The Pomp Podcast - Camila Russo, Author and Former Bloomberg Reporter: How Traditional Journalists View Crypto

Episode Date: June 7, 2019

Camila Russo is an author and a former Bloomberg News reporter. In this conversation, Camila and Anthony Pompliano discuss how she discovered Bitcoin while covering the Argentina's financial markets, why crypto has captured her interest, how traditional journalists view crypto and Bitcoin today, why she is writing the book on Ethereum, and what stories she has learned along the way. ----- 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. Camilla Russo is a former Bloomberg journalist and currently writing a book on Ethereum with HarperCollins. In this conversation, we discuss how she discovered Bitcoin while covering the Argentine financial markets, why crypto has captured her interest, how traditional journalists view Bitcoin and crypto today, why she is writing the book on Ethereum, and what stories she has learned along the way. I really enjoyed this conversation and found Camilla to be incredibly engaging. I hope you enjoy it as well. 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. I am here with Camilla. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. I feel like you are one of the foremost experts on Ethereum now that you've done all this work to write a book. Before we get into all that, though, maybe let's just talk about your background and how you got to writing the

word of record on Ethereum. Sure. Where were we born and kind of how did you end up at Bloomberg first? Okay, so I'm Chilean. I was born in Santiago. I spent most of my childhood in Chile, but I also lived in Miami for a couple of years when I was growing up, then went back to the states um to do a master's in in journalism at chicago in northwestern and from there is when i got interested in business journalism um went to the internship at bloomberg in new york got hired from there they sent me to argentina i spent uh four and a half years living in buenos aires i think yeah it was like one of the best times of my life oh you liked it i loved it okay It's such a fun city.

And it was also amazing professionally. I, you know, I was covering Argentine markets, mostly bonds and effects. And it was during, you know, a time when Argentina was going through, you know, really high inflation, currency controls, a default, you know. Bad shit. Yeah. It's really bad shit. Like company nationalizations. This was in Cristina Fernandez's second term.

um and that's when i wrote about bitcoin for the first time in 2013 um i saw how people were using it to protect against inflation and they were using it to skirt currency controls i thought that was super interesting and and how do you so like you're the first person at bloomberg to ever write about bitcoin um right yeah i mean at least in you know in like latin america and i think there had been like stories but like very early i was very early like i i remember pitching the story my editors had never heard about bitcoin before like i had really yeah i had to really pitch really hard on the story uh convince convince them it was a real thing uh to them it was just like me talking crazy like what's this internet money thing you were doing that in 2013

we're still doing that in 2019 trying to give people it's real right um all right and so like How did you hear about Bitcoin? Did a source tell you about it? Do you go and interview somebody and they're like, oh, by the way, we're doing this thing? How did you first come across it? No, it was actually an Argentine colleague who had left. I think he read it somewhere or heard about a meetup because he's Argentine.

So he heard about a meetup that was happening in Buenos Aires, people who were there to learn about Bitcoin. So he's like, oh, look, look at this. Like, maybe you should go to this meetup thing. Yeah. And I did. I went and there was like, there was a lot of activity around Bitcoin back then in Argentina and even more so now. Yeah, absolutely. And so you write the article and like, what was the reaction when you first wrote about Bitcoin? Was it, did people write in and they're like, you know, shut up. This is stupid. Like, stop writing about it. Are they intrigued? Does nobody notice? Like, what was that reaction? No, I remember I got a really, you know, good reception, like, good readership. I think back then, 2013, yeah, Bitcoin had just gone through a bubble, but it wasn't as crazy as 2017. And it was just for Bloomberg readers. It was more of, like, a curiosity.

i think i got like much like bigger um like reactions when when i was writing about it in 2017 you know bloomberg readers being like why are you writing about this like beanie baby money you know really yeah people got really mad at me um i said this at the time but i i never had such visceral reactions to to stories but because it wasn't just like people disagreeing on what what I was writing about it it felt like they were personally threatened by it you know um because the reaction was very emotional it wasn't it wasn't so like rational like they weren't looking at it from an investment perspective it was like you're writing about something that's like threatening me absolutely and so I guess as you're writing about this um Argentine uh was going

through huge problems right i mean across the board uh still today facing a lot of challenges um did you get the sense that people thought this was going to be as big as it is today like it was going to become this huge thing or was it more just oh there's this interesting you know digital currency that we can use to solve our problems today but maybe it's a thing maybe it's not but you know but there wasn't really like the belief it was going to become massive i think for for people in in places like argentina where you know there's just like this ingrained mistrust in the financial system and you like you really get that what happens when you don't trust your your own currency uh what happens when you know that the only way your currency is going is down and that

uh your government can one day just stop you from from doing whatever you want with with your money like and it happened to me because I was I was earning my salary was in Argentine pesos and the first thing my colleagues told me when I got to Argentina was you have to buy dollars as soon as you get your your pesos so I was doing that until one day Cristina Fernandez said there are no more dollar purchases allowed and literally went to the my bank website um to like my account and the option to like buy dollars in like to change dollars to my dollar account wasn't there anymore it was just that simple so like i saw it and so because you had an argentinian bank account right because you're getting paid i was getting paid in argentina and like argentine pesos wow so like as

soon as i got because you needed it while you were living there right that's the okay got it yeah yep so yeah so i mean people people in argentina or places like it when they hear about bitcoin they instantly get it like it's not it's not like here where you really need to convince people you know this is actually a positive thing to have like this parallel financial system where you don't need to ask permission in Argentina they get it so I think they get excited yeah they get excited and I think like your question was that were people thinking it was going to be a big deal and I think yes people using it in Argentina back then because they got it they knew it was going to be big and what's your take on i i don't know off the top of my head what the

inflation has looked like but there's been pretty volatile swings in the currency right um and i think larger volatile swings than bitcoin so even though bitcoin is volatile having argentinian pesos actually uh at times has been much more volatile than bitcoin right so it's almost like in the u.s compared to the U.S. dollar, you know, people are freaking out when it drops 10%, let alone, you know, 50, 80%. In other countries, that actually is a small drop compared to the inflation that they see that drives their purchasing power. Right. I mean, in Argentina, I think right now inflation is at 50% annual, so it's crazy. Annualized inflation at 50%. Yeah, 50%. When I there was 25 um the peso i think the last time i i haven't i haven't checked in a while but i

remember doing a chart at bloomberg once um and i think yes the volatility was comparable to to bitcoin um and it really depends on the timeline you look at because i think in in 2018 you would have been better off holding argentine pesos and holding bitcoin yep but for example i don't know I've interviewed people for my book who bought Bitcoin in 2013. And they said, you know, whatever happens to this like weird money, to Bitcoin, I know it's going to do better than the peso. I know the peso is going to either do 25 or more inflation. I mean, look, even just we're recording this right now in May of 2019. and Bitcoin's up over 100% on the year, right?

So you can imagine that compared to 50% inflation is a pretty drastic change, right? So, all right, so you're writing in Argentina and then you end up leaving. Yes. And what do you do next? So I asked to get transferred to Madrid. Okay.

I just needed a change. It was just, you know, getting to be the same story over and over again in Argentina. The headline is just, shit's bad, stay away Yeah, I just wanted to try other things too So I was living in Madrid, life there was amazing, really loved Europe But it wasn't as exciting a news story, I was writing about European stocks So after Argentina that seemed pretty boring

um so uh you know as i was like thinking about leaving and there was a kind of restructuring of the market team at bloomberg where they created this new team um that was leading a live markets blog in new york and so i was invited to join this this new team and so moved here in march of 2017. Okay, so you move here in March of 2017 and really you're focused on kind of global markets. Yeah, macro markets. Okay, so macro markets and that just happens to be right when the fund starts in crypto with kind of the bull run or really it's really the tail end of the bull run, right, because it had started before that but I think when a lot of retail kind of rushed in and we saw the significant price appreciation was kind of May of 2017 through the end of the year, right?

Yeah. And so, like, what was going on inside Bloomberg when, you know, every day it seems like there's just these assets that are, you know, going up and to the right nonstop for months at a time. And then also, you know, there's announcement after announcement after announcement of people raising, you know, tens, hundreds of millions of dollars for these ICOs. What's happening in the meetings at Bloomberg? Are people like, this is all a joke? What do they say? OK, so I think like at the blog, I started writing because it was it was good to have. I had flexibility to write about whatever I thought was interesting, you know, going on in the market at the moment. So I I had kept my interest in Bitcoin since Argentina. And so I started writing at that time.

There was a lot of talk about the Bitcoin ETF with the Winklevoss brothers. So I started writing about that, you know, that was like more tied to the Bloomberg audience and ETF. So I started with that. But then I also started writing about ICOs. And there was just more and more interest from the Bloomberg audience to know about crypto. And, you know, any story with Bitcoin on the headline would get tons of hits. So, I mean, I think in the end, you know, editors will look at that and increase coverage when there's more interest. well and interest comes from not only the people who like it but also the people who hate it yes

right like that's how you get all the the kind of hate mail yeah yeah exactly yeah so my editor saw this and said you know what like we we need more coverage for regular bloomberg news not just a blog so i started uh you know just covering crypto as like my my side job which you know quickly took over my main job. And so the sentiment that Bloomberg was like, yeah, like we need to cover it. There's tons of interest, but they were still like very careful

with how deeply they wanted to dive in crypto because, you know, it was, it's still, and it still is a very volatile asset. We're not sure like where regulation is going. And Bloomberg's bread and butter is Wall Street, you know, like big markets of regulated securities. So, yeah, I think that that was kind of the balancing act that I saw Bloomberg at the time. Like, OK, there's huge interest. It's driving headlines. But, you know, like how seriously are we going to take this market? Absolutely. And so I guess as part of this is the interest at the time.

So 2017, the ICOs really were hot topic number one, Bitcoin hot topic number two. And then I don't really remember there being interest in kind of the details, right? It was like, it just felt like, oh, this ICO fundraising mechanism is really interesting. And then the Bitcoin price is just going through the roof, right? Was there interest from like the classic Wall Street folks? Was it crypto people migrating over to Bloomberg? Like, did you get a sense of, like, who in the audience was interested? Or was it just, hey, we just know that the numbers keep, you know, every time we publish Bitcoin articles, they just, you know, get distribution.

We don't really know who's on the other end. No, I think it was pretty clear it was existing Bloomberg subscribers. So it was a Wall Street audience that was interested. You know, there was a lot of demand for more data in the terminal for crypto. I mean, Bloomberg had a Bitcoin index and an Ether index and there were always like requests to have more coins in the system and more data about the coins that were there. So definitely it wasn't just from like Bloomberg subscribers, not like new crypto enthusiasts were buying the terminal. Absolutely. And so you continue covering through December 2017 when, I mean, I've just never seen anything in my life like just the absolute euphoria and mania that was going on.

And you decide maybe you should go and write a book. Yes. Talk about kind of what your thought process there was and why pick what you picked, etc. Yeah. So you're exactly right. at the end of 2017 it was looking back and being like what just happened you know like I had been like deep in this market or new asset class or whatever and it was just like a whirlwind of information and like hype and excitement and then at the end of the year I said this has to be

documented that like what just happened is crazy and it's so interesting and exciting and I had always wanted to to write a book but never you know found kind of the right topic or that i was um like i was the expert in in something to to the degree that i needed to be to write but but in in crypto it just felt like everyone was new um and that you know anyone could could own it you know um and and so that's i'm laughing to myself because uh one that's not true in traditional markets right a lot of times uh but also outside the united states where uh there's a ton of interest it's not just regulatory barriers right it's also just the fact that there's a lot of people internationally that are unbanked right or they don't have access to the

traditional kind of western financial system and so it's um it's not just hey go write a book and there's going to be people in the united states that read it right it's likely to be that there's a very global audience yeah for sure yeah um so right so i thought okay there's a book here um so what's the best story to tell and the bitcoin story i think has has pretty much been been told i mean there's uh digital gold i think it's a great book and tells kind of the back story of bitcoin that's uh nathaniel popper yeah okay yeah um so you know there's no digital gold for ethereum nobody has really told the the backstory of ethereum like how it was created the people behind it and so for those that don't know uh digital gold is a book about the early days of

Bitcoin a lot of the players kind of their stories etc but it's all focused on Bitcoin and obviously based on the name this idea of it being digital gold and so no one had written that kind of early day story about Ethereum. Yeah and it's such an interesting story I thought it really was an important story to tell because looking at what happened in 2017 a lot of it was because of ICOs And ICOs really disrupted finance. Like, they changed the way startups raise money. And so, you know, I thought whatever happens, Ethereum already changed tech. It already changed finance.

Like, it already made an impact in blockchain. It brought blockchain forward. So, you know, I don't know. So from the start of this process, I knew that it wasn't a sure thing that Ethereum will still be here in 10 to 20 years, whatever. Maybe it will be another blockchain that is the winner in smart contracts. But Ethereum is the one that really started it. So it's worth telling it.

There's been a number of people who have obviously come on the podcast and talked about things like ERC-20, that protocol shook the world, right? and especially the finance world, things like Ether became the reserve currency of fundraising globally, right? You know, people weren't just using Bitcoin. They were using Ether to do this stuff. And then obviously the network itself or the platform of Ethereum really did become the foundation for a new financial system to some degree, right? And so as you look at this, the book, though, is not just the story of Ethereum, right? But it's also kind of there's things that predate the beginning of Ethereum, like Vitalik's life and things like that.

Maybe just talk about kind of how you think from a structural standpoint. You know, why go to talk about things pre, you know, the first time that somebody heard about Ethereum? Yeah. I mean, because Ethereum didn't like just come out of the blue. Vitalik did a lot of work in the Bitcoin space before Ethereum. I don't know that a lot of people realize that Vitalik was a Bitcoiner before thinking about like writing the Ethereum white paper. So it's important to know where all these ideas came from. And the idea of like a blockchain that did more than just peer-to-peer cash like Bitcoin was in the space before Ethereum. But Vitalik really took it to the extreme and he was the first one to think about making a protocol that's completely featureless.

I think other projects like MasterCoin and NXT, there were other blockchains that wanted to increase the capabilities that Bitcoin had, but they weren't doing it in the same way that Ethereum did it. It just wanted to become the building blocks of whatever people wanted to. It's like the true platform strategy, right? It's just like we're going to serve as a platform, we're not going to compete with anything that's built on top of it, and just people can use it however they see fit. Right. So, yeah, I think it was important to give background on how Vitalik came up with that idea. And then it just wasn't his, I mean, he wasn't the only one thinking about it at the time. And then what about, you know, in the book as you're writing this, and you're almost done, I think, right?

is kind of where you're on the process um talk to us about is there a lot of things that maybe you went in assuming were true and turned out not to be or even maybe there's like a story that um you know you're like wow this really surprised me as and part of the story um i mean things don't give us to don't give us the secrets of the book no no i won't i won't But, okay, things I find really interesting about Ethereum that I didn't know before. One is that, you know, seeing all the difficult decisions that Vitalik had to make in the history of the project. he started really young he was 19 when he wrote the white paper but he had to make really difficult um decisions that put him uh in in the position of having to decide between

the project or like a friend or like a long time colleague and every time he chose ethereum so i think it's just really interesting to to see you know that he's had this vision for for the platform and that's like the most important thing um always like no no no matter what he's always going to choose ethereum um something else is that you know like a lot of the problems that ethereum is having now they've been thinking about it for like since before the launch um like proof of stake uh scaling like all of those problems they knew were coming like um they knew that they that they would want to change to to from proof of work to another consensus mechanism they knew that scaling would be a problem like it wasn't like oh like it's almost

like they knew what they were doing yeah it was like it wasn't like crypto kitties happened and suddenly they were like oh we need to scale no like they knew this was this was a problem from before um so yeah it was just interesting to like go back to old blog posts like of the ethereum foundation or like things like vitalik wrote i'm like oh like this could be written like maybe now you know um so it just like tells you that they've been like thinking about these problems and like working on on these problems for for a long time and i think it's like taking a long time because they don't want to do like a patch solution um they really want to solve this this trilemma of um what is it like throughput security and decentralization and they don't want to

compromise on like any of the three uh pieces which is like what a lot of smart contract platforms are doing they they're compromising on one of the three but ethereum doesn't want to And so, yeah, so they've been thinking about this from like the very early, early days. When you get done with the book, I need to go introduce you to every fund manager and you need to give them a lesson on Ethereum because you got it now. All right. So let's switch gears for a second. And I want to talk about like what it means to write a book, right?

So you have an idea. I think that there's a book. It sounds like Ethereum is probably going to be a good idea to write the book about. What are the steps that you go through to actually write the book, right? Like, I think you've got to get a book deal, then you've got to actually put the work in to write the book. Like, just walk us through the steps that you've had to go through to get to where you are. Okay, so this is my first book. I had no idea what I was doing.

I mean, I still kind of don't, but... You're one book ahead of pretty much every person listening to this, so you're good to go. Okay, so first thing I did is I reached out to an author, the author of a book that I was reading at the time. who was who's also a journalist and it was his first book so I thought okay maybe he can give me some tips and he introduced me to his agent so with that I emailed the the agent told him hey I have an idea for a crypto book I met with the agent and he he told me I have to write a book proposal so what that is is basically a business plan for the book where I have to I had to write okay what the book is why now why I should be the one to write it the outline with like

summaries for each chapter it's like a 20 page document and once I had that then the agent went and sent it to too many different publishers in like a couple weeks I got a an answer from harper collins and they you know made uh an offer to to buy their rights to the book and i accepted the offer right away um so yeah in in usually it happens that there there's like more negotiation and like a bidding war almost yeah i don't really like it yeah um for me harper collins really was really interested and they wanted to kind of take it out of the table um and they made a really good offer so my agent advised that i should just take take that so got it well first of all congratulations okay it's a lot of work so you get the book deal with harper collins um

they basically uh my understanding we're talking before is they give you a book advance right and then um essentially uh when the book goes on sale they you know recoup their capital and then there's a split of the book what do you have to do between the book going live and signing the book deal right so once you sign the book deal you got to write the book right like what's that process like um okay so before even before the book deal i i had been reporting for the book so so first thing i i kind of had like a basic structure of what i wanted the book to be I had a list of like the key people I wanted to interview so start reaching out to everyone I want to interview planning my trips like I knew I wanted to do in-person interviews for like key

people so so just doing a lot of planning with interviews reaching out like I think that the first few few weeks was a lot about just like scheduling as many interviews as I could um once I had like kind of the the first I don't know like 10 or I don't know how many but like the first like key interviews then I I started just like very slowly writing like the first pieces um I tried to write like after I did uh each interview I tried to write like whatever um interesting pieces came out of that and just to feel like i i was i had something on paper like you're making progress yeah like i didn't want to just like be interviewing um but i think it was like after like six months of research and reporting that i actually started to write like

the real book holy shit yeah yeah all right and so when you start writing the book uh i've always wondered like do you start on like okay this is page one and then you go from page one to like page 200 and you just write sequentially or do you say okay today i'm gonna work on chapter three let me write chapter three now you know the next time i'm gonna work on chapter two then i'll just skip to chapter 12 like do you skip around or do you just write it from first page all the way to the back so in in the beginning so while i was doing these interviews i was like writing down pieces right so at the start i had just like chunks of like different sections of the book and and then it just came came to a point where i had like all these chance and i had like most

of my key interviews and that's when i just started writing from like like page one from page one yeah but i did i i actually started from like chapter three like i wasn't clear exactly what like my first like two chapters were so i wrote like first 10 chapters and then i went back and wrote like the first two got it so you know like added more to the beginning yeah um how long will the book be um i like probably 90 000 words which is like i like between 300 and 400 pages i think yeah that's that's a lot yes okay and then um how many people do you think you'll have interviewed by what it's all said and done like 10 100 a thousand like what just ballpark uh well i have around 100 interviews right now already yeah so you'll be probably

over 100 by the time that you're done wow it's a lot of work um okay and then i guess uh what is your like you know let's fast forward 10 years from now and when people look back at the book like and i was asked them like what do you think about this book like what's the one thing you want them to say um i want them to to say that that's when they understood why blockchain technology matters um and you know why it can be why it can really shape um just the way things work beyond money um because i think that's what bitcoin has down i mean that's what it's good at But I think Ethereum really opens up kind of the vision of what blockchain can do. And so if you can do that, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you wrote a New York Times bestseller.

Do you have aspirations to follow some of these other books that, you know, they basically take the book and they take the IP and then they turn it into a movie as well? Is it something that you would pursue or is it just write the book and move on and never want to hear about Ethereum again? No, no, I mean, I definitely think it will make a great movie. Like, this is beyond just like, okay, this is interesting technology. I think it's a really interesting story. Like, it's a fun story to read. It has tons of drama, has interesting characters. Like, it really has all the ingredients of a good movie.

So, yeah, I'll definitely try to get a movie out of this. That would be pretty cool if the first movie was about Ethereum. any characters that you think could actually play themselves in the movie? Like anyone in the story? Like you think Vitalik could play Vitalik in the movie? No. No. I think he would have no interest, you know?

Yeah, I was going to say, he's too smart. He's just like, I'm not dealing with it. He just wants to be coding. I'm trying to go build Ethereum. All the time. I don't know. There's just like, there's just really charismatic people in Ethereum.

Like the first guy that comes to mind is Griff Green. i think like he's just like a natural like outgoing person that would like play himself um but yeah it'll be hard to find like the right person to play vitalik i don't know all right well you think about who that's going to be so if you go pitch as a movie they're probably gonna want to know um okay very cool and so um before we get into the rapid fire questions to end it let's just talk for a second about um you know i think a lot of people in the cryptocurrency industry they're just like down this deep deep rabbit hole right they consume all of their content about crypto on twitter and telegram and reddit and crypto news sites and just they're so lost that they

don't even know which way's up anymore right because they're that far down the rabbit hole yeah and i'm like victim number one at times right so so it's not it's not a a bad thing it's just that's what happens in this industry but there's so much other stuff that happens in finance right and like from your perspective as a journalist take like outside of the crypto industry is this stuff important to anybody or do they just literally say like oh you know you crypto kids like that's cute go sit in the corner and like don't be too loud right like like how how are they looking at this and and is it material in terms of like the global scale and in media coverage in the finance community or is it still pretty small at nasa i think it's still

pretty small um i think just you know from from just hearing uh colleagues opinion at bloomberg uh it was always just like okay this is cute like this is funny um or you know people are still i don't think taking crypto seriously um because it's it's a really small market like it has a really small trading volume compared to to most markets and you know it's like all of the the news that come out a lot of it is really negative um with hacks and just uh market like just prices and data not not being credible um so i think it makes it hard for for like professional investors to to take this place seriously but i think i think it's it's definitely getting better um and And I think looking at the space now, it's already matured from where we were in 2017.

I think there's a lot more real stuff going on, like actual use. I look at the DeFi space, like decentralized finance, and see, okay, there's actual traction here and use beyond speculation. And it just like, it tells me, okay, if there's like, if we're really starting a bull market now, it'll have more solid fundamentals than it did in 2017. And that will help institutional investors and professional investors take the space seriously. Yeah. When's the book supposed to come out? A year from now, Blockchain Week next year. Okay. So Blockchain Week 2020. Yes.

If we're entering a bull market now, it's going to come out right around the halving, which should be a pretty good point for you to release a book. I really hope so. We literally are businesses to bet on it, and that's something I would bet on. That's pretty cool timing there. Okay, and then I guess one other last thing is just like you've been on the other side as a journalist, right? And you've probably heard a million pitches from crypto businesses or people in the crypto community. Like, what would be your advice to them, right? Like, what's the biggest mistakes they make?

And then, like, what should they keep in mind when they do talk to reporters that maybe it's just very obvious that they're not paying attention to? Okay. I think. Don't be too harsh on people. No, I'll be harsh. no i think that the the main advice is to not announce anything until they have actual progress until they have actual results to show for their work um just like keep your head down and build and don't like clog journalists inboxes with like vapid announcements and if you have something

that's that's worth looking at you'll get coverage um but if you just like announce oh like we we launched uh our mainnet today um that's gonna subtract your from your credibility um the other thing is just say why this this matters like don't get people often get really focused on on like the details of the tech and you know why this uh you know consensus algorithm is better than the other one um at least like for mainstream reporters what they're going to look at is how is this going to change people's lives like how what impact does it have in like normal people and just like tell it in a way that people can can understand um i think yeah just entrepreneurs like often forget that um and yeah forget to like communicate in in a way that

regular people can understand um what else uh yeah and just like I think it's it's it's easy for for people who are so excited about what they're building to think that everyone is gonna be as as excited um but again it comes down to put yourself in like the other like the other person's shoes like why why would should they care about what you're doing you know and it feels like to me i mean the point you made about wait to make an announcement or try to get press coverage when there's substance couldn't be more overstated like could that couldn't be more important right um it's just you see it all the time it's like you know the running joke obviously is uh is the team at tron who announces an announcement about unannounced right like okay guys not not really

helping your kids it gets really exhausting um for sure uh okay so before i wrap up i always do some rapid fire questions uh what do you think is the most important company in crypto company company in crypto you can't say ethereum oh you're biased to ethereum wow um um uh i don't know let me think i'm like blanking out now um let's see maybe just i want to say like i don't like coinbase is coming to mind just because like they uh they get a lot of hate uh on on twitter but i i really think that you know they're like maybe the first place just normal people will go to when they want to come into this The largest exchange in the United States?

Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's a perfectly fine answer. What is the thing that you believe in crypto that you think the most number of people would disagree with? Like, what's, like, your most controversial thought? I'm especially interested because you've done a bunch of work on Ethereum. Let's see. Um, yeah, I think, uh, controversial, um, maybe, uh, I'm having trouble with this.

Maybe you don't have any controversial thoughts. No, no, let me think. um uh okay so i think like the ethereum community portrays itself to be like very rainbows and like unicorns and like peace and love literally they wear them on their t-shirts yeah yeah um but just like looking at the backdoor drama uh i don't think that's you know the the most accurate portrayal i think they can be as mean as like hardcore bitcoiners that's i'm sure there's a lot of people who don't recognize that that's that's actually pretty interesting insight um what do you think is the most important book you've ever read um okay so i think

um let me think uh well i think yeah probably michael lewis uh the big short had the biggest influence on me i think because i think when i after i read it i i was like okay this is the book i would want to write just like very interesting um non-fiction story on on finance because i mean that's what i what i know what i cover and i think what moves the world so after i read that i was like okay like this is how finance can be interesting and fun to read and And that's what I'd want to read. I mean, I'd want to write. Very cool.

In a second, I'm going to let you ask me a question to finish it. But before, I always talk to people about aliens. Believer in aliens? Not believer? Do you think they're real or not? I think they're, I think, yeah, I believe in aliens. I think there has to be, I mean, it's a huge universe out there. We can't be the only life in it.

Yeah, so I think there's a chance. an incredibly high number of people like they're on a percentage basis that come in here that believe in aliens it's like probably like over 75 80 percent maybe yeah like spending so much time in crypto like makes you well yeah that's true that's a good point maybe everyone who just comes in here is crazy um all right what uh what one question do you have for me to uh to finish up well i'd love your your advice like what would you want to read and in a book on ethereum interesting um so i'm actually fascinated by the players in the very early days and how they got to that place like and why they wanted to build it okay right and the reason why uh i i'm so fascinated by the

why is it's finance related it's very capitalistic to go create something like this um it can drive a lot of wealth i don't think it's my outside assumption that many of the people in that room that's why they were doing it right now maybe there was right i'm not i'm not sure hopefully of the book covers it but to me if it's not capitalist driven why right is it just like they're screwing around and they want to go build something and like oh this would be cool to see what happens is it like we want to go take down wall street we've got this great idea right you know like like whatever that reason is um and my guess is that like i don't know there's probably three to ten people you know that are important in there five to ten people whatever it is

many of them actually have different answers probably yeah right and that created huge problems down the line so it sounds like you already know the answers okay all right perfect i will i will read the book um where can people if they're interested in the book are they able to pre-order anything right now unfortunately not yet but yeah if you follow me on twitter of course i'll announce it as soon as it's available what is your uh what's your twitter account it's at Connie Russo, C-A-M-I-R-U-S-S-O. Okay, so if they follow you there, then everyone on Twitter will know when the book is coming out.

All right, awesome. Thank you so much for doing this. I know that you didn't have to do it, and it's just really cool, I think, to hear kind of why you're writing the book and talking to you at a point where you're about a year out from releasing it. And so maybe when you go to release it, we'll bring you back and see if the things that you're thinking about now

end up making it in the book. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Awesome, thanks so much. Thank you. Hey, everyone. pop here if you like this episode of off the chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the apple spotify and other podcast charts please do us a favor and rate review and subscribe to review simply go to the off the chain homepage scroll down until you see the five blank stars taking

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