The Wolf Of All Streets - Joe Lallouz, CEO of Bison Trails on the Intersection of Technology, Crypto and Finance

Episode Date: June 23, 2020

Joe Lallouz Founder and CEO of Bison Trails has positioned him and his company at the crossroads between major financial institutions and cryptocurrencies. Bison Trails is bridging the gap between tech, developers, crypto projects, and major financial institutions, which has resulted in him working alongside crypto’s most notable projects including Libra, Tezos, and ETH 2.0. Scott Melker and Joe Lallouz further discuss what it means to be a pioneer in the crypto space, the incredible pace of DeFi innovation, the imminence of mass adoption, the government's current role in the cryptocurrency space and more. --- ROUNDLYX RoundlyX allows you to dollar-cost-average into crypto with our spare change "Roundup" investing tool, manage multiple crypto exchange accounts in one dashboard and access curated digital asset content and services. Visit RoundlyX and use promo code "WOLF" to learn more about accumulating your favorite digital assets when making everyday purchases and earn $4 in free Bitcoin. --- 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. I'd like to thank my sponsors, Round the X and Voyager, for making today's episode possible. We'll hear much 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 has founded several companies and is presently the CEO of Bison Trails. Joe Lelous has been at the forefront of tech startups for years, more recently bringing his expertise to crypto. That transition has resulted in him working alongside some of the most notable leading projects in the industry, including Tezos Tezos, because nobody actually knows how to pronounce it. So I'm just going to throw that out there. Libra, Ethereum 2.0 and more. Joe, thanks so much for being here today.

Scott, thanks so much for having me. Really excited to be here. And really flattered by the intro. Really, really appreciate it. I could have gone bigger, but yeah, maybe next time. So, you know, I think we have a pretty diverse audience for the show. People from just superficially interested in investing and trading all the way to the fully in it for the tech crowd, which I know is probably the poll that you are a bit closer to. So I really like to start with the basics in the beginning. Can you tell us first what are nodes and why are they important? Yeah, absolutely. And just on that note about the audience and the

folks watching and listening in, one of the things that I think my co-founder and I are really good at is actually bridging the gap between really technical crowds and maybe folks that are more on the business or product development side. And one of the reasons why I'm super excited to be building a company in the blockchain and crypto space is because of that sort of that, that, you know, that tension between really, really technical concepts and the sort of esoteric vibe that crypto has. And the sort of, you know, the fact that we want to get more adoption, more sort of regular day to day mainstream adoption in the ecosystem. So super happy to be there and bridge those gaps, but, and really happy to talk about it. Yeah. I think we need to bridge that gap for people because I do just like not even to go at a left turn already, but I think that one of the biggest

barriers to entry certainly for the general public and mainstream adoption is that they just don't understand it, right? It's just too complicated and they don't want to bother to know what it's really about. They just want you to tell them how they're going to make their money or be a part of the future. No, a hundred percent. And that's, you know, one of the, one of the initiatives of our organization of Bison Trails, and I'll tell you a little bit what nodes are and what Bison Trails is in a second, is to educate. Our whole, our whole goal is to educate folks. And, and that's our customers, that's the market that's, you know, our prospect customers, that's developers in the ecosystem. And so we're, we're, we're pretty,

we're pretty dead set on, on making sure that we can bridge that gap. But you know, getting back to your original question. So the, the, you know, the, the one-liner for Bison Trails, the description of Bison Trails is we're an infrastructure-as-a-service company supporting blockchain protocols. That's a mouthful. It's very technical. What that actually means is that we help folks that want to participate in blockchains. So, companies, developers, entrepreneurs, funds, custodians, exchanges, anybody who

wants to participate in a blockchain. And that type of participation is either helping secure the blockchain, writing blocks to the blockchain, or reading from that blockchain. They need to run nodes on that network, on that protocol, to be able to do it. So you asked early on, what is a node? A node is simply a computer that basically takes an implementation of a blockchain and runs that blockchain. It helps read and write from a blockchain, and it is an entry point, a gateway in and out of the distributed ledger. So a blockchain is essentially a ledger that's distributed amongst lots of

different folks. And the nodes are points in that blockchain, often operated by individuals or companies that enable folks to read and write from a blockchain. And that's that. They hold the truth. They read, write, and secure the truth. So why would a company want to participate in this? I mean, it makes a lot of sense, I understand, but like, why would a big company come to you and say, hey, you know, I want to be a part of this and this will benefit me how? Yeah. So a couple of things that are kind of important there. The first thing is that blockchain nodes have existed for as long as blockchains have existed. There's been a shift in the market moving from proof of work, which is the consensus mechanism for securing blockchains like Bitcoin and some of the earlier blockchains.

There's been a shift in the market from proof of work to what most folks are referring to alternative consensus mechanisms like proof of stake or proof of authority. And I'll kind of dig into like a little bit of the details there. It was my next question. So that's perfect. To make that a little bit clearer. So in a proof of work network like Bitcoin, you have miners that help secure the network. And this is basically just a whole bunch of computers that are for, you know, without having to get into the real details of how mining works, because that can be complicated in itself, they're trying to guess and check a number to help secure the ledger. Let's just take that as a given. What happened is the ecosystem, the blockchain ecosystem is shifting from using proof

of work as a mechanism to secure blockchains and new blockchains are implementing things like proof of stake and proof of authority. And the shift includes the securing of those networks by the nodes on the networks themselves. So there's no, there's also nodes on Bitcoin, except for those nodes are only used to read, you know, really just to read from the chain. It's read from the chain itself. Right. And in proof-of-stake, these nodes are similarly used to read from the chain. However, they're also used to secure and write blocks. So if you're running a node on a proof-of-stake network like Tezos, Ethereum 2, Cosmos, or one of the other 30 protocols that are in the midst of coming out like Celo or Oasis or Nier. I don't want to name all of them without naming others, but there's really,

really great people in the space that are building great protocols. If you run a node on that network, you can help validate blocks, sign blocks, secure the network itself. And so the reason why people want to do it is, one, it's part of their core competency. So they have a business competency that relies on helping secure these networks as part of the ecosystem. Those are folks like custodians, exchanges, large asset holders, funds, those kinds of folks. The other thing is that in participating in these networks, so running nodes in these networks and helping validate and sign blocks, folks also earn rewards for doing that. And so the network, the protocol itself actually distributes inflationary rewards to folks that are running nodes on the network and helping secure it. It's a really great way

to bootstrap a network if you want lots of people to help secure the network, because the more nodes you have securing the network, the more secure that network is, the less likely it is to be able to be taken over or hijacked. You can distribute inflationary rewards to be able to do that. It's interesting. I've heard a lot of people discuss Tezos in particular as sort of, I don't want to paint it in a negative light, because I think it's actually a relatively incredible system, but a bit of a Ponzi scheme in the trader community because basically the price can only go up as a result of the structure of the staking. Can you address that in any way or explain why it inflates price or why it drives drives price and interest? Yeah. So I would, I mean, like the, the, there's a few ways you could push back against that idea that the price can

only go up. You can also make the same statement that a fixed inflationary rate, you can actually price that into the asset price itself. So if you understand how the asset is, if the asset is predetermined on how it will inflate over time, you can actually price in the risk of that, of that. So you can kind of look at it. It sort of cuts both ways in a sense. That's actually part of the asset and that's how it's described. And that's how it's designed. What's cool about it is that it's code. So it's not like a group of, you know, 10 people. I mean, let's just take governance aside because governance could

affect people can actually change these things. Right. Of course. But you know, you have to vote to change the code and the code decides what the inflationary rate is. So, you know, I want to address the question, is it a Ponzi scheme? I can see how if you're not really familiar how proof of stake networks work, you may confuse this idea that it's ever inflationary as you can only go up. But in reality, it's a feature of the protocol itself and of the fixed monetary supplier, fixed inflationary supplies is a feature of the protocol. It really just depends like how you're using it and why you're using it. I can tell you

like, yes, Tezos will inflate by this much over the next 10 years and I can then actually price it into the asset. Right. Makes sense. So there's constant conjecture as to whether institutional money is invested in Bitcoin. I've always sort of thought that big money is more likely to be interested in investing in the companies that are at the forefront of the innovation rather than just trying to hold in custody a ton of Bitcoin or a ton of the assets. So I think everyone wants to know whether institutional money is here. Can you offer any insight based on your customers and the companies that you work with, if that's the case? Yeah. So I should say we work with some of the world's top custodians, exchanges, asset holders, funds, venture funds, crypto funds, crypto hedge funds,

really like a whole gamut of folks. And they vary in size too. So there's some small ones, some really big ones. I would say, you know, I'm going to use air quotes here. Institutional money is, you know, it really depends on how you define it, right? Like you're talking about within crypto or externally, certainly. Yeah. Even just scale wise, you know, like you can look at Andreessen Crypto that just publicly announced a $500 million fund that's, you know, investing in the crypto space and say, okay, institutional money is here. But then you could also look at, you know, some of the largest traditional, you know,

traditional financial institutions in the world and say, like, they barely dip their toes. So do I think institutional money is interested in the space and looking at it? Definitely, definitely, definitely looking at it. Definitely some real money involved in real money getting invested. Has it reached exit velocity from an institutional perspective? I don't think so. But I mean, I don't know for a fact, you know what I mean? I'm not running the balance sheet. Of course. But we see, you know obviously, it's a somewhat different conversation, but like JP Morgan starting their own Ripple or XRP competitive blockchain. Right. It's internal and it's a completely different conversation. But I guess to that degree, we know that they're at least interested. I guess the question will be how much of their money they actually put into the ecosystem. But I guess that

remains to be seen. I also think that the smartest ones will do it. The smartest ones already have and will continue to put money and invest in the space. And for me, I define smartest by the ones that are looking at the time horizon of 50 or 100 years. You know, I've always been amazed by this. You know, it's funny, I don't know if it's lore or if it's the true story or not. But I've always been amazed by this like story of like, you know, fidelity invests on like 100 year timelines. I think like that kind of concept is fantastic. And we're going to see the institutions that are thinking on these really long term timelines and not in the three, four year return cycles. They'll come out really, really positive with this because, you know,

there's lots of folks that believe that things like decentralized finance and crypto will completely displace the financial and banking system that we see today. And, you know, if that's true, the folks that have been in it early and are investing that capital early investing in the products and services and the experiments, they're the ones that are going to fare out really, really well down the road. So there are people who think that, do you think that that's the case? Do you think that DeFi is the future of finance? Yeah, I do. I think that, uh, I think that the, the incarnation of DeFi that we see today is

experimental and that the version of DeFi that we will see that is the future of finance is not the version of DeFi that we see today. It will become way more mature. There will be better infrastructure. There'll be better security, more robust products and services that are built on top of it to both address individuals as well as institutional needs. But I do think that it is the future of finance. I think that, I think that, you know, decentralized finance will significantly disrupt the financial ecosystem. Yeah, I tend to agree. So we've kind of got the basics here, why people would want to run a node and what it is. So how does Bison Trails specifically solve the node problem for an individual? Like what are you offering?

What barriers to entry are you eliminating those things? Yeah. So the easiest way to describe this is we make it incredibly easy for folks to run highly secure nodes or computers on these different protocols. If you're a builder in the space, that's actually a very difficult task to do. So my co-founder and I have been entrepreneurs for a really long time. In particular, we're both technical, we're software engineers.

We've been building products and services for, this is going to sound crazy. We've been building product and services for almost 18 years together. This is the- They did not have computers 18 years ago. That's crazy. You can see the ones we were building on.

I had a Commodore 64 in the eighties. I know, I know all about it. The funny thing is hopefully the sarcasm translates to those who aren't looking at my face on video. Yeah, no, it's yeah, it's, it's real. We've been building for a really long time. We built a number of startups in the past. Technical startups tend to focus on solving technical problems. And we're builders. You know, we build first. Every time we build, we work on a company, we always build the first version of everything we've done ourselves,

build the software ourselves. And when we got into the crypto space, when we started getting involved in the blockchain and crypto space, which I should say really, this is odd, but actually happened more as an investor first than as a builder, because we were sort of on the tail end of exiting our last company. We said to ourselves, let's just build, let's build a few different products and services and see what it's like to build in the crypto and blockchain space and could not get past

this idea that the infrastructure component was incredibly immature. And so in, in sort of like web 2.0 or in non-crypto, non-blockchain ecosystems, there's a tremendous amount of, of tooling and a tremendous amount of infrastructure products and services you can use so that you can focus on the thing that you do best. So let's say you want to, we were like, at one point we tried to build a wallet and running a wallet means you actually have to build every single thing from the protocol level all the way up to the user experience of the wallet. It's kind of like if I said to you, go build Gmail. Here's the SMTP protocol.

You'd be like, where do I start? There's probably 600 products and services and layers in between in that stack. And so we said to ourselves, one, this is incredibly hard. It's going to be super hard to get more entrepreneurs that, that, you know, have to build in the space that have that kind of experience working in, in other ecosystems too. If the space is going to take off and continue to succeed, this company needs to exist and this product and service needs to exist.

So folks need to be able to go and click one button and to deploy a node into a protocol and never have to worry about it again. That wasn't the case before Bison Trails existed. You'd have to go and read a whole bunch of GitHub documentation and trial and error, and you'd spin up an Ethereum node and it would, it would take a week to sync. And then it would be 20 minutes later. And it was an absolute disaster. And right now, you can literally click you can literally click it, two seconds, you have your Ethereum node, you never have to think about it again. So whether you're, you know, a massive engineering organization,

you don't want to have to spend the time and resources it takes to add new protocols or support the protocols you exist, or you're just an entrepreneur, you know, kicking it and you want to try and build a new product or service, you can just do that really, really quickly. So that was really the gist of it.

And that's what we do. It's, you know, like I said, it's a very technical company. So it's, you know, solving a pretty technical problem. But the cool thing about it is that it's this intersection of technology, as well as these, you know, the sort of like financial products, because the protocols themselves, by running nodes in the network, you help secure the network, and you receive rewards for doing that. So we have plenty of folks that are, are, you know, funds and they're really interested in participating in things like staking and proof of staking governance. So it's basically a fix it and forget it solution to something extremely

complicated. And the person doesn't have to understand it at all. They just need to know why they want to do it and that you're going to handle it for them. That's the idea. Which is interesting. I've tried before, and I'm not a particularly technical person, but running a node is extremely complicated. And few and far between the people who will be able to figure it out and then actually stick with it on their own if they even have figured it out.

Honestly, even technical teams, so not just technical people, but technical teams that know how to do it. Think it sucks. It's not, it's not an enjoyable experience. It's hard thinking about the security vectors and the risks associated with that security, making sure that it's always up, making sure you can always connect to it. It's another, it's just another variable that folks that are building products and services don't want to have to deal with. Well, let's talk about security. So what are the issues if you're an individual running a node? Everybody is superficially obviously aware of the risk of hacking, but usually it's like,

how are they going to SIM swap me, steal my Bitcoin, hack my computer? But I think you're taking it to a whole other level when you're talking about running a node. So what are you talking about when you're talking about security? Yeah. So most of the time when we're talking about security, specifically around a node, it's this idea of surface area of attack on that node itself. And you can think of that from the perspective of the protocol, so the blockchain itself, or you can think about it from the perspective of the operator of that node. So me as an operator, I would like to make sure that my node is up and running 24-7. It's distributed around the world in the sense that it has redundancy. So if there's an issue on the East Coast of the United States that my node doesn't go down,

that it can easily and seamlessly move to Singapore, for instance, and I can still connect to it even though now it's physically located in Singapore. So it's sort of dissociating the concept of a node from the physical elements of a node. So we think about that from a security perspective. We also think about the, so as not, sorry, I should say as an operator, you think about it as like, how do I make sure that no one else has access to it? How do I make sure that it's never going to go down, and that it has the redundancy and availability that I need for my services? And then the third piece is, and this is pretty unique to proof-of-stake protocols,

so things like Cosmos and Tezos, is that really, if you're our node operator in one of these networks, you're incentivized to be a good actor in the sense that the network, the protocol inflates and issues rewards for signing blocks. You make more money for behaving well. You make more money for behaving well, but in some of them, you're actually penalized for behaving poorly. And that's where security really, really comes into play. Because if let's just say, I don't like you for whatever reason, you're a competitor, you're someone I don't enjoy spending time with, whatever it is.

Take it easy on me, man. Maliciously against your node and actually lose you money. So this is a concept of flashing where if if you act poorly, we can maybe get into the details of what it means to stake and sort of bonding. But basically, in a proof of stake network, you put a monetary value or economic value behind your node. And that is directly correlated to how often you're helping validators secure the network. So, you know, if I have one-tenth of the Tezos, the Tezis in the Tezos network, I will most likely, and this is probabilistic, I will most likely sign

or validate one-tenth of the blocks in Tezos network, one-tenth of the rewards for doing that. And so what can happen is that if you behave poorly, let's say you sign the wrong block or you sign a block twice, which is really, really bad. It confuses the whole network. So you're disincentivized to do that. And they have these concepts called slashing where the protocol itself will then take part of your stake, the economic value that's behind your node and remove 3% of it or 5% of it. And sometimes that goes to a developer fund.

Sometimes it gets burned entirely. It doesn't exist anymore. It really depends on the protocol itself. So you want to make sure that if you're running a node, you better be doing it really securely, really well, that it's available, that you're not going to sign two blocks. You're not going to mess this up,

especially if you're, for instance, a fiduciary or a fund manager and you're doing this on behalf of other people's money, not just your own money, your own economic value. So that's kind of where the sort of operator security comes into play. So when you talk about bad acting, it's less malicious necessarily sometimes than accidental or just surely incompetence. So like an individual who runs a node is doing it for the first time, doesn't really understand what they're doing, makes a mistake. And that's what you're preventing to some degree, right? You're making sure that that doesn't happen because you're running them all collectively. So the cool thing about it is, one, we guarantee that it doesn't happen. And that's part of our products and service.

So for folks that use Bison Trails, we actually guarantee things like rewards and we guarantee against things like downtime and slashing, which is fantastic. From a user perspective, people are very happy about that because that's what we do. It's our bread and butter. We do it really, really well and we do it better than anybody else. We're excited about that. But I will just highlight protocols are designed in a way to be somewhat forgiving. So, yes, it's not necessarily malicious. If you're a malicious actor, like for sure that that ends up having serious economic value, economic loss associated with it. But they're also designed in a way that like a small blip can be somewhat tolerated. So, you know, if like you running a node for the first time, you've never done it before you're doing it by yourself and you have like an hour of downtime, most of the time there isn't even a penalty associated with that. I'm just like, try and

get back up. You know, if that ends up being, you know, you know, three weeks, then you'll probably see some kind of penalty. And the reason for this is because there's a certain sense of community and reliance on each other, right? It's I actually need your node to do the right thing. Otherwise, my node can't do the right thing. And so it makes sense that, you know, you're sort of penalized for doing the wrong thing because you can really mess up the rest of us. I mean, at the core, these are very passionate and committed communities more than anything else, correct? I mean, if you put in all the work and the effort to actually do this, you want everyone to succeed together. I think that's one of the biggest selling points for proof of stake and one of the things that really draws people to it. Is that accurate? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we've seen these communities just...

They're super passionate. They do things that I think are incredible, that are pretty unscalable. I'm very proud that myself, my co-founder, our team over time have become pretty active community members. We do things like help with the open source, uh, open source, uh, protocols themselves and contributing code. We contribute advice and we contribute, um, cross ecosystem advice. Like, Hey, this protocol is thinking about this. Like, what do you think about these things? Um, we also do things like help with governance and, you know, uh, Libra is a good example. Like I'm, I'm on the technical steering committee of Libra. Let's go there. Libra association. And we and we help help govern that association as well. So, you know, we do a

lot of stuff there and really, really passionate communities doing stuff that's like, incredible and unscalable. So you're 100% right, and they rely on each other. So let's talk about Libra, because I don't think there's a more polarizing or interesting topic, I think, in the space in general. And it's funny because it was such big news when it happened. And then there were the congressional hearings. And then it sort of seemed to disappear from the forefront, like anything in the modern news cycle, of course. I mean, an asteroid could hit the earth and the news cycle would pass it by tomorrow. First of all, why did you get involved in Libra in the

first place? What is your belief that Facebook is the person is the company to do this and, uh, and where are they at now? Yeah. Um, so, so I should, I should just caveat this with, I'm not an official spokesperson on the Libra association as a member. I'm very happy to speak on the things that I know, but I'm also just speaking from our perspective and my perspective on this. And I'm pretty transparent and open about why we're interested in this and why we got involved. First and foremost, I think Libra is an incredible feat for the blockchain and crypto space, regardless of your position on Facebook or your position on decentralization or centralization. What it actually said to me when I first heard about it, and I can explain a little bit how I actually first heard about it,

was some of the world's largest tech companies were taking this ecosystem and this technology seriously. And this wasn't just, you know, and no offense to JP Morgan, but this wasn't just JP Morgan building like something on a blockchain as an experiment internally to see what it was like. This was a pretty large, if not one of the largest tech companies in the world taking this as a serious initiative to help, you know, broaden financial inclusion as a mission. And to me, that was a really, really strong signal because I have outspokenly said that blockchains and crypto are an inevitability, that products and services will be built on top of blockchains and crypto that we don't, as,

as, you know, everyday users, we won't even notice, we won't even know, we won't, we won't know that they will be using decentralized technology, we won't even know. We won't know that they will be using decentralized technology. We won't necessarily know that you have greater control over your data or your privacy or your security. Eventually, we'll build products and services that are so high up the stack that it just kind of becomes part of what you do. And it's a world that I wanted to see. And so I'm happy to help build that. Roundthex.com is one of my favorite companies in the entire crypto space. What they do is take all your small purchases and round them up to the nearest dollar and invest that spare change into any of over 30 crypto assets of your choice.

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That's investvoyager.com, promo code SCOTT25 for $25 in free Bitcoin and start trading today. So that was the first thing that, quite frankly, for me, the project stands, whether it succeeds or not, stands as a very, very strong milestone for the crypto and blockchain space by saying, this is an important enough thing that like this group of people needs to get together and work on it. And I thought that was very real. How we got involved was way, way, way more organic than that. So this is, you know, this is kind of funny. I've never worked at Facebook. I don't really know anybody that worked on Libra before. I never know anybody that worked on Libra before. I never knew anybody that worked on Libra before this. They approached us because we had been doing a lot of work with a lot of these open source

protocol teams like, you know, Cosmos and Tezos and LivePeer and, you know, Near and NewCypher and, you know, all these different protocols. And they were looking around the ecosystem, they being at the time, just Facebook was sort of trying to put together this association to help build, build the Libra Association and build the Libra network. They were looking for folks that could be really helpful on the technology side. And I guess that they had heard rumblings that like we were doing really great work in the ecosystem, we were sort of leading the pack from an infrastructure perspective, when it came to running nodes on a network, there was no one that was better or more secure than bison trails so um they approached us

and i got like a mutual contact kind of put us in contact put me in contact with um the team that was that was working on libra at facebook and they said hey look we're working on this thing are you interested and to be entirely honest at first i was like great just what we need like a facebook coin facebook coin exactly i was kind of like, not really. Yeah. It was like, this doesn't really fit into like what, what I actually care about, like why I'm doing this, why I'm in this space. And what I found was that as I got to know them a little bit better, I started to realize what they were trying to do,

which was trying to build an association of a hundred companies that while it wasn't like perfectly decentralized, it was actually not just Facebook trying to control an association of a hundred companies that while it wasn't like perfectly decentralized, it was actually not just Facebook trying to control a thing that it was like trying to get a really great respectable group of people together to build this association that was going to govern this, this crypto network. And that to me was way, way, way more interesting than, you know, a sort of centrally driven Zuck Bucks. We already saw Facebook coin or Facebook bucks. Like I think they had a couple of products that tried it. It

was like nothing crazy. So I guess like the transition from like, hey, let's put blockchain in front of this, kind of like what happened with that ICT company to like, actually, we're trying to literally build a blockchain or crypto product. Oh, you use a new logo. Right. And that transition in my head was what made it really interesting to me. So, so at this point now, this is about a year and a half ago, because it was about, I guess the project was announced last summer. Probably got involved about eight months before that, pretty quietly. And we were, you know, at this point, I was okay, interested in sort of the potential, and then interested in the mission. And then ultimately, you know,

the thing that really hooked me once I kind of got to that point was this idea that Facebook and the rest of the association, the association members, Libra association members, folks like Uber and Lyft and Shopify and Spotify, the reach of these companies are in the billions. And if you're someone who believes in blockchains and crypto, and you believe that it could actually reach mainstream, this is a very, very, very strong case for how that might happen. And so I was super interested in helping drive that forward as well. So that's kind of how we got involved and why we got involved. Over the last year since the announcement, and it's been pretty close to exactly a year,

the association has been working on some of the basic building blocks of democracy and creating a governing body for a payment network. And so we've been doing everything like actually forming the association officially and then creating a technical steering committee and creating a board and hiring, you know, a managing director and a CEO and putting together the different groups that you need to do to be able to actually build this thing and govern it. And that part's been super impressive and really impressive to be on the inside on. I don't think people realize then. So it was more when it was announced and even discussed and became international news, it was still just kind of an idea. It was definitely, I would say,

it was still an idea. The association had not been formed yet when it was announced, which is why a lot of companies that have been involved have evolved their thinking on when they should get involved and how they should get involved and how they should get involved. And that progression felt incredibly normal to me. And then more recently, the Libra Association put out its second white paper, the white paper 2.0. I believe that was in the middle of March or maybe middle of April.

Honestly, time is a flat circle right now. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous yeah it's ridiculous yeah and that that highlighted a lot of this sort of progression in the thinking of the libra association and libra network and highlighted this will be in my in my house i actually didn't nobody's gonna hear it but i saw that fly by your face on the screen. What was I going to say? Oh, yeah, that white paper highlighted some of the work that the Libra Association has been doing with regulators around the world and sort of some of the changes that we wanted to make to the Libra network to reflect the conversations we've been having with regulators and sort of the back and forth. And so the project is moving along, which is great.

I'm super excited to say that it's moving along really, really well. The technology is phenomenal. As someone who's heavily involved in the tech side, as a member of the technical steering committee, it's super, super cool to see that technology move forward, because I think it's actually very helpful for the blockchain and crypto space as a whole. Do you fear as a part of the project that, well, I mean, obviously, we've already seen the resistance, but that, you know, the governments will see it as a threat to their own currency. Obviously, there's been the theory that, you know, it could replace the dollar as the world's, you know, global currency. I don't necessarily see that happening. And then we also know, obviously, that they're testing a digital euro, digital currency in China. So it seems like,

you know, at least the perception is this company, which you've explained, it's not really the case, it's hundreds of companies, but you know, has come and said, we're going to replace all of your money, you know, and make a more powerful and global form of money than any individual company has. That's a huge threat to the United States, certainly. Yeah, I think. So when it's described or defined like that, I think that that could be true. Like there's a hyperbole in that. I think that, you know, the dollar is probably the best brand in the world. And the only true safe haven asset, and that's not changing, but yeah, I'm not even talking about currency brands. I'm just talking about period, period.

Like the best brand in the world is probably the dollar. And so to displace that brand would be incredibly, incredibly, incredibly difficult. I think more likely what we see is complementary systems that help move things like cross-border payments and remittances be smoother and easier and faster, including things like the dollar in it. And so the white paper 2.0 included multiple currencies within the Libra network. So things like Libra USD, Libra EUR, and sort of embracing the idea that the dollar isn't going anywhere

and that Libra wants to be complementary to it and not looking to replace it and threaten the United States or threaten the Eurozone. And I think that's been a good change for the Libra project as a whole. I also think it makes it way, way more likely that it will be successful. Of course. Because people understand what a dollar is, you know, people understand what a euro is. And so, you know, getting back to like almost the first thing we talked about in this conversation, like one of the hardest things that we all have as people in crypto and blockchain is education and helping people understand.

And so if we take steps to make it easier for people to understand what the hell is going on, they're more likely to use it, more likely to adopt it. So do I actually believe that it's like a threat to the United States and a threat to like sovereign nations? I don't. I think it's going to be a really great compliment, help move things faster and easier and make it easier to move money around. Yeah, I agree that it's obviously hyperbole. I just, you hear it. You know, that's the knee-jerk reaction,

I think, certainly from people in the space. So that said, I think that's pretty clear on how it affects national currencies in general. What do you think Libra's effect would be on Bitcoin itself? Fantastic. Amazing. Are you kidding? So, okay, just getting back to like the other like you can say

you can replace anything with the dollar and that would be a threat in the united states like if i just said like hey let's use seashells again you know and and use seashells as a currency like that would be a threat to the united states but you actually have to be able to do that and i'm trying to pay that the dollar is a really strong brand it's hard to do um i think the libra is fantastic it would be fantastic for the entire crypto space including bitcoin i think that it creates additional on and off ramps uh better understanding better education around the value of bitcoin the value of crypto as a whole i think they will complement each other i don't think it's competitive in the way that it's being described

similar and you know i know there's lots of people that are completely obsessed with Bitcoin and think it's the only thing that should exist. And there's people that feel the same way about Ethereum and other networks. You sort of have these really great, passionate communities. And I think those are great, but I'm personally not one of those people.

I actually think that they all need to interplay and some will be successful and some will not. I'm not saying that all protocols will exist forever. But I think that if we live in a world where only Bitcoin exists 10 years from now, then the crypto and blockchain space will have probably failed. I agree. Yeah. And so there needs to be more, there needs to be more protocols. They need to continue to grow. And this is more about how do we continue to grow the entire ecosystem as opposed to like, is Libra taking market share from Bitcoin? I don't view it that way. I view it as Libra's existence helps bolster Bitcoin and vice versa. I mean, even at the most basic level of a billion people opening a digital wallet and

understanding what that is and transacting with it should open the door to the entire crypto space. If you eliminated everything else you said, that one simple thing, as you said, the education and awareness and getting past the sort of tech backend and complications that people see with it and aren't interested, which is interesting. And you said something about this before, and it was something that I wanted to ask you about. Do you think that there ever will be a point when retail and institutions worry less about how the blockchain itself works and more about just accepting and using it. For example, nobody asks how email works. Nobody asks how a credit card works. Nobody asks how a cell phone works. They just use it, right? We don't worry

about the inner workings of the internet. We just go on the internet and they've made it incredibly simple to do that for any person. So when do we get to that point with blockchain and all of these things that are being built on it? Yeah. Okay. So to save myself from making a prediction about when this actually happens. We love predictions. We'll hold you to it. I'm going to mark this down. Okay. For sure. We get to that point. That is how, that's how mass adoption happens. Right. I actually, I remember at some point and you know, this isn't the answer, but at one point someone that I knew asked me, you know, I was, it was funny. We were actually standing in a coffee shop. I can't remember exactly where we were sending. I remember this

distinctly. We were in a coffee shop. We had just ordered coffee. And my friend was asking me like, how does, but I don't understand, like, how do I pay for something with a Bitcoin? Like I can't pay for something with Bitcoin. And I like literally leaned in to pay for the coffee and like tapped my credit card on the, you know, the receptacle. And I was like, well, do you know how that thing works? And they were like, no. And I was like, so you don't need to know.

Right. Like it doesn't, it's like leave that part to like the technical folks that are building the, the, the layers of, of the infrastructure stack to understand those pieces. And eventually you end up with a credit card that you can tap on a thing and it's a secure network. And we are there with that. I mean, there are plenty now of very interesting debit cards and credit cards, you know, that's happening. Yeah. So there's companies that are interweaving existing systems that we already know, trying to bridge that gap. So, you know, you could have

like an account with a challenger bank that holds fiat in it, but you also have a Bitcoin balance and they're using the Visa network, but they're, you know, they're probably not actually using Bitcoin to make that payment. They're using cash, but on the backend swapping for Bitcoin. Same to you, right? You don't matter. Sorry, not you don't matter. It doesn't matter to you. You don't know the difference. And I think we're going to continue to see companies build those abstraction layers over time. And so to answer your question more pointedly, like, when does that actually happen? Well, it's already happening. It's just a matter of how broad that's happening, how much trust folks have in the crypto assets themselves, what kind of utility you're getting

out of the crypto assets. You know, I think that the undeniable fact about the blockchain and crypto space, regardless of adoption or success is the pace of innovation. We've seen experiments in things like decentralized finance at a pace that like has taken hundreds of years in centralized finance, like lending platforms, you know, just, just the sheer concept of there being a billion dollars locked up in decentralized finance lending platforms, which is actually old news. Right. Is insane to me. It means that like, you know, we went from, this didn't exist two years ago. Right. You know, like this didn't exist two years ago to like, now there's a billion dollars that people have locked up saying like, yeah, I want to create loans and earn interest on this in this new asset class.

Like that's the pace at which that's happening. It's just, it's speeding up. That's the thing. It's not, it's not slowing down. It's not staying stagnant and speeding up. And so I don't know when we end up in a perfect world where like no one knows that. The blockchain is running everything. I don't know when that happens, but what I do know is that I, the,

the pace of innovation in this space is just, it's so it's even on the inside, it's impossible to keep up with everything. It's super hard. So you touched earlier on, I guess, the beginnings of your story and how you got here, but I would love to hear the story of how you started and sold a company to Etsy and then how, I guess, uh, you know, in concert with that, whether you were already interested in blockchain, how you actually got interested in crypto and blockchain, I guess what your Bitcoin story is and sort of just your timeline to getting here. Yeah. Um, absolutely. So, um, so, so like I said, I've been, I've been a entrepreneur for pretty much my whole career, uh, which I'm very grateful for. Uh, I've been an entrepreneur for pretty much my whole career, which I'm

very grateful for. I've had a couple of successes from an entrepreneurship perspective, but learned a lot of really hard lessons along the way, really valuable lessons along the way. My co-founder and I like to joke that we've built three companies, but failed at 25 other ones. Right. Just honestly, probably not a hyperbolic characterization. There was probably 25 companies we didn't actually build into companies that there were ideas or projects

that never actually happened. Right. And, you know, my Bitcoin story is kind of nerdy. The truth is, it's like, it's actually, it sort of fits. It makes a lot of sense. I think a Bitcoin story is inherently nerdy. It sort of makes a lot of sense. My co-founder and I were working on this other company back in 2011 or 2012. And my first interaction with Bitcoin, and there's been a few since, and I can kind of like milestone them out because they're not all long stories. But the first interaction I had with Bitcoin was there was this engineer that was working with us

on this company. And he had left the company. And a few months later, we had found these really long running processes on these computers, these servers that we had, because we had our own servers. This was before even people had made a huge jump to like AWS. It was the beginning, like it wasn't pre-AWS, but not every company was AWS yet. And we were thinking about it and we were looking at our computers and it turns out that he had been running Bitcoin miners on these computers even like well after he had left the company. We always have a good laugh about it. We're like,

I wonder if he's like sitting on a beach somewhere. I mean, he has to be 2011, man. Yeah. Or he just as likely, it doesn't have the keys and lost them. Believe it all.

That's the real story of most people. Right. So familiar with it in a very interesting way. So then how did it evolve most people. Right. So, okay. So you became familiar with it in a very interesting way. So then how did it evolve from there? Yeah. So, so, um, so we kind of, at that point got really interested in what, you know, I was like, what is this Bitcoin thing? Got involved on the technology side, you know, obviously read the white paper, started looking into what was happening, but truthfully wasn't like, this is the future of finance. This is going to change everything. It was like, this is weird. It's cool. Like weird programmable money. Like who the hell knows, you know, it also wasn't the

first time I had ever heard of, you know, quote unquote internet money, you know, like we're some folks that were trying different ways. It was, you know, if you, if you had ever long ago, yeah. If you ever, ever really like kind of looked at like the underbelly of the internet, you always, you knew these things existed, whether it was like on poker websites or on like, you know, Craigslist type like marketplaces, they were around for a while. So it wasn't like a shocker to me. I was like, this is cool. Um, and then a few years later, uh, we've started, I was working on this company called grand street, which was an online marketplace for creative technology, new hardware devices. Uh, and, uh, we had, we had worked with this company that was doing

trying to do Bitcoin payments. This was like kind of our next worry. And we were actually integrated Bitcoin into our marketplace. So folks could buy and sell using Bitcoin, which was pretty cool. At the time, there was still a decent amount of fraud and it was kind of a headache to deal with. So we ultimately ended up like removing it. This was, you know, around 2013. So kind of got kind of, kind of got involved there. But at that, at that stage, that's when I was like, this is incredibly cool. This is like, this is at that point, I was like, this is going to be the future and started doing all the nerdy stuff that nerds do when they like think something is a future, which is like, we're spending way

more time than they should be reading about it, talking to people about it, uh, evangelizing it, and then doing stuff like dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin. Straight down the rabbit hole. Exactly. Like headfirst, like get me into the rabbit hole. And yeah, and then definitely have my doubts. I definitely would not characterize myself as like a true believer forever. You know, I have to be honest, like I sold Bitcoin at amounts that were lower than I would like to, than I'm proud of. You know, because I was like, I don't know why do I even have this thing?

You know, it's like, it's stupid. I don't think it's going to ever take off or it's ever worth it. And again, so, you know, a few years later we,

we were, we'd sold the company, we'd sold our company to Etsy. I joined the leadership team at Etsy and Aaron, my co-founder and I were, were working there. And we started talking to some really new, some interesting folks who are building new products and services in the blockchain and crypto space. And we do a lot of angel investing.

And so we had done some angel investing in different protocols, different products, different services. And that's why I say like kind of got involved as an investor before a builder, because the truth is like, I was mostly investing in protocols and in assets in the space before i was like i'm jumping in when uh decided that i was when we decided we were going to leave etsy and we're going to build something new we could not get away from this this idea that blockchains and crypto networks and transfer value networks were going to be the future that computers needed to be able to talk to each other and transfer value seamlessly without any human intervention. Smart contracts were just kind of coming up in the sense of like Ethereum was just sort of out and it was all the rage and we're like, this is it.

We're doing this. And I feel very, very fortunate to be able to take a step back and say, okay, what do I want to work on for the next 20 years? What do I think is going to affect the most change? And what do I care about? And that's how I ended up building Bison Trails and kind of mentioned a little bit earlier that, you know, Bison Trails in its current iteration was actually a very organic evolution of a few different ideas that came together with some good timing around a shift in the market.

I like the name. It sounds like an organic, uh, bison jerky. Where did you come up with the name Bison Trails? Yeah. So the name, uh, the name is actually a hat tip to one of the first projects we did in the space was in one of our experiences in learning. So we're very much like entrepreneur founders. We don't know how to learn by reading. We like read and then we do. And one of the first things we did, we were like looking at infrastructure. We're like, how does the infrastructure work? Oh, it's mining. Let's build a mine. And so we actually built a mine, which ended up being pretty big for two people, but small by bitmain standards, so to speak. But we built a mine and

in building a mine, you realize there's three things you need, really inexpensive hardware, really inexpensive power, and then kind of somewhere that where the climate is temperate and out of the way, and you're sort of out of the way. So we'd actually spent a while, about nine months traveling around the middle of the country, sort of going from the East coast towards the West coast and ultimately found a spot in the Pacific Northwest, which was fantastic and great. But we were spent a lot of time in things like in places like Utah and Wyoming and, and Washington state and Oregon state.

And so the name is actually a hat tip to, to that. So bison are these really cool animals. They paved these trails going West and helped early pioneers settle and, and during, during the gold rush. And so we were like, why don't, you know, why don't we sort of create a name that is a, you know, reflection of this idea that we're like helping pave the path forward for pioneers of the future. That's where the name came from. I just remember playing Oregon trail and always dying in my covered wagon.

Reminds me of that for some reason. So of all these projects you're working on all the protocols it's I had a talk on here with a gentleman named Ed Felton, who is the deputy CTO of the United States and is working actively in the space. And he kind of interestingly said that Ethereum was very clunky and very slow at this point. It was like building all these billion-dollar things on like a hundred dollar computer that was, you know, somewhere. So we know that Ethereum obviously has 2.0 coming, but what, what protocols and what blockchains are you the most excited about? And do you think that might, you know, win this battle? Cause as you've touched on, there's no way they all survive,

right? I mean, these are, these are small businesses that are competing for the same, you know, same purpose. Yeah. So, um so I think that that's true. I don't want to unfairly characterize Ethereum as too clunky. There are things that Ethereum did incredibly, incredibly well in that it kind of kept things simple, which is good. But in realizing that, you know, in trying to scale some of the products and services built on top of Ethereum and smart contracts, folks have realized that there's some improvements that could have been made to that protocol itself. And so I don't, you know, we as a company, we're a protocol agnostic company in a sense that we don't, we don't necessarily, I don't think we necessarily believe like this one is better than that one. Right.

Like what we're seeing is an explosion of innovation across a few different facets. So things like scalability, things like transaction speed, things like security. There are different protocol teams that are focused on different pieces. You have like a protocol like Near, for instance, which Bicetrail's just announced we're supporting their mainnet launch and helping them deploy and orchestrate that network which we're really excited about people have characterized as like an ethereum killer right incredible incredible technical team but characterize everything as an ethereum killer right i think there's a world where they coexist i think there's a world where similar to how i don't believe that ethereum is going to kill Bitcoin, they're solving different types of problems.

And if you wanted something that needed sharding, for instance, which is a form of, again, not to get too technical, but it's a form of splitting up the network into different pieces so that it can transact faster. If you wanted to do something that enabled that kind of quicker transacting, you would probably build it on something like Near. And if you were wanting to potentially do something that was a little bit more simple, you might do it on Ethereum. And then there'll be products and services that help bridge those things together. Now, where I do think there's competition, and not to be too political about this, because I'm basically saying I think there's a room for all of them, but maybe to be a little bit more pointed in this, I do think that there's a few folks that are trying to solve the same problem in different ways. So there's room for all of them, but maybe to be a little bit more pointed in this. I do think that there's a few folks that are trying to solve the same problem in different ways.

So there's two or three protocols that are trying to solve sharding or two or three protocols that are ignoring sharding and working on using much higher power computers and focus on transaction speeds. And I think they will compete probably for utility and for market share. And honestly, it's a hard battle, right? You're battling for the hearts and minds of these communities and developers are fickle and they want to use the best and the fastest thing and those things evolve. And so, you know, the communities have to evolve with them. All that being said, things like HTTP or SMTP,

which are powering the internet today and email, those still exist. HTTP was invented a long time ago. Yeah. So there's some really great ones coming out. And so what is the blockchain alliance? I know that you're a part of it and I think that people are probably generally unaware of it and it's important. I know that's a total pivot, but

it's something that I know that you're passionate about. Yeah. So, well, there's the Proof of Stake Alliance, which is essentially a trade group that was formed by a few different major companies in the space, so Bison Trails and Coinbase and a few other sort of major players in space, came together to basically help shape how the blockchains in general, proof-of-stake blockchains and proof-of-stake in general, is treated by different government agencies and regulators.

So one of the things about being in an ecosystem where the technology is advancing at a pace that's, you know, almost hard to keep up with, even when you're in it, is trying to stay on top of it when you're not in it. And you're sort of just trying to pay attention as a regulator or as someone who's running, you know, the tax department or someone who's running, you know, the SEC. And so the group is focused on helping engaging with the different government agencies and helping regulators understand what's going on, why it's going on that way, why it's important, what are areas that we want to work together, and how they should be treating different protocols, different assets, different type of activity, all in this idea of being open, transparent,

and promoting education. And so I've said it probably a couple times now, like, one of the things I think is most important is that we educate everyone on the space. And that includes the governments or the jurisdictions that we live in and work in. So are you actually enacting policy or helping enact policy? Are you guys more consultants? So that I mean, literally, just so they can even understand the underlying topics. I mean, anytime something crypto related or blockchain related comes in front of the Senate or Congress, it's like a literal circus. I mean, it's old guys who have no understanding of any of it who throw out this, just like these complete ridiculous ideas. And it's just clear there's

very little understanding in government, at least at the top levels of any of this so i is you know you guys are you guys basically just like they're kindergarten teachers for for blockchain we're we're like trying our best to make the information and the ideas accessible because on in all fairness okay so i i agree i agree with you that it's really is like there's a lot of information that's lost and a lot of the details are lost. But quite frankly, like, even as a very technical person getting involved in the blockchain space, I was lost the first six months. And when anybody asked me, like, how do you get involved? Like, honestly, the best thing you could do right now is just go read,

spend the next three months reading, you know, like, ask a lot of questions, ask questions that you think sound dumb, but trust me, they're not dumb because somebody at some point had to ask that question. And there's, you know, there's a whole bunch of, of, you know, at the end of the day, it's like, there's a lot of academics and PhDs that are, you know, we're basically building applied computer science, you know? So it's like really pushing the forefront. So in the defense of like the, the, the, you know, government agencies, like it's a hard thing to understand. Yeah. Yes. But to your point, a hundred percent, like we're basically trying to like simplify things and say like, okay, this is how this works. This is why this works this way. This is why we want this innovation to stay in the United States because some of the

best minds are working on it. And we're really excited about these things. You know, there's, there's a lot that we're, we're doing to help educate folks. That makes sense. So what can we look forward to in the future from you and from Bison Trails? Obviously, we understand what you're doing now, but what's the, I guess, the grand vision if this all comes to fruition and goes as planned? Yeah. So, I mean, for us, it's really about helping grow the ecosystem, helping,

you know, democratize access to these new protocols, these new blockchains and, you know, helping, um, hasten the pace of innovation. So bringing it, making it easier for new people to come in and build products and services. So when you're using, when you're eventually using that app and it has, you know, Libra LUSD or Libra USD built into it, or it has, you know, some kind of lending element built into it, or you're just simply, you know, tapping to pay for your coffee. We want to, we want Bison Trails to be a key part of that infrastructure layer so that we're helping power and secure those networks. I mean, that's, that's what's in store for us. So it's really just about continuing to grow the ecosystem. Well, hopefully when I go to buy a cup of coffee with

Bitcoin, I won't get taxed like seven times for the transactions as they have it structured. And you guys can, as a part of the blockchain alliance, can go help enact some new policy on the tax regulations. Every time someone says like, buy a cup of coffee with Bitcoin, I laugh because that ironically would have been more realistic in like 2016 or 2017 before they even paid attention. Now it's like, I mean, if I buy coffee, I've sold Bitcoin. I need to record that. So I don't even know if there's a question in here. It just jumps out at me every time someone says it. I mean, I guess, how do we get to a point where we can use it without any of this interference? You know, it's very, yeah, no, it's the, you're, you're a hundred percent right. And that comes, we're in this,

like, uh, we're in this like gawky teenager stage, you know, preteen where it's like, it's not an infant anymore, but it's definitely not a mature adult. And so it's like kind of got big hands and like big ears, but like, we haven't figured out like what it is yet. And, and, um, you know, it's, it's, it's, they're funny, they're, they're funny waters to navigate. Yeah. Makes sense. So, uh, where can people follow you after this? Keep up with what you're doing personally and what the company is doing? Yeah. Um, so you can find the company at, uh, bison trails.co. Um, you can shoot us an email high advice and trails.co. If you ever want to know more about what we're doing or products or services, you can obviously check us out on the

internet as well as on Twitter. It's at bison trails and I'm at Joe Laloose. Good luck with everyone spelling that. Don't worry. It'll be written in the description. So, well, man, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I think that that clarified probably a lot of complicated concepts for people. And hopefully, you know, with time, what you're doing will become interesting, not only to the big guys, but to the little guys as well. And that some guy like me at home will be able to also push a button and run a node without that complicated process and understanding. Yeah, we're, you know, we're getting there now. So we'd love that. And

honestly, thanks so much for having me on the show, Scott. It's really, really great to be here. Of course. My pleasure. I'm sure we'll speak soon. Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening. New episodes go live every Tuesday at 7am Eastern Standard Time. Links to our Apple and Spotify channels are in the show notes. You can also follow me on Twitter, at Scott Melker, to continue the conversation. See you next week.