#549 Alex Taub on Digital Horse Racing

Alex Taub is the co-founder and CEO of Upstream, a new social professional network. He is also an avid investor in, and user of, Zed, a new digital horse racing ecosystem. In this conversation, we discuss digital ecosystems, virtual horse racing, stud farms, various investment strategies, the metaverse, and building a new professional network. ======================= Did you know nearly 338 million dollars worth of NFTs were sent last year? And in 2021 that number is growing faster than ever. Looking to make your first NFT? Check out NEAR’s fast, scalable, low-cost, open-source platform. Learn why NEAR is the infrastructure for innovation at near.org: https://near.org/?utm_campaign=pomp ======================= Exodus is an absolute game changer in the crypto wallet space, and we’ve teamed up to offer an exclusive discount for you, as listeners of the podcast. Sign up for Exodus today using my promo code Exodus.com/pomp. This is a no brainer for both newcomers and crypto heavyweights - go sign up today. ======================= With 10M+ users, Crypto.com is the easiest place to buy, and sell 100+ cryptocurrencies. The Crypto.com Visa Card gives you up to 8% back instantly, and 100% back on Spotify and Netflix. Also, Crypto.com lets you earn up to 8.5% p.a. on BTC, and 14% p.a. on stablecoins. Get $25 when you download the Crypto.com App with code "pomp". Download the App now: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/pomppodcast2021 =======================

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

• 0:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Alex Taub is the co-founder and CEO of Upstream, a new social professional network. He is also an avid investor and user of ZED, a new digital horse racing ecosystem. In this conversation, we discuss digital ecosystems, virtual horse racing, stud farms, various investment strategies, the metaverse, and building a new professional network. I really enjoyed this conversation with Alex, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is NEAR. NEAR is an open source platform that accelerates the development of decentralized applications,

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:27Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:54Anthony Pompliano?

  a guest at hundreds of airports around the world if you like going to airports listen up of course the crypto.com visa card gives you all of this with no annual or monthly fees to worry about so get 25 big bucks $25 when you download the crypto.com app today using the code pomp or you can click on the link in the description again 25 bucks download the crypto.com app use code pomp or click on the link in the description alright let's get into the virtual horse racing this one's a fun one I hope you enjoy this episode with Alex

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs pomp investments all views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of pomp investments you should not treat any opinion expressed by pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy but only as an expression of his personal opinion this podcast is for informational purposes only

• 3:53Anthony Pompliano?

  alright guys bang bang I've got Alex here with me what's up man

• 3:57Speaker 02

  what's going on

• 3:58Anthony Pompliano?

  we're doing it in Miami

• 4:00Speaker 02

  yes we are

• 4:01Anthony Pompliano?

  alright what the hell is Zed Zed dot run has like taken over the world it's digital horse racing?

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I got into it about a month and a half ago.

• 4:11Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, that scares everyone immediately when it's only six weeks, but that's important context.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got into it about a month and a half ago, almost two months ago. Some like backstory, I have a friend Drew, Drew Austin, he's a great guy, runs a thing called Redbeard Ventures. And he tried to get me into NBA Top Shot in like early, well, and tried to get me into NBA Top Shot, like October, November, December time of the past year.

• 4:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And that was like 2020.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that was really early.

• 4:39Anthony Pompliano?

  That would have been a good time to get NBA Top Shot, all right.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  And then he was in Miami, actually, at the end of the year, beginning of, beginning of January, end of December. And we were sitting down at some hotel and he was like showing me, he's like, I just spent like 1,500 bucks and I bought this like Zion Williamson Cosmic Hollow, like one out of 50. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? Like, why are you spending, you just flushed 1,500 bucks down the toilet? And he's like, no, I bought like a John Moran, I bought this like Vince Carter Last Shot, all these like Cosmic Hollows, whatever. I was like, what's going on? He's like, just buy a pack, experience it. Took me about a week to buy a pack. And when I did, I was like, oh, this is really cool, like the, the opening of it. And anyway, flash forward about a month later, his portfolio is worth about over $2 million on a $50,000 investment.

• 5:28Anthony Pompliano?

  It's pretty good.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  I'm no mathematician, but that's pretty good. It's pretty good. And that, that was a really expensive week because that week I could have bought like a few like legendary packs for like, you know, 200 bucks, which anything you got there is worth, you know, 3K plus. And I was like, ah, okay, I gotta listen to Drew next time. Drew and I started this like weekly event and there's, there's context to this backstory, but Drew and I started this like weekly event on, on the company I run called Upstream. We have an NFT community, we meet every Friday at 1:00 PM. And every week we talk about something different. So the first week we talked about Top Shot. The second week, I think we talked about Genies. Then the week after we had like Akash, who's the founder of Genies, they were launching some NFT stuff. And then on Wednesday, I was like, hey Drew, who should we have this, this weekend?

• 6:11Speaker 02

  He's like, oh, I'm getting into this thing called Zed. I'm actually buying a bunch of horses for some friends, do you want? To buy you a horse or a few horses. I was like, dude, what are you talking about?

• 6:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Like digital horses?

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, first I was like, I don't need a horse like, and he's like, no, it's digital horses. You race them, you breed them. It's he's like, I don't have time to explain right now, but let me know if you want me to buy you some horses. And I was like, all right, I didn't listen to you last time. Like, how much ETH do I need to send you to get like a nice, whatever? Whatever you're doing. So I sent him a little bit of money.

• 6:42Anthony Pompliano?

  How much?

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Uh, I think it's in like 5K in ETH.

• 6:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  And then, and then on Friday, we started talking about this thing called Zed.

• 6:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Was that for one horse?

• 6:54Speaker 02

  No, he got me like a few. This was still early, so it wasn't super expensive yet.

• 7:00Anthony Pompliano?

  So you're like, you're like a horse empire.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  No, he got me like five horses. It was like a few Z, one Z, three, Z, four, Z, five, and a few Z, like nines and tens. Um, which I'll explain all what that means in a minute. Um, and what, what he ended up doing is on Friday, we started talking about it. And I was like, oh, wait, Drew, is this the thing you bought me earlier this week? And he's like, yeah. I was like, oh, this is actually really cool. Uh, anyway, that night was a, was a drop. Uh, and they released like 200 horses and Drew had said, you know, a month before that event we did, uh, it took about like 12 hours or like 24 hours to sell out the horses. And then the next week, because they were doing drops every Friday, the next week it took like, it, it was cut in half.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  It was like 12 hours or six hours. Then it was like six hours or three hours after we did that event on upstream. And after, after, because there was like 50 to 100 people there, they sold out the horses in about 10 minutes. And then from there on, you can barely get a horse in the drop. I mean, it's, it's really hard. So in terms of, that's how I got into it.

• 8:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Um, and I bought a bunch of horses that night. I, I have at least 27 horses myself.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  My dad's got nine. I share a stable with Drew. We have another seven. Got like one or two like pretty rare coats and early mints. And then I share another stable with a friend named Narendra. And he, uh, he built this whole algorithm to figure out like rare and super rare coats.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  So yeah, it's.

• 8:27Anthony Pompliano?

  So you own like 50 horses?

• 8:29Speaker 02

  About like I own and co-own about 50 horses.

• 8:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  But in terms of what, what Zed is, I mean, it's digital horse racing. So the idea is, when I say that like it's like normal, a normal thing. But, uh, yeah, it's, you know, I personally believe like 90% of NFTs are going to be worth us. I think the things that are going to stay are going to be things with strong IP. So things like, you know, the NBA Top Shot, MLB, UFC, NFL, eventually someone will do, you know, soccer is going to be massive when it comes out. Cause that has, that's IP. I think when, you know, movies like, uh, everything from Star Wars to Marvel to Disney, they have strong IP.

• 9:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, so my whole thing isn't so much just the IP, like the IP is important, obviously.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:12Anthony Pompliano?

  But, uh, the one that like I saw and I was like, oh wow, this is really cool is, uh, there's something called So Rare.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Which Benchmark recently invested in. And, uh, what they essentially did was it's like fantasy football for soccer or, uh, football as people abroad will call it. And, uh, you basically don't get to just draft players and then play like you do, you know, like Yahoo fantasy football or whatever. Instead, you basically have to buy and then you have the token and then you can trade and you can use certain players and all stuff. And so to me, it's not so much just like buying this thing, holding it and speculating that the price is going to go up. The utility of, the only way to play the game is to have.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  So that's the other thing. That's exactly, exactly. So like IP is important. And then the other thing that's going to last, well, I think there's actually three things that are last. It's IP, I think utility. So just buying it and selling it, it's great. But if you can make money, if you can earn some sort of benefit.

• 10:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Like a return or a yield off of it.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Or an access to a, a location, uh, digital or physical. If there's some sort of utility to it, I think those things are going to be interesting and last. And then the last I think is the art world. I think, you know, Crypto art, digital art, you know, it's, it's just a mimic of physical art. I don't personally get a lot of art, but I know that there's a market for that. The scarcity, the rarity, et cetera. I think the cash grabs are gonna go away. I think the people that don't take, you know, time to figure out exactly what makes sense. I think, I mean, this past week was a crazy week for NFTs. I mean, there was everything from, I don't know if you saw Appimon, uh, which is like a, a, you're gonna think it's even more crazy, but it's like a, it's like an egg that you can open. So there's like 6,000 of them. And in the egg, there's like this creature.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  And some of them are gonna be rare, some of them are gonna be common.

• 10:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Like dinosaurs?

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Like little, like, it's sort of like LOL Surprise. I don't know if you know LOL Surprise, you don't have a, any young children.

• 10:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Nope.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  They did nine billion in revenue last year.

• 10:58Anthony Pompliano?

  What is LOL Surprise?

• 11:00Speaker 02

  It's literally a, if you have a young daughter, you probably have seen it. It's, it's, um, it's a toy. And then you get an egg and then you open the egg and in the egg is a surprise. And it's one of the characters and there's some rare ones, there's some common ones.

• 11:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Uh, they did nine billion revenue last year. It's a physical toy company. If you go to any like CVS, Walgreens and you go to the toy section, you'll see LOL Surprise everywhere.

• 11:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. Um, and so now there's a digital version.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  So yeah, this thing called Appimon. Then there's this thing called, um, uh, the Board Ape Yacht, Yacht Club that launched.

• 11:33Anthony Pompliano?

  What is that?

• 11:34Speaker 02

  And it's like, you get, you buy like this.

• 11:36Anthony Pompliano?

  You get a yacht?

• 11:36Speaker 02

  No, you get like an ape. And the ape is like, whatever, we don't need to get into the specifics, but like.

• 11:42Anthony Pompliano?

  You know that all this sounds crazy.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  It just sounds insane.

• 11:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Uh, but the thing that's really interesting about Board, uh, Board Ape Yacht Club. Is that they're giving you, if you own an ape, you can get access to a virtual place.

• 11:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  This yacht club. And only other people who own apes can come. So you think about, okay, if you own a token or you own this NFT, you can theoretically get access to a digital place or a physical place. Then nobody else can go to unless you're a token owner or an NFT owner. I just think that that gets to be really interesting. These things all launched like this week, but at the same time, they're, they seem to be very thoughtful, well-designed and been in the works for a while. But, but back to Zed. So.

• 12:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Zed is horse racing.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Zed is horse racing.

• 12:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Digitally.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Digital horse racing.

• 12:27Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you go into the system, you can buy a horse.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Uh, you can buy a horse during a drop.

• 12:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  And then you can also buy it on, I think, OpenSea.

• 12:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  And then also.

• 12:37Anthony Pompliano?

  How many total horses are there? So we don't know yet.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, we do know, but there's it's important to understand actually how it works. So right now, we're still in the midst. So it's actually still really early for Zed. There's gonna be 38,000 Genesis horses. The rumor is they'll probably go through the Genesis horses by the end of the summer, maybe the end of the year. Um, I think there's only 13,000 of those 30, 37 or 38,000 that have been released. There's a rumor that this Friday, um, there's gonna be a, I mean, it's not a rumor. It's gonna be this Friday, there's something called a Terra drop. There's either gonna be 5,000 or 7,000 or 10,000 horses that are gonna be available directly.

• 13:17Anthony Pompliano?

  All at one time.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  All at one time.

• 13:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Try buy one.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, you should, but I think you need to own Ethan, right? I think you're you've been on the on the record of not owning any.

• 13:26Anthony Pompliano?

  I own no.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  I can gift you your first horse if you want. I can make you a baby horse.

• 13:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I want the best, like, I want the winner, like, I want the Secretarian of of all the horses.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, well, then you have.

• 13:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that the name of the the horse that won this thing?

• 13:38Speaker 02

  I think it's Secretariat.

• 13:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Secretariat, yeah.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm basically a horse professional. There's Seabiscuit, there's Secretariat, there's American Pharaoh.

• 13:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Seabiscuit is a good one.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  American Pharaoh was the most recent one that.

• 13:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so American Pharaoh, I want the equivalent of American Pharaoh in Zed. How do I get that?

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 13:52Anthony Pompliano?

  How much would it cost me?

• 13:54Speaker 02

  How much would it cost you? I mean, I've I've heard that.

• 13:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, is there one horse that everyone's like, that's the winner?

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's like, there's Breathless Edge, there's Ducky Malin. There's these horses are becoming a little famous because they're such winners.

• 14:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Breathless Edge?

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Breathless Edge is one, Ducky Malin is one. No, but like a 30% win rate.

• 14:11Anthony Pompliano?

  I want an undefeated one.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  There's no undefeated, actually, there was. The reason why breeding is not available right now is because when they brought breeding back, there was a it wasn't, I don't know if it was a bug, but some horses got four parent DNA. I didn't get into breeding yet, but I'll get into that in a second. And these horses were like freaks of nature. I think there's one called Escobar.

• 14:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I want Escobar. There you go, a freaking nature named Escobar, that's the horse I want. Who owns that one?

• 14:36Speaker 02

  I don't know, but it was the first 10 races, the horse was 10-0. And we were and but it was like winning, you get odds and stuff, and it was winning by like, like, like. Like multiple seconds.

• 14:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Escobar sounds like a champion. That's what I.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that when they bring it back, they're gonna look, they've changed some things and it'll be fixed.

• 14:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Are they gonna like take away Escobar's skills?

• 14:56Speaker 02

  No, I, I, I don't know 100% know how it works, but I think that they, the things they take into account, they're gonna have to change stuff. Cause you can't change Escobar's abilities, cause it's on the blockchain. So you have to sort of, I'm not 100% sure how it works.

• 15:10Anthony Pompliano?

  How they're gonna change the, they're gonna rig the game because Escobar is so dominant.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  It's gonna be the same. Yes, but no, they're gonna be, they're gonna have to level it up so that everyone has like that, that same situation.

• 15:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  But anyway, so, so going back to 38,000 Genesis horses. These are minted by Zed. And they are, there's, there's 10 levels. So there's Z1 to Z10. Z standing for Zed, Z1 to Z10. Z1 is the most scarce. Z10 is the most, uh, the least scarce.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Z1 is called Nakamoto after.

• 15:49Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a good, it's a good name.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  Satoshi. So that's Z1 and Z2 are both Nakamotos. There's a thousand Z1 Nakamotos. There's a thousand Z2 Nakamotos. In the last drop, a Z1 Nakamoto was selling directly from Zed, not like a resale value, directly from Zed for about $16,000.

• 16:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Okay. Z3 and 4 are called Zabo, named after I think Nick, Nick Zabo. Uh, there's 2,000 Z3s, 2,000 Z4s. Then there's Z5, 6, and 7 are Finny, after Hal Finny. And then 8, 9, and 10 is Buterin or Butterin or, you know, Vitalik. Z10, I think there's gonna be about 20,000, and I may be getting the number off a little bit, but I think there's about gonna be about 20,000 Z10 Buterins.

• 16:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  So that's gonna be the most common. In the last drop, I think a Buterin went for about a hundred, a hundred twenty dollars. And those are the most common you'll see. Now, okay, so that's 38,000 Genesis horses. There'll never be more Genesis horses. And they're still releasing them, which means it's still, still early.

• 16:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And then they all go have sex with each other.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's called, it's called the stud farm.

• 16:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Stud farm?

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's called.

• 16:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, well, explain.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Okay, so then, then there's breeding.

• 17:02Anthony Pompliano?

  I need to get in the horse game.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  No, it's, it's what, it actually, so there's male and female horses, there's, uh, it, the un, un, when you don't have any offspring, um, it's a filly for a female and then a colt for a male.

• 17:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  And then, once you have a child, you're a mare for a female, and then you're a stallion for a male.

• 17:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Now, there's the stud farm. The other thing that's actually worth noting is, there's, there's also, um, there's also coats. So, there's, uh, common coats, like the color of their, their coat. Then there's rare, and then there's, uh, like, super rare, or something like that. Um, so there are some really like.

• 17:44Anthony Pompliano?

  What does Escobar have? It's gotta be rare.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  I wanna, I wanna say I think it was like a fire brick. I could be getting, I think it was red. I think it was a rare or a super rare.

• 17:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh my god, you got a red horse that's just cleaning the competition?

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it was, I think, I, I'm.

• 18:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I should go buy Escobar before we release this, before somebody jacks up the price on me if I wanna go buy it. Go ahead.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  Well, I think Escobar came down to earth in terms of the, the stats, so. And, yeah, I mean, value also. But, by the way, most of the people who own these, like, really, like, champion horses, there's really no reason for them to sell it to you.

• 18:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Because they can make money without selling it to you.

• 18:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but it's, I mean, it's kinda like a cash flow, right?

• 18:24Speaker 02

  For example, the second horse ever minted was called, a horse called Wall Street. It's also a pretty good horse, has like a 20% win rate. Or like, between 15 and 20% is pretty solid. Wall Street can put itself in the stud farm and charge a thousand dollars to breed with Wall Street. And people will pay a thousand dollars to get an offspring of Wall Street.

• 18:43Anthony Pompliano?

  How much sex can the horse have?

• 18:44Speaker 02

  So that, that's a great question. Um.

• 18:47Anthony Pompliano?

  So, because I actually, I recently looked at, my brother was telling me, the amount of breeding that a champion horse, like a Kentucky Derby champion horse, between 100 and 250 times a year. And then they also fly them around the world with physical horses, uh, because they have to be in warm weather, I think. So they basically go from hemisphere to hemisphere to make sure that it can get extra breeding on a annual basis.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  That's crazy, but that's actually randomly similar to how actually it works.

• 19:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  So, um, when the stud farm is currently closed, it's gonna be hopefully opened up. I think they're waiting for the drop to happen and then they're gonna.

• 19:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Are they like closing it because this is still kind of like a beta?

• 19:25Speaker 02

  No, they closed it because there was the bug. There was like the, people were breeding these free horses.

• 19:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Escobar.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, Escobar. And there was another, there was like one or two more.

• 19:33Anthony Pompliano?

  By the way, this is like the most crypto thing in the world. I'm hearing about horses named Wall Street and Escobar. Basically the same two types of people. They're both criminal organizations. Go ahead.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, but by the way, so actually the Zed breddest horses are named by the employees of Zed.

• 19:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  And then the offspring is named by the users. So like if I like make a baby for you, then you can name it if you wanted to.

• 19:57Anthony Pompliano?

  If somebody just hears that clip, they're gonna think we're crazy.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:00Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So if I put Wall Street.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Okay, so how the stud farm works, you put males into the stud farm.

• 20:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Okay, so you put the male horses in, every two weeks, they can have seven offspring.

• 20:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  So you, as the owner of that male horse, you put it in there and you dictate how much it costs to mate with your horse. So if you have a Z1 Nakamoto named Wall Street, you might charge a thousand bucks to breed with it, just because you probably can get seven horses. You know, seven offspring. No, I mean, so I, one night I just wanted to experience it. I put, I just wanted to experience the stuff, um, I put, I put, I have a Z1. I put one.

• 20:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, you got like one of the big dogs.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  I have one of, I have, I have three Z1s now.

• 20:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Three Z1s, all right. How much did you, how much did they cost you?

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Uh, I, uh.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  About 10 to 12 K each.

• 20:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  And then.

• 20:55Anthony Pompliano?

  So let's say $30,000 you're in on the Z1s.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And you put them in the stud farm, all of them?

• 21:00Speaker 02

  So, well, actually, so I own three myself. And then I share two with Drew. So I have a few, honestly, I've, I've put some money into this.

• 21:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I think it sounds like it.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  But I've also, so I put.

• 21:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Are we making money or losing money then?

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, obviously I put out money, but for an example, I put my Z1 into the stud farm. And, uh, within 12 hours, I, I charged $600 to mate with it, or 500, 500 or $600. I just wanted to see if it would go. But I went and I did this at like midnight, I went to bed, woke up, I had 3K in my, my.

• 21:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, people were trying to mate.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  I was all mated, it was all seven, it was done. That, that, that, meaning I made three grand off a horse I bought for like 10 grand.

• 21:42Anthony Pompliano?

  You made three grand off a digital horse having sex with another digital horse.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  With multiple digital horses.

• 21:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did.

• 21:49Anthony Pompliano?

  This is why I'm fascinated by this, because it feels like it's a recreation of exactly what happened in the analog world. And it's going to happen again in the digital world. And there is the opportunity to be the greatest horseman in the world.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. By the way, the other thing is I have a horse called Winter, Winter Wonderland.

• 22:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  It's a rare coat.

• 22:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you name that?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  No, that was, it was a, it was a Genesis horse. Winter Wonderland has, uh, is a Z4 or Z5.

• 22:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  And it's a, it's a rare coat, Sir Aquamarine. And I put it in the stud farm also. And Winter Wonderland has raced in one match. And it won that match. So it is 100% win rate.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  And I put it in there.

• 22:34Anthony Pompliano?

  You sound like the finance kids on TikTok that are like, I have one stock and the stock went up.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Go ahead. But no, I, I, I stopped racing it. I stopped, I mean, like, you're not going to get better than 100%. Like, you know, it's only one for one. I put it in the stud farm, also, seven horses, 12 hours, it was all gone. I put it for like 200 each, because it's, it's not a Z1, so I put it for 200 each. Made like, made like a grand, easy. And I didn't even spend a grand to buy it, or maybe I did, I don't know. I, that was one of the ones Drew got me originally.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  So seven, seven offspring, only raced ones. I look at, I, I went back.

• 23:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you get a cut on the offspring?

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so does that. Uh, no, not on the offspring. I get a cut to breed.

• 23:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  The person who has the female horse pays you.

• 23:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Pays.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  Um.

• 23:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Who owns the baby horse?

• 23:25Speaker 02

  The female.

• 23:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Ah, got it. So is it better to have the male or the female?

• 23:29Speaker 02

  You can make more money instantly by male, but female, I mean, you could resell the, the, the children.

• 23:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  Said it really bad.

• 23:37Anthony Pompliano?

  This sounds ridiculous.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  You could, you could, you could resell the offspring. It also sounds pretty good.

• 23:41Anthony Pompliano?

  So here's my question.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Well, but, so the reason, well, the last thing, the reason that I brought that up is one of the children is a champion horse. So I looked through, cause you, you could see all the lineage and stuff. I looked, there's a, there's a, I think it's called Night Queen. And it's like a champion horse. It's got like 40 plus wins. And then whoever bred it has just been racing it and it's a good horse. See, cause that's the thing.

• 24:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Does that mean your horse is good?

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 24:07Anthony Pompliano?

  But you don't want to race it, cause then you might mess up the 100%.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  I don't want to race it, cause I want the 100%. I think I could just get an annuity of like a thousand bucks every two weeks, just from that. Like, not even thinking about it.

• 24:15Anthony Pompliano?

  24 grand a year.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  So.

• 24:18Anthony Pompliano?

  That was math. You see that pull of math? That's pretty good, right?

• 24:20Speaker 02

  It's pretty good math. Um, but that, that, uh, that, the Z1 that I have is not raced. So you don't know, like, so there's a lot of strategy.

• 24:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, so you got a Z1, but you never raced it?

• 24:30Speaker 02

  I never raced it and.

• 24:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And so people, people think it's a good one, but we don't know.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  Well, it's sort of like getting, imagine you can get an unopened, you know, NBA Top Shot pack, right? And it's a Cosmic Hollow Series One. So you can get a LeBron, you can get a Zion in there, but you also can get like, even though they're still, I mean, if you're a basketball player, you're good. But like, you can get like a C.D. Ossman and a Langston Galloway. Great, you know, good players, serviceable players, but they're not LeBron or Zion. So.

• 24:57Anthony Pompliano?

  So if you have a Z1 and then it loses its first two races, then.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  You don't, you don't want that. It's worthless. Immediately lowers the value. But if you see that the offspring are good. Then the value can go up.

• 25:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so I gotta give you a piece of context here because I've been sandbagging. So, uh, the reason why I'm so fascinated by this is in 2016, I believe it was, I went to Nigeria. And in Nigeria, uh, I went with, uh, somebody who's building like a, um, uh, chat app for soccer. And, uh, we had a like local who was a user of that app, take us around. And I'm, when I say when I went to Nigeria, most people go and they say Victoria Island, which is like where all the tourists stay. We stayed in Lagos, like there's dudes with AK-47 standing outside the hotel and like, it looks like it's secure, but if somebody starts shooting, they're definitely running. So, so you're like in Lagos, right? Uh, and it was about, I don't know, uh, a mile from a place called Computer Village in Nigeria.

• 25:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And Computer Village is, uh, think of like the busiest you've ever seen Times Square.

• 25:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Exactly like that, and it is just packed, almost like a, like a flea market would be. There's stalls and stores and all stuff and in some, in some of the places it's two or three stories. Uh, and it's just people everywhere. And what's fascinating about it is they are so in touch with technology. It's probably, I literally wrote a piece when I came back and I was like, I saw the future of consumer, uh, technology by looking, uh, in this one little place called Computer Village. Demographics of Nigeria off the chart, population growth incredibly fast, uh, very, very digital native. And then they've now got smartphones, internet access, all this stuff. So while we're there, we have some time to burn. And the local takes us to a equivalent of like, I'll call it a betting house. I don't know what they call it. And while we were there, we had like watched, uh, soccer games in people's backyards and like done all this stuff.

• 26:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And like there, there's a whole little economy around soccer and viewing. But we go to this bet house and literally, uh, think of it almost like the cage at a casino. So people are sitting in chairs, they're watching games on television, they get up, they walk over, they place their bet, they get a little piece of paper, they go sit back down. Did I win? Did I lose? Go back and they just, and they're doing this all day long, right? But then all of a sudden I noticed that everyone at all times was watching one of the screens on the far right. What's going on on that screen? Why is that one not have commercials? What's going on over there? And that was also the one that I quickly realized was having the most betting activity. It was a simulation. It was like, you know, when we play video games and like you're playing like a soccer game or a football game or whatever. And you just hit simulate and the game basically plays the game. And then it just tells you like, oh, the Green Bay Packers won, right?

• 27:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Which never really happens in real life. The Giants are the best team. And so I remember sitting there being like, these people are betting on a simulation in a video game. That's nuts. Cause as an American, guess what my first thing is? It's rigged. There's no way it's fair, right? Like somehow it is rigged. But they were betting all day, every day. So when I saw that, I remember just putting that in the back of my head, like, that's an interesting thing. Went about my day. When I saw the digital horse racing, that's the first thing I thought of. I said, oh my God, somebody figured out how to do this. Have no clue if it's rigged, is not rigged, does it work, does not work, whatever. But somebody figured out how to take that exact same experience and now bring it to a global basis. And it's around horse racing. And that seems pretty interesting to me. So it feels like the only three things you can really do are one, you can buy a horse. You can race it.

• 28:13Anthony Pompliano?

  You can buy a horse. You can put it in the stud farm, breed it. Or you can basically create more horses and then go race those horses. Fair?

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah. And by the way, seven male horses every two weeks when you breed. Two, uh, every female horse can have two offspring every two weeks.

• 28:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  So meaning when you originally said they like, they could do 150. If you do the math, seven every two weeks, 14 a month, you're getting pretty close to the actual. And maybe that's how they actually modeled it.

• 28:44Anthony Pompliano?

  100 to 250 is the, uh, is the number. So it's like a hundred on average versus, uh, I think it was, uh, 250 if they move them all around the world, you know, different hemispheres.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, uh, in terms of, in terms of, um, breeding, you know, only two from the female, which I don't know if that's real life. Like, I don't know how like.

• 29:03Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know what the pregnancy of women, uh, female horses are.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Off the top of my head, neither do I.

• 29:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't think they're one week at a time though.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's probably not. But, uh, but in, but in terms of, yeah, so I mean, breeding, so it's buying and holding. breeding and and like making money off that so I've I've made some money off that and then racing now

• 29:27Anthony Pompliano?

  how does the racing work and how do you know it's not rigged

• 29:29Speaker 02

  so there's a bunch of white papers that I've read like a few sentences of and there's a bunch of there's an article they wrote about like it's called like provably fair now the way that they describe it is there's 10,000 simulations of each race and they there's one that's chosen at random to be that race so when you go up against 11 other horses because there's 12 horses one of those like everyone has odds so

• 29:55Anthony Pompliano?

  so if I if I have the odds of winning 20 out of 100 times you just extrapolate that out to 10,000 simulations and then basically that's the odds and then they run each simulation and then they literally just pick okay simulation 7432 is

• 30:09Speaker 02

  is the one everyone's gonna see

• 30:10Anthony Pompliano?

  and that's somehow randomly selected and when that occurs based on the odds that my horse has of winning out of every hundred or thousand or 10,000 races then that's the odds for that specific race

• 30:19Speaker 02

  yeah exactly that's how I understand it

• 30:24Anthony Pompliano?

  that seems a complex enough where like that would be pretty hard to game

• 30:28Speaker 02

  yes the thing is that every horse so every horse the way I've I've come to understand it is every horse is like minted with like a base number and the only thing that right now is taken into account is distance preference so it doesn't matter what gate they are in it does not matter what time of day it doesn't matter how many races that they've had there's no fatigue the horses currently live forever there's so there's no like there's no like the horses getting old right now the only thing that gets taken into account is distance preference so there's 1000 meter races all the way up to 2600 meter races

• 31:08Speaker 02

  and you have to if that's why I haven't raced in Miz Miz ones is because if I race it I need to dedicate time to figure out if it's any good at anything and then when I know what it's good at or if by the way some of these horses are donkeys like you don't want to go race it

• 31:25Anthony Pompliano?

  how much money can I win racing

• 31:26Speaker 02

  I've seen horses that have that have made close to six figures already

• 31:32Anthony Pompliano?

  With just one race?

• 31:33Speaker 02

  No, oh, oh, the biggest, actually, no, so that it used to be like $5 entry up to $50 entry. But now there's like, I think I saw like a $5,000 entry. So it's going up. The most I've won in a race is like 200 bucks.

• 31:46Anthony Pompliano?

  200 bucks, alright.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  So far, but that was when it was only to 50.

• 31:48Anthony Pompliano?

  So it sounds like it's way better have the horses have digital sex than to race the horses.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Currently, so the my thesis around this, and a lot of people think, is that the Genesis game of Zed is around breeding. So find the good horses and then breed them, you know, and by the way, you you take someone like Breathless Edge. If Breathless Edge, I don't know if Breathless Edge is a male or a female, but imagine it's a male and it goes into the stud farm. That person could charge, you know, five grand per horse, 10 grand per horse, and they will sell all seven of them. No question, because it's that good of a horse. When you're placing 50% of the time and you're winning 30% of the time, like, you know, or Ducky Malin, which is another one, like, they're going to charge, they're going to be able to command a premium. So that's why the way you think about the breeding, so I think the breeding part.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Well, I I think the Genesis horses is a breeding game, and I think the offspring is a racing game. So I think like, the best horse is going to be because because there's Genesis horses. When you breed two Genesis horses, you create a legendary horse.

• 32:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  When you when you breed legendary horses, you create, I think, either elite or exclusive. And then there's like two or three steps down.

• 32:54Anthony Pompliano?

  So there's like all these things, but Genesis are the best ones.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Genesis are the original ones. They're the the original ones minted.

• 33:01Anthony Pompliano?

  But does original mean best?

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Not necessarily.

• 33:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  I've seen Z5s beat Z1s in races. Just because you're a Z1 doesn't mean you're 100% going to win. So.

• 33:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Because probability.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, but also like I I have a horse that is really good at 1600 meter races. So I get really good odds.

• 33:20Anthony Pompliano?

  You don't.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Uh, Dag Nabbit.

• 33:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Dag Nabbit, did you name it?

• 33:23Speaker 02

  No.

• 33:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  No, come on, that's not, that's not a name I would name.

• 33:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  I I I bred some horses for my daughter.

• 33:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Uh, she's five, she likes, she likes.

• 33:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Does she like going watching the?

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Oh, we watch the games together. She comes home from school, she wants to race it. So the original horse that I raised.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Oh, by the way, when you, when you breed Nakamotos together, you create another Nakamoto. But if you do like a Nakamoto and a Zabo, it creates a Zabo. If you do Nakamoto and a Fini, it creates a Fini. Whatever the lesser like one is, is what the offspring is.

• 33:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  But I bred her a Nakamoto. So she is a Z2. By the way, when you do Z1 and Z1, you create a Z2. If you do a Z1 and a Z5, you create a Z6.

• 34:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Okay. Just simple math.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. It's just you have to add up the numbers.

• 34:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Would you do 2Z10s, Z20?

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Z20. I think you go up to like Z100, 200 something. It was a crazy, crazy number. But anyway, so the, I bred her, she has a Z2, I think a Z2 or Z3 Nakamoto. She named it Gemstone. And then Gemstone's a girl, so we had two offspring, Sparkles and Rainbows. Both mentioned in the New York Times article. Which I think the value goes up. She's five.

• 34:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. Does your daughter go to school and say, I own three horses?

• 34:37Speaker 02

  She does tell people she owns horses.

• 34:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Like she's like, it's like, not my dad, like I own the horses.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, but she doesn't say like it's a digital horse. She says like, I own a horse. For her, it's, there's no difference. But it's funny because they're mentioned in the New York Times article that was just this past week on Zed. And someone mentioned to me, he's like, good job getting the horse name in New York Times. If you go and you put it on Discord, or if you put it in the Stud Farm, you'd be like, you know, Rainbows mentioned in the New York Times, come breed with it. Or, you know, you can, like, the value goes up for horses that are like publicly mentioned.

• 35:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know if that's true. Why don't the horses die?

• 35:12Speaker 02

  I think they've, I think they're debating it.

• 35:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  But right now, like, I, I've heard that they're gonna eventually add gate preference. I've heard that they're gonna eventually add weather.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  And I imagine they'll add fatigue.

• 35:26Anthony Pompliano?

  So you can't just go race, because right now you could essentially take your horse. I could take Escobar, which I need to own. And then I could basically race Escobar 20 times in a day and it doesn't matter.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  So right now you can be in three races at one time, meaning three, like there's a bunch of...

• 35:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, I don't even do 20 in a day. I could literally like three races all at the same time simultaneously, my horse.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  That's the most you can, but they don't have to be simultaneously running, but the most you can enter is three horses at a given time. So once one of those races ends, you can enter another one.

• 35:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Okay.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you could, I mean, people, there are.

• 35:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Are there horse millionaires?

• 36:00Speaker 02

  There are degenerate people sitting there all day racing their horses.

• 36:03Anthony Pompliano?

  But they're making money.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Sometimes, sometimes they're losing money. You have to.

• 36:06Anthony Pompliano?

  I like the breeding game. The breeding game sounds a lot more up my alley.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  But the horse, the, the, the racing game, there is a bit of skill to it because you have to figure out, you can't just like blindly race it. You have to look at the data. Um, you have to figure out, okay, when is this horse, is this horse doing really well? Like, okay, it's going 1,400 meter races, but it's not winning. Um, but it's in, but it's in first place when it, when you hit a thousand meters. So should I be, you know, only entering into a thousand meter races? You have to figure out a lot of that stuff, but once, once you start looking at the data, like, there's a lot of like sabermetrics type of data. Once you start looking at the data, it's, it's a game changer. I, I had two horses that I knew were decent, but I didn't know how decent they were. And then I looked at the odds and, and like the detailed data.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  And I was like, oh, I have to race this only 1,800 meters and above, and this one only 1,800 meter below. And I'm gonna make, I'm gonna actually make money. Um, if you enter enough races for five, 10, 15 dollars.

• 37:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Can you race while you're in the stud farm?

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Uh, no, I, I think you're not, I think you're not allowed to race while you're in the stud farm.

• 37:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I mean, that would make sense. You're.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  You can't be racing and.

• 37:12Anthony Pompliano?

  And breeding at the same time. Okay. Uh,

• 37:16Anthony Pompliano?

  if I'm thinking of this game, it feels like the people who own the horses are a step below the people who own Zed.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:25Anthony Pompliano?

  But then there's this like middle ground. I want to own a track. How do I do that?

• 37:30Speaker 02

  So I've heard, so they, they did a, they announced a partnership with Atari.

• 37:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  That Atari is going to be doing like branded, a few branded horses, like Atari horses that are going to be like rare. And then I've heard that there's like, I mean, you could think about like the Central Land and things like that where, why not? Why not buy a track and, and be a bookie? You know? Like Zed won't be the bookie. Zed won't be DraftKings. Zed's the NBA. Zed's the NFL. We're the owners, we're, we're, we're Mark Cuban. You know, we're, we're the, we're the team owners.

• 38:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think Mark owns any horses?

• 38:04Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 38:05Anthony Pompliano?

  I feel he'd say it.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I don't think he owns any horses.

• 38:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Sorry.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Who owns the most horses?

• 38:11Speaker 02

  It's a great question. Funny story, which is sort of about this. I was, I caught up with a friend recently and I was, I was, we were talking about like crypto and Z and NFTs. And he's like, you know, my, um, my, my sister married this guy. And he has been obsessed with Zed for like a few months. And like the family is about to have this, like, he's just racing digital horses all day. And the family's about to have like an intervention with him. And I was like, send me the stable link, like, send me like, I want to see the stable. And, um, he sends to me, it's like 13 Z1s, like 40 Z2s. And he co-owns the stable with a bunch of people. I'm like, dude, this guy has like a multimillion dollar stable, like do not intervene with it. Like, let him, let him do his thing.

• 38:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  So there's a bunch of those out there. There's a bunch of people who have stocked up early. You know, I think, I think a few months ago, a Z1 was going for like 5K, not 16K. So, you know, you could.

• 39:08Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a price appreciation.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, and, and each drop, the, it goes up about 20% in terms of like the, the floor value.

• 39:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  Uh, someone offered me 40K for one of my Z1s. I said, no, I think, I think that'll be worth, once the Genesis horses are done, I think Z1s, it's only a thousand of them, Genesis Z1s. I mean, they're going to go for 100K each, minimum.

• 39:29Anthony Pompliano?

  A hundred on a million? A hundred K?

• 39:32Speaker 02

  A hundred, I, I think, like, the worst Z1 will be worth 100K. Like, you can barely buy one for, you know, 30, 40K right now.

• 39:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow. All right.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Cause there's not that many.

• 39:43Anthony Pompliano?

  So how do I own a track? Is that available?

• 39:44Speaker 02

  So, no, currently not available. Uh, I don't know if it will ever be, but it seems like there's a lot they want to do. I mean, I, the way that Drew has always described it to me was that like, they're building like the metaverse and like horse racing is just like the popular sport.

• 40:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  But like, I don't know, why don't, why don't, why can't they do like dog racing? Why can't they do dragon racing? Like, they could do anything. So it's just like, okay, horses are like.

• 40:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Why don't they do human racing?

• 40:15Anthony Pompliano?

  We'll just all put our avatars in there and just have foot races.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the question is, you know, can you make these horses better? Or do you like, are they are what they are?

• 40:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Is there like a training process? Can I buy a shitty horse and then like, you know, like make it stronger?

• 40:27Speaker 02

  You could theoretically buy a shitty horse that was incorrectly ran. So like, if you see a horse that has really bad odds at 2,000 meters and the owner was only running at 2,000 meters. And then you start racing on others and you realize, oh, this horse actually does really well at 1,200 meters.

• 40:40Anthony Pompliano?

  But you don't know that until it runs those races.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you've got, so that there's like a process to figure out, which is like, you should probably race the horse three to five times at every single level at the cheapest way you can. And then, and then, okay, look at the data. Where am I getting good odds? It's also you get odds depending on who you're going up against. So if you go up against Escobar and Breathless Edge and Ducky Malone, like you're gonna have pretty bad odds.

• 41:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, Escobar's undefeated.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  I don't know if, I don't know if that's true anymore.

• 41:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  We could look it up.

• 41:07Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Well, I'm gonna own Escobar and it's gonna be undefeated. All right, so what's the end game here? Like, are people just gonna own the horses forever? Do they sell them and like cash out like?

• 41:18Speaker 02

  I don't know, listen, if I can get a, if I can get 2, 3K every two weeks from one horse. Um, now, now maybe eventually like the demand goes down, but again, Z1's only a thousand of them. You know, Nakamotos, not many Nakamotos in general. So if you can make, that's the whole utility thing. If I can make money racing and breeding, I'm not gonna sell my horses. Why would I sell them? I'll make all my money back that I spent just by doing those things. And then let, just continue to sort of, and then grow it from there. So.

• 41:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you reinvest or do you take the money out?

• 41:51Speaker 02

  I, I've currently, it's all just in ETH, just reinvested. So I don't.

• 41:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Reinvested in ETH or in more horses?

• 41:57Speaker 02

  So like you have a, an ETH account in ZED? And then there's a W ETH account, which I don't know what W stands for.

• 42:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Wrapped.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  But yeah, so that, that's where you buy, that's where you could buy the horses.

• 42:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Just for you, all you Ethereum people.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  That's where you can buy the horses, you can breed the horses and you can

• 42:19Speaker 02

  race the horses. You have to use W ETH. So yeah, I just, it goes in there and I don't like, the funny thing is, this joke I've been saying with a bunch of people is that like you go and you race, right? Every night before I go to bed, I just, I know the odds, I know which horses like I look for the right race and I just put my horses in those races and I go to bed and I wake up and I look at if I won anything. The funny thing is because ETH has been blowing up. I put $5 into a race, I lose, I have 50 more dollars in my account. So it's like, it's like, it's really bad for like degenerate gamblers. Cause like, it's just going up right now. Cause it's tied to it.

• 42:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So, uh, can you like outfit the horse to look the way you want? Like with like a saddle or anything like that?

• 43:05Speaker 02

  There's no jockeys, there's no saddle. It's you, you have a coat. That's about it. But they're all 3D. I don't know if you've seen a race go, but like it's beautiful.

• 43:13Anthony Pompliano?

  It's pretty cool. And they got like the cool camera angle and it looks kind of futuristic, little Ready Player One-esque, right? And they're ready to rock and roll.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I mean, I don't know where Zed 100% is going. Is it only ever going to be horses? Are they going to do other things? But there's a lot of just value and utility of just the horse stuff. So I've been having fun. Um, and like, I think, yeah, you can make a lot of money off it. I think owning a track or, or, you know, like, like Zed, Zed, I don't think is ever going to get into the gambling side of it. The DraftKings and the, and the FanDuel's of the world are going to go and, and offer that, uh, the bookies of the world. And like, can you buy a track and then charge, get a fee for everyone who races on your track? I think probably. Why not? Like,

• 44:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you, what do you do on a day-to-day basis? We sat here and we've talked about digital horses. Tell us about the company.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. No, so I have a company called Upstream. We're building like, you know, LinkedIn groups 2.0. We're going after professional networks. Basically LinkedIn has had a monopoly for the past like 18 years. And you know, people like dunk on them all the time. LinkedIn sucks, this, that. I have a lot of respect for them. I think the core product is really strong. The digital resume. I mean, there's a reason why. You know, they have a monopoly. It's a great product. You know, I can look you up and see your past history, etc. But they've dropped the ball on a few things. The biggest, I think, you know, being who do you know and how well do you know them? They killed their API a few years ago for some good reasons, but I think there's a platform that could be built on a professional network. And then what we're starting with is professional groups. Like, nobody uses LinkedIn groups, right?

• 44:51Speaker 02

  You know, nobody actually even knows LinkedIn groups is a thing.

• 44:54Anthony Pompliano?

  I was just gonna say, don't even know what that is.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Anyone who's building a professional community is doing it on Slack. They're doing it on WhatsApp. They're doing it on Telegram, doing it on Discord. And I love all those products. I use them all. They're just not really meant for professional community. So that's where we started. And then when COVID hit, we, you know, like, when you think of, there's like two pieces to Topstream. One is the professional and like, oh, sorry, the, the community and group side. The other is the professional side. In that professional side, there's like a life cycle, meeting new people, socializing, following up with people, reaching out to people, reconnecting with people. That's all part of like the professional life cycle. We're playing right now in the meeting new people, socializing. So we do this event. We have this product called Upstream Events. They're virtual events. They're usually 20 to 30 minutes.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  We typically have a guest speaker, the first 10, 15 minutes, and then the second half of it is matchmaking. And it's been really popular during COVID. We've got, you know, you know, thousands of people coming and meeting each other every week. And it's just been, it's been really popular. It's like, during COVID, it was really hard to meet people unless you're like in Miami. But, uh, yeah, no, it was just like, you know, so.

• 46:04Anthony Pompliano?

  He didn't say it, but what he meant was because Miami was open, everyone else was closed.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it was, the joke is like, everyone in Miami already had COVID, so.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  So that's why it could, you know, it's herd immunity already here. No, there's definitely some, some good stuff and bad stuff being here. We, I moved my family, I have a wife and two daughters. We moved down here in July. It's been really nice. But anyway, so this company Upstream started it in the beginning of 2020, me and my co-founder. Before that, I had a company called Social Rank, social media analytics company. We sold it at the end of 2019. We just started Upstream. We, we haven't announced yet, but we raised a little bit of money and, you know, we've got a team of nine awesome people and trying to build the, the next professional network.

• 46:45Anthony Pompliano?

  So you basically, you took your family, your company and your digital horses and you moved to Miami, right?

• 46:50Speaker 02

  I bought the digital horses down here, but yes. I was born and raised in New York, lived there my whole life, grew up in Manhattan.

• 46:57Anthony Pompliano?

  If you're successful with Upstream, what does this turn into, right? Like in terms of, is it literally LinkedIn, but a platform where people can come and build on top of the social graph? And it's all for professionals and there's events and kind of like you just like rebuild it for the modern age or like today?

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we started on mobile. So it was like a mobile first play. But yeah, no, what does success mean? I mean, building a professional network, building a platform. So like, events are really cool and events are really popular, but it's just a piece of the puzzle. And it's a, it's a big piece. Like every successful community should have events, virtual events, in-person events, et cetera. But it's just a little piece of the puzzle. I mean, you know, I have a roadmap for the next five, 10 years in my brain. To be honest, I want to do this for the rest of my life. I'm not, like, you know, we only met each other a few months ago, but we sort of prioritize me. Like, this, this is, a big piece of it is around giving and getting help, meeting new people professionally. I love that. That's what I do every day.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  So if someone like LinkedIn came along and they're like, hey, we want you to run LinkedIn groups and make it something that people actually know what it is, I'd rather just do this. I'd rather just go out and raise more money and, and try to build a bigger company. Though, a lot of the, the ways I think about it is there's, there's three pieces. There's live and synchronous, which is like these events. Then there's like asynchronous, which is like posting asks and eventually there'll be more like asynchronous things on Upstream. And then the third is utility. So one of the things that we're thinking about right now a lot is like, what type of utility can you provide people? Maybe it's not directly tied to community, but like, who do you know and how well you know them? Like, how many times do people hit you up and like, hey, I saw that you're connected to this person at, on LinkedIn, like, can you make an intro? And you're like, I don't even know who that person is.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Like, I have to go look back, figure out how I met that person. And there's a bunch of really easy ways to figure that out. A lot of people who've gone after that problem have gone about it in the, in the wrong ways. They, they try to build like new address books or they try to build like these souped up things that take like a week for it to load and it just never really works. The closest probably is like Affinity CRM. They've done a decent job at the, the digital sort of connection, like who do you know, frequency of connection. But we're working on some stuff now that hopefully will be available in the summer around like, you know, strength of relationship and who you know, how well you know that. And I think that just balloons into a much bigger opportunity.

• 49:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Completely agree. I think it's a smart idea.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  Thanks, man.

• 49:20Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, I got three questions before I let you go.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 49:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, most important book you've ever read?

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Most important book. I've been, I've been, I've been slacking on the books. I mean, I, I read this book, uh, back in, I wrote my college, I don't even remember what it was, what it was called, but it was, uh, it was like The Seamstress. I'm gonna have, we're gonna have to edit this because I'm not remembering the name of the book. I wrote my college essay about it, but it had a profound impact on me at the time, but the fact that I can't even remember it, I guess means something. Yeah. Um, let me think. Uh, what's the second question? Let me think about.

• 49:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Second question is sleep. So our friends over at Eight Sleep, I got this bed.

• 50:01Anthony Pompliano?

  It's freezing cold, right? It's a thermal regulated bed. I sleep like five or six hours. My wife really wanted like murder me. Now I sleep like eight or nine hours and it's been like the most life-changing thing ever. And hopefully they're gonna be able to make it so you feel the same way after seven hours or six hours of sleep. What is your sleep schedule?

• 50:20Speaker 02

  It is really.

• 50:20Anthony Pompliano?

  You have two young kids, right?

• 50:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. It is very bad. I need it. I need.

• 50:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Like what?

• 50:26Speaker 02

  I do.

• 50:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like how bad?

• 50:28Speaker 02

  It's bad.

• 50:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Over, under five hours a night?

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Around five.

• 50:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, alright.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  But I, so I.

• 50:32Anthony Pompliano?

  That's like borderline horrendous.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I go to bed late, but I wake up late. I, I go to bed late, but I wake up late.

• 50:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  So I typically go to bed between,

• 50:45Speaker 02

  it'll be really nice if I get to bed at one. I usually go to bed two, three.

• 50:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, wow. So like really like a night owl.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  But then, yeah, I do my best work between 10 and 2. I mean, I, you know,

• 50:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  I feel like it's, you know, you're not supposed to say that type of stuff anymore, like building companies, but like it's the truth. Like I just, that's how I, that's how I, I function.

• 51:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And what time do you wake up?

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Usually eight, nine.

• 51:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so like five to six hours.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  I trained my two daughters to wake up at eight or later. That was the best thing I ever did.

• 51:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's not bad.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  So it's not that bad, but I know I need more sleep. I usually catch up on the weekends.

• 51:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Alright, third question. Aliens. Are you a believer or a non-believer?

• 51:23Speaker 02

  I think statistically, something has to exist out there. You're like, it's just like, when you ever, if you ever look at like where Earth is compared to the whole solar system and galaxy, I mean, it's like, just seems. It just seems impossible that we're not like that we're the only people ever. I don't know if anyone else is still alive. I don't know if we can actually get to them at a time like, you know, because the distance.

• 51:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Might be too far away.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  They may be too far away, but I think it's probabilistically really low. I think what what likely is chances is a lot of other Earths out there and they can't see beyond their galaxy.

• 51:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's probably true.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  And we can't see them. They can't see us. It's just too far away. We sort of know that there's a lot of stuff out there, but we can't, we don't have means of communication.

• 52:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, you're gonna get to ask me one question to finish, but uh, my favorite statistic or uh, data point on all of space. Is that when I was in high school, there was nine planets, including Pluto. Now, there's over a thousand.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Where did the rest of them come from?

• 52:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, my only guess is that technology got way better so that we can have better like surveillance, you know, of the solar system or whatever, but like, that's a pretty big jump.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, no.

• 52:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Like from nine to a thousand.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I I'm I.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  It seems unlikely that we're alone. The question is, if they get to us before we get to them, are we in trouble? You know, so.

• 52:48Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you know they haven't been here?

• 52:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's a, there's a, there's a pretty senior person from, I think it was either Israel or Ken or whatever that you probably, if you ask this question.

• 52:57Anthony Pompliano?

  The intergalactic federation.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  I don't know how, you know, that that sounds a little bit.

• 53:01Anthony Pompliano?

  For those that don't know, there's a guy, I think it's from Israel. He uh, was like in charge of space or whatever.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Like basically the equivalent with the Space Force. And he's like, oh yeah, we all are in the intergalactic federation and we just don't want to tell anyone yet.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and like.

• 53:13Anthony Pompliano?

  And he's a little bit older, may maybe a little.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  He might, he may be a little going a little crazy. Uh, but then, then he said some things that were like, well, yeah, why did Trump like la- launch Space Force out of nowhere? Like, you know what I mean? That was like really a random thing. Like, maybe there is something to it. May- may- maybe there is, I don't know. I don't, I don't know. And like, I feel like. If there was, like, they would try to be hidden, but it's so hard to hide things these days.

• 53:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  You know? But like, the UFO stuff has been crazy with like, them releasing, like, we don't know what this was. We don't know what that was. So like, maybe. I, I, I, I, I won't, I won't, I'm not on the side of saying like, no.

• 53:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I'm the same way.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  But I'm not on like, I'd love to see it.

• 53:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, you're not on the like, I met one.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, but like, you know that Blink 182 guy, like, how like vindicated must he feel? Like, he stopped making music and then like, went all in on aliens and like.

• 54:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, he's not wrong.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's pretty cool. By the way, back to the first question. I wouldn't say a book.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  I would say the best thing that I've read is, uh, the old Mark Andreessen posts from, from his blog. I'm more of a blog, sort of tweet reader.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  But, um, his, his, his old stuff still holds up, like, just like, just his thoughts on building a company and networks and all that stuff is just, it's timeless. I mean, it's archived somewhere, the, the P market blog, but that, that's probably the best thing I've read.

• 54:41Anthony Pompliano?

  That's actually a great suggestion.

• 54:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:43Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Where can, uh, well, first of all, what question do you have for me?

• 54:47Speaker 02

  So something we ask every time on, on Upstream, when we have a guest speaker, we, we ask, what do you need help with? Usually there's like a handful of people there and we say like, you could be hiring somebody, you could want to help.

• 54:56Anthony Pompliano?

  We're gonna hang a 65 inch screen television, but I got a guy coming today, but that's what I need help with right now. Cause I'm scared that I'm gonna screw it up.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  Okay. You need help with that? Anything, anything you need help with that maybe someone can help you?

• 55:09Anthony Pompliano?

  No, send me the best investment deals.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  Okay, no, that's, that's a good one. Send the best companies.

• 55:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I mean, that's like the easiest thing. Uh, where can we send people to find you on the internet?

• 55:20Speaker 02

  On Twitter, I'm at AJT.

• 55:22Anthony Pompliano?

  How'd you get that?

• 55:24Speaker 02

  That's a whole other story. So I had a friend, I'll, I'll tell a quick version of it. I have a friend at Twitter, she was leaving, um, and she, uh, she hit me up and she had, it was still back in the day when you could like, grab handles if you like, it was inactive. So she's like, I'm leaving, my last day is like next week, make a list of handles you want. And ah, and, and send them to me and, and just have a handle I could swap it with. And if I can get it, I'll get it. That's not how I got AJT. I got it. I got that from her early on. But that haul, I got, uh, I own at truth on Twitter. I'm just sitting on it and I gave it to the Biden campaign a little bit. They played with it during the election. They got it up to like 250,000 followers.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  And then I thought I was getting it back with 250,000 followers. And then they worked with Twitter to wipe it and gave me back with zero followers. I was like, guys, I gave it to you because I thought I like, come on.

• 56:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  That was, that was a big disappointment. I mean, I, I didn't ask them not to wipe it, but like the expectation was I was giving them to get back a big account. But I, I, I would understand how they wouldn't want like, let's say I became crazy and I started posting like, you know, QAnon stuff or whatever.

• 56:36Anthony Pompliano?

  From at truth?

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. They don't want to be associated with that.

• 56:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Um, so I understand. I was just upset. I own a bunch of random ones. Uh, I, my daughters have at Kira. She's, her name's Kira and then at JD and her name's Jade. So I have, uh, I've got a bunch. Oh, I have at NYK. The Knicks are NY Knicks. I'm NYK.

• 56:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Winning record this year, right?

• 56:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm a little nervous. We've got eight games to go. It looks good. But I, in, in, I'm just like, I'm so fearful of like a collapse. And like a eight, eight game losing streak out of the playoffs. We haven't clinched yet or anything. So, and it's hard teams. I mean, going up against tonight, Denver. Then, uh, uh, Phoenix, uh, Clippers, Lakers. Boston, like that's not, it's, I mean, I'm really happy how they're playing. But I'm just, you know, it would be such a Nick thing.

• 57:31Anthony Pompliano?

  It would be a Nick thing.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  To lose the last eight games and, and just, you know.

• 57:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Whoops.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 57:38Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Where can we have people to find you other than at AJT?

• 57:40Speaker 02

  AJT, uh, on upstream, uh, at upstreamapp.com or you can download it in the app store. Where else am I on the internet?

• 57:47Anthony Pompliano?

  LinkedIn?

• 57:48Speaker 02

  Nah, you, you can. By the way, I have respect for LinkedIn. I, I'm not, we're not trying to replace them today, but tomorrow, you know what I mean? Like we want to get big, um, before we really go after anything they do that's core. But yeah, no, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on, uh, I'm on, I think I'm on, I'm on everything. But, uh, Twitter is where I spend most of my time.

• 58:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome, man. Listen, thank you so much for doing this. I'll do it again in the future.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Anytime.