The Wolf Of All Streets - Unlocking $700 trillion through Crypto with John Wu of Ava Labs

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

Since John Wu’s first appearance on the podcast, Avalanche Protocol, alongside Avalanche Labs, has snowballed into a multi-billion dollar network. But this is only the beginning with Wu’s goal to unlock hundreds of trillions of illiquid assets trapped in financial systems. He envisions not only to put the world into second gear but at the same time, improve the lives of those who haven’t been given a fair chance financially. For once the individual can become financially empowered, and not be at the beck and call of governments or powerful corporations. Follow John Wu: https://twitter.com/John1wu In this episode, Melker and Wu discuss a range of topics including: Digitizing $700 trillion in assets Miami as the crypto hub The printing press and internet 1.0 Worthless risk-adjusted yield Ava Labs complimenting Ethereum Hiring more lawyers than employees The death of the dollar and replacing banks Self-empowerment through crypto Trillions sitting on corporate balance sheets Early investing in web 2.0 NFTs and musicians ---- NEXO 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 https://thewolfofallstreets.link/nexo 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 https://thewolfofallstreets.link/Bitcasino, to unlock your 200 FREE SPINS in the Legacy of Dead Promotion. –––– COSMOS Visit https://thewolfofallstreets.link/cosmos to learn about the Cosmos Hub and how the $ATOM can connect every blockchain. Cosmos is the port city connecting chains like Bitcoin and Ethereum to ensure your liquidity on any chain can be used anywhere. Find new staking opportunities, applications, or build your own parachain at cosmos.network. https://thewolfofallstreets.link/cosmos ---- 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 ---- Join the Wolf Den newsletter: ►►https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen/members

What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast. Traditional finance is fragmented. Trillions of dollars are caught up in complicated systems that fail to easily interact with one another. Blockchain and crypto help solve this, and that's exactly why I asked today's guest to make a second appearance on the show. John is the president of Ava Labs, whose objective is to open up financial services and products to everyone. John understands legacy finance because on top of Ava Labs, he has an impressive resume in the hedge fund world, managing billions of dollars.

John Mood, thank you so much for coming back on a second time. Scott, it's a pleasure. And it's always fun. It's a great conversation. Awesome, Al. I'm glad to have you back. And once again, before we get into the questions, 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, art, music, sports, politics, anyone with a good story to tell. This podcast is powered by Blockworks, the fastest growing media company in the digital asset space. You can check them out at blockworks.co. And if you like the podcast and follow me on Twitter, you can find my newsletter and basically everything else at thewolfofallstreets.io. So now to dive right into today's episode. I saw you recently had the opportunity to meet Mayor Suarez down in Miami. What was that like? Because it seems like they've come out of nowhere as the leader in the United States for crypto and fintech. Well, I mean, we've been growing leaps and bounds. I think last we spoke, we were about like 40 people.

Now we're pressing 100. And we are a very distributed global firm. And frankly, there's a lot of people now we're recruiting in the city of Miami. So we need to have a presence there. And Miami has done an unbelievable job of inviting people to come in and build and develop there. You know, they want the capital there. They want the intellectual capital there, and they make it very friendly and easy. So it was a pleasure meeting him. And I can tell you, when I walked around the streets in Miami, Brickell, the business area, South Beach

area, it literally reminded me when I first got into finance in the late 90s and 2000s in New York City, in Manhattan. Everyone is buzzing. Dinners are happening all over the place. Obviously, we have COVID, but even ex-COVID, it just seems a little less energy in the New York area. But Miami, it's picked up all the slack. And I can say the same thing about San Fran too, by the way. It's like San Fran and New York, it's kind of lost some energy, it feels like, but the energy is vibrant down there. Yeah, that's what I've heard. It's interesting. I lived there for almost five years until about four years ago. And our joke used to be that the problem with Miami was that nobody had a job or could tell you what they did. And nobody cared about anything because everybody

was either a tourist or just living off someone else's money in Miami. It feels like there's been this epic transformation now to where it's a legit become a legitimate business center. So I'm looking forward to getting back down there and spending some time. I think actually the biggest problem in Miami is the weather is so nice. When people go down there, why would they work? They just want to hang out and check out that beautiful view and the sunny and absorb that sun. That was my biggest problem. I had a music studio in Wynwood and it would be like, make music today or surf and surfing like inevitably won every single time. I can't blame anyone. So back when we spoke last time,

I believe your mainnet had literally just launched. I think it was in October. So can you talk about the progress that's been made? You obviously already have told us you went from 40 to 100 employees, which is astounding. So what's been happening with the mainnet and the progress? Oh, I mean, first of all, it's a fantastic time for the entire space, I would say. A lot of progress for everyone. For us, we have now like 900 plus validators. So we're very decentralized. That's close to like $9 billion of state value. We have 50 plus live projects that is deploying. so you know as a refresher avalabs is the team behind avalanchards the protocol and the protocol now has 50 projects building on top of it and i can see a clear line to another hundred that is in the process of integrating for the next month or so and then after that there's another long line um what else there's been over 1 million smart contract transactions on the protocol. The, you know, $120 million worth of assets have come over from Ethereum. There is an Ethereum Avalabs bridge. It's called AEB. So assets can go back and forth. So it's a lot of momentum, a lot of great things happening. And it's just a lot of fun, basically. That's incredible. So I'm actually curious what you just talked about,

because we still hear that the bulk of projects are being built on Ethereum, but it sounds like there is this actual sort of migration away. So first of all, it depends on which layer one, there's a whole bunch of layer ones, and even layer twos out there. I think if I take a holistic view first, you know, I think of the first generation, obviously, was just simple Bitcoin. And that introduced to the world, digital money and store value. Then you had Ethereum, and Ethereum was fantastic that, you know, people started building things on top, ecosystems started developing, but there was one issue. You can't have a real economy, a digital economy when costs are high, there's a lot of latency

and you can't scale. So transactions can't happen. So this whole new generation, what I call like, you know, crypto wave three guys like Avalanche and some others have now been building the capability to have faster, larger transactions, as well as lower costs. So when transactions and exchanges can happen, an economy can happen. So wave three is more like about an economy. And in terms of how we view Ethereum, we think of ourselves, Avalabs at least, and then Avalanche, the protocol, as not a competitor, a complement to the Ethereum ecosystem. And when the team at Avalabs developed our consensus

protocol, it was with that mindset out there. So now Avalanche, a protocol that's out there, I think people who build on top of Avalanche have the same view. In other words, okay, there's a bridge. So people want to go back from Ethereum to us, they can do that. But because of different functionality, they can do different things and create different projects and things that perhaps they can't do over there. But over there, there are, you know, 2,500 plus devs and large user base. So there are things we can't do that they're doing. And this goes with the other, you know, layer one guys, smart contract platforms as well.

So I don't think of us as taking share. I think they have about Ethereum 2,500. The Avalanche protocol has about 300 developers. I think some of the other protocols have about the same. So that's coming from zero, sure. But 300, 400 is a nice amount. But still, that is still so low compared to the millions that are developing on iOS or Android. Right. So Ethereum seems like this monster, but actually relative to any other space, it's quite small. Yeah, that's right. That's interesting. You don't really think about that. Yeah. But that's, you know, it's interesting because, you know, I try to make analogs from my previous life as an investor. I really think though,

wave three is not going to be a winner take all in this thing. It's going to be more like winner take most. You'll have your equivalent of a Facebook, and then you're going to have TikTok, Snapchat, Clubhouse, and everyone's going to have specialties that you just can't replicate being a massive generalist. That makes sense. Because to me, from the outside, obviously, I'm not a programmer or developer, and I'm not intimately involved. But it feels like we've got this sort of Roman Colosseum gladiator, like everybody trying to kill everybody vibe on the outside. It's nice to hear that you view yourself complimentary, but I'm assuming that it's still extremely competitive, you know, considering how nascent the market is and how fast it's growing. Oh yeah. It's very competitive, but I think competition in general is good. It

makes everyone work faster, harder. I don't know what the overlap in those developer numbers. I can just tell you that the people who want to go on Avalanche, they usually go on for two reasons. One, wow, costs are lower. And two, it's, wow, given this ability in the platform, maybe I can do this that couldn't be done somewhere else. Right. So they have the flexibility to maybe build exactly what they want that they can't build elsewhere. Which leads me to the idea, you said that you've already had 50, which is incredible. What kind of projects are you seeing launching on Avalanche? Who is driven to use you guys as opposed to these other ones? And why is that? Sure. So I would say there are two types of

projects that have been building on top of the Avalanche protocol. One type is basically end users, for instance, AMMs, people can use. The other type of projects I'll put in the bucket of tooling and infrastructure. So providing some functionality, taking advantage of a different type of technology, different platform that they can build something that perhaps they can't do elsewhere

and anticipating for a multi-blockchain world, so to speak. I mean, I think we were talking about Covalent. That's a perfect example. When you have, and they're multi-blockchain oriented. So the way I think about them, it's very simple. They have figured a way out to now and create partnerships to basically provide data. And when the data that they can provide in an easy interface, like kind of like an API you can plug in, allows developers to actually unleash emergent dreams and technologies because now they have more tools and infrastructure to work with. So it's really two types. Some of them are user interfacing and others are really the backbone that's going to, you know, with the velocity of how fast things are being built and improvements in technology, it just blows your

mind what this could be. I kind of hope in 10 years, the answer is the way we treat AWS. It's just there. Yeah. And the benefit of this is not only is it just there, I hope we adjust for some of the issues I see with what I call Web 2.0. In other words, empowering the individual again, giving them their own data, giving them more self-governance because it's distributed or decentralized governance, allowing them to have a vote in everything they do.

I mean, as an early investor in a lot of these web 2.0, call it tech companies, it was fantastic in the sense that they provided a lot of great use cases for individuals. And then somewhere along the line, they took that data and started using it

to quote unquote optimize my experience. And then that's okay. So I can buy something faster because they can show me something better. They can show me newsfeeds better. But I think somewhere along the line here, we kind of crossed that Rubicon. And now it's like, I own your data. I'm going to monetize your data. And I'm going to use it to kind of manipulate you so that you will buy more stuff or do something more so I can make more money off of you. And that is, you know, part of the reason why I think there is this great growth in blockchain and crypto, because people look at this as a way to be empowered as having a vote. I think to some degree, people became the, you know, started as the consumer and became the product, you know, and I don't know when that line was crossed, sort of as you talked

about it, but that to me is the simplest term to view it as. But that definitely lends the question, you're building these systems that can stop that, but they're not going to want you to, right? And I've had these conversations where people say, yeah, they'll adapt because they'll have to. I don't buy that, right? I think they'll fight it tooth and nail to the very end because this is how they're making their money. Well, they will, they will fight it from, but in the end, again,

10, 15 years from now, first of all, there'll always be parallel universes. That's usually how these things happen and a smaller crop and then a larger crop. And then they, and the better one ultimately, you know, moves into the pole position, so to speak. But what they did in internet and software land was they provided a better experience for the end user because they were able to do it cheaper. And for other reasons, because they became from hardware to software, and then the network effects took over. And then all of a sudden it was like, you see their margins in their companies going crazy, 67%, 80% sometimes, gross margins. And sometimes even EBITDA margins are that high. So basically, they made a very

lightweight solution. But what the blockchain and cryptocurrency world does is they disintermediate even more. And they are still hopefully at some point able to provide the same type of product with even fewer intermediaries and even more streamlined workflow. So in theory, if you can figure out an income statement on these companies, their margins will be even higher. So ultimately there's an economic reason if this is done well. Also, there is a, I guess, a spirit among people, I believe that they love to have more control and more freedom. And if they can be a voice and a vote in how they are monetized, or how things work, that probably will overpower any monopolistic body that is just

trying to extract their Schumpeterian rents, I think. It's almost like going back in the family tree and isolating where it went wrong and starting a new branch from that side where we take all the benefits of sort of those Web 2.0 companies that you talked about and all the amazing things. Because clearly, I mean, it changed the world, like you said, and just branching off from where they started to take advantage of their consumer base. I've listened to some of your guests and I think, and this is what's great about it. You have like great guests and you have great ways of asking questions to get information out. And I don't know who said this, but you know,

it was the first is another form of this. It happened many like a hundred years ago, you know, the Gutenberg press printing machine. So that allowed a whole new group of people and made information travel a lot better and that empowered people and ultimately better things happen. So that was internet 1.0. That was, you know, basically getting information around everyone becoming more aware of things so they can make their own, have their own judgment of things. I think this, but that ultimately turned into, and I think your guests even said it, a very bad system because now you have fake things going,

being published. Everyone is a publisher now. So it became like printing facts to just printing opinions and persuading people. You're trying to basically poke at their feelings as opposed to make them think about things. So it's like, it turned into the lowest common denominator entertainment aspect, as opposed to getting real information to people's minds so they can think properly. Sure. That was Robert Breedlove. He's brilliant. And he was basically talking about how that took the power away from the church because people had access to information that wasn't directly fed to them from the church. And as you said, it sort of evolved to their benefit at first. And then obviously it's hard detriment sort of later. You talked about how these things develop in

parallel universes. And I sort of love that because that's often how I think about the future of the financial system. A lot of people in the crypto space like to talk about replacing the banks and the death of the dollar and Bitcoin becoming a global currency. Okay. Possible, I guess. But I like to think that it's more realistic that we can build a system that runs alongside that, that allows people to opt out and function throughout their lives without having to rely on those legacy systems. So if that's the case, is that really what you guys are building at this point is sort of that parallel system that allows people to opt out without replacing it? So the Avalanche protocol has easy subnets and subnets are basically,

think of it almost like a private blockchain. So if enterprises wanted to come in and create their own private blockchain, which is permission, they can do that for the benefit of the workflow, as opposed to the spirit of what crypto and blockchain is all about. So we allow for both worlds. And reality is, if you're talking about DeFi as an example, DeFi is fantastic. It's showing the world where we can be one day. You're definitely disintermediating a lot of people and stuff in between. You're allowing trap money to be out there. So in theory, that's part of the reason why yields are higher. But it is a riskier bet. That's why the yields are so high. There's a lot of unknown risks there. Whereas in the traditional finance world, and it's also frankly a different market, like not everyone is involved in DeFi or wants to be in DeFi. The traditional financial world yields are providing a service, taking a piece of that

yield, giving the customer a more safe risk adjusted yield at the end of the day. And they feel comfortable with that. So right now, if you talk about the consumer, you can almost think about it like two different consumers, one that prefers high volatility and higher yield. The other one wants stable, lower yield. But I know my money will be there if something hits the fan. Right. I think that's all good and well until those yields become zero in those systems, which is sort of where we are. And to your point.

Well, that goes back to your earlier dollar comment. OK, so that was, the financial economy inside of their country is just a reflection of the product that they product. And if you think of dollar as their product, what they are doing right now is literally devaluing that product by increasing supply at rates no one's ever seen before. I mean, you know, we went through this financial crisis, and then in 2008, and they started printing money. Back then, and that's not a lot long ago. You and I have been around, but like that, it's only 10 plus years ago, 11, 12 years. And we talked about the number trillion. And we were like, wow. And now they throw it out there like it's 10 years later.

Yeah. It's a passing thought. Yeah. That's nothing. That's nothing. What is a trillion? I mean, I saw you on Twitter for you, though Mark Yusko did a great job of explaining what a few trillion is. And that was a great way to let people think about how much money that is. So they are devaluing their best and biggest product. And I fear, and I think Peter Thiel was on CNBC today talking about it. I fear that one of the best things we have is going to be devalued and letting other countries take the lead in things that we should be doing. Peter Thiel is interesting because I believe, I can't quote him obviously off the top of my head, but the gist of what he said was that China would weaponize Bitcoin against the United States for the very reason that you just discussed. He's a huge Bitcoin bull. So I think a lot of people were taking it as much more of a negative than he intended it. I think he was just obviously showing how powerful Bitcoin is and how the practice you just described of printing is

dangerous. But I actually think they're much more likely to weaponize a central bank digital currency against the United States, a digital yuan, which they're actively trying to do. I really don't see Bitcoin as being their tool. I think that's great. It's another maximalist dream to give it that much importance, but that's why they're developing central bank digital currency there, right? I think they're both related. So their central bank digital currency gives them more power, but promoting Bitcoin affects other central banks. So one's a tool for diminishing someone else, and the other tool is used for making themselves more powerful. That makes perfect sense. That makes perfect sense. So that said, do we see the Chinese or other central banks start to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet, just like we see,

you know, the micro strategies and Tesla's and squares of the world? Well, I think we got to keep the micro strategies and the Tesla's still, I mean, that's just a long runway for that. Yes. You know, I think Tesla has like 1.5 billion or something now and Bitcoin some large number. But where I read was in the S&P 500, there is like still trillions of dollars that are just sitting in cash on the balance sheets of those S&P 500 companies. So if you just took a small percentage of that cash going into Bitcoin, we're talking about 100,000 easily. So there is still a long way for that group before even the central banks do it. The central banks who are involved in this, it seems like they're more interested in using the benefits of the technology, but

giving them more control. So again, it's kind of like a better gizmo for them to have more control. Yeah. I mean, I say this all the time, but like a digital currency is a central bank wet dream, right? It's perfect. And control of every single penny, maybe not pennies in their case, but they can control the money supply and every single transaction. This is probably why Facebook is doing their own digital currency, because they have so much information on us. But now if they can marry that directly to the actual purchase of things, then what freedom do we have? It's like kind of gone. It's terrifying, honestly. You talked about these trillions of dollars locked in their balance sheet. I listened to a recent interview you did, and you mentioned that $360 trillion are locked in an outdated financial system. What were you talking about specifically when you said that? have estimated there's like $720 trillion of assets out there. A lot of that is in public

stock markets and public things that people can get assets to. But there's a lot of real estate and things that are not easily exchangeable that sit on balance sheets of enterprises as well as financial service firms. If you can digitize a lot of that and basically issue that and allow those assets to free flow and exchange of ownership, then we are talking about unlocking more value with better price discovery. That's basically what I was talking about. And then you give access to the individual to possibly purchase things that before only a large private equity firm can actually buy or dedicated real estate funds or dedicated whatever type funds. So that's what I meant by that.

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But what's absolutely amazing about this is it's not the project themselves that are sponsoring the show. It's their community. They pooled their resources and funds to get the word out because they're so incredibly passionate about their project. Now, why are they passionate about it? Well, there's a few things I'm really excited about. First, they have a new DEX or decentralized exchange that's coming out that will connect to any blockchain where you can swap ERC-20, Ethereum tokens, or any other token with Adam.

Also, this decentralized exchange will have order books just like you see on centralized exchanges, which does not exist right now in the DEX world. It's really mind-blowing. Also, they've launched an incredible open-source interconnect protocol that will bridge any blockchain to any other through the Cosmos hub. They're redefining interoperability. Guys, you have to check out everything that Cosmos is doing and go ahead and check out the Atom token. You can do all of that at cosmos.network. You and I talked about NFTs in our last conversation and people obviously now we've seen this boom. It's on Saturday Night Live. It's become a catchphrase, you know, in the mainstream, but they think about it as sort of the art and someone selling worlds will exist. Yes. So I think the, since we last talked, I mean, NFT market was nothing back then. Today, it's like, it's incredible. We're getting calls left and right and what NFT has actually done that I think has been even better than the DeFi community has done is it's brought over traditional athletes celebrities and other things into this world it's not a much but if someone's doing I think there's like

x hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions now in NFTs. But if you do the analysis behind it, I would bet that is more what they call normies than pure. It's a bigger pie for the normies than it is for OG. It's certainly, yeah. Anecdotally, but I have friends that I've tried to get into Bitcoin, tried to get into DeFi forever and kind of laughed at me and didn't touch it who are now like degenerate NBA top shot fans opening packs and flipping cards. And for people, I'm in my 40s.

That's what we did with baseball cards in the 80s, right? So you talk about it being sort of more mainstream accessible. I think there's a familiarity to people trading scarce items. Everybody has done it, whether it was Garbage Pail Kids or Pokemon cards or whatever it was. I think that's touched everyone's lives. So I think that's probably the

appeal there. That's a big part of the appeal. The other thing is the instruments involved. What I mean by that is they've made the experience. I don't know how many times you've gone to NBA Top Shot. Yeah, it's awesome. It's great, but you have no idea. It's a blockchain. It might as well be a centralized server. I think the ultimate point was that you have the certificate of authentication. It may or may not be that piece of art, but that sits on something where you can go in like a registry

and check that that is yours, transparency, all that. But abstract it away from that. You have no idea that that was done on the blockchain. This goes back to, what are things like in 10 years? I'm hoping we don't even talk about it. It's just like AWS, where are you hosted? You don't even talk about it. In my basement, in a cage, or in the cloud.

They've made that experience easy. Yeah, but that begs the question, which my same friend asked me about, he was like, well, what if like, I believe that's all built on flow, right? Like what if that blockchain just ceases to be used? What happens to all of my NBA Top Shot cards that I'm holding? Great point. So if I look at that, at least the NBA Top Shot, and that's a great point. So right now, Flow is a good blockchain, but it's built on the classical protocol. So it's fast, but it's not very decentralized and it's got its own little thing. But it's a closed system. It's almost like texting in AOL days where you can only go back

and forth with the other people on AOL. And I think you and I were a little bit too young, but there was a day where there was just Betamax and VHS. And that's remember, and Betamax was pretty popular for a long time. It was better. It was a better technology. That's why. Yep. Yeah, it was better. It was quality was better. But what they got wrong was, I think it was Sony, whatever. So it was like Sony made the movies, Sony made the machines and Sony sold it. So you had a very vertically integrated thing and it was a closed system.

And VHS was like, well, any studio can make a film and anyone, any brand, Panasonic, U-Name, RCA, whatever, you guys could all make it. And all of a sudden that openness took over. So, I mean, I think there will be vertical specialists, as we talked about it before. So with Flow, what they can do is create brand and create a business development experience and competitive edge that way. And then hopefully they can have a great product for that sustainable. But I'd like to believe taking lessons from life of VHS and all the stuff we just talked

about, the more multi-chain open network ultimately wins out in the long run. Yeah. Let's just hope for people who are collecting that flow doesn't become Laserdisc because remember those huge platters? The looks like you and I are going to hate ourselves. You should stop talking about this because you're going to lose your younger fans. And you have a lot of fans. Yeah, I love those things, though.

My friend had them. I thought they were the coolest thing. It was like a huge mirror. But yeah, so I mean, I do agree. I think that, you know, the NFT is just for so many reasons are more mainstream, you know, accessible. And DeFi, it's a little scarier because it's banking, right? I mean, it's your money.

It's not fun. It's not a collectible. It's literally like some people want it to be their bank. But what happens? So we've talked about, obviously, that there's all these intermediaries and it's a safer system when you're in legacy systems, but that yield is gone. And we all know that there's too many intermediaries. It'd be one thing if there was one person who checked off, but why are there five total collectors in my transaction from bank to bank? But that's a separate topic. What happens when legacy systems start to co-op this, right? We've already seen OCC say, hey, banks can custody Bitcoin. To me, that's not a far step from saying it's going to be collateral for loans, right? And we've already seen, hey, we don't need, you know, maybe we'll test stable coins instead of a swift transactions

and these things. So what happens when those various systems that were, I guess we're trying to detach from start to co-opt the technology and the benefits? Well, I think ultimately the answer is, and this is a long, long view. So I think there's a long runway for DeFi products. Basically it's integrated with your life. And ultimately that translates to a better user experience because somehow we figured out the right amount of assurance we need from intermediaries with improved services and functionality of what I think DeFi can give you. And inherent in anything,

there's a trade-off. How much self-governance do I want and how much other things do I want to give up in order to gain that? Just like with Web 2.0, how much of the efficiency and fun parts about texting and all these apps do I want? And the question is how much privacy and data of myself do I want to give up? And at some point, the people will vote and hopefully there'll be a happy medium somewhere. Such an interesting question because Bitcoiners are so passionate about self-governance and being your own bank. But I still make the argument that even if you explain that to your average person, more than 90% of people want nothing to do with being their own

bank and self-governance. In fact, they would give up almost anything for the convenience and the security of knowing that they didn't have to worry about it. Yeah. Again, not everyone's going to want the same thing. So two products will exist for a long time. And for certain people having self-custody and then seeing what Robinhood and GameStop did, like conceptually what happened there? Like Robinhood basically seemed to people arbitrarily just decided to make a new rule as to how much collateral. And then all of a sudden you wake up one day and you're on Robin Hood and they said, you cannot trade these stocks anymore. You feel like you've been gypped. But if you were part of a decentralized system, one, in theory, you would have been voting on that proposal. So at least you would have had some heads up. And then two, you custody it. So like, okay, it happened here.

Fine. Everyone else wanted it, but it's a multi-chain world and it's easy to be interoperable. So I will take my self-custody GameStop shares and move to, I don't know, Schwab and then trade it there. So if you explain it like that to people, I think you tell people more and more to like, hey, I want to be self-empowered instead of at the beck and call of the giant tech companies or the government. It's like Cartman in South Park.

Screw you guys. I'm going home. I'm taking my ball and I'm going home. I don't want to play with you guys anymore. And you have that option. But Robinhood traders didn't. And not only did they not have that option, I think that somewhere deep in the terms of service that no human being has ever read, it basically said they can liquidate a non-leverage

position. You think you own a stock. So in this decentralized world, you literally custody it. You didn't even own that stock. They liquidated people who thought they had just bought a stock like they had their whole lives on E-Trade or something, and they didn't. They had a line in a ledger on a centralized database at Robinhood, who was the ultimate custodian of all of those stocks, basically. So nobody, yeah, people just didn't even realize they didn't own their stock. And I think that that's like, if any example in the past few months just shines such a bright and impenetrable light on this, that Robinhood GameStop thing was, you know, why DeFi is necessary, whether it's for you or not is a

different conversation, but we need to have it. Absolutely. That's why I'm a big proponent for DeFi. I'm a proponent for choice. Okay. Yeah. This is what this does and transparency. Again, going back to Robinhood, all these terms of services in these huge tech companies, like they know no one can actually read it because you actually read these terms of services in these huge tech companies, like they know no one can actually read it because you actually read those terms of service. You would never actually do anything because it takes too long to read those things. Some lawyer, a team of lawyers somewhere put it together to basically absolve these companies of all their responsibilities. Yep. So I'm going to have full responsibility.

Everything that could possibly go wrong and list it. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Like if I'm going to take full responsibility. Everything that could possibly go wrong and list it. Right. Somewhere. Exactly. Exactly. Like if I'm going to take full responsibility for everything that happens here, then let me monetize myself or let me have choice into what happens. Right. And I mean, talking about, you know, eventually the banks coming in or how there would be this sort of marriage between legacy systems and DeFi. I mean, we're seeing real adoption from a lot of companies, right?

PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and they're all sort of adopting crypto in different ways. It's sort of fun to watch. None of them are certainly going fully down the rabbit hole, right? But they're all finding the part that works for their business and starting to test the waters, it feels like. What do you make of all that? Well, I think they're listening, especially, you know, I've had conversations with a lot of those players. And if you look at a PayPal listening, especially, you know, I've had conversations with a lot of those players. And if you look at a PayPal, for instance, you know, they have 300 million users and 29 million merchants on the other side.

They basically have listened to their customers and customers are telling them they want this. So the way they're going about it is actually quite smart, in my opinion. On the front end or the UX and the UI, the user has no idea. It's just like, again, it's just like their normal Venmo wallet or PayPal wallet. It's seamless. And that's why adoption is happening so quickly in late 2020 and early 2021, because you're giving a normie or a newbie a user experience that they're very comfortable with. On the back backend, if you

really explore what PayPal is doing on the backend, it is a mess. It's a mess, but they are taking care of the mess and they are using crypto companies who have proven excellence and have a history to help them solve that. In the end, the user doesn't know what's happening underneath the surface. It's literally like kind of eating a hot dog or sausage. You do not want to go into the factory to see how it's made, but it tastes good. Yeah. It makes total sense. And that's the same thing. People just want something that's familiar, right? Nobody wants to go.

I mean, there's people who do, but the biggest barrier has always been like trying to explain to someone going to get a private wallet and how to send their coins there and typing in that long address. But if you just go on PayPal and you hit a button that looks just like the other button you've always hit on PayPal, it's super easy. That's right. I mean, I like to think about it like people in the smart contract layer one world, the guys that I know were more technologists. And PayPal is a great product company. A product is between technology and user and biz dev. And they figured out how to get it to people's hands in a very efficient and good way. But they still need

the underlying technology. Right. More importantly, on the merchant side, which I think a lot of people get confused on, it's the same thing for the merchant. To turn on crypto payments, they get paid in fiat. It's sort of like taking American Express and just accepting that you're going to pay the fee for them. But it's not like they need to worry about what they're going to do with the Bitcoin when somebody pays them in Bitcoin. It's not like Tesla, who's actually trying to hold the Bitcoin that they're getting paid in. That's right. That's exactly right. And the next iteration of this is that that merchant who's used to paying two and a half percent away to use the credit card rails, once a PayPal or these banks figure out how to use stable coin and do all this stuff, suddenly they see the benefit when it's no longer two and a half percent and it's only whatever percent or basis points it is.

And then in theory, they will pass some of that benefit. In theory, you're paying two and a half percent more on some merchandise because, well, part of that two and a half is shared between you and the merchants in theory. And hopefully you get back some of that as well as a consumer. Sure.

And the payments thing is so interesting because obviously we love the idea that we can pay in crypto. And we love the idea that a merchant will accept it. But almost nobody wants to pay in crypto, right? Why would you use your appreciating asset to buy that depreciating car? Yeah, exactly. Appreciating asset to buy something that's depreciating. And second, the rules and regulations are still very difficult. IRS treats it like a property. So there's a huge tax involved. Your all-in cost is still higher if you do. Right, because you're selling your Bitcoin to buy that car. So if you're in the top tax bracket and buying a Tesla, you basically have a 37% tax liability on top of the price of your car.

That's right. That's right. Only in the United States. There are places that have much more reasonable views, most places actually than the United States. I wonder if we'll get to a place where our regulators sort of view it more as money or at least not as property, kind of like a Forex trade or something. It will get better, but I don't know. As long as we are in this money printing mode where budget deficits are just like nothing and they're going to find any way possible to tax. Sure. They need to pay for it somehow. Right. Unfortunately. So then, I mean, that's the payment side, obviously, that I touched on the PayPal, the visas, the MasterCards. Then there's the bank side, obviously, that I touched on, the PayPals, the Visas, the MasterCards.

Then there's the bank side, right? So we have Morgan Stanley, which I just think is so funny, offering crypto services, but only if you hold $2 million with Morgan Stanley, right? Actually, you'll find this funny. I had a guest on, Jason Yanowitz from BlockWorks, and he said that he had a connection at Morgan Stanley. And they said that basically their largest like bracket of customers has about 1.5 to 2 million in assets with Morgan Stanley. So they set that not arbitrarily sort of as like an incentive to get those people to hold more other assets to get up to the 2 million to be able to. That's hilarious. That is fascinating. Jeez. Okay. Totally makes sense. Totally makes sense. But what do you make of the fact that these banks are only opening it to their wealthiest of clients? Well, I think they are, in fairness to them, they're still very hamstrung in many ways.

They have tons of regulation. And they a lot of times want if the regulations on the 50 yard line, they're going to be so far away from the 50 yard line, because they have too large of existing business. So I think they do that just like there are accreditation rules in order for people to invest in privates or alternative assets. They're doing that just to make sure they're way away from any gray zone. Toe dip. Yep, exactly. They get to help out with, say that they're involved and do it in a very, very risk-adjusted, safe way. Right, so the question is, do they actually have any intention doing it

or are they just sort of assuaging the demands of their clients who keep asking when Bitcoin? That's my feeling to some degree is that none of them really probably wanna touch it to any great degree, but they're getting pressure. And when the clients start asking it's going to go into this somewhere. Do I want to do it or not? And they're also very hypocritical because their investment banking side is banking Coinbase and banking all of these things. And there are SPACs like on backed happening. So your investment banking side can make money on this, but your commercial banking side or your wealth side won't let people get involved.

There's a huge, huge discrepancy there. And I know the banking laws are different on the commercial versus investment banking side. So that's part of it. But I also think, you know, it's self-serving to say we can invest in these things as an, I can service them as a banker in the investment banking side, but we can't on the commercial side. Right. Makes sense, I guess, you know, protect, protect your butt. You just brought up Coinbase and they're very much the hot button topic right now because they're having their direct listing next week, which everybody seems to be calling an IPO, even though it's not. they just reported first quarter earnings. And I mean, without going into the numbers, it's a trend we see, I think, across all exchanges and everything crypto-related, but they effectively crushed all of 2020 in the first quarter of 2021.

I think they had 56 million new users in 2021 in three months and like 42 or 44 or something in all of 2020. I don't even know what to say. When I looked at that, I was just like, holy cow, this is insane. But I think there's two takeaways from that. One, and this is very important, I think, because if you look at the massive amount of dollars they custody and a lot of that business, where it came from, It is more institutional. The growth is more higher on the institutional side and in people coming over to the crypto world

as opposed to OG crypto people. Oh, for sure. They don't touch Coinbase. I mean, literally. I mean, it's a whole different slew of people. But I don't think people realize that all these new incoming people are actually doing DeFi and everyone else a huge service. So this money comes over in Bitcoin,

usually they play around and then they somehow find Ethereum because it's fun. And somehow they get into like USDC. And after three, four or five months of continuing having fun with Ethereum, Bitcoin and USDC, their money finds their way into the world of DeFi. And then the DeFi world keeps growing that way. So they are doing the benefit. And it's kind of like a it's a funny thing because it's like a bathtub and the water from the faucet is coming out much faster than the drain on the bottom of this thing. Yeah, I just laughed because as a child of the 80s, all I could think of is like the Bitcoin comparison to like marijuana as a gateway drug. Yeah, just try it. So they used to say at the beginning of the war on drugs, right? Like the Reagan and Bush years, it was like, if you try

marijuana, you're going to like be a crackhead on the corner in three weeks. And that's sort of like the 30, 40 years later, now we're legalizing it. So I guess, you know, a parallel universe for another 30 years. So if things have been compressed, so it'll be like 30, 40 years, 30, 40 years to legalize marijuana. So maybe before DeFi and and CeFi converges probably only 20. So let's cut it down. Yeah, I mean, we're easily dog years in crypto. If not, like one to 10 instead of one to seven. It's pretty crazy.

I mean, I think regardless of your thoughts about Coinbase, I think they could potentially be one of the biggest and most important companies in the world. It's amazing. I mean, yes, they have the users and they have all the financial methods. It's amazing because I mean, yes, they have the users and they have all the financial methods. It's amazing because you're looking at effectively a crypto company with better financial metrics

than most financial services companies. By far. And the only question is, what do you want to pay for that? And do you look at their, do you believe that that growth is very boom bust cycle, like we've seen the last three or four iterations, you know, from 2013 to 2017, then bust and now back to 2020? Or do you model this out like it's we've crossed the Rubicon and this is secular growth? That will determine your multiple and

be a big difference of what you're willing to pay. Even in their earning statement or call, they sort of alluded to the fact that, hey man, Bitcoin's doing really well, so we're doing well. So I guess the question then is, does the paradigm shift to where they do well regardless or are they really continuing to ride this bullish trend of the actual asset?

That's a bit dangerous if that's the case. I'm kind of in the camp that, and I'm hoping, maybe I'm hoping for this, that we're still in boom bust. Because if we're still in boom bust, that means we are still a cottage industry. I feel like as an operator, there's so much more to be done. And you asked this question, what happens when traditional finance comes and starts doing a lot of these things? And we know they are handicapped, whether they can or cannot do it. Right. I'm kind of selfishly, I want to keep doing it. So if I see secular trend or Coinbase,

it means we're more long the tooth in this trend. But if I see more boom bust, that means I just have more opportunities to keep innovating. Makes total sense. I want to jump back to something you talked about earlier, because it's so interesting and something that's somewhat unique to what you guys are doing you talked about being able to create these permissioned blockchains for clients who come in which i think you know for anyone that would be similar to like jp morgan coin right it's very uh it's for one specific person purpose it's one company it's completely centralized to that company but you guys have the flexibility i mean primarily you have a permissionless blockchain, but then you can build these permission blockchains off of it as sort of branches. Is that, is that correct? And can you explain why that's important?

That's exactly right. And then you have, call it like the master key that allows you to open the gateway to the permissionless world easily, like an API key that allows you to easily go into the permissionless whenever you want to. And I think the importance of that is for, again, we talked about that 360 trillion of financial assets that sit on financial services firms. Part of the reason why they can't unlock it is because there are rules and regulations and they have to control how the asset flows and who buys, et cetera. So if you give someone a permission blockchain, then they can basically dictate the governance rules in the validator set and they can decide and rules are constantly changing, regulations constantly changing. So if you give them that capability in order to like be flexible, given how the regulators change rules and let them decide

who gets to be part of their validator set and what the governance and how far away from the gray matter you want to be, then they are more likely to adopt the technology, at least get the benefit of the workflow automation, and maybe not get the whole spirit of the thing, but start getting to be part of the movement, if you will. And that was the main reason why Eamon Gunsir, the professor who founded Ava Labs, when he constructed this architecture, this thing, thought about how to do it. So it's interesting because it really allows you to be kind of something for everyone. Regardless of what you want to do, if you believe that blockchain is going, as you said, you're never going to think about it.

It's going to be the thing that's running it. Like you never think about what's running your cell phone. You just use it. You never think about what's running the internet. You just use it. Everyone can build their sort of iteration or vision of that on your technology. Yeah, that's right. And do it in a relatively easy way.

So in enterprise deals that we've talked to, obviously there are like, you know, big private blockchains out there. And when, when our team goes in there and does a bake off of one of those, the biggest response has always been, Hey, it's very easy to do it on yours as a, it's kind of like when you wanted a website in 2000, it was a lot harder. You had to hire a consulting firm to come in. And it was still very, like, you know, not so great. Now it's WYSIWYG. You just go to like Wix or someone and you can just drag and click and then you have it instantly. And it's better too.

I used to have a Flash website. And literally, if I wanted to change like five words on it, I had to call a programmer to completely redo everything. I mean, it's so clunky when you think about it. That's insane. Absolutely. Yeah. Now everything is completely customizable. I'm curious, we kind of touched on regulators before. How much do regulators play into your like day-to-day decision-making? Do you have any fears that they could change something that could fundamentally alter what you're doing or that you would no longer be compliant when you thought you were a month ago or anything like that. I see that as such a huge problem for everything in this space. Yeah. I mean, I think any crypto company who doesn't think about

regulation and complying to the rules in their jurisdiction are basically silly. So it's a big That happens all the time, right? Well, you know, maybe less, it's less than the frontal lobe of people are offshore. But when you're on shore, it is a part of every decision making thing that we have to do. And our, you know, bills with the lawyers are insane. So the real issue is, do the lawyers really know? And the answer- I had that conversation. Yeah, yeah. I had that conversation with Sam Bankman Freed.

I made a joke. I was like, you must have more lawyers than employees. It was like, I do, but they all give me different answers and it makes me more confused and everybody's just covering their own backside to give you the answer they think that will protect them instead of actually you. And it causes more confusion.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And ultimately that's why, you know, that's exactly right. And ultimately, that's why, you know, that's why all these things are domiciled over in Asia, just like, it makes it easier for him to do a lot of things. But which is another problem we talked about, like keeping the lead here. I mean, we still have unbelievable capital reserves in this country that want to get involved in this, we have great innovation. I'm hoping we find a way to keep all of that in the US. Well, it does seem like we have some, are having a transition to at least some people in power who have an understanding or belief in it. Gary Gensler, obviously, I mean, teaches blockchain and, you know, SEC, Hester Peirce, you know, we have Senator, like Senator Loomis talks

about being a hodler and all these kind of cool things. So I think we are making progress and that we probably do have advocates for the first time in government. Absolutely. 100% agree. So the question is, when do we start seeing, I guess, the crypto companies being the largest donator? Well, Sam Bateman Freed was the largest donator, top five donator to the Biden campaign. So I guess we've seen it. You didn't need to ask me. I'm glad you answered it because that's, you know, yeah. And he's naming an arena in Miami, too, while he's at it.

I mean, good for him. I was down there talking to the mayor when this whole thing was happening. And good for him. Good for him. So what's the next step for you guys? I mean, obviously, everything's being built. You've gone from 40 to a hundred people. You've got 50 projects when it was zero. Did you say you have another hundred in the pipeline? How do you see this at scale? I mean, the mission is still

the same. We want as many new projects and things and assets that want to take advantage of what we can offer on our, you know, on the platform of Avalanche, basically. So that means providing constantly on the core platform updates so that it's kind of like your iOS phone. There's constant like software updates so that you can improve the underlying speeds, costs, as well as features. So that's on the, you know, the platform level. And then on the business development front, it is to be out there and figure out what tooling like a covalent or infrastructure stuff that you need and, and reach out to the players and, and, and have them build it on top of Avalanche so that more developers can have even more creative things to build. So I think the answer is we're probably not going to be done until a big portion of that 360 trillion is actually flowing through crypto, either through

us or with our friends in the space. And that happens when that land that you're talking about, that's locked up and it's so impossible to transfer the deed or escrow the money that happens when that land is represented by a non-fungible token and you can just sell your land to me and we send it over the blockchain. There are a non-fungible token or some other I'm sure, you know, in a year from now, we'll be talking another three-letter acronym because someone's maybe NFT better.

Even since we've, well, actually, it's not true. It's been a couple of years. We've gone from ERC721 to 11.5 with slightly different features. So this is evolving. And sure, the answer is similar to what you said. It won't be the same three-letter acronym. Right. So we're just effectively eliminating all of those middlemen, making a transaction that's

directly between two people, which allows it to happen when it's almost impossible in the current As close as possible. When you can eliminate all of that, ultimately, you and I have the best experience and the cheapest experience. I love the idea. It's very frustrating to think about how difficult they're going to make it to get there. Because all those toll collectors, I mean, they're the wealthiest people in the world and they've made that wealth by being the toll collectors. Tell Sam to donate more. Seriously. What's five? Five million is like dropping the bucket. It's absolutely nothing. Come on. Exactly. So what do you think? I'm just curious, totally separate topic. I'm curious if you had five on each side and then all of a sudden publicize this side when the results are in. That would be wise.

I wouldn't doubt it, but I'm curious just personally, because obviously my background is music and it's my passion. What do you see happening in the music space with NFTs? Well, I think, well, obviously I think everyone saw Kings of Leon and I don't know if I can mention specific groups or whatever, but there are definitely artists reaching out. They want, I think two things. One is to understand what this hype and euphoria is all about and whether they can help monetize some of their own brand via this. That's one thing. And then the business people around these artists, they're trying to figure out if there's a way to improve the existing business model of what they do. Royalty structure. I mean, my God.

Exactly. Royalty structure. They want to be like Courtney Cox and get a royalty on every single Friends episode that shows up somewhere. So it's like effectively building in the intelligence into the smart contract at every secondary transaction of this thing, a piece of that goes back to the artist so they can capture more. And then new use cases like ticketing. Right now there's intermediaries like Ticketmaster using QR codes and QR codes have been known to easily copy and make frauds. There are five people showing up at the same seat. Same ticket. Yep. Exactly. And the artist really doesn't know who's the end guy using it. I mean, one of the best things about NFTs, it's just providence. You can see the history and then

all of a sudden, you know, your fans better. Maybe you can provide a better product because you know, your fans better. You have direct access to that fan. You can sell them experiences, merchandise and all these things at a higher, I mean, it just makes so much sense, especially, I mean, it's no coincidence. I don't think that this has exploded sort of during COVID because everybody had to look for alternate ways to make money when there was no shows, but anyone who, if anyone who knows the music business, you make your money on shows. Right. Right. Yep. That's right. And so if you need to find a new revenue stream, this is a pretty brilliant one. I find it so incredible what

could potentially be done. And this was invented earlier. Maybe you still be playing music and you wouldn't be talking to me. Seriously. definitely possible. I mean, NBA Top Shot, the NBA gets a piece of every secondary transaction, right? They're getting their cut of every single thing, no matter how far down the chain it goes. Exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, that's right. So it's a great thing for them.

But I don't know if the users who are buying this stuff really realize what they own just yet. I mean, it's not like you can take that moment of someone dunking a basketball and then resell that to ESPN for the top 10 plays of the week or something. It is more like your baseball card thing, which is like, hey, it has some value to me for whatever reason, sentimental value or whatever, but it may not have much value to anyone else until that guy becomes, I think you said Mickey Mantle or something. Yeah. I mean, it's exactly right. I've used my huge collection of 80s baseball cards, for example, of many things, because I basically had to light them on fire and donate them after I thought they were going to be

my retirement, but they weren't scarce. Right. So, I mean, they printed so many at that time in history, but that doesn't, you know, as you alluded to, it doesn't take away from the ones that are scarce and have real value. And also, I mean, when it comes to the NFTs and music and stuff, sometimes you just need that one guy who thinks it's really valuable. You only need one person to buy it from you. So that's right. Everybody has to accept it. As you know, I listened to your podcast because they're so great. Not only are they educational, but they're entertaining. But you gave me like a lot of relief because for many years, I, in the 80s, used to collect baseball cards.

I played baseball in college. I love it. You know, and I had these giant, you know, boxes, shoe boxes of all these cards. And frankly, they're probably still in some basement in my mom's place with collecting mold and mildew or whatever. But like, I always thought like, whoa, this could be so valuable. One day I'm going to go take them and I'm going to go trade it in. But when you when I heard that you said you actually did that and they were worthless, you gave a huge relief for me like I didn't leave any value on the table there basically from like 1984 on so that everything before still has a level of scarcity

but that's when there was this huge craze and they just started printing them like crazy so you know they're just uh absolutely worth nothing that's the famous baseball card story that every uh boomer has told their kids my mom threw away my mickey man my 1952 mickey mantle I had that or I put it in the spokes of my bike to make the sound. I don't know if you ever heard that one, but that was a big one with my parents. Well, these kids trade Pokemon cards now. I wonder how that's going to turn out 20 years from now. I don't know, but man, they're making millions doing it. It's unbelievable. It's good for them. I respect the hustle for sure. So I know we're up against it

here. Where can everybody follow you guys and follow you after this conversation? Thanks, first of all, it's a lot of fun. So for Ava Labs, the easiest way is to go to the website, avalabs.org, and that'll get you, if you're a techie, into the Discord channels there, or if you want to be part of the community where you can go there, just go to that website

and then learn more about us. And if you want to hear my views, simplest is at John, the number one woo on Twitter. Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for running this back a second time. And I have a feeling that this won't be the last. I think we're going to be due a third in about six months with the velocity of how things are changing. A lot of fun. Thank you very much. Thank you, man. It's great.