The Pomp Podcast - Frederic Chesnais, CEO of Atari: The Legendary Atari's Big Move into Crypto

Episode Date: June 24, 2019

Frederic Chesnais is the CEO and Chairman of the Board at Atari. In this conversation, Frederic and Anthony Pompliano discuss the history of Atari's brand, how cryptocurrencies can incentivize new types of work, why gaming is finding product/market fit in crypto, and what Atari plans to do to capitalize on the crypto opportunity. -----BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a USD loan funded directly to your bank account. They do loans ranging from $2,000 to $10,000,000, and they're perfect for helping you reach your financial goals of all sizes. Visit BlockFi.com/Pomp to learn more about putting your crypto to work without having to sell it. -----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. Frederick Chesnays is the CEO and Chairman of the board at Atari. In this conversation, we discuss the history of Atari's brand, how cryptocurrencies can incentivize new types of work, why gaming is finding product market fit in crypto, and what Atari plans to do to capitalize on the crypto opportunity. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well. Before we kick off this podcast, first a word from our sponsor BlockFi. As many of you know, crypto investors store their digital assets on exchanges or in cold storage for long-term

safekeeping. However, this strategy doesn't help them grow their investment holdings or build overall wealth. With the new BlockFi interest account, users can now securely store their Bitcoin or Ether at BlockFi and receive 6% annual interest paid monthly in cryptocurrency. 6% is an absurdly high rate. It's the best rate in the industry. I highly suggest you go check out BlockFi.com slash Pomp. Again, that's BlockFi.com slash Pomp to sign up and start earning crypto 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. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I am here with Fred. Super excited to go over everything that you've been up to so what thanks for so much for coming in thanks for having me for sure all right give us your background you were not from America no so from France was born there a long time ago French people always say it so much better than Americans in France in America we're just dumb and we say French no but so I was born there I stayed there until the 2004 I was

working between France and the US and I stopped you know I had to stop that I had to come here because I was just going to bed at 2 a.m. 3 a.m. so I was just like a disc jockey in France and so that my background is very interesting because I started in finance starting also as a CPA then got bored of numbers and decided I wanted to become a lawyer to make deals, big deals. Okay. Nobody's perfect. So I became a lawyer in France, and then I said, you know what,

what I really want to do is really big, big, bigger deals. So I went into investment banking, spent five years at Le Jard, and this is where I started to invest and advise in the space. So it was a long time ago. It was in 1995. and I was in Paris and I started to really look into the space but at the time you know PlayStation wasn't really there Xbox definitely not so what started is that I was one of my clients was Infogrames Entertainment and it was at the time you know bigger than Ubisoft

so we were advising the company and I was going quite well quite along with the founders So five years later in 2000, I left the bank and I joined the company. So we teamed up and at the time we were just mainly doing internet, not really video games. But in 2001, we all, you know, woke up after the big crisis and we all came back into the company. And we said, OK, now let's do it. We have something that's, you know, we were losing a lot of money, but we had just acquired Hasbro Interactive from Hasbro. And inside Hasbro Interactive was the Atari brand. And we knew it.

At the time, everyone was very excited about games.com, which is a URL that I ended up selling a few years later because we had to make ends meet and we had to redeem a lot of that. At the time, we had 550 million euros of that because we had bought everything. GT Interactive, Hasbro Interactive. So we knew that we had the Atari brand and all the games inside. So we renamed gradually our companies because we had subsidiaries in every country.

So we renamed our companies Atari. And ultimately, the holding company became Atari SA. So the French company became Atari SA. So that was from 2000 to 2009. I left in 2007 because at the time we had so much debt, the hedge fund became the largest shareholder. They bought the debt, and they made their way, and we helped them because we knew we had to repay the debt. We were left in 2007, and in late 2012, early 2013, the hedge fund called me back. It's public domain.

You'll find the name of the hedge fund. But it's public domain. They called me back, and they said, look, we want out. Please come back. We would like you to buy back the company from us. So, okay, let me recap for a second. You basically went from being a lawyer to an investment banker to an operator and almost exclusively have operated within the gaming industry. And you started out acquiring these different divisions or companies from larger players, eventually get a hold of the Atari brand.

You create this new Atari kind of strategy, go forward, you execute, sell to a hedge fund. And then this is when the story gets really good. Right, so you guys leave, the hedge fund takes over. It was not a one-man show. We were three, four, but it was a good team. And then when the hedge fund arrived, I said, look, yeah, here's the water is here, electricity is there, gas. If you need us, you know where to find us. So we all left in 2007.

Okay, so basically the team leaves 2007, hedge fund's in charge. What happens? So they went through six or seven CEOs, but they ended up losing like 400 million euros. And, yeah, for me, it was just like, whoa. So when I left, I negotiated not only to take some cash, but I had the severance to be paid. So I also took the – I bought the Macroprose brand at the time, Macroprose, which I ended up selling a few years later.

But everyone went on its own. So some came back to France. I stayed here. So I kept investing in – I created a company called Interactive Game Group, I2G, like stupid name. but my plan was to create a big portfolio of intellectual rights for games. So I started, I'm quasi-responsible for fitness games because I created with Jillian Michaels, we created,

and Giancarlo Cersic, we created Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum for the Wii, the balance board. Yep. We sold a few units, I would say, millions of units. It's pretty popular, right? Yeah, yeah, but Jillian was great, and it was perfect timing. But, you know, so I always kept an eye on Atari. And it's true that they were going down and down because it's, you know, the game business is super difficult.

So when you guys left, you were still creating games. You were still creating different things, right? Still kind of involved, but just not at Atari. So, yeah, exactly. I was just, I kept a licensing gig or advisory gig with Atari. But, no, I made fitness games. I invested in zombie games. I'm the one behind Nether

which is a game online that just got rebooted two weeks ago if you want to check it out on Steam so yeah we just kept doing that but my eye was always on Atari and when the opportunity came back

when they called me I said yeah of course it took me one day and a half to go through the data room because basically it was just like I know the contract, I did sign it, look at the signature page So it was very funny. But at the time, early 2013, they were making 1 million euros of revenue. Okay.

And more than 30 million euros of debt. So hold on a second. When you guys sell this in 2007 and you guys leave, you come back basically. And when you see the company, it's a million euros in revenue, 30 million euros in debt. Not exactly an appetizing situation. It's a startup. it's a big plus they had a great idea which was to file for bankruptcy in the u.s and you're like why did you file for bankruptcy they say oh we thought it was a nice way to get some money

with deep financing and i'm like dude really yeah so what happened it took me basically um so what i did i bought the french company uh the french company which were the old companies i bought it back i became the largest shareholder but the business it was and is still in the u.s So here I had to go, the French company was solvent, the parent company was solvent, so I bought it, but then I have to make my way out of the U.S. bankruptcy. Here, you know, it is what it is. It cost us, what, $10 million, but I ended up paying $1.7 million to the creditors and more than $8 million to the advisors, like the lawyers and the bankers. I'm a banker, so I appreciate that, and I'm a lawyer as well. so so but the creditors got just under two million and basically the lawyers and the bankers got it

yeah but it's what was very important to me is that I was able to basically work a plan with the creditors with the bankers the advisors and we were able to keep the brand because the brand could have been sold through auctions yep so we had to sell a few games so we sold I think six or seven games for like five million dollars and with that we were able just to you know put some some gas in in the tank and keep the ball rolling but what was interesting is that i was able to basically keep the brand keep the games uh keep test drive uh keep um the the roller coaster tycoon license uh the only atari game really that we sold at the time was barrel zone which you know It doesn't have the Atari name, word in the name, so it was okay.

But in any case, we had to leave bankruptcy. So it took us from early 2013, January, February 2013, to basically, it took us 18 months to leave bankruptcy. And after that, I still had 30 million euros of debt to redeem because the debt, the 30 million euros was on top of the bankruptcy. It was the parent company level. So then I had to tackle that, and I ended up repaying all the debt in 2016, roughly. And in the meantime, we made everything we could just to revamp and to revitalize the business.

Yep. So to do that, you know, we had to make some very simple choices. What we did was we selected two IPs, And one is Roller Coaster Tycoon, because I knew the franchise quite well. So we restarted with that, and we also restarted with A Toy Vault, which is basically all the toy games all packaged in one single bundle. But we've not tried to, for the moment, but Navis is coming,

we've not tried to relaunch a new Warlord, a new Tempest, a new Missile Command, a new whatever, Adventure. That's coming now. And so with these two franchises plus a very solid licensing program, and we were able just to reboot the business, but I did it in a very, very different way, different manner. Let's say if you look at the year 2005, we had 2,500 employees, of which 1,000 developers. In 2005, you had 1,000 developers and 2,500 employees.

Yes, roughly. We went as high as 3,000-something. Yeah, we had 10 studios in Dallas, Los Angeles. Huge company. Melbourne, everywhere. We were doing 750 million euros of revenue. But to reboot the company, I mean, I could have tried to raise the money and do the same, but my goal is, again, just to build on the portfolio, to have a very, very valuable portfolio of games.

and it's easier for us to do that and team up with third-party studios yep so you have um i mean it may cost it might cost you more than if you had them internally but at least you know if you take a studio that does lower racing games yes it's lower the race you don't pay the downtime but the most important thing is that i can tell you you know i've lost a lot of money with games i've made a lot of money but if you have a studio that does racing games i can tell you they can only do and they will only do racing game it's just part of their dna you just have to acknowledge that so there's you know so much racing games you can do so right now i think what we're doing is that we're back um very very different organization very very different

structure we are less than 20 employees we do more than 20 million dollars of royalties so now we have partners who push the boxes at retail we have a new console coming again we partner with people we have casino games so it's very very different organization and we are very happy with that so I really want to touch on how big this market is right I think a lot of people hear Atari's name they think kind of the the legacy games that we all know and many of us grew up loved but describe how big gaming is both domestically in the US but also internationally so I think well you have numbers all over the place but um i think the most important thing to understand is that you

have different markets right first you have consoles so that's one thing this is the microsoft the the sony the nintendo of the world this is xbox playstation dreamcast whatever nintendo switch so that's console then you have pc this is so console is big in the in the uis in europe There's no console in China, not for the moment. But this is big in the U.S. and in Europe. Then you have PC. PC is all over the place. And this is Minecraft.

The Minecraft Steam as a distribution. You have PUBG. You have whatever games, you know. Fortnite, of course. And then you have mobile. On mobile, you have Apple and you have Android. So that's basically the video game business. So I'm not going to, I mean, it's billions of dollars depending on if you put China, not China.

I mean, we're talking. It's big. It's big. We're talking $100 billion easily. But on top of it, what people have to understand is that you have also gambling. So gambling is, I'm not talking casino. I'm talking gambling, real money games on the phone, right? So you have, of course, you can think, okay, slot machines.

You can think number games, lottery games. But more and more, you have e-sports. esports is that what is it is it uh is it a game is it gambling is it casino it's not regulated but you can make money uh so you you have all these new business and i can tell you you know what we're looking at here is also very big we do as a charlie we do casino games on phones in europe and in africa so you guys let me back up for one second there is the three bucks you described but then there's also this esports casino games all the stuff that in the united states is actually not legal or it's heavily regulated oh no esports now it's uh it's open well esports is different

than the casino games right the casino games in many states are still regulated etc as long as outside the u.s is different yeah so okay so i think video games we all know what it is uh real money games it's very you have three types of games you have games where you have only luck this is casino yep you have games where it's only skill this is sports and then in between you have a combo of we call that hybrid okay games it's a combo of luck and skill if you have luck basically you have to go and get the license it's cleaner easier in the u.s outside of the u.s it really depends on the country okay country so luck is the one that's heavily regulated it's luck is regulated and frankly for everyone listening if you have a game that involves luck um but

Basically, think about it. If a monkey can play the game and win, then you have luck. So I think that's always the test I put myself on. Just a kid, like two years old, one year old, just pressing the button, you win money. It's better to get a license. You're offending these smart kids that are out there winning the spelling bee at like age three now. Yeah, but they don't make a lot of money. So it's unfortunate for them.

I think it should be a sport. um but so you have gambling but the point is this the for anyone listening i mean the point is if you think about this industry i can just tell you it's going to keep growing very simple why why is he saying this stupid no between 40 and 60 years old people don't play yep you know so you have it's like as if we were doing tv producing tv shows when no one between 40 and 60 would watch tv why am i putting a line at 60 ish because we've realized that grandparents would play more than parents to bond with the grandchildren that's very interesting and also because you had that nintendo game brain age that was basically she was deemed to to fight alzheimer

i don't think it's it's true but it was just like trying so that's the first thing uh you have a Yeah, big age groups that are not playing. Second, women are not playing as much as male. So here you have a second bucket of growth. Third, if you think about India, South America, Africa, all these, you know, even China, all these big territories, there's no one. I mean, the level of players is not the same as in the U.S., so you still have a pocket here. And then the fourth reason is that more and more you have new platforms, right?

Now you can play on the phone. Tomorrow you'll be able to play wherever, on Facebook. So for all these reasons, this industry still has like 20 to 30 years of growth easily. After that, you're always as good as your last game, but that's the plan. And most of these games, they're fun. They're entertainment, right? So people are never going to want to not have fun or not be entertained. Yeah, I think so.

I think it's, of course, you spend more time, you know, you allocate time, so that's the only, that's the only issue for us. It's, the competition is really, you know, everyone who is competing for your, your time for entertainment, is it Facebook, Google, whoever, for us it's a competitor. It's not only the, it is not only the game publishers. Facebook is a competitor because the minute you spend on Facebook, you don't spend it playing video games. Got it.

And so we hear a ton about crypto and blockchain entering into the gaming space, right? Everything from these non-fungible tokens to instantaneous settlement for casino games, just all kinds of stuff. From your seat, you know, you've been at this a really long time. Give us an understanding of like how crypto actually fits in. Where do you think it makes sense and where do you think maybe it doesn't make sense? Well, I think for me first, I mean, I don't want to say that the video game company industry created a crypto, but we're very used to having virtual assets. That's part of it. You know, this is why we're still alive, because we know in every game, any game we know to create a currency.

So I think we're very familiar with that. Now, the other way around from crypto into gaming, I think there are basically three ways. One is more and more you'll be able with the non-fungible tokens, you'll be able to play video games and you will have more and more games based on crypto and digital assets. I mean, CryptoKid is a very good example. If you look at a company that we have partnered with, Animoca, they have a license from Formula One to do a crypto game or a game based on crypto and non-fungible tokens for Formula One. I don't know what the game is about. They announced it. So yes, there will be crypto and blockchain in the game space.

The second thing is more and more you'll see when we do game, I'm talking gambling now, gaming being for video games, gambling for casino games. For us, crypto is just another line in the database of currencies. As long as your platform supports 10, 20, 50 different currencies, adding a crypto is not a problem. As long as you have somebody who can do the transaction on the other side. But so more and more you will have is, I think, casino games using crypto, definitely.

And the third, I would say the third element or the first point of convergence is that, and this is what we are trying to do, we're trying to create a platform where new users will be able to log on and work inside the industry. All right. So there's two separate bodies of work here. One is what I'll call crypto fitting into the legacy system, right, of gaming, which is everything from blockchain based games to just using Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies as the medium of exchange within a game. Right. So that's kind of the old model stays true. And now you're just adding blockchain or cryptocurrency into it to replace a single piece. The second bucket of work that you're talking about is building basically a work marketplace to use cryptocurrency as an incentive tool to get people to work from anywhere in the world on different tasks. Exactly.

Okay, explain this more. So what we've done, there's a company called Infinity Networks Limited that we've created with a few developers. And I'm very proud to just to remind everyone here that Anthony Di Iorio is also one. of the founders and is also one of the partners is antony is one of the co-founders of ethereum so what we're trying to do here through this company in inl is create a an atari platform where anyone will be able to log on and work in the industry let me just first give you the few reasons why we're doing it today you have approximately between two and three billion people that are connected tomorrow you know with all the satellite systems that are being launched you're

going to have is it five six billion people but you're going to have a lot a lot of people connected and these people will want to earn a living so we see that as an opportunity we see that as an opportunity of course we're not going to program a game from a to z definitely not the case but we believe that this new tranche of individuals will will be able to provide services in the video game industry, such as testing, translating, doing some little animations. And as time goes by, I think they will earn, they'll go on YouTube, they'll just train themselves,

and they will be able to do more and more sophisticated tasks. And we see that as an opportunity. So what we're trying to do is creating a platform where they can log on and be offered through the blockchain, smart contracts to perform initially simple tasks, but then more and more complex tasks that will be helpful in the, I don't want to say game, I just want to say in the multimedia space. Again, it could be checking a translation,

checking a dubbing of a voice in the local language, could be testing the game, could be many, many of these tasks which will increase in complexity. But why do you need the blockchain here? You don't really need, you need the crypto, but first you need the blockchain to have a smart contract. Because you don't know where these guys are. I'm not saying that you don't care, because you do care about the quality of the work.

But you don't know who they are. I mean, they have no address. They have a cell phone, but I can tell you that's for sure. But they have no address. They have no ID. They never have any credit card, any debit card. Forget the Amex. What you're basically talking about is there's almost like to the Western world, there's a shadow workforce, right?

There's a bunch of humans. Not shadow, necessarily. What I mean by shadow is the means by which we would recognize workers in the Western world is they would ask you for identification. They would ask you for your home address. They would ask you for your bank account details, your Social Security or other identifying numbers. In many countries around the world, there's tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people who don't have that information. They have no address. Yeah, they have no way to provide those details.

And so what I think I hear you saying is that blockchain and cryptocurrency can basically provide a lot of the same infrastructure to these people without them having to kind of catch up. They almost leap ahead and now they can receive payments. They can actually participate in a global economy without having to get an address, for example. But they will, for instance, if you have a very simple task to perform, a task that can be embedded into a smart contract, it's impossible to find first. Assume you have found the guy. He's not going to sign you a 10-page document just to earn $150.

So it's impossible. Forget about it. And second, he doesn't have a bank account. Yep. You can't pay him. You can't pay him. It's just like, look, I've been trying to send money to the GRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kinshasa, the old, the former Belgian colony. It's just incredibly, it's impossible to send $100 because we had a test over there.

And I wanted just to use that as a test case and say, OK, let us, guys, let us send him $100 for, he had worked like 20 minutes. I wanted just to give him $100 for his services. took me five days so uh i think this is why the blockchain is very very important for these people because you don't need to as long as you know that the work has been done and of course you have an id you know but you you know that that guy he has that name okay great you may want to meet him one day if you go there but the most important thing you you want is to have the workforce pay him and make sure that you know the work is done and on his end what he wants is make sure he's going to to get paid and it's impossible for him to sign a 10-page document it doesn't mean anything so

that's why i think blockchain is important and then will be should be very helpful after that you know once they get the crypto they'll find a way to get uh liquidity it's not going to be difficult even today look africa look at africa i can tell you i work a lot in kenya for instance Two-thirds, I mean, they basically lep-frogged the bank development state. The banks are gone. The money is with the telco. And two-thirds of the transactions, financial transactions in Kenya are done with mobile money. I think about this all the time.

It's crypto. It's like on the phone. You send a text message. You have to go there to really understand what it is. And it's very cheap. is one person, even, yeah, one person, one and a half. And everyone is like, great, no problem, but at least it's working. The, in almost the entire continent of Africa, not every country,

but many countries were drastically behind on a financial infrastructure basis, the Western world. And with the advent and proliferation of mobile banking, they lep-frog, right? Like they are way ahead now. and they actually can use financial infrastructure that we struggle with in the Western world because it's so mobile, because it is so connected, it is top-down from the telcos. It feels like blockchain is going to help many of these areas who see the value and embrace it immediately continue to leap ahead, whereas the Western world, we're okay with the infrastructure we have, right?

It works for us on most use cases, and so we're less likely to be the first adopters. but i think it works for us for a very simple i mean for a series of very simple reasons i have an id i have a bank account i have a visa mastercard and or an amex i'm good so why would i just go through blockchain crypto because i have everything and it's working it has a cost yeah but also have security i have an insurance right if if i get fraud on my fraud on my business card um yeah i'm gonna get protection so why would i make the move but i think at the end of the day we will all make the move because you will have a mass of people that will just make the move before us and if we want to be in a position to catch up with these guys we just

have to make the move and i think i don't know what's going to happen to the to the you know the western banks but it's true that right now the world you see a lot of transactions going to to telcos in Africa, it's just insane. Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, all these countries, this is just the way it works. So we'll see if that, you know, for the moment it's working for us, but because we have the KYC and AML,

try to do a KYC just in Ethiopia, be my guest. There's no doubt. Good luck. Yeah, be my guest. So I think this is where, back to HRAVC, what we see as an opportunity. And I can just also give you another very, very simple example. You know, take Fortnite, take Pokemon Go, take any game.

You know, today you can play, you can build your avatar up to a certain level, and then you can sell it. So for these new people joining online, they'll see that also as a way to make money. Because for us, okay, $150 in New York City, you're not going to make a living out of that. I can tell you, if you live in a village in Kenya or in Uganda, if you can make $150 a week building an Overture, just because the issue would be the access to the hardware. But I think the hardware will come for free.

It will come through the existence of basically forms where you go, you rent one hour, two hours of hardware. But even the phones are so powerful today that you'll be able to build your Overture up to a certain level and make $100, $125, $150 a week. And this is a lot of money. Yeah. Well, the whole thing here is that access to the Internet, the connectivity to the rest of the world, you can learn, right? So you can pick up the skills that it takes to edit, to create, to do all this stuff. Everything is on YouTube. Absolutely.

And then you can turn around and you can then use that to participate in the digital economy. The hard part is how do you get paid, right? And if there's a way to get paid with some sort of global currency. No, no, not even global. I think you can take any crypto associated to your blockchain project. if the if your project is good you're gonna have a lot of users and then you're gonna have a lot of liquidity on the crypto and the crypto will be exchangeable they'll find a way is it like from crypto to blockchain and then blockchain to cash is it look well they will find a way uh and i

think this is it doesn't have to be listed on the exchange as long as you provide liquidity in one two three steps you're good absolutely what um what are you most excited about with atari right now like when you look for us you've got the the work marketplace that you're building but on the gaming side what what's kind of next for you so we have uh four business lines we have games that's our dna we have the new console that we just uh announced um that will be out 2019 2020 so that's the second business line and then we have gambling casino so that's very minor for the money for the the us doesn't really matter but for me it's important and then we have blockchain we're using the brand as a tech brand i'm really excited so games we have a guy who's taking care of that

that's great we're working on um you know new game features new game plays we're working on the asteroid 99 which is basically the asteroids but with a last man standing mode online so games we're working on that the vcs is very important what i'm really interested to in doing is to basically see I can use the brand to create and to invest in new tech technologies. So is it blockchain? Is it I'm looking, for instance, into a phone right now? Or having more and more examples of using the Atari brand

to attract people to a new experience that makes sense. But it's true that with the Atari brand, it's very funny because it's always the same thing. And I've been through immigration here so many times until I got the global entry system. but it would be like you know going through the the officer and say okay i'm here there's a passport okay what do you do video games which company atari and then all of a sudden it was oh wow atari that's great and then the guy would go for 10 15 seconds about the you know

but then it was always oh but what are you doing today is it still alive you know past the first reaction so i think i'm very interested in trying to use the brand to create new experiences and new applications um hardware is great the new console but long term it's really building an online community got it what uh what do you think the biggest challenge is for you guys as you enter into the blockchain so there's tons of opportunity you're really excited about it i think a lot of people see the gaming applications what do you see as the biggest challenge i think the challenge for us would be so we have a name recognition i think the challenge is just like everyone it's a race uh so first you need the resources and i think it's really gaining uh

mass adoption so that's why we we prefer to go or to use the angle of the the work uh basically i don't want to to oversimplify but sometimes you know that's why i decided to do it back in the day you would have to pay to play right uh now it's more like free to play so you don't have to pay But I think down the road, you will be paid to play. So I think that it's a reversal of the proposal, right? Before I had to pay and I'm being paid. And I can tell you this is true today because if you play any game, you'll see a video. You're getting a boost.

We're getting the money. But you are receiving a boost, a power up because you've watched a video. So, yes, you're paid in a way. And we're working on concepts like watch the video. The chips are free and then you can earn real money. So, basically, you're getting paid whether it's direct monetary value or some other value. There's an exchange. You do an action.

You receive some incentive for that action. I see. So, I see that. That's why because it's still a very, it is a very, very competitive business because it is growing. But also, as it is growing, we see a lot of opportunities. I think for us, the biggest challenge is just making sure that, you know, you don't have a lot of tries, let me say. you can have one two three projects but after that it's uh if you fail three times it's difficult um so i think for us it's really the the definition of the project what do you really

want to do and i think going through the money angle being okay you can work uh you can have a future this is where you know the atari brand is uh is pretty powerful because we it's very difficult to compete against the big big boys but look at where we're coming from so i think that's the big challenge for us and that's also the opportunity but the big challenge is making sure that we define exactly what we want to do and so far I'm very happy to have selected that angle

which is make sure that people earn a living, earn money because at the end of the day we all need that. To help people have fun, be entertained and make a living is quite a mission there my friend. Alright before I wrap up I always do rapid

fire. What do you think the most important company in crypto is other than atari uh binance finance why oh because they provide the liquidity all liquidity yeah i think it's all liquidity that's that's the most important thing to do what do you think is the one regulation that you would change or improve if you could i think you know the the regulations is people's i remember all these um all these conversations last year about utility tokens, frankly, it's just like, it's a currency, right?

So for me, it doesn't matter. Make sure that you select your own, the reference that you want to use. If you're in the U.S., do it by the books. Because at the end of the day, it's money. People will make a living.

So I don't really care about the regulations. The only advice I have, and for me, and which we apply, is that is it clear? Is it safe for people? Because it's a currency.

It doesn't matter. The regulations will always change. Don't build the business for the regulations. No, for me, it's just one of the parameters. Deal with it. It will change for sure. The more successful we are together, the more regulations there will be. But it is what it is.

Yeah, that makes sense. What would you say is your most controversial thought in blockchain and cryptocurrency? Yeah, I think it's before we used to pay to play. Today is free to play. And tomorrow, I think we will be paid. to play so there's a transition between you used to have to pay as the as the user of the player now it's free and eventually you'll profit from playing these games like the value problem was it goes completely inverse to what it used to be because on top of it you know uh if you think in

masses what we are really providing is information about us and uh you know if it's uh i have a friend who always says look if it's free it means that you are the product and i think it's true And you are the product being, if it's free, you are paid because you're providing information about you. And this is why you're the product. So, yeah, you should get paid for that. Yeah. How do you think Bitcoin fits into all this? Look, I think it's, is it gold or like gold?

Maybe, you see, I think what is really important here is that we are seeing Bitcoin through the eyes of people who have IDs and social and all of that. If you put yourself in the shoes of somebody who is in a country where there is no currency, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, things like this, it's better to have a Bitcoin, a fraction of a Bitcoin than just the local McDonald's. So in that sense, I think it fits well for all these countries. But I think we are not, because we live in the Western world, we don't grasp the real utility of blockchain. because it's only when you're in a situation where you have no ID, no address, no bank account that you see, wow, am I going to get out of here? And I think Bitcoin here can help,

but more generally, blockchain and crypto can help a lot. For sure. What's the most important book you've ever read? Oh, the way, for me, it's The Clash of Civilization by Huntington because it shows it's not crypto. What is that about? It's about, you know, how you have basically seven civilizations today in the world. The Western, the Chinese, the Russian, and how some civilizations were great before,

how the Western civilization was great and is still great, but the moving forces between the civilizations, that's a great book. The Clash of Civilizations. All right, I'll have to read that. Yeah, 1990s. It's 20 years old, but it's still valid. Do you think it's still worth reading? It's still worth reading as long as you can update it.

Yeah, I think it's still valid. You know, I'm from Europe, and I see more clashes of civilizations there than in the U.S. In the U.S., I like it here because everyone is here for a reason, and you know why you're here, and you know what the U.S. is giving you, and that's great. So since you brought up civilizations, I got to ask, what's your take on all this, the Yellow Vest protesters? What's going on in France? Yeah, this came as basically a short reaction initially, but they basically grew out of proportions. The guys started with very, very simple requests, but then the thing got out of proportion.

And basically also these guys found themselves a reason, right? Yeah, it was just like, okay, what do I do? Instead of staying home alone, I'm going to see my buddies on the roundabouts. At the end of the day, it's out, basically. Has the government provided all the answers? Yeah, I think the government has provided a lot of answers and a lot of measures. So we'll see. They will be like this, waves.

They express themselves in a certain way. That's it. It is just up to take that into account. But at the end of the day, democracy is that people have elected some people, and you just have to deal with it. I mean, the third round of the election is going to be in the streets. No way. The Frenchmen are wild, man. I saw some videos.

They were going crazy. I mean, if you put 20,000 people in the street, you always find one or two. At the end of the day, it's been a long movement. It's been going on for months now, right? But I think it's, for me, the way I see it is that there's no way you can have, like, the third round of elections being in the street. And it's going to take time because they have clearly left a huge impact on the French system and even on the day-to-day, you know, life of people. So it's not over. We'll see.

But, you know, these are long-term questions. So I think the answers will be provided also on a very long-term basis. Got it. What do you think about aliens? Real? Not real? Do you believe in them? Have you met one? No, look, I think it's a scientific question. So I think there's no proof right now. So show me an alien. No, is there an alien somewhere, somehow? Can someone tell me, okay, they live here?

No. Having said that, I think no one really understands the depth and the extent of the universe. When people say, okay, 100 billion light years, you're like, no one gets it, right? Yep. So I think no one gets the real number of planets out there. Every day, every week, every hour, you have new planets coming. Oh, we didn't know that. And so every day.

So I think as long as you have not explored the world universe, there will always be a probability that aliens are out there. Now, I think the second question, the first one is, of course, do they live out there? Yeah. Show me, explore any planet, and as long as you have not done that, there will always be a probability, which is higher than zero. Now the question is, is this a risk? Is this a chance? Is this a probability of meeting these guys? Look, it really depends on your perspective.

If you're a native Indian in 1492, I'm not sure you want to meet Christophe Colomb because when you look at the death rate after that, it's pretty significant. and it was just like, you know, a lot of dead people. That's an interesting way of looking at it. You're not sure we might not want to be discovered by aliens or vice versa. Look at these guys in the Amazonia, you know, you discover, you were still discovering

villages, right? So I think for these guys, I'm not sure it's good for them to be discovered by us because of, you know, the new diseases. So So as a human here, do you want to know that they are out there? Yes, that's clearly, you know, one of the greatest questions.

There's no proof today. But I'm not sure that you want to meet them initially because it's something easy. But I think it's definitely one of the greatest questions we have to answer. I don't remember the guy who said, whatever the answer, you know, the answer is quite terrific because if it's yes you're like whoa we are there and if it's no it means that we are alone in the universe which is in itself you know quite unique and you're like wow why us and uh so in any case i think the the i'm i'm just losing the name of the guy um with the guy the seventh we said that but i think in any case uh whatever the answer the end the end

And whatever the answer, the answer is pretty, you know, yeah, pretty sad. And you're like, whoa, you have to think about it twice. Big magnitude to that question. That's my, there's this guy, Dave Portnoy, who says, big brain? That's my big brain question is, are the aliens real? What one question do you have for me to finish this up? Say it, why Atari? Why Atari?

Look, I think two things. So one is there are too many people who are trying to build what I'll call utility or productivity products today, right? So a lot of entrepreneurs are very stuck on the idea of you have to solve a real problem. And they've lost sight that fun and entertainment is a problem, right? People want to be entertained. People want to have fun. And so I think that the Atari brand just stands for that. Right. It's just people, you know, it's like the story you tell where somebody hears the word Atari and they immediately go back to childhood memories.

And it's just these like positive moments in life that I think are very underestimated and forgotten by today's entrepreneurs. And then the second thing is you, the company, the story, the current user base. It's like there's a very much more global nature to what you guys are doing that a lot of Western world developers and game builders and designers, they just don't understand, right? And so it's how many other game developers can say, look, I've built games that are played on six of the seven continents, right? Or can say things like we actually have partners on the ground in countries in Africa or places around the world. I think it's just a very different approach that you're taking. Now, as you said, there's a lot of challenges, right? And so being able to build the games is one thing.

Being able to elicit or incentivize a workforce is another. But I think that if anyone's going to do it, it's going to be you guys. And it seems like so far so good. Thank you. So don't screw this up. No, no. If we will, we'll always say it because, you know, we're listed. so

but no it's a huge challenge at the same time you know we're very happy to do it at the same time we're like whoa

let's make sure we don't mess this up because you know I did not create the brand the brand was created by Nolan Bushnell it was very successful

he's still around I say hi to him to Nolan so we just there's a lot of history so we try to to do the right thing

but sometimes we're like whoa if we fail on that one if we screw up but the good thing is you know it's like everyone knows the brand so that's a good thing the drawback is just like in france we say you know we have the french national team that's world champion so you have everyone you have 60 million people maybe not 60 40 who want to be the french

coach and so you go to any bar they will just see if i wear this guy if i wear this guy yeah you have 40 million guys who want to have the job but there's only one job right so i'm saying this because sometimes I go online, I see very positive comments, I see very negative comments, I see basically people who love the brand and other people who love the brand but we don't love what we're doing.

Yeah, it takes time. Just be sure that we read all the comments as much as we can. Listen, the haters are just future fans that haven't figured out that they like you yet. Coming soon. Exactly. All right, listen, thank you so much for doing this.

I really had a lot of fun. And we'll have to do it again in the future as you kind of continue to progress. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, everyone. And thanks for listening. All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to that podcast. Before I let you go, one more word from our sponsor, BlockFi. Their new interest account allows you to securely deposit your Bitcoin or Ether at BlockFi and receive 6% annual interest paid monthly in cryptocurrency.

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Hey, everyone. Pomp 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 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts i appreciate you listening and see you next time on off the chain