The Pomp Podcast - David Bleznak, Founder & CEO of Totle: Simplifying Decentralized Exchanges

Episode Date: February 4, 2019

David Bleznak is the founder and CEO of Detroit based Totle. In this live recording, Bleznak and Anthony Pompliano discuss tokenization of assets, the current regulatory environment, future financing mechanisms, and fundraising in today's bear market. This episode of Off the Chain was recorded at CUT by Wolfgang Puck. Totle’s B2B platform provides crypto-to-crypto exchange at the best prices. Similar to using Kayak for finding the best flights, Totle’s platform aggregates access to leading decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and optimally routes traders to the best venue. With Totle, users always safely control their private keys. Visit Totle.com to learn more. For investment information visit Totle.com/invest. ----- Join the Off the Chain newsletter. Pomp's daily email analyzes the crypto market for institutional investors. Simply, it’s the best crypto newsletter delivered to your inbox every morning. No frills. No bullsh*t. Just everything you need to know in a 3-minute read. https://offthechain.substack.com/ ----- 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. David Belznick is the founder and CEO of Detroit-based Total. In this live recording, we discuss tokenization of assets, the current regulatory environment, future financing mechanisms, and fundraising in today's bear market. For more information, you can go to Total's website at www.total.com. That's T-O-T-L-E.com. I hope you enjoy this conversation nearly as much as I did. 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, we've got David here. We are recording live at Cut by Wolfgang Puck. If you have not been to one of these, you should come. Tons of fun. David, thank you for coming. Thanks for having me, Pop. All right. We got a lot to cover. So let's start first with your background, and then we can figure out how you got into crypto.

Yeah, so I grew up in Southeast Michigan. I went to the University of Michigan and graduated 2012. Went straight to Chicago for a year, really learned the real estate industry, worked for a development company there, mostly focused on retail. And then I brought that skill set back to my family's office in the Detroit area,

and we worked on a lot of turnaround deals until around 16, um, 16, 17, when I got an interest in crypto. If you went to Michigan, I'm assuming that you're not a big Ohio state fan. No, not, not, not really. All right. We won't go there. Um, so when you got into crypto, when's the first time you ever heard about Bitcoin blockchain crypto? 2013 is when I first heard about it. I wasn't, uh, as active as I, as I am now in the space. But I bought three Bitcoin and put them in a safe, held on to them. And it wasn't really until Ethereum came about until I started really getting much more involved with the programmability of that blockchain and the opportunities that come from that.

Got it. And what was your initial reaction when you first came across crypto? Did you think everyone was crazy? No, I mean, I think I was skeptical, just like most people. I didn't really understand what the value was or why we needed it or, you know, why would even someone pay for a Bitcoin? I think I had the same similar reactions that most people have when they first hear about the tech. Got it. And then maybe talk a little bit about what you guys are doing now. I know that you guys just made a couple of announcements and then we can get into some of the nuances of it. Yeah. So Total is focused on providing exchange functionality for every decentralized financial

application in the world. So basically, all of these great entrepreneurs and businesses out there are developing decentralized applications, whether it's DeFi to games to platforms. And most of them need or almost all of them need some way for the participants to change one token to another. And that process requires some sort of exchange functionality and Total provides that in one source. All right. So a traditional exchange, pretty self-explanatory, a buyer-seller come, they meet, they decide on a price and they exchange whatever the asset is for usually capital or currency. What is the difference between a centralized exchange and a decentralized exchange? Yeah, that's a good question. So that's all I do is good questions on this podcast.

Okay. I'll try to only give you good answers. So basically in a centralized exchange, which is the model that humans have known for almost all of time, you come to a centralized exchange and you deposit your assets, right? You give up possession of your assets the first thing you do. And why do you do that? Because you give it to an administrator. You need someone who's going to keep track of all this stuff and make sure that all the trades you make and all the actions you take on that exchange go through. The problem with that is you're putting your trust in that third party, in that administrator. Because they have your assets. Yeah, they take possession, whether it's legal or whether some jurisdiction says that they need to

take your assets, whatever it may be, they have possession, which is worth a lot. So in our opinion, the only real way to trade crypto assets is through decentralized exchanges. And this takes out the need for that administrative party, that third party. And so without a middleman, you can trade directly with your peers using decentralized exchanges and smart contracts. So I get in a decentralized world where I take my assets, I put it on the exchange, right? Or I deposit it. And there's an administrator that basically has control or custody of those assets. And then when I make trades, they're helping to facilitate that. In a decentralized world, where do my assets sit before I make the trade? Yeah. So similarly, if you're using a centralized exchange before you

even approach the exchange or begin to participate, you need to deposit them from somewhere. And when you're doing that, it's usually from your possession, from what they call wallet, right? Well, in a decentralized exchange, you actually visit the exchange with your wallet. So you actually, for example, if it's Total, which is a venue where you can do these exchanges of assets, you can go right to the website on your browser, right? And if you have a software wallet hooked up on your browser like MetaMask, you can begin trading directly from your possession. Got it. And then how does the decentralized exchange match buy-sell orders compared to maybe a centralized exchange? Yeah. So that is the key right there. And that's where a lot of research and development is going in the space. This concept of party matching, right? So you

need a way in a decentralized exchange to take a buyer and take a seller. And since you don't have that administrative third party, there needs to be some protocol or some mechanism for people to follow in order to be introduced to each other and negotiate pricing and settle the trade. So all of that's coded in decentralized exchanges. And the great thing about that is that people can choose how they implement this. So you have all sorts of different choices. You have AirSwap, you have Bancor, you have Kyber, you have order book solutions like EtherDelta, RadarRelay. So however you feel decentralized exchange is executed the best, you freely can choose what protocol protocol utilize. And in total, we we hide all of that. You can use all of those

venues in one one tool. And so really what you're doing is you're bundling every single one of those protocols or many of those protocols you just described into a single interface. And that interface is where the value is to the end user. That's correct. And what we've really found is that it's not so much the interface is it's the access. So now we've been selling the tech without forcing people to come and use our interface. So wallets and portfolio management softwares, they all want to plug in our exchange functionality. Got it. So let's switch gears a little bit. I want to talk about what's actually traded on these exchanges, right? In the kind of traditional centralized world, let's call it the incumbent financial system. You've got stocks,

you've got currencies, you've got bonds, right? There's all kind of the traditional assets. in the crypto world what i'll call the incumbent crypto world centralized exchanges like the gemini's coin bases they've been fairly um slow to add all kinds of assets they've tried to stick to you know large caps and and now we're starting to see them leak into some of the little bit smaller ones where do we end up let's work kind of backwards from the future right so where does this end up is it that i can go and trade every all the currencies the tokenized stocks the collectibles, like every digital asset in one single exchange? Or do we get a fragmented world where maybe all the crypto collectibles are traded on a single exchange and then all the

tokenized stocks are traded on another exchange and you get that fragmentation? Yeah, that's a really great way to frame it. I think that you do get some fragmentation. I think you bifurcate the security style, financial, those type of instruments and the new asset class. And the reason that I believe that so much is that the laws today do not allow you to trade other assets and securities in the same mechanism. So it's already somewhat bifurcated in a way. You're saying you can't trade a known security, let's say like a tokenized stock. Somebody who has the issuer says, this is a security, I'm going to trade like a security, an exchange. Commodities and stocks, it's very difficult to have one platform and all of them

mixed in from a regulatory perspective. Got it. So once you bifurcate those, and when I say bifurcate, you have the securities, the financial instruments, and then you have these utility tokens, the tokens that represent what. And that's really what the conversation is. And we believe in this new asset class, maybe not so much as it's been formulated by the entrance to the space in 2017, but we're big believers in tokens and utility tokens. We don't think that the highest and best use or really what these tokens represent has fully been discovered. All right. So this is going to be fun because I disagree, but I want you to convince me to believe what you believe. My whole position on this is utility tokens are definitely incentives,

right? I think we agree on that. We've had digital incentives for a long time. Streaks, points, badges, et cetera. This is a new, potentially more valuable or powerful type of incentive. But how is a user going to manage 10, 20, 100 different utility tokens across all the different platforms they use? Or maybe that's not the world you see in the future. Yeah. So with Total, you don't have to manage all these things because we exchange them right to the asset that you want. So that's one solution. The other part of it, too, is that I do believe it is incentives. But again, it's capturing value in a way that we have not really understood it. I'll give you a couple examples and I can walk through. I go on Facebook and I

like your photo. You won't like mine, but you'll like somebody's. Okay. I like a photo. Whoever's photo that is, right? I've just built their social equity, their social proof. Okay. But in order for them to monetize that, they have to go find a company, right? That wants to market to the people who view their page, take that product, stand in front of the camera, go, hi, I'm here. And then have that company pay them for how many times? It makes no sense. It's like he's not really. So if there was a way to capture that value, right, and immediately have you or have me like this photo and have that person immediately take that social equity and buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks within seconds without having to go through all the friction and paying Chase 2%

twice to convert the value well then you're going to unlock a lot of opportunity that we can't even see or comprehend quite yet as a as a race or as a it's funny you talk about this because i forget the um what was the company clout score right i don't know if you remember that where basically they tried to take all some you know some formula and say how many followers you have how much engagement you have who are those followers etc and they basically assigned a score to it and they said, you know, you've got 70 is your score as clout and mine is 50, right? And you've got more clout than I have on social, et cetera. And so really a lot of these ideas on the utility tokens we've seen before in terms of the directional idea. Now the argument I think you're making is

the utility token itself actually provides a much more powerful way to monetize and incentivize people to do things? Correct. It's powerful incentives, and it's also powerful capturing of value that we could not put into any instrument before. This is a new instrument that now represents value we could not, as people, could understand. So this is completely new. There's a new asset class here for sure, in my opinion. Would it be fair to say that many of these utility tokens, so the example I always think of is like AWS credits with Amazon, right? They use it both as a way to pay so to get access to computing power to their network etc but they also use it as an incentive where they say hey i'll give you fifteen thousand dollars worth of

aws credits when you start your company you start using aws switching cost is really high now they got you in their ecosystem exactly and they start doing it it's not based on blockchain it's not cryptographically secure but a lot of the mechanisms and the underlying logic that goes into how they use that AWS credit is similar to a utility token? Yes. I would say that airline miles would represent the same thing.

Reward system, reputation, all sorts of... There's guys outside of crypto that talk about this stuff. This isn't like, you know, incentives aren't this like mind-blowing thing that crypto created. Bill Gross even talks about it.

He says pay-per-click was first. The real revolution is pay-per-action. you know and he doesn't really talk about crypto all the time this is this is a way to program isms to program incentives that's what this technology does do you think the incumbent companies will who have these incentive-based programs right so the aws's the airlines etc does it make sense for them to tokenize or put those systems on a blockchain do they get advantages out of that or do you think that they've got what works they're using it they'll continue down that path and it's new things new incentives that people create that will actually

go on the blockchain no i think i think eventually they do go on the blockchain i think that the the the incentive structure as you just went through that you know why how that why they have these points and stuff yep it benefits the the organization having the points doesn't benefit the the user it keeps them in the ecosystem it you know it benefits them by allowing by putting on a blockchain that benefits the user. Now it allows them to, it unlocks that value, removes the value from depending on American airlines to administrate that value for them. Now they can take that value to Iran and buy a piece of clothing with an airline mile for the US. But they don't have to tell American airlines that they're doing that. Yep. So does this lead to

this world of gamification and incentives that we could say that this like social credit scoring that China is thinking about, right, where basically all of your actions get assigned some kind of score, positive or negative, kind of like an Uber type rating. And if you fall below a certain threshold, you lose, you know, quote unquote, access or rights to things. And if you are deemed a good citizen, right, you get access to certain things. Is that this? Yeah, this doesn't scare me this is great because really to be honest you there should be multiple scoring systems why do we have one credit score that makes no sense why is it that there's one authority that says what everybody's credit is it's like ridiculous you should be able to go to another network and

say look this network's screwed up they don't have my credit right and over time it'll be proven if you're on five networks and your credit sucks your credit sucks if you're on you know five networks and four of them say you're a hundred percent. And one says you're a D one, you know, one screwed up. So it's, it's, it's, it's more about opening and allowing free markets to decide all of these things. I, you know, my personal belief is that free markets and you could privatize every government organization and it would operate better. Let's dig into this. You think that you can privatize every government organization, every government organization, every government service what would be the hardest one to privatize probably health care okay why i just think it's

such a there there's a there's a social aspect to it that's not economic that gets tied into that i mean there's a there's more than one of those but i'm using health care as that example i'll give you a good example we just took public transportation and we privatized it as a people how because uber and the uberization whether it's uber itself as a company forget that i'm using Uber is an adjective here. We're investors in Lyft over here. We only talk about Lyft. I don't know what the other one is. Ride sharing. What's the word now that they use? I was just in Texas and they had an abbreviation for it where I stood. I don't know what it is anymore. So ride sharing applications. All right. So my point is, is that that created an economy

for transportation that didn't exist prior. And it completely unlocked value in areas of this country that did not have transportation for people to move around. I'm from Detroit. This is a great example. We had no transportation for people, the suburbs who grew up in the suburbs. Right. So this is a generation after all of the issues we've had, didn't want to go back down to the city because there was no transportation to take them there. you're gonna love this so my father who doesn't listen to podcasts i think he literally learned what a podcast was about a month and a half ago uh said to me one time he goes what what did you just do on your phone why the car came and i explained it to him and he said i'll never use

that and this is like probably two years ago and i said why not and he goes i'm not waiting 20 minutes for that thing to come pick me up that's like that's how i feel when people are like i'm not waiting an hour for that transaction to be confirmed it's like you're gonna wait a week to get the check from the bank like what is wrong with you well the the spoiler to the story is he uses uber all the time now yeah right i'm not surprised we're trying to get him on the lift train but he's still he's still on uber that's fine uh you got more it's because you have more lift currency you know so let's talk about uh regulation on a global basis for these decentralized exchanges right so with the decentralized exchange what you do is you

remove a lot of i think the um the aspects that are highly regulated in traditional markets but there's still going to be some level of regulation. How do you think about multiple jurisdictions that are trying to all look at a decentralized exchange and figure out just what are the rules? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really big issue because it creates a lot of friction. You know, there's the the interoperability is tough enough for the blockchains, the interoperability of the jurisdictions even worse. And so I think that there needs to be, be, especially in the US, this hands-off approach. Obviously, that's my personal opinion. But realistically, I see a lot of people moving to these island nations. And I don't know how

much in the long run that really makes a difference. Eventually, you have to serve US customers. That's what the law is based on. So maybe it's good. Maybe it's good for testing in these markets. Maybe that's how we make progress. I mean, look at Facebook's testing a stablecoin in India. So maybe it's not so bad that the innovation's coming offshore in order for us to figure that out. I'm highly biased because I work there. If Facebook launches a stablecoin in India, it may be one of the most impactful applications of technology in our lifetime. True or false? False. Why? Because they're not innovating or, you said applications? Yeah. Basically, if they do that, it has the chance to disrupt a lot of the monetary issues in India.

And it would be one of the first times that a large technology company went right head-to-head with a government-backed currency and said, let the people choose between a government-controlled option and a non-government-controlled option. It will be very interesting to see. I definitely think it'll be a big move. and i also think that uh it really have to do with regulation more than the tech though i mean i think right right now india has banned crypto right or banned icos or they've gone back and forth the india is uh interesting because they actually took the path of uh the fight to which i think is the most intelligent way you don't go head on with crypto and say we're gonna ban ownership of it we're gonna ban uh icos all they said was to the legacy folks the people who actually listen to the rules and and think that whatever the regulators say is you know the gospel

they said you cannot work with any crypto companies and so if you think of like from my perspective the single point of failure for crypto is still the dependence on the legacy financial system which is what they went right after how is that different than the u.s it's not How would you, if you're the U.S. government, how would you, and you felt threatened by crypto, Bitcoin, different blockchain applications, what would you do to try to stop or stall the adoption and growth? Build a wall. After you built the wall, what would you do? That's the only way to really keep crypto up, because it comes through with all the sensors. There's no other way to really keep it up.

The caravan of crypto enthusiasts? uh no i mean i what would i do by the way i just i just imagined all the characters from twitter like in a caravan and that's really scary all right so what would you do for real i mean i i mean it's all it's an internet infrastructure play china's trying to do this every you know governments i think i mean russia's tried to to block uh telegram um so blocking cryptographic applications is not new um but i i would say if the if the i mean i can't believe the u.s government whatever that would be crazy to me that they would try to destroy or try to block it completely it seemed that seems pretty un-american to me i i've tweeted this before

so i think he's comfortable with me saying he said it uh zuko um who's working on z cash told me once he said look a lot of people are worried about the privacy coins and they think the government's gonna say you know why do you need a privacy coin if you don't have anything to hide type argument and he explained to me that uh which i didn't know was when encryption first came on the scene uh there was this huge debate where the government basically said why do you need encrypted uh communications and data if you've got nothing to hide and so there was this huge fight between the government and people working on encryption and eventually there was this hearing in front of you know legislators etc and he's like how funny is it that today

encryption is seen as a best practice right if you actually are communicating in a non-encrypted way it's actually a bad thing right and so his belief is look the privacy features on tokens today will actually every single token will have them at some point in the future governments will get comfortable with this stuff etc that's a pretty big leap given where we are today but there is some precedent with other types of encryption or privacy technology that it happened yeah i mean my personal belief on the thing in terms of viewing the the kyc and all of that i think that that's needed for going from your fiat currency to your crypto once you're in crypto and you're in the ecosystem going from crypto to crypto doesn't seem like that's really needed

um but i i do think that there is a uh that i don't believe in like no you know complete anarchy no regulation i just think that there it needs to be done in a way that's going to allow uh innovation in this country specifically if regulators get it wrong do people leave yes i think that people do leave um and i'm not sure i'm not sure how it plays out if they you know i'm not really sure i think they leave in droves i i really do i mean it there's a lot of people i talk to in this industry and they do not live in the united states they have no plans to live in the united states and some of it is what i'll put under like the quality of life right they just want to live somewhere else i think it's better warmer weather you know

whatever their kind of reasoning is. But then there's a lot of people who just say, look, I'm just going to sidestep completely all the regulatory issues by living somewhere else. Yeah, it doesn't. Again, though, once you serve U.S. customers, it's you know, that's that that's the thing. Once you serve U.S. customers, you have to play by U.S. rules. What we've done at Total is we've decided we're not going to play in any security. So we don't deal with securities. You can't buy any securities through our software. We are completely associated on what's uh noted as virtual commodities got it what's the most interesting virtual commodity you've seen that's a that's a good one what's the most interesting man you said that twice i know

i'm on fire today caught me a most interesting virtual commodity uh bitcoin i was just gonna say that's the right answer good job what's the second most all right i mean i would say i'm gonna make it interesting we'll go with a token uh you know what i really believe in bat I think that's going to be one of these that really makes it basic attention token that makes it out of crypto. Like they have this platform and it's I use it. Explain. So brave is an alternative to Chrome. It's a browser and it's focused on privacy.

It also has a native cryptocurrency basic attention token bat. And it that would reward users, reward venues for their attention and venues, reward users. for their attention and vice versa. You can pay them using the BAT token. It's an ecosystem. It's an economy based on this token. I think that it's going to actually take hold with people who are new to the space,

who have not really used crypto before. I think the product stands first. And that's similar how we're doing it at Total and our ethos, but they focused on this browser. They've disrupted the browser space, right? And now the crypto aspect, the incentive, okay, to bring the thing full circle is built in inherently into the model.

And so that, just by focusing on a problem that people are having and developing a product that improves their life, and then using crypto as a way to run that economy, I mean, they're doing it right. That's kind of how I feel about it. It's interesting because whenever there's new technology, you can do one of two things with it, right?

You can either use it to build something the world's never seen before, do something new with it, or you can use it to improve the old world. And I think a lot of people in crypto are focused on building that new world, things we've never seen before and they're all excited what that team did was they actually improved an old world right they went to they built a browser we've got plenty of browser options

but they incorporated new elements or or kind of new shiny uh advantageous elements that make the old browser world much more interesting to a lot of people who are interested in this world yeah i mean that was that was all on purpose too you know the purposely wanted to disrupt firefox That's what's happening. And I mean, that's creative destruction at its finest. Absolutely. What's your biggest worry in the crypto industry? I think it goes back to our last conversation.

My number one worry is the US doesn't get it right. And that's really my fear. The second, I think, from the technical side, my fear is that the tribalism in the space really continues. And we end up with a much longer battle than is needed to take down the real. enemy. What is the most likely way that the U.S. gets it wrong? Is it around regulation and like the security stuff or is there something else? No, I think they get in their own way. I think it's the same. It's not different. It's not like a new story here. You know, they end up in this

situation and the guy, their buddies want the licenses and there's no way for them to make it fair. You can't, this technology, you can't get your hands around, right? That's what they're so used to their hands getting their hands around making it okay okay you have goldman you you have this role everyone has this role okay and it's good that you can't do that with this you can't grab this this is this is its own life i hope no one from goldman's here but uh they got their own troubles man they're the the one mdb stuff is uh is pretty wild yeah and my my other biggest uh concern is it going back to the tribalism and the fragmentation of the market is the scaling for uh these blockchains i mean we just had a delay today uh you saw that do you want to talk about

it i mean i don't i didn't i was busy all day so i just saw a tweet that we won't have this upgrade so the ethereum update uh that everyone was uh we could say lightly excited about uh didn't happen which in hindsight is like the most crypto thing of all time right like literally let's all get excited about it's gonna happen it's gonna happen it's gonna happen it's gonna save this you know it's going to make it more scalable and they don't even get launched it's not even that way it didn't work it just doesn't get launched yeah i mean this is this is the thing this is the new this is the fact that we're in this era where uh this organization right ethereum is they're making all these decisions on the fly there's no you know there's no history for this stuff

do you think that is a disadvantage for most of these utility tokens and all like all networks slash coins and this is actually one of the areas where bitcoin because of the slow development and because of the kind of more methodical process actually has an advantage or do you think it's just those two things aren't really that correlated and people are making mistakes yeah i don't think that when you say mistakes what do you mean by making mistakes well some would argue that uh there wasn't enough planning there wasn't enough um kind of methodical approach to implementing this and if there had been perfect execution of it we would have had it implemented today. Yeah, I think that there's truth to that. But I think that what you're talking about,

these delays, the disorganization or whatever you want to call it, it's a product of the fact that these types of organizations or models that come from crypto are not like the old models, right? We're human. And there's a human element to the growth of these organizations. There needs to be consensus true consensus from the group to change the protocols we have new communities forking and happening and you know like it just it's not the same as as a traditional model in terms of how how they evolve and how they develop so i'll take it a step further uh i was thinking about this the other day can you imagine the reaction from the u.s government if they went up to somebody and said shut that off and the person's response was i can't right right yeah

I mean, like like if someone's like, hey, shut off the Bitcoin network and I can't. You think they know that you think that they can't call Mr. Bitcoin CEO and be like, turn it off. It's over now. So I will. And I said this quite a lot because I really do believe it. The U.S. regulators specifically have done a fantastic job of towing the line. And what I mean by that is they're aware of this stuff. They're really trying hard to get educated.

they're only going after people that are like the obvious scammers right so people who are frauds who who took money and ran all that kind of stuff and they've stayed away from like the heavy-handed we're gonna ban icos or we're gonna ban this or you can't do that and they may retroactively go after people but i think that they have allowed so your innovation but your opinion is that the The fact that ICOs were billions and billions of dollars and now that they're at zero, it's because that was natural markets? No, no, no. I don't think that it was all natural or do I think that it was all good behavior. What I'm saying is if you asked me should the regulators ban all of this before it happens versus should they let it happen and figure it out after the fact, I actually would lean towards the regulators weren't educated enough at the time – and they probably would say this – to just say we're going to ban it all.

They didn't know what it was. they didn't they hadn't had enough time to do the work and so now they're much more educated they're likely to go back through that kind of damage and say hey 40 of you guys you guys are bad actors you shouldn't have done that stuff you're in trouble the other 50 60 percent you think they really care about the bad actors yes yes i disagree i think that they come in and if this is their opportunity to wait just long enough okay to be the hero okay and come in and save mom and pop from crypto, you know, extravaganza, Godzilla. And over the next 30 years, they get to be looked at as the hero of saving people

and regulation is good. So by enforcing that message for people and by saying that the SEC actually does something, then they create a use for themselves in the system. Do you think there's no use? There's absolutely no use for what they're doing. What would you, so if they went away, this is an interesting thought exercise. If the SEC and other regulators like them went away, how would we ensure any sort of compliance or sanity in the markets? It's the same way we talked about all these other privatizations.

You're going to have a private rating agency is going to emerge and they're going to say, this is good, this is good, this is good, this is good. And they only get away with lying one time. that's fair. Uh, along this lines, is there the possibility that someone builds a quote unquote decentralized regulatory body and hands it to regulators and says, listen, this is going to do a better job than you. You should defer to this decentralized organization that no one controls. Yeah. And what do you think their response is going to be? Well, I have an opinion, but what do you think? Go fly a kite. All right. Before I wrap up, I always do a rapid fire set of questions uh what is the one regulation if you could wave a magic wand and change or improve

that you would change or improve taxation next question how how would you change it remove it completely um yeah i mean if there's no need for government services and government organizations then why do you need taxation you think there's zero need zero need every private organization you can pay you need uh private security you'll you'll pay on demand how would you pay for roads that you use that are public property there would be a private organization that would obviously make some money for administrating that process and you would contribute if you wanted to drive your car you hit some potholes i'm just imagining like a road filled with a bunch of you can go on the cheaper road there's a lot more there's a lot more potholes on that one all right if the

technology was there and the car was able like if they're so here's my whole theory actually this is pretty interesting so my whole theory with blockchain and crypto is that we're simply tokenizing every stock bond currency and commodity in the world because what it does is it empowers machine to machine transactions it empowers like all the automation etc and so in that world there is a thing that you could have right this is completely theoretical when the car drives down the road it knows how far you drove down the road it knows what the price per mile or price per foot or whatever it is, and it actually pays for the usage of the road rather than how much your income is, and we're going to tax you based on it.

Certainly. It's still a tax. Now, you could argue, does that go to a public entity or a private entity? Yeah, I'm saying going to a public entity. That's what I was just saying. But yeah, I would say I would move taxes. I'm blown away you said taxation. That's great.

No one's ever said that before. It's tough. Oh, my God. All right. What's the most important book you've ever read? Um, you were quick on the taxation answer on the book. You got no answer. Well, no, to be honest, I don't read a lot of books.

I read a lot of articles. I did. I did like the big short, the big short. All right. What's the best article you've read recently? That's a good, another good one. I like my favorite channel. I'm three for three.

Yeah. My, my favorite channel is the Atlantic. So I like the media, my favorite medium. I like reading their stuff. So if I was that, so I, yeah. Okay. Uh, what's the most important company in crypto? still coinbase to me why because of the influence they have over the retail user

if facebook launches something that hits more users do they be do they replace coinbase as the most important company in crypto they compete for sure okay that's fair um so before i end and let you ask me a question uh i was asked one non-crypto question probability that aliens exist 99.9 how do you arrive at 99.9 and why is it not a hundred because nothing's a hundred percent that's the only reason that's not true it's a hundred percent true that you're sitting next to me right now no it's not that's pretty good all right so wait why 99.9 it's just because nothing's 100 i believe in it and nothing's 100 that's all there is to it do you think that there's a shot that you meet an alien before you die i i would say yes there's a shot let's say

that's a much lower percentage all right the reason why i asked that question is because i always think like if i met one what would i do yeah now can i ask you a question well hold on the only thing that i would do if i met an alien is like you want to go grab a beer i don't know what else to do i mean if you can speak to it and it can hear you then probably probably what we'll do all right what's your one question are you an alien no i'm not an alien come on you got a better question than that that's it that's my only question that's your question so uh how could i know for sure so there's there's one person who 100 i won't say who it is but they always describe people that they think are like the outliers as they say that person's an alien

and uh he's in crypto and the last time he said it i like pushed him on i was like what do you mean he's an alien he was like well that guy kind of thinks differently you know doesn't seem like he came from where we came from i mean i was like man there's a lot of fucking aliens in the world fair enough all right cool thank you so much uh we are holding people up from dinner so i appreciate you coming we'll have to do this again thank you for having me we really appreciate it and everyone check out total t-o-t-l-e.com.com.com all right 100 appreciate it 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

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