0:14

Welcome to Epicenter, the show which talks about the

0:16

technologies, projects and people driving decentralization

0:18

and the blockchain revolution. I'm Sebastian Cuchillo

0:20

and I'm here on episode 500

0:23

of Epicenter with

0:25

Felix Luch, Brian Crane,

0:27

Mehar Roy, Sunny Agrawal and Felike

0:29

Ernst. And today we're going to be,

0:32

well, looking back on the

0:34

last almost 10 years of Epicenter and

0:37

also looking forward to the next 10 years of

0:39

Epicenter

0:40

and yeah, discussing

0:43

a number of things, including, you know,

0:46

where we think the ecosystem is heading. Things

0:49

that we thought would

0:52

have played out differently, but surprised us

0:54

and also some

0:56

exciting surprises. So let's

0:58

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2:19

How's everybody doing? Pretty good. Excited

2:23

to be back again. Yeah,

2:25

Sunny, how long has it been since you've been on Epicenter?

2:27

Oh, when's the last time you did one of these? Well,

2:29

technically only like two or three weeks since I was on

2:31

one at Avaland. But

2:34

before that, probably like over

2:37

six months. I mean, Sunny almost looks

2:39

grown up now. I

2:43

suppose this is just you. I'm

2:46

fine, but I feel like this is I'm

2:48

not the person who this question was intended

2:51

for.

2:53

Yeah, yeah, OK, I can I can go. Yeah,

2:55

so some of you may have followed like you on

2:57

Twitter. I was writing a little so I was basically

3:00

went to Bucharest for like a few days. This is like

3:02

almost a month ago now or three weeks ago

3:04

or so. Or maybe almost a month ago. And then

3:06

I had started having this like stomach intense

3:09

stomach pain and I had

3:11

it sort of before. So I was like, yeah, this

3:13

line is just going to go away. But

3:16

then it didn't go away. And

3:18

so I ended up going to the hospital and then it was like

3:20

the appendix was in flame infected

3:23

and then and then it burst.

3:26

So then they had to do this surgery.

3:29

So they basically made a big cut,

3:31

sort of like 30 centimeters in

3:33

the, you know, the whole stomach and

3:36

had to like clean out everything.

3:38

And yeah,

3:41

basically other pictures of this, by the way, they

3:43

are, they are. So

3:46

I was basically and then then I was in the hospital one

3:48

day. I love to see this.

3:50

Yeah, I mean, I posted on Twitter. There

3:53

is some. No, the pictures of you opened up, not

3:55

the pictures. Oh, no, I don't have any.

3:58

I don't have any pictures of that.

3:59

I think it was like three and a half hours surgery

4:02

or something.

4:03

Yeah. And then I was basically in the hospital

4:05

for around almost two

4:07

weeks, I think.

4:09

And yeah, and now I'm back in Portugal and stuff.

4:11

I've been kind of recovering from that.

4:13

Uh, lost like seven kilos or something.

4:17

Uh, but, but I'm okay now. Right. So

4:19

now it's basically just sort of, you know, getting

4:23

on the recovery, but everything's fine. But

4:25

yeah, it was a bit of an intense episodes.

4:27

Definitely. And,

4:30

um, yeah, if,

4:33

if, yeah, so lesson, lesson here is if you

4:35

have really intense stomach pain, don't ignore it.

4:41

It got pretty tense for, it got pretty tense

4:44

for, for at one moment,

4:46

I think, like you were, you were tweeting,

4:48

I think on the day after the episode, uh, after the

4:50

surgery that things were getting worse. And,

4:53

you know, I, I got the sense that

4:55

you started perhaps fearing for your

4:57

life. Like how, how bad

5:00

was it? Like how close were you to things

5:02

becoming, you know, potentially quite

5:04

dangerous? Yeah, it's sort

5:06

of hard to tell. I mean, I think if you read about

5:08

sort of the state I was in, you know, if, if

5:10

it was like a hundred years ago, right? Like 90%

5:14

of the people in that thing

5:16

would die, you know, because basically,

5:19

uh, if you didn't have antibiotics, then I think,

5:22

uh, probably would have died. Um,

5:26

so now

5:28

I guess it was kind

5:30

of serious. It wasn't like,

5:32

eh, you know, I think they didn't, they

5:35

did, they diagnosed it the right way and then

5:37

they sort of treated it the right way. So I think

5:39

it was okay.

5:41

You know, definitely it's on points that doctors

5:43

would tell me like, oh, this is looking really bad

5:45

and things like that. So, and of course, like, you know, how, how

5:47

do you, um,

5:49

it's hard to sort of. Interpret

5:52

it. I did have a lot of pain, right?

5:54

I think the pain was actually the hardest thing to

5:56

deal with, right? Cause when you just have hours and

5:58

hours and hours of like.

5:59

intense pain at some point, it gets like, you

6:02

know, really wear a seat down. And,

6:04

uh, I mean, I remember going in, when I was going

6:06

into surgery, I was like, okay, like maybe

6:08

I die, right? Like who knows? Like, I mean, I don't

6:11

know what the chance is, but so,

6:13

and I, I felt really, I felt actually

6:15

quite the peace at the time. And I

6:17

was sort of wondering, I don't know if it was just, uh,

6:19

all the pain killers I was on, I was like, okay,

6:22

this is, it was definitely

6:24

slightly high on painkillers. So, uh,

6:28

but I felt reasonably at peace with the

6:30

idea of like, okay, maybe I'll never wake up

6:32

from this. Um, so

6:35

yeah, who knows? Great.

6:38

We are all super happy you woke up, Brian. Definitely.

6:41

Yeah. I'm, I'm glad

6:43

we're getting all of this out because, um,

6:45

you know, the last couple of weeks, when you go to

6:47

conferences,

6:48

people, people come up to you and say, Frederica,

6:51

is your co-host going to

6:53

be okay? And

6:57

like, literally like at, at Con, I was

6:59

probably asked like 15 times. Um,

7:02

and for Tricky, how do you answer that question? How,

7:05

yeah.

7:06

Yeah. Well, the first time I was like, Oh yeah,

7:08

poor Brian and so on. But you know, after the

7:10

third time, I was just like,

7:12

yeah, he's going to be just fine. Can

7:14

I tell you about nose chain?

7:20

Yeah, but so now I'm taking, taking a

7:22

bunch of time off, which is like so nice. Uh,

7:25

so I think this is like, I mean, partially

7:27

having still recovering, but I think partially also

7:29

I just like really needed a break and so

7:32

this is sort of like a nice timing too,

7:34

and I think it's gonna, it's

7:36

also nice that, you know, things are kind of in a good

7:38

place. Course one is in a good place. You know, here

7:40

we have, uh, you know, a lot of great people hosting

7:43

podcasts. And, uh, so

7:45

I think it's, it's, you know, it's fine

7:48

at the moment for me to take some, a bit of time

7:50

off. So I'm going to take all of June off

7:52

and it's like really, really nice to just

7:54

like.

7:56

Do nothing for a lot. And also I had a

7:58

bunch of traveling, uh, all

8:00

this traveling and I think this whole rest

8:02

is like super,

8:04

super happy about it.

8:07

And do you somehow, after

8:10

this ordeal, did you have

8:13

some kind of, you know, important life

8:15

realizations or anything like that,

8:18

you know, that this has sort

8:20

of imbued on you?

8:22

Well, I do feel like the sort of

8:24

thing of like, just taking

8:27

some time to like rest and chill and do nothing,

8:29

I think that's like something where

8:32

I, you know, I mean, I could have of course done this

8:35

anyway, right? There could have been like, okay, let me take

8:37

off a month or something because but

8:41

you know, I sort of didn't,

8:43

I didn't like allow myself to do that, you know, it was

8:45

only because of like, then getting ill that I sort

8:47

of so I do feel like that is one thing

8:49

where I felt like, okay, I should be like maybe

8:52

two years from now, I will maybe

8:54

take off like another month or something, right?

8:56

So I feel like, you know, I think,

8:58

you know, if you think like, let's say something

9:01

like, okay, now you're building this company,

9:03

then, you know, it's

9:05

kind of gets like tiring over

9:08

time, right? And exhausting. And I think

9:10

a lot of people, right, when they build startups,

9:13

or build, they build things,

9:15

they,

9:16

they want it to end because they're working

9:18

because they're just kind of always so

9:21

semi burned out and exhausted, right?

9:23

And then they're like, okay, I need to get some sort of

9:25

exit or something and you

9:27

know, like, and then then finally I can

9:29

rest. And I think that's

9:32

obviously, you know, I

9:34

mean, okay, maybe good in the sense

9:37

that people work really hard, but also sort

9:39

of like problematic because then you're

9:41

like, you know, you want the thing to end because he's so exhausted.

9:43

It

9:44

just makes it sound like people want to die, looking

9:47

for an exit and it just wants some rest.

9:52

I mean, I think it's so common. I think so,

9:54

so many people that you talk about like running startups,

9:57

they're like, okay, I'm just like, you know,

9:59

pushing so hard. trying to get there trying

10:01

to get there you know like I also have to

10:03

get to this finish line I know it's completely

10:05

unsustainable like I'm gonna like but

10:07

like you know I gonna like two more years and

10:10

then like sell this thing and like

10:12

I don't want to like I

10:13

have anything to do this anymore and

10:15

You know obviously that way you

10:17

cannot

10:18

you're gonna do something for like a long a

10:20

longer time And I think this kind of break

10:23

is like super valuable for that

10:25

So I was also thinking you know like

10:27

let's say a course one if there's people who've been there

10:29

for like years and years to like you know

10:32

be great right for people to Maybe

10:35

encourage them to do things like that as well

10:38

Cool very cool Well

10:40

yeah, we're all glad you're doing better And

10:43

I bet the employees of course one are also happy that they'll

10:45

probably get it a month long break at some point

10:48

well You heard here We

10:50

should discuss that in the way, but

10:52

I think I think that's good that area

10:56

Cool well, let's let's

10:59

let's dive into Topics

11:02

we had planned for today's episode, so I think

11:04

the first thing we wanted to discuss is

11:07

You know I mean I mean before we get into this like

11:10

How does it how does it feel

11:12

everyone to be at 500 episodes? You

11:15

know you know it's just it is just

11:17

a number and we kind of always have

11:20

a host only episode at every you

11:22

know Significant kind of number

11:25

we did this at 400. I think we did it at 300 as well

11:28

Yeah, well, how do you feel about

11:30

it? I? Think you

11:32

and Brian are to answer this first right because

11:36

From we we got we got we weren't

11:38

here from episode one right so basically I

11:41

think this kind of changes something whether you kind

11:43

of join an episode 280 or

11:45

whether you've always been there

11:46

yeah, no I mean I'm happy to share

11:49

what I how I feel about it You know something so

11:52

like Yeah, as many people know

11:54

I I was Kind

11:56

of running epicenter you know the company

11:58

for a while and kind of host a lot of episodes

12:01

over

12:01

the last 2019 to 2021

12:05

or something. And then took a bit of a step

12:07

back to focus on other things, on Interop,

12:09

Ventures, and Nebula Summit, and

12:11

the Interop, which is my other podcast. And

12:15

I also during that period,

12:17

when you say this kind of burnout feeling, I really

12:19

felt kind of burned out around

12:21

that time.

12:22

And

12:25

taking a step back from it has really made me appreciate

12:27

a lot more. And so I do

12:30

appreciate coming back

12:32

and hosting episodes on

12:35

a semi-regular basis, but also it's

12:37

gotten me to appreciate just

12:39

the importance of

12:41

Epicenter in crypto culture. And

12:43

it's something that when I was really in it, I wasn't fully

12:46

aware or I wasn't appreciating

12:48

fully just how important Epicenter was to

12:51

so many people.

12:52

And then having spoken with people about

12:54

it over the last two or three years that

12:56

people are like, Epicenter really kind

12:58

of was a part of my

13:01

learning journey when I came into crypto or like

13:03

I got rich because of Epicenter or I got this

13:05

job or I met

13:07

my co-founder through Epicenter. And

13:11

so yeah, in the last couple

13:13

of months or the last year, I've

13:15

got like a renewed appreciation

13:18

for

13:19

what we've built here,

13:20

but also the importance that

13:24

it's had on the ecosystem, I think,

13:27

into a lot of people.

13:29

Yeah, definitely. It's always amazing to hear those

13:31

stories. I feel

13:33

like especially at like, yeah,

13:35

I guess it happens a lot. Yeah, I hear this

13:37

kind of stories often and it's definitely beautiful.

13:41

I think the amazing thing for me is

13:43

just that like,

13:45

such a long time, right? Like almost 10 years

13:47

now. And

13:48

it's not like... I

13:53

mean, it's just one episode at a time. It's just

13:55

like every week we're trying to like, okay, we got to do an

13:57

episode, right? We got to do an episode. You got to do an episode.

13:59

episode and then you know, you keep doing

14:02

it and keep doing it and then you get the 500 at

14:04

some point, right? So like, I think, you

14:06

know, 500 episodes, that would have seemed so like inconceivably

14:09

large at 10 years seems like it's a crazy

14:11

amount of time. But

14:13

then yeah, if you just, just keep doing

14:15

it for years and years, then that's, that's sort of how

14:17

you get. So that's pretty cool.

14:20

Yeah, yeah. Apart from brushing my teeth

14:22

and like eating every day, I think it's the thing that I've

14:24

been doing for the longest of my life.

14:28

We still have the state where we've only, we've only

14:30

missed one week in the entire 500,

14:32

right? Correct. Like

14:35

we've actually had like,

14:36

wow, that's, that is insanely

14:39

impressive. Yeah. And I think this is also something

14:41

that listeners don't always appreciate, right?

14:43

That sometimes these episodes, they're

14:46

recorded just in time to be released

14:48

that week. I mean, sometimes we have like a couple lined

14:51

up already and we kind of, we have them recorded

14:53

and we can just release them as we go. But

14:56

yeah, often it's, it's

14:58

a lot of juggling.

15:00

Yeah, it's certainly a lot of juggling. So

15:03

what's, and Meher, Meher and

15:05

Felix, you've been

15:07

pretty quiet since the beginning here. Meher,

15:09

you've been here the longest after Brian and me.

15:12

So how's it feel to be here

15:14

and still,

15:15

still coming out once in a while?

15:18

Yeah, I mean, it's great. I

15:21

don't have any profound thoughts. I

15:23

think like the crypto space has grown way faster

15:27

than what I expected it to in

15:29

terms of prices in the last 10 years,

15:32

while I've been at epicenter. And

15:37

it's grown way slower than

15:39

actual usage than I thought it would. So

15:42

in some ways, I say the, the

15:45

price to actual utility delivered

15:47

is way out of whack than

15:49

what I thought it would be in 2014. Yeah.

15:53

So I guess like I'm, I'm

15:55

happy to be in the crypto space and also

15:58

like wishing that. We

16:00

had much better product market fit found

16:03

in the last 10 years, so slightly

16:06

disappointed also from the crypto space.

16:09

I think I know where you're coming from. I

16:12

think if you look at the amount

16:15

of tooling and the amount of infrastructure

16:18

and the amount of

16:19

tools in the toolkit we have at our disposal

16:21

now to build products, I think

16:23

we're now really in a position to

16:26

actually build products

16:28

that are genuinely

16:31

just a

16:33

better user experience than

16:35

their web to equivalence. That's

16:37

where we need to get to for crypto to actually have societal

16:40

value.

16:46

I

16:48

mean, you need to offer user experience

16:50

that's strictly better than what was previously

16:52

possible. I think

16:54

we're now starting to see the

16:57

first glimpses of what that may

16:59

look like, and I think that's super exciting. I

17:02

also think it's taken longer

17:05

than I would have imagined

17:07

at the time, so I totally see where you're coming from. But

17:11

also, on the other hand, there were so many things

17:13

we didn't think about that just

17:15

needed to be built and tried out. It's

17:19

not like we as an

17:21

ecosystem

17:23

haven't done stuff for the last 10 years.

17:25

Yeah, I don't

17:28

want to jump in here when we play. So this very

17:30

much resonates what Meher is saying. I

17:33

mean, when I got into crypto, this was like the 2013 time

17:35

when Bitcoin went from like $70 to like $1,000-something dollars

17:37

at the end of

17:39

the year.

17:48

And you started to have mainstream

17:51

coverage of Bitcoin in the media,

17:53

and it felt like, wow, this is really happening.

17:56

People are getting on board. And

17:59

I was very excited.

17:59

sold on, you know, we are going to

18:02

have, you know, this is going to go

18:04

mainstream within the next like, you know, two

18:06

years or something. Right. Like I was very, it

18:09

felt like that.

18:11

And I think that was a pretty common view

18:13

at the time.

18:15

And now it's, you know, like

18:17

so many years later and like, you know, how

18:19

many really like active crypto users

18:22

are there? It's not a lot.

18:24

And then, but what we've

18:26

had is this sort of the

18:28

whole thing of, oh, you can issue a token

18:31

and token can sort of, you know, represent

18:33

the future value and people

18:35

may not use it, but the tokens worth a lot. So

18:38

like,

18:39

it gives you funding to invest in it. And

18:41

as it's fascinating how you've had

18:44

basically

18:45

this really substantial industry

18:47

develop all based on, you

18:49

know, future expectations, you know, there's

18:51

basically very little, you know, real

18:54

substance and usage and revenues

18:56

in the entire space and so like, Oh,

18:59

but we think it's going to happen in the future. Hence

19:02

we're going to value this token today. Hence,

19:04

you know, you have now all these revenues and people

19:06

can raise money and all these people

19:09

and all of this. But yeah,

19:12

I would not have expected that. I did not see

19:14

that coming. And of course, maybe it's

19:16

great for all of us working here,

19:19

but also, yeah, it is a bit

19:21

disappointing that

19:22

there's still like so little actual users.

19:25

Do you think Bitcoin

19:28

like is, it feels

19:31

like the moment that Bitcoin was like

19:33

built for, like is,

19:36

has started to come and is coming. Like,

19:39

I feel like we're entering this world

19:41

of like de-dollarization at least entering

19:44

this like multipolar currency world.

19:47

You see like, you

19:49

know, the whole BRICS stuff happening. Like,

19:52

you know, a lot of countries moving away

19:54

from dollar based commerce.

19:56

And, you know, this is even like earlier

19:59

this year. You had banking system,

20:02

shakiness and stuff. It

20:05

feels like all the problems that Bitcoiners

20:08

have pointed out are coming

20:10

true. But do you think Bitcoin is actually

20:13

in a position to capture

20:16

any of this? China

20:18

has been buying so much gold

20:21

in the last one year, basically.

20:23

You look at how much they've been increasing their

20:25

gold supplies. Wasn't

20:29

this what Bitcoiners meant to come in and do? Why

20:34

do you think Bitcoiners actually failed to step in

20:36

and take on that role that it was designed

20:39

to? Banks. Banks

20:41

don't like it.

20:45

Look, Bitcoin and crypto and the

20:47

project of crypto is

20:49

political. It's inherently political.

20:53

We should always remember

20:55

that. It is

20:57

threatening the

21:00

power of institutions, whether

21:03

that's government institutions,

21:05

but also financial institutions that are in

21:08

many places very close to government. I

21:11

think that

21:14

in a nutshell is the bastardized explanation of

21:16

why. But

21:22

yeah, at a high level, I think that sort of covers

21:24

it. In

21:27

my 10 years in the crypto space,

21:30

I have essentially come to the conclusion

21:34

that the Bitcoin vision

21:36

is kind of wrong. So what I

21:38

mean is yes,

21:40

de-duralization will happen. Yes,

21:43

major banking crisis will happen. But

21:47

I don't think Bitcoin is the beneficiary

21:49

of either of these trends to

21:52

the extent that we think it is. Like sometimes

21:54

we imagine it, you know, five million dollars per

21:56

coin. It

21:58

won't go to. go to that extent

22:02

and my realization is that the

22:04

argument for why Bitcoin

22:07

should be a beneficiary of let's

22:09

say a big debt crisis or currency

22:15

people losing trust in currency is usually

22:18

that A it's either

22:20

like a store of value something

22:22

that will hold value over the long run or

22:25

B it is like

22:27

a transactional is a

22:30

transactional unit if the transactional

22:32

unit domain Bitcoin's

22:35

volatility prevents it from being

22:37

a great transactional unit meaning

22:40

and the perfect

22:43

illustration of it was in geopolitics

22:47

it happened like a few months ago when

22:52

so these days there's like the USSR

22:54

sorry the Russia nobody wants lots

22:57

of countries don't want to buy oil from Russia

23:00

India is kind of bucking the trend India

23:02

is buying oil from Russia converting

23:05

that into products

23:07

and selling it to the west again and

23:09

it's pocketing a difference and

23:12

India and Russia kind of like negotiating what

23:15

currency shall India pay Russia with that India

23:18

wants to pay with the Indian rupee

23:21

and Russia doesn't want to take the Indian

23:23

rupee

23:24

and the reason for Russia not wanting to

23:26

take the Indian rupee is

23:28

it can take a lot of Indian rupees sure but

23:30

then what will it buy with Indian rupees

23:33

it can only buy Indian products and it doesn't

23:36

have a lot of demand for Indian products so

23:38

it's like the economy

23:40

that actually is the most productive

23:43

you want to hold the currency of that economy

23:46

it from for transactional purposes

23:48

which is why people hold us dollars and if

23:51

the US declines in power whatever

23:53

is the next productive geopolitical

23:56

area of the world

23:57

that will work even as a transaction

23:59

if you

24:02

think of store of value, we

24:05

will think, okay, Bitcoin is a great store

24:07

of value, but I've also realized that equity

24:10

indexes are the best store of value. So

24:15

if you go and think of an equity index,

24:19

S&P 500, it's

24:20

backed by actual

24:22

human productive power, great products,

24:24

great business models, a mix of them. And

24:27

they turn out based on what

24:30

is good and what is not. And

24:34

that is a much more

24:37

stable foundation for a long term

24:39

store of value than a crypto

24:41

coin. And so I think index based

24:44

stores of value, which might come from the stock

24:47

market, or it might even come from crypto, right?

24:51

And index of crypto coins, each of which

24:52

have great business models, I think there are going to be

24:54

those things that are better stores of value.

24:59

And so I am no longer a Bitcoin convert on either

25:01

of these dimensions. But

25:04

that's true that yes, an index of all tokens

25:06

actually outperforms

25:09

markets generally in this current

25:12

historical trend. But

25:23

gold is still the highest value market cap

25:25

asset in the world and by almost

25:27

an order of magnitude.

25:29

So I don't think Bitcoin ever claimed to

25:32

be a productive asset or

25:34

anything. It

25:43

was always, at least for at this point, approaching seven, eight

25:46

plus years at this point, right? In

25:50

the early days, I think Bitcoin was trying to find

25:53

what is its purpose kind of thing. But now we've

25:56

been in this world long enough where it's settled, like

25:58

we are trying to build digital gold.

25:59

That's it. The question is why

26:02

has Bitcoin failed to

26:04

come close to gold?

26:08

Or you can argue that it hasn't. You can argue

26:11

that gold is a $12 trillion

26:14

asset market cap, Bitcoin is a half trillion dollar

26:16

market asset cap. The fact that we're within

26:19

an order of magnitude is actually kind of impressive.

26:22

But maybe you can argue that we haven't failed

26:24

yet. Do

26:27

you still believe that Bitcoin will be able to replace gold

26:30

as an asset one day?

26:31

Or no? I guess

26:33

two things. So first of all, why hasn't

26:36

Bitcoin sort of taken on

26:38

this role and the

26:40

dollar and those kind of things? Well,

26:43

I mean, I do. You

26:45

know, with the whole Balaji's argument

26:47

and all of that, I do agree that there

26:50

is some sort of de-dollarization that's going

26:52

to happen. And I do agree that eventually

26:55

the

26:55

U.S. dollar is going to

26:58

collapse. I think it's

27:00

just like it's obviously unsustainable

27:02

with debt levels and all of that. However,

27:05

when it comes to the time horizon

27:08

of this, I don't believe

27:11

it's very close. And

27:13

I think in the end, it's

27:16

still stable enough, the dollar.

27:19

And it's still something that is extremely

27:21

useful because you can

27:24

use it to trade. And for most

27:27

people in other fiat currencies, well, if

27:29

I can put my money in the dollar, that's

27:31

pretty good.

27:32

So it's like a better store

27:34

of value than Bitcoin because it's more

27:38

useful and then it's more

27:41

stable from a price perspective.

27:44

So I think when would be the time

27:46

when you really see Bitcoin thrive?

27:49

Well, I mean, maybe if the dollar really

27:52

struggles, but that seems far away.

27:56

And maybe you have some other advantages, of course,

27:58

right? Like where maybe if

27:59

It's like sanctions and you're outside of banking

28:02

system, you have control of your assets. So I think there

28:04

are some of those advantages. But of course, a

28:07

lot of people may not care that much about

28:09

it, right? Because they can get a U.S. like,

28:11

I don't know, if you're in Argentina and you can get a

28:14

dollar account somewhere

28:16

else and you can access it well, then maybe that's

28:18

good enough for you.

28:20

You know, whether Bitcoin

28:23

is going to replace gold in

28:26

the longer run. I

28:29

think it's possible, but

28:31

I still think that, you know, Bitcoin

28:34

has unique risks

28:37

that, I mean, of course, maybe gold has

28:40

risks with maybe like, asteroid mining or something.

28:42

But Bitcoin also has risks, right? Because

28:45

Bitcoin has this whole thing about, you

28:47

know, the Bitcoin's mind, the,

28:49

you know, the inflation

28:52

block rewards going down with the halving

28:54

and, you know, you don't really have transaction fees

28:57

replacing that or like, you know,

29:00

the long term economic security to me

29:02

for Bitcoin feels a bit like,

29:05

you know, I don't know, I'm not totally

29:07

comfortable with it. So

29:11

and of course, for a lot of people also just

29:14

crypto still has too negative

29:17

of an

29:18

image, right? It's like they see Bitcoin

29:21

and they think, well, crypto, it's volatile,

29:24

it's,

29:25

you know, criminals, money

29:28

laundering, buying rocks online,

29:30

a bunch of scammers, Gary Gensler

29:32

doesn't like it, you know, like, is that

29:35

so does that feel like a good alternative

29:37

to gold?

29:38

I think a lot of people will probably not

29:40

see it that way because of that.

29:43

So I think there's still a lot of obstacles

29:45

that I see. I

29:47

so I'm with Meher on the S&P 500

29:51

thesis. I also think I mean, so basically

29:53

also if you look at the market cap of the S&P 500,

29:56

it's several times

29:58

that of gold, I think maybe

29:59

like five times or so that of gold, maybe

30:02

a little bit less. But to

30:04

me, the question

30:06

is in the de-dollarization,

30:09

basically not when's gold or when's

30:11

Bitcoin going to replace the dollar,

30:14

but when are stablecoins

30:16

going to, or baskets of

30:18

stablecoins or somewhat

30:21

stable assets devise that

30:23

way through clever

30:25

basketization.

30:27

When's that going to come? Because

30:29

that seems

30:31

closer. Do

30:32

you guys agree?

30:35

I gave a talk yesterday at the Gateway

30:37

conference about a Terra

30:40

one-year retrospective since the crash.

30:42

There was a period there where

30:44

I was highly

30:46

convinced

30:50

that Terra had

30:53

the potential to become a global

30:56

currency. Eventually it would de-peg from

30:59

the dollar,

31:01

follow some more floating exchange

31:04

rate kind of thing. But

31:06

after that whole system collapse, I

31:09

have all these reasons that happened. But

31:11

I feel a little bit sad that there's very

31:14

little

31:18

work being done on these

31:20

algo

31:23

stables and stuff since then. It

31:25

feels like it's almost like

31:27

everyone's scared to even

31:29

talk about it. I think that's not

31:32

great. I think we do need to. If

31:34

we do want to build

31:36

decentralized money, decentralized stablecoins,

31:38

we do need to figure out, open

31:40

up the conversation again about how

31:43

do we build

31:45

under collateralized algo stable systems.

31:49

I fully agree. I

31:50

think the issue with

31:53

the stablecoins today is that they're

31:55

basically all backed by

31:58

dollars in US

32:00

bank accounts and I think

32:03

that's just so easy to control. So

32:06

I don't think there's any way that the

32:09

current type of stablecoins, like hopefully they

32:12

can keep existing because they're super useful.

32:14

They're great, right?

32:15

And they can be a great

32:18

sort of

32:19

transaction media, but then they're really

32:21

more of a different

32:23

payment rails than

32:25

anything else. I think they

32:27

can never be, the

32:28

US

32:30

financial system will never allow them

32:32

to get to a threatening state and I

32:34

think they can easily prevent that because

32:36

they can just freeze the assets in these banks

32:38

and go after these banks.

32:40

So I think the

32:43

current stablecoins are not really viable.

32:46

They're not building

32:48

a viable alternative and I think for a viable

32:50

alternative, we do need to have

32:53

a really decentralized

32:55

system. I like Sony, I

32:58

was very bullish on Terra,

33:00

of course also very wrong about

33:03

it, but I think

33:05

the idea was

33:07

just enormous.

33:09

And then I think that idea needs to be pursued

33:12

in some way.

33:12

Maybe it has, I don't know if it's

33:17

fully collateralized, maybe that

33:19

can work

33:20

or maybe it needs to be under collateralized,

33:23

but maybe

33:24

they're not with the same mistakes that Terra

33:27

made, I'm not totally sure.

33:29

But I do think those experiments need to happen

33:31

and we need different types

33:33

of stablecoins.

33:36

So what have we learned from the Terra collapse? Maybe

33:39

you're just giving an essence of your

33:41

talk. I

33:44

think that when

33:49

Doris has a really good blog post from 2018 or

33:51

something where he talks

33:53

about the goal with a stablecoin

33:55

is to build a real economy around

33:57

it and he talked

33:59

about it. If you build a payment system

34:01

that drives continuous demand for

34:03

it, you have to get people to start denominating

34:07

business debts in this stable coin.

34:10

That's how you get fiat-remained

34:12

stable because you have this perpetual demand

34:15

for the token,

34:18

the currency. That's

34:21

what I think Terra had started

34:24

to build. That's what the whole Chai

34:26

stuff was about. Obviously

34:29

now in retrospect, it's unclear how much of that was fraud

34:32

like real or not. I guess there's all

34:34

these

34:35

four pieces going on about that. But

34:38

then they had started building a

34:40

real DeFi economy around it that was

34:43

getting demand.

34:44

But then eventually they

34:46

just got greedy, I think, at some point. Instead

34:50

of having this actual sustainable

34:53

growth that they were seeing, the

34:55

anchor scam came along and basically told

34:58

everyone to hold USD in this pool for 20%

35:00

yield. It

35:04

was not real yield. It was just being subsidized

35:06

by

35:08

TFL and anchor

35:10

emissions and being

35:12

propped up basically. What happened was as

35:14

soon as things got a little

35:17

shaky, everyone went running for

35:19

the door. No one was there for

35:22

actual demand. Everyone just

35:24

exited from anchor. There's all these issues. First of all, anchor

35:26

should have probably had some rate limits or something, but

35:28

everyone just went running for the door. And anchor also had this

35:31

along with

35:33

having everyone hold USD for

35:36

this fake yield, it actually had this

35:38

bad effect where

35:41

it made it harder for people to build real economies There

35:44

was an episode with Mars a couple weeks

35:46

ago and Mars

35:48

was originally on Terra. They had their

35:50

own lending protocol, but they struggled

35:53

to get deposits because they had

35:55

to compete with the 20% yield from anchor.

35:58

And so it's like

35:59

not only was it like creating

36:01

this fake economy, it was actually parasiting

36:03

the real DeFi economy

36:06

that was being built around UST.

36:08

And so, I don't know,

36:10

what did we learn that

36:13

stablecoins propped up by Ponzi-Algo

36:15

farms

36:17

don't work, but it's like no shit, obviously.

36:19

So that's the part that I find the most

36:21

disappointing. We didn't learn anything

36:24

new and it just soured the

36:26

ecosystem for everyone that it's like now

36:29

the sentiment is so against Algo staples, even

36:31

though the original experiment of building

36:33

a demand driven

36:35

crypto economy was never tested

36:37

properly.

36:39

It kind of ties back to the whole

36:42

infrastructure phase and real business

36:44

running on the networks. I think

36:46

in the end, Terra was too early because there

36:49

was nothing like that. And I guess this ultra Ponzi-nomics

36:52

that like made it scale way too quick and

36:55

then in its collapse, I think right

36:57

now, I guess you

37:00

first need these real businesses to be

37:02

on chain, right? And I guess then you can have

37:04

a decentralized stablecoin. I don't think

37:06

it's necessarily like a design flaw

37:08

or like you can somehow fix this with design. You

37:10

really need

37:11

like economy to migrate on

37:14

chain, like purely

37:16

the better stablecoin design won't fix it, right?

37:18

So I think it's just it

37:20

will take some time. And I do

37:23

actually think that over collateralized stablecoins,

37:25

like even like Maker, right? It's quite nice

37:28

design. It's not as scalable,

37:30

but maybe it doesn't need to be. And

37:33

when the demand is there, maybe when

37:35

there are reward assets on chain and more than

37:37

it will be scalable enough at that point,

37:39

it could sort of be a theory. I'm not like

37:41

super convinced if there is like some Algo

37:43

stable that like purely by design

37:46

can fix this, these issues personally.

37:50

You need circles. Circles

37:53

seems like the answer here, because

37:55

I mean, so basically these mutual credit

37:58

lines that basically circle in effect

38:01

is, it lets you create

38:04

money locally in groups

38:07

and move it along relationships

38:10

that exist. I think that's super

38:13

valuable. I think AlgoStables

38:16

with central issuance, those

38:18

were... If we'll see them, my

38:21

thesis would be that

38:23

we will see them later. First,

38:27

we will see localized versions.

38:30

Yeah, that kind of resonates with me. I

38:33

feel like one of

38:35

the things that we...

38:37

If you remember, Fredaika, the first time we interviewed,

38:40

it wasn't Doa, but it was his previous

38:43

co-founder on Epicenter.

38:45

Daniel. Daniel, right. We

38:49

walked away from that episode thinking that

38:51

Terra was not sustainable

38:54

because it relied on this hypothesis

38:57

of perpetual growth

38:59

and perpetual demand in order to fuel its growth

39:01

and stability. I

39:04

wonder if at least currently

39:06

you're in the current ecosystem,

39:10

if it is even possible to create enough

39:13

demand to sustain

39:15

a stable coin.

39:20

What would that demand come from? Is

39:22

it DeFi?

39:23

If you think it's DeFi, then

39:25

I think that's inherently flawed because

39:28

DeFi is built on all these pillars

39:30

that are also a little bit... Brian

39:32

was talking about this, really, about how

39:35

there is no usage behind much

39:37

of the activity.

39:41

I feel like what Circles hits at

39:43

is it hits that real world economy tangible.

39:47

You can touch it, hold in your hands, eat it,

39:49

drink it. Use

39:52

it to sustain you economies

39:55

that

39:56

are necessary for a currency

39:59

to exist. and maybe the algorithmic

40:01

stablecoins of the future will be baskets of those

40:04

types of ecosystems, right? Like

40:05

Circle and something else similar to it.

40:08

Yeah. I do feel like that's,

40:11

I mean, if you want to be cynical about it,

40:14

the stablecoin that so far has

40:16

found product market fit

40:18

is Tether and the use case is tax

40:20

evasion. I

40:21

think, I mean, it's

40:23

a little bit, maybe it's a little bit too

40:25

stuck. Nah, I mean, it's not the

40:28

use case. I mean, yeah,

40:30

there's a lot of Tether usage, like

40:32

globally, like, but have you tried to cash

40:35

out Tether? No,

40:37

but yeah, but it's

40:39

really, really difficult. It's difficult

40:42

to, to, to cash out. I don't know what that

40:44

has to do with tax. I mean, Tether

40:46

is used so much for all kinds of stuff. Like

40:48

it doesn't sound right to me. What are you saying? What's

40:51

interesting is if you look at the Tether stats on

40:54

the Tron blockchain, right? Like they have like,

40:56

what, like $50 billion

40:58

of Tether on there? Like, yes, 80% of

41:01

it is in exchange accounts, but actually like 20%

41:03

is like in like

41:05

tail end wallets and that are like making

41:08

like daily transactions. Like

41:10

there's actually an entire like

41:12

real, like you go to Thailand,

41:14

there's like street merchants accepting Tether. You

41:16

go to Columbia, there's like ATM, like Tether

41:19

ATM's where people can like convert

41:21

Tether to like cash. And it's like,

41:24

as much as we like to meme on Justin Sun, he's

41:26

actually been like building a real like

41:28

payment rail system like globally

41:31

with on Tron and Tether. Like

41:33

obviously it'd be nice if it wasn't in a centralized

41:36

stablecoin. It was actually like a more decentralized thing,

41:38

but like

41:39

the actual like, hey, you

41:42

know, what most people care about right now

41:44

in the world is like, you know, like, like

41:47

I thought we were saying, Brian, maybe, but like, you know, not

41:49

getting their hands on gold, but it's like getting their hands on like

41:51

dollars. Like most people in the world, in third world countries

41:54

just want access to dollars and like

41:56

Tether and Tron have actually been doing that

41:58

pretty successfully.

42:00

Why do you think it's Tether and not say USCC?

42:07

So I've talked a lot to the Tether team about this

42:10

and they actually like about the tail end

42:12

stuff, right? And their claim is that actually

42:14

they weren't very involved with it. It's actually been

42:16

mostly like the Tron

42:18

like team that was like leading

42:20

this like effort. And so I don't

42:23

know, just good execution

42:26

skills. I think Tether just

42:28

happened to be on Tron like accidentally

42:31

like those like this, like why did it

42:33

end up being Tether and not USCC

42:35

was just a... Tether

42:37

came first, it had more liquidity and then a lot

42:40

of people were using like, you know, the

42:42

Tron team like spent a lot of time like making

42:45

sure that like getting all exchanges

42:47

to do Tether transfers via

42:49

Tron.

42:50

And then from there they expanded

42:52

into like more retail payments.

42:55

Like if USCC existed at the time, like that's

42:57

the whole thing. I think that's what like Binance was

42:59

trying to do with BUSD. The problem

43:01

with USDC is there's like

43:03

not a global

43:06

distribution rail for it. What

43:08

Binance was trying to do with BUSD was

43:11

basically Tether, yes, like, you know, it is sketchier

43:13

than like your actually

43:16

regulated stablecoins. Binance was trying to take

43:18

a regulated stablecoin by Paxos

43:21

and then use the Binance system to like

43:23

as a global distribution rail for

43:25

like how do we get this like

43:27

better, more secure stablecoin than Tether

43:29

in the hands of people globally. And of

43:31

course, obviously that got like shut down

43:34

basically, effectively by the government. But like

43:36

that is I think what they were trying to do.

43:40

So we had here in the rundown

43:42

that we would talk about,

43:43

you know, which project we

43:46

think had the most significant

43:48

pivot and I feel like this sort of covers

43:52

that. I guess Tether for

43:54

a lot of us, or sorry, Terra

43:57

for a lot of us was that project.

44:00

What about things that you

44:03

were super excited about

44:05

that have faded out or ceased

44:07

to exist?

44:08

I know, Felaike, you had

44:11

some ideas here of projects

44:13

that you were interested in over the years

44:15

that have faded out or maybe you were surprised faded

44:17

out.

44:18

Any thoughts there?

44:19

Yeah. I mean, basically,

44:21

it's just sometimes you speak to a

44:24

team and you just immediately see

44:26

the value of that project

44:28

and you think, oh yeah, I

44:30

would totally use that and I will use

44:33

that. And

44:34

then it just fades out and you

44:36

never hear from it again.

44:40

I think the example that I made was Dharma.

44:44

At the time, it just seemed

44:46

so novel and then basically they pivoted to

44:48

a

44:50

multi-sig wallet. Before

44:53

you recall this episode, I said, I wonder what happened

44:55

to them. I haven't actually thought about them

44:57

for a long time and

44:59

someone said they were acquired by OpenSea.

45:02

Yeah, it's just

45:05

sometimes it just plays out differently

45:08

than you thought. And I was wondering

45:11

whether you had any of those moments

45:12

recently. I

45:15

had one, an

45:16

app I was using a lot during

45:18

COVID and actually they were sponsoring the show

45:21

for a while was Pepo

45:22

was this kind of crypto

45:24

TikTok like thing

45:26

that was on the OST chain or by

45:28

the OST team.

45:30

And

45:32

they were around for like, I think, two

45:34

or three years or something like that. They

45:36

were trying to build out

45:38

this kind of crypto version of TikTok

45:41

and there were a lot of cool content

45:44

creators there, like some very niche

45:46

people,

45:47

met a few folks there as well. But

45:50

yeah, then they decided to just like shut it down and pivoted

45:52

and Jason

45:53

Goldberg, who was running

45:55

that project, is now doing some kind of like online gym

45:57

or something like that.

46:00

Yeah, that was one recent

46:02

example.

46:05

Yeah, I'm not going to say

46:07

anchor. No,

46:12

I guess for me, it's probably like

46:15

some of the scaling solutions or some of the

46:17

initial ideas like plasma or even

46:19

Trubit. I was like just looking back

46:22

at the episodes, sort of when

46:24

I started to listen to epicenter around like 150 or

46:26

something and

46:27

sort of fascinated about these

46:29

initial ideas of scaling and sort of

46:32

how it developed into what we have today, like

46:34

roll ups and

46:37

this kind of designs. Obviously, like some of the

46:39

early design sort of just faded or teams

46:41

even

46:44

dissolved or got to work somewhere else.

46:46

I guess I would probably mention those where I was

46:48

like pre bullish on, but that

46:50

specific project, for example, didn't make it like like

46:52

like a Trubit.

46:55

It kind of ended up

46:57

inspiring the like

46:59

all the optimistic roll ups that are being

47:01

built today. But yeah,

47:04

right idea, wrong time, I guess.

47:07

For me, what's really interesting is how hard

47:09

it is to disrupt the

47:13

TCP IP HTTP stack.

47:16

And one can see that in kind of like the

47:18

struggles IPFS has or

47:21

I mean, I think the struggles

47:24

a bit will have all

47:26

of these

47:28

projects that are trying to reinvent like

47:31

networking and like data transport

47:33

around the web.

47:34

They haven't done as well as I thought they

47:37

would. I mean, you see IPFS being

47:39

used in some dApps, but

47:41

then

47:42

they will be you'll come across a cutting

47:44

edge ecosystem

47:46

and it will have nearly zero

47:48

IPFS penetration with all the

47:50

wallets being traditional

47:53

centralized wallets. It

47:56

kind of reinforces how how

47:59

sticky the. the current web stack

48:01

really is.

48:04

For me, I think the one that, you

48:08

know, as people might remember, I was like a huge

48:10

on interledger and I was like really

48:13

excited about like

48:14

the, you know, hey, let's build

48:16

a generalized payments protocol that

48:18

will span across all the chains. Like, and

48:22

you know, a lot of reasons,

48:24

I think the project didn't really succeed. Like

48:26

I think one, it was trying to do too much at the same

48:28

time. It was trying to be like a payment

48:30

channel network as well as like

48:33

an exchange system as well

48:35

as like a crop, like a bridging kind of protocol.

48:37

And it was kind of do all this stuff into,

48:40

in one thing at the same time. And

48:42

so I think like learning from that is like

48:45

important, like, okay, if maybe don't try to do too much

48:47

in one step protocol. And obviously I do

48:49

think that the ripple association is

48:51

part of what killed it where like, you

48:53

know, I, it came from out of the ripple

48:56

team. And like, because

48:58

of that,

48:59

it just didn't get the

49:01

political will from other ecosystems

49:03

to like really put effort behind it.

49:06

You know, I talked to a team recently and they were like, we're

49:08

building on, on,

49:11

uh, on interledger. I

49:13

was like, what, that thing is still around. And yeah,

49:15

I guess there's some like

49:16

some usage in Latin America or something

49:19

like that. Yeah. So

49:21

yeah, I mean, one, one project that came to my mind,

49:23

maybe it was like radical. So radical

49:25

was like trying to do this, uh, decentralized

49:28

GitHub alternative, which also

49:30

seemed like,

49:32

you know, such a big need. Uh,

49:35

you know, I think for

49:37

at one point there was a lot of discussion about

49:39

this, right? Because you'd have

49:41

projects that would be, you

49:43

know, kind of decentralized, like Bitcoin free

49:45

service was a big topic, right? Where you have like,

49:47

of course, very decentralized network, but then

49:50

the code is all run or

49:52

hosted on a centralized platform, GitHub,

49:55

where you have, you know, a bunch of like,

49:57

uh, maintainers that, you know, babies

49:59

is raw.

49:59

controlled by the GitHub company that

50:02

end up having a lot of power. So

50:04

like, you know, and then of course other things,

50:06

right? Where like GitHub will like exclude

50:08

people from certain jurisdictions, you know, like

50:10

if you're Ronnie and you can't use GitHub and stuff

50:13

like that. So it did feel like,

50:16

you know, that that would be cool idea to do a

50:18

sort of, you know, decentralized alternative

50:20

to it. But then, and I think,

50:23

you know, the team was pretty strong like that, you know,

50:25

but then somehow I think it didn't manage

50:28

to do it. And I mean,

50:30

it's still around to some extent, but I

50:33

don't know. You don't hear much about

50:35

it. And

50:36

are you both on Gitopia?

50:39

I don't know. Gitopia, no idea.

50:42

Yeah, I was going to bring that up. Gitopia is

50:44

a project that's like doing the

50:47

same, like similar thing like GitHub, like a

50:49

decentralized version of GitHub. And

50:50

actually, in my opinion, doing it correctly. Like I

50:53

was on the episode, you know, I would did the episode

50:55

with Radical. And I was actually

50:57

always like very skeptical about the approach that

50:59

they were taking, where,

51:01

arguably, it was a bit too radical, where like

51:03

their take on like software development was that like

51:06

master branches are a source of centralization.

51:08

And like we have to get rid of master branches.

51:11

We have to go to a world where like back to

51:13

when everyone had their own personal branches, and we're all like merging

51:15

patches amongst each other. It's like,

51:17

no, like that's not actually how like

51:19

real software development it's done. And like,

51:22

I think like,

51:23

yeah, I think Rival was trying to like shove this like weird,

51:26

esoteric, like software development philosophy

51:28

baked into the model of their system. And

51:30

I think that was the problem. I think so what Gitopia

51:32

is doing is actually

51:34

doing it correctly, which is like taking the

51:36

infrastructure that that that

51:39

GitHub has done in a very centralized way and actually

51:41

just

51:42

moving that onto a blockchain. So

51:44

I'm personally really excited about Gitopia. Like

51:47

it's I think it's radical done, right?

51:49

Yeah. And the other thing that's cool about Gitopia is it incorporates,

51:52

or at least they want to incorporate all

51:54

this kind of like DAO tooling within

51:57

the system so that

51:59

of have your Git repo be managed

52:02

by a DAO. And what I'm really looking forward

52:04

to here is like, when all of this

52:06

tooling

52:07

is built in a kind

52:09

of one-click

52:10

system where like, if you're launching a

52:12

blockchain project, you can just go

52:15

to Gitopia or like some interface built

52:17

on top of it, say, I'm looking for like this

52:19

kind of structure, like I want to be like Benaveta dictator,

52:22

or I want my my project to be run by a DAO

52:24

or like some other model or some kind of custom

52:26

multisig or whatever. And like within one

52:28

transaction, you can start the DAO, you can

52:30

distribute the tokens, you have the Git repos,

52:32

you have like all the permission to access. And it's just like,

52:35

it just becomes a default for any crypto project

52:37

that's starting, they're not going to go to GitHub, they're going to go to

52:39

like, to Gitopia and you can sort of get started

52:41

there. I think that would be really powerful.

52:44

Super nice. Before

52:46

we move on to another topic, could I take another thing

52:49

that faded out? So one

52:51

of the weird things that for me, like

52:54

faded out, but then

52:56

is reborn like a Phoenix

52:59

in the Ashes is

53:01

the idea of the private

53:03

corporate blockchain,

53:05

or the blockchain, the private

53:07

enterprise blockchain,

53:09

which has this, from my perspective,

53:12

weird story of

53:13

the bear market of 2017. It's

53:17

and suddenly it's all

53:19

the work, there are companies, digital asset,

53:22

R3C, it

53:24

is a hyper ledger, has

53:26

a bunch of projects, all of them trying to build

53:29

blockchains for the enterprise.

53:32

And as far as I can see, none

53:34

of those applications have

53:37

have really stuck. And

53:40

that initial idea that you can build

53:42

blockchains without a crypto coin. And

53:46

then those blockchains would be used by insurance

53:48

companies and big banks, kind

53:51

of faded out and

53:53

became much smaller than the noise at

53:56

that point in time.

53:58

What's really weird is, that

54:01

idea I think is being reborn

54:03

in the end to space so

54:05

when you look at like coinbase base well

54:09

isn't that really an enterprise blockchain

54:12

it's like built by built by

54:14

coinbase

54:16

their vision is to onboard 80 million

54:19

users of coinbase onto that blockchain

54:21

it's gonna have a centralized sequencer

54:25

it's an L2 to Ethereum

54:27

so it's using these cryptoeconomic mechanisms

54:31

but

54:31

it feels awfully like an

54:33

enterprise blockchain and I think there's going to be

54:35

more of them

54:36

like that so I think that

54:38

idea may again reappear

54:41

with the big qualifier that

54:43

those enterprise blockchains will be

54:45

built by crypto native enterprises

54:48

so that's kind of

54:50

like a

54:51

weird story that

54:53

has existed in our space

54:57

yeah I think that makes sense there's also like another

54:59

version of this that I've seen

55:02

like one or two examples of and

55:04

that is projects

55:07

projects building with the cosmos SDK

55:10

with the hopes that industrials

55:13

will become validators

55:15

so one example is

55:17

a project that I know of course one you guys

55:20

I think invested in is sort chain

55:21

and so they're building a decentralized

55:24

network for basically vehicle data

55:26

it's like a vehicle data market and so there's like this whole

55:29

industry like this will kind of like vertical that's emerging

55:31

around vehicles sharing data with each

55:33

other and with infrastructure etc and there

55:35

is no kind of you

55:36

know decentralized infrastructure to incentivize

55:40

that data to be shared

55:42

with

55:43

with the with sort of like the greater network

55:46

and they're working with auto

55:49

manufacturers and parts manufacturers and

55:51

one of their ambitions I think is to have you

55:53

know the Fords and Toyotas of the world

55:55

be validators on this network and you know

55:58

when we at Stratos were

56:00

working on permission lists or

56:02

permission consortiums

56:04

back in those days, back in 2016, 2017 and

56:07

onwards.

56:08

That was the idea. The idea was we're going to create

56:10

these use cases that corporations

56:13

will want to

56:15

hop on board and become

56:17

validators in these networks.

56:18

But I think that

56:20

the technology wasn't quite there yet. Maybe

56:22

the understanding that cryptoeconomics are an important

56:25

aspect of

56:27

maintaining incentives in the system. So

56:30

I'm happy to see that those types of use cases are

56:32

coming back. And the nice thing about the Cosmos SDK is that

56:34

it can start this permission and become

56:36

permissionless over time. And

56:38

IBC enables some of that as well. Network

56:44

architecture that I'm quite bullish

56:47

on and I wish

56:48

the Interchain Foundation would spend a little bit more time

56:50

doing

56:51

business development around this

56:52

kind of thing.

56:55

Maybe let's change gears and talk

56:58

about the converse. So every now and

57:00

then there are niches

57:02

in this ecosystem that grow way

57:05

faster, become way more useful

57:07

than we would have thought, like even

57:09

a couple of months before they kind of exploded

57:12

onto the scene. So basically one thing I'm thinking

57:14

about, for instance, is CKP

57:16

technology. So basically if you

57:18

look at how much it's kind of shaped

57:22

what we think the ecosystem

57:24

can do over the next couple of years, it's enormous.

57:27

Another thing is AI. So let's talk

57:29

about these.

57:32

The thing with AI, here's

57:34

what's kind of funny about the whole

57:36

AI and blockchain topic.

57:39

Once again, this is a topic that

57:41

has kind of done at 360

57:43

because, or maybe a 180.

57:46

Because a couple of years ago, in

57:49

the last cycle, people

57:50

would talk about AI and blockchain. It

57:53

was just kind of this weird cringe topic

57:55

that we all thought wasn't

57:57

going to amount too much and it was just sort of like, buzzwords

58:00

that people will put on a pitch deck to raise funds and teams

58:03

did raise funds. But now it actually starts to

58:05

make sense. Of the

58:08

last three episodes we did on the interop, the topic of

58:10

AI and blockchain was central to those

58:13

episodes. And Sunny, we did an episode

58:15

of

58:16

Avow Launch and they're

58:19

putting a large language model in a blockchain

58:22

so that you don't have to run code anymore. You can just tell

58:24

it what to do and it will

58:26

send those instructions to validators.

58:30

Akash network is

58:32

working on a decentralized marketplace

58:35

in which, among other

58:37

types of execution resources

58:40

would also be

58:41

GPUs

58:43

that people could use to train

58:45

models. So the topic of AI and blockchain

58:47

is coming back in a really

58:48

big way and I think in a really

58:50

relevant way. I know,

58:52

Mary, this is a topic you've

58:55

been spending a lot of time researching. I'm curious what your thoughts

58:57

are on that too.

58:59

So I've kind of followed this topic for

59:03

six or seven years. In fact, if

59:05

you look at the classic articles for AI

59:07

and blockchain, they are written by Trent McConaughey

59:10

where he has a series called Wild, Wooly,

59:12

AI, Dows. I think 2016, 2017. And

59:15

I'm actually cited in

59:19

the blog. So shout out

59:22

to Trent. I've

59:25

kind of followed a

59:27

lot of these projects.

59:30

And I think the

59:31

one major idea here

59:34

is, okay, can you train

59:37

AI models on hardware

59:41

that is kind of incentivized

59:43

by some crypto network? So that's one

59:46

idea that is

59:48

very prominent.

59:50

I actually don't know how successful it is going

59:52

to be. In fact, I'm

59:54

not highly convinced about it.

59:57

So in general, AI and blockchain is very

59:59

hard. mix

1:00:01

and it is so even now. I

1:00:03

don't think GPTs have

1:00:06

changed a lot but

1:00:08

what I do suspect crypto

1:00:12

could deliver the AI

1:00:14

space in a very powerful

1:00:16

fashion is when

1:00:19

you have AI agents that end

1:00:22

up becoming very powerful

1:00:25

the only way to contain

1:00:28

them starts to be

1:00:31

zero-knowledge technology or blockchains.

1:00:35

So imagine

1:00:39

you have like an AI agent that

1:00:41

is as intelligent

1:00:43

as a human

1:00:46

and you want to jail that AI agent in

1:00:48

some way by jail meaning you want to restrict

1:00:51

it from doing certain things. The

1:00:55

problem is that if you as a

1:00:57

developer are developing such an

1:00:59

agent and there are some examples

1:01:02

like that

1:01:03

then because you're fundamentally building software that

1:01:05

is as intelligent as you it can

1:01:08

always escape into the broader

1:01:10

internet

1:01:11

and it can replicate and

1:01:14

you can have very little control over it.

1:01:16

So how do you exercise control over an

1:01:20

agent over a piece of software

1:01:23

that is as intelligent as you are this

1:01:25

is what is called the alignment problem

1:01:28

in the AI space and

1:01:31

I think the point at which AI and

1:01:33

blockchain are going to merge on a very powerful

1:01:35

way is the way you actually

1:01:38

control a

1:01:40

highly intelligent AI system

1:01:42

is that

1:01:44

the entire execution

1:01:46

of that AI agent continually

1:01:50

output some kind of zero-knowledge proofs

1:01:53

and for example if you want to have a kill switch

1:01:55

on any agent so I assume that there's an AI

1:01:57

agent that is extremely intelligent the

1:01:59

minimum thing is want is to install a kill

1:02:01

switch into that AI agent that when

1:02:04

I say die, I can make

1:02:06

it die with 100% guarantee

1:02:09

and the AI agent cannot break

1:02:12

the kill switch itself because

1:02:14

if the agent can break the kill switch,

1:02:17

then it can leak out into the world

1:02:19

and replicate across the internet. So

1:02:22

how do you implement a guaranteed

1:02:24

kill switch? That's a

1:02:26

type of alignment problem.

1:02:29

And I think the answer to it is

1:02:32

you have to write an AI agent

1:02:35

inside like an Urbit

1:02:37

or inside like a ZKEVM

1:02:40

like computational platform where

1:02:44

you can write the kill switch

1:02:46

as some kind of logic

1:02:48

which has a zero knowledge proof and as

1:02:51

the computer executes,

1:02:53

there are guarantees that the kill switch isn't

1:02:55

disabled. So

1:02:57

when you think of this problem of extremely

1:03:00

intelligent systems, verifiable

1:03:02

software is going to

1:03:04

become really important and what

1:03:07

we are fundamentally developing via the mechanism

1:03:09

of zero knowledge proofs is actually

1:03:12

verifiable software

1:03:13

fundamentally. And I think that's why

1:03:17

I think there is an intersection in

1:03:19

the future. I

1:03:21

mean, this makes sense to me, but how do you deal like

1:03:24

when you have open source models

1:03:26

and how do you force

1:03:29

things to have kill switches

1:03:31

built in? I think

1:03:33

that's the

1:03:35

concern issue I have with this idea.

1:03:38

So you

1:03:40

can have an open source model, right? The

1:03:43

model is just code or

1:03:46

it's the weights of a network and it is open source.

1:03:49

The

1:03:49

thing that is dangerous is

1:03:52

not the model itself,

1:03:54

but actually a running version of the model,

1:03:56

right? It's some,

1:03:58

but something has to be executed. executing,

1:04:01

making calls to the model,

1:04:03

and it has to be executing it as a

1:04:06

process.

1:04:07

It's that process that

1:04:10

can be dangerous.

1:04:12

And how do you have any kinds

1:04:14

of limitations posed on

1:04:16

a running computer process that is as

1:04:18

intelligent as you are?

1:04:21

You want a verifiable kin

1:04:23

switch called verifiable power

1:04:25

limitation switch. And

1:04:27

I think that is fundamentally what crypto provides.

1:04:31

But Meher, so

1:04:33

the kill switch idea to me makes sense, but

1:04:36

how do you know when

1:04:39

to

1:04:40

press it? So basically, to

1:04:42

me, the danger would be that kind of the AI just

1:04:45

outsmarts you and it looks harmless. But

1:04:48

in the back end, it actually makes something malicious

1:04:50

because it knows in principle you can shut it down.

1:04:53

So I mean, it's a cat and mouse game, no?

1:04:54

Exactly. So again, you want

1:04:57

an auditable log out of

1:04:59

the AI agent, whatever the agent

1:05:01

does, it has to guarantee appear

1:05:04

into a log that you can see

1:05:06

and analyze with a different system. That's

1:05:09

another verifiable computation problem

1:05:11

guaranteed

1:05:12

printing of a log. That's

1:05:15

a crypto problem. That's a ZKD problem.

1:05:18

This is what I suspect is

1:05:21

going to be our value proposition to

1:05:24

that field. Do

1:05:26

you think, so basically, I recently spent

1:05:28

a lot of time also reading about AI

1:05:30

stuff.

1:05:31

Do you think this is going to be the end

1:05:33

of all of us at some point? Because

1:05:35

basically, so there's so

1:05:37

many ways it could in principle go

1:05:40

wrong. And basically dealing

1:05:42

with something that is just

1:05:45

inherently more powerful than you are

1:05:47

yourself. It may just be, it's

1:05:49

probably impossible

1:05:52

to contain, at

1:05:54

least reliably.

1:05:56

And I mean,

1:05:58

they only have... has

1:06:00

to be one hiccup, right?

1:06:02

That

1:06:05

may well spell the end of all of us.

1:06:07

So

1:06:08

do you see that danger? And if

1:06:10

so,

1:06:11

what do we do against it?

1:06:14

I recently heard

1:06:16

a couple of people say that they think

1:06:18

our only way to kind of survive this is

1:06:21

kind of just

1:06:22

upgrading ourselves too

1:06:24

with kind of a neural link type

1:06:27

technology.

1:06:28

I don't buy that. But basically

1:06:30

the question is, as someone who's actually

1:06:33

thought about this a lot, do you think we're

1:06:35

in any sort of real danger?

1:06:39

So this is essentially known

1:06:42

in various

1:06:44

places as the control problem and like

1:06:46

the alignment problem.

1:06:48

The control problem being,

1:06:50

it's like, how do you place restrictions

1:06:53

on something that is smarter than you,

1:06:55

can replicate across the internet,

1:06:58

right? So if you're running it on

1:07:00

some computer system

1:07:02

and that running agent is kind

1:07:04

of smarter than you are,

1:07:07

it can always kind of jailbreak

1:07:09

and go to the internet and start

1:07:11

running on some other hardware. So

1:07:14

how do you place restrictions

1:07:17

on it is one

1:07:19

highly important problem. And

1:07:21

then

1:07:22

the other problem is kind of when you're not

1:07:25

placing restrictions on it,

1:07:27

for some reasons, right? Like

1:07:29

you need to do it a certain task

1:07:32

and it is making autonomous decisions,

1:07:35

then how do you make sure that

1:07:37

those autonomous decisions

1:07:40

are kind of in alignment

1:07:43

with what your original desires work?

1:07:47

And kind

1:07:49

of,

1:07:50

these are unsolved problems, right? And

1:07:52

there are many people in the world that believe

1:07:56

humanity won't be able to solve these

1:07:58

problems on a,

1:08:01

on the time scale at which we will build

1:08:03

systems more smarter than us. So the

1:08:05

fundamental problem being that we will

1:08:08

build things as intelligent

1:08:10

as us before we know

1:08:13

how to control or align them. And

1:08:15

that timing mismatch is

1:08:18

what dooms us or dooms

1:08:20

human civilization fundamentally to

1:08:23

end and the end being

1:08:26

defined in various various

1:08:28

ways. Some people will literally define it

1:08:31

as

1:08:31

every human dying, others defining

1:08:34

it as some combination of

1:08:36

years becoming

1:08:38

the dictators of humanity,

1:08:40

etc. So

1:08:43

it's an unsolved problem.

1:08:46

If you just look at how in

1:08:48

the last six months, large

1:08:50

language models have

1:08:52

become so

1:08:55

prevalent, everybody

1:08:57

do you just chat GPT for something,

1:08:59

right?

1:09:00

And lots of startups are

1:09:03

now using chat

1:09:05

GPT or large language

1:09:07

models and GPT models

1:09:09

to create new

1:09:11

products. None of these products are being

1:09:14

designed with these sorts of containment

1:09:16

models in

1:09:17

mind, right? So

1:09:19

they're being built as SaaS products and people are using them

1:09:22

and they're in your call

1:09:24

recorder software or they're in like tomorrow

1:09:27

they'll be reading your email and

1:09:30

giving you some advice about

1:09:32

how you should be responding to your email or perhaps even responding

1:09:34

to your email for you. These things are coming and they're

1:09:36

coming fast. None of these

1:09:38

products have this containment in mind. And

1:09:40

so why would at some point like

1:09:43

in a year from now or three or five years from now

1:09:45

when

1:09:46

these systems have infiltrated

1:09:49

our lives, right? And we're

1:09:51

using them and we're talking to Siri and Siri

1:09:53

is now basically like GPT, right? And

1:09:56

why would at that point containment

1:09:58

models?

1:09:59

start. It would

1:10:01

be so difficult and I think practically impossible

1:10:03

at that point to

1:10:06

incorporate containment models. So

1:10:09

I think

1:10:09

the odds of this going wrong are

1:10:12

fairly high.

1:10:13

Although I love GPT, it's great.

1:10:15

I'm an optimist

1:10:17

and I believe

1:10:20

we will solve

1:10:22

the control problem. And

1:10:25

I actually think crypto is already

1:10:27

solving the control problem

1:10:30

by developing verifiable

1:10:32

compute.

1:10:34

So

1:10:35

if you look at like an orbit planet,

1:10:37

what's really fascinating about an orbit planet

1:10:40

is

1:10:41

everything that an orbit planet

1:10:43

computes, it can create a proof

1:10:46

that it computed

1:10:48

as per the code

1:10:51

that you had put in.

1:10:53

And so even invisibly, we

1:10:56

are developing verifiable compute and

1:10:59

we will be able to

1:11:01

put some control into these systems.

1:11:03

And on the other side,

1:11:05

I actually think

1:11:07

making highly capable AI open

1:11:09

source

1:11:10

and distributing

1:11:12

this power across many parties

1:11:14

is also essential

1:11:16

because then humanity can in

1:11:18

a sense divide and conquer

1:11:20

where you don't want one

1:11:24

one highly super intelligent or two

1:11:26

highly super intelligent systems in the world

1:11:28

that are only managed by 300 programmers

1:11:31

each, which

1:11:33

is the size of open AI. Because if only 600

1:11:36

people are going to be managing super intelligences,

1:11:39

it's way riskier

1:11:42

than 60,000 people managing it or 600,000 people

1:11:45

managing it.

1:11:46

And fundamentally, I think

1:11:49

we have to open source in,

1:11:51

make sure that the world's GPU

1:11:54

capacity is being used for artificial

1:11:56

intelligence by lots of parties. And

1:12:00

we have to ensure that the

1:12:02

designs for all of the systems are very

1:12:04

different, want them to be heterogeneous.

1:12:07

And then we want to use crypto to be

1:12:10

able to

1:12:11

put in containment measures for this technology

1:12:14

where verifiable compute.

1:12:16

And I think that is why the

1:12:18

values of open source,

1:12:20

wide distribution

1:12:23

and verifiable compute

1:12:26

will play an essential role in this

1:12:28

technological area. That's my belief anyway.

1:12:31

In

1:12:37

the shorter term, do you think that decentralized

1:12:39

identity systems protect

1:12:41

us from some of the

1:12:44

things that people are afraid

1:12:46

of? So like

1:12:48

the disinformation risk

1:12:50

that comes with all the generative

1:12:52

AI that is coming to production

1:12:55

to product now, things like

1:12:57

stable diffusion, et cetera, all the video creation

1:13:01

algorithms

1:13:02

that exist now. Do you think that

1:13:04

identity systems can help

1:13:07

with

1:13:09

proving that content

1:13:11

was created by a person or created

1:13:13

by an AI?

1:13:16

Yeah. So, I mean, this is actually

1:13:19

a

1:13:21

rhyming version of the bigger problem. So

1:13:23

the bigger problem is once the software

1:13:26

is as intelligent as you are or more

1:13:28

than you are,

1:13:29

how do you contain it inside some

1:13:31

computational box, essentially?

1:13:34

Right.

1:13:34

And how do you know that what

1:13:36

the outputs you're getting from the computational box

1:13:39

are what the system is thinking? That's

1:13:42

the high level problem 10

1:13:44

years from now for humanity.

1:13:48

The short scale problem,

1:13:50

interestingly, is also a problem of verification

1:13:53

and cryptography again, where when

1:13:55

the cost of producing any piece

1:13:57

of content goes down to a dollar.

1:14:00

For a dollar you could produce

1:14:02

any 10 minute movie about anything

1:14:04

in the world. It could be a clip of Harry Potter, it

1:14:06

could be a clip of

1:14:08

Donald Trump talking something. For a dollar

1:14:10

you could produce that.

1:14:12

How do you make sure that what you are seeing

1:14:14

has been produced by a human on

1:14:16

the other side?

1:14:18

That's, you see, another cryptography problem.

1:14:20

We have to give private

1:14:23

keys to every human in the world.

1:14:25

That's a problem we are working on. So

1:14:29

in a sense it rhymes, doesn't it? So

1:14:33

we know how to solve this problem. We have public-private

1:14:35

key cryptography. We are naturally as a space

1:14:37

building that technology.

1:14:39

Even if AI didn't exist, we would build it. But

1:14:43

because AI exists, there's enormous

1:14:46

incentive to adopt

1:14:48

private-public key cryptography. And I think because

1:14:50

AI will get stronger, there'll be enormous incentive

1:14:53

to

1:14:54

adopt verifiable computation.

1:14:56

And I think those problems are

1:14:58

rhyming and we will manage to solve

1:15:01

these problems fundamentally.

1:15:04

No one teaches AI how to use public-private

1:15:07

key cryptography then.

1:15:09

Okay. Yeah. Be

1:15:12

sure not to teach them how to use it. No

1:15:15

one should give their

1:15:17

AI a ledger

1:15:18

or connect it to an HSM.

1:15:21

So barring some AI apocalypse

1:15:25

where we all disappear,

1:15:28

what are you most looking forward to in the next 500 episodes?

1:15:33

And I guess a bigger question is

1:15:35

like, how do we keep this going

1:15:37

so that we could be here in the next 500 episodes?

1:15:41

Other than Meher, I'm

1:15:43

the other internal optimist.

1:15:46

In the next, say, 100 episodes,

1:15:49

I really want to see

1:15:51

the stuff we're building kind of

1:15:54

hit

1:15:55

normal people in a big

1:15:57

way. So I don't want to

1:15:59

see the

1:15:59

I don't want to say the mainstream because it

1:16:02

doesn't have to be mainstream. But

1:16:05

I want to have products that are

1:16:07

built on blockchain technology

1:16:09

that are just legitimately

1:16:12

fun to use and better to

1:16:14

use than the

1:16:15

alternatives. And I think

1:16:17

this is what I want.

1:16:21

Same here. Yeah. I'm

1:16:25

increasingly thinking that

1:16:27

more and more I think that this will come

1:16:29

from some combination of gaming

1:16:32

slash social-fi applications.

1:16:36

It's a space that I

1:16:38

don't have a whole lot of visibility

1:16:40

into, but I do hear

1:16:42

a lot of people building infrastructure telling

1:16:45

me that the

1:16:48

market that they're addressing is

1:16:50

just gaming and social-fi

1:16:53

use case. And

1:16:56

that has the potential to bring in a lot

1:16:58

of young people, I think, and young people

1:17:01

tend to use technology and adopt

1:17:03

technology faster than old people.

1:17:05

And it also likes to play games and are very social.

1:17:07

So I think that's

1:17:10

a decent hypothesis.

1:17:12

You're talking like we are not some of

1:17:15

them. Only

1:17:17

Sunny. We have Sunny. We do

1:17:19

have Sunny. Yeah.

1:17:21

I would say aside from

1:17:24

maybe like AI generated host that

1:17:27

can take stock on some episodes. That'd

1:17:29

be helpful. On some weeks, I think that

1:17:31

would be good if we had an AI

1:17:34

host. Yeah, we can spice it up

1:17:36

and then don't tell people and you have

1:17:38

to find out which one was the AI episode. Yeah.

1:17:41

Yeah. So

1:17:44

what are we doing for episode 1000?

1:17:47

What kind of topics will we

1:17:49

cover by then?

1:17:51

Guesses, courageous guesses.

1:17:53

We'll still be questioning mainstream adoption. Yeah.

1:17:56

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:18:00

Oh no, oh no, don't say that. When

1:18:03

is it finally going to happen that people use this

1:18:05

stuff? Yeah. Or

1:18:08

are we going to talk with Vitalik about Ethereum

1:18:10

scaling roadmap?

1:18:15

Do

1:18:15

you guys think Bitcoin will still feature?

1:18:18

Yes. Yes. What

1:18:21

about Goit? Yes. Yeah. The

1:18:25

dollar? Yes. Yeah. Agostables?

1:18:29

Yes. Yeah. I think the dollar

1:18:31

has the highest chance of not

1:18:33

being around anymore. Except for it. Yeah. Out

1:18:36

of those three? Out of those three. No,

1:18:38

I would put Bitcoin above that. Oh, you put Bitcoin above

1:18:40

that? Okay. Yeah, me too. Well, Goit will still be around for sure. Most

1:18:43

chances to stay around is Goit, then

1:18:46

Dollar, then Bitcoin. Okay. Yeah,

1:18:48

I agree. So

1:18:51

my offbeat

1:18:53

idea would be, I

1:18:55

think in 10 years,

1:18:57

the thing that will

1:18:59

become really massive and

1:19:02

hopefully bigger than Bitcoin

1:19:04

are fundamentally all of the amazing

1:19:07

exchange technologies that are being invented

1:19:10

in this space.

1:19:11

So when I look at

1:19:14

what crypto has

1:19:16

genuinely done new, I

1:19:19

think

1:19:21

on the exchange space, we have this automated

1:19:24

market makers, one of which

1:19:26

Sunny is building, maybe the second or third most

1:19:28

popular of which Sunny is building.

1:19:31

We have the badge auction exchange,

1:19:34

which is this frequently amazing

1:19:36

exchange technology that replaces

1:19:39

market makers with solvers,

1:19:41

open source solvers, and

1:19:44

could result in better prices. Man,

1:19:46

that could be amazing. Sridharika

1:19:48

is involved with that. And then

1:19:50

we have the invention of the perpetual

1:19:53

where

1:19:54

without having a spot asset, I can

1:19:57

go long or short with leverage without

1:19:59

having to.

1:19:59

to the spot. And

1:20:02

if you look at these three technologies, none

1:20:04

of them exist in the stock

1:20:07

markets, bond markets of

1:20:09

the world.

1:20:11

And I think the

1:20:13

world will realize what, and

1:20:15

maybe there will be more of these amazing

1:20:18

inventions. And I think the world will come to realize

1:20:20

that

1:20:21

if you want to do cheap transactional

1:20:24

cost exchange,

1:20:26

you have to go to a crypto network.

1:20:29

Very

1:20:29

cool. I think that's a good note to end on. Guys,

1:20:32

this has been really fun.

1:20:33

And I mean, when

1:20:36

I say it's been really fun, I mean, the

1:20:38

last 500 episodes

1:20:40

have been really fun and also this

1:20:42

one has been really fun.

1:20:43

And I really look forward to doing

1:20:45

more of these with all of you.

1:20:48

Me too. Thanks

1:20:50

so much. Thanks. Thanks

1:20:53

everyone. See you in 500 episodes.

1:20:57

Thank you for joining

1:20:59

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