The Wolf Of All Streets - The Dawn of Blockchain with Anthony Di Iorio, Co-Founder of Ethereum

Episode Date: March 18, 2021

Anthony Di Iorio first heard about Bitcoin in 2012 and immediately did two things - he bought Bitcoin and decided to become a key contributor to the emerging crypto sector. Not long after, Di Iorio joined forces with Vitalik Buterin and six other co-founders, and a year later Ethereum was born. Today, Anthony spends his time building crypto tools to empower newcomers to be their own bank. In this episode, Melker and Di Iorio discuss a range of topics including: The dawn of the personal computing age Buying Bitcoin in 2012 Developing crypto wallets Co-founding Ethereum Misaligned incentive structures The degradation of society Restoring a wallet with private keys Working alongside Vitalik Buterin The largest risk to crypto Excitement around authenticity Spending $0 on advertising Dealing with investors ---- MAKERSPLACE MakersPlace is the go-to premium marketplace for purchasing rare digital artworks from the world’s top creators (Ie. José Delbo, Trevor Jones, Pak, SSX3LAU, Shu Lea Cheang). New artworks are dropped twice a week, where they typically sell out within seconds of release and have been reselling several months later, upwards of 10x. Subscribe for exclusive drop notifications at https://makersplace.com/thewolf ---- Try Nexo’s full-suite, instant crypto banking service, featuring: Savings accounts with up to 12% interest on crypto, stablecoins & fiat Flexible crypto-backed credit lines at just 5.9% APR An exchange with 75+ crypto and fiat pairs and best-price guarantee All this and more wrapped up in a single Nexo Wallet. Start banking at nexo.io Or download the app on Google Play or the App Store.   ---- Legacy of Dead  This episode was brought to you by Bitcasino. The worlds leading Bitcoin-led online casino and crypto-centric gaming destination. Wager your way into a world of opportunity, with the ultimate Fun, Fast and Fair crypto-casino experience.  Deposit, wager, and withdraw in real-time with a host of top cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), LiteCoin (LTC), Tether (USDT), TRON (TRX), Ripple (XRP), and more!  Use the promo link Bitcasino.io/Scott, to unlock your 200 FREE SPINS in the Legacy of Dead Promotion. ---- Join the Wolf Den newsletter: ►►https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen/members ---- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworks.co

What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast. Now, most people who first heard about Bitcoin in the early days dismissed it as a passing phase and failed to buy, myself included. It's this window of time that's often looked back upon as a missed opportunity of bought cheaper or jumped in earlier. Today's guest is one of the rare few who discovered Bitcoin back in 2012 and skipped the common dismissal phase entirely, buying his first Bitcoin immediately for about $10. It hurts even to talk about it. Anthony was quick to recognize the potential of this emerging sector and went on to co-found Ethereum, something only eight people can say that they did. It's my intention this episode to better understand one of the most

important genesis stories of crypto and how the landscape looks today from the perspective of a true crypto OG. Anthony DiIorio, thanks so much for coming on, man. Thanks for having me, Scott. I appreciate putting me on and it looks like you've got some good background and now know what we're going to talk about. So it's going to be fun. We don't like to give anyone too much of a heads up. So it's spontaneous. I don't like to have heads up. I like things to be spontaneous and have nice conversations. I never know. You want to ask me, you're welcome to ask me. Awesome.

Thank you. Well, before we get into the questions, once again, you're listening to the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast where twice a week, I talk to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, and politics. This podcast is powered by Blockworkss, the fastest growing media company in the digital asset space. You can check them out at blockworks.co for access to the highest quality information in the space.

And if you like the podcast and you follow me on Twitter, check out my newsletter and website. You can do all of that at thewolfofallstreets.io. So now to get on into what's important. If my research is correct, as I said before, you discovered Bitcoin back in 2012 and ended up co-founding Ethereum a year later in 2013. To me, this is the two most important Genesis stories, obviously, in the history of crypto. So

I just want to dive right in and hear how it happened, how you discovered Bitcoin, and then how you took that leap to actually building Ethereum. Okay. And I'm going to keep this as brief as I can, but still give you the pertinent details. I'm a technology person since I was eight. I was born in 75. So the dawn of the personal computing age was kind of when I really first got in.

My dad brought home a computer when I was eight years old and I was kind of hooked on computers since then. That translated into the BBS days and the modems and communications before the internet. So I was heavy into that. And then when the internet came along, it was like, this was the holy grail for me of now being able to communicate and be able to have that information democratized around the world. And I just saw the potential of it. But I was a little too young to really utilize that time when things were heating up. And when I was going through university at the time, and I went into business rather than computers, my dad was an entrepreneur,

problem solver, inventor. So technology, business, went to work for the family business afterwards, learned a lot more there about entrepreneurship, had started a few companies before that. So always wanted to be an entrepreneur and go in that direction. In 2008, 2009, we had the housing crisis in the U.S. and the banking crisis, and it was sparked to learn about what money is. My brother had suggested I learn about money and the history of money, and I started digging in deep to that. I started trying to understand what had happened during this crisis in the U. hey was this going to happen in Canada as well and started learning about booms and bus cycles and what were causing them and learned about the Austrian School of Economics which was the path that kind of decided made more sense for me. I've always been about not liking

what people say you know I like to do what I want to do I don't like to be told what to do. I always like to feel I'm a unique individual and I don't like to be told what to do. I always like to feel I'm a unique individual and I don't like to be put in groups and I don't like normal. I like doing things differently. I think it's people's individuality that really contributes to the whole and you want as many different people as possible out there that can help to create change and do different things. So it basically was a perfect storm when I heard about Bitcoin on a Freedom podcast called Free Talk Live in 2012, the first episode I listened to. And I'm like, they mentioned Bitcoin. What's that?

Because studying economics for the last couple of years and thinking, okay, here's where we are. What do we do about it? And how do I position myself to be able to navigate this world that seems to be set in a very certain type of economic theory? When I heard about Bitcoin and thought about I could be my own bank and I knew about decentralized technologies, for my background, learning about Napster and that whole thing that happened with music file sharing. It just culminated in a first day. I get it. I grasp it.

Went on LocalBitcoin. I found about LocalBitcoin. Went and bought my first Bitcoin that day. And I never looked back. And I started thinking about after weeks of not sleeping and researching, I decided to look for a community. There wasn't any around in Toronto. I started the Toronto Bitcoin Meetup group.

Italic Buterin was one of the first few people that came to that first meetup. Peter Todd was another recognizable person in the space. And I just started becoming a center of gravity in Toronto and building out the community. And events got bigger and bigger. And then doing conferences and at the same time thinking how do i position myself in this thing to create real value and what can i do and uh i i connected with a developer out of new jersey within a week we had we had popped out a company a gambling site for bitcoin exited that a few years a few months later we're

all bitcoin bitcoin proceeded to take off and i had a few million bucks after the first few months. And we had both said, me and my partner, we don't want to be in the gambling space. We're just going to do this. Let's make some capital. And then let's do some greater things. So we started building wallets, recognizing that the wallet is the interface for this technology. It's the equivalent to the browser of the internet.

You needed to navigate the space. You needed to manage and move value. You needed the masses to understand what's going on and do this. So we started building wallets. And along the way that year in 2013, Vitalik was helping us out with the wallet company and got to know Charles Hoskinson. We were both doing kind of advocacy work

for different organizations for Bitcoin and traveling the world. And I was building up my network in Canada and globally. Vitalik shows me the white paper at the end of 2013. I'd gotten to know him really well and had a lot of respect and trust for him. And he was a reliable person and super bright and intelligent. And I showed the paper to Charles, introduced Charles to Vitalik. And that's how it kind of started along with the co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine with Vitalik, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Amir Chetrit. We got this off the ground and started

doing it and kind of the rest is history. I mean, it's an unbelievable story. I have to ask now, especially in context of what's happened in 2020, 2021 and seeing, I mean, obviously the global economic meltdown, but the boom specifically in crypto and the use case of Ethereum. Did you ever think that it would reach this point? I mean, when you guys founded it and started it, did you view it as more of an experiment or did you really see this level of adoption as somewhat inevitable? It would be truthful to say that we in our head over some time thought this could be really big. I always used to say, you know, Bitcoin to the moon, who knows where Ethereum could go?

You know, are we going to Mars or are we going elsewhere? But that's in your head until you start, you know, you put things as they grow and the community comes along and the developers start pulling this together and you start thinking, wow, they could actually do this. We could actually achieve this. And that's what we did. And not just that, thousands of people have done this thing, thousands of people have contributed to this. And that's what's so great about these types of technologies and open systems that you get the the crowdsourcing of people coming together and the knowledge to build out something that's not behind closed doors and with so many built-in amazing mechanisms for consensus and governance and all these different things that really form an amazing project so uh in the back

of your head you're you're thinking what can this get to and And I'm just amazed and proud and thankful. I'm grateful for what this has turned into and what I've learned from it and the people I've met and the contributions I was able to make. And it's just helped me along the way to grow and learn and take these experiences and hopefully do even bigger and better things down the road. So it's been phenomenal. It's been such a great run. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it. I'm curious now seeing obviously the success, but then obviously there's a ton of competitors, right? I mean, there's plenty of protocols and projects that are trying to compete, but Ethereum still seems to be where everybody's building. You kind of touched on the fact that you had very dedicated developers. And I think that that speaks obviously to what you guys built.

But there's clearly scalability issues with gas and they're going to largely be addressed in 2.0. But do you think that Ethereum will be able to eventually scale to meet this demand and still be efficient? I mean, anyone obviously who's Uniswap and done these things and paid $300, $400 a transaction knows that that's not sustainable forever. Yeah, there's definitely issues that need to be addressed. And I do have confidence that it's going to be figured out. But you also have people on the sidelines or other projects that are coming as well with newer technologies that are trying to meet Ethereum's launch, right? So I'm not sure what's going to happen at the end of the day. I'm always an optimistic person. I think Ethereum is going to, and it's going to have to, make changes that are

needed in order to allow it to flourish and to grow. I don't stay too entwined on the inner workings of what is going on there. I moved out of the project in 2015. I support Ethereum. I'm a holder of Ether. I build wallets for Ether. But I also am involved in a much larger community that involves other projects. I'm a very inclusive and I like to seek competition and innovation. So I'm by no means a maximalist of any sort. I have a portfolio of many different projects. So it's hard for me to keep up to date on all the inner workings of things. But yeah, my understanding, there's something brewing right now with the decisions made,

the changes, the recent changes. And it's interesting to see what's going to come out of this and how the miners are going to react and if there's going to be the rebellion and potentially a hard fork that might come out of this. But that's crypto. And so it makes it exciting. And it's all going towards learnings and new knowledge and innovation. And it's an exciting thing to be in. Survival of the fittest, right? Exactly. So it must be actually kind of interesting to be able to kind of watch from the sidelines after you built it to see your baby grow, you know, and not be so intimately involved with the day-to-day decisions?

Yeah, I mean, it's something I had early involvement in, and something that has a very special place in my heart. Even saying like, my baby girl, it's a collaborative effort of thousands and thousands of people that did this. So I had a small piece of it. I mean, I funded it, and, you know, I put some people together and did it and I had early, early decision making on quite a few things, but what's been done since I've been gone is just been exponential. It's got to give it up to all those people that have rallied around it and that are supporting it. So, yeah. So I was born in 76. You said you were born in 75 and I had this sort of, listening to your background was very sort of of uh similar uh experience i think we got

our first computer when i was six or seven my dad was an inventor commodore 64 of course okay mine was ibm pc junior yeah we were like uh you know doing print shop and all the really basic sort of stuff rbi baseball i think was the first like sports game i was playing on there it was awesome but and my dad also was an inventor, although of medical devices. So it was just very, a lot of what you said sort of echoed as very familiar to my own childhood, but it really was an incredible time with regard to technology and computers to grow up, I think. But I didn't take that route. What made you sort of realize that, you know, computing and programming was sort of your light bulb thing that was what you wanted to focus on was it as a result of gaming or was it a result of

you know people always have their different story of why they really you know were drawn to it that's a good question i don't think i've ever been asked that um i was you know i remember games like montezuma's revenge on the pc junior and a few other ones like that at seamus and the um leisure suit larry which came oh my god and police quest and all those yeah leisure suit larry king's quest oh yeah like those things so yeah gaming was a big part of it but it wasn't just about gaming i went to the camps for robotics and computers and um I don't know. I just, maybe it's problem solving.

I was building computers as well. I was a developer, but that wasn't really where I saw myself fitting myself. And I always felt that I would run teams of developers and creators. I think that I'm a, I put pieces together, I think, and I can, it's really the problem solving. My dad is a problem solver. The questioning of why would everything drives him nuts and why is it like that? And it could be a better way to do things. And it eats away at you until you figure this stuff out. And I take that around with me,

everything that I do and everything I see in it. And it's like, why was I greeted like that at the restaurant? Is there a better way? How would I do it? How would I create this formula to make a restaurant better? Would I have singing chefs come up and greet you? Would I have visibility of TV screens on the entrance showing a chef cooking food to draw people in? These are things that I've thought about.

And it's about problem solving. It's about putting a formula together that can take a problem, because I love to solve problems, and come up with a solution along the way. This is exactly what I've done. I created a general problem-solving formula called Perfect Formula. And it's the idea that putting together principles, tools, and processes that I've put through over the years, how can I utilize what I believe I have, which is problem solving capabilities to be the most service to the world and service to life. And I do it because it makes me happy. And I do it via perfect formula, this model, this general problem solving formula that I've developed for

micro and macro problems that I use in everything that I do. And my goal in the future is to take that to the world and continue to do it in greater things. And blockchain is one of my tools in my tool belt that I've been able to develop, but it's not the be all and end all. It's a part of things and it's the principles, it's the trying to create winning situations for as many stakeholders as possible, adding as many stakeholders as you can into any problem to then use my brain to come up with a way to create movements by bringing people together and understanding that if we do this together and we're all in this together and we're all one and the more you can

do to help people in their lives the more people will join you I think and the more good will be done and the more we'll be able to to create a better place to live for more people and that's really what what drives me and what I want to be doing with my life that's awesome well first I got in trouble for playing leisure suit Larry when I was a kid at my life. That's awesome. Well, first, I got in trouble for playing Leisure Suit Larry when I was a kid at my friend's house. We were not supposed to be playing, and his mom walked in and found us playing. Anyway, I'm not going to get into it,

but anyone here who knows what it is would know why. I know exactly what you're talking about. It's kind of like the Grand Theft Auto of our generation, I guess, in a weird way. In a very weird way and a much calmer way, um, you know, we're very weird way and very calm, much calmer way. Yes, certainly. Um, so you said obviously that you're a problem solver and that's sort of how you approach, uh, you know, what you want to focus on moving, moving forward and what you've done in the past. I'm curious what you see as the biggest problems that we need solving right now.

Um, not necessarily crypto specific, just in general, I think that a lot of the things you probably saw in 2012 that you already identified as problematic have come to the forefront for most people in the last year, money, and obviously the reason you want to become your own bank. What are the biggest problems we need to solve now? So to me, the core problem that I've determined, I think is the biggest problem is the incentive structure that are driving the world, the business models that drive the world. And generally it's focused around maximizing shareholder returns and that strive to make more money into consistently providing these returns for investors that people are beholden to ends up leading to a dysfunctional, you know, or sorry, a degraded planet and people that are

not being sufficed and people that are being pushed out because the drive to do one thing is all about dials and you have to maneuver and massage things. And the more you're doing and seeking one thing, the consequences it's going to have when you're doing that. And I believe this model of corporations having to consistently return these things, it's okay. But I don't think they're doing it in a way that is optimum. And I think that my mission is to provide a new way of looking at things that says, are you doing more good for people? And I'm talking about how can you figure as being a brand or a person that, that can realize by me helping more and more people,

I'm going to get more and more people on my side and I'm going to get what I want by doing more good for people. So it's not that it's, it's a striving to it for wealth of, of different things, of money, of knowledge, all things is bad. But if you're doing it in a way where you're not getting as close to a hundred percent of the population behind what you're doing it in a way where you're not getting as close to 100% of the population behind what you're doing, and you can't figure out ways to work with your competitors or be able to work with others in the space and figure out, hey, is there a better way we can do this together?

Is there a better way that we can do this to help more people? I believe if that happens, more people will be behind what you're doing. And you're going to in turn get the respect and you're going to get people buying your products. You're going to get people doing things. So I think there needs to be a shift and a recognition that, and it's happening. We've seen things come out where CEOs have gotten together and said,

we can't just be looking at this maximizing shareholder returns because it's having the consequences and we need to figure out a better way that's going to not disclude so many people in this mix and not lead to the scandal and the greed that emerge of every documentary that comes out with problems that are coming up and business models that people are realizing you know is it right i'm giving my information away and then it's being monetized or is it right that i'm that i'm being uh manipulated into doing certain actions based

on what advertisers want and i don't even know that that's being done and and this is leading to this tribe mentality and these people that are so convinced what they're reading in the news is real. And then their emotions start tying to that and they start going off the rails in these issues. And it's a very big problem. And it comes to the end of the day,

I think back to these models, these models of advertising, these models that are trying to get people to do things without them actually knowing you're doing it. And it's unfortunate because I think it's very manipulative and it's taking advantage of people that are not sophisticated enough to understand and that's the direction of being led.

And it's leading to family issues. It's leading to all kinds of problems, leading to misinformation of things that are just preposterous out there that people believe. And I just think it needs a whole shift and a whole change and an evolution towards and problem solvers to step up and create better ways of doing things that bring people along. It's not saying we're going to get rid of those people and we're going to, you know, just, you know, let's get rid of the banks. Let's get rid of these models.

No, they still need to be brought along as well. Let's provide them with better solutions that everybody's going to win and everybody's going to be able to bring what they're good at to the table and what we can utilize them as good at and and create a a better a better system for things and that's i think what's up for entrepreneurs and problem solvers to do that and i'd like to kind of help to spearhead that and be a leader that people can this leadership is is sorely lacking and we really need people to come forward that's going to create better plans and solutions.

Yeah, it's problematic, much like politics, because the people who need to make the change are the ones who are least incentivized to make that change because they're profiting from it, right? And so you have a situation where all of us are the product rather than the customer and people don't realize it as you touched on. So the question then is that I think we can all agree that those are huge problems, but how do we solve those problems

knowing that the people in power are the ones perpetuating their problems, those problems purposefully for profit, obviously. Yeah, we need to come up with plans that show them a better way to do things that their lives will also be improved by them joining this plan. So it's aligning stakeholders identifying all the stakeholders and then not stopping with the problem solving layers until you come up with something that you're going

to try to get to 100 of those stakeholders are going to be involved in the solution so i don't believe you know in the it's always been like that that's the way it's going to be i don't believe that if there's people against you you can't figure out something that you're going to provide a better solution for them that they're going to say really if i meet you i knew you know i'm your competitor why would i why would you provide a solution i mean it's like well why don't we work together on this why don't we figure out a way that's like anything that's being fought or anything that you have to put energy into that that i believe is is not you know that you're consistently in the back of your mind is negative energy or you got these other people oh man they're

my enemies they're against me that type of thinking and the mentality it's not uh positive and you know i try to create a line i got negative on one side positive one side and i don't even want to see this one side i want to consistently have my mind and thoughts going towards the most positive and optimism things i could think of and loving things. That's where I, and you are what you think, I believe. So the more energy you can put into those things and the more you can remove negative words from your vocabulary and the more you can be very clear in your talking and clear in your messaging and provide hope for people and provide solutions for people. I think that's what people are going to kind of navigate or kind of move towards. So I think those people that are in the leadership roles, maybe that don't have the

problem-solving capabilities or doing what it is that they know how to do, and they need to be presented with a guide with a plan, a guide that has a plan for them. And that's kind of where I see I'd like to be one of those people. and I'd like my superhero network and problem solvers to come together and work together with everybody to to help provide new ways and new things because if you're presented with something you look at it and go wait a second this improves me it improves everybody in here's life by carrying out this plan why wouldn't you do it there'd be a silly reason not to do that it just takes the the the acumen and the skill and the and the models to provide and figure out those solutions. And the crypto space is full of people that have amazing, amazing ideas and thoughts.

And it's that network of social capital, trust capital, all those different capitals that I hope that I've been able to bring to the table and hope that others see that that's what I'm striving for. I'm striving to be of service. And I love being of service because it makes me happy. And that's my whole mission. And I think making other people happy is one of the greatest things that people can do. Interesting, because what you just described could be used by many to describe the early days of crypto or even crypto development in general, which is when everybody is incentivized towards the same goal, even if that incentive has nothing to do with anyone else, you incentivize their greed, right? Just make it better for them and they have no reason to be a bad actor.

I mean, that's obviously kind of the core thinking behind proof of work. I mean, proof of stake, right? I mean, you don't attack the network because you make more money by being a good actor and by participating. Aligning everybody's incentives, I think is paramount. And when I say it's like one of the core elements of my problem solving formula is,

you know, you identify the stakeholders in the problem, but can you add the rest of the world as a stakeholder? I always put that into the mix. It's not, you know, there's micro problems in the problem, but can you add the rest of the world as a stakeholder? I always put that into the mix. It's not, you know, there's micro problems I've identified in macro problems. Micro are the ones that maybe don't involve the rest of the world. It's your day-to-day life

where you're going through a problem and you're trying to work something out and it doesn't need to involve the rest of the world necessarily. I put a macro problem as something bigger, something that's a larger problem there. And if you add who you think the stakeholders are that's great but how do you then take it to the next level and add the rest of the

world as a stakeholder and any solution you come up with can can can bring the whole world as a winner into this solution so i think that's that's that's a really important uh aspect of it is to try to add the world as a stakeholder to a large problem and then use the brainpower methods in order to come up with a solution that creates a win-win-win-win-win-win for all stakeholders. And that's how I believe movements are created. I mean, financially, is that what Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies effectively do? Because obviously, it's hard to imagine a system where central banks fix themselves and behave to the benefit of the average person.

It's hard to see a system where 100% of people own stock rather than just 40% or 45% who actually benefit from that sort of system you talked about in the market, and really the top 1%, as we know. So I mean, can the legacy system be fixed? Or do we have to opt out of it completely and do it through Bitcoin, basically, when you're talking strictly financially? I'm optimistic that there's a way to create a transition that's stable and is going to provide solutions and opportunities for legacy systems to come into the new system without as much fight. I don't know how long it's going to take. I might be wrong. I mean, I'm not a binary person.

I think there's a, you know, I like to move numbers and percentages. Maybe 60% of me thinks that, maybe 40% of me doesn't. But in all, I believe that that's what's going to happen. And I hope that's what's going to happen. And hopefully I can, you know, I'd love to do what I can to try to get it there because I've never been in the us versus them mentality. You know, while doing my stuff with Decentral, with my company and doing my stuff in, you know, 2015, 2016, I was the chief digital officer of the Toronto Stock Exchange. So I've consulted with banks and it's all about, hey, guys, what are your problems here? What are you facing?

Is there a way for us to utilize what you're good at and maybe take what we're good at and figure out what people's problems are and put that all together to come up with solutions that everybody's going to be in win with. So I'm optimistic with that approach that it's not the, let's just get rid of those people and let's just disregard them

because that turns into enemies and it turns into fighting. rid of those people and let's just disregard them because that turns into enemies and it turns into fighting. And you want people on your side. I think it's, it's just a better way to do things. You want a team working together towards a common goal, but people need to be brought and shown the light of a better way to do that. And that's where the problem solving and the new ways of thinking come. It's official. The digital art market is going mainstream.

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but obviously we know that it's not that easy to use day to day. And also, most people are not up to the responsibility of being their own bank. That was very attractive to you, obviously, when you started. You touched on that in 2012. But do you think your average person is ready to secure their own assets? Yeah, it's about a choice of philosophy for people. And I say that there's definitely reasons to keep stuff on an exchange. Sometimes if you think it makes sense, there's definitely reasons to be in control of it if you want.

And there's things in between. There's times when it's hard to evolve. There's not. But what is growing is the utility and the experiences and the user experience to create systems that people can still feel confident that they're in control, but they have backup mechanisms in place as well. And that's what it's going to take. It's going to take a way to say that a user feels comfortable being in control because they know there's a lot of fail-safe mechanisms in place that have been created and people have innovated in that. And there's been so much that happens over the year, but we're still very early on. And I've been building these tools. I build these interfaces and I build the experiences. And it's always been to build for my dad or who I'm in love with.

So it's, it's, it's how can I build stuff for the average person to do? That's always been our, our, my company's mandate building wallets and building interfaces that connect to these technologies. But, but I understand the case that it's not ready yet for those things. And maybe people feel safer in other ways. And well, there's those options as well. It's about options and choice. And the more choices that become available that are better will be the ones that survive longer for this, the ones that grow through. And I do hope there's a day that the average person is going to look at it and go, wow, this is easy. I feel safe.

It's a great experience. It's portable. It means I can take it from one system to another and not have to worry about one company failing or something like that happening. And this has improved my life. And it's a better way of doing things because I didn't like the way things were before. And I didn't like giving away my information, not being in control. And it's about empowering people. I think most people want to be empowered with the tools they need to be in control of their lives. And that's what I've been building. And I think a lot of colleagues are building that and it's going to keep getting better. I mean, with that in mind, if the end goal is that holistic experience where you're both secure and comfortable and confident in your ability to use it. How early are we and how far away are those solutions? I don't know.

I mean, it's not a yes or no thing for me. It's going to still take time. There are people that do understand things and want to be in control. I mean, we have thousands of New Year's of the day that are using Jack's Liberty, my wallet. And most of these are new people because we've identified the majority of our users are the 99% of the world that are not crypto fanatics and they just are looking into the bitcoin or looking

for ethereum maybe a couple other ones that's 95% of what goes on in the wallets we create and they're and they're doing well and of course there's going to be times when people don't understand that they got to be careful and they're going to a malicious copycat website that's out there of us or apps that get on the store that are not ours. And people put their keys in and their money gets taken. And that's an issue. So we're constantly trying to figure out better ways and better communications with how to take down the fake stuff that's out there,

which is, it's just, it's rampant. It's daily. We're dealing with problems like that, but there's literally thousands of people that use our product and new ones on a daily basis that that are um saying i'd rather go in this direction and i don't want to put my stuff on exchanges necessarily and i understand how this works and and i get it so it's a it's a wide slew of people a wide wide range of people of agents of different technological experiences and things like that and it'll keep getting uh better better tools and they'll feel more and more comfortable, I think, down the road.

But along the way, there's going to be a lot of hurt and there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be losing their money. But that's part of that personal responsibility movement, I think, that needs to happen in the world. I think being able to take the control for the individual of money, communication, and identities, those are three pillars that I build around. And I believe that those should be owned by an individual. An individual should be deciding how

and if they want to monetize what they are and what they have. And right now, it's almost a given to a lot of these business models that you give them something there and you're giving them your identity or you're giving them your decision-making and they're going to take it and decide what to do.

But we're seeing the problems that are coming with that and people are questioning that type of stuff. So I think we're on the right direction in what's going on in our industry. And I don't know how long it's going to be until we get to what you'd mentioned about everybody being safe. But I think there's a movement and a progression and I'm confident that's going to happen eventually. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, we've seen the progression with time.

Obviously, hackers become more interested, the more popular it becomes. And the more you have average people, the easier they are to target. I've heard the story you just told about your wallet at least five times in the last month. You know, somebody makes a copycat website, they tell you you're going to get an airdrop, you enter your private keys for them to give you the airdrop. And all of a sudden your account is liquidated. I mean, education, it's gotta be the education. And that's something that's always on the back of my mind too, is how do we educate as many people as possible? The ins and outs that you need to know about this space and so that people don't get harmed. Because it does really, you know, sometimes you feel, are you doing good?

Or are you getting into situations where people are getting harmed and would it make more sense to not be doing what I'm doing? Because you, or are you getting into situations where people are getting harmed and would it make more sense to not be doing what I'm doing? Because a guy messaged you yesterday that by using our wallet, he then downloaded a copycat site and he lost all his money. And you feel for this and you're like, like, like what can I do better to make the experiences better and to make the

information better? And it's a challenge, but it's something that I'm, you know, committed to keep doing for our, for our users. And it's a challenge, but it's something that I'm committed to keep doing for our users and just for the industry as a whole and working with other colleagues that have other wallets and working together on better best practices and other things that can be done. And as a community, working together to create better things for more people to help them out. I mean, it must be sickening to get those calls. I get messages all the time and I can't help. I didn't have a choice. Those you get and you get the requests for in the dire situations, people are asking for money and things and then it's heartbreaking. So what can you do about it? You just keep figuring out what, for me, it's the duty I feel I have to do bigger things

that are going to help more and more people. And that's where my mind is at. I mean, while we're sitting here talking and thousands of people will listen, and some of them may not be so passionate about crypto or understand these things, are there some very, very basic things that people should never do that we should be telling them about that maybe we haven't? I mean, we probably have. But like, for example, never to enter your private keys into any site anywhere. Yeah.

And that works until you have to restore your wallet onto a company's thing. And you thought you're in the right site, but you're not. So in order to to restore your wallet you've got to put your your private keys in and but you you're on the wrong site and and there that site is just there to take your private keys so uh ensuring that you're on the right location so double always check the the addresses double double check and verify um make sure you have the right site don't necessarily look at advertising there's a lot of fake malicious advertisements out there on google where

it'll be the first thing you see but that's to a uh a scam site such a problem with uniswap in the early days yeah it's happened with us it's happened with ledger it's happened with all kinds of wallets out there where and because we don't advertise, right? Like I don't spend a dime on advertising for our stuff. It's all been organic up to this point. We're getting into growth mode finally now to really start working on user acquisition now. But it's been eight years of building infrastructure for us. So when we don't advertise

and someone advertises using our name and they're at the top there and people are clicking that, it's like, gee, what do I do to stop that? It's it's like google how are you letting how is this being allowed to be on there so i am hoping those guys take a little more notice in the app stores about how they can control what's going on there and take a little more initiative to do that because things are running rampant and it's leading to a lot of people getting hurt and it's really unfortunate so what what should people be doing spend as much time researching and understanding the technology. If you're not sophisticated enough, perhaps align yourself with somebody or a group that you feel comfortable with and confident in.

It's all about knowledge. It's all about understanding the way things work. Maybe start dabbling in a little bit first. Really get a grasp of it and understand the things. But education and finding trusted sources is difficult it's hard to even go on the web and start like where's the starting point to learn about this you could ask 10 people and they'll say 10 different things but is there is there you know how do we get those trusted resources out that you can believe and there's so much noise out there and so many uh you know everybody and their uncles coming up with a new project in NFT now. And that happened with the ICO craze.

So there's just so much noise out there that a lot of people could just say, I'm too frustrated to even get into this. So how do we create that change that people will want to get involved in something that I think it's really important they understand and know? Because it's going to impact their lives very much. It's going to impact their children's lives. It's going to impact their sectors and businesses that they're in so it's i believe really important to stay ahead of the curve and know where things are going it's going to start piece by piece but but to just be stagnant and just throw your hands up i think um it's not the best option but then it's also up to the creators and the builders to provide the educators to

provide those sources and things that people can feel they have their hand being held for. So at the end of the day, it comes down to personal responsibility and educating yourself in a world where people often fail to take personal responsibility to educate themselves. It really is a tough challenge. I'd agree to that. I'm a big believer in personal responsibility. And I think the more that you get handouts, the more that you're given, it's harder to earn that principle or that tool about the importance of personal responsibility and being responsible for one's own actions. And

that's going to lead to more skills and more knowledge. And that's how you build trust capital. That's how you build all the different types of capital that are needed to be someone that is virtuous, I believe. Personal responsibility is a major message. I hope that there's a shift that happens towards that. Sometimes I question the direction a lot of things are going, but I am optimistic that we can do things that'll help get people to understand there's a better way to do that. And that personal responsibility

is something that might be challenging, but at the end of the day, it has its rewards. You just talked about not believing in handouts and believing obviously in personal responsibility as the United States government is actively dropping $1.9 trillion. It's not that I don't believe in handouts. I'd say that there's got to be, it's got to be a balance on that. And there's certain legitimate cases, I believe that our

handouts might be needed for things. But when that becomes the expected, this is the way that we're going to handle things. And why do I have to do anything? Because I'm just going to get a handout. It really creates a society, I think, that would go on a decline. And I think that shift has to be created more of the leadership that brings the idea and a plan of personal responsibility. And here's a plan of action

that we're going to lift society up and it's going to require a lot of work. And we're going to need people that want to work and want to contribute and if if that doesn't happen there's consequences to that not happening there's a there's other countries out there that are that are that are doing things differently and maybe what can be learned from those other countries that are leading to a flourishing and a thriving which is what i would think every company would want to be leading towards um so i i hope that that's that's the direction that the countries that are maybe not looking as good now can take and embrace new ways of doing things and be more mindful and more open to change.

That makes sense. So you're obviously somewhat bullish on the crypto space still, since you're actively building and you have Jack's Wallet, and obviously you've been innovating in the space forever. What do you view as the biggest potential threats to the success of this experiment? I think the common things that most people would be talking about are regulatory risk. There are going to be technical limitations and how long it's going to take to fix some issues and things. We're in this typical boom and bust cycle that's going to continue to happen when there's money to be made and people thinking that there's easy opportunities to come and try

to make a quick buck with things. So the amount of noise that's out there in projects will eventually lead to resets and will lead to a delayed time for actual meaningful technologies to make their way and figure out how we're going to be brought in. So I think that's what's happening in the NFT space right now. I think the, you know, NFTs were sexy to me maybe three, four or five years ago with the thought of what could be done with that. And I've always felt physical and digital needs to come together more, not just necessarily digital. I think there's a difference between a Bitcoin and an NFT digital art piece. A Bitcoin you have and you own and you only have one of that.

I can take a print of an NFT and I can put it on my wall here. It doesn't mean I own it, but I have a print of it. So it has to figure out where the value comes in from these systems. So that's why I like the idea of physical and digital together. And not just that, but also experiential. Those three things coming together can provide a new layer to NFT that we don't have or haven't seen too much of yet. Right now, it's a lot of the early stages of the traditional boom and bust cycles of what happens with anything. Everybody it's, it's in the, you know, the, the,

everybody's just in a fury right now with this and try to figure out how they can, can, can utilize this to make some money. And, and over time, it's going to, it's going to progress. Innovation is going to happen and the real value and it's going to, it's going to, it's going to find its place. It's going to come out of it. So I think the, the, the cycles are definitely going to, you know, ups and downs and I don't know how long things are going to be ups and downs. I don't know how long things are going to take and what are the benchmarks for this to be considered a success.

I'm not exactly sure what that particularly is right now. I would say regulatory is probably a big thing. The countries that are not embracing and trying to think different about regulations and how do we solve the problems that we have? I don't like to say we how did they how are problems solved but um in a way that are thinking differently because you can't use the same tools to solve the same problems that have always been the same way so there needs to be an advancement in the way that regulatory regulations are looked at and the

countries that figure that out are going to be the ones that thrive that create new jobs that create and export their talent their skills and all the different things that out are going to be the ones that thrive, that create new jobs, that create and export their talent, their skills, and all the different things that you want to have as a country. And for me, that's what I want to do here in Canada. I'm from Toronto here, born and raised in Canada. I'm British-Italian, there's no background. But I think Canada has a lot of stuff to offer here.

We're very multicultural. We have these certain things that I don't think a lot of other countries have in terms of such a great, vast wealth of culture and people that are also humble. And also, I think that gives us some edge on certain things. And it's those countries that recognize how can they do better for themselves? And then how can they do better for other countries? How can they take what's been learned here and export that knowledge in a way that's saying, we don't want to hold it here. We want to put it out there for others to take

and others to use and others. Because at the end of the day, if we're all being and coming forward in this global system that we're in here, it's going to be better for everybody. So I'm hoping that that's what a lot of the countries are striving towards. And the ones that are more restrictive, the ones that are trying to really hold things together

and restrain within borders and restrain things and try to protect, to me, that's fighting. And fighting is not the best way to do things. And the more free and open and the more you can work with others, the more ideas are going to flourish and grow. So regulatory is something that's a question mark. Different countries are going to thrive and succeed and others are going to flourish and grow. So regulatory is something that's a question mark. Different countries are going to thrive and succeed, and others are going to learn from it, hopefully, because if they don't, they're going to struggle. So it's a fine balance of things.

What's the problem and why are they regulating? What are they really concerned about here? Let's think about that problem. And then is there a better way to do it that's also going to encourage technology flourishing and growth and new ideas and innovation. And that's where problem solving and entrepreneurs need to step up and come together to provide those solutions I believe to go. Yeah, it's interesting because it sounds once again, like you're describing how Ethereum

was built, right? I mean, you had a core group and then you open the doors and everybody built on it and it sort of improved. If countries behave that way, it would be incredible but uh we largely don't see them do that um maybe it's interesting you get more and more crypto people that are going to be getting involved in in the role politics you've got people like brock pierce uh trying to take active roles in service and a few other of my colleagues that are that are getting positions and things and maybe it's those ideas that are going to create the change. And I look forward to that happening.

Right. I mean, I think regulation is inevitable. We can all agree on that. So the threat ends up being just sort of blind or dumb regulation, so to speak, right? It's regulation from people that have no core understanding of what they're regulating. Yeah, exactly. Which is funny because I think we all know that I'm in the United States, but I think we all know that our senators and congressmen don't read or write Yeah, exactly. excuse. So how does that equate? I mean, how does that even work? So yeah, there's just a lot of

written stuff out there and a lot of laws and a lot of rules out there and maybe there's a better way. It's interesting what you were saying about NFTs. We've seen these sort of, I guess, bubbles as you would describe it throughout the crypto history. Certainly ICOs in 2017, as you touched on, some could argue that the last summer for DeFi was somewhat that way where with the food coins and rug pulls and yield farming and all that. Now, obviously we're seeing this sort of crazy growth in NFTs, but essentially you said I can hang a JPEG of it on your wall. How's that different than every single girl in my college dorm having a picture of the Starry Night on their wall. But we obviously know that that's not the original Van Gogh

that's hanging there. It's bragging rights. Oh, yeah, sure. That's for sure. I don't want to say it in a negative connotation or in a negative way like that, but it's literally there's collectors out there that they collect.

And that's what they do. I'm not one of those. But to say that they have that Mona Lisa, they have that thing is what they're going after. People are willing to spend a lot of money and that's what markets are. So whatever people are willing to buy and sell

I think gives the value of what that product is. And that's what we're seeing right now. And we're seeing history being made is what it is. And people want to be a piece of history, part of history. And then you see new business models that are going to develop from this as well and how are you going to monetize those things and do these things and that's innovation it's really exciting to think of all these uh you know limitless possibilities that

are going to emerge from this and it's going to find its way and it's going to going to uh you know after it kind of i think there's gonna be a reset there's gonna be a reset and you're going to be done a slow building it's just that it follows the traditional formulas. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Everybody gets really excited. Most of what they invest in becomes worth nothing. And then it's the internet boom of the 90s.

We always throw back to that. But the phoenix rise from the ashes and we see what's actually worth something. It's also funny you mentioned that, the idea that you mentioned about me picking up on crypto right away. I introduced people to crypto in 2017. Well, not crypto, but into NFTs and into Ethereum in 2017 on our unrelated. I was looking to get a video guy to do some work for me for the boat cruise I was doing in New York City for

consensus. And I connected with people and we talked and I'm like explaining to him the opportunity for artists and what's going to be going on and and uh he messaged me last year as I started looking in he's like Anthony I remember our conversation from last night I wish I I wish I kept it going on that but this is amazing and I'm so awesome so it's like it's like hey I didn't do anything there you didn't take it up but that's all good but I'm so proud of you for what you're doing now and he's just been been doing an amazing job's all good. But I'm so proud of you for what you're doing now. And he's just been doing an amazing job with it. And it's so proud of him and the payoff of work that he's done over these 14 years of every day. And that just shows determination of what you can achieve if you put your head to things and you build your skill. And it can pay off.

And I'm hoping that's what artists are going to grab from this is is a new avenue for them to empower to monetize digital and that's what there's that's why this is so exciting is that you have musicians and you have uh artists you have all these different things that are recognizing now with digital you can create something that you can you can give ownership to somebody else and that can go and it's people's minds are getting blown and that's why it's going big so it's not that getting blown and that's why it's going big. So it's not that it's a, it's a, it's a bad thing. And it's not that this is not amazing technology. It is. But it's going to have to find its way.

And there's going to be along the way it's going to, it's going to have, you know, people are going to lose a lot of money. People are going to, are going to, you know, do well. Some aren't, but that's just the cycles and the way that things are. And then we'll finally find its way and it's going to improve everybody's lives it's going to find its niche and it's going to be great and people go wow this is amazing that's that's what the internet is that's what computers do that's what motors do everything is like that and uh and it's it's exciting to see these new things come out and to be living while this stuff is happening and seeing it

emerge yeah people is actually the podcast before you. Incredible conversation with him and just such a smart and interesting person. And it's a lesson that the cream rises to the top. Yeah. Right. I mean, his art's not going anywhere.

His art's not going anywhere. Hard work and building your skills and your tools are going to, are going to get you ahead. And who knows if you ever thought this would have the payback that he's had now, but he's been successful for a very long time. Yes. He's been super successful. He's a great follower and hardworking.

And these are all, I think, great things that people can look up to and strive towards. And when you get stories like that, it's got to inspire the youth and inspire the little guys to say, wow, he did this and this is what hard work is. And that's the direction that I want to go. And that's, you know, I give it to him and others that do that for providing the leadership to, to, to, and, and role models to do that. Right. And obviously for anyone who's like, sort of more deeply involved in the space,

they realize that maybe art is not the end all be all for NFT technology anyways. Right. I mean, it's the more boring things, the brass tacks, the ownership of my car or my mortgage and those kinds of things that can be tokenized, you know, with non-fungible tokens that probably are the bigger future, I would imagine. And that's, that's why, you know, what's, what's going on now. It's not the most exciting thing for me is because I I've been involved in those projects, like VeChain and I was an early funder for that. This was all about how can you take a chip and embed it into a Louis Vuitton handbag and then be able to prove that that is not a counterfeit.

That's been around for a while. How can you embed things into auto parts to ensure that these are legitimate things? How do you put a chip in a wine bottle to prove that that wine is authentic from the manufacturer so that's the the exciting things to me and then it's even you know but that's been exciting or that's been around for years for me as well so how do you take that into the next level and do things is is what's interesting and exciting and i never really personally got in with just a matter of time but it's always been something i felt was you know there's a lot a lot of amazing new ways to, to prove ownership

and to prove chain of custody and to prove authenticity that, that this is just kind of starting out within the world's kind of becoming more and more aware of it right now. Yeah. So what are you working on next with Jack's wallet or, and in any other projects that you're working on, but but like what are the problems you're solving immediately at this this moment with those projects so there's three actually things that I'm doing I got Jack's delivery which is the culmination of eight years of infrastructure building we identified what were all the things needed for the internet that are

needed for crypto so you have the new decentralized world emerging and what's going to be needed for that. You have a browser for the internet, you have a wallet for crypto. You have cloud services for the internet, you have your blockchain as a service, services for crypto. You have your partnership network, app stores, things like that, you have the same thing for crypto. I've been building for 8-years all those tools. So the browser is the wallet. That's the interface, the infrastructure that we've been building to connect to these networks. And that's not an easy feat to create scalable, interoperable back-end systems to connect to Ethereum. So every time there's a new block, we've got to show our users all around the world that your wallet just changed based on that new block.

And it's not just for Ethereum. It's for all these other coins that we support. How does that all talk together? So we've been building the AWS of crypto to be able to have others build on our stuff. And right now, Jaxx is the client for our infrastructure. But eventually, my goal is to bring that to the enterprise level and be able to have developers and others build on our infrastructure because it works. It's fantastic. It's scalable. It's been eight years of research and trial and error.

And it's not something you can pick up in a year. So we've really created something of value. That's been a lot of hard work and a lot of making mistakes and a lot of figuring out, why do I need to reset this every single day and have to have a team working on this? And it's like, our stuff just works now.

It's scalable. We don't have to have, they just literally just been functioning for a year and we don't have to touch it. And that's like, our stuff just works now. It's scalable. We don't have to have, they just literally just been functioning for a year and we don't have to touch it. And that's just an amazing feat because I don't know of any other system out there that's really like that. So bringing the enterprise stuff to developers

so that they have the tools to build on top of is kind of the next level goal for Jackson. And now we're just started this year with scaling and user acquisition. It hasn't even started yet, actually. It's starting imminently, where we are, for the first time ever, looking for users. And when you do 2,000 to 7,000 users a day already organically,

we don't even know where they come from because we don't spend a dime to bring them in. Well, what can we do when we actually start doing that? And that's what I'm really excited to figure out. I've never scaled and grown a company, and this is an exciting time for me to do that and maximize what I've done over the last eight years of building.

And then the goal is to have the capital from that to shift to be the person that's going to change the incentive structure. So I'm looking to exit and I'm looking to shift towards the idea of being a leader that moves towards creating compounding impact. And that's the new model of doing things things and you'll get what you want by doing that. So I have a project that I'm, I'm not, that I'm going to be rolling out after I'm done with what I'm doing, but my focus is on Jackson central right now. But at the end of the day,

I need to have that capital to do the larger thing. And I don't take investor money. So I always have to figure out ways that I'm, that I'm funding the things that I want to do because me taking investor money turns me down in the cycle of getting a maximized return, which means I can't move the speed I want, the pace I want. So that's always been a principle of mine is, you know, it's whatever possible,

try to do situations where, where you can be in control and you can fund things and you're taking that responsibility on yourself without having to, to promise something to someone that you, that that's taking a lot of your energy and time to do. So that's another lesson that I, that I hope to get across to a lot of people is whenever you can is to try to, to do things in a way that you're not, you know,

becoming beholden to others and responsibility to others. And that's why I don't why I don't have a crypto project now or a coin. I just don't want that responsibility. I just don't want that. That's why I don't take investor money. I would rather use my own money to do the projects that I want because

win or lose it, at least it was mine and it's not someone else's. That helps me to lead a more simpler life. There's a lot of other things, but it helps me to maintain that balance because I, I can't imagine what I'd have to do if I had investors or people on my back to provide in these returns. And, and then I'm not going to get to where I want to go when I want to get there, because that's what my mind is on. And that's not a best serving of my time. Entrepreneurship sometimes dies when investors get involved, because even though you're

an entrepreneur, you are working for someone, right? I mean, at the end of the day, you're working for them. And as you said, if you have a coin, you're somewhat working for the people who hold that coin, or at least you answer to them. That's right. And, you know, we did it with Ethereum. It was a kind of a different ballgame back then. I didn't have the money to, you know, I put all my money into funding Ethereum off the bat before the crowd sale. So that, that was the best I could do at that time. And it was such an opportunity even to have, you know, five partners when we started and then eight partners, that was a challenge and chore to make decisions and everything.

And I, and I'd learned in the past that I don't want partners really. It's just, it's, it's, I'd rather, I'd rather, you know rather i'd rather you know you need the coach you need the you need you need the person and i want to make fast decisions and if you can work with people and bring tools from people that's how i'd rather do things um not to say i would never have partners in the future uh but it's got to be a right fit with things and and i just for me what works best for me is the way that i'm doing things right now and not having other investors and not having partners. And it allows me to, I think, to move at the pace I want and slow down when I want to and speed up when I want to and do it at the time it takes because stuff takes a long time. And things can take 10 to 20 years sometimes to do things that get to where they are.

And when you have people breathing down your neck because their thesis is than yours, and they want stuff right now, it's tough. And that's just not the way that I like to do things. It comes down again to, I mean, personal responsibility. Once again, you're one of the few people who's willing to take the responsibility for your decisions and wants to be responsible for your actions. It's interesting that you said that things can take 10, 20 years, they can be very slow. You've been building jacks for your actions. It's interesting though, you said that things can take 10, 20 years. They can be very slow. You've been building jacks for eight years. We joke that crypto is like dog years

or even worse, right? So a year in crypto is like 10 years or seven years dog years in a legacy market or somewhere else. So you've basically been building jacks for like 55 years before even being concerned. Even being concerned with user acquisition. So I think that makes you a bit of a unicorn in this space and sort of is a

testament to how seriously you take what you're building. I don't see projects launch in two weeks. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's the last thing that I want is not to be able to serve our customers with things and, and, and get into the weeds on something because we launched too early or we we we we couldn't support this amount of users at a certain time and and that's where we feel we're comfortable to be able to do this now to be able to have the scalability and interoperability with our systems that we're not going to get in the weeds and i got a small team

i'm a super small team i've gone from 60 down to like six people and i love it and we've automated more and we've we've done things that help get the scaling ready to go, but I find it such more easy, such easy. It's easier for me to manage these things and we outsource a few more things now, but that I find it works better for me. And if I'm in balance and I'm in harmony with what I'm doing in my life and my work, I feel I can tackle the things that I want to do. When I, when I feel I'm overwhelmed with things, I, I, I,

and I feel that I have to take a break or a reset that's not the best way to do things like I'm trying to navigate and figure out that harmony and balance and it's it's a struggle but I feel I'm much further along here because I've got bigger things I want to do and it's always like wow how am I going to do those even bigger things that I want to do so I've got to consistently be figuring out ways to to balance and making sure I'm getting the sleep and making sure I'm getting time for myself and making sure I'm getting that time to reflect on all these different things. It's so important. And that's, you know, I'm an early riser. I love to have my time. I can just do this stuff.

And, but I need that balance and it's easy to get sucked away from that. So it's having the discipline to be able to stick with your, with what it is that you need to know or else you can very easy in this world to be bombarded with information stimuli that you just you just the brain is not ready to absorb it and that's where i think imbalance happens and anxiety happens and depression you can take hold and things like that so um balance and harmony is is something that's that's a definitely a very important thing for me and i'm not all the way there yet, but I'm still striving. Nobody is. Yeah. Yeah. I struggle. That's one of my biggest struggles as well. I mean, I have two young kids and a wife and I don't want to be staring at a Bitcoin chart every second of every day. It is a challenge, but balance really is the key to everything. And

I think that's a great sort of parting, parting idea. Cause I know we're up against it here with, with time. So where can everybody follow you and keep up with what you guys are doing? And now that you are thinking about user acquisition, where can everybody sign up? That's it. So our website for JAX is jax.io.

For me, it's my Twitter. I don't do much on social media. Twitter is the best way to connect with me. I'm going to start being a little more active. And now the growth and scaling i am doing more things out there but it is a fine balance there as well for me all right seeing different things but uh um yeah twitter is probably the best way to connect with me and see what's going on there and uh um yeah that's probably best well thank you man so much i'm really looking forward to seeing now that you've left it sort of open-ended, like you have this huge plan after Jax that you're going to use the money for.

I want to know what it is. So we're going to have to catch up down the road when the time comes and do this again. I'd love to. That's the thing that's really driving me forward is the changing the incentive structures that I got the plan to do it. So I'm really excited to get that off and get that going. And thank you. Thank you for having me and for what you're doing and the knowledge and the

bringing people together to keep people informed. This is, this is what's important. These types of things to bring people. So thank you. Thank you. Let me know if I can help. Outro Music