutely. I played football in college and I used to tell people all the time, wrestlers were the only dudes who potentially, I would never admit it, but potentially could be tough. That's funny. So look, you obviously had this very storied career in college and then eventually went to the Olympics as a wrestler.

and then when you transition to mixed martial arts like how big of a transition is that where you go from you know really wrestling and grappling and going to the ground to actually the potential getting punched in the face and having to punch back and kind of the the transition there well for me i'd have to say it was pretty simple i mean i've always liked i mean one of the things that drew me to wrestling over other sports in the beginning was just the combativeness of it the hand-to-hand the one-on-one i loved that part of it and so for me it almost seemed like a natural progression and frankly some of the times i've got hit it hit hardest in my life is in wrestling you know you shoot and they shoot at the same time your heads collide or you shoot

and they sprawl and you hit right in their hip bone those have been some of the biggest hits i've ever taken in my life uh and so the the transition for me was fairly seamless obviously i had to be okay with learning new skills and and diving in and i did that and um it turned out really well obviously i kind of transitioned seamlessly and i was i was the bellator champion um i believe 18 months into my fighting career so transitioned well yeah it's badass to be able to say that frankly um so you did the bellator thing right and then you eventually ended up and uh you won your first fight um in the ufc against uh robbie lawler um you know what what is that like in terms of getting into that octagon just knowing that um the crowd that's there and also

it's just you know kind of the streaming and the pay-per-view and all that um and then winning it did you feel different afterwards you know from going from bellator to ufc or is it just like look man i've been doing this my whole life i'm just here to beat the dude in front of me and let's move on to the next thing yeah i would say more than that than anything so obviously i was a champion bellator for three and a half years and then i had some contract negotiations that went south and that actually i signed a contract with a company called one championship and i was exclusively in asia for four and a half years and then i i said i would retire unless i um unless i got the opportunity to fight to prove i was the best in the world and i was a part of the first

ever mixed martial arts trade which ufc traded demetrius johnson to one championship for myself um and uh i decided to come out of retirement for the opportunity i mean that was that was So that was the fight you're talking about against Robbie Lawler. And, man, I think it's just like you were saying. I just got to beat the guy in front of me. That's as simple as it is. You can't string two and three and four fights together. All you have to do is focus on what's in front of you.

And that's the way to be most effective. So that's what I did. And, no, it felt normal. It felt like that's what I was supposed to do. It wasn't a shock. I knew I had the skills for many, many years. I haven't had the opportunity. I mean, obviously, I was undefeated the whole time while I was in Bellator in one championship.

but I haven't had the opportunity to fight the guys who other people would give me credit for beating, uh, to show that I'm the best in the world. Absolutely. And then you've got a fight coming up here in July. Maybe just give us some, uh, some information on that. Um, and so people can make sure they watch it. Yeah, I am fighting a guy named George Masvidal. He's actually ranked one spot above me, although I don't know why, cause I don't think he's better than me at all. Uh,

so I'm fighting him on July 6th, 26th which is roughly two and a half weeks away and then um after that who knows hopefully i can hop into a title fight or something like that got it you're gonna win uh i do yeah i do believe i'm gonna win all right i'd be scared if you said that you didn't know so uh i see all the time too uh last thing on the wrestling side um you and uh and and uh mike novogratz novogratz is uh is a big fan of yours and uh i think that uh it seems like one of the comment links is the beat the streets um effort maybe tell a little bit about that how you and mike got uh got hooked up yeah i asked so i actually wrestled in the first ever beat the

streets gala which is uh it's their major fundraiser every day so what beat the streets does they raise money for inner city wrestling in new york city they've started i don't want to blow the numbers but something like uh 50 high school programs and 40 40 middle school programs they've gotten 5 000 new wrestlers something to that effect you know it's really really big numbers um so they're doing a great job so i wrestled in the first ever beat the streets gala in 20 uh 2010 and um just kind of kept in touch obviously i i that was like i haven't really wrestled since then and um obviously this opportunity i don't know jesse jansen another guy who he was an ncaa champ at harvard good friends with novogratz and beat the

streets and i believe he's into crypto also um he uh he reached out to me and said would you wrestle jordan burroughs and it's like man i haven't wrestled in nine years but yeah i don't see why not it's a great cause it's a great opponent uh let's go give it a shot and uh you know it didn't turn out very well for me but we sold out madison square garden the hulu theater uh it was a great environment and we raised 1.3 million dollars for charity so i think it was a success it's amazing it is uh yeah it's pretty incredible um all right so let's transition to the non-wrestling and mma world like you know i think most people when they think of you there's like look at this badass motherfucker who spends all day training to go beat people up right and

then you're out here you've got the podcast you're all over twitter all the stuff like what is well what's the desire or the the interest in kind of things outside of the mma world um and like why spend so much time doing this other stuff i don't know i i just gravitate towards stuff i'm interested in um you know ever since i was young i always thought it was so weird where people said like you need to just sit in your room and focus it's like i i'm super busy i don't want to do that i'd rather keep myself occupied i actually remember martin's on the other line and i don't know if he remembers this but i remember i think it was 2007 i had flow sports had just begun and a lot of them you know it was full sports at that time it might have been

full wrestling and full track and martin was there the week before the ncas and i was out playing disc golf barefoot and he said something like what are you doing why are you out playing you you could hurt yourself and i was like nah i'm fine i'm not gonna hurt myself i'm like what what do you mean do i sit in my room and protect me i can't live in a bubble i gotta go do stuff and that's the way yeah but what let me i mean you you're in your barefoot like walking through the woods I would just imagine like getting uh sliced up by a rock or something or I don't know a branch I'm just like why why are you put doing this but Ben doesn't Ben doesn't care yeah so I you can't live in a bubble that's what I you know I find things I'm passionate about and it shouldn't

sometimes sometimes I do say shit I'm too busy and then it's like okay but what am I gonna give up and then it's like well I really genuinely enjoy everything I'm doing and uh so I it's hard for me give anything up so yeah i like i said i'm involved in a lot of ventures but i'm kind of really interested and excited about everything i'm doing absolutely um so before we get to rockfin and kind of what you're doing on the on the content platform there i gotta ask about the uh the twitter trolls because uh you are um becoming one of my favorite guys on twitter because i see them coming at you and usually it's not crypto related it's usually like uh mma or ufc stuff um every once in a while every once in a while it's crypto related because listen you can't post

anything bitcoin or litecoin or anything related without a handful of dipshit saying it's going to zero you're an idiot and you know it's like oh my god you guys are so dumb so you gotta you gotta shoot back sometimes i i love it because uh most of the guys and the girls in the crypto are you know they got like jobs in the crypto industry so they got to be kind of politically correct etc but uh but whether it's you russell okong you know all these athletes they just come in real hot and you of all people are holding up so it's it's pretty fun to watch uh watch the kind of the crypto trolls um you know get a little taste of their own medicine yeah absolutely and listen crypto is about as volatile as it gets and i mean i'm not i'm not going and investing 100

of my assets in crypto obviously that that would that would be a scary scary scary ride but i have significant investments and i also understand it's going to go up and down and so I do, I do this thing where I mess with my wife whenever, whenever it starts going up, I tell her and she gets annoyed by it. I'm like, Hey, we just made seven grand today, you know? And then, uh, she'd be like, well, we didn't really make it. Cause you're not gonna trade it in. I'm like, yeah, you're right. I'm not. And then, you know, obviously the next day it'll, it'll lose $8,000. And I won't say anything to her. And then the day after that, it'll make $4,000. I'll say, Hey, we spent $4,000 today. Just, just like antagonize her. I only tell her about the good

uh and never about the bad and it's really funny because you know you know she understands that it goes up and down uh but i only tell her about the ups so uh it really bothers her yeah it's like the uh kind of kind of like what you do on twitter why am i going to celebrate when it's going down i'm going to tell you guys bitcoin is going to 10 000 and when it drops back from nine to eight in a day i'm not going to tell you about that look it's uh positivity is as the way of the world right i i joke i'm in the uh my favorite things that people say on twitter are definitely uh one bitcoin equals one bitcoin because that just pisses the trolls off uh and then the other one makes him so mad yeah the other one is uh you didn't lose the money if you never sold at a loss

yeah right uh all right so how do you and martin know each other how did you guys get hooked up yeah we we met martin started full wrestling and i maybe by the 2006 but might have been 2007 uh and i was when i was a senior college and we kind of just hit it off i don't know we just saw eye to eye on a lot of things and um then obviously he you know he followed me around through the olympics because that was you know one of the main stories and we just developed a friendship i've ended up visiting austin a handful of times and working with them and um yeah i guess just through all those avenues and then um you know when he left flow sports in 2018 and he started he decided to start his own thing uh i saw the vision and it was

uh i was really excited about it yeah i would say like the one thing that gravitated uh us together is it seems like ben's always on the bleeding edge and you can kind of see it in his wrestling or in his fighting he's really he's evolving he's innovating and so you know when we first came on the scene for at flow sports we were doing something completely different right um everything was TV based. And we decided, no, TV is missing it. They're a mile wide and an inch deep. And they don't really align with people's passions. People's passions are an inch wide. They go a mile deep. And when you can align with people's passions, you drive a much higher lifetime value per subscriber, which makes an economic model actually work around digital content. And so

it was just the exact opposite approach of what the industry was doing. And I said, you know what, they're missing it and our opportunity is in sports um right now we're all not all the live rights aren't locked up and so we went heavy into wrestling um i went into wrestling too just because i loved wrestling and so that's where i really saw a lot of opportunity i wrestled in college nowhere near the success of of ben of course but um i loved it i thought it was the most exciting sport and so from there um it just seemed like ben was just really on the same page of exactly what we're doing and he's he's an early innovator he's like an early adopter he he knows when things um and maybe maybe he just knows it in his gut but he senses when things um need to be transformed

and and if there's a platform that does it then he kind of he kind of gravitates towards it so that's what he did with flow sports and and then after um when i was done with flow sports uh you know it was natural that as i was going through the rock fin i was bouncing it off of Ben and just kind of seeing where his head was at getting his take and uh and so um he's been he's been on the platform since the start so it's been good to good to have him there yeah it's awesome so so maybe give us a quick overview of like exactly what Rockfin is um and then we can talk about how Ben as a content creator um you know why why you kind of see the benefit in it and how you're using the platform yeah so you know first off the mission behind Rockfin is to be the

world's best platform for content creators to monetize their content. And it really started, it starts actually from a problem, right? Like, so digital networks, there's something wrong with them, right? Digital platforms have done great with digital networks. They've accrued an immense amount of wealth over the last 20 years. Any digital platforms that own a successful digital network, their stockholders have done great and customers have done really good. But the content creators on them haven't participated in that upside you know a clear example is when you look at like a youtube right youtube um sells for 1.6 billion dollars to google with very little money they're selling for their network and what makes up their network is the content creators

but the content creators don't participate don't participate in that transaction at all right so they sell to google for 1.6 billion same thing with instagram now the content creators on Instagram. They sell to Facebook for a billion. They don't participate in that network. And if it stopped there, maybe it would be acceptable, but it actually gets worse. As those networks grow, they get more and more powerful. The content creators on them that have helped build them, now let's remind that those networks don't exist without the content creators. The content creators on them get more and more leveraged because they're being commoditized by the digital platform. Digital platform says, hey, if you don't want to participate on this, we got 990

other people that will participate. And don't you want to stay connected to the fans? Don't you want to stay connected to new fans? Don't you want to be relevant? And all this while, the content creator is like, well, I've helped build this network, and now I'm getting squeezed by them, right? And so we've used blockchain to solve for this. On Rockfin, content creators receive the full value of the network. And when they were able to do that through the RAID token. And frankly, you know, I'm kind of late to the blockchain, the blockchain world. I only really started doing this in 20, started to understand and look and research blockchain in 2016, 2017. But when we started Rockfin, you know, my thought was, if we don't have to use blockchain, let's not use it.

but it just so happens blockchain is the only technology that solves this problem and that's why we use it so explain that like why how did you guys come to the conclusion it's the only technology well because uh right now content um because there's a cooperative game problem right so um and there's an asymmetry of information right so digital platforms as they scale they have much more uh they have a much bigger network the reason they're able to do that with content creators is because they own the network. When Google does its financing calls, they don't report on YouTube. They don't want to tell all the different finances on YouTube because then people can start to maybe start to figure out what's actually going on there, how much value

is actually being accrued by this. So they obfuscate the data. They don't let content creators know how their content affects the lifetime value of the customers on the platform. And that's the real game. That's the heart of the issue. And so what we do with the Ray ecosystem and Rockfin is Rockfin is a Delaware system. It plugs into the Ray ecosystem, which is an ERC-20 token, and we publish all of the results. And so as customers come on, they pay a simple $9.99 with their credit card to access. What happens in the background is we take $9.99 worth of Ray, we burn that Ray to transmit value to the network and it creates utility. And every content creator can see that we are burning Ray. And then as a certain amount of work is being done on the

platform, the Ray ecosystem mints 10,000 Ray and distributes based on who provided the value to the ecosystem. And a value in a subscription business is customer acquisition and customer retention. So what content creators, what content has helped either acquire customers or retain customers? And so ultimately, this creates is that Rockfin needs Ray to continue to distribute the content that is on its platform. And so it has this inherent utility for the system that we need Ray. So as more creators come on, they bring on more customers. All of a sudden, our appetite for Ray grows. We need more Ray so that we can burn more Ray to continue to distribute people's content.

And so as that grows, the demand for Ray grows as well. Got it. And so, Ben, talk a little bit about maybe like you're creating this content. You can pretty much put it anywhere in the world. Why go put it on the Rockfin platform? What's the benefit to you? Well, I believe in Martin. I guess that's first and foremost.

um no i i see obviously i see the flaws in i see the flaws in youtube or some of the obviously youtube is the number one uh platform right now i see the flaws in it i see the issues obviously and it's becoming more and more evident and that's just people being demonetized people being deplatformed and they just have the ability to do that now obviously the rockfin platform um that that stuff's not going to take place and um so when i decided to start putting stuff up so I have both an MMA podcast and a blog on the Rockman channel as well as some wrestling technique. It was just obvious.

And I've seen Martin build flow sports from him and his brother in a van to a 300-employee company. So I've seen him do it once before. I don't see any reason why he can't do it again. And this problem, and Martin outlined it, but Joe Rogan, obviously one of my favorite podcasters. I got to get in his brain because he has discussed this issue no less than seven times. And I don't listen to all of his podcasts, just the ones that I find interesting. But it comes up very frequently that it could be with iTunes, another network that essentially has

a monopoly on what they do. It could be on YouTube that they have so much power over what they decide. I mean, if tomorrow YouTube says, hey, everybody that we're paying, we're paying you half you're gonna get half deal with it tough shit then they're gonna you know what is it what is the content creator gonna do they have no power youtube's just too big at this point for those individual content creators to say anything about it and obviously it's got much worse than half it's a lot you know handful of people have been demonetized recently over really nebulous claims absolutely and part of it too i guess is um yeah so one of my favorite joe rogan episodes actually is when he brought uh i think it's tim pool uh jack dorsey oh that was so

fantastic yeah and he and jack to his credit look jack it was answering questions but he also brought like uh the woman and i and i forget her name um but she's like in charge of the policy yes you know when you're listening to it you go into and you're like man tim pool is gonna just you know wipe the floor with these folks because there's just no right answer but when you hear like they they are trying to be thoughtful in many cases but the problem is there's no right answer right and so you're gonna piss somebody off um and what ends up happening in the second that whether it's facebook twitter youtube etc gets into the um because it's not a censorship game right i think what they look at it as is they're like policing the platform it just happens

they end up censoring people as like an output it's just a slippery slope because once you start then now now you're the you're the babysitter right and uh and people come to you all the time and complain about i don't like their views they're being you know stupid whatever yeah i think i think a big part of the problem there with twitter though is that um and all these digital networks is in the beginning when they don't have any leverage and the network is just going they act like angels there's friction there's zero friction to join the platform there's zero friction to stay on the platform. And then all of a sudden, once it becomes in their financial interest, and once it becomes in their best interest, they all of a sudden start to change

the rules and start to leverage things. And they start to say, you know, well, we want to avoid, we're going to change the algorithms, or we're going to change the rules here for whatever political reasons or for other dynamics. And that wasn't there in the beginning. And it all kind of goes back to that creator's dilemma. And I think it's what's frustrating for content creators who have helped build that network. You know, that network doesn't exist without the content creators, right? And yes, the digital platform is a part of building that network, but the content creators were a key component to that.

And sometimes they've changed their whole livelihood to, you know, to do that, right? And so what's frustrating for them is that they didn't own a part of the network. They didn't get to participate in that network. And so a key differentiator for something like Ray, so a lot of people ask me, why do you use Ray? Why don't you just pay in cash? And there's two reasons why. Well, first is we reward in Ray to reward for the value contributed to the network. And when you look at networks, in the early days of the network, the first 100 customers, the first 1,000, the first 10,000 customers are so much more valuable than the customers at 1 million when you get the next 100 customers or you get the next 1,000 customers already after you have a million customers.

So we reward in Ray so that the content creators that have helped build the network get to actually participate in the full value that they've contributed. And then the second part why we don't pay in cash is because if you pay in cash, the content creators cashed out. It's implicit in the actual meaning. When you pay in cash, the content creators cashed out. They can't stay connected to the network and be a part of its growth. They're done. And so those are the two reasons why. And we think that, yeah, maybe in the future, Rockfin could potentially do the stuff that YouTube does, but it would be really hard. It would be really bad for us. People would know their true value on the network. And that holds us to a lot more accountability. There's other digital platforms that could hook into the Ray ecosystem that can compete on a fair playing field. So it really a lot. It really changes the whole chessboard, the whole dynamic that makes digital platforms much more accountable to content creators. Got it. So you got Ben on the platform. What are some of the other content creators on the platform? Yeah, we got a really strong MMA vertical within the within the platform. We have Chael Sonnen, who just recently retired from MMA.

We got Adam Hunter. We got a whole slew of comedians. Our comedian vertical is really strong and a couple of big announcements on the way as well on that front. So right now, the two verticals, we're just in alpha. We've been around for, you know, just over 60 days. And the two verticals that are starting is around MMA and comedy. Got it. Every MMA fighter I know thinks that they're a comedian.

So there's a lot of overlap there. Cool. So, Ben, what's kind of outside of Rockfin? What else in crypto has got your attention right now? Well, obviously, I'm a big supporter of Litecoin. And again, I don't put myself out there as an expert. I'll say one of my good friends from college, he was who got me into crypto. And obviously, he's a Bitcoin guy first, Litecoin guy second.

And then he's into a handful of other businesses as well. But it's just I love anything that gives you more freedom. and that's what what cryptos are going to do that's what bitcoin and litecoin do they give you more freedom uh they take us off fiat currency whether it's the united states government or anywhere else and you know a lot of people in the united states there i mean there's a couple issues especially people in the united states they don't number one they don't see um they haven't seen a bank failure in a very long time or a hyperinflation whereas if you go if you go all across the world, it's been many, many hyperinflations or bank failures in the last

20 years. And then also, if you look at some of the, especially in Southeast Asia, where I traveled extensively from my fighting career, I mean, there's a lot of parts of some of those countries that are unbanked. Literally, they don't have access to a bank, but almost everyone has access to a cell phone network and essentially maybe it's not super convenient right now, but I would say within a couple of years, it's going to be super convenient for anyone with a cell phone network to have some type of crypto wallet on their phone and make purchases. So I think getting those unbanked people onto a crypto network can be really, really simple and pivotal towards the future.

Got it. Makes sense. You sound like a Bitcoin expert to me. um ha martin what's uh what's next for rockfin as you guys kind of go out from a day 60 or so out you know over the next 12 24 months yeah so one thing we didn't do is we didn't do an ico we didn't know founders reward we started very much like uh very much like the bitcoin network there will only be 34 minted 34 million rate token ever minted and we burn so you know we do a traditional fundraising approach to fund our operations. And, um, and, and we think that's the right

approach. We're not, I really, I don't like ICOs. I don't, I don't think they actually align interests, uh, from the entrepreneur, um, to the, uh, to the content creator in our case, uh, to the user. Um, we, we just, we, we don't think that they're effective. Um, we've, I've raised plenty of money at Flow Sports. And I think that process is good. It holds everybody to account. And so we'll do a proper seed round here in the back half of 2019 that we're excited about. And then we're looking to expand and get out of alpha phase. We'll be opening up our platform to all content creators. Right now, we've just kept it to a few and we're working through that through the alpha phase uh once we open up to uh to the the hole we expect a lot

more growth and so we want to be prepared uh for that aggressive growth got it makes uh makes sense um and then uh as uh as i usually wrap these up um i ask rapid fire questions but since there's two of you i'll give you each individual ones uh ben in your opinion what's the most important company in crypto other than uh rockfin um shoot i don't know because i you would say obviously bitcoin like when our companies uh i have i have no idea you tell me tell me that well you can say bitcoin that's what i would say it's not but that's not a company that's not a company it's not a company but it's a it's an organization just highly decentralized ah well see that now Now you're asking trick questions.

You're supposed to be smart. You can answer however you want. It's your podcast. Okay. Whatever you want. I would say, you know, I think it's pretty well consensus among most people that Bitcoin will be kind of the number one store of value on the crypto network for eternity. Yeah. I tend to agree.

Martin, what's the one regulation you would change or improve if you could? Uh, well, I would say, first off, clarity around regulations would be the first thing. You know, I'll tell you, when we first started this, that was a key anxiety. I mean, we went out, spent a lot of money to get a legal memo to really show that we're totally poking through and through. But that anxiety, that friction can really probably scare away innovation within the space. So I think we've got to have clarity to allow, to let people feel at ease that this is the right way. Let investors know that, yeah, there is, there is a process. There is a great utility for, for this technology and there's a way you can operate with it and still be compliant.

Right. So that's first and foremost. If there's technology, I'd say like, you know, another one that comes to my mind is, is, is, is putting some people's feet to the fire in terms of when they have to become decentralized. I mean, you get this Libra paper that, or this Libra coin that Facebook just announced, and you just start peeling back the onion. It's like, well, it's totally centralized. We don't even necessarily know if there's a blockchain involved and they do some hand-waving that says, oh yeah, it will get decentralized. But it's like, when's the last time Facebook has followed through on all the promises they make around other things, around privacy? They'll often do this hand-waving, but when it's in their best financial interest,

They just keep doing what they want to do. So if there was some time frame that was reasonable that projects could start out centralized but then start to move to decentralization and then there needs to be some proof that it is truly decentralized, I think it wouldn't be a bad thing either for the space. Got it. Makes sense to me. Ben, most controversial thought you have in your whole life? Oh, this is fun. Talent doesn't exist. That's an easy one.

Talent doesn't exist. All right. Explain that. it does don't even get me started it doesn't exist you don't have time and you don't have the right arguments it doesn't exist in no in no way shape or form and there's there's never been a scientific study that proves it does do you believe in talent so what i'm assuming when you say it doesn't exist the argument is that hard work develops talent is that is that basically the argument no okay explain not not not really for me i would say that there's never been a study

that has proved that high-level success in anything complex comes from anything innate. And I don't believe there'll ever be a study that can prove that. Now, I mean, maybe if you're, say, a very simplistic task, say being a center in the NBA, obviously there's a prerequisite, which is being probably 6'11 or above. If you are not 6'11 or above, you cannot be in that pool of people who can do that thing, right? There's very specific things like that. But say, if you're going to win a wrestling match, or if you're going to start a business, there's just a myriad of characteristics. There's hundreds of characteristics that can make you successful at that one endeavor. And there is no, there's no, you need A, B, C, D, and E. You could have

A, Z, F, 1, 2, and 4, right? You could have any mix of these things that's going to make you successful. And so, you know, a lot of people, they like to say talent exists because then it lets them off the hook for them not being successful. And because it's also a very, very easy explanation but it's essentially kind of a hindsight bias because people would look at me and say oh my god he's talented at wrestling he you know he did this and that and he created this technique and that technique he's so talented it's like fuck no one was saying i was talented when i was 13 and getting my ass kicked all over the place no one was saying i was talented when i was 16 and i listen i'm not new to wrestling at 16 well i'm 16 i've been wrestling for a decade

and i go oh and two at the national tournament don't win a match no one's saying i'm talented at that point in time and i think that's what happens a lot is people it's a hindsight bias they see someone have success and then they try to attribute it to a few simplistic characteristics and say oh he has talent she has talent when there's just so many characteristics that can make someone successful um and and you know you can use any combination of those things go ahead martin yeah well a key a key book actually ben and i we've talked a lot about this and gone back and forth um a key book that around that is his talent code i thought was did a really great job of explaining it for people like kind of interested in it but um yeah ben's

i you know i agree 100 with ben there yeah great that's one of my favorite books what you guys are basically saying is uh it reminds me a lot of uh jeff lewis is uh i think the managing partner and one of the founders of bedrock capital i used to be at founders fund with peter till and those guys and uh one time i uh i forget exactly how it came up but uh the idea of luck came up and he basically was like luck doesn't exist that's just what the the people who don't uh who blame they're not successfulness on right and that's the same thing i think uh you know where the hindsight i think it resonates for people it's funny though because you know i i agree i i tend to agree with that but um i don't know if you've heard of the how how you built this podcast

yep um it's a good it's really good podcast tells some storytelling i swear to god every entrepreneur after the fact they say hey does luck exist and it's almost like if they say luck doesn't exist they're kind of like i don't know they're they're they're snobby or something like that and every time hey yes luck exists we got we got lucky da da da da and it seems like you know it's it's counter to what a lot of people believe they a lot of people believe in that that there is luck yeah and i guess there's chances but luck luck is luck is like talent like if you're if you're to say everyone is everyone is the exact same out of the womb obviously that's not true we all have things inherently we are better at than other people and it's about cultivating

those things to make something a success and so everyone you know luck over over an extended period of time luck is going to be neutral yeah uh you know it's gonna you're gonna have some positive you're gonna have some negative but over an extended long enough time it's going to be neutral and everyone's going to experience that neutralness that the universe i always tell kids this the universe is not biased towards anybody and it's it's seriously and i think when teenagers have this chip on their shoulder everyone's against me i think that's kind of okay i'm cool with that because they're young they got a lot of spunk but if you're 35 and you think the universe is conspiring against you you're effing insane well you have issues i'll say one thing though

you know to kind of like take the edge a little bit off that ben is that if you're i like edging yeah they take i mean if you're born in like a really shitty family you know that's kind of unlucky i guess you could say that sure and that really that will affect or if you're born in a certain part of the world it's like there are i mean there are chances around that but i think general like when you're in america um you know it's i feel like you have so much you have so much at your disposal or you're in a Western world country, or if you're in a, um, in an industrialized country, a first world country, you have so much. And so there's so much potential and that, that to, to put it on luck or not luck, it's, it's about, it's about really creating

opportunities, uh, making opportunities. I usually think a lot about this idea of the ovarian lottery, right? Essentially is, uh, is this idea of people that, uh, first of all, it's incredibly low probability that uh you as a human are the one who ended up uh with the sperm and the egg coming together and actually being born right just the biology of it and then not only were did you actually make it right to actually become a human then you were born you know with two arms two legs and you kind of go through all these things and you're like it's all relative right and so it's uh it's pretty incredible when you think about it from that way But I do think that a lot of times when people are talking about luck, right, it's, hey, you take two wrestlers, for example, and you put them in a tournament and one of them got lucky, right?

And to me, that description is – it's hard to resonate with me just because, again, right, it's who put the work in, who actually did the actions, right? It's not like some fairy godmother came down and, you know, did something to one of the wrestlers. It's just effort. Yeah. yes all right before i finish up uh i uh i always ask about aliens either one of you guys oh god i'm not uh i'm not totally against the possibility i'm also not well researched enough to say there are aliens but i know a lot of smart a lot of smart people really really do genuinely believe that they exist so it's a possibility all right pomp uh what's more

scary for you pomp is that if aliens exist or if aliens don't exist um that's a really good question actually uh so my whole take on it is really that mathematically it is unlikely that we're the only you know sentient beings in all of these different galaxies and the one thing i i've talked about on my podcast before but just the thing that just scared the hell out of me when i was reading one day uh and really kind of gave me higher conviction in the whole idea of aliens existing was uh right now there are two other galaxies so outside of our you know freaking solar system galaxy whatever that are colliding with each other i don't you know i'm not smart enough to know what that actually what is that even what does that even mean i don't know that's

like a big bang type thing or what but there's two galaxies that are colliding right now uh and they're really far away obviously but our galaxy is supposed to collide with either those galaxies or another galaxy in like four billion years and when i when i read that i said wait a minute what the hell so how did people even know that it's like such like uh like i'm here trying to figure out what's the best uh you know our engineers are sometimes trying to figure out and having lively discussions and on you know should the button be placed here and here and let's a b test and see if we have enough data and it's like these people come up with this like i don't even know how you can make a statement like that i don't even know where you begin and then

you have no no feedback loop so it's like i guess you can make statements out in a vacuum but man that's got to be i mean you start somewhere so people have come up with hypothesis but um a question for you i got is do you think satoshi is an actual alien oh so definitely not an alien the it's probably the question i get the most often it's always like i'll go meet with a lot of these institutional investors these are pretty conservative people who their job is to lose money right it's not even to make money as much as this first first job don't lose it second job make some uh make some money and uh they always ask me two things on the way out the door it's always out uh as we're walking out the door and it's usually like the analyst or

kind of one of the younger guys um and what they'll say first is hey man i follow you on twitter i've you know listen to podcasts whatever but they don't want to like say that out loud in the meeting to be labeled as like the crazy crypto one um and the second thing that they'll always ask me is like who do you think satoshi is and i always tell them that like first we're better off not know it it's craig right isn't it i i saw something going around on twitter that uh the colombian government is now recognizing him as satoshi i don't know what the hell is going on oh my goodness he paid he paid for that ben ashburn is uh is satoshi and see how that goes i don't i think people wouldn't realize that i do not have the intellect for that

damn it no it's a thing where uh i really do think it's uh marty bent uh calls it the the immaculate conception of bitcoin right and it's this whole idea of like yeah everyone's got their theory but we've got some uh information like the early emails and some of the blog posts and things like that but nobody knows who did it and that's actually a positive um because it's it's a story right and money is just a belief system and there's now a story to believe in um and so we're better off not knowing and i think i subscribe to that thought process yeah it's great for a story from that perspective 100% creates so so much intrigue and mystery around it for sure So where can people find out more about Rockfin and kind of get connected with you guys?

Yeah, so creators interested in joining Rockfin, you can email us at creators at Rockfin. You spell that R-O-K-F-I-N dot com. And you can also go to Raytoken, R-A-E token dot org and figure out more about the Raytoken and uh the uh the blockchain components and and and all the um all the token mechanics and whatnot around ray so got it ben uh what twitter uh your rockfin account what do you want to uh push you uh yeah all of that i'm just obviously on my twitter i'm on instagram i'm uh i i obviously post a lot of my preview material for my rockfin stuff on my twitter and my instagram um so you If you go to one of those places, you'll be obviously led to Rockfin as well.

All right, last question. Any prediction for the fight in July? I mean, I tend to believe it's going to be a fairly easy fight for me, whether I just dominate him for 15 minutes or whether he ends up making a mistake and I submit him. I'm not sure. He could obviously play a much more conservative game and just take the L, or he could try to be more aggressive, in which case I'll probably submit him.

So, yeah, I'm pretty confident. Training's going great. Everything's good. i'm excited hey ray or ben i heard that no one has submitted jorge or knocked him out in his 47 fights is that true uh let's see losses decision decision decision decision decision decision decision to see oh no he got submitted by toby amada and he got tk about rodrigo damn those were both a long time ago but yeah it has happened yeah it's a lot of elders that you just counted up there well he's got i see he's 33 and 13 so he does he does have a lot of fights yeah what uh

what do you uh when people ask you what your record is what do you count in there on the mma side my i'm 19 and 0 yeah zero losses undefeated zero yeah it's good let's keep it that way yeah yeah absolutely all right guys listen this is a ton of fun i appreciate you guys taking the time to do it especially ben while you're uh you're training for the fight and everything. We'll be cheering for you. And then Martin, hopefully people go check out Rockfin and they can come find you guys and track you down on the internet. Absolutely. Sounds good. Hey, thanks for having us, Tom. Are you curious about cryptocurrency and you don't know where to begin? I've got a great way for you to try. You can use Stormplay, a free and fun way to start

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