0:03

All right, ladies and gentlemen,

0:05

welcome back to another episode

0:07

of the crypto 101 podcast.

0:09

I

0:16

am your co-host dutifully and

0:19

cheerfully. You guys know me, Bryce Paul.

0:21

You guys also know my notorious co-host,

0:24

Brendan Veman. Brendan, how

0:26

are you doing today, man? I am

0:28

doing good. What's up, everybody? You

0:31

know, we're seeing a lot of life in the crypto markets

0:33

right now, Bryce. I don't know about you, but I

0:35

am riled up and I am excited. I'm

0:37

making it all the most exciting in

0:39

a long time because it's October and we

0:41

are feeling the effects of it. I'll tell you

0:43

what. Yeah, it's crazy

0:46

because everybody was talking about October.

0:48

You know, it's always on record as one

0:50

of the best months in crypto's market.

0:52

And then we just were dragging and dragging

0:54

for the first, what, two weeks. Finally,

0:57

over this past weekend, you know,

1:00

we just saw a tremendous bid

1:02

in the market and we're excited. Clearly,

1:06

it's a builder's market still. And that's

1:09

why we have a builder with us today who

1:11

we're going to introduce. But maybe the

1:13

speculation will return here to

1:16

the market as the bull unfolds.

1:18

But we're all always excited

1:20

through the bear and through the bull. And

1:23

we don't like to call it bear markets. We like to call them

1:25

builders markets because this is when the

1:28

actual real stuff gets done. This

1:30

is when nobody's really paying attention

1:32

and everybody's stopped calling you and texting

1:35

you to hear about the latest price of Bitcoin. But the real,

1:38

you know, crypto aficionados

1:40

and the real builders stick around

1:42

and they build what ends up being

1:44

the infrastructure for the

1:46

future. So we have joining us

1:48

a very special guest, Matt Bell, who

1:51

is the CEO of Turbo

1:53

Fish. So, Matt, welcome

1:55

to the Crypto 101 podcast.

1:58

Thank you so much for having me. Yeah,

2:01

we're really excited. How do you feel?

2:03

Are you feeling excited or are you just

2:05

you know, you don't even check price charts What do you think

2:07

I?

2:09

Check a little bit. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we've

2:11

been in the builders market I've just been building

2:13

and not checking but then now you know It feels

2:15

good when you have a chance to like, okay now I

2:17

want to check it because I'm gonna look and see a bunch of

2:19

green on coin market cap and

2:21

stuff like that So yeah,

2:24

I'm feeling pretty good. Just like We

2:26

have Bitcoin right now Up five

2:29

percent the last 24 hours. That's pretty good.

2:31

Like that's that feels good. I

2:33

Mean you make a good point because

2:36

there are times in the market where we

2:38

are checking our phone I find myself opening up

2:40

the trading view app just to close it and then open

2:43

it back up and then close it and then Open it back right

2:45

like it's a social media

2:46

like an addict. Yeah. Yeah, exactly It's

2:49

the same hit of dopamine as social media.

2:51

It's just like refresh. Oh, my

2:53

bags went up a little bit And

2:56

then there's and then there's other times where I'm

2:58

like, I do not want to look at the market I am deleting

3:00

my trading view app and I'll look at it

3:02

next month and you know, luckily

3:05

we're on The first scenario

3:07

where now I'm constantly refreshing my feed and

3:09

I'm just

3:10

I did to be a part of it Just

3:12

happy to be here. Right? Well Matt. Let's let's

3:15

dive into a little bit about your background

3:18

Prior to you know founding turbo fish

3:21

and we'll get into that and all the amazing things you're building

3:23

there But but what were you kind of doing before

3:26

and how did you find your way into

3:28

the blockchain and the crypto markets?

3:30

Yes, it's been a long time now Like

3:34

I got into the industry just

3:36

sort of on accident Like I was just interested

3:38

in Bitcoin in like 2012

3:41

just learning about it and like wow This is a

3:43

really cool thing and back then it was such a small

3:45

world like, you know like

3:47

a subreddit with like, you know a few thousand

3:50

people basically and That

3:52

was early small community and just

3:54

like in yeah Bitcoin was like $1

3:57

back then or something Just like in all these

3:59

different chat rooms talking about this stuff

4:01

and

4:02

I never really thought like

4:04

oh this is gonna be something that like I should invest

4:06

in that's gonna grow a lot it was just for me it

4:08

was like this is some cool fun little

4:11

like niche technology you know and it's

4:13

interesting to me so I was interested

4:15

in it then I just sort of you

4:17

know there were some companies in the space

4:19

that had raised money and stuff so I like started

4:22

working in that world

4:24

you know and it's just sort of stuck and now it's been

4:27

a decade of working in the industry and

4:29

you know all these different projects

4:32

and seeing it evolve and it's gone

4:34

way farther than I ever thought it could it's

4:36

exciting

4:37

and and kind of you know what made

4:39

you decide of all the companies

4:42

you could found and work on you know

4:45

what was it about turbofish that

4:47

really made you land on that

4:50

yes so a turbofish

4:52

we're just focused on you know

4:54

we've seen the trends come and go in like

4:57

you know how things are built the different engineering

5:00

the different platforms people have built on

5:02

and

5:04

we think we have you know

5:06

a special take on how

5:09

to build things the right way sort of

5:11

how to get the core engineering really right to

5:13

build everything how it will you

5:16

know how it will last like all

5:18

the if you think of all the crypto and blockchain

5:20

products people will use in the future you

5:22

know that will support billions of users

5:26

we just really want to build that rather

5:29

than you know there's been so many platforms

5:31

that are just sort of like the transitions

5:34

to get us there but we really want to build the future

5:36

of this technology and

5:38

what is it that you're building at turbofish specifically

5:42

yeah so our focus right now is

5:45

we're founding a protocol called gnomic

5:48

and gnomic basically

5:50

brings Bitcoin to cosmos

5:53

and you know and beyond and

5:58

it's it's just sort of You

6:00

know, if you look at Bitcoin, it's been the

6:03

strongest crypto asset all this time.

6:05

You know, it's the first one, but it's always been

6:07

the biggest. Even right now, it's bigger than all

6:09

other crypto combined, which is pretty amazing.

6:12

It is crazy. But if you think

6:15

about it, everyone, like so many people own

6:17

Bitcoin, but it's just sitting there in their

6:19

wallets not doing anything. But

6:21

in recent years, people have built all these cool

6:24

newer platforms that have, you know, DeFi

6:26

and all these cool new things you can do.

6:29

And,

6:30

you know, but the liquidity and the

6:32

value of Bitcoin has sort of

6:34

just been separate from that. So the goal

6:37

we're trying to achieve in

6:40

building Nomic is bringing

6:42

Bitcoin into the DeFi world. And

6:46

yeah, we're starting with Cosmos for that. So you'll

6:48

be able to move Bitcoin

6:50

through Nomic into any Cosmos

6:53

chain really easily. Like you'll

6:55

be able to just go to Osmosis,

6:57

for instance, and like

6:59

click a button, or you just click to pause it,

7:02

you get a Bitcoin address, you send to that,

7:04

and then it's in. Now, your Bitcoin

7:06

is in Osmosis. So

7:09

yeah. So this is really all about

7:11

empowering these everyday users. I mean,

7:13

like you said, Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency.

7:16

It's probably the most held cryptocurrency

7:18

as well because of that reason. And

7:21

so, you know, this gets me thinking if people have more of

7:23

a reason to transact Bitcoin and move

7:25

it around and be active, this would probably

7:28

increase not only volume, but liquidity

7:30

as well. Is that right? Definitely. Yeah.

7:32

So there's like,

7:34

you know, if you think of liquidity as just

7:36

like moving capital into

7:38

some system or some market, you know,

7:41

if it's just if the Bitcoin, you know,

7:43

it already has so much value, but it's not doing

7:45

anything. Why not move

7:47

it into DeFi, earn a little bit of yield

7:50

or whatever you want to do with it? So,

7:53

yeah, it seems like a no brainer.

7:55

Yeah, I mean, just if you go back and you look at the Ethereum 2.0

7:58

launch, people were. really excited

8:01

about just the concept of being able to

8:03

stake and un-stake Ethereum. I mean,

8:05

it brought a ton of additional volume

8:08

and activity and all sorts of things. So if we

8:10

kind of open those flood doors to something

8:12

that is as large as Bitcoin, I

8:14

guess we'll let the mind, the

8:16

curiosity expand there, but it

8:19

has a lot of opportunity. Yeah.

8:22

But is this something that's

8:24

different than like

8:26

wrapped Bitcoin? I know people have been

8:29

using WBTC on

8:31

Ethereum for quite some time.

8:35

How different or how similar is it to that model?

8:38

Yeah, that's a good question. So with

8:40

NOMIC, you have NBTC and

8:44

there's no product that really offers

8:46

that right now where you're not like taking on

8:49

all this risk. And so I think

8:52

getting the word out, I think

8:54

people are sort of already looking for this.

8:57

Yeah, I agree.

8:59

When you talk to people, I mean, number one, who doesn't want to

9:01

earn a yield, right? I've talked

9:04

to even my parents and

9:06

I would say anyone that's even on like the older side

9:08

or anyone that's not even like that doesn't live

9:10

in crypto. Like we all live in crypto. We're

9:12

probably looking at the markets 12 hours a day, whether

9:15

it's charts or news or developing

9:17

or something like that. But for the average

9:19

person, a lot of people out there don't

9:21

know that they can earn yield on their crypto. Even

9:24

on things as simple as like Ethereum

9:26

or Cosmos, they go, you can earn a yield on that,

9:29

let alone Bitcoin. And you're right, Bitcoin

9:31

has this massive market cap. It has

9:33

this massive audience space. And if you're

9:35

going to tell those people, hey, you can earn a

9:37

yield on your Bitcoin, you can use it for all these different

9:40

purposes now. I think that kind of blow a lot

9:42

of people's minds. And again, who wouldn't

9:44

be interested in maybe getting

9:46

a little bit more? Because what that does is that

9:49

compounds over time, right? Maybe

9:51

you'll get a couple percent on Bitcoin, but it's growing

9:53

by X amount over the next

9:56

one, five, 10 years. I think

9:58

that is something that a lot of people people are gonna find

10:00

interesting.

10:01

Yeah, and I guess kind of to follow up on that, what

10:04

are some of the yield generating applications

10:07

that we can pledge our NBTC

10:09

to? I know a lot of people

10:12

who are listeners are probably familiar with

10:14

maybe Aave or Compound

10:17

or MakerDAO or some of these very

10:19

classic Ethereum facilities.

10:22

What sort of utilities and applications are big

10:25

on Cosmos that people could kind of

10:27

tinker around with and maybe earn

10:29

some extra yield on or utilize?

10:32

Yeah, that's a good question. There's

10:35

some of the equivalence of those things like Aave.

10:38

So in the Cosmos world, there's

10:42

the Kujira ecosystem. So that's

10:44

sort of this cool project that

10:46

has a lot of cool things you can do

10:48

where

10:50

you'll be able to trade

10:52

with leverage or like borrow against

10:55

it to mint the USK stablecoin,

10:57

all these things like that. But for a sort

10:59

of low risk yield opportunity,

11:02

there's Mars protocol,

11:04

which does lending similar to Aave

11:07

and Compound and stuff. And then there's

11:10

Umi protocol, which is also very similar.

11:12

So that's like just from day one, that's

11:14

like an easy way where like there's yield, you just move

11:17

your money in, you're earning a little

11:19

bit. And I

11:21

think going beyond

11:23

that to find better sources

11:26

of yield,

11:28

we picture eventually, like

11:31

imagine this as a product, like a yield aggregator

11:34

kind of like yearn where it's sort of like

11:36

you just move your money in and then there's this DAO

11:38

managing it for you, finding whatever

11:41

the good yield opportunities are out

11:43

there. And, you

11:47

know. Yeah, like a yield aggregator.

11:50

Exactly, yeah. I think, you know,

11:52

over time, we want to push things that

11:55

way. I think, you know, that's like the best user

11:57

experience where, you know, there's

11:59

all these. traders and these people that know

12:01

how to direct the Dow to earn this

12:04

yield and like in return they can sort

12:06

of earn more than they would if they're just investing

12:08

their own money, but then For

12:11

some consumer that just like has

12:14

you know, you they just want to passively earn yields

12:16

You know, you just move your money in and the machine

12:18

does the work for you, but from

12:21

day one, you know There's like these lending protocols

12:24

But other than that you'd have to sort of dig

12:26

and search for you know, these funds defy

12:28

yield opportunities And if you

12:30

can do that though, you will be rewarded.

12:33

So yeah, there's definitely a

12:35

lot of a lot of room for growth I think

12:37

that's why a lot of people are invested in this market

12:39

because hey if everything was already built There'd

12:42

probably be no money to be made but

12:44

the fact that things are still getting built

12:46

and we are so new I mean the opportunities

12:48

rife

12:49

To really, you know strike it big

12:52

but one of the things I did want to ask about

12:55

And I know you weren't affiliated with it.

12:57

So, you know, you can't speak to the particulars But

12:59

I want to know

13:00

Um, you know, how can we as a

13:02

cosmos ecosystem avoid?

13:05

another luna Catastrophe

13:08

or something similar because that was you

13:10

know a stable coin that was kind of built

13:12

a little bit on Cosmos,

13:15

you know, how can we avoid that? What were things

13:17

that the cosmos ecosystem learned from

13:19

that?

13:20

Yeah, so that all came down to one

13:23

main thing which was just fundamentally Algorithmic

13:26

stable coins like that just

13:28

aren't a strong design like as

13:31

opposed to You know, there's other

13:33

kinds of stable coins like maker

13:35

dao in ethereum which Kujira

13:38

like I mentioned has that same model where

13:41

that is something that's strong because it's

13:44

based on being over collateralized where you

13:46

have some asset and then That's

13:49

like held by this network and then

13:51

you have the stable coin But the stable coin

13:53

is less value than the collateral

13:56

and so you're sort of guaranteed for

13:58

that to be a sound system

13:59

Whereas

14:01

Terra and Luna, it was trying

14:03

to be like, oh, what if we just didn't have

14:05

that much collateral and we had tons of stable

14:07

coin, then it turns out

14:11

if the price goes down a little bit, then everyone gets

14:13

scared and pulls out and the whole thing blows up.

14:15

And so that all just came down to the

14:17

fundamental design. And that's

14:20

something that's maybe hard for people

14:22

from the outside to know because when

14:24

it was flying high, everyone was like, oh, this is great,

14:27

put all your money in this. But

14:30

just take sort of like doing your own

14:32

research and looking into how these things

14:34

work and sort of thinking about like, is this a

14:37

sound design or not? I

14:40

think the community has learned from

14:42

that lesson a lot and

14:44

people aren't really trying these risky things

14:46

anymore. Everything is very

14:48

safely collateralized. So,

14:51

yes. Do you think that these DeFi

14:53

applications,

14:56

as the cross chain future

14:59

kind of unfolds or the multi

15:01

chain future, do you

15:03

think it will actually add a little bit more resilience

15:06

to every application because now the

15:09

smart contract risk or the

15:11

protocol risk kind of gets diffused

15:14

across platforms as opposed to just being

15:16

on one blockchain?

15:18

Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think, yeah,

15:21

part of that is there's so many

15:23

choices. People are implementing things many

15:26

different ways and so the market can

15:28

sort of just like

15:29

look at all of that and see like what

15:31

actually does make sense and what's sound

15:33

and what's unsound and

15:35

hopefully the market is watching for

15:39

all these different things, like the different risks

15:42

that everyone should be aware of. So.

15:44

Yeah, I mean, speaking of security,

15:46

I think one of the questions at the front

15:48

of everyone's mind is the topic

15:51

of bridging, which is something that Numik

15:53

is definitely familiar with, but when it comes

15:55

to bridging BTC with Cosmos

15:57

and all this stuff, it's a little bit different, right?

16:00

Because I think one of the clear outlooks

16:02

is that this isn't your average bridge

16:04

where people man I think there's

16:07

a cause to be You

16:09

know curious

16:10

about the security of anything, but this is

16:12

one of the more secure bridges I love we have heard

16:14

about a lot of bridge hacks. I mean, you know

16:16

wormhole or Nomad

16:19

and you know all these other

16:21

things that rail and stuff. So it's a valid

16:23

question for sure

16:25

Definitely. Yeah, it's something we think about a lot

16:28

and we make security our number one priority

16:31

But

16:32

the nice thing from our position

16:34

is that there is this past of all

16:36

these projects where we can learn from their

16:39

mistakes And so we have

16:41

a lot of mechanisms in NOMIC where if these

16:43

other projects had them I don't think they would have had

16:45

any issues For example, there's a

16:47

circuit breaker so if all the funds were

16:49

leaving the bridge at once the bridge

16:52

will automatically just sort of Put

16:54

a halt on that where it'll be resumed

16:56

But like there's time for the network to sort

16:59

of assess what's going on So if there was some

17:01

hack instead of just like in one

17:03

minute the hackers like in and then they got all

17:05

the funds you know, there's just a fail-safe

17:08

mechanism where they they wouldn't

17:10

be able to do that and I Like

17:13

that's just one example There's many different things

17:15

where we've looked at all these issues that have happened

17:17

in the past and made sure that those

17:20

mistakes Can't happen on NOMIC

17:22

and

17:24

Yeah, I think over time This is just

17:26

sort of how technologies develop where

17:28

in the beginning People haven't learned

17:31

what all the different failure modes are and then over

17:33

time, you know Like in the beginning of airplanes

17:35

and stuff like it's not like they

17:38

knew exactly how to do this And sometimes

17:40

planes could just like fall out of the sky or

17:42

something, you know like over time it's

17:44

just we see how to build

17:46

these things the engineering gets better and Everything,

17:51

you know, we'll just get lower and lower

17:53

risk over the years. I

17:56

think we've already made a big step in NOMIC

17:58

We're all We're all standing

18:00

on the shoulders of giants Um,

18:03

right. Yeah, basically here Nobody's

18:05

developing in a vacuum. We're all kind of building

18:08

on top of what somebody else built

18:10

and iterating and learning from their failures

18:13

And that's the key right learning It's

18:15

it's the natural process of any of

18:17

any industry is learning from others people's

18:20

mistakes And I think that that's

18:22

the most important thing that we can do As

18:24

an industry and making things right

18:27

as we move forward and matt you mentioned it Like

18:29

just by adding one thing and two things

18:32

and seeing what works and then having other projects

18:34

build on top of that like over time These things

18:36

are going to get more secure and

18:38

we saw the same thing as traditional finance

18:40

was building up and as the internet Uh

18:43

was building up like security risks way

18:45

back when? Or a whole thing

18:47

like it was a lot easier to get a hold of people's information

18:50

It's a lot easier to do a lot of things but you know

18:52

as the internet has matured

18:55

There is better security practices whether

18:57

that's vpn or like Malmoutabyte

19:01

software and all these different things. So I

19:04

like the analogy. Yeah

19:06

No, i'm excited about what you're building

19:08

and kind of i'm curious just you know

19:10

You've been around, you know, like you said since 2012 So

19:13

you've seen the bull markets the bear markets and

19:15

back again and you know, where you know Where

19:17

are we at right now again? You know late october?

19:20

The halving is coming up in about six months

19:24

Where do you kind of see this market?

19:27

You know trending towards and again, nothing that we say

19:29

or you say is going to be financial advice We just want

19:31

to get your opinions

19:33

Right. I feel like There's never some

19:35

sort of like scientific way to know the

19:37

best way to really judge these things is

19:39

really just to feel it and just to be like

19:42

Watching everything and being part of all these communities

19:45

and just sort of like feel how the sentiment shifts

19:48

And it does feel like it's sort of warming up

19:50

right now and people are sort of ready

19:52

to be like on the lookout for like

19:54

the next new cool project that they want to be

19:56

a part of or that they want to invest in and

19:59

You

20:01

know, it's always so hard to know and that can always turn

20:03

at any point, but I am really optimistic.

20:06

It does feel like everyone out there is

20:08

sort of like getting more optimistic. And

20:10

there's also, you know, the

20:12

macro climate, it feels like interest

20:14

rates are now at the top. Like

20:17

economists think, you know, the Fed is

20:19

going to bring interest rates down. That'll be something

20:21

that just puts more

20:23

money flowing back in the economy. And that

20:25

means crypto going up as well. And

20:29

yeah, I don't know. It's feeling good.

20:31

Yeah, a lot of this is a gut feel. I

20:33

mean, ask a lot of the asset managers and

20:35

stuff, you know, you could feel when the

20:38

market starts to shift. I actually read

20:41

an excerpt from George Soros. He's like,

20:43

before I would even logically come to a

20:45

conclusion about, you know, where the market

20:47

was going, I would physically like feel

20:50

it in my gut. He said something like he

20:52

would get sick the night before or something that

20:54

the market starts to come down. And

20:56

I'm like, yeah, he's just

20:59

he's become one with the market. I

21:01

think it makes a lot of sense.

21:03

It's such a human

21:06

thing, you know, like a market is really just

21:08

many humans sort of like

21:10

trying to figure out what reality is like,

21:12

is this valuable? Is this not valuable?

21:15

Like what are other people thinking? Like everyone's

21:17

feeling all these feelings and trying to figure out

21:19

what to do. And you

21:22

know, if you're feeling something, there's a good

21:24

chance that other people are feeling the same way.

21:26

And so if you're feeling good, then you know, the market

21:28

is probably feeling good and ready to invest

21:31

more. And if you're feeling scared, you

21:33

know, other people are probably trying to pull out and

21:35

yeah.

21:37

Yeah, it's funny. It's like if you look at a price

21:39

chart, it's really

21:41

like you said, a graph of human emotion over

21:43

time. Because if you think about it, prices

21:45

are just people and people

21:48

are prices. They're,

21:51

you know, the only time an

21:53

asset moves is because some person

21:56

wants to buy or wants to sell. And sure,

21:58

maybe it's a bot. that a person

22:00

coded to buy

22:03

at this point or sell at this point, but it's still at the end of the

22:05

day an expression of some

22:07

kind of humanity behind it. It's

22:10

crazy. No, I love it. Look,

22:12

Matt, before we let you go, I just wanted

22:14

to ask a quick question. Based

22:17

on all the people that you run into

22:19

in the Cosmos ecosystem,

22:22

who else is super noteworthy?

22:25

Who's a good, strong leader that you would recommend

22:27

people go and maybe watch them on YouTube

22:30

or who do you like in the Cosmos ecosystem?

22:33

Yeah,

22:34

that's a good question. I think one

22:36

who comes to mind who already a lot

22:39

of people look up to is Sonny

22:41

Augerwall, who's the founder of Osmosis.

22:45

I really like his opinions on things

22:47

and he's well-spoken. He's also

22:49

sort of a Bitcoin maximalist. I

22:52

think he has Bitcoin in his Twitter

22:54

bio or something. I

22:58

think he's a good one to watch if you're

23:00

looking for someone in Cosmos.

23:03

Love it. For all those

23:05

folks who are out there who are listening, and maybe this is

23:07

the first crypto podcast they've ever even heard,

23:10

what would you give advice to

23:12

a young, bright-eyed,

23:15

eager crypto investor coming from a veteran?

23:19

See, I don't know that I'm the best crypto investor

23:21

in the world. I think I'm just

23:25

driven by the technology and stuff, but

23:27

I think the times where things have

23:29

paid off the best for me are just want to follow

23:32

my curiosity, where there might

23:35

be some project where it's like, oh, that's a good

23:37

idea. I want to learn more about that. I

23:39

think that's the best way where

23:43

don't just take what other people say and

23:45

take their opinion but

23:47

follow what you think, like, hmm, this might

23:50

be interesting. Maybe other people, like,

23:52

maybe no one else cares about some project

23:54

yet, but it's interesting to you. I

23:56

think that's a really good sign and that's something to follow.

23:59

That would be my advice. Follow your curiosity.

24:02

I think that's great advice. What do you think, Brendan? I

24:05

mean, Matt, you're messing with all the

24:07

stuff that we like over here. You're touching Bitcoin,

24:10

Cosmos, DeFi. I

24:12

for one am excited for you.

24:14

Yeah. No. Well, thank you

24:16

so much. Matt, we

24:18

hope to...