The Wolf Of All Streets - Making Sense of Social Data with Joe Vezzani, CEO of LunarCRUSH
Episode Date: September 24, 2020Joe Vezzani is the CEO of LunarCRUSH, a social listening solution that compiles massive amounts of fundamental data from communities across a number of platforms. Raised in a finance family, Joe was p...oised to work on Wall Street, but the ‘08 crash sent him down an entirely different path into advertising and media. Upon finding Bitcoin early and mixing his new skills with his old passion, Joe and his team developed one of the most useful and innovative products in the crypto space. Scott Melker and Joe Vezzani further discuss growing up as a finance kid, looking for a job in the ‘08 crash, the rise and fall of Lehman Brothers, a lack of fundamentals in the crypto world, developing a platform that understands “Dogecoin is mooning,” millennial farm animals, the Wall Street Suits, the nightmare of taxing Bitcoin, Galaxy scores, Alt Ranks and more. --- 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. --- ELECTRONEUM Electroneum, has gained widespread adoption providing a mobile-first payment solution to the world's unbanked, attracting more than 4M users worldwide in less than three years. They have since launched a new freelance marketplace, AnyTask.com, which is providing thousands of freelancers the opportunity to sell their services to buyers globally, without the need of a bank account. Learn more at Electroneum.com. --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe.This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io
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I'd like to thank my sponsors, Voyager, Choice by Kingdom Trust, and Electroneum for making
this episode possible. Stay tuned for more info on them later.
What is up, everybody? This is Scott Melker, your host for the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast,
where twice a week I talk to your favorite personalities in the worlds of finance,
Bitcoin, crypto, art, music, politics, sports, basically anyone with an interesting story to
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all my trades, charts, analysis, market thoughts, and lessons on improving your trading and investing.
You can check all that out at thewealthofallstreets.io.
So today's guest is a friend of mine who's founded one of the most useful and interesting companies in the crypto space. Joe Vizzani, the CEO of Lunar Crush, noticed that participants
and observers in the crypto space lacked traditional sources to gauge social sentiment
in the market. Now with his solution, traders, investors, and developers can better understand
the complexities of the crypto space and how social sentiment plays into that. So really, really excited to talk to Joe today.
What's up, man? How are you? Thank you for being here.
I'm doing well. Doing well. Thank you so much for having me. That was a great intro. I should,
I should, I gotta write that one down.
Hooray. You know, every time I say your name, since I spent like 10 years in Philly,
I want to do the Rocky boy, Adrian, like Joe Vizzani, you know,
it has that feeling to it. You don't look that way, you know, but it has that feel.
It's a funny, it's actually a pretty funny story. So my grandfather is Gino Vizzani. My dad is
Gino Vizzani Jr. And they literally had, my parents had an opportunity to call me Gino Vizzani the third from Chicago.
I was from Chicago and they passed on that.
Cause my mom was blonde hair, light skin. She's like,
this is going to be a blonde haired kid. We can't call him Gino Vizzani.
I like that. I mean, that would have been missed out a little bit.
You would have had like serious street cred walking into any room or situation,
I think. And the best cheese,
Pat's and Gino's
are like the two famous cheesesteak places in Philly. So that even like lens, you know,
lends a little more credibility there to what I was saying about the, the Rocky voice.
He actually runs through the Italian market right past him. And every time he's training
in the movie and runs up the steps. Awesome. Anyways, I digress. So, um, what's up, man?
I would love to hear, you know, uh background, how this all got started and how you ended up in this space.
For sure. You know, I can kind of start where I found crypto. My co-founder, John Fargo, and I, we had worked together for about for a year or so.
I think it was like 2015 when he brought it up to me and he's like hey man you know like you know what bitcoin is
and i was like no he's like you got to check it out you got to check it out and um you know coming
from a world of finance and technology i was like this is where the intersection of these two
spaces are and like i need to be on board and so we we just started kind of going back and forth
on everything and just learning about more and And then things like Ethereum started coming up and, you know,
I remember back to buying, you know,
hamburgers at lunchtime with Ethereum and sending it to my friend, you know,
if it was $5 and, you know, God knows how much I made him.
He's an expensive hamburger, dude.
He took me to a bunch of USD games. So it's all good. It's all even now.
But yeah, it was just, you know,
coming out of school, I came out of school in 2008. And it was, you know, it was an interesting
time back then too, especially in the financial world. I have a finance and economics degree.
And, you know, I wanted to go work for Lehman Brothers. You know, I had some friends that
had worked there and they were trying to help me get a job there. And, um, you know,
it was like, I was probably like a month away from moving to New York. And I remember never forget,
you know, Lehman brothers saying, they're like, Hey, we're sorry. We're not taking a class in
this year that, you know, that we're not taking the next kind of grad class in. Um, and then about
like a couple of months later, you know, they don't exist anymore. Right. And I was like, Holy
shit. How, how do we get to a point in society where this hundred year old bank where
it's like the most nostalgic, I mean,
there's like Lehman brothers hospital and it's just ingrained into like the
society there and everywhere.
So institution in the United States.
Yes. Yes. Embarrassed turns too. And so, you know,
I know the story about how, you know, Goldman made it through that and AIG. And no, we don't have to go into all that, all that crap, but you know, I know the story about how, you know, Goldman made it through that and AIG and, you know, we don't have to go into all that, all that crap.
But, you know, came out of school and I was like, what do I do?
Where do I, where do I go next?
Right.
And so being from Chicago, I went down to the University of Chicago and, you know, there was a job fair there.
And, you know, I, I'm like, I thought I was going to do like proprietary trading, like prop trading.
Like I was going to trade like corn and like just got Chicago Board of Trade.
I was like, this is what some of my friends' parents did when I was younger.
I wanted to follow that path a little bit.
And, you know, it's kind of a funny story.
But, you know, I'll never forget.
I see this really long line for people waiting for this one company.
And the line kind of just so happened to be a bunch of really pretty girls.
And I'm 22. And I was kind of like, happened to be a bunch of really pretty girls. And I'm being, I'm 22.
And I was kind of like, what's that company?
And someone's like, you know, that's an advertising agency.
And I was like, well, what do they do?
I don't even know what they do.
And they're like, well, they like marketing and stuff.
I was like, I'll go over there.
And I look at the list and they had a financial analyst position open.
And I was like, oh, I could do that.
And so I applied for it. And, you know, I think the could do that. Um, and so I applied for it.
And, you know, I think the, the starting salary, uh, you know, at Lehman or something was going
to be like close to a hundred grand a year and the starting salary for sure. Yeah. And the starting
salary for this was like 36 or something. And you know, I, my dad worked in the mortgage business
and, um, I called him, I was like, dad, I got this job. Like, should I really, it's 35. Like,
what should I really do it? And he, you know, working in the, I was like, dad, I got this job. Like, should I really, it's 35. Like what,
should I really do it? And he, you know, working in the mortgage business was like, I think
Washington mutual or something. I'd just gone out of business, which is that was at the time,
kind of like the rocket mortgage, the largest, like loan originator in the country. And, uh,
he's like, they just want a business. He's like, take anything. He's like, literally he's like,
get a job now. Um, and so I actually ended up finding the world of advertising
and basically worked in the proverbial mailroom. I worked on the general ledger of the accounting
side and learned a completely different business. And the company was called at the time Draft FCB.
It was Footcone and Belding. It was a kind of a historical ad agency. And I'll never forget,
I think it was like the first year or so I worked there, they won the Miller Coors account when Miller and Coors merged.
And they literally had the Backstreet Boys come play in the office.
That world, man.
In the office. And I was just thinking to myself, like, you know, it was probably six months into
working there where my boss was like, hey, you don't need to wear a tie anymore. Like you can
just kind of wear it's a little bit. I wearing like a tie like a suit into like an advertising
so i did that for for many years and learned about a completely different business than you
know i was in and it kind of just my curiosity just kind of brought me through that business and
you know i ended up moving out to southern cal to Southern California from Chicago to work on some cool accounts like Taco Bell and Smokey the Bear and
these cool things and started trying to maybe produce a little bit of radio and kind of do
like broadcast business affairs and things like that. And eventually you find out in advertising
that, you know, it doesn't, doesn't pay as well as a young, as a young, you know, fella in that
industry. And so I went and actually ended up going into sales and worked for a big company called
Owens Corning.
And at 25, I was running California, Nevada, and Hawaii and had an expense account and
a car.
And it was like the most epic experience to be just traveling around and learning channel
management and pricing strategy and manufacturing, which is something that I didn't know.
Right.
And, you know, founded another company that was called Lifeline Response.
And I was a kind of a junior co-founder there and ended up going through a Techstars accelerator
with that company back in 2014.
And that's where I kind of learned.
I was always, I was kind of a gamer and always knew technology but I was really learning technology at that point and learning what user experience was and
learning other stuff and um so that's kind of like my I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur
and be in startups and that was my first kind of like dip my toes into that which was pretty epic
and so learn that and you know that that went for a couple of years company's still around I kind of learned a lesson there about like founder conflict and everything else, which was an interesting thing.
It's why most companies fail.
But, you know, unbelievable experience there.
And then actually went back into advertising, but this time kind of with a new shell.
You know, I learned a lot more than I, you know, I had kind of, I think jumped past a lot
of people with four or five years of startup experience. You realize like, well, you really
learn a lot when you try to start your own thing and, um, ended up working in advertising again
for a couple of years and, you know, did everything from building a mobile apps for Hyundai to writing
strategy for Superbowl commercials and all sorts of crazy stuff. And then I found Bitcoin and it was like, this is where I need to be. So long-winded response for you there.
Yeah, that's great. I had a lot of similarities actually in my background.
I, with my own college degree and like I graduated in 99, but in 2004, I went and worked in the mail
room of a commercial editing agency. So they, agency. So the ad agencies were their clients
and they were editing literally
like the Super Bowl commercials and stuff.
And it was the same thing
because they were basically to win accounts
meant who could entertain the people the best
when they were in the office.
So I was sitting in this little mail place
delivering packages and stuff
because I was just desperate and needed money.
But everyone's playing ping pong and drinking
and it's open bar and open everything.
Everyone's playing video games, all the guys editing and hiring talent to come in and kind
of same thing.
I was really mind blown by that industry in general, how much money they spend to woo
business and to keep it because people basically just choose who they like to work with the
best since everybody's pretty much competent, I think.
So we got to your, your Bitcoin story. So talk about, uh, obviously you discovered Bitcoin,
you believed in it, but why Lunar Crush? Yeah. And so John and I would, would kind of just every day, like, you know, we call each other on the ride home and we would just kind of start
shoot the shit a little bit about, you know, what's missing from this industry. How do we
get involved? And, you know, we were, you know, we were kind of start shoot the shit a little bit about, you know, what's missing from this industry. How do we get involved?
And, you know, we were, you know, we were kind of those people, once we started to figure
stuff out and talk to people about it, you know, we were the friends in the text thread
that everyone was like, you know, Hey, what do I buy?
What, you know, what's Tron, you know, just like all this crazy stuff.
And so we thought to ourself, we're like, what do we do?
How do you know?
And it was partially, people were like, Oh, you can consult on this stuff and help people. And I was like, that's not really,
you know, in order to be an expert in something, you have to build in that industry. You have to
really understand how to build something and what the market looks like. And that's how you become
an expert. And so we wanted to be experts. And so we thought about the ways that we learned about
different projects. It was really, you know, you're going out to Twitter
and you're looking for things and because that's where the social discourse is happening. And then
you're looking on places like Reddit and you're trying to find different news articles and they're
all outdated and you can't really track the conversation in real time. And so we said to
ourselves, like, how do we create transparency to a point where, you know, you're going to know as an individual
at a glance, you know, if something like you're in finance is, does have a community, right?
And then the community is really what denotes value in our space, right?
There are no, and we, you know, we talked about at the beginning of when we started
kind of creating the language in this space of, you know, there's no earnings reports,
you know, there's no earnings calls.
Like how do you know whether or not something has value or not?
And it was really, does it have a community?
And it's almost the same thing as the number of wallets type,
type idea behind, you know, are people talking about it?
Are people contributing? Are they excited?
And then not only are they excited in real time,
but are they excited and have they been excited over a longer period of time?
So, you know, we talk about projects like a Chainlink or a Tezos that have been around for a while that have kind of a groundswell, if you will, of people that are surrounding the project.
And so we thought about that.
We're like, you know, this has to be like that's where we kind of saw at the beginning of what we knew that it can turn into. And so it was really, can we get this data, right? Can we get the Twitter feed? Can we get
Reddit APIs? Can we get news like all in one place? And it was, that's like the easiest part
of the business. The hardest part of the business is organizing and cleaning that data. And so it's
like that, that to us, we have a lot of people that come to us
and they're like, oh, well, you know,
this hedge fund or someone else is doing this.
They just grab all this data.
And I was like, yeah, well, what are you doing with it?
Right, like there's a lot that you need to do
in order to make it usable and make it simple
and have the experience on your product
be at a place where people could just drop on
there and be like, oh, I know what this is. Holy crap. Like this coin came out like two weeks ago
and it's gone like this and there's community has gone like this. Now the community's dropped off.
Well, what do you think the price is going to do? And so it's educating the space and something
that's a little bit different that maybe they're not, they're not used to. And so we went and just
started building it, coming up with it,
brought a little bit of a team on,
brought some other co-founders in
and, you know, just started building.
And then it was July of 2019
is when we actually went full-time at it.
We did, we were working kind of moonlighting,
you know, I was going to conferences
while I was at another position
just because it was like,
this is how
you have to build in the space when you know we were kind of in crypto winter and so we were
building during that time and it was like we always knew that we were doing something that
mattered and we were focused and our heads were down because it felt right even though people
would come to us and be like i don't think think Bitcoin was like dead. Like what happened there?
And then you're just looking at them like, what?
Like I think Blockstream is like shooting satellites
into space or something to keep the network going.
So those billionaires are doing that.
Like I think it's probably going to keep going.
Yeah, fair enough.
So how do you quantify the size of a community
based on social data and interaction?
A couple of different ways.
So we look at social volume,
which is just pure,
almost just imagine like unique hits to your website.
Right.
This is just individuals.
Mentions.
Yeah.
If you mention Bitcoin five times that day,
that's going to be five unique mentions of what social volume is. And then we also look at engagement. And so
we're looking at, you know, if you mentioned Bitcoin five times, what, how many likes did
it have? How many retweets did it have? How many upvotes on Reddit? How many times was it mentioned
in a news article? You know, how many YouTube mediums? So we're adding all those
in the kind of morality of a post. And so that's, that's a good way for people to kind of denote,
you know, is there a huge spike in something that's happening? That's like something's
happening right now. You need to be paying attention to it. And then we've started to
kind of add a couple more metrics, like a social contributor. So how many individuals over time?
So if you're talking about
something that's just one time in the day and so it's a little bit different of a metric but it's
it's kind of how like i was saying before you really kind of feel the groundswell of whether
a project's working and then we developed a couple of kind of proprietary metrics um where you know
we're going to have a lot more of these that come out but the first one we call our galaxy score
just because we're all about just lunar lot more of these that come out. But the first one we call our Galaxy Score,
just because we're all about just lunar and moon and crushing and everything else.
Yeah, get the moon, man. Crush the moon. Let's go. Yeah, got to get back to go to the moon. There's only two ways to go.
And so, yeah, Galaxy Score is really looking at a coin's performance against itself.
It's kind of like you racing against yourself over and over and trying to beat your time.
So, like, the Galaxy score is zero to 100. And you know, it tends to be in like a 30 to 80 range roughly. And so when it's 80 or 90, that means that there's a lot of social volume
on that coin compared to its previous social volume, its price performance. So like something
like a moving average, like a MACD is outperforming.
And then it's also looking at market volume
and then correlating all of those things together
to say, are they all moving together?
And that's really what kind of will boost a score up.
So it's not just social data.
I mean, it's social data in confluence
with technical indicators
that people are probably familiar with and use.
Correct. So we try to backtest all the different kind of technical analysis that's out
there and figured out, you know, which ones at least within crypto are working more over time.
And so those are the ones that we kind of slot into the scores. So it helps us identify at least
the momentum side of price, because a lot of people trade off that and it is it does work if
you use it well. But social added into that is really just kind of that extra boost it needed so the galaxy
score almost could be i mean or maybe has been like viewed as an indicator on a chart for sure
yeah i mean we have on lunar crush you can look at that on like a trading view chart over time and
it's it's real time though which is kind of the you know people always like there's a lot of people out there like oh i did
some analysis on this one you know this one coin and we're going to rank them as like an a minus
right it's like well a minus a minus for how long three months right things happen quickly in this
industry you could be an a minus one day and an F plus.
Bickling's probably an A plus four days ago.
Right now I put it in like a D plus, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Really crazy.
So like we always say, you know, in trading,
people joke sort of that, you know, volume precedes price. Like check what the volume is doing.
And then you have a very likelihood as to whether a trend is intact
and what's coming next. It sounds like that's what you is doing. And then you have a very likelihood as to whether a trend is intact and what's coming next.
It sounds like that's what you're doing.
Like that social data and sentiment is somewhat like volume because you can
see this swell and interest in advance of price moving and therefore becomes
an indicator.
Is that like a proper way to sort of view it?
No.
Yeah.
I'd say that would,
that would be a great way to look at it.
And it's, it's also this,
people start chatting first before they're potentially buying. Like, has anyone looked
at this? Or if there's a piece of news that happens, if there's an acute event that happens,
people still need to get in our industry, their coins to the right place, their assets to get
somewhere to buy something. So there's lag there. And that's where some of the larger,
more sophisticated investors
can take advantage of some of that stuff
because they've got assets sitting in the places
that they need to be.
But yes, it's essentially sometimes volume
definitely precedes price.
It's something that we think investors
should always be looking at
if you want to really understand,
you know, potentially what's a longer term investment,
I would say.
So what, like if your average person comes to you,
comes to Lunar Crush basically is like, how do I use this?
How am I going to make money with this? What do I do? How, you know,
if you come to your site for the first time and you want to check it out and
you want to learn how to use it, what's the approach?
So when you log into Lunar Crush crush you're going to see a markets page
almost like you'd see on some of the other standard kind of pricing pages but as you kind of
dig deeper you're going to find you know most likely you're going to find our two metrics first
which is galaxy score like i mentioned and then alt rank and so alt rank could be my favorite
piece of what a lunar crush that i like that's what i stare at all day right
is i rank anything by our alt rank which alt rank is looking at a coin's performance against bitcoin
over time so is it beating bitcoin yes or no does it have a social volume that's increasing
over time and then it doesn't have actual tradable market volume right like is there is there actual
volume for you to push money in and out of this thing and actually trade it versus like trying to buy a specific coin and
literally moving the market with like 25 grand, right? Yeah. And so, yeah, which a lot of people,
and once you do that, you're like, well, I'm never getting this money out. And so you just
hold it forever. But we're, I would say that's where I would start as an, as someone coming out
to Lunar Crush first is just, just look at the market a little bit differently than you normally would with just
price and rank it by alt rank and just kind of see what pops into that top 10. And again,
it's real time, just like galaxy score. So it's changing when we get data, it's not every 30
seconds or minute, whenever we get data that that changes. And so I would say, look at the top 25,
look at the coins that end up in that top 25
over and over and over again. That means good price for Bitcoin, good community, which we said
is really what you need in order to kind of create that groundswell and market volume. So you can
trade it, right? You can invest in it. So how do you quantify whether it's positive or negative
engagement? Because like, I'm sure, you know, this is going to date our conversation but things like
hot dog and yam you know that uh everybody was talking about but because they went to zero
right so how do you make sure that what you're seeing is positive interaction and not just a
swell and people you know freaking out and panicking with anger about a coin? Well, conversation and sentiments
is an interesting one because sometimes when people are even talking negatively
because it is so tribal, it doesn't necessarily mean that that
is a negative. It's going to be something negative.
The way that we look at it today is as we
receive all this data from these feeds and
it's coming in we actually are we're we're analyzing it ourselves first and so we're looking
and training a model a machine learning model on crypto specific data and language so you know when
you're if you're out there you're trading you know jp morgan or duke energy or something you're out there, you're trading, you know, JP Morgan or Duke energy or something, you're not going to go tweet and be like Duke energy just got wrecked.
R E K T. Like you're not going to,
you're not going to get many errors. I might, but right.
You might, but it's like, you know, as a trader,
you're kind of blending into different markets,
which I think all traders do. And so, you know, we've, we've trained,
you know, you couldn't just pick up a regular NLP natural language processing library.
You can't just pick up something that says good, bad, up, down, and try to put that on the crypto market.
It's not going to work.
That's how they talk.
Yeah.
Yeah, we've trained it to say, you know, if Dogecoin is mooning, like that's probably a positive sentiment, right? And so
we've trained this. And so as we've trained that data, now we just unleash it on the, you know,
300,000 today pieces of data that come in every day. And that helps us gauge sentiment a little
bit bullish and bearish. And so that goes into as it gets smarter, because it's like,
machine learning is only as smart as it is today. And then eventually, you know, it's like,
it can't land the plane and then eventually it could land the plane better than
a human can every single time. Of course, you try to hit those thresholds.
How much of this could be automated for a trader? You know,
just set a bot to track it, do your buying and selling and go drink your
pina colada on the beach. Pina colada on the beach.
Yeah. Pina. I on the beach. Yeah.
Pina.
I think, I don't even know if it's pina, pina.
I don't know.
I think with the bots.
I think that's a thing.
Like when I'm like whacking at right now in the market,
trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing.
Cause I can't.
I mean, right now.
Yeah.
No, we can talk about that in a minute but um bots i
think it's an interesting one with bots and it's it's you know it's kind of where people say they
want to get and it's a very it seems like a very clean way to trade and everyone wants to set it
and forget it and walk away and just make money forever into perpetuity but it never happens i
think there's so many different types of traders and investors and
to get people in the crypto industry you know that might be a little bit of the older generation
onboarded it's like i don't know if that's like necessarily the place that we build into first i
guess would be my my thought around that i do think that they're you know we are so right now
in lunar crush if you come on you have to kind of search for stuff
a little bit right you've got to go find go to your you know your chain link page and maybe see
where the engagement is and whatnot so what we're releasing i guess i can just talk about it what
we're releasing here in the next couple of weeks is an alerting tool um and so what we're actually
going to be able to do is across all of our metrics
whether or not you're more advanced or you're a beginner you're going to be able to set custom
alerts for all of the different social metrics right so like i mentioned before with something
like an alt rank you know right now you kind of have to be staring at lunar crush to know hey like
you know chain like again or tezos or something one of the mid-cap alt coin is is staying in that crossing that alt rank position 10 but what if you want to trade goes from 20
to 10 right so now you're going to be able to get alerted when anything moves and where it moves
and so it's kind of a first step into that and so if you can you'll also be able to back test
in real time all of those strategies,
then it's going to be super cheap as well.
We know this is a global industry.
75% of our market is international.
It's not in the U.S.
Almost 80% now, which is crazy to think that the U.S. is just,
we're just so far behind with regulation and everything else.
So it's just crushing us. And so I could see a scenario, see a scenario and we talk about it where if you can
kind of perfect those alerts and you're doing well with those alerts, it's a very simple step to
connect to an exchange of your choosing. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. You touched on
something earlier when you were talking about why you formed the company, which is, I found really
interesting because you kind of, I make the same
sort of joke all the time. Well, it's not like I can see this company's P and L or like their
quarterly earnings report, you know? And so how do I, and then that leads to the kind of meme joke
that there's no fundamentals in the market and we can just trade the charts in crypto because
it's all vaporware or something, you know, which I don't necessarily believe, but it is very hard
to understand the fundamental value. So are you saying really that like, in lieu of having
fundamentals, the real fundamentals here are community and they are social engagement and
they are, you know, the whole Twitterverse as a whole to some degree? Definitely to some degree. I definitely think that you need to be looking
at this data if you want to make more educated decisions on where to invest your time and money
in the cryptocurrency space. So, you know, like you said, in lieu of, there are going to be,
there's sectors of coins now, as we start to learn a little bit more about the space and it matures, there are, I mean, all of these projects, as we call them, are working towards potential revenue,
depending on where they are, there's public blockchains, right? And so depending on what
they are, you know, it just, it really matters more in our space than it would in maybe a
traditional space. And I think the traditional space will probably move into this kind of social public discourse more.
Look at Tesla and Hertz. We are seeing sentiment driven like social media FOMO in
traditional markets. Right. So how do you track that? How do you get out ahead of it? How do you
be alerted when these things happen? And that's kind of where we come in is listening to all things financial that are out there. And then
crypto, just because that's where we are, we're just so passionate about it. And we know that
this space can lead to some pretty amazing products. I mean, we just had, you know,
we just had a really cool project on and I'll give him a shout out. It's called safe Haven.
And, you know, they're working on custody, but for when you, for when you die, you know they're working on custody but for when you for when you die you know what
do you do with your with your coins right and it's like one of the better right one of the better use
cases i think and it's just they you know they hopefully will move towards you know maybe someone
like my father's age he's a baby boomer is getting up there it's like he doesn't really need to know
that it's crypto oriented he just needs to know know that, Hey, I give, you know, my kids these four different keys and when they come
together and it's validated by a third party, it's just released, right. Done and done. It's
a very simple, you know, way to distribute and go through stuff that you couldn't otherwise
work with the, you know, the traditional infrastructure that's out there. And I think
you'll see all sorts of stuff like, you know, like I think real estate is a huge one. Like I keep, and that's just like
DeFi is just, it's just the next phase of cryptocurrency. That's all it is. Like staking
started and like, then it's now it's like, well, what can we do with staking? Holy shit. And now
DeFi comes out of it, but it's just each one of these is a cool product. Like why can't I
instantly get a loan across a market
because my FICO is, you know, seven 60 to eight 20 and I want to sell my house. And then once
I instantly get that, it triggers an inspection and triggers an appraisal. Why do you need middle
men for any of this? Why do you need a loan originator when there's a person who wants money
and there's a person who wants to lend money? Cause I got to press the print and like, look at
your credit.
Like, Scott, how many credit cards do you have?
Oh man, you got a ton of credit left
because you opened 50 cards in 2008
and said you made $5 million.
Killing it.
That's why I spent a month on those credit cards.
It's such a small percentage, right?
Like it's all bullshit.
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Yeah. And people can gamify the system. DeFi is so interesting right now. It's like you said,
but I have my fears for where a lot of it's going. But I think that definitely it is somewhat the
future of finance and we will see real players emerge. I think it's just like any boom the tech boom dot com boom
whatever you're just gonna see like this grand culling of all the nonsense and scams and stuff
but i mean it's crazy to see things go from like a thousand dollars to zero dollars in less than
five minutes yes no we haven't seen this in a long time. Yeah. It's 2017. And like, have you, you know,
backtesting what you do? Can you like confidently say, Hey,
we would have seen this crap coming or we would have seen this amazing pump
coming, you know,
I would imagine the negative part is hard because it's not what you're looking for, but.
Yeah, I think it's, it's going to be a little bit more nuanced for a trader or someone or an
investor. It's really looking internally and saying to yourself, you know, I mean, we get,
I get a request, I get like 10 to 15 requests a day to add new projects to Lunar Crush.
Well now.
So it's like, it's, it's insane how many, I mean, it was probably,
we'll call it six months ago. Maybe it was like one or two a day that we would get. And so it's
like, if you're an investor coming out into the market and you're looking and you can only find
this at a very obscure place and you know, maybe we don't even have social data up on it yet.
And so you're saying, do they even have a community? Do I want to invest
in something where it's like some random thing that might not even come to market for a while?
If you're okay with waiting and there's a test net and everything else, that's fine. But you
probably don't want to invest in something, you know, but people chase. Yeah. So complete lack
of social data actually is a great indicator. Like somebody's selling you a bill of goods and
nobody's talking about it. That might be a pretty, pretty bad sign. So that's actually an interesting sort
of flip side to it. So I know just so people know, like you guys have some pretty big name investors,
right? I mean, you've gotten some investment from some pretty, pretty, pretty impressive people.
Can you talk about that a bit? Sure. Yeah. I mean, we, we bootstrapped the company from the beginning ourselves. I mean,
we were kind of fortunate enough to be working. And, you know, we, we have a little bit older
of a founding team. You know, we're not, you know, all in our, in our lower twenties anymore,
trying to scrape and not sleep anymore. My God, you think you're older.
Older in your 30s.
I'd say we're like our average age.
You are actually right.
It just makes me feel terrible
because I'm 43 years old.
Oh, yeah.
If you ever watched Silicon Valley,
it's always like that one episode
of like the one guy's name is like the carver.
And it's like actually some like 15 year old kid
that just takes a bunch of Adderall.
Like doesn't sleep, crushes through stuff. So that's what you feel is a little bit,
you know, mature in the space. But, um, yeah, we, so we bootstrapped and we just,
we built this thing and we were fortunate enough to do that. And so, um, you know,
we actually ended up going to an accelerator first. Um, so we did a tech stars accelerator
in July of last year, which is,
depending on what your startup and what you're going through, it is a very nice catalyst
to kind of denote a point in time where it's like, hey, it's time to work on this full time. And
I think we took the appropriate steps to kind of line that up and get involved in that. And then
coming out of that, being in the Los Angeles area,
we met a couple of investors that run, it's called Crypto Invest Summit, now the LA Blockchain Summit,
Alon, Gorin, and Joseph Holm. They partnered up with Tim Draper to create Draper Gorin Holm,
which is a blockchain studio. But also, they're amazing investors because they're partners. Like,
there's investors that you bring on that are just like, hey, man, like're amazing investors because they're partners. Like there's,
there's investors that you bring on that are just like, Hey man, like talk to me in five years. I know this takes like five to seven years, like just whatever, just send me the monthly updates.
And then there are people that are like texting you, how can I help? What can I do? You know,
help us out with this post this. And that's the type of investor that, you know, Tim Joseph and
Alana are is they're, they're helping us understand the market. They're helping us get deeper into the market
and just kind of bringing the brand to a place. I think that, you know, in conjunction with all
of our work is, is a really, it's just coming from a cool place. I think in the space where
it used to be a lot of pseudonyms out there. And I think we've talked about this in DMs before a
little bit, like pseudonyms of people and, you know, how do you have to put your face out there. And I think we've talked about this in DMs before a little bit, like pseudonyms of people and, you know, how do you have to put your face out there? Right. You have to, we have to
legitimize the space in a way that, you know, is real or, you know, unfortunately the rest of the
market probably won't think it is. Right. And so I think it's getting better now because it's,
we've, we've legitimized it, but it's like, you have to put your face and name out there. And so
we wanted to do that and they're super supportive with everything we've done. So they've been great.
It's an interesting mix because, you know, it's like the old rich guys in suits, right? And so
you've got the old rich guys in suits, but then the young guys who get it. And I've always argued
that, you know, I mean, the community might say like short the banks and F Wall Street and all
those things. But the reality is, is we need guys in suits to show up to Senate hearings and, and, uh,
get the Wall Street money.
And it's largely not going to be millennials, uh, with, you know, as you said, sort of like
millennials with, uh, farm animals as their avatars are not the ones who are going to
push it forward in that market.
You know what I mean?
So I think that, uh, it's, it's a nice mix to have those guys who really
believe in it, you know, that are putting their money where their mouth is, I guess. I mean,
Draper has been a pretty amazing proponent for the crypto space.
Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, it's like in our space, sometimes I think people think it's
like a little, almost like a little wacky kind of, you know, it's like, you know, I talked to like my dad's financial advisor
when I was starting this and he's like, oh, you're, you know, that's just drug money. It's
just all, isn't it just people just doing drug money, drug money, buddy. Yeah. Right. And then
it's like, I wait a year. Right. And then it's, he, you know, he's like, you know, still it's
drug money. And then I wait another year. He's like's like you know and then now it's not him that's learning it's all of his investors that are like hey man
like my buddy like just made like 140 last year on this like he's like we did seven like what's
going on here's what we beat the s&p you know and then he's like okay fine they wait another year
it's like hey my buddy just did like another 300 on his on this cryptocurrency thing are we going
to get into
it? And so it got to a point where finally it's like, now I'm getting the call from the financial
advisor going, Hey, what's up? What's up? What's happening? Yeah. Their hand is forced. Every one
of these people has no interest until their clients annoy them enough that they think they
might lose their clients if they don't have an answer. Which was weird because I was on like
one of the Goldman call recently, a few months ago,
and I was really excited. I got on the call and I was going to hear what they had to say about it.
And you could tell that it was like enough people had asked that they had to publicly dismiss it.
And they went on there and they were like, this is trash. We don't see any value. It is what it
is. Stay away. And I was really disappointed because i thought that their stance would be different but i do think that it's completely like how much clients force their hand
to see if they're going to be interested yeah yeah and i really wish and it's been the us's stance
to kind of keep it at an arm's length versus melding with the space and i think you know
because they're thinking like okay maybe and this is with any new technology, maybe they're thinking, you know,
this is the end of our way of life. And that's scary for people where in reality,
if they, they embraced it,
it's like they could shepherd it in a way and they can get out ahead of it.
I do think, you know, they're,
they still have enough money on hand and everyone else can look at the entire
market cap of crypto, right? It's like,
people like two Sigma are trading that in like a day right on currencies global globally so it's
like they're just and this could technically represent the next leg up right like if we
if bitcoin hits a hundred thousand now it's big enough potentially for some of these big players
to actually start moving and so it's like that's the leg from 100 to 225, which Tim says is 5% of money supply
globally. And that's where we need to get to have some dominance. I talk about this all the time.
And it's come up in probably the last three or four podcasts that I've done, which is that like,
it's just not big enough yet. So they want in, they just literally can't buy until the market
cap is big enough that they know that if they need to exit, they'll actually have someone to sell to.
Exactly.
I mean, at the end of the day, if you have a $500 million, you know, billion dollar position,
you need to know that if things go bad, you're going to need to be able to exit it.
It's just not big enough.
I mean, I think Apple's like market cap dropped last day or two more than the entire crypto
space, you know?
Oh yeah.
I mean, Elon probably lost $20 billion in like five days.
Like I can imagine not affecting him, but still.
Well, I guess if you gained like five times that much
in the preceding two or three months,
that's how I like to look at my losses too.
Well, they're losses on gains.
So it's fine, not a big deal.
But so, I mean, you talk to Tim, these guys all the time.
So that really is their firm belief then that institutional money comes with more growth, not that they're buying the bottom as, you know, is sort of the idea that people have in the actual community.
I think for them, it's a little bit of, I mean, the idea of the larger institutions coming in with larger market cap, I mean, that's come from some of our research of talking to some of the larger funds that we've spoken with.
I think for some of the people that have been in this space since the beginning in terms of the world, it's usage.
It's actual usage as money and getting people shopping with it and using it.
And that's how it grows and becomes bigger.
And then there's countries that might be in kind of an interesting place inflation-wise,
maybe not the United States, but maybe like a Venezuela, maybe a Zimbabwe,
someone like that that's smaller that says, you know what?
We have inflation of, I don't know't 10,000 percent a month right even a fluctuation of Bitcoin from 12k
to four four thousand dollars irrelevant nothing here to like money being used as
toilet paper which in our society for three weeks we thought was gonna be the
currency right exactly there's like a completely different way to look at it
for a small to mid-sized country that's trying to be competitive in the market and the landscape, which I think is huge in today's world.
Because looking at the U.S. and looking at coronavirus, we can work from anywhere.
Countries need to compete for business.
And that's where taxes come in place.
And that's where incentives come in place.
And that's why you see the Microsofts of the world based in Ireland and people moving to places like Singapore or Santiago, Chile, which is favorable in Latin
America. You're seeing these companies move to different places. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting
because you said a lot of these people want to see it used as money, but all the regulation and
tax law in the United States prohibits it from ever being used as money. If I buy a Starbucks
coffee with a dollar, it's not a taxable transaction, right? So how do we ever get to
the point where we're using crypto, at least in this country, where we're using it as money if
it's literally prohibited by the government to view it as such? Yeah. No, that's a very tough
question. And all I know right now is that the situation we're in is every time I, even if I use a micro transaction on brave, right. And I'm getting paid that that's like buying and selling a home. Right. And like, how many times a day do you do that? Like, what if I accidentally sent some to the wrong address and that's gone? Like, how do they like, Oh, we don't believe you didn't send that to get a write-off. Right.
A hack does not get you a write-off. That's it. It's insane.
So that's, that's just,
that's a problem that needs to be solved very quickly. Um,
and just so there's less people moving to Puerto Rico, I think.
Yeah. But what's crazy is like, what, what kind of pisses me off is,
so I have over 5,000 transactions this year, right? If you're
talking about microtransactions and stuff, I try to keep on top of it because I don't want to get
caught with my pants down when tax time comes. And every time you market buy or market sell
something, as you touched on earlier with any size, that can be 70 orders, right? They'll
consider that 70 different transactions because it's every time you fill not the order that you place so every one of those is a taxable transaction i mean
how it's such a cluster and it's so just absolutely absurd but what pisses me off like i was gonna
say they're gonna change it and i'm not gonna get my tax money back that i paid in these
wonderful years of
trading. Right. So like in two years, when they kept to their senses, they're going to say it's
dollars in and dollars out of the crypto market, like Forex or something, probably, you know,
like whatever you do with your Bitcoin, just pay us the taxes when the Bitcoin comes out,
I'm going to want a refund, man. Oh yeah. Like our taxes end up being like 50, 60% by the time you calculate all these things and try to make sense of it.
When you did it last year, did you use a software or anything to help you out?
I used like four of the softwares and then I talked to my accountant and I talked to an attorney.
But this year, it's even crazier, honestly, because it seems like the IRS is actually paying more attention, right? So I'm afraid to even miss like one microtransaction at this point
or to associate one wrong,
which effectively means going through thousands of transactions
or keeping on top of it and making sure that they're associated.
This year is different also because I have people,
I like to actually like transact in crypto,
even though it's so prohibitive by the government.
So I'll have people pay me in Bitcoin instead of money,
but like that's associated different.
And what if you pay someone back a commission on that who brokered a deal or
something, can you write off paying it to, it's just very, very complex.
Yeah. And I, it, we, we accept some Bitcoin as a,
as a business as well. And it's like, it comes through.
So if you invoice someone for a thousand dollars, but when they send it,
you get 998, it's like, well, do we have to adjust that? Was their invoice only 998?
But our contract said it was a thousand. So I guess we'll just let that go. So there's,
it's just creating so many barriers and headaches. And I mean, God bless the accountants that are
working through this because they're saving everyone so much time. It's just like,
dude, if you could just deal with this, like just i can't even go through everything yeah but the thing is the software
can but and they're they're getting better but like an accountant really can't because like they
don't and depending if you're just trading bitcoin ethereum sure but if you're trading a lot of all
coins if you're transacting if you're god forbid like have a metamask wallet or any of these ethereum
wallets and every one of those transactions and your gas fees.
I mean, they're just not going to have access to all of it unless you're using some sort of software.
So it really is kind of just a train wreck.
But I guess we can move on from that.
Do you think it was accurate for your trades?
Like when you looked at the numbers at the end of the year, we're like, that seems pretty accurate.
Yeah, it lines up. When it gets a little iffy, it's all based on
a cost basis, often of things that you bought years past. So there has to be a reconciliation
for the amount that you sold and the amount that you had and where it came from. And sometimes it
was just like an exchange from four years ago that I don't have the tax records of where I
transferred some coin that wasn't on a major exchange. And once I transferred, and there's no, there's no like
origin of that. So listen, it's really nitpicky if they come after me for that, it'll be the IRS's
fun job to go find the origin of that transaction, Godspeed. But it's at that level of insanity.
If you really take it as seriously as I do. I mean, I'm not going to evade taxes,
you know, it's just, I'm going to pay every penny. It sucks, but I'm going to pay every penny of it.
So have you had the similar experience? I mean, how did you do it?
Well, when I talked to some people that use some of the software, they said that they
plugged in all of their exchanges and they did did it to the to the t exactly what they should and it actually came back with like huge credits because of the timing and the years
and everything else that they did and so they would go and they'd be like yeah they would go
and be like all right like a hundred thousand dollar loss the government owes me 60 grand like
this is fantastic yeah they only let you write off a little bit in that space is what i was
thinking i was like the government still got you, they're slowing them down because they can't.
They're like, wait, we just told everyone that we want them to pay us for their crypto taxes and now we owe all this money?
This is not what we thought.
Well, yeah, I mean, listen, people took massive losses.
I mean, if you're like reporting in 2018, kind of 19, you know, you would expect that it was mostly people trying to get a write-off and not trying to evade anything. So, so having, you know, you obviously have been doing this for quite
a few years, um, even though you formerly launched in 2019, what are you seeing that's different
this time in this sort of run up, you know, uh, since March, uh, is the sentiment different?
Can you get a gauge of where the money's coming from
that's pouring into the market through social? I think it's some of the same investors that
we've seen. I mean, when we look at social volume though, it's much higher, much, much,
much higher than it was in previous years. And especially because it's new interesting projects that I
think people can understand and get a grasp of that there is real-world
application it's like when you launch everyone was technically a public
blockchain back in 2017 and they said they were gonna go solve something but
it was just like no one saw a market for any of these things right and so I think
that's why the crash was so violent. Whereas this time, yes, a lot of these projects will go away. And my feeling is always, you know, and you can talk
about people that are kind of Bitcoin maximalists and the way that they see the world, then there's
just going to be one. In my view, it's, I feel like most of the cryptocurrencies that exist today
will not exist in the future. But I do believe that there will be more cryptocurrencies in the
future than
there are today. And people are going to just keep launching and keep trying to solve problems
through the technology because it does make so much sense and it does create so much value by
removing the middleman, right? Like we were talking about. But I feel the difference this
time is that there's solid entrepreneurs in the space that have a little bit of expertise that
have been through it that now have created connections and networks at potentially some larger exchanges
or some of the bigger companies that we have in our space. And they can start to get things done
in a better way. I also believe that people are much more focused on user experience and the
experience of using their product that before they
were just, it was very developer heavy, right? Like copy my key.
Where's my seed phrase. What do I do with that?
And now people are not only educated on that more, but it's also simplified.
And so as we move into that space more, it's not going to be like, Hey,
where's my key to do this or that? It's going to be like, Oh,
I just log into this thing and it pays my Verizon bill and these other things with my staking coins every single month. Oh, that's awesome.
Do you think those are the biggest barriers to entry for retail? I mean,
outside of regulation and taxes that we talked about, which are absurd. And if your average
person hears about that, they might just run away. But do you think that those are the barriers to
entry? It's understanding the tech, the fear of being hacked, not knowing how to use your wallet, not understanding what a key is.
Yes. I mean, that's a hundred percent.
I remember John and I went to the,
it was like a block stack summit at the beginning when we started looking at
this at like the computer museum up in Silicon Valley.
And it was like, we were the only two, you know,
quasi marketing UX type people that were there.
It was just very developer heavy and it was
like the presentations that were given were so technically advanced it was like us too and then
there was like one kind of like wall street guy that kind of saw us and like sat at our table
he's like what the hell is going on here normal this is nuts and i was like yeah i go these people
are building the future and we are hopefully here to shepherd in
that next phase of, of usage and understanding.
So because it's nothing without the market and the masses getting in and being
able to benefit from a technology without having to understand it. Right.
Like no one, everyone just uses Tik TOK. They don't know how, you know,
it's delivered. They don't know the algorithm that gives them.
It's delivered from China.
It's so true.
It's interesting.
You know, I'm always mind blown now.
And maybe it's just I didn't have my hand on the, my finger on the pulse in the same
way in the past.
And I wasn't as much part of the community.
And I didn't have a podcast where I was like inviting these impressive guests, but there's a lot of big wall street dudes and people who had these
banking jobs and, you know, really like major executives who now have said F it to that world
and all want to be in crypto who see that this is what they want to build things in this space.
And you're talking about like people who really understand what's happening.
I mean, I interviewed Richard Byworth, the CEO of Diginex, like Equus.
They have an investment bank, institutional-grade exchange.
They do custody.
And he said that right now, in all his years running investment banks
and whatever, he said,
he's seeing triple quadruple the quality talent trying to hire for a crypto
company than he ever saw.
And those were much bigger, higher paying desirable jobs at the time.
Yes.
I mean, I think that like people want in now,
and that is a little different than the past.
Yeah, no, they, they're starting to feel
like they're, they're being left behind a little bit. And that's not for those people that are so
kind of high power, super competitive. That's not a place that they like to live for a long time.
And so you're seeing these people and it's always, there's always, it's awesome. And you see that
shift from like, you know, like the, just to use TikTok as an example, like the seat, like someone
that was at Disney for a long time now, you know, jumping over and running something like a TikTok. It's
like, I want to see like VP level Goldman Sachs, SVP level partner type people jumping and trying
to like run an exchange, right. And bringing that up to like, you're saying like, get the
legislation filled out, figure out what's going on. I think, you know, we kind of, you know, someone like a Kelly Loeffler,
I think we thought that was kind of the position that she was going to take
running, you know, the futures exchange and then going into Congress.
I think there was some other stuff there with like trading,
which, you know, we don't have to get into, but it's like people like that.
You mean how she sold all of her stock in advance of COVID?
No, nothing like that, right? Yeah. You don't, it's just like,
secret Senate committee hearing. Yeah.
It's like one of those things where it's like in today's world, it's like,
man, is there really another like police video coming out again?
It's almost like Kelly, you got a chance to get in there. Like, Oh man,
like there was such an opportunity. So yeah.
People just humans being humans, right? Like we're just, we're fighting these things every day to try and, you know, be straight
and narrow and make it happen.
And I think we just, there are some very high integrities, amazingly smart people in this
space that, you know, I think otherwise, like in the business world, you just, sometimes
these people just don't want to go into politics.
It's just a nightmare to like go there and deal
with that. And it's a, you know, and so you have a lot of smart people that are just like, I'm just
going to build this really kick-ass cool blockchain business. Right. And I'm going to solve this
problem that I couldn't solve before. And Holy crap, I don't need a bank for that. And, you know,
I think that's where it's, it's going to be a pretty interesting next two years of figuring
out where the next big things come from. And it's
going to come from someone like that. So I guess based on what you're seeing yourself, just as a
person who's, you know, day in, day out involved in this industry, but also on Lunar Crush, I mean,
where do you think we are in the next sort of cycle here? I'm not asking for like, what will
the price of Bitcoin be in six months? And then, you know, hold you to it. I'm just curious where you think.
Yeah, no, I hear you.
I, you know, it's, it's such an interesting, I think right now it,
it's so macro oriented with even something like Bitcoin.
And I think, you know, six to eight months ago and you, you know,
you kind of hear some of the bigger names in our space, you know, talking about like, this is a systematic hedge against, you know, six to eight months ago, and you, you know, you kind of hear some of the bigger
names in our space, you know, talking about like, this is a systematic hedge against, you know,
catastrophes. And then COVID happens. Evidently, it's not a systematic hedge against global
catastrophes, right? It moves in conjunction. And, you know, like a gold, basically, but with
a completely different set of that. And so Bitcoin moves on that, but I think you see the rest of the market moving on Bitcoin in a different variant, I guess. It's, you just, you know,
we, on days where Bitcoin is down, you can have Polkadot up, you know, you can have other projects
up, you know, so it's like, you're trying to find sometimes needles in a haystack and,
and social helps you identify that, I think, better than going and trying to find it just on price or technical alone.
But I just, the pure amount of talent that's flooding into the space, I mean, there's no question that this space is going to grow.
And we're going to have super interesting companies and projects that are going to be built out of it, in my opinion.
And where Lunar Crush sits in that is, you know, just transparency and helping bring to light a lot of these projects that we think are amazing.
And that, you know, it's not us picking our coin of the day, right?
It's the algorithm that's picking it based on social.
And so people are like, man, you guys are really favoriting someone like a V-chain.
I was like, well, no, their community is literally popping off every single day.
I'm not doing anything.
Like, this is what we built into light.
And so I think it's as people
focus on community and understand that more and try to bring more people into the fold. I think
the space grows pretty rapidly, but I think it's unfortunately going to be led internationally,
you know, in places like Singapore and places like the EU and Africa, right? Like, I mean,
look at what someone like Akon is going to do. And at least it's like trying to be a shining star somewhere and showing what the best.
And when you have a clean palette like that, you can build from the ground up.
It looks like it's like almost like a Tesla, right?
When you don't have the legacy systems in place and you can build something from scratch,
look how much more epic it could be.
Yeah, that makes sense.
That's so true.
So like, what are your, you know, in a perfect world, what does Lunar Crush look like in 2022, 2024? You know, what do you or two, I'll be able to pull some stuff out, but, um, you know, it's going to look a lot like focusing on the projects, um, helping them,
you know, organize, like we're talking about marketing and trying to figure that out. We want
to democratize people's ability to, you know, we don't just want people that know marketing or know
advertising. We want the hardcore developers, the people that might not understand that part of the space.
We still want to bring those technologies to light because we think that
sometimes those are the projects that the world needs to see.
And so we're going to be finding really cool ways to allow those projects to
really get on center stage and have people adopt that.
And so we're going to be coming up with some really cool stuff for,
for basically them to be a part of Lunar Crush and have more autonomy over
potentially like their pages on our site so that they're the ones that are kind
of organizing and getting the word out to them. We also, you know,
there's, there's a lot that we can do when we,
we worked on community first, right?
A lot of the people that are in the world, they, they have,
they launch a coin and then they try to figure out what they're building and then they try to create a community, right?
For us, we knew what we were building, we built it, and now we're building a community and that
community is growing. And so we kind of went at the world of crypto in almost a reverse order,
but we think that that's probably the order that you should approach the market to kind of validate
your ideas before launching full into
infrastructure. It's kind of like starting a Twitter handle, right? If you start a Twitter
handle, you know, and you start talking about things that are important to you and what you
want the world to look like. And if people gravitate towards that, then you have an audience.
So build your audience first is kind of the way that we thought about it. And so it allows us to look at the market going forward and really just decide where we want to go.
And so that's the cool part, I think, about what we've put together.
Awesome. So where can people follow you, sign up, you personally, and keep up with the developments?
So just LunarCrush.com. It's free to sign up. So we have like a coin of the
day where you can kind of see all of our different metrics, but just sign in with your Twitter,
Gmail, email, log in, um, you know, get all of our metrics on there. You can follow us
at lunar crush on Twitter. Um, you know, we're on there posting anywhere from 10 to 50 times a day
on insights that we see. So that's kind of a good place to kind of find the news.
You can find me at Joe Vez on Twitter.
I usually just talk about like the stock market and how shitty it is that they
print money, but you know,
it's not going to have a lot to tweet about lately.
My account. What else is there to talk about?
Yeah, just lunarcrush.com. Come check us out. I mean,
we're tweeting it out there. We'd love to have you part of our community.
So anyone listening.
Oh man, thank you so much for taking the time.
And it's really such a different and unique perspective
and approach to markets,
especially for people who come from other markets
and don't understand really how much I think
this is social and community driven.
So hopefully they'll get something out of this
and start following that as a path to understanding and making more money.
So thank you for taking the time and for being here.
This is awesome. I really appreciate Scott.
Yeah. And now since you couldn't tell me like what's coming,
or you have to do it again in a few months, in a few months, round two.
We'll record it. We'll record it. And then you can release it on the day.
How about that? I'd be like Rocky and Apollo, rocky one and rocky two rocky four is my favorite oh i will break him i must break him
if he dies he dies yeah that's one of my favorite movies my my dogs were always named after rocky
characters when we were kids rocky was like one of them and we had a clubber from rocky three
i don't think we ever had a drago, but I did have a friend.
Awesome.
All right.
Thank you,
man.