The Wolf Of All Streets - Jack O’Holleran, CEO of Skale Labs on Pulling Away from the Pack in Sports, Business, Crypto and Life

Episode Date: July 2, 2020

Jack O’Holleran, CEO of Skale Network graduated from the University of Nebraska where he was a starting wide receiver. Only months after leaving the field, he worked his way deep into the tech sector, starting his own business and living a new lifestyle that took him around the world. A self taught coder, Jack now leads a team solving crypto’s scalability issues, all while securing the blockchain in a reliable, cost effective and safe way. Scott Melker and Jack O’Holleran further discuss their experiences living in Japan, leather helmets in football, learning about Bitcoin at a 2013 bachelor party, what it's like to leave the field for deep tech, Ethereum dominating the crypto development sector, concussions in football, bad actors dumping on retail markets and compounding interest in sports, business and life for the best return on effort. --- CHOICE IRA by KINGDOM TRUST Don’t be part of the 7.1M Bitcoiners who have bitcoin and a retirement account but don’t have bitcoin in their retirement account. With Choice IRA by Kingdom Trust you can hold bitcoin in your retirement account. The first 1,000 users to open a Choice IRA will receive $62.50 in free BTC - visit RetireWithChoice.com/WOLF to join the waitlist and secure free BTC. --- VOYAGER This episode is brought to you by Voyager, your new favorite crypto broker. Trade crypto fast and commission-free the easy way. Earn up to 6% interest on top coins with no lockups and no limits. Download the Voyager app and use code “SCOTT25” to get $25 in free Bitcoin when you create your account --- 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, everybody? This is your host, Scott Melker, and you're listening to the Wolf of All Streets podcast. Every week, I'm talking to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, politics, and basically anyone else with an interesting story to tell. So sit down, strap in, and get ready, because we're going deep. Let's go. Today's episode is brought to you by Choice, by Kingdom Trust, and Voyager. We'll learn more about them later on in the episode.

This podcast is powered by BlockWorks Group, the only events and podcast production company I trust. For access to the premier digital asset conferences and in-depth podcast content, visit them at blockworksgroup.io. I promise you will not be disappointed. Today's guest is the CEO and co-founder of Scale Labs, a college athlete turned tech entrepreneur turned blockchain developer. Jack O'Halloran has now landed himself at the forefront of the blockchain space, solving crypto's most challenging scalability issues. So please welcome Jack to the show.

Thanks for being here, man. Hey, pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. So I got to tell you, man, from the very beginning, I've got a slight bone to pick. Not necessarily with you, but I'm a huge Gator fan. I grew up in Gainesville and in like 96, Nebraska rolled Lawrence Phillips out of jail to come play against us. And you guys whooped us in the national championship game. So I have this like sort of PTSD about anyone who played for the Cornhuskers or

for any Nebraska. Yeah. So, Hey, sorry. That's a fun, it's fun to get to talk a little college football on the crypto talk. So I like that. Um, we can do play. Hey, that was, you know, you, you know, you guys got your licks on in, on us, uh, in other years and in other sports. So we had, we had a good one that that day, though. I remember that I was I was a kid watching it. And yeah, it was my freshman year. That was like my freshman year of college. And we were so hopeful and it went so so poorly for us. But interesting. So you were a wide receiver at Nebraska, right? Yep, that is right. So I have to assume every time I talk to anyone who's been involved in sports and ends up in tech or a CEO of a company that there were like major lessons

that they learned, whether it was about work ethic or team building from playing sports. Have you found that that's the case for you? Things that you learned from playing sports your whole life that have led you to where you are? Yeah, definitely. I think in a couple categories too. I think one is just learning how to get good at a skill. So you play sports and I was always the type of athlete where, you know, I'd be kind of average initially and then I figured out like what I needed to get really good at. And then I would put effort into getting good at those things. And then, you know, then you get compounding interest on your effort and then you can really pull away from the pack. So, you know, I had, I was all stayed in three different sports and, but, you know, a lot of it was just based off really like studying and understanding what I

needed to get good at and even training in particular ways. So that was like one thing I think that's really valuable. And if you think about business, you think about building companies, you think about, you know, anything in life, it's really like analyzing what is going to produce the most return on your effort and then focusing on those things. So that, that was critical. And then also there's just like, Hey, like, especially being a college athlete, it's just insanely hard work. It's way, it's harder than starting a company and being, you know, an entrepreneur. I mean, that's hard too, but man, to play college football and Nebraska, we're just beating the crap out of each other every day. And, you know, it was, it was

tough. A few times a day, I would imagine it's actually interesting, you know, watching these programs, try to return in the context of COVID and try to find a way to do all that hard work while keeping their players healthy. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be on one of these teams now. and you train so hard and like the women and men playing college sports who, you know, this is their one chance. And thankfully the NCAA granted a lot of them an extra year of eligibility, but I mean, hopefully get on the field this year. Right. It's yeah. It's crazy stuff. So what, tell me about your path, I guess, from post-college to becoming, you know, the CEO and founding scale. How did you progress to that point? Yeah. So, you know, and I'll be, it's kind of interesting because I was not technical when I was in college. I think a lot of my friends were like, you're doing what?

Mine too. You know, one of the things that's interesting about technology though, it's just kind of like going back to that sports analogy. There's a certain set of things to learn and to understand. And it's like learning a new language. If you want to learn Spanish or Japanese or something, you, you have to like understand the framework, understand like what you need to get good at and practice. And like, and then technology is very clear. There's a very defined set of rules.

It's not magic. And, but you can't jump in the deep end. You have to start at like a learning, you know, a basic area. And I, I have to say, I got, I got, I was very fortunate. I grew up in Nebraska in a small town, but I had two uncles, two of my dad's brothers had moved to the Bay area and were, were both surgeons and they're doctors in the Bay area. And through their relationships, they said, Hey, you should meet some of these people. Maybe you should move to Silicon Valley and work at a tech company. And I was thinking to myself, like me working at a tech company, you know, I like want to throw my computer out the window and I don't understand what's working. And, and so, you know, ended up like getting a job at a company

called good technology. And you know what, I went to school and I, and I decided, Hey, I didn't, I started in sales and I decided I don't want to just be good at learning the techniques and mechanics of sales. I want to learn about the technology. How is it working? What are the principles of what makes this work? And I started first just understanding what it did. And then you start getting into the technical frameworks and then the coding language.

And eventually, I started my own enterprise software company and uh, became a founder after we had a, we had an exit to Motorola for almost half a billion dollars. It was a successful exit. And that way, yeah. And you know, we raised a lot of capital. Nice round number. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, I think we raised $250 million also. So it was like, you know, you know, would have been way better to have that type of exit and raise 10 million, but it was still a win and a great win for everybody involved. But then I decided, hey, I want to go start my own company. And then had at this point, you know, and the first one was a digital currency platform where NASA and other companies could use this internal currency, like these NASA bucks to buy resources internally. And so I got really into digital currencies and doing this. But

one thing that happened was I realized we had about 10 people. I was like, well, I'm the only person that doesn't know how to code. And, you know, here I am, like, you know, used to be a football player, used to like running my head into other people and, you know, doing squats and bench presses and not necessarily like sitting in front of a keyboard and like learning technical framework. So I was in Japan for work. We had businesses in Japan. I went, I think I spent 500 days in Japan and I was there on one of my trips. And I just said, you know what, I'm going to like look online and see if I can teach myself. And I just taught myself how to code. And it made me such a better teammate

and value add player to that startup that I had started, Octana, because all of a sudden I could have different level conversations with my team and help really guide the product roadmap and product strategy. It's interesting. I spent almost six months in Japan. You probably don't know my background, but I was a DJ for about 20 years. And I was the DJ in Japan. You probably don't know my background, but I was a DJ for about 20 years. And I was the DJ in the band for like the Michael Jackson of Japan, basically. So I was like a band member and we toured all of Japan. So I spent six months there, which to me was an extremely culturally eye-opening experience, especially seeing, you know, kind of every corner of that country. Did you have that same sort of feeling spending

that much time in Japan? Especially, I'm from Gainesville, Florida, you're from Nebraska. It's not exactly like moving over from the big city. Yeah, that is one of the cool things about Japan is that it's so culturally different. And you go to a lot of countries around the world, and everyone's wearing the same clothes and kind of like watching the same television and having a, you know, similar cultural norms and customs. And in Japan, it's very different. And there's such like reverence people have for each other and space and process. And it was, it was amazing. I, and you know, I learned Japanese over the time I was going there for seven years, and I went over 50 times. and yeah, I, I loved it. I had a blast. Yeah. I love it over there. I was definitely shocked the first time I was like in a crowded

nightclub and I walked up to the bar to get a drink and everybody looked at me like I was insane. And then I looked to the right and there was this huge line for the bar. Which is what you're talking about. Like they're so orderly and respectful. You can't even, I mean, they thought I was like crazy for, for walking up to the bar to get a drink, which is, I mean, obviously is serving them well in the context of, I think, how things are now, you know, and it's easy when people listen to the government and, you know, keep their distance and wear masks and things like that. So it's an interesting cultural difference there. So you spent all this time in Japan, you started obviously multiple companies, you and a master skill. And I know how it works, but I, you know, I'm so fortunate to be paired up with some phenomenal engineers who

like Stan, my co-founder and CTO and the whole team we have at Scale. It's incredibly helpful to know how to do it and be able to do it and understand frameworks. My strengths are really understanding product market fit, building a team, knowing how to execute, you know, designing team structure, designing product marketing and, you know,

building a plan to go like support customers and build a product. And, and thankfully I know how to code. So I'm able to, to participate and support, but this is a master skill and and in particular what we're doing we're service like we serve this network serves developers right and so I have a lot of empathy for those users and just but just want to give them props and credit

because they're way better at that than I am you're not so you're not Mr. Robot. No. But, but Hey, so I, it was 2013. I was actually in, in Shanghai and one of my buddies, uh, who was one of the founders of, of CoinDesk was saying, you've got to buy Bitcoin, learn about Bitcoin. And I had kind of, I'd had the white paper passed around in 2011 and I was like, really Bitcoin really bitcoin and was there with a lot of other friends and and it was uh actually a friend's bachelor party and so uh and a lot of tech people and and everyone was talking about bitcoin and so then kind of like went down the rabbit hole then and then when ethereum launched i realized i was like that was like another like eye-opening light bulb. And then when I was starting a new company in 2017, I was working on another machine learning AI SaaS product.

The prior company had started Octana. Almost every biotech and pharmaceutical company in the world uses this. And if you've ever had a drug prescribed to you by a doctor at some way, shape, or form, Octana probably played a role in getting the doctor information for your prescription. And, you know, and I was looking at that category again and realized, hey, there's so much opportunity in crypto to build something. We actually changed the dynamics and the parameters of how systems work

and how entities work. And if you look at scale, guess what? It's open source. It's like Ethereum and Bitcoin. Nobody owns these things. You just, we all participate. The code's open source. You have ownership over tokens by way of your key structures, and you can even vote with them, like in scale,

if you want to change economics. Well, I'm the CEO of Scale Labs. I have no control over the scale network. We have to vote. And if you have token stakes in the network and you know what, and when people pay for a scale chain, it doesn't go to scale labs, doesn't go to anybody else working on the network. It goes to validators and delegators that are staking. And you can create these new business frameworks where you have more egalitarian and democratized business models. And it just destroys middlemen float. So middlemen that are taking huge rakes really can't compete when

communities are owning and running systems. So got excited about that, started working on scale, actually started working on building ADAP, was introduced to Stan Kladko, our CTO. He was working on building ADAP. And he was actually working on building like six of them. And I was like, how can you build all these things? He's like, well, I've designed this architecture that does this and this and this. And I was like, draw this out for me. And then we put our heads together and we said, you know what, let's build this for everyone else. Let's not build DAPs. Let's support DAP developers and let's build infrastructure and middleware. And that's

what both of us had done in our career anyway. So it was a natural fit. And so how does scale do that in a unique way? What's the value proposition that you guys bring that nobody else is doing? Yeah. So if you think about, so blockchains, right? And I'm going to go not technical. You can do it for dummies. Yeah, you definitely can start with blockchain for dummies. Yeah, adapts for dummies and go from there. Yeah. Well, no, not dummies. We'll just say like, there's obviously many, many smart people that aren't engineers who understand the way crypto works. I'm going to use, I'm going to go for that angle of non-engineering.

I'm the dummy. I'm the dummy. Not at all. Not at all not at all man so so we think of blockchains right they're really computers we'll call them nodes but these computers all have to just say the same thing they carry the same database right and then they they have unique mechanisms depending on the consensus to for them to talk and say hey we all have the same state and if you have the same thing i've know, great, then guess what? We can process a transaction. A smart contract is another step than just a transaction. It also can include a piece of logic, like did the bulls win? Okay, yes, they won. Well, then this happens too, right? You can incorporate data points. That's

what smart contracts do. And so what scale does is most blockchains, the more nodes you add, the more secure they get. But the slower they get and the more expensive they get to run because the bigger the history is in the data, the more complex it is and the more it's just bloated and shared across everything. So when we think about regular applications, we think about like I'm using my Gmail. Guess what? Only Gmail, only Google has that data. about regular applications we think about like i'm using my gmail guess what only gmail only google has that data when then i i mean we're using zoom meeting guess what zoom meeting has servers only zoom meeting uses those servers right but in blockchain zoom if we if zoom and google ran on a shared blockchain if zoom started getting a lot of use and like it has the last couple

months all of a sudden my email would get slower to use and more expensive. Right. And so what scale does, scale has this way where we can still have a big shared ledger called Ethereum, right? But then every application that's a decentralized application gets its own version of Ethereum.

And so, and so if I have an email, a decentralized email client or a decentralized video client, I'm just using these as basic examples. Of course. And one's successful and the other one's not. They have no impact on each other. They each have their own backend database.

And guess what? They don't have to pay per transaction over in that zone. They just pay for the compute resourcing. And so everyone gets the speed, efficiency, and high throughput, and they're not impacted by anyone else because they have their own zone. Okay? And so that's what scale does. But there's one more unique thing that happens there because when you have a smaller set of nodes,

it's easier to get two-thirds of them to collude to steal money. Right. So scale basically has a big shared network, and what it does is it randomly selects the computers or nodes and rotates them for each application. So you basically have this big pool. At any given time, 16 of them are working for me. And then they're swapped out.

And then they might be working for you tomorrow. And the next month, they're working for someone else. And so to get them to collude, to steal money is really difficult because they all have this. They'll be working with on any given day. Yeah. And if they're bad, they lose all their money. Right. And so it's really hard in a real world environment to organize a collusion attack when you have a big pool and then use randomness, rotation and incentives. And so that's, that's really, you know,

this in simple, as simple terms as I can try to describe it. Yeah. The magic of what scale does. So what will be the effect of Ethereum 2.0 on your business? So then we talk about this big shared chain. Well, that big shared chain is only going to be 64 versions.

So Ethereum has shards, there's 64 shards. Still, you know, Zoom and Google, if they're both on Ethereum, share things and have shared price. And, you know, we're talking like hundreds of transactions across the network. And so what Scale does, Scale was designed with ETH2 in mind, and it was designed to support ETH2 and give people still their own backend. And they don't have to, their cost isn't impacted by other people. Their security is not impacted. It's still two lines of code. You can connect ETH2 to scale just like you can in ETH1. You will be able to in ETH2s around. So, so, you know, Hey, the just basic transaction throughput issue will be less pronounced instead of 20 transactions per

second. We might be getting hundreds, but we think that we're going to need millions and millions of transactions a second to make all of these smart contract calls. If we are going to really see growth in decentralized applications. And how do we get there? Because obviously it's like, many people, I guess, don't realize, but Bitcoin and Ethereum are kind of like your grandpa's beat up old Cadillac at this point with the speed of some new blockchains that are coming out. It really is the older technology. So how do we get from, you know, the the 10 20 transactions per second that we're talking about on ethereum to you know 10 000 100 000 a million how does that scaling happen

yeah so if you think about each scale chain this is what scale does so scale uses the main net so the main net anything that comes into scale basically gets frozen on the main net and then it produces a clone and so let's's say you have, you know, 10 ETH in a certain DAP. And actually your 10 ETH don't go into scale, they get frozen there in the main net. And then you produce these cloned or wrapped versions and then you have these scale ETH. And then they run in scale. And then when it goes to scale in this application, that application can do 2,000 transactions per second, and the other one can do 2,000, the other one can do 2,000, and it just grows linearly. There might be 100,000 nodes in the scale network supporting all the different applications out there.

Each 16 nodes adds another 2,000 transactions per second to the network, so it can grow linearly. Then you still can use the value and security of the main net. And when you leave your clones get burned or destroyed, and maybe you only have four at that point, or you have 40, but it goes back to Ethereum. You get what you should have, and then you take it back. And you as a user,

don't even need to know you use the scale chain. You just use Ethereum. And then the developer on the back end has this handshake to the scaling platform and it's fast and easy and they don't need to, you know, we end users shouldn't need to college, your college, like a teammates, how did you get into this? Cause it's a, I mean, you know, when you start to lay it out there, it obviously, I mean, it's, it's, it's pretty complex. I mean, you're really talking about the future of the way that money moves, the way that transactions happen. I mean, it's pretty, uh, it's pretty intense. So what kind of companies come to you? Who, what are your clients? Like, you don't have to necessarily go into specifics,

but who are you basically servicing with this? Yeah, so right now, Ethereum is where all the developer traction is happening. Always. I mean, I bet 99% of the developer traction, people building dApps are building it on Ethereum. And so usually right now, these are like five to 50 person startups that see an opportunity to say, hey, let's go build, let's use community and, you know, decentralization.

Decentralization is not a good word because it's loaded. I like to say, let's grow market share by having better profit sharing and better community governance and community control of this product. And that's what blockchains do. And then what you're going to do is you're going to go compete with a competitor to say, pricing's better, control's better, ownership of your data is better. All these things are better. You get a say. It's like a democratized business. And you even see businesses that are centralized doing this, like Reddit's doing it, but just with a couple subreddits. And they're saying, hey, we're going to give up control of these subreddits, right? The crypto subreddits, we're going to have this Ethereum token. And you know what, the group is in charge of these things.

Reddit, the company is not going to manage these things, the token and the token governance and, and, you know, and they're giving up control for growth. And so we'll see big companies take hybrid models. And then smaller companies are saying, hey, I see these big companies that are middlemen that are taking like Uber, for example, which is a tough one to execute on. I bet no one will do it well for three to five years.

But Uber takes 30% of every ride. What if the community ran the software and there was a stable token introduced in the middle that had like a maker type feature on the back end that gave people you know some upside by participating holding the base token and the fees are always paid in the growth token and the stable coin the u.s dollar back stable coins used to pay for the ride. The community runs the servers and the code and all of a sudden drivers get paid 20% more and riders pay 10% less or each get a 15% of Uber's cut. And what are people going to use? And hey, we want these rights for drivers. Well, let's vote. It's not like the Uber execs. It's like a real union i mean it's

it's the spirit of what a union should be right is that everybody better control unions unions because in theory without the leadership and without the politics yeah and it's like everyone can sit at home and like punch in their votes when they're staked and you don't have to have like a union leader you know pushing you around to control your vote. Not that unions are bad, but just they. Yeah, no, to be a spirit of it, not in practice by any stretch. So we've seen, I mean, at this point, probably thousands of these projects, right? Especially since 2016, 2017, their coins are trading all over the place. I mean, what do you think happens to all these? I mean, a lot of them are already zombie projects, probably, even though their coins are being traded and stuff.

I mean, do you think that we see this huge, like expansion of the net and we do see thousands and thousands of successful, or do you think that there's just going to be a few that sort of the cream rises to the top and are successful? Yeah, I think it will be a lot. My guess is it's going to be a lot like the 99 bubble, which I, you know, I was graduating, I just starting college in 2000. So I was not privy to all the details of what happened, but, you know, was able to observe it and then retroactively study it. And and hey there's just so many things that pop up and there's people trying to get quick money and whether they're teams and projects or investors everyone's trying to but now we're at a point where i think traction is king

and the only projects that will survive are ones that have real traction and the speculation part of this is starting to die so i do think we're going to have a de-layering i think 80 of projects and coins are and you are you see like these ghost coins uh ghost networks and evan van ness is somebody who posts all the ghost network stuff on twitter um he's always like calling out uh different chains like look there are no transactions for the last 20 minutes or something yeah and you know they have billion dollar valuations and no one uses these things so that's that stuff's gonna die and then but you know what once and there'll be a de-layering 20 will be here but then i think there might be you know ten times as many projects and teams and businesses because once we

kind of have that like that shakeout because I believe in I think the industry is going to grow dramatically right early quality we're gonna look for metrics people that buy tokens and get smarter about what metrics to look at like and you know you can go on GitHub and just see, is the team doing anything? You don't need to be an engineer. Just go on GitHub, look at the GitHub repositories. And you can see the activity that happens.

There's an activity gauge. And it's like, are people working on this? How many people contribute? How many people work on this? And if something has like $100 million total diluted valuation and they haven't changed the code in six months, like, you know, run the other direction.

So somewhat like the Pareto principle, 80, 20, you know, 20% will be successful. 80% will fail. And, you know, 80% of the success will come from those 20%. It's interesting. So we all kind of, and you were building during this ICO bubble, I guess, in 2017, some have already compared, you know, 2017, I guess, to 19 to 1999, the sort of, the sort of crash at that point. Um, how much do you think it hurt, uh, the idea of mainstream adoption? I guess we can talk about what we think the path to mainstream adoption is in general,

but how much damage do you think like that insane sort of bubble popping? And I mean, companies, as you said, raising a billion dollars when they probably needed like a few million dollars to build a product and then never bought building it. I mean, how does that affect, I guess, public perception and the idea of mainstream adoption going forward? Do you think that it did irreparable damage or do you think that, you know, we can heal from that? No, I think, I think, I don't think it did irreparable damage. I think what it did, I think it drove a lot of awareness, but then a lot of people got burned. The people who found out late and started buying late and started getting pumps

and put more money in, they got crushed. Yeah. And they lost a lot of real money. And so I think what we have now is we have a lot of people who should be really concerned and should be looking for real signals of growth. But I think the market and they should be looking for maturity and how projects launch if they're launching. So I'll give you some examples, some things that that that scale is doing that I was really just, you know, unmoving and about like, and just passionate about is one, what, what happened back then too, is you had people who bought VCs, bought early discounts and they got like half the price of other, you know, people who bought in like a public sale, which was, you know, maybe 100th the price of other people

after like the token started pumping. And then they had no lockups. And then you look at the teams, the teams had no lockups. Just dump. And so what you do is you create this dynamic where people just dump on the retail market or secondary market coming in. And that just like and then like, you know, motivation to keep building and doing stuff kind of goes away. And then they go find the next one to do that same kind of mechanism with. So, so what we're doing, we have our team vesting schedules don't start until the main net launches. And our investors lock up schedules don't start to the main net launches. That means me, I've been working for two and a half years. I haven't invested a single day, but you know, we do that to protect people that want to participate in the network because in scale too, you're not buying a security you're actually buying a token that can be used and so when we

sell the token or yeah and so when people buy the token i guess we're not going to sell a consensus is going to launch a proof of use mechanism launch where you can buy a token from them through this uh dutch auction process but then you have to stake it in the network and there's no trading for 90 days. There's 90 days where the network gets healthy, the validator set up the nodes, people join the network and they stake. And then 90 days later, it goes on exchanges, but you still have these lockup periods and you sold tokens and it ends up becoming a, like, you know, I think a much more fair way for everybody to be able to buy without getting screwed over by people. And it's more compliant and, you know, and it makes it really

clear that the token's a utility. And then, hey, the other thing is we have 45 dApps signed up to use the product and, you know, 30 world-class validators to run the network. And you have to build that stuff before you want to take people's money and let them bet on you. You know what I mean? Um, because it's just, you know, it's slower, slower success, but more ethically, uh, I think in the right direction. Yeah. I mean, there's an existing model for this, right? I mean, employees of companies get stock options or then they test at a certain pace. They don't give a first week employee all of their options for the next 10 years. So if they can go sell the stock and have no vested interest.

I mean, it is crazy what a wild west, I guess, that phase was and how insane those models were. I mean, you could tell at the time, but looking back, I guess, how difficult has it been navigating the, I guess, ever-changing landscape of regulation operating in the United States? Don't be a part of the 7.1 million Bitcoiners in the United States who have Bitcoin and a retirement account, but don't have Bitcoin in their retirement account. Seriously, you can hold Bitcoin in your retirement account and not just GBTC. How can you do this? Through a self-directed choice IRA by KingdomE-W-I-T-H-C-H-O-I-C-E dot C-O-M slash W-O-L-F. Podcast listeners receive extra points to move up the waitlist and get their choice IRA first. Do it right now. It's time to take control of your financial future and free yourself

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investvoyager.com or search for Voyager on the iTunes or Google Play store and get $25 in free Bitcoin when you use the promo code SCOTT25. That's investvoyager.com, promo code SCOTT25 for $25 in free Bitcoin and start trading today. You know, because you touched on securities versus utility tokens, and there's always this, like, putting it to the Howey test and deciding, is it a security? Are we violating any FinCEN? You know, all those things.

Well, we did. So scale labs, Inc was working on this. We raised an initial SAF round and then we decided it was, Hey, this should be community owned. And we did is we essentially gave the assets to the,

to a foundation in Lichtenstein. And the SAF went to them, and then Scale Labs just supports the foundation as a service provider. And we do engineering, we help do sales and marketing and network and community growth and support and things of that nature. And then in Lichtenstein, there's a clear blockchain act with clear governance and rules around what constitutes a utility token, what things you need to do for due diligence, what KYC AML processes you have to follow. And so in Lichtenstein, that entity then launches a token.

And then what's also happening is ConsenSys has a really cool program called Activate. a token. And then what's also happening is ConsenSys has a really cool program called Activate. So if you go to ConsenSys Activate or read about the Brooklyn project. And so they approached the foundation and they said, and the on stolt of the foundation, which is the kind of the business arm and with this model and the net, the token is going to launch that way it happens to also be compliant um to the you know from my perspective to the greatest degree possible of for u.s understanding of what defines utility right and that's or a security and that's and so it it you do it complies with u.s laws but it it's this other entity is doing it because, you know, they have a clear legal framework.

And in the US, it's not, you know, there's certain things that are really clearly violations and you need to make sure you don't do those. But this way, you know, the entity can launch. And, but let me tell you, it's not, it's just, it takes an entirely new level of effort. It's like, usually when you start a business, you just build a product and you sell it to people. Yep. And in crypto you build a product and you let other people run the product, other people buy it, they sell it to it back and they sell it to each other. And then, you know,

and then you have this whole legal framework thing that needs to, that frankly is a huge time and money sink because it's a new battle in itself. But I think we've been lucky to have really phenomenal lawyers and then this entity in Lichtenstein that's been able to help offload that. The United States is extremely far behind with, I guess, embracing and understanding the importance of blockchain and crypto in general. But I guess really the underlying technology and making it so difficult seems to be, in my eyes, to the detriment of the United States because other countries are getting ahead. And if we believe this is the future, I mean, do you think that the United States is really far behind here? You know, I actually have to say a little bit, yes, but also this is what I think what the, what our government, what our governing bodies are trying to do are protect consumers. And so the SEC, I actually, I'm really supportive of. And so if you think about what they're trying to do, like my grandma gets,

my grandma's 92 and she gets called by people trying to get her to buy stuff. And of course, it's so sad. And like, and it's like, and so you have, and if you think about a lot of crypto tokens, like they didn't have a product built yet, it's like supposedly decentralized, but it doesn't exist. And you have this token and you have all, you know, these advisors and it does all this stuff, but a lot of it's not real. And then you're trying to get people who don't have the understanding to go and analyze to say, hey, this is real. This is a good investment. And so the SEC basically says, they have a framework now and it says, don't sell a

token unless the network already exists and is running. And it doesn't require, and if you're decentralized, it means you're not, you know, requiring people to continue to do work before the thing, you know, can function in a decentralized manner. And so they issued a framework that made a lot of sense to me. But, you know, it's also like you want to, you don't want to perpetuate income inequality where only accredited investors can make dumb bets because then your normal person can't invest in and start. And so the consensus thing is cool or like the proof of use thing

because you don't have to be accredited to buy, but you have to take a test that shows you have basic blockchain knowledge. Oh, that's interesting. And so if my grandma took it, she would never pass it. She's 92. She doesn't know anything about technology or blockchain, even though she knows how to use FaceTime now, which is cool. But anybody who invests in these things who knows enough about blockchain and has read Skim the White Paper, they're going to qualify. So things like that, I think, help keep fairness and protection in good balance.

Right. So there's basically a happy balance that we're trying to achieve, I guess. This conversation, that conversation comes up so often when I talk to the CEO of any company in this space is the idea, I guess, of accreditation. And obviously, like that balance between trying to protect people, but also saying that if you don't make $250,000 a year or whatever, you're not allowed to invest your money as you see fit or, you know, speculate on things that you may really believe in. It really is a hard battle there because, you know, and during that ICO bubble, it probably did in retrospect, in retrospect, save a lot of Americans uh making some pretty terrible investments because you know we were locked out yeah maybe that's the silver lining and when i think about the united states being somewhat behind i'm a trader you know by i guess by by a trade trader by trade um and so it's that the tax code is what is so difficult for me yes it's like we're so behind. The fact that you can't spend crypto

without it being a taxable sale of an asset and having to worry about if I buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks with Bitcoin that I've now sold Bitcoin and have to somehow account for that. I think those are huge barriers to entry for mainstream adoption in this country. I don't know your take. I totally agree. Cause, cause tokens aren't a real token like Bitcoin or with a scale token after it launches like Ethereum, ERC 20, you know, all these token standards like ETH itself, they are functional units of software that do things. And, and, you know, but also they're meant to be programmable money. And if I want to use them for money and I have to pay 40% short-term tax, like what a mess, right?

Yeah, you just won't. And the other thing is staking is also kind of like a complete gray area right now. So let's say I stake in a network and I get a bounty return to me and I just want to keep restaking that. And I want to keep restaking that. Why should I pay 40% each time I get paid when I'm not spending it? It's just compounding. And it's kind of like, you know, if you're an apple farmer and you take 10% of your apples and you just like eat them and use them for seeds and replant them, should you have to pay, you don't pay tax on that quantity. You only pay tax. You take them to the market and sell them and exchange them for seeds and replant them should you have to pay you don't pay tax on that

quantity you only pay tax you take in the market and sell them right exchange them for cash so it's an amazing analogy yeah amazing analogy so to me we need i would love to see and the thing is the securities law and the tax law seem to be you know like each taking the most favorable stance for the entity and they're diametrically opposed and like, hold on, if I take that logic here, then that doesn't make sense. And the logics don't match up. If there were one logic around what a token was and that, you know, the US, like we as like all being US citizens could say, hey, like this is what a token is.

And then we match the securities and the tax laws to that. I think we're in a better position. And the SEC framework is a great, I think, step in the right direction. And I hope the tax law also, you know, keeps evolving as well. Yeah. It seems like it would be, first of all, I mean, we all know that the IRS is like woefully underfunded and undermanned anyway. So they're not going to go out and probably track most of this for people. They're just creating more work. But it seems that logically, it would just be kind of like you said, your cash goes into the crypto market, whatever you do with it within that market is fine. And when you cash out, you pay the taxes on the difference. I mean,

it would be so simple, kind of like how Forex, I guess, is taxed when you trade currencies. You know, I buy Bitcoin, I go trade it for all these other things. I spend it. And when I cash that Bitcoin out, I pay, you know, I make a hundred grand. I pay taxes on that. Yeah. Or, you know, or if I buy something, if I go trade it for a good, I buy a car. Like I pay sales tax on the car.

You're already paying the tax. It's a double taxing. And if you want to trade altcoins, you get taxed. You're selling Bitcoin when you buy it. Now you're selling that when you come back. I mean, it's like you get five taxable transactions out of one simple thing and it's just, it just makes absolutely no sense. It's somewhat infuriating, but what are you gonna do? Yeah. So, um, I, I, anyways, I i think there's there's good stuff on the horizon i hope but uh you know i just kind of take this strategy like hey just pay taxes and yeah let's hope just keep our fingers crossed let's make sure like yeah you don't want to be the test case that's for sure yeah let's like lobby let's we need to like a lobbying group

that educates the government lawmakers on what crypto is. I think it's not, like we were talking about earlier, it brings more democratization to businesses. It helps data ownership. It helps the rights of consumers that use products. It helps people who participate and work for these like entities have better rights and better pay. And there's also an appreciation of these assets. But this is like such a net positive for society that I think, you know, we need to make sure the U.S. doesn't get too far behind.

So you talked about earlier is interesting. You talked about obviously exiting a company for half a billion dollars, but that it basically had to raise $250 million to do that. How does venture capital play a role, I guess, in crypto? Are there unique challenges to raising money in this space that are different from the other space? I don't think a lot of people realize how brutalized, obviously, the owners of the companies who start a company or the inventor of a product before all the VC and the sharks kind of come in, how little they often benefit

at the end. Are there unique challenges in crypto to raising money to start these products, start these companies? Yeah. You know what? I think the framework in crypto is so much better than traditional startups. I mean, so many companies, you look at founders that start companies and because of the nature of dilution with equity, you keep growing the pie and growing the pie and growing the pie. And you might have 50% of the company as a founder. And then over time you might have like 5% or 2% or 1% or half a percent. And the company sells for like 700 million and you hardly make any money because of the nature of the way investing works in the venture capital industry.

And it's all about like making sure your valuation goes up and you raise as little money as you need, as little money as possible and do the most with it and raise it at the highest valuation. And you protect your ownership stake. But sometimes that doesn't happen. And you have employees, you need to keep them, you know, paid and you need to take a down round to keep the company going. So things like that happen too. And, but the cool thing about crypto is investors play a role. They often stake in the networks and then they secure the network. So not just, they're like supporters. They're not, you know, they are actually actively playing a role with security.

And, you know, there's very clear rules. These things aren't, you know, like there's a framework of who owns what. And just like for the users and like the people who run servers, the money goes, doesn't go, there's not a middleman in most of these crypto economic mechanisms and designs. You're really growing community by bringing value to the users. And then as a team, you know, hey, you only have a fixed pool that you have and then you can sell. You can't print more tokens, right? And Bitcoin's like, hey, we only have a certain amount of

Bitcoin. There's only a certain amount of scale. And so you have to like be really smart with the way you spend the money and how you raise it. And we've been doing that. We've just been acting like we're, you know, we've raised decent money, but we're, you know, $17 million roughly has been raised, but we're spending money like we've got $2 million because that's the way you have to act. You have to, you know, that's what makes startups successful. So, but Hey, raising money in the space, it's same, it's same, similar thing like investors or people that are looking to invest money. They, you know, they're looking for good deals.

They want to know if you have product market fit, they want to understand how you're going to use the money. What, um, what is, what, you know, What are the dynamics at play? And in crypto, it's also unique because these things aren't securities. So you have to really be talking about the functional use of all and how their role and their participation brings more strength, security, growth to the network as well. So you just said you're not going to print more Bitcoin. We can't print more scale.

There are obviously deflationary assets. So what do you think about what the Fed is doing right now with infinite quantitative easing and printing, quote unquote, you know, as much money as we're going to we're going to need to, to make sure that, uh, everything continues to function. Yeah. I mean, I, all I have to say is it's like, I I'm, I'm observing, I don't, I don't have all the right answers either that I'm cringing. Uh, and I know, I think, and it's a really complex topic. And, you know, my understanding too, is that the world pays the price because that who, that's who we owe debt to. So it's like, if I owe you a hundred bucks and then we just make a dollar really worth 50 cents, you just, and you just print, you know, a bunch more than what I own, my peg to real world value. I'd like, hold on, like, hold on, you owe me this. And now

you just printed more. And so the other countries who the US has debt to maybe are the ones that pay more of the price. That's why the, you know, I keep hearing the US and like the dollar will remain strong despite what's happening. But yeah, I don't have the answers here. I just kind of like cringing, but also hoping that like the, you know, the funds help people as where, you know, people are looking, you know, not being able to work. Like that's, that's the hard part to me. Yeah. But so you, I mean, you said you were first reading the Bitcoin white paper and, you know, 2012, 2013, isn't this sort of the, uh, the environment that this was created for, you know, like, uh, do you think that people are starting to see,

you know, kind of a crack in the foundation of how the general economy works. And maybe that this is the time that Bitcoin could shine. Definitely. And hey, I am, you know, it's funny, there's, there's like Bitcoin maximalists, and then, you know, people who are all about Ethereum. And, and I think actually, a lot of people on the Ethereum side, like myself, we love Bitcoin and we all got started with Bitcoin and, and Bitcoin, I mean, gold's worth what, $9 trillion or something. And, and most of it just sits like under storage somewhere and it's hard to access. Like Bitcoin to me is a phenomenal store of value and a peg to stable currencies. And I don't know, like I actually in the short term, don't get excited about paying for coffee with my Bitcoin. I get excited about it being like a phenomenal place to store value and be

leveraged against for DeFi primitives. And so, so it's, it is just getting started. Like, uh, my philosophy has always been never sell Bitcoin, just keep getting, buying more. Yeah. I kind of, of the, uh, of the same investment advice, by the way. No, but like, yeah, my dad's probably listening and would tell me that was nuts. So, um, but yeah, I think that, but I, you know, I do think that it's getting to a point with general awareness where there are people who understand that what's happening is crazy and maybe they will start buying 1%. You know, the Chamath,

like everybody should own 1% of their net worth should be in Bitcoin in case we go full Mad Max and the entire world melts down, I guess. But kind of like insurance, you want to have it, but you don't necessarily want to have to use it. Yeah. And it's really this amazing thing that we all own together. And that's where I don't think it's too far of a stretch to say, are we all going to collectively own the search engine we use someday right like we collectively are saying you know what we don't need to trust anybody because of the the game theory at play within the way bitcoin functions it serves all of us to not you know to keep it running and like for our search engines, Google makes 110 billion a year in revenue. Like why are we not going to switch over to a model where we collectively own the search

engine and have better rules and governance? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Brave is a really cool company that at least is like taking steps in that direction. I mean, yeah, I think that, I think that that will happen. I do. I want to go back to football a little bit because I've never had the opportunity on the show to talk to anybody about, well, because I'm always fascinated with the arguments about

concussions and CTE. I mean, did you have personal experience with that? Do you think that it's a big problem in football? You know, it's literally like I grew up in Gainesville and my neighbors were all like Gator football players, Gator announcers. They've been through the whole thing. And I remember him always being like, ah, that's whatever, man. Look at me. I'm good. I got concussions, you know, kind of that attitude, but it seems like there's something there. You know, I, I think I had like five or six concussions and one of them I was, uh, so it was at Texas stadium or like Daryl K.

Royal stadium playing against the Longhorns and kick return. And one of my teammates missed the Texas guy and just spearheaded me right in the side of the head. And this guy, you know, he went on to play for the Eagles. He was a great player and like strong guy. And I just remember just like just looking up like where am I and looking around and there's like a hundred thousand people around me and I was like oh my god I'm at a football stadium and I and you know I ran to the sideline and all of a sudden I like had like I

could remember the dream I had the night before I was like in this like weird and but you know I was competing for a spot and playing time you know and so I just didn't tell anyone I was I got a concussion just played you know you get physically ill you're like sick but you know I just went out and kept playing but uh yeah I had my share of concussions and thankfully I've not had any issues and I know I have some teammates that are like hey do you ever like feel you know kind of off and I don't, thankfully I don't, I'm, I feel fortunate. I have no, uh, no issues later, but Hey, or down the road, I think the answer is we need to move back to leather helmets. Yeah. Because then people aren't going to spear each other. It's

kind of the, uh, it's kind of the opposite, right? It's like, who's going to throw their head in there if they're not protected. Yeah. Cause your helmet is a weapon. I mean, and if you don't use it, you're going to, you know, it's a disadvantage. You have to use it. And so right now, like all these flags and these things that are happening, it's just like, I just think it's like, it's like, let people play and like, let's just change the equipment. Cause it's less of a protective device. It's become more of an offensive device. And I've never, I've never heard it explained that way. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I played on the rugby team after college and, and let me tell you, rugby is like running and wrestling. There's no hard impact

because you just can't ram, ram your, ram your head into people. And so there's just so far fewer. I mean, and maybe like the front line, you know, those guys are banging heads, but the number of concussions is so much lower and it's so much better in your body. People play rugby recreationally until they're like 50 in a lot of countries that play rugby. Might get your ear like ripped off a little bit or something, but at least you don't have the long-term damage of concussions. I mean, do you think that they're going to be able to have a college pro football season this year? I hope so. I really do.

I think, you know, I think I love what the NBA is doing, how they're trying to get like, hey, let's like create this hermetically sealed environment so we can still play, get television going. But, you know, in terms of fans being the stands, I just don't think it's going to happen. No. And if it does, it's going to be a disaster. And, you know, we're not seeing like if you're looking at all the health.org, we're seeing an uptrend estimate in the fall and winter. And I think we're just we're just going to be in a tough place till we get a vaccine.

But, hey, I just hope I don't know. I really hope we I'll be I'll be i'm already like you know dealing with everyone else's dealing with like i'm tired of being at home and not having any sports like i'd love to be able to watch football this fall yeah yeah i mean we all have kind of upset it gives us all something to do i mean it's like the i moved back to gainesville a couple years ago after living in new york city philly and miami for like years. And so it's the only thing here, right? So like, yeah, we tailgate right at the front of the stadium, like right on Gator Walk with like the and if that's gone, it's like our entire like social life. You know how these towns are. It's eliminated. But it's interesting, you talk about the NBA coming to

Florida, in this hermetically sealed environment. I think it's like this incredible idea in principle. But I can't see these guys like remaining in their hotel room, like celibate for six months, like not going out to find weed. You know what I mean? Like, unless they're going to be really locked in and security, I feel like it's going to end up being this just sort of like Olympic village free for all. You know what I mean? I feel like it's going to end up being this just sort of like Olympic village free for all, you know? You know, I mean, and hopefully they do get to have a life and they just, you know, they just get to test them every, you know, but Hey,

like they've got to have fun and live. Yeah. You know, and you know, Hey, just like test everybody once a week. And if you're tested, you're like out for two weeks till you're back or something. And, um, but yeah, it's going to be, it's a lot easier in theory than practice. That's, that's for sure. And you did an iron man, right? Yeah. So, yeah. So, so you're, you're one of those.

No, no. Let me tell you, I'd never done a triathlon. I did a trial triathlon when I was like, maybe I think I was like eight years old and I did a sprint with my dad. And then I didn't do another one ever. And I was not, I wasn't about distance sports at all. And I was in Japan and one of my customers was like, always kept trying to talk me into doing an Ironman. And his whole thing is like, it's a whole hog approach. You're your first triathlon, you just do a full Ironman. Cause if you do a half Ironman or something else, then you're never going to want to do the Ironman. It. Because it'll be so bad, right?

You'll suffer so much that you never want to do it. Yeah, he was like, just go all the way in. And then we're out drinking. We're in, you know, in Tokyo. It's like two in the morning. I'm like, I'm doing the Ironman. And everyone's like toasting, cheering, like, you know, like committed. And then the next day I woke up and I was like, oh, shit, what did I do?

Yeah. And so then, you know, I had four months. I like went and bought a bike. I learned how to like, I could only swim like two laps without needing to get air. And I just like hacked the techniques. I was just watching YouTube videos. And I, I like just tried to perfect my swim technique and my cycling technique and like my nutrition and my running technique. And I got a physical therapist on day one. I started doing all these like, you know, pre-habilitation things. And I did it.

I completed it. It took 15 hours. It was painful. It took me 15 days. That was my... But I mean, most people train for a lot longer than four months, I would imagine, right? And you don't go... I mean, you laugh about it, but like most people who do Ironman have done 10, 20 triathlons and have sort of scaled up, I would imagine.

I mean, it just seems, I don't think there's anything for me. And I've been an athlete my whole life. Nothing worse than even just running a marathon, much less adding all the other parts of an Ironman onto it. I mean, it just seems like- I never run a marathon either. I hate running. I hate it. I hate it i hate it i love sprinting i'll run from here to somewhere for a practical purpose but like i think you know

what though there's something about something about the like whole hog approach doing the full iron man it's just like such a crazy goal that you just are like driven to actions. Like I need to like, I need to focus to make this happen. I need to build a plan. And it's like, I think it's almost easier than doing training for like 10 years to do an Ironman. Right. If I could go back and tell myself though, I would have trained like 20% more because I was miserable. It was horrible. I mean, it seems just horrible. Like just, It was just, it was so painful. Would you ever do it again? Or was it one of those things where you were like, I've done it. I'm never doing any triathlon. I'm never running further than like my couch

to my kitchen again. This is over. You know what? So I was on a bike and I was on the bikes and a monsoon hit and I was just wearing this like singlet and I wasn't like you know keeping up with the Japanese news and I didn't you know like didn't realize that this like typhoon or monsoon had changed directions and so I didn't have a jacket I didn't have any any warm clothes and all of a sudden it just starts raining sideways and it gets like 50 degrees and I was like eight hours on a bike and I was just crying, like just getting hit in the face with rain and wind. And I just remember, I was like, you know what?

I want to write a letter to myself right now and tell myself never, ever, ever do an Ironman ever again. Yeah. Because I just know, like I knew that when you cross the finish line, you just get hit with such, such a high. You're like, that's what happens to people. Then they keep doing them.

And now I'm kind of thinking, you know, I care i don't know what i'm like maybe i'll do another one like you know i'm thinking about it again and i'm like yeah i'll get back in really good shape and i'll just and so i'm starting to think i wish i had that letter right now so i could have like told myself that's like a horrible that's like the horrible ex-girlfriend who is the worst thing ever and then like you're oh, she wasn't that bad. You start remembering only the good stuff and not the bad stuff. Also, why they say that people have a second, third, fourth kid is because you forget. Your brain erases how awful it was having a baby.

And they're like, oh, it was fine. But at the time, it was absolutely terrible. Do you ever get to play football anymore? I mean, do you miss the game? It's not like tennis or golf, which you can go out and play for the rest of your life. Like you can't just like go play football by yourself. Right. So yeah, that's the saddest thing about football. I think anybody listening who played in high school, college or like whenever you play your last game, it's really sad because you know, you're never going to put the equipment on again. Like hardly any. Yeah. You're just done.

And you know, you can go, so I love going and throwing the football around and just like running around, but you don't ever get to really play. So it's, yeah, it's kind of a sad thing. Did you ever like think that you would go play, I mean, whether in the NFL or professionally somewhere else, or did you always sort of know that college was going to be the end of your football career? So I started my junior year and I thought like, you know, I thought, hey, I could do it. And, you know, I just had, frankly, just had a really bad injury. And then I remember like, you know, it was like, I remember just being by myself, going on this walk and saying, you know what, I'm not going to be able, my dream's over.

I've got to find a new one. And then I, then I was like, you know, I'm not going to be able my dreams over i've got to find a new one then i then i was like you know i'm going to move to silicon valley and i'm going to i've got another goal and i shifted my goal so you were able to fully you know everyone when sadly kobe passed away like i think one of the major focuses was like this guy has this incredible second act that we're all missing right like he had this yeah this this basketball career is incredible second act that we're all missing, right? Like he had this, this, this basketball career is incredible, but now he's a venture capitalist and a business owner and he's, you know, succeeding in the same manner outside of sports that he did before. I don't feel like most athletes get there like mentally. I think there's this,

I mean, I know coming from music and stuff and having a certain level of like success. I mean, you definitely miss the attention and you miss the game or whatever, but like, I guess it's just a rare person that can make the transition and go as hard or as big. It's something completely different after focusing their whole life on that one thing. How did you like say to yourself? Yeah. Okay. Football's done. Here we go. You know what I mean? I did it with music into crypto and it's been great,

but it's a very hard thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's really hard. I think, you know, you have to like set your North star and just like really emotionally say, all right, like, and it's hard because your identity is wrapped up in this other thing. Your, the lifestyle you have is different. And, and I just said, Hey, I'm going to go do this. And I'll tell you, like, it wasn't easy because in college at playing at Nebraska, right. And if you're starting to imagine, it's a really good lifestyle, you know, you're done well. And, and so I, so I took a job for this tech company. I'm like, leave, leave Lincoln, like bye everybody. Like, you know, being kind of like a well-known person and, and like having this awesome life. And then I moved,

then this company in Silicon Valley hired me and they said, Hey, you have to move to North Carolina and work there for three to six months. And then we'll move you to California if you do well. And so I'm in Cal, I'm in North Carolina. I'm like every day sitting in a cubicle, like cold calling people who are hanging up on me, you know, calling it directors and CIOs. And like, I'd got to bars and no, like, like, Oh, you, you aren't from here. Like, it was like, and I just thought to myself, I was like, Oh my God, I'm like a total loser compared to what I was before. And I have no friends. I'm like, go to work every day and sit in a cubicle. And then, you know, I just kind of like, Hey, I'm going to like turn this around. I'm going to like, and I just pushed through,

but it wasn't easy, but you just have to like, have your vision of where you want to go and then figure out how do I get there? Like, what do I need to do? And you probably went through something similar, right? When you were 50 years? To some degree. Yeah. But I was already, I mean, I was already like approaching 40, I'm 43 years old. And so I didn't really quit DJ until I was 38 or 39, even though it was like a kind of a slow transition and it was forced to some degree by having kids and, you know, like off the road, but yeah, I went through it. And even at that age, it's like, it's hard not to be cool anymore. You know what I mean? At that basic level, it's hard to admit that, but it's like you said, like, you know,

if I went out in the cities where I lived, like I knew everyone, I could walk into any place, high five, you know? And then it was like, well, you're doing crypto now, which is very cool. Don't get me wrong. I'm just saying it's just, it is very strange. But I always, I, I'm, I think I'm like you or I would just push through it and be confident. Like I just not the kind to sit around and wait for something to happen. Like, okay, that's it. Let's go on and do the next thing. But I just wonder for a lot of athletes who get to that level,

how hard that must be, especially football where like your career's over in your late twenties for most people. And what are you gonna do with the rest of your life? And you know, Hey, I had to like i i tell you it was like it was rewarding though like i was glad i went through that pain for those years just kind of like completely like ripping the band-aid off and like and i go back to link i went back to lincoln when i moved to move to california when i got the you know promotion drove back across the country went back back to Lincoln on the way back, and I got my friends, and they're still living the same lifestyle.

I was like, you guys. And I was like, you know what? I'm investing in the future. And some of them, I go back and they're – I don't want to comment on where any of them are, but some of them I'm sure – I was like – and then I was like a couple years later, getting to hang out and every week I was like, you know, I'm here. And then I was like, a couple years later, I get into hang out.

And every week I was in New York or Tokyo or San Francisco. I was working really, really hard. But I was, you know, had like a new fun reinvention of myself and what life was. And now that I'm working in crypto, I have to say it's like another level of like intellectual stimulation and fun. I agree. And I'm loving it too because I was, you know, in enterprise software purely.

It was deep tech, but this is deep tech, but there's other interesting things here and it's a fun place to be. Well, really impressive, man. I love your story. And I think hopefully some people find some inspiration there

because I know that a lot of people find it hard to really find that next act, as we said. So where can people keep up with you after this? Where can people follow what Scale is doing? Yeah, so Twitter is a great, you can follow me at Jack O'Halloran. You can also go at Scale Network

is the Scale Network Twitter. And then if you go to scale.network, scale with a K, that's the website. And you can see it on your shirt. We can see it on your shirt, at least, for the people who go to scale.networkscale with a K, that's the website. We can see it on your shirt at least for the people who decide to watch. My Denver hackathon shirt, by the way. I've got my buffacorn for anybody who knows the buffacorn. That's awesome. I actually didn't even notice that the whole time.

I just saw the scale part. It's the mascot of the ETH Denver hackathon. Okay, well, I'm sure there's a few go ahead please before we go if the huskers ever play florida and gainesville i'm coming to visit you all right oh we've got i'm telling you we've got like the tailgate of all tailgates like with the you know air-conditioned tent and the screens and catered everything right at the front we we do it big so So you're invited anytime, but, uh, we might have to meet in Lincoln too. I don't know. I can't guarantee it'll be.

Yeah. All right. Let's, let's do it. And I've never made that trip. So I would love to do that. All right, man. Well, thank you so much. I really do appreciate it. And I look forward to what you guys have coming in the future. All right. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Hey everyone. Thanks for listening. New episodes go live every been a pleasure. Let's go.