179 - The Bankless Origin Story - Raoul Pal

The tables are turned as Raoul Pal interviews David and Ryan on all things Bankless. They share respective origin stories of how they got into crypto, meeting each other for the first time, how Bankless got started and where the future frontiers of Bankless are headed. ------ ✨ DEBRIEF | Unpacking the episode: https://www.bankless.com/debrief-raoul-pal ------ 🚀 Unlock $3,000+ in Perks with Bankless Citizenship 🚀 ⁠https://bankless.cc/GetThePerks https://%E2%81%A0https//bankless.cc/GetThePerks ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE ⁠https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2⁠ https://%E2%81%A0https//k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2%E2%81%A0 🦊METAMASK LEARN | HELPFUL WEB3 RESOURCE ⁠https://bankless.cc/MetaMask⁠ https://%E2%81%A0https//bankless.cc/MetaMask%E2%81%A0 🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/Toku ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum⁠ https://%E2%81%A0https//bankless.cc/Arbitrum%E2%81%A0 🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE ⁠https://bankless.cc/uniswap⁠ https://%E2%81%A0https//bankless.cc/uniswap%E2%81%A0 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK ⁠https://bankless.cc/Mantle⁠ https://%E2%81%A0https//bankless.cc/Mantle%E2%81%A0 ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 5:50 David's Crypto Journey 11:04 Ryan's Crypto Journey 19:12 David's 2017 Story 22:11 Conviction Through The Bear Market 28:00 Bankless Origin Story 32:53 Vision For Bankless 39:23 From DeFi to Web3 48:44 Tribalism 54:56 A Helpful Mental Model 1:01:39 Dealing With Hate 1:08:38 Bankless Ventures ------ RESOURCES Raoul Pal https://twitter.com/RaoulGMI Real Vision https://www.realvision.com/ Real Vision Newsletter https://www.realvision.com/dailybriefing ------ RELATED EPISODES: 118 - Raoul Pal | Should We Be Scared Right Now? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzGMSKbqjco ------ Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Something truly magic is happening here. And yes, we're in this bear market phase of it all, but there is total magic going on. That just gave me another shot in the arm to think, you know what? What comes out of this is going to be massive.

• 0:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better and how to front run the opportunity. This is Ryan Sean Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman and we're here to help you become more bankless. Guys, this is part two of our conversation with Raul Paul and the tables have turned. This time, Raul is interviewing David and myself. So we wanted to publish this on the Bankless Podcast as well. I hope there are some good takes in here for you. This is really an opportunity to talk a little bit about the founding of Bankless, our early theses, where we got our start, how we met. We're not usually interviewed and I don't think neither David or myself are in a place to kind of ask each other questions as well as a third party would ask us.

• 1:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  So that's what you're in for today. David, do you have any reflections on this episode?

• 1:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah, like you said, like we don't, I always enjoy being on the other side of the microphone. The times that you and I both have been on the other side of the microphone are very few and far between and nothing of this caliber of like Raul Paul. I'm pretty sure the Bankless Nation will thoroughly enjoy us being interviewed rather than doing the interviewer interviewing. So yeah, like Ryan said, like the early days of Bankless or genesis of Bankless, like maybe you came into Bankless during 2021 or later and missed mine and Ryan's trajectory up to the genesis of Bankless and then also the early years of Bankless. Like this will probably provide you a lot of context and probably illustrate how we got to be the way that we are and why we say the things that we say. So I think this episode is going to be pretty fun for a lot of people.

• 1:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was also an episode, very, very rare episode where we were recording in person, like literally sitting beside each other. So there's that dynamic.

• 2:00David Hoffman?

  Never would have thought possible.

• 2:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  I know. Can you believe it? So guys, that's the episode today with Raul Paul talking to, I guess, David, you and I are guests today. We're the guests. Enjoy this one, but first a moment to tell you about the fantastic sponsors that made this possible, including our number one recommended crypto exchange and tool for going bankless, Kraken.

• 2:21David Hoffman?

  Kraken Pro has easily become the best crypto trading platform in the industry. The place I use to check the charts and the crypto prices, even when I'm not looking to place a trade. On Kraken Pro, you'll have access to advanced charting tools, real-time market data, and lightning-fast trade execution, all inside their spiffy new modular interface. Kraken's new customizable modular layout lets you tailor your trading experience to suit your needs. Pick and choose your favorite modules and place them anywhere you want on your screen. With Kraken Pro, you have that power. Whether you are a seasoned pro or just starting out, join thousands of traders who trust Kraken Pro for their crypto trading needs. Visit pro.kraken.com to get started today. Enter Mantle, an entire ecosystem dedicated to the adoption of decentralized, token-governed technologies.

• 3:04David Hoffman?

  Mantle, formerly known as BitDow, is the first DAO-led Web3 ecosystem, all built on top of Mantle's first core product, the Mantle Network, a brand-new, high-performance Ethereum Layer 2, built differently from the other Layer 2s that you may be familiar with. Mantle asks the question, how would you build a Layer 2 if you had the technology of 2023? Mantle Network is a modular Layer 2, built using the OP stack, but uses IconLayers' data availability solution instead of the expensive Ethereum Layer 1. Not only does this reduce Mantle Network's gas fees by 80% compared to other Layer 2s, but it also reduces gas fee volatility, providing a more stable foundation for Mantle applications. The Mantle Treasury is one of the biggest DAO-owned treasuries in DeFi, which is seeding an ecosystem of projects from all around the Web3 space for Mantle.

• 3:49David Hoffman?

  Mantle already has sub-communities from around Web3 onboarded to help the growth of Mantle, like Game7 for Web3 gaming, or EduDAO for the world of DSci, and Bybit for TBL and liquidity in OnRamp. So if you want to build on the Mantle Network, Mantle is offering a grants program that provides milestone-based funding to promising projects that help expand, secure, and decentralize Mantle. If you want to get started working with the first DAO-led Layer 2 ecosystem, check out Mantle at mantle.xyz and follow them on Twitter at @zeroxmantle. Are you planning to launch a token? Your token already live? And are you granting your employees and contractors vesting token awards? And are you trying to figure out how to take care of taxable events for your team? Toku makes implementing a global token incentive award simple.

• 4:31David Hoffman?

  With Toku, you will get unmatched legal and tax support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Toku will help you navigate across the lifecycle of your token, from easy-to-use pre-launch token grant award templates to managing post-cliff taxable events with payroll. For legal, finance, and HR teams, it's a huge, complex task to have to comply with labor laws, payroll and tax obligations, tax reporting, and crypto regulations in every country that you employ someone. It's difficult, time-consuming, manual, and costly, and it's drawing more attention from global regulators and governments. Toku makes it simple for leading companies in the space: Protocol Labs, Hedera, Gitcoin, and many more. So if you want some help navigating the complex world of token compliance, go to toku.com/bankless or click the link in the description below.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  So, double trouble today.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  David and Ryan, great to see you. It's good to be on this side of the table, and it should be a bit of fun.

• 5:23David Hoffman?

  Not only are we infrequently on the other side of the microphone, but we are even more infrequently actually together in person. So this is unique.

• 5:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, this is just happenstance. And David, you just put on your Wells Bankless t-shirt. I noticed, I see there.

• 5:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we got the Bankless America as well.

• 5:43Speaker 00

  Fantastic. So, as ever, I always like to start with people's journey into the space, because everybody comes in different ways. There's a different hook that brings you on, and then your understanding grows from there. So, I don't know, David, do you want to start with you?

• 5:58David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got hooked, I'm a class of 2017 crypto graduate, so came in, bought the top of 2017, as one does. Net worth went to zero in 2018, and again in 2019. But I was immediately compelled by just-

• 6:14Speaker 00

  What were you doing beforehand? How did you get into this?

• 6:16David Hoffman?

  Uh, my first job out of school was in social work. Um, after that, I was going, trying to figure out my way into the world of health sciences. Um, the, the through line between that and crypto was that I was in search of trying to find the way to improve people's lives, uh, for the biggest, in the biggest bang for your buck. So like, how do you do the smallest things that produce the largest net outcomes in people's just wellbeing? Um, my major was, uh, psychology with a focus on positive psychology. And the TLDR of that is just like, hey, psychology as a, as an academic study is all about, uh, improving sick people to be normal. But what if you apply psychological principles to, to normal people to just make them feel stronger, more self-actualized, just better?

• 7:00David Hoffman?

  Um, and so in pursuit of that, I was like, okay, that's great. But in order to make people feel more psychologically sound, you need to also improve their fitness, right? Like you can't be psychologically sound without like exercise. And then once you do those two things, you might as well round it all out with nutrition. And so these, there's just a bunch of low hanging fruit to make the average individual feel a lot better. Um, so on my search for how to find a private practice role in that, uh, I discover Ethereum because of 2017. And my mind gets opened up to the world of money and finance as an economic substrate for all humans. And so like, understanding like, how do I, how do we improve everyone's lives very simply and very easily? Well, money and finance goes down to the root of all things.

• 7:45David Hoffman?

  So like very far from psychology, but the, the through line of just like, how do we improve the most people's lives in the easiest, most systemic way possible? As soon as I kind of, you know, had the aha moment of like money and finances at the root of all things and Ethereum is a new platform for producing that, I was just immediately compelled and there was no going back.

• 8:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think David is one of the, the only people I've ever heard who came through to crypto through route of psychology and nutrition, actually.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  My wife's a behavioral psychologist.

• 8:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Really?

• 8:16Speaker 00

  She just thinks my NFTs are just ridiculous.

• 8:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  But does she understand them?

• 8:21Speaker 00

  No, and I've tried. She's just like, this is ridiculous.

• 8:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's no psychological thesis behind why humans collect these sorts of digital objects.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  There is, but she just doesn't want to accept it. Too much of that science brain. She's like, no, this is stupid.

• 8:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, and full credit to David, too. I think one of the things that I've observed, because I've got to see him since 2017. We probably started working together more in 2019 and then beyond to start Bankless. But this guy has taught himself everything, and he's gotten up to speed, you know, just so quickly. And to not like, know, I don't know, how much do you know about finance?

• 8:58David Hoffman?

  Zero.

• 8:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, how much did you know about money?

• 9:01David Hoffman?

  Zero business classes. A lot of my friends in college took business, like, went through business school.

• 9:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  Is this the antithesis of what you were doing, right? It's like, money was root of all evil when you go through kind of sociology, psychology.

• 9:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I wore a CCC P-shirt in middle school, for sure.

• 9:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, God. So, but this, I don't know if you've observed this, Raul, but sometimes the most trad-fi, deepest economists, people who have gone to graduate school and pursue their PhD, they miss this crypto thing for some reason. It's because I think they learn bad habits.

• 9:36David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 9:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so you almost have to enter crypto as a child.

• 9:40David Hoffman?

  A blank slate.

• 9:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right? And like, and like, kind of go back to the basics of, let's, let's build out from base principles what this money thing actually is, and then work from there. And that's what I've observed David doing in this space.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  I, I've, I was gonna mention when we were speaking to, yesterday, but I've now on my screen got the bell curve of the mid-twit.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  And I was speaking to Meltem about this, that we both realized that is the single most important thing, is never be in the middle. And that's why most of these guys, like you saw Taleb yesterday on CNBC, right? He's squarely being the mid-twit.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  And it's the simplicity of the idea is what can drive much better results, I think.

• 10:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I tease all of my business school friends that, you know, I was the one psych friend amongst the Cia business school people, but I was the one that discovered crypto well ahead of the curve and did well for myself, well, well, at an accelerated pace in comparison to them.

• 10:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  How do they respond to that teasing, David?

• 10:43David Hoffman?

  Well, you guys had to unlearn all of this stuff in order to understand crypto. It's about like the unlearning that I never had to do. I never had to unlearn anything because I never told my dad.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Because you could come in as a total moron.

• 10:56David Hoffman?

  Exactly. Yes, right.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  And then move to Jedi Master over time, right?

• 11:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Does that mean you're, are you on the left side of the mid Twit then, David? Are you on the right side? I don't know what I am yet. But I'm definitely not in the middle. That's all right, as long as you're not in the middle.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  So Ryan, what's your story? How did you get into all of this?

• 11:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Um, not by way of nutrition, not by way of psychology. I actually did the, the business school kind of thing, right? And so somehow I unlearned the lessons of Keynesian economics and everything they kind of teach you in business school. But I would say I kind of came at this through the, um, you know, technophile, startup entrepreneurship kind of thing. I remember sold a healthcare tech company in 2014 and the co-founder, the guy I was working with, said something to me in passing. He's like, have you heard about Bitcoin? Because I have set up a bunch of Bitcoin mining machines in my, in my garage. And this was 2014, right? Uh, of course, that was never profitable for him, unfortunately.

• 11:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  But I was like, what? Like, what? The idea of mining using machines, using, using computers, the idea was so foreign that I, I had a holiday, like a kind of a Thanksgiving holiday in the US where I had some time and I just went deep down the crypto Bitcoin at the time rabbit hole in 2014. Spent the entire weekend, you know, didn't spend as much time with my family as I probably should have, but I was just, uh, everything Andreas Antonopoulos had written or said on the subject, I absorbed that. I, you know, read everything I could on the subject. And by Monday, at the end of that weekend, I was ready, literally, to kind of quit my job. He was a crypto person. I opened up five exchange accounts, had no idea what I was doing.

• 12:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  And these were some shady exchanges at the time, let me tell you. And I was just, you know, starting to invest, started, I wanted to go all in. After that, I almost think of that as a sort of a manic type of weekend for me. Because after that, I kind of woke up and, you know, on Monday, and I was like, okay, back to, back to work, back to what I am doing. And the idea, you know, crypto kind of left me until Ethereum really entered, 2016. And now there's the idea, if Bitcoin was money over IP, which was so incredibly important, money over the internet, digital money, as a bearer instrument, that idea so powerful. Now the ability to program it, this ability of smart contracts, to actually build a,

• 13:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  didn't use this phrase at the time, but a bankless money system, that totally gripped me and totally captured me. And this was in 2016, 2017, still had no idea what I was doing in the space. And actually, I wanted to start a crypto fund. So, you know, your assets appreciate a little bit, and you rode Bitcoin up, you rode Ether up from some lows, and you're like, I'm an investor now. I can do this. I am brilliant. So let me manage other people's money. Did you ever put Blockchain Expert on your LinkedIn? No, I'm not that cringe, David, all right? I'm kind of, I'm kind of cringe, but, but so I didn't do that.

• 14:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Because I went down the path in 2017, and I realized, one, there was so much I still needed to learn. Like, I didn't have an underlying thesis of where value would accrue in this space. And so I had no business managing someone else's money. Like, absolutely none. I'm pleased you realized that. I think a lot of people didn't in 2017, because that was the time of like crypto hedge funds, and everyone was, was kind of launching one. And, you know, another reason I think a story arc of my life, my narrative. Has been this pursuit of of freedom and kind of autonomy, right? And I saw in crypto a technology that would deliver that not just to myself,

• 14:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  but but to society, to self sovereign money, this concept of once you own private keys, no one can take that away from you, right? Decentralization really kind of captured me almost like spiritually as well. If if if that's a way of of kind of capturing it. And so I knew if I took other people's money at that time, I didn't know what that would be a a shackle as well. And I was here for freedom. I was here for kind of, you know, everything that that entailed. So I didn't do it at the time. I'm very thankful and I spent the next few years really trying to understand and develop my thesis for this space. And it turns out David was doing that at the same time. We kind of met and converged in this path.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  Was that 2017 or later?

• 15:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  2019.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  So let's before we get to 2019.

• 15:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  I just want to hear the genius to idiot phase of suddenly the space collapses. It's the first time you've fully gone through it. I want to hear your mindset because a lot of people are going through that now. Right now, I I I was a class of 2012, so I've gone through a few times. But it's never fun, but you get kind of get used to it. So.

• 16:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why don't you tell yours?

• 16:00Speaker 00

  Go with your first experience.

• 16:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'll tell mine. Okay, so, you know, you you watch the the price of Bitcoin appreciate to, you know, above 20K, right? When you'd purchased much, much lower than that, obviously. And then you watch the price of Ether appreciate, you know, to 1420? Is that a number you remember, David? 2017, 1420? It just hit that very briefly, but like that was it, right? That that was the top. And then you watch it fall over the preceding months, right?

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Fast.

• 16:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  And fast. Okay, so, you know, down down to 800. Okay, you can hang with that. It's just a dip, right? It'll it'll pass down, down, just like massive flood at this time. You know, Ethereum is only kind of a.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  Had you marked your net worth in your head, the classic?

• 16:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Don't you? Everyone does. Don't you? I mean, and and you're kind of.

• 16:53Speaker 00

  Now, but I used to.

• 16:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  And that's when you think you're sort of a genius and you do things like one mistake I certainly made on the way up is discovered this really cool, you know, DeFi protocol called Maker Dow and opened up a, you know, a nice CDP, of course, right? And I'm protected because ETH can't go below 100. It can't go below 100, can it? Of course not. That would be impossible. Hit, you know, 1420. We're in a new paradigm. And then what happened over the months and even years to come is this massive amount of FUD, this kind of dark period where, well, maybe it was all a bubble, just ICOs and they have ETH on and they're treasuring, they're selling.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  Or did you just ride the whole thing?

• 17:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  I rode the entire thing, Raul. And you know what, though? It was not easy. It's not easy to do that. And particularly, I spent all of my waking hours trying to figure out if I was crazy or not. And I don't know if people can identify that right now, that they're kind of first cyclers, if they're just sort of wondering, am I the crazy one? Because that's what the world tells you. And not only that, Raul, in crypto in 2018, that's what the Bitcoiners would say, Bitcoin maximalists would say. It was crypto too. Yes, it's not only like the outside world is saying crypto is dead, but inside of crypto. Ethereum is dead. Ethereum is dead. There's no, like, DeFi wasn't a thing. It's just ICOs flash in the

• 18:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  pan. And so what I spent that year doing was trying to figure out if I was crazy or not. And in 20, I didn't sell during this time until I had some kind of conclusion of whether I was crazy. And why sell when you're down bad, you know, that much anyway? And so 2019.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  This is why you shouldn't be a hedge fund.

• 18:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. So 2019, I realized that, you know what? I don't think I'm crazy. I think everybody else is wrong. All right. Like, I've spent enough time looking at this technology, like, doing the pattern matching thing, and everyone is missing DeFi. Everyone is missing what's going on in Ethereum. This is actually bigger in impact than just simple money. Over IP, this is an opportunity for a bankless money system. And then I started to find others that thought the same way. David was one of those, but

• 19:13Speaker 00

  I want to hear David's story.

• 19:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, what's your 2017?

• 19:16Speaker 00

  The hero to zero. We need to hear it.

• 19:18David Hoffman?

  Thankfully, I didn't have too much capital going into 2017. And so like my high watermark, even though like relatively was super high for me, like going back down to zero after that. And I was like, whoa, okay, here I was. I'm familiar with this. Like, so let me tell you, social work does not pay quite a lot. And especially as you're a student, you're already faced with debt. And so like for me, going into crypto is like, hey, either I go to four plus years of grad school in debt, or I go into crypto and no debt. And so like that, that threshold was already, already nice. So yeah, so did the whole thing, just like Ryan said, went up to 1420, thought I was a genius as a bull market. Tokens were doing crazy things. Got my, got my first like taste of what capital markets and crazy capital markets can do.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  That's psychology 101, right?

• 20:04David Hoffman?

  Yes, 100%. Like definitely learning about herd, herd mentality and all that kind of stuff. And then so like, yeah, 2018 came, I got my first job in the space, being like a blog writer, community manager for an ICO advisory company, which retroactively, retrospectively, I'm like, okay, that's a shitcoin peddling company. But you don't really think about that at the time. Then got a job at a security token company because all the ICOs rotated into security tokens. And then I got a job at a tokenized real estate startup. And so I was going from just like, I was just like holding on by my fingernails, like job to job to job, getting through the bear market. And meanwhile, I learned that I can speak pretty well. And so I started my first podcast POV crypto with a Bitcoiner co-host.

• 20:47David Hoffman?

  And so I was the Ethereum, had a Bitcoiner co-host. And we were kind of like this bear market darling podcast. I think that's probably where Ryan heard me.

• 20:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  I loved it. I enjoy, I listened to this every time you guys publish an episode, I would listen to this.

• 21:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 21:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I'd be cheering you on, David.

• 21:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's like It was funny because like all the Bitcoiners that listened to it for, because of my co-host were like, man, I really like POV crypto. But your, your host, David is an idiot.

• 21:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  A complete moron.

• 21:11David Hoffman?

  And then all my friends would tell me the same thing. It's like, man, I really like POV crypto, but you're Bitcoiner. Our co-host is an idiot. Yeah, and so we were like, yeah, like this is my college friend. We like each other. It's great. Uh, so that's where I learned, that's when we learned to like be open and share ideas. And so even though we were like fiercely debating with each other, we, we were friends and so it was with love. And it was also like honest and integral and like trying to get down to the, to the basement of things. And so that was my foundation. And so like while like trying to hold my grip on to actually having a drive throughout the bear market, I was also doing the whole side gig because like my, my first job, the company blew up and I was laid off. And so I was like, okay, I never like with Ryan's freedom things, like I never want to have that be outside of my control ever again.

• 21:55David Hoffman?

  I want to work for myself. No one's ever going to lay me off ever again. Uh, and so I started to make a podcast just like that. That's mine and, and like learn how to make a podcast into a business. Uh, and so that was like my bear market, like endeavor.

• 22:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Can I, can I ask you a question though, David? So, um, a lot of people left during that time.

• 22:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  I stayed just to figure out if I was crazy or not. Why did you stay?

• 22:18David Hoffman?

  I, my conviction about crypto just did not waver in the slightest. Like it wasn't even a question to me. It's just like, I didn't get why people didn't get it. And I was the annoying one of my friends was like, guys, like this is, this is real. And they were like, uh, we're going to the baseball game. Like, ah, whatever.

• 22:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  What do you think you saw that they did? Like, what was it?

• 22:40David Hoffman?

  I don't know. Uh, I always, I grew up with a computer in my room. So I was always like tinkering with computer stuff and internet things. And so I understood that, like, that was more familiar to me. I also got in via mining myself. So I was mining Ethereum.

• 22:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 22:55David Hoffman?

  Uh, in my father's ba- uh, bathroom.

• 22:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  How many rigs did you have?

• 23:01David Hoffman?

  I had four rigs.

• 23:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why, why in the bathroom, dude?

• 23:03Speaker 00

  Electricity, water, not the best of mix.

• 23:06David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I was well aware.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  Sticking with the moron thing.

• 23:11David Hoffman?

  It worked out. The rigs actually are still gathering dust. I turned them off years ago, but I still have them. Why did I have such conviction? There was just some things like from first principles things of like scarcity on the internet. Like, why wouldn't you have conviction about that? Like Bitcoin never broke. Ethereum never broke. The things, maybe people lost faith in them, but the systems worked. Yeah, I was like, ICOs are still great. Right. Yeah, they're still a thing. I like, I don't know. It's like, people say like, why, why did you have conviction? Throughout the 2018 to 2020 bear market. Like, I don't know. Why didn't you have conviction? Yeah, why'd you leave?

• 23:48Speaker 00

  Price is not, people have to learn, and you guys obviously learned it, was that price is not an indicator of the overall value of the network over time.

• 23:58David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 23:59Speaker 00

  It's just where it is that day, you know, and that's psychology and that's network activity and other stuff. But overall, you know, you just look at, I've always just looked at the lows and realized they're always higher.

• 24:10David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 24:12Speaker 00

  And if that's the value of the network, therefore the network is more valuable each time you go through a cycle. I mean, that's all you need to know, really.

• 24:18David Hoffman?

  For me, I think there's a definitely a very strong personal element as to like why I stuck around. I was, I was learning to write and in my opinion, I was learning to write very well. I was like, not only was I writing what I thought was like pretty on point theses, but I was also going back and editing the piece so that I knew people would effing read it. Right? And so I would write a 3,000 word long piece and I would trim it down to 2,000 words. And then I would trim it down to 1,500 words. And then I would read it. It's like, man, this is a really good piece of article. So it was, for me, it was like a part of like creativity and expression. Yeah. And that kept me going because I was, I was tuning my own brain at the same time. So like, not only is like, we can talk about all the fundamentals of crypto and why it's here to stay and like why I had conviction.

• 25:03David Hoffman?

  But also I learned personally to like self actualize and improve myself and become a better person because of what I had to do to get through the bear market without losing my sanity. You developed a talent.

• 25:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. What Ryan was doing with trying to figure out, is he insane or not? It's the same thing. It's that, and that's, it's at that moment that you really make the breakthroughs. It's that, it's in the dark days and you're like, you know what? I've done my thousand hours. And I'm building on that.

• 25:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  And I'm more sure than ever.

• 25:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Mm hmm.

• 25:36Speaker 00

  It's that moment is a really magic moment. Uh, in this whole crypto space. And once you get that, you know, you're never gonna leave.

• 25:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  It is. And you know what gave me the most confidence? And I think the reason um I concluded the a big part of the reason I concluded I wasn't crazy during that time was I was spending the thousand hours actually using these protocols and using these tools. And I was looking around me at all of the the critics. Uh, and all of the the naysayers, all of the people saying crypto was dead and realizing that they weren't. They had never opened a collateralized debt position in Maker DAO. And seen in a few clicks, what you can do without any trusted intermediary. I was I was refinancing my house at the time and the the amount of documentation I had to sign to get a collateralized loan.

• 26:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I was able to do this on chain in Maker using ETH as my collateral. And in a few clicks, as clunky as that interface was, make it happen, get a collateralized loan. That to me was magic. 2019 Uniswap coming aboard. The the ability to um swap assets without a centralized intermediary, that was all new. And so it was putting in the work to actually use these protocols. And it just it showed me how hollow the critics' arguments were because they weren't actually doing this stuff. They weren't spending the time using the the protocols, even even kind of the the notable VCs.

• 27:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is why I what I don't know what you believe about like the efficient market hypothesis in this idea that everything is always priced in. I'm like, that's complete dog shit. Like, that does that is not my experience of the world. Like, I think the rewards go to the people who stick around and and research and put in the hours and put in the work. And so like, one message I would say is um you're never gonna make it through this bear market if you're lazy, right? Like, you have to put in the work. To actually use the tools and develop your thinking based on first principles, not relying on YouTuber, TikToker, or someone on Twitter to tell you what to think.

• 27:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  And that is the meta-skill I think all good investors eventually learn. It's something that I certainly learned during the last bear market.

• 27:53Speaker 00

  Tell me the story of Bankless, because you know, you guys have, you really do produce some of the best quality content out there. It's very thoughtful. What was the, tell me the story. How the hell did you two get together?

• 28:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I saw in 2019, I saw this, this guy writing all sorts of fantastic articles that I started reading. One of them, a notable piece was on MakerDAO and sort of explaining how that works to the layman. And I think, David, you and I started a DM conversation at the time. And I was, I had started a newsletter called Bankless in 2019. And the idea of this newsletter was, was very simple. It's to expose more people to DeFi tools and to help the world go bankless. We can all go on the bankless journey. And it starts by getting more of your net worth out of banked money systems, fiat in your bank account, in your Wells Fargo account, and more into crypto systems.

• 28:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  And to the point where you stop using banks, right? And I can say over time, I have a much larger percent of my net worth that's bankless. Over time, that, that has happened to me. And more of my transactions are on-chain than are in kind of the bank money system. And so it's, it's, it's a journey. Anyway, I wanted to build a community and provide an information resource for people who are going on the journey, on the bankless journey. And so met David and I was like, I have to work with this guy. He's a fantastic writer. I want this person to write for Bankless. Because it was very hard at the time to publish, you know, three to five articles per week, just myself solo and keep up with the space as well.

• 29:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so I needed some help with that. And that's where we started. He was just kind of a contract writer on Bankless. And then over time, it evolved and he's like, hey, Ryan, we should. Start a podcast. Hey, Ryan. Hey, we should, we should start a podcast. We should start a podcast. And he kept saying this over and over. And I was like, David, we're not going to have enough to actually talk about. Okay, like maybe five episodes worth. It's not going to be a thing.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  And you've both got faces for radio.

• 29:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, exactly. That's what I told him. Especially me. And, and so, but, but he, he, I don't know. I don't know how you did it, man, but like.

• 30:07David Hoffman?

  It took me a while to convince Ryan that podcast, a podcast was a good idea.

• 30:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I had been a podcast consumer, but didn't think that I at least had the skills to, to, to produce. And then we just hit record one day. Somehow you convinced me. We hit record and that was episode one, I think in May, sorry, March 2020. Right? Was it before or right after COVID hit?

• 30:30David Hoffman?

  Episode number two was the day of the COVID dump.

• 30:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. And so that's where we started. And then we just kind of grew it from there. And of course, this is, this, the last couple of days is only the second time David and I have met in person.

• 30:44David Hoffman?

  This is true.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  No way.

• 30:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. So we had, we developed this entire thing through COVID and met for the first time last year.

• 30:52David Hoffman?

  It was over two years of working together before we met. I mean, we had like a 10 plus person company at the time before we ever met.

• 30:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, is that how you remember it, David? What's your, what's your story there?

• 31:03David Hoffman?

  That's right. I had my own medium. And so I would, that's where I was writing all my articles and publishing all my articles. And then I had that, that other podcast that was called POV Crypto, Point of View Crypto. And so I had never really meaningfully considered about like branding and business. Like, yes, POV Crypto was a sex joke, even though it was about like.

• 31:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. I'm just learning this. What the hell?

• 31:27David Hoffman?

  It's like Point of View Crypto, Point of View Ethereum, and also Bitcoin, but also haha sex. Never really like put on the like, hey, let's be professional and turn this into a business and scale this out and like lean into a brand. I was like writing on my medium just because I wanted people to read my stuff. And I, cause I didn't go to business school. I did not have that part of me to actually be able to build a foundation that was like in that mindset, right? Like a self sustaining, hey, we can scale this out. We can do this better and more intentionally. Uh, and so I'm just like writing on my medium, producing my content. Uh, and then Ryan makes the bankless newsletter and he's like, and I kind of like get it. It's like, oh, distribution, like consistency, brand. Oh. Uh, and I'm like, okay, what if I just take all of my writing and deposit it into the bankless newsletter?

• 32:12David Hoffman?

  Right? And, and then it's like Ryan and I are saying the same words anyways. And so it's not, and there's no like misalignment there. And not only that, but like the more I talk to him, the more precise both of our words become. Uh, and so like, we're just sharpening each other's sticks. Uh, and so it goes from a little bit of just like, hey, can, can we work together? And be like, oh, we're, this is working out. Can we do a podcast together? Oh, this is working out. Uh, and so it was just like, uh, bankless for me has just been this like bastion of, uh, creative expression that I think always just like gets me going. Yeah. And like, gives me like, what a reason to like, hey, what's the next bit of content I can produce? Like, what's the next thesis I can spit out?

• 32:52Speaker 00

  What's your, what's your guys' vision now for bankless?

• 32:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's a good question.

• 32:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, I think.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  What you've been talking about, you guys, cause now you've had some time together, but you know, where do you want to go with it?

• 33:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think, I think bankless started in, uh, in a way that, you know, David's talking with, with, it's just an exploration, a discovery. We, we've always called it kind of going bankless is sort of the journey west, right? Where you, you know, you, you, you, you set sail and you go try to discover undiscovered lands. And I think that's why the podcast has been, um, for both of us, just energy producing because we're both learning as we go. And so.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  And you get to meet amazing people and have fantastic conversations.

• 33:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Absolutely. So, and then you're developing your thesis in kind of real time, based on conversations with some of the smartest people. I do think that crypto, yes, crypto attracts the scammers and the grifters and we have some of the worst of that. It also attracts some of the most brilliant humanitarian wonderful people that I've ever met. And to have an opportunity, you know, being David and I, at least myself, on the left side of that bell curve, to have that opportunity to talk to some of these crypto geniuses, these kind of researchers, you know, best in their field is absolutely incredible. And so the cool thing about this now, using obviously media as a tool,

• 34:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  is we can open source this entire journey and this entire pursuit. And so it's an open sourcing of that of that journey to go bankless. And it's inviting a community to come along with us. And that's really what the newsletter has been for us and also what the podcast has been for us. And so I think in the bankless community, there's now about 300,000 members who kind of subscribe to the newsletter. And, you know, that was growing. I remember in, you know, 2019, no one was noticed. I remember the first time I hit 10,000 on the newsletter. And I was like, this is, what could be better? I can't believe 10,000. That's everyone. That's like, yeah, that's it.

• 35:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so, I mean, what is kind of the end state ambition here? I think the end state ambition is similar to, you know, the ambition of crypto, which is private keys in everyone's hands. You know, every citizen on the planet, ideally, has the ability and is going at some level, at some point in the spectrum, on the bankless journey. So I think the end state for us is sort of, how do we get a billion people into crypto? And provide kind of the open source journey, you know, the tools, the media to do that, you know, podcasts that they can turn to and, you know, jump aboard. I think we still have some limiters, though, in crypto, like in terms of our scalability.

• 35:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm trying to think. I don't know if you would, how you would answer this question, but lately, David, I've been thinking about 2023 and kind of reflecting on it. And I feel like crypto has gone a bit more passive in terms of, it's a little bit different than the previous bear market, I would say. Like, you know, 2019, there were crypto natives using all of these tools. And, you know, 2023, I feel like we are, we're caught in this rut almost, where all we can talk about is regulatory, all we talk about is Gary Gensler. We talk about price, we talk about the investing side. There's tons to do in crypto, don't get me wrong,

• 36:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  but it almost feels like some of us have been content to sit a little passively and watch prices. And I'm just hungry for more on-chain stuff to happen. And I do feel like the community has to build the apps in order to get us to the next level, so that we can, you know, continue the journey and get to 100 million, you know, 500 million, a billion people. We really have to earn that. And we're in this place where we haven't quite earned it in 2023.

• 36:55David Hoffman?

  Metamask has something new. Introducing Metamask Portfolio. Metamask Portfolio is the best way to view your crypto portfolio from a holistic level. See everything across all the chains all at once. In your portfolio, Metamask will report the aggregate value of all the assets in your Metamask wallets, and even the other wallets you import too. But Metamask Portfolio isn't just a passive portfolio viewer. It is a place to do all of the money verbs that make DeFi so powerful. You can buy, swap, bridge, and stake your crypto assets. So not only is Metamask the easiest place to see your wallets in aggregate, but it's also a powerful battle station for all of your DeFi moves. So go check out your Metamask portfolio, because it's waiting for you to open it up. Check it out at portfolio.metamask.io. You know Uniswap.

• 37:39David Hoffman?

  It's the world's largest decentralized exchange with over 1.4 trillion dollars in trading volume. You know this because we talk about it endlessly on Bankless. It's Uniswap, but Uniswap is becoming so much more. Uniswap Labs just released the Uniswap Mobile Wallet for iOS, the newest, easiest way to trade tokens on the go. With a Uniswap Wallet, you can easily create or import a new wallet, buy crypto on any available exchange with your debit card, with extremely low fiat on-ramp fees, and you can seamlessly swap on mainnet, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism. On the Uniswap Mobile Wallet, you can store and display your beautiful NFTs, and you can also explore Web 3 with the in-app search features, market leaderboards, and price charts, or use Wallet Connect to connect to any Web 3 application. So you can now go directly to DeFi with the Uniswap Mobile Wallet.

• 38:23David Hoffman?

  Safe, simple custody from the most trusted team in DeFi. Download the Uniswap Wallet today on iOS. There is a link in the show notes. Arbitrum One is pioneering the world of secure Ethereum scalability and is continuing to accelerate the Web 3 landscape. Hundreds of projects have already deployed on Arbitrum One, producing flourishing DeFi and NFT ecosystems. With the recent addition of Arbitrum Nova, gaming and social dApps like Reddit are also now calling Arbitrum home. Both Arbitrum One and Nova leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum and provide a builder experience that's intuitive, familiar, and fully EVM compatible. On Arbitrum, both builders and users will experience faster transaction speeds with significantly lower gas fees.

• 39:05David Hoffman?

  With Arbitrum's recent migration to Arbitrum Nitro, it's also now 10 times faster than before. Visit arbitrum.io, where you can join the community, dive into the developer docs, bridge your assets, and start building your first app. With Arbitrum, experience Web 3 development the way it was meant to be: secure, fast, cheap, and friction-free.

• 39:23Speaker 00

  One of the things that I've noticed with you guys is your journey has gone from DeFi as like, here's the killer app. To a broader understanding of Web three.

• 39:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  Which is the applications layer of a lot of this. How, what, what was your Web three journey? Why did you suddenly start to see the bigger picture? I mean, you, there's ownership of crypto, crypto, crypto dick butts in this now. You know, David sporting a Solana NFT and you know, this, you've clearly got something. I mean, I've, I've been down this route for a while, but I, there was a magic moment for me. I was at Ian Rogers' house in Paris and I was having dinner and next to me was like artists, musicians, technologists, finance people, just this eclectic group of brilliant, talented people. And I'm like, this does not happen in your lifetime.

• 40:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah, right.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  It really doesn't. Something truly magic is happening here. And yes, we're in this bear market phase of it all, but there is total magic going on. And that just gave me in the, I don't know when that was, last December, it just gave me another shot in the arm to think, you know what? What comes out of this is going to be massive. What's your, how did you start thinking about Web three more? Well, not more than, but you know, as another layer to what you guys do at Bankless.

• 40:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  Or think about.

• 40:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, well, I think one of the neat things about crypto is that it seems to present some sort of like singularity about many different topics and, and like areas of focus. Right? So we, typically there's the contrast between DeFi and NFTs, right? Like either it's DeFi or it's NFTs. But the T in NFT is token and a token is a financial instrument and that's DeFi. And, and then we have like the relationship between protocols and community. And this is where, um, it's, I think just like everything kind of weaves together. So to understand deeply, whatever this thing is, DeFi, like NFTs, Ethereum, Web three,

• 41:28David Hoffman?

  crypto, internet money and internet, what, what words do we even use to explain these, this thing in totality? I don't know.

• 41:35Speaker 00

  I kind of like the digital nation state. I mean, that's.

• 41:38David Hoffman?

  Sure. Yeah. But that's, I would also say that's another way to approach the knowledge, right? There's, there's, and this is why I always say crypto has something for everyone and there's 10,000 ways to find crypto and what that, what it, what you see in it. But to stop at DeFi is to only paint in like a certain corner of the picture. Maybe, maybe it's towards the center of the picture, uh, maybe, but maybe that's up for interpretation. But I think a holistic understanding and why people really, uh, enjoy Bankless, because we try and go down every single rabbit hole that crypto presents us. And so we go down the DeFi rabbit hole, we go down the Web three rabbit hole, we go down the NFT rabbit hole.

• 42:16David Hoffman?

  And we also try and do our best to weave them all together to, to tell the grand story that is this movement that we're all like on together. And I think perhaps like one of the reasons why Bankless is what it is, is because I think we've done a bang up job, like weaving it all together. But it's still like, there's still corners and dots and data to connect. And from a content perspective, it's very, very rich, right? Like, why, why are we able to produce three episodes a week at minimum? It's like, oh, it's because there's so much data and data points out there to connect and so much knowledge to, to share and weave together. And so we started in DeFi just because like, like Ryan said, like first off, no one in 2018 to 2020, no one believed in crypto. And then even inside of crypto, 90% of people didn't believe in Ethereum.

• 43:00David Hoffman?

  And even inside of Ethereum, like half of Ethereum didn't even believe in DeFi. And so it was the conviction, it was the contrarian bet layered inside of a contrarian bet layered inside of a contrarian bet. And being right about that, like put, put many, many people on the map and, and Bankless specifically. But then it just grows from there. It's like, okay, now that, now that we have this foundation of like, hey, DeFi is real, tokens are a thing, smart contracts are a thing. That just makes so many other downstream technologies also a thing, right? And that makes DAOs a thing, that makes NFTs a thing, that makes Layer 2s a thing. Uh, and so everything kind of spawned out from there. And after that, it's just been like trying to capture lightning in a bottle because like, there's so many conversations to be had about where this thing goes.

• 43:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, for me, it's it's sort of a few mental models that really clicked to kind of understand this and understand NFTs. And, you know, one of the mental models is the digital nation state, as you said, and a cornerstone of any nation state, digital nation, or sorry, any any kind of physical manifestation of a nation is this idea of rule of law and property rights. And what we have created, kind of the mental model to unlock with with something like Ethereum or even a Bitcoin, is we have created a internet based digital property rights system. And so that can be any type of property. That can be fungible property, like like tokens, either, you know, could be stocks and bonds

• 44:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  or currencies and kind of the, you know, the nation state world. Those are all forms of property of the of the nation state. And we can have that and register those as assets on something like Ethereum. Or it could be non-fungible elements of property. And we see that, of course, in the physical world, too, you know, that your house, your apartment, a collectible that you purchase. These are also forms of property that are kind of registered via the nation state, you know, through rule of law. And so it's all the same side of the the coin. But you were mentioning that that that meal you had, where you saw kind of like artists and, you know, finance people and everyone kind of collectively together. Another mental model unlocked for me was we did an episode with a historian.

• 45:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  His name is Josh Rosenthal. And it's probably the my favorite episode that Bankless has ever produced, just because it was so pivotal to like my crypto journey. And he basically went through the Renaissance. And he talked, he compared where we have been to sort of the feudal system, where, you know, there was no democratization of of property. It was sort of, you know, our feudal lords, kind of, you know, we worked on their land and toiled for them. And that's sort of the kind of the present day internet. And then we unlocked a couple of things that led to the Renaissance. And these were technologies. We unlocked the printing press, Gutenberg's printing press. And so this enabled

• 45:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Last distribution of communication was a communication technology. And we also unlocked, you know, Medici and others, double entry bookkeeping, right? And so you have a communication technology and you have a ledger technology. And what do you get? You get the Renaissance, this splash of of human creativity and science and progress. And man, the roots of everything that humanity has achieved up to now, a lot of that was was rooted in the Renaissance. And so now what do we have? Well, we have a communication technology that democratizes communication. That's called the Internet, TCP IP. That's the protocol for it. Okay, that's like the the printing press.

• 46:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  And we have a new triple entry bookkeeping system, a general ledger that is crypto. All right, so we've got these two technologies. And I think why you're starting to see what you're seeing, Raul, is is we are starting. We're seeing the early phases of unlocking a new Renaissance.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've been writing about this myself, this whole exponential age thesis.

• 46:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  Just builds on that. It's where AI fits in robotics, the Internet of Things, genetic sciences. All of this is building on an entirely new system that has the opportunity to be a Renaissance that we can be optimistic about and not fear. People fear change, right? It's a natural human thing. But if you embrace it and go with it, that's the rewarding journey.

• 47:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  A hundred percent. And and I I think that that is the opportunity for everyone, I would say, listening to this, consuming Real Vision content, consuming bankless content. We are at a very unique place in history, right? Where we've just had the we've we are just I I think there's a tendency, particularly among younger generations, to be almost nihilistic about their their place in time in history, right? And you could certainly go down that path. And there have been, you know, points in my life where I've gone down that.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  We've all been down that path.

• 47:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  All been down that path. Look at the flip side of this, like the massive exponential opportunity that is available to you, like the tools that we have at our disposal right now in this period of change, that the old institutions aren't going to take us to the next stage in human progress. And so we have an opportunity, this is sort of what we're talking about yesterday, Raul, with the fourth turning, we have the opportunity to set up a new set of institutions that will help humanity coordinate better. And that's kind of the 21st century technology. And what a gift to be born and to be alive at such a time and a place. That's the flip

• 48:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  side. I mean, to me, I know David has talked about this with his own sort of journey, but to me, that is the nihilism killer is when you see the pie-expanding opportunity.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  That's going to get me into another thing, is I really worry about this, the abundance mindset that many of us have. And then there's the tribalism. And is, I mean, I left the Bitcoin ecosystem, yes, because ETH was outperforming, you know, as an investment guy, but because I fucking hated the ecosystem, right? You weren't treated well. If you want to join a digital nation-state and they don't treat you well as citizens, you want to leave. And I think we're starting to see that, but the tribalism is still immense in this space.

• 49:24Speaker 00

  And something has to change there if we're trying to onboard a billion people. It can't be a group of people throwing poo at each other.

• 49:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let me ask you, do you think, because there have been those that argued that the tribalism is actually a feature, not a bug?

• 49:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, I get that, but you don't have to be nasty about it. You can protect your own and be somebody who wants their ecosystem to succeed, even above others. But it doesn't have to be a pie mentality, it can be an abundance mentality of, if we all do this together, we all succeed. I just don't get it.

• 49:56David Hoffman?

  My interpretation on this, we use this line at Bankless a lot, it's like we're speedrunning the history of money and finance. And so like the compression of time in crypto, if you want to extrapolate it out and layer it on actual human history, like Bitcoin invented in 2009, that's like us discovering gold on the internet. It's like Bitcoin's great, it is primitive. And so it makes sense that Bitcoin looks and feels, and if you like, which I do, except Nick Carter's interpretation of this, it is a religion. It is not like a religion, it is a religion. It acts like a religion, it quacks like a religion, they have religious purity tests. And so like the, and so that is where, you know, crypto is in the

• 50:40David Hoffman?

  landscape of time. Like Bitcoin is the earliest discovery of Bitcoin. And so it's like you have your high priests of Bitcoin, you have the word of Bitcoin, the word of Satoshi, interpretations of the word of Satoshi. And so this is where crypto was when we discovered it in 2009, where Bitcoin is. And then we move forward in time and space and, you know, very rapidly. And then we also move forward in technological progress of the, of crypto. And then all of a sudden, we have something more advanced that looks and feels more resident with modern technology and modern values and modern society, which in my mind is Ethereum.

• 51:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you think though, that like the religious aspect of it like is a product of stagnation more than anything else?

• 51:23Speaker 00

  I think it's a product of valuation. Because valuation in the space is Metcalfe's law. So it's about trying to get the most activity on your chain. I guess stagnation plays into that. When the market is stagnant, there's no new capital coming in. So you're fighting for your share of the capital. You can see it in NFT space as well, right? It's got the exact thing, exact same thing is going on because there's a scarcity of capital. So people become more. Fanatic about attracting that capital. And they coalesce, tell themselves different stories to try and attract capital via narrative. Once the space starts growing again, it does drop a bit.

• 52:07Speaker 00

  But it's particularly bad in bear markets.

• 52:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, there's, there's always the, hey, let's grow the pie. Conversation versus just splitting up the pie. And that's, that's why I like to talk about Ethereum's rollup centric roadmap in, in the conversation of that pie. Whereas layer twos on Ethereum, optimism competes with Arbitrum, competes with Polygon, competes with ZK Sync. Yet, when an application deploys on any one of those things, it's very easy to transfer and spread that value around to the other layer twos. And so the layer twos of Ethereum exist in this harmonious equilibrium between competition and collaboration. And so it's, hey, we can grow the pie, but we're all trying to take our larger slice, but we're still going to grow the pie.

• 52:52David Hoffman?

  And I don't think other communities have that. Like that, that balance between that design philosophy, like Solana and the monolithic architecture. It is just like Solana, the layer one, they need to capture a larger share of the pie. That is their wind condition. Same thing with Bitcoin is like, they don't have this, this harmonious balance tug of war between competition and collaboration that the Ethereum layer twos have. Like Bitcoin, it, it, and the wind condition for Bitcoin is that it eats the entire damn pie. And that's the same thing for almost every layer one. Like, I think, I think Ryan agrees with me that like, layer ones are maximalists of themselves. Like, they want to dominate. And so how do you, as a layer one, win? In my mind, you win by having a harmonious balance between collaboration and competition. And that's why I see layer twos.

• 53:37David Hoffman?

  And so like, the reason why we are so tribal is that I think layer ones themselves, if you apply agency to layer ones, they know that they need to dominate. They need to be the biggest layer one. Like, this is a competition of empires and layer ones are, you know, warring with each other. And so the, I do understand why we are all so tribal. It gets worse in bear markets, but I think the layer one competition kind of induces that.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  I think that's right. I mean, I'm working with Kevin Kelly from Delphi to try and.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  Put together a research piece on analyzing ETH as a digital network state, comparing it to traditional economies using similar metrics. So it's kind of dropping all the crypto-specific stuff, looking at that and then looking at these other economies. And look, the story of economies is also the story of competition. And it depends how you how you compete and how you work together. You know, that's the interoperability layer that can drive some of this nation, this too. You know, Holland is a small country. Holland benefits massively from being in the middle of Europe, having the same currency and borderless. Okay, so there's a lot that's going to apply. There's we've got a bit more work to do in it, but I think I I want to try and reframe the conversation

• 54:53Speaker 00

  in the market about understanding for the next phase forwards, because I think people who are coming into the space, particularly in the institutional investment space, need a framework to understand that these are emerging markets. We've got emerging market credit systems. We've got emerging market. We've got business layers being built on top, infrastructure layers being built. It really is an economy. People just don't see it yet.

• 55:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent. That is the best mental model, I think, for these crypto networks is as nation states, is as emerging economies. And that's essentially what you're sort of investing in. And I do think that's why we see some of the tribalism too. It was a Supreme Court justice, I believe, I can't think of, you know, the person's name right now, but called, you know, America's Fifty States, Fifty Experiments in Freedom. And I see at their best, that's what we're doing with all of these layer one experiments, right? And even the layer two experiments, right? Because you see now in 2023, there's a lot of tribalism between different layer two ecosystems, even in Ethereum, right? And some of that is good, though.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  I think it's great.

• 56:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  If you if you can just ignore, delete crypto Twitter for a few months, right? Or for a year, just ignore all of the noise and the like the yammering, the clamour back and forth, ignore all of that and actually see the outcome is we're The alternative layer one ecosystems are making Ethereum better and Ethereum is making them better. Okay, the layer two competition, this experimentation at kind of the state level inside of the the federal nation state of Ethereum, they're all improving each other, right? They're all make like it is actual evolutionary progress, survival of the fittest experiment. So we get to let all of the experiments play out. So while I think tribalism is kind of negative and toxic and when you're in the moment, you

• 56:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  know, like it is all of these things, you know, I agree. Actually, I still kind of argue would argue that it's more of a feature than it is a bug. Yes, we don't have to be toxic. Yes, we don't have to be nasty.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  It's fine to be nationalistic, but don't try and invade other country. You know, it's like

• 57:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  I agree.

• 57:06Speaker 00

  It's fine to be a nationalist.

• 57:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  I agree.

• 57:08Speaker 00

  It's not fine to invade somebody else based on your own

• 57:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's compete. Let's compete in kind of, you know, the right way. And let's have a healthy competition as between sports teams or as between, you know, healthy nation states that aren't going to war. That kind of competition, I think, is healthy. Once you kind of declare a jihad against another, you know, crypto community, then then it starts to get into unhealthy territory, certainly. But the net is, we get to let all of these experiments play out. And that's a great thing for the progress of this space. And that, by the way, is why I think crypto is absolutely unbeatable. Like, we're going to win. Like, this level of experimentation is not happening anywhere else. It's not happening at the nation state level.

• 57:53Speaker 00

  At this speed and this scale? No.

• 57:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right?

• 57:57Speaker 00

  Nothing is like it.

• 57:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not even close. So this is why at some points you have to kind of step back and ask again that question, like, am I crazy? Right? It's a valid question asking. I keep going back to like, with all of the experimentation, the rapid pace and acceleration of all of these things, it's all open source. We're trying all of these things all at once. It's almost feels that this could be, this could sound hubristic to say, but it feels inevitable, is my conclusion on crypto. Like, it is going to be Absolutely massive. This is absolutely going to be the property rights layer of the internet. The internet, a communication network, completely needs a property rights system. And that's it. That's crypto.

• 58:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so if you can kind of zoom out, when in doubt, zoom out, zoom out above what's happening in 2023 and the tribal crypto battles and kind of see the big picture here. And like, look at, I mean, you, you've been here since 2012, Raoul. So look at the progress. Look at how far we've come, over a trillion dollars. Yeah, like, this is, it's happening.

• 59:00Speaker 00

  Weird, because my hypothesis, when I first saw Bitcoin and blockchain, was like, oh, well, here's the future of the financial system. We need to put all financial assets on chain to start with. So we know who owns what. Here we are 11 years later. We're not even close.

• 59:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's true.

• 59:19Speaker 00

  Other things I didn't imagine happened, which was smart contracts and NFTs. And it's, you know, we don't know how it works, but, you know, it's kind of just finds its way like mercury.

• 59:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's, but it's very much like, I mean, we've, we've seen this before, haven't we? Even with, in all of our lifetimes, that's how the internet emerged. You remember the internet of the 1990s? People predicted all sorts of use cases that really, you know, didn't happen. And it evolved in unexpected ways. I mean, no one predicted kind of the, the rise of social networking.

• 59:46Speaker 00

  Because it's evolutionary, I think to your point, there's an evolutionary element that's organic about it.

• 59:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 59:52Speaker 00

  Which makes it less predictable.

• 59:53David Hoffman?

  I think there's two halves of this conversation. We have the technology of the pre-existing world, pre-crypto. And when we see and then, then invent crypto, we'd be like, oh, we can improve our old technologies by applying these new crypto things. And that's totally true. But the problem is you're fighting against a, like a massive ship that is, that you have to turn, right? You have incumbents that you have to fight. You have regulations that you have to fight. You have like old companies that are doing things in old ways that you have to convince to pivot. And so, yeah, well, eventually the whole world will be built on crypto. But in the meantime, while the whole world adapts to this new crypto paradigm, we have these new digitally native use cases that have no incumbents to fight against, like brand new startups that can capture that real estate.

• 1:00:36David Hoffman?

  This is something I learned when I was at that tokenized real estate startup. It's like, Oh, tokenizing real estate is trying to get the old world to adapt to a new, a new system and you have to get new regulations and like, man, like houses already exist and, and regulations already exist. What's going to happen faster and what ultimately did happen faster is JPEGs, right? Like Uniswap, like

• 1:00:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Digital things.

• 1:00:59David Hoffman?

  Digital, digital things, like there's a fertile landscape out there and it's going to be, it's going to be a hundred times easier to build digitally native things that have zero competition.

• 1:01:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yep.

• 1:01:08David Hoffman?

  Versus like trying to get the old world onto crypto.

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  Because also you're then doing show, not tell.

• 1:01:13David Hoffman?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  So you're showing people, okay, here is the efficiencies of using this new system and eventually the old system migrates as opposed to telling them they need to go on chain and then fighting tooth and nail for decades with you.

• 1:01:26David Hoffman?

  Right. Plus, if we bring the old world on chain, they're going to be like, but we need this. And we're going to like, but you don't need that. And it's, they're going to bastardize like the nature of these crypto platforms.

• 1:01:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, they're not going to use the tools as well as crypto.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  I just want to switch a bit. The, one of the things I want to see your thoughts on or how it's impacted you is, look, you guys are public, like me, like a bunch of us who are trying to help as many people as possible, understand the narratives, and then suddenly hate comes.

• 1:01:56David Hoffman?

  Ha.

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  Right. You, I mean, I spoke to Scott Melkro about this as well.

• 1:02:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Speaker 00

  We've all been down. How did that affect you? Because you, you know, you go from, your mission doesn't change. You do the best you can and suddenly the narrative about you changes. People get angry.

• 1:02:14David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  Or lose money or upset. Talk me through how it affected you guys because it can't not affect you.

• 1:02:20David Hoffman?

  There you go.

• 1:02:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go.

• 1:02:22David Hoffman?

  Oh, boy. Yeah, it's definitely not the thing that I expected. Like, I'm a content producer. Like, one, one thing that we, we made a decision very early in Bankless is that like, we are investors. We're investing in this. Like, we built Bankless from the early days on a thesis around Ether and DeFi. And we invested in those things and then wrote theses about why we're investing in those things. And that, and in the startup Bankless for the first like two years, I was like, great. I was like, everyone loved that. Now there's not as much acceptance of like Ryan and David as investors in this space while also being content producers. Like, we have to like, I feel like we have to fight for that a little bit more. It's like, hey, we also want to be investors in this crypto thing is why we're here in the first place.

• 1:03:07David Hoffman?

  I don't think people as readily accept the relationship as like Ryan and David as crypto investors that are also content producers in a way that they once did. Like the OGs understand it because they've seen our track record through and through and through. The newer, the newer comers into the crypto space are like, oh, Ryan and David are, they're biased. They have investments, which I mean, it's totally true, but like it didn't. It never used to be so critical or toxic or like mean before. And so that's something that I'm like trying to figure out how to navigate.

• 1:03:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  We've been.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  Does it affect you at a personal level?

• 1:03:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:03:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  It does. I, I, I think where it affects, because we've been, we've been attacked at, you know, multiple stages of this. You mentioned the tribalism.

• 1:03:48David Hoffman?

  From multiple like places too.

• 1:03:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. So I mean, there were, there are a few notable attacks, you know, one was Danny.

• 1:03:56David Hoffman?

  Danny Sesta.

• 1:03:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sesta and kind of a, we call them frog army attacks because it's often kind of like, but either it's bots or it's people, human beings behaving as bots.

• 1:04:06David Hoffman?

  Or both.

• 1:04:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Saying the same thing, not responding to, you know, rational thought. And of course, Raul, like the, the social media algos reward this as well. So that, that doesn't cause the problem, but certainly amplifies the feeling of it. And, and so we, we had a frog army attack, Danny Sesta and that entire ecosystem that kind of the, was it the magic ecosystem?

• 1:04:32David Hoffman?

  Wonderland. Yeah.

• 1:04:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And so that, that seemed to us to be scammer laden, fraud laden. And, you know, we said as much, we didn't talk about that content, got attacked for that.

• 1:04:44David Hoffman?

  We got attacked because we weren't hosting Danny Sesta on the show.

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've been through that as well.

• 1:04:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Got, got attacked at one point in time by the Terra Luna community. And I think we actually presented a very fair take on Terra Luna, which is basically, is this a ticking time bomb? Let's do the, the bear case and the bull case for this. And even, even posing the question, even asking that at that point in time in the market, subjected us to a massive amount of attack.

• 1:05:14David Hoffman?

  By the way, at one month after we got attacked by Danny Sess's frogs, like a month later, it was exposed that Zero X Sifu was the old Quadringa X like co-founder. And so then that whole ecosystem like crumbled. And then one month later, after we had the is Terra a ticking time bomb episode, like Terra blew up.

• 1:05:32Speaker 00

  I've learned, I try and step back from the anger and think about the motivation.

• 1:05:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  But now the market's a little bit different. I think 2023 is different. But what I my feeling on 2023 is the crypto community is in a mood. And they're in a mood that's been caused by on the back of 2022, which is a whole bunch of public figures that

• 1:05:54Speaker 00

  That they trusted.

• 1:05:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  That segments of the community trusted Alex Mashinsky, SBF, Suzy, Three Horse Capital, even you know, like the GBDC, that coal kind of empire, putting money in Gemini, right? Like all of these things betraying trust. And so we are now white blood selling attacking everything. And the reality is, the time to launch these attacks and for the white blood cells to come like attack kind of the, you know, the invaders and the bacteria and the viruses was actually 2021 and 2022. Right now in 2023, predominantly, there's a bunch of good faith actors that are still here, that are still building during the bear market. There's always, you know, kind of the oddball people that are not doing

• 1:06:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  that. But and yet, the it's an autoimmune disorder, because still, the immune system is kind of now attacking some of the good faith actors. And that's what I see. But honestly, Raul, it does get me down, particularly when the attacks are coming from the in tribe kind of group, right? And they're coming from inside the house. And you're like, wow, you know, but it's, it just goes with the territory. And I think getting off of social media for a period of time and zooming out and looking at this, you know, has been helpful for me personally.

• 1:07:12Speaker 00

  I mean, I've had the other line of attack, which is interesting, from the old school, the like, you're a macro guy, why are you encrypting? I'm like, I've been encrypted longer than most people, and it's all part of macro. And then it's like, the market goes down, and it's like, you're a scammer, you've ruined people's lives. I'm like, no, I've always explained my thesis, how long term, you know, it's, people just want to find reasons to try and.

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  Unsettle you for various reasons and usually it's their own insecurity that's driving it.

• 1:07:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:41Speaker 00

  So the reason the Terra Luna community was so angry with you guys is because they were feeling insecure. Right. Generally, it's a lack, a lack of security or the feeling of security that creates that behavior. That's why I try and step back to do and try and think, why, why are they being like that? I mean, I never do that. It's just not part of my personality. But I, I guess I'm less insecure about certain things.

• 1:08:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:05Speaker 00

  I probably do it with my wife if she threatens me about something that she knows is that, that particular point that's gonna upset me.

• 1:08:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Your NFT collection.

• 1:08:12Speaker 00

  Exactly, NFT collection. There we go.

• 1:08:15David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I, I do think the insecurity angle is, is the right one. That's also like the, the laser eyed Bitcoin maxis, the ones that are really loud and tribal. They get insecure because there's like things about Bitcoin that are worth like talking about and they just wanna brush that, brush that under the rug. And like you get that about every single loud, loud people, loud tribes on crypto. I've just learned like those are loud and insecure are like almost the same thing.

• 1:08:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. So finishing off, you guys started another chapter as well, which is the VC fund. Talk to me about that, cause that's super interesting.

• 1:08:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. So, uh, over the course of, I, I would say the last three years, um, as David mentioned, we've always been crypto investors on the journey. And so we've obviously, um, you know, uh, backed that up with investments in, uh, some of the, the publicly traded tokens. Let's call them in the, in kind of the open markets. We've also been angel investing over this time too. And so unfortunately, because of accredited investor laws and all sorts of other reasons, there are projects that, um, don't have anything that, that retail can kind of invest into. And so that they're kind of in the pre-token, pre-public type phase. And so for the last three years or so, I think David and I have been involved in 70 or something, different, uh, uh, investments.

• 1:09:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Again, this is crypto infrastructure building in the future. And so what, uh, we decided to do is essentially parlay all of this into, uh, more of a structured VC fund.

• 1:09:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was becoming unwieldy to manage, David, myself, and you have spreadsheets of kind of your investments and tracking all of this. So we decided to formalize this and spin this up into Bankless Ventures is what we're calling it. And so we brought on a partner who's absolutely fantastic. His name is Ben Lakoff, and he has helped organize all of the activity. We've recruited a team. And so we are staying on kind of the frontier of what crypto is building and some of these early stage seed level crypto projects. And that allows us to do that. So I think we've already invested in or getting ready to invest in four to five different things.

• 1:10:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  And, you know, we just finished a $30 million fundraise, which was difficult-ish to do in this type of 2023.

• 1:10:34Speaker 00

  Although it's brilliant timing to launch a VC, but as ever, it's the hardest time to launch, to raise bloody capital in the middle of that.

• 1:10:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, so it's just complementary with everything we've, we've been doing as investors in the crypto journey, trying to build tools to help people go bankless. It is a crypto fund, VC fund, so it's got a 10-year time horizon. So again, you know, one of the ethics that we've always observed at Bankless is long-term games with long-term people. So this isn't a type of a fund that receives tokens and then dumps them on the community. We have very long-term time horizon. So it's just complementary with, with everything that we've been doing in the space up to date and keeps us sharp from a, from a content and thesis perspective, too. Cause we get to see what's happening in the very early stages.

• 1:11:19David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the, the long-term goal of the ventures is to, that, like, like Ryan said, there's a lot of activities that we're already doing, right? We're already doing angel investing. This conversation about ventures really got started. We were talking about like, hey, we're doing a lot of angel investing. What if we just hired an analyst to help us just research these angel deals a little bit more? And then we're like, oh, that's more than half of a VC firm that we already have. We've got the deal flow, we're writing the checks. If we hire an analyst, like, we might as well just do this, this thing outright. And so the idea is like, we, we spin this thing up, we, we pass all of our deal flow in through ventures. We hire out a team to, to turn it into a professionalized streamlined operation that is dotting i's and crossing t's in the ways that maybe Ryan and I weren't when we were doing this individually, because we didn't have the time. But now we have the team to, to get that done.

• 1:12:03David Hoffman?

  My long-term idea for, for what Ventures does is that actually, hopefully. informs the podcast about these frontiers that we are exploring. So the idea is like, well, the podcast and the newsletter in Bankless Media grows the network that Bankless Ventures can latch on to and get deal flow from, just because that's our network, right? Monetizing the network.

• 1:12:21Speaker 00

  It's a 360 degree kind of flywheel that you can build from this.

• 1:12:25David Hoffman?

  Yes. And then, and then because of the information and education that we are able to scale through the research team at Ventures, like, we are able to be more informed on the podcast. But I do want to draw a very clear line that the podcast and media entities are very much firewalled from content from the venture firm. Like, just because you're a deal that goes for Bankless Ventures doesn't mean just get to waltz on the podcast. You have to earn it, just like everyone else. So there's no, there's no like back and forth there.

• 1:12:52Speaker 00

  I'm laughing myself, knowing that this time in four or five years' time, in the bottom of the bear market, that's exactly the stick you'll be beating.

• 1:12:58David Hoffman?

  Oh, we're, yeah. People are already doing it and it hasn't even been an issue. Yeah.

• 1:13:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think one defense against that, and I don't know what you guys have done at Real Vision, but I'd be curious to kind of compare notes, is have the best disclosures in the business. And so that means, basically, like, wherever possible, we are fully transparent with our crypto holdings and our crypto wallets and what BBC owns at any point in time. The great, great news about this, lack of privacy on-chain, also means anyone can look at your address and see exactly what you're holding. Having a disclosures page that is continuously updated, so that people know exactly what David holds, exactly what I hold, exactly what members of our team are holding at any given time.

• 1:13:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  So we just say, like, you know, we're, we have a thesis. Of course, we're investors on the Bankless journey. We're pursuing that thesis. Of course, we're going to, we're not, we're not journalists. Like, we're going to invest in things that we believe in, right? As should you. Like, that's our encouragement, is be an investor in the space. That's how to kind of maximize the opportunity. And so as long as we have some of the best disclosures in the business, I think that is the ultimate kind of shield. And we can always direct people to there. It's all fully transparent. You can, you can see it at any point in time. You know exactly what we're holding, and then we disclaim them, you know, as we go through the content.

• 1:14:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I just tell people, as you know, I just tell, because I don't, I don't trade a lot, I don't do special situations, I'm not involved in stuff. So I just tell people, this is my rough weighting, and this is what I'm doing, and this is what I own, and... That's it.

• 1:14:34David Hoffman?

  I think it's pretty normal for people to be skeptical at front. It's like, oh, the biggest podcast in the space is doing a VC fund. Like, what's going on with that? So like, the gut reaction, I think, is totally justifiable. But we're going to do the same thing that we did with Bankless, which is like, nothing's going to change. We're going to be here. The podcast won't change and we will earn the legitimacy once again.

• 1:14:56Speaker 00

  And also, you will find a way over time, because I know you believe in it, to allow regular people to invest in this kind of opportunity. Yeah. That's what we're working on at Real Vision as well, even for the asset management firm, which is separate to Real Vision. Everything is all the same thing. And it's this democratization of finance. And that's what we're trying to get to. Guys, listen, it was fantastic to have you. I really enjoyed the conversation. It was good to turn the tables and hear your stories. Because I think, you know, your stories, because you're so much the other side of the camera, they're as important. You know, you play an important part in this ecosystem. And just to hear that, I think is fabulous. So thank you for sharing your time with us.

• 1:15:36David Hoffman?

  Thanks, Ralph.

• 1:15:37Speaker 00

  Thanks, Ralph. It's been fun.