The Pomp Podcast - Phil Chen, General Partner at Proof of Capital: How HTC Is Driving Massive Crypto Adoption

Episode Date: October 24, 2019

Phil Chen is a General Partner at Proof of Capital, and the Decentralized Chief Officer at the HTC Exodus. In this conversation, Phil and Anthony Pompliano discuss hardware wallets, what they built with the HTC Exodus, why certain features were included, how big companies can drive innovation, and what Phil is excited about moving forward in the cryptocurrency industry. BLOCKFI-----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. CRYPTO.COM-----Crypto.com is a pioneering payment and cryptocurrency platform that seeks to accelerate the world's transition to cryptocurrency. With the vision of "cryptocurrency in every wallet", the Crypto.com App offers a full range of financial products with competitive pricing, well designed UX and high security. It is the best place to buy, sell and pay with crypto. COINMINE-----The Coinmine One is like an Xbox that turns your electricity into Bitcoin. You just plug it in, connect to wifi, and tap on the crypto you want. It’s so easy anyone can do it. Everything is controlled from the Coinmine mobile app and the Coinmine keeps getting better with over the air updates that add new coins, features and services to your Coinmine. Visit coinmine.com/pomp to get a Coinmine and earn crypto for powering a new world.

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. Phil Chen is the general partner at Proof of Capital and the decentralized chief officer at the HTC Exodus. In this conversation, we discuss hardware wallets, what they built with the HTC Exodus, why certain features were included, how big companies can drive innovation, and what Phil is excited about moving forward in the cryptocurrency industry. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well. Want to know who has the best URL? Crypto.com. That's right, Crypto.com. They're a crypto

platform with one goal, motherf***ing mass adoption. That's why we're all here. We're trying to get crypto in every wallet crypto.com is helping people do that through buying earning lending and card payment everything you could want at crypto.com go help your boy out tell him pomp sent you download the app or visit crypto.com pomp's got you always ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how don't worry your boy pomp's got you everybody got some electricity and wi-fi all you got to do is go to coinmine.com you buy a coin mine it's like an xbox or a playstation that helps you turn your electricity into bitcoin that's right you purchase it it shows up at your doorstep you pull it out of the box you plug it in connect to your

wi-fi five minutes or less you're mining bitcoin all you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide and then you receive over-the-air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis kind of like how tesla does over-the-air updates and updates the car software Just you're updating your CoinMine. Consumer mining made easy. That's right. Go to CoinMine.com, tell them Pomp sent you, and thank me later. 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've got Phil here with us. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this and talk about what you guys are working on, Phil. Thank you. Thank you for having me. thank you for this opportunity for sure let's uh let's jump right in uh talk about your background a little bit before you started working on uh crypto and then uh hardware walls yeah well my career started early 2000s you know i started an ebook company called the alex e-reader um that company got sold and became you know the first barnes and noble ebook reader called the nook and then I quickly joined HTC 2007 and at HTC I was a product manager

I built the first Android phone we shipped to 2008 yeah and I was at HTC basically from 2007 to 2014 the last thing I left before I left HTC in 2014 was I started the Vive the VR headset but then I left the day we launched the dev kit to start, you know, a VR AR fund called Presence Capital.

A year into that, it was a seed fund. A year into that, I joined a much bigger fund in Hong Kong, which is Li Ka-shing's venture fund. You know, I did all of the kind of the deep tech, a lot of the AI investments. And Horizons has a history of, you know, investing in many disruptive companies, including, you know, companies like Siri that Apple acquired

or DeepMind that Google acquired. And that's where I really started learning a lot about, you know, crypto and public blockchains. Horizons, we had invested in companies like Blockstream, you know, one of the earlier Bitcoin kind of blockchain companies. And it had also invested in DCG. You know, DCG, of course, is one of the most prolific investors in Bitcoin startups.

And that's how I kind of got, you know, started to learn, you know, about Bitcoin and public blockchains. And that's how I really started to get really, really interested in understanding that, you know, it was the most, I think, the most disruptive technologies I've been in touch with. And what I find fascinating is in those years investing, I was there from basically 2015 to 18. I started investing 14 or full-time 14, 2018. And I looked at every, you know, vertical, like from biotech to fintech to AI to autonomous driving to robotics. And every single vertical was dominated by the same players, you know, namely Google, Amazon, Facebook. In China, it's Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent. But there was only one vertical or one technology that wasn't owned by these, you know, these, you know, the big four or some people call it GAFA.

And that was crypto. You know, nobody owned Bitcoin. You know, Ethereum came up and, you know, it was crowdsourced. And so it was the most fascinating disruptive technology that, you know, I wanted to spend, you know, my time with. So, yeah, and then that's how I got really, really interested into crypto. Got it. And talk a little bit about, you know, HTC, what your role there is and kind of then we'll get into what you're working on. Yeah.

So, you know, originally, you know, at Horizons, you know, we were investing in disruptive tech, you know, including a lot of the public blockchain and crypto companies. and you know because of my years there from 2007 to 14 i still had a you know deep relationship with a lot of the executives and board members and i simply pitched them the idea right you know i will you know i i actually learned most of my bitcoin stuff from andreas antonopoulos you know i i literally watched hundreds of hours of andreas on youtube and listened to his podcasts you know and it all came down to you know if you don't own your private keys you don't own your bitcoin right and of course you know trezor and ledger and many other hardware wallets were very popular in in in empowering the user to own their private keys and then i simply went back to htz i

I mean, not thinking that I would go back and build this, but kind of seeding the idea to, you know, some board members and the CEO of HGC saying, hey, you should build a phone and empower the users to own their private keys on the phone because the phone is the most prevalent device, right? I mean, today, you know, you talk about, you know, 2 billion unbanked, you know, people or even 3 billion underbanked or even more, right? and over half of those people have mobile phones right and if you can build a mobile phone with a hardware wallet that empowers people to own their private keys it allows them it banks them basically you know we can talk about that later but the idea was seeded to them you know and then they decide oh okay it's very interesting and so you know they put up a kind of a skunk skunk works team to start building prototypes you know and then come like you know late 2000 or mid 2018 it became really serious right um but then there was there was nobody that understood how to make

a phone yet understand the whole crypto space or even understand what it means to have a hardware wallet on a phone that empowers you to own their private keys and so that's kind of how i decided okay i think i need to go back and and build things again and so and this was meaningful enough for me to to do that because i feel like you know hgc is a company well positioned to do this you know um because it didn't have the cloud legacies um business you know like every other business like people ask me you know what if google comes in and do this or facebook or you know apple uh come and do this then you know uh you know what do you do you know and and i thought through that and the conclusion i came up to is i don't think google or facebook

or apple will do this because it's completely counter cultural to their business model because the past not just past 20 years but past 50 years the way you make money is to own the customer and own all of their data. And that's how Google and Facebook make money. And what we're doing is the exact opposite, right? We're giving people ownership of their private keys, right? And based on that, right now they're owning their Bitcoin, but based on that, we want to empower them to own their data, their digital identities, and any sensitive or, you know, important information. and so you know htc is a company that did really well from 2007 to 12 you know um it didn't do well in the cloud business it didn't do well in owning people's data and mining and monetizing off of

that and to me it was the best you know it was and it still had a good reputation and being able to build good hardware and so to me it was like the the perfect company to to to build this kind of contrarian countercultural product you know and so yeah that's what motivated me to you know leave a very very comfortable venture capital job you know to go back to the trenches and then build this for sure and so before we get into what you guys specifically are building let's just talk about kind of hardware wallets in general what's your assessment of the lay of the land um you know with what other people have built good bad and in between yeah no i you know i think trezor and ledger have built a great product you know um and i think for people who hold a lot of bitcoin you

know that's you know that's that's one of the main ways to do it right except you know the the way you use it is is very difficult right like you know you uh for you to start transacting you would have to you know get your treasure you would have to plug you would have to have a laptop right you plug it it's a usb you plug it into uh your laptop um and then you open a browser and then you have to open a metamask you know or some wallet uh and then you transact right that's you know four or five or at least two hardware pieces and you know three or four software kind of combinations right And what we've done is we've done that all on the phone, basically, right? We've built that, you know, that whole browser MetaMask laptop to USB stick, that whole chain into, you know, what you would be used to using in an app, in a smartphone, right?

So just making it much more user-friendly and easier, right? and yeah i think uh uh you know what ledger and treasurer have done is is great you know but i think uh to get it to more mass adoption it needs to be people are so used to using their mobile phones um having it on a mobile phone uh is you know is much more accessible and i also just think it's completely different use cases right um it's like you know you could call it maybe your savings account versus your checkings account right maybe you would have your savings on you know uh uh you know uh a ledger or treasure where you keep at home where people don't don't see it um but at some point when you know bitcoin when we start building out bitcoin not just as a

store of value. But, you know, when we build out the lightning stuff, when it becomes a payment system, you know, you need to carry something to make payments, right? Retailers need a point of sale system to receive payments, right? And so we're just laying down that foundation for people to be able to have access to that infrastructure on mobile, right? And I think that's going to be one of my key topics that i talk about in the lightning conference is what is bitcoin on mobile right these two most powerful forces mobile that shaped everything that we know about usability and access but then bitcoin this other revolution and i'm just basically combining these two revolutions i actually find it fascinating that you know when i launched the first android phone

You know, I thought I was, you know, I loved, you know, I joined it because I believed in open source, right? Android was that open source software, and we launched our first Android phone. And, of course, you know, the reason why I got into this space was because I believed in that promise of the Internet, right? Open sharing of knowledge, open access to information, right? But what happened was, you know, this whole Android Google open source movement became a way to hijack people's data, right? And what I find fascinating was that I launched or we launched at HTC the first Android phone October of 2008. And 2009 January was the first Bitcoin, was the Genesis block, right? and to me that was the that was the real revolution or the real kind of um um successor of

you know open source kind of movement and so like 10 years later 2018 i launched the exodus and i just found that fascinating that launching their first android phone and the first bitcoin was was so close together except we weren't paying attention you know and now i'm paying attention and the potential of Bitcoin on mobile is just so fascinating. For sure. So let's talk a little bit about exactly what you guys have built because you are now on, is this the kind of updated version, the second version?

Second version, okay. And so my understanding is that you guys have built a phone. It makes phone calls, texts, got internet access, kind of everything that a normal phone does that HTC would, you know, build and release. But also you have added the hardware wallet and a full Bitcoin node to it as well, correct? Yes. Yes. So, yeah, I'll do maybe I'll maybe highlight four or five things. Right. Yes. First, it's a smartphone. Right. And second, it's a it's a hardware wallet. It's basically this secluded area on the chip that Android doesn't touch, right?

It's basically a physical space where we keep your private keys, right? So it's first that. It's a smartphone plus a hardware wallet. And then we have, you know, other really interesting features like secure UI. You know, what that is is, you know, when you want to sign transactions, right, And your private keys are so important to protect, right? You can imagine that people will want to hack and steal your private keys, right? And so we want to make sure that private keys is never revealed, right?

And so we have something called secure UI, which is basically the touchscreen basically itself has a hard line into the secure area. And so you can't steal people's passwords or do kind of phishing ways of stealing people's data by faking a home screen and people punching their password kind of thing. you know and so once it once it put you use our uh our hardware wallet um basically there's a ui that goes only to the secure zone uh that's not uh that android can't access you know so the secure ui just adds another layer of security that's what makes it more secure than a software wallet right a software wallet is still on android um and you know android is susceptible susceptible to many hacks, right? What we've done is put it in this trust zone,

the ARM trust zone that's separate from Android and just significantly reduce the attack surface area, right? And so it keeps your private keys safe, right? And then it keeps your transaction safe with a secure UI. And then often the next question, I guess, and this is another significant piece of technology that we built is um what happens when you lose your phone right you know and so we built something called a social key recovery um and what that is is when you set up your hardware wallet

will split your keys into five different parts um and you share those five parts to five of your friends or family all they have to do is download an app uh they keep one in the five and so when you lose your phone, you can recover your keys by combining three out of the five keys from, you know, from your friends and family. And so just to show that, you know, HTC, when we ship you the phone, we don't have access to your private keys. So when you lose your phone, you can't call HTC, right? In fact, there's a funny story in which there was a bitcoin magazine kind of journalist that was asking me this trick question like what happens when you lose your phone you know because they had to ask that same question to a chinese

manufacturer and the chinese manufacturer said oh it's easy we'll recover your keys from our cloud right and yeah they so immediately they knew that you know this is you know this big this blockchain phone conversation is not real because you're not serious about giving people tools uh to to to own their private keys right and so and so the social key recovery is is um it's something we built and we open sourced it and others to other wallets or anybody else can use this key recovery mechanism and so so we're just also um in the spirit of open source and, you know, sharing the code that we've built, you know. And so, yeah.

And then this latest one, the Exodus 1S, so that we're launching, you know, end of this week at the Lightning Conferences. Well, first, it's a much more accessible price. The first Exodus 1 was around $700. This new one will be around $200. uh us dollars or uh with tax it would be about 220 euros um and much more accessible and you know it's still a smartphone it's a functioning smartphone with a functioning

hardware wallet right with social key recovery and secure ui all of that and now we're adding the other new functionality for you to run a full bitcoin node right and so you can verify transactions yourself you can relay transactions right um of course we suggest that um uh you have your phone plugged in uh with wi-fi access you know there are some bandwidth and battery requirements um but you can run a full bitcoin known you know when your phone is plugged in at night right and so you can help secure the network you know you can help contribute to the community And I think that's that's what we want to build tools to empower people, but build software tools for people to join this community and be a part of this whole Bitcoin network. Want to know who has the best URL? Crypto.com. That's right. Crypto.com.

They're a crypto platform with one goal. Mother f***ing mass adoption. That's why we're all here. We're trying to get crypto in every wallet. Crypto.com is helping people do that through buying, earning, lending, and card payment. Everything you could want at Crypto.com. Go help your boy out. Tell him Pomp sent you. Download the app or visit Crypto.com. Pomp's got you, always.

Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry, your boy Pomp's got you. Everybody got some electricity and Wi-Fi. All you got to do is go to CoinMine.com. You buy a CoinMine. It's like an Xbox or a PlayStation that helps you turn your electricity into Bitcoin. That's right. You purchase it.

It shows up at your doorstep. You pull it out of the box. You plug it in, connect to your Wi-Fi. Five minutes or less, you're mining Bitcoin. All you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide, and then you receive over-the-air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis. Kind of like how Tesla does over-the-air updates and updates the car software. Just you're updating your coin mine.

consumer mining made easy that's right go to coinmine.com tell them pomp sent you and thank me later one more word from our sponsor blockfi their new interest account allows you to securely deposit your bitcoin or ether at blockfi and receive six percent annual interest paid monthly in cryptocurrency this rate actually compounds so you receive a 6.2 percent apy which is very attractive given the alternatives so you can actually take your bitcoin you can deposit it with BlockFi and get paid an interest rate of 6% in return. Go check out blockfi.com slash pomp again, blockfi.com slash pomp to sign up and start earning interest on your crypto today. As part of this, like, what do you see the response from the market being right? Because,

you know, look, it's pretty cool to one have a full hardware wallet on my on my phone, be able to store Bitcoin and cryptocurrency securely, have the social recovery aspect to it. So if I lose my phone, I don't feel like I'm going to lose all of my wealth. Then you add in the Bitcoin node, which allows me to participate and help secure the network and really kind of fulfill part of what the Bitcoin ethos and goal is. And then you add into that a very low price point that is competitive for any phone, let alone one that has this functionality, do you see others kind of scrambling to respond? Or do you think this is something where you guys are going to have a significant advantage moving forward for quite a long time?

I mean, I do see others getting in, although because it's such a contrarian point of view. Like, why would you give people access to the private keys and let them own their crypto? I mean, it's already kind of countercultural even in crypto, right? Because 95% of the people still have their keys in centralized exchanges, right? So even in the crypto world, it's not mainstream behavior, right? Because still most of the speculators still have their keys in centralized exchanges in the cloud rather than in some, you know, a leisure or treasure or a hardware wallet or even a cold storage, you know, let alone, you know, the phone, right?

And so, you know, if you move to the mainstream, then it's even more contrarian. Like people don't even get it, right? And so, you know, I don't know if you would – I would say that we're the only ones, you know, who have a big advantage, But it's such a contrarian way of thinking that I think, you know, I don't see it as an advantage. I see it more like, hey, you know, very few people like right now, many, it's still the early adopters and the developers that are buying this phone and developing this phone and kind of seeing the potential of it rather than, you know, kind of the mass market, you know, who want to use this, you know, who actually want to trade even for speculation purposes. and so it's it's something like i i meet so many people in the bitcoin space and like i never got

this kind of response you know even building the android phone you know big people in the bitcoin space like i go to south america i go to you know silicon valley and i i just get sincere thank yous they just say thank you for doing what you do because they know nobody's going to do that you know let alone an institution a respectable institution had the right mind to do this right because it's it's borderless it's open it's you know it's neutral it's you know it's public you know it's all those things that's so again countercultural sorry to use that word so many times but that's what it is um and like that's what really it motivates me it's like people in community is far and few but they come to me and say thank you for what you do you know because

they know so few people will stand for that and as long as as long as i can build this and you know i'm going to keep standing on that principle of the power user to use on their private keys and it's it's it's and it's not easy right it's not easy to stand for that because people don't get it you know and you know very very few people even today even in the crypto space are behaviorally are are are are doing that too and so yeah i don't know if i see that as an advantage but um it's definitely i don't see anybody in the near term really doing that either you know or even the way we contribute to the open source community right i mean we don't just take everything we like the whole social key recovery we contributed back to the community

right that's also um you know contrarian behavior got it and so what do you think is um kind of the challenges ahead for you guys specifically are there other things that you want to build into the phone uh moving forward um and if so what would those be and kind of what what could potentially be an obstacle as you move to do that i think you know uh you know i think most people see bitcoin as a store of value right um they see that as a killer app and you know i see definitely that's one of the main killer apps um but bitcoin also in crypto needs to move into the medium of exchange too into payments right i think that's where mobile is really going to shine because if payments don't take off right and if it's just a store of value

then it's probably smart that you don't keep all your crypto on a mobile phone right because it's something you carry with you all the time right again it's more like this there's this distinction between a savings and a checkings account right you want to keep your savings account even if you you're you you are your own bank or you hold custody or you own your private keys you want that savings to be at home and you know not on the go with you all the time right but um as a payment system you want it with you all the time because you want to use it to pay for coffee for transportation for for anything on a daily basis right and so um that's been the challenge right And that's why I'm really focused on, you know, building up, helping and contributing to the Lightning Network, because that will help make it a true, you know, medium of exchange too, right?

People that, you know, a mechanism where people can use as a payment rail, right? And that would be the most killer application for Bitcoin on mobile and even for retail and merchants to use as a point-of-sale system, right? You can just use a mobile phone to be your point-of-sale system, right? And so I would say, yeah, it's that. It's how do we get Bitcoin to be a medium of exchange or day-to-day payment mechanism? You know, that's what I really want to, you know, help build and contribute next. For sure. No. And I guess the the big thing here for you really is this is less about can you guys build the different functionality? It's probably more prioritization than anything. Right. Because there's so many different things that you could do.

uh we're still so early um that if you can prioritize things correctly that's really you know at least to me would feel like where a lot of the uh the opportunity lies as well yes and there's so many things i mean on a super high level like the things we're challenging are money right that's what bitcoin is challenging and then number two is data right if you look at the top 10 companies today like you know amazon google facebook and jp morgan like i would say seven out of the the 10 are either money companies banks or data companies like google and facebook right and right now we're really focused on the money part right you know i mean once you empower somebody to own their private keys basically what you've done is

You've given them the tools to be their own bank, you know, or universal access to basic finance, right? Once you have your private keys, you set up a hardware wallet, you know, you can send and receive money, right? You can buy and trade and sell, right? um and then now you know with stable coins coming in you can even lend and borrow now and voila you know these are the the three main things a bank does right but what does a bank do a bank stores your money uh it allows you to make payments number two and number three it lends and lets you borrow those are the three main things a bank does right and now with a phone with a private key, with a hardware wallet.

You can do all those three, right? And so that's what we want to do. We want to build out those three main behaviors. And so what we've done with, I think, with an Exodus 1S at this price point is to give someone universal access to basic finance and basic banking tools, right? And what's even cooler is we have an SDK. so we're not just empowering you to be a bank but we're a bank with an sdk to empower you and the

developer developer to make up even better bank right how do you build a better local exchange or better exchange rate from fiat to crypto or crypto to fiat on ramps you know or how do you build a better remittance app you know um there's so many things in in the money space uh that you can build um but what we're doing is empowering you to be your own bank but we took it one step further because you can use our hardware to sign transactions we're a bank with an sdk and i think that completely changes the game right i love it man i love it um where can people find uh find the phone uh htcexodus.com yeah www.htcexodus.com you know we have an e-commerce site uh we'll start opening uh right now you can already buy the exodus one um you know we take we even take

bitcoin and eath uh uh as payment um and the exodus 1s will will be start selling uh this saturday that's awesome and um as you do this uh i always answer or finish up with um rapid fire set of questions what uh what do you think is the most important company in crypto other than htc i think binance might be one of them uh um i think you know lightning labs might be one of them um these are kind of people who are really pushing the agenda and trying new things You know, a lot of times ignoring regulation or have a strategy for arbitraging regulation risk. But, yeah, I think, you know, these companies are doing or experimenting with the right things. What's the one regulation you would change or improve if you could?

KYC, AML, privacy. see yeah like why why regulate that you know i mean look it's a legitimate question right as to why to do it it is and and once you do it then you become surveillance and what's you know what's what are we giving up when we do that and what what's what's happened is the result is right now 2 billion unbanked people because they're not worthy to be banked, right? It's too expensive to bank them. It takes too many lawyers. It takes too many accountants. It takes too many bureaucrats and it takes too many police officers to enforce. And so you, you leave 2 billion people unbanked and 3 billion underbanked. That is the reality. And that's not going to change.

the current banking system is simply not scalable right when nick zabo wrote that incredible post on social scalability i think that's what he's referring to right what you're giving access you know sure bitcoin and proof of work you know computation takes a lot of power right and a lot of energy but what have you replaced you replaced lawyers accountants bureaucrats bank tellers and the police force that's a lot of stuff you're you're you're replacing for for for the proof of work that you're you're you're getting you know and the security and the distributed ledger and the empowering of anybody to be there become their own bank yeah it's just it's to me it's it's it's a it's a great trade-off yeah i mean look it's a

it's a no brainer at this point, right? I think I joke all the time and say, we've left the if part of this equation, and just gotten into the when. So it'll happen. It's just take some time. What's the most important book you've ever read? I think one of the more recent ones these past few years has been, you know, Anti-Fragile, which is Nassim Tlaib's book. Have you read that book? I have. yeah and it's just the whole concept and he you know he talks about bitcoin is very anti-fragile um it was just a completely new way of thinking about markets and products and you know having

skin in the game and that that book skin in the game motivated motivated me to come back and build this too because you know i was in a very comfortable venture capital job investing in Bitcoin. But until you go and build it yourself, you don't have skin in the game, right? So I decided to put some skin in the game and come back to build this thing that nobody's going to build in the short term. For sure. I love it, man. Aliens, real, not real? Believer, non-believer? I think there's something out there, probably. That's it? yeah well i'm a physicist by by training too and so you know uh i follow the drake equation and you know the probability seems pretty that that you know it's it's it you know there there should

be some intelligence there's definitely intelligence outside of outside of us i don't know if they're aliens but some intelligence i love it i love it um okay and then uh what one question do you have for me to finish up what do you think is the most you know important uh kind of breakthrough for bitcoin or the most important company in this space what do you think needs to happen or what needs that sorry three questions what needs to happen technology and which company the most important thing i actually don't think is technology i think it's just time right it it uh it takes time for people to be comfortable with new ideas it takes time for people to be familiar with new ideas it takes time for um the technology to get built takes

time for people to adopt it right all these things are just a function of time and so you know patience is probably uh undervalued uh in this market but uh but but taking time obviously is um uh important here uh then when it comes to um the companies you know what the one answer i have to this that that we always forget about it's like there's people who are building bitcoin right like not building applications for bitcoin etc but the actual developers who are working on bitcoin sure yeah and i you know look there are there companies helping with that yes of course But I just put all of the developers who are contributing code, et cetera, in a bucket and say, like, they are usually forgotten and they are much, much more important than most people would like to admit or understand. And so to me, they are the ones that are kind of the unsung heroes here.

And, you know, while they're not a true corporation, I think they're probably the most important. Can't disagree with that. Right. Difficult. Yeah, you made an airtight argument hard to disagree with. Here's the way I look at it. They did something I couldn't do, so they're all right in my book. Yeah, agreed.

All right, man. Listen, super pumped that you took the time to do this. Obviously, what you guys are building is pretty commendable. So anyone who wants to go out and check out the HTC Exodus can do that. It's got a full digital wallet, got a full Bitcoin node in there. and hopefully you guys will keep shipping awesome products and we'll have you back on again to talk about them. Great.

Thanks, Pomp. I appreciate you giving me this opportunity. 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. We'll be right back.