#369: Alex Masmej on Personalized Tokens

Alex Masmej is the creator of the $ALEX token. He is interested in how decentralized computing and smart contracts can significantly change the world. In this conversation, we discuss crypto's low barrier to entry, personalized tokens, Decentralized Finance, Bitcoin and Ethereum, and how athletes and musicians are likely to monetize themselves in the future. =============================== Crypto.com is the only all-in-one platform that allows you to BUY / SELL / STORE / EARN / LOAN / INVEST crypto all from one place. Join over 1 million users currently using the Crypto.com app. Download and earn $50 USD using my code ‘pomp2020’, or use the link https://platinum.crypto.com/r/pomp2020 when you sign up for one of their metal cards today. =============================== Coinbase Wallets are adding support for .crypto and .zil domains through their partnership with Unstoppable Domains. Unstoppable Domains provides an all-in-one solution for blockchain domains. You can send money using these new domains instead of long Bitcoin wallet addresses, while also storing your domain in Coinbase's collectibles section. Go to unstoppabledomains.com in the dapp browser to register and manage your domains. =============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

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

• 0:00Anthony 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. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Alex Masmitz is the creator of the Alex token. He is interested in how decentralized computing and smart contracts can significantly change the world. In this conversation, we discuss crypto's low barrier to entry, personalized tokens, decentralized finance, Bitcoin and Ethereum, and how athletes and musicians are likely to monetize themselves in the future. I really enjoyed this conversation with Alex, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into the episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. The first is Crypto.com. They've got an awesome URL, but they're also an all-in-one platform that allows you to buy, sell, store, earn, loan, or invest crypto all from one place.

• 0:51Anthony Pompliano?

  That's right, Crypto.com has 1 million users currently using the Crypto.com app. So you can go download it today and they'll give you 50 US dollars if you use my code Pomp2020. Anytime somebody allows for an all-in-one platform where you can buy, sell, store, earn, loan, or invest, you should pay attention. So go check out Crypto.com. Like I said, great URL, but that's the place where mass adoption is occurring, Crypto.com. Next up is Unstoppable Domains. Coinbase Wallets normally ask you to include the wallet address when you send crypto to them. So that is the long string of letters and numbers. When you go to do it, you're literally sweating, your heart is palpating, it doesn't feel good, you're stressed out.

• 1:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Because you're scared you're gonna mess up some of the letters and numbers in that string. Well now Coinbase Wallet supports .crypto and .zill domains through their partnership with Unstoppable Domains. What this means is that you can now use something like Pomp.crypto as your wallet address. So when people say, "Where should I send the Bitcoin?", you can simply say Pomp.crypto. "Where should I send the Ether?", Pomp.crypto. That is what Unstoppable Domains and Coinbase Wallet has created through this partnership. So Unstoppable Domains provides an all-in-one solution for blockchain domains. You can send money Using these new domains instead of the long Bitcoin wallet addresses while you can also store your domain in Coinbase's collectible section. So they are domains. It's just like URLs. If

• 2:20Anthony Pompliano?

  somebody buys it and you wanted it, you can't get it. It's first come, first served. So go to unstoppabledomains.com in your DApp browser and go get your domain today before somebody else buys it. Once they're gone, they're gone. If you want a specific domain, go get it at unstoppabledomains.com. Go check it out. Lastly, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. I break down complex topics into easy to understand language while sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. All right, let's get into this episode with Alex. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:28Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Alex here. What's going on, man? Bang, bang. Super excited. Thank you so much. Absolutely. All right. We, uh, we've been meaning to do this for a while now and you are known for creating the Alex token, which is the first personalized crypto token. The people listening to this, 50% of them are going to think that that's awesome and, and, you know, really exciting and cutting hedge. And the other 50% are going to be like, oh, great, another shitcoin. So we'll get to all that in a second, but let's start with just you, your background, and kind of how did you come, uh, come on to crypto and get so enthralled with it?

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. So yeah, and indeed, like contention is great when fifty fifty ratio. That's the best ratio to get attention. So I get I got this right. Yeah, so my background, I spent zero to eighteen year old in Paris. You know, high school and everything, and then studied in the UK, learned English for three years, business management. And then for your, I tried to start up that failed. It was about like three printing platform. But basically, my goal in life is to be a founder of tech companies and optimizing for impact. And so, once this has failed, I realized that I need to have the best network possible in order to succeed in life. And then I tried to select an industry because I was just going for three printing because of serendipity, I guess.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  But I chose like three technologies that I studied for a while, which is AI, crypto and AR and VR and like, you know, X reality. And as a young person starting their career, crypto has just the lowest barriers of entry. And you know, this like the internet created the best entrepreneurs in the world. And so I thought, you know, if they were alive today, I mean, they are alive today, they would choose crypto today. And it paid off so far. It's going great. So I've entered crypto last year, twelve months ago. And I've done a lot of primitives on Ethereum, so applications in DeFi, DAO, NFT, and lately my personal token, Alex, and I can talk about any of those.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  But it's been such a journey so far and super excited. And now like on to my next startup. So yeah, short background.

• 5:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Let's just dive right into the Alex token. I think that's the one that you're probably known most for. What the hell is this thing?

• 5:56Speaker 02

  So basically, it's a token that represents my community. And it started off in March when basically COVID happens. I got my only source of income cut off. Like, I'm a founder. I don't have any salaries. And I am scheduled on main stage at a big Ethereum conference to talk about personal tokens. Because I've had one for a while. I was known as the only one to have it. But I've never done anything with it. And I thought, you know what, this is now or never. Do a small token sale of $20,000 and announce it on stage. And it got great feedback. And then a month later, I released the documents to participate in the sale. Thirty people did. And that's it. In two days, it got sold off.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  And that's where I got a bit of media attention. And it's awesome, because I will be giving 15% of my income in the next three years to the 30 people. And then, since the Alex token has gone up in value, I've done like other experiments since, and exclusive content to benefit my community.

• 7:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so the idea here is, people can buy the tokens, right? There was a token sale, but can they also buy them elsewhere in order to get part of the tokens that you didn't sell to those original investors to put up $30,000 or $20,000?

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Yes, so 10% was reserved for those. And so the immense majority, which doesn't have any claim on income or whatever, and it's used as a utility for my community,

• 7:27Speaker 02

  are on Uniswap right now, because Uniswap is permissionless. And you know, you've got Bradley from Roll on board, which is the creator of my social token. And he always does that. The team actually stakes a bit of ETH to create some initial liquidity for my token.

• 7:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when somebody goes and buys the Alex token today, because they weren't part of the token sale, they don't get a claim on your income, right? Only those investors do. What do I get in exchange for buying Alex token?

• 7:56Speaker 02

  So you get tons of things. So first, you get access to my Telegram group, only group chat. We have like a bot that actually checks if you have enough Alex and kicks you out if you sell the tokens. Also a newsletter. So that's the two, like exclusive content to get updated with my life. And because I have a commitment that I will continue experience with the token, that's informed with my community. If I get more popular, which is actually a purpose incentive, because successful is different from popular. If I get more popular, the token should have more fans buying into it for the experience that I'm doing, and potentially could go up. Anyway, so.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Other than this, I've done Control My Life, which is a quite big title for personal token voting. And so Austin Griffiths, a very famous Ethereum developer, did this ERC20 voting thing. And basically, people could stake on my daily habit in July. And so there was like solely living off Bitcoin, or waking up at 6:00 AM, or running off 5 miles, which I've done. And this vote won. And the fourth one, I don't remember, but I think it's like Go Vegan. And it's funny, like a million tokens were voted. There's only 4 million circulating right now, which is such a huge participation rates compared to many like other organization in the space. So that was very funny to see.

• 9:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And so what you basically did was you said, hey, there's four things that I may do this month. If you're a token holder, you get a vote, and you're literally going to quote unquote, "control my life," right? You're going to basically, the crowd's going to decide what I do?

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah. And so this happened over a week. And at the end, running 5 miles won. And so to prove myself, on my Alex-only Telegram group chats, I've gone on to publish Trava runs every single day. I mean, 5 days a week for the whole month of July, running 5 kilometers. And that was, that was very fun.

• 9:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so extrapolate this out, right? Is you're the first person to kind of do a lot of these things. I think, again, a lot of people look at it and they say, that's kind of an experiment. But why are you doing this? And then how do you think that this evolves over time? Like, what does this look like in the study status? Is every human walking around with their own token? And we're all controlling each other's lives? Or how does that play out?

• 10:17Speaker 02

  So there's so many different things here. But I think the main one, and the one I'm probably going to use, is that a stake in someone's community is amazing. And the fact that people can support me and have a vehicle to support me so early on in my life. And I was in Europe, so I did not benefit from Silicon Valley. Like, now I'm connected to people in the Bay Area and very young. You know, they can get like $100,000 from wealthy people very young to optimize their impacts. And so I did not get that. I was born in Paris. And so for me, it's like a whole new vehicle, way better than student loans, way better than other alternatives of funding than, you know, it exists today. So I'm creating this whole new, different path. It's clunky because...

• 11:01Speaker 02

  I'm never, I'm like the only one there, pretty much. Now there's more people, there's around 10 of us, I think. And so, yeah, creating my own path to a little bit of funding, but also the fact that I'm pioneering this also got me some attention, connections. And so, so far, it's not my full-time thing, like I'm still a founder of building startups. And I've actually got a personal token manager, like a month ago, which is super weird, like 2020 jobs.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  But yeah, I'm just keeping this a side thing because it really interests people and I love experimenting.

• 11:34Anthony Pompliano?

  What is a personal token manager?

• 11:38Speaker 02

  So that person is Cooper Tully and he is a talent manager for artists in Los Angeles. But he also is one of the biggest contributors to the Defiant, which is a new source for Ethereum info. And so mixing those two is literally being my agent, my agent, especially as personal token people probably in the future will be athletes or entrepreneurs, artists. And so this is the kind of same vibe where, you know, if I have some OTC deals where people want to buy my token in bulk, other than Uniswap for voting in my experiments, he could handle the deals or he could suggest some experiments. And so he has other people under his arm. And he just started this like a month ago, which for me is fascinating. And yeah, I'm super glad to be part of it.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  And at the same time, just like an artist can focus on music whilst the manager does all the business stuff. Same for me, I can focus on my startup and he's like experimenting with my token on the side.

• 12:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so you're young. How old are you?

• 12:39Speaker 02

  I just turned 24. I was playing the young card so long, but now it's like, yeah.

• 12:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen, as somebody who's 32 and still gets called young, 24, you got a long way to go before everybody says that you're not young.

• 12:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk to me a little bit about where does this drive and ambition come from in terms of, you've met a lot of people, you've built a great network, you've tinkered with a lot of technology and you're only 24 years old. Like most 24-year-olds are trying to figure out how to go get drunk on the weekend. Like, why are you doing this?

• 13:09Speaker 02

  I'm doing this because there was like a bug in the matrix where at like 13 I got so fascinated by Steve Jobs. And Steve Jobs is the best, especially compared to my background where I'm not that technical. And Steve Jobs is someone that's pretty much, you know, product and marketing as a tech person. And this is what I'm driving for today. And I seem to be doing well at both of those so far. And crypto is also the best field to enter because the level of talent isn't still world-class. I think Silicon Valley dismisses crypto for now, which is healthy for young entrepreneurs like me to kind of like sharpen the knife. In the meantime, uh, so it's like, yeah, so basically initially Steve Jobs, I'm just so fascinated for me, Apple is the best brand in the world.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  And they actually are anyway by market cap, right? So, yeah.

• 13:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so as you think about these personalized tokens, these community tokens, you mentioned a little bit. You know, you're a young guy who who's kind of sharpening the blade, right? Or kind of at the tip of the spear of this. But when you pull that back, it sounds like you think that every musician, every entrepreneur, every athlete. And pretty much anyone in the spotlight is going to have one of these. Is that fair?

• 14:20Speaker 02

  I think so. Just like, you know, Justin Khan, which is the founder of Twitch, was a weirdo. Streaming himself and then he created a billion dollar platform called Twitch. Uh, I think right now I'm that weirdo, uh, monetizing myself, but I think every single creator of every type, even politicians. I can see the future could rally the community and that would be awesome, right? I think, you know, artists usually thank fans, uh, you know, by saying, I would be nothing without you. Thank you so much for being there, my day ones, et cetera. But they never thank them financially. And I think, uh, it's long overdue that we do that.

• 14:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so as that plays out, is this something where the token, uh, structures are like inflationary? You can create more tokens? Is it something where there's just a preset, uh, kind of artificial cap somewhere like a Bitcoin? Like, like, how do you think about that token structure? Especially when you're starting out and you've got 30 investors. But if you were to become, you know, the next Drake or the next LeBron James, you then could have the potential of millions and millions of people wanting access to this.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  That makes sense. So right now, the model that ROL does with me and all the other tokenized people is a 10 million fixed cap. That's not going to be inflated and a token vesting mechanism of $200,000 every single month. And so I kind of cheated on it like we unlocked a million tokens for like the investor stuff because that's special. But it's like still that way. And for me, it's great fixed supply. I can understand because it's only my early fans and you know, if I get super famous later, does everyone wants to be a token holder of myself? Maybe not. Maybe more the super fans. So that's funny. It's fixed supply to kind of create some scarcity.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  And then the vesting is great, in my opinion, because as I grow in popularity, the token gets a bit more liquid. And if it was all at once, it would not be as exciting. And now we can see growth in all segments. So that's great.

• 16:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And is the thought process that these people will stop looking for dollars or whatever the fiat currency is? And they'll just want the appreciation of their token? Or is it something where they coexist? So hey, I still want the cash flow, but then I also want the token to appreciate in price too?

• 16:36Speaker 02

  I think it will coexist, but I do think that if you're a huge fan of someone, you would love to get as many of their tokens. Because surely all of their products and services will be linked at least maybe as a like loyalty discount scheme. But of course, I think fiat denomination at least is here to stay. It's just so simple.

• 16:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And given what you've done already, you've been doing this for what, six months, give or take? What are the biggest surprises or the things that if you could go back, you wouldn't do?

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Biggest surprises? So yeah, people go into two categories. Either they're like, oh my God, you're going to lose control of your life. This is an interdured servitude. You're going to be like enslaved by your shareholders. And this is the worst, like you have no control. And I'm like, well, no, I do have control. Like this is an experiment, like the control my life thing was clickbait. Because I'm good at marketing, but it's not actually controlling my life. And then it's Second thing is both saying you have too much control. This is 2017 ICO, you are scam, you're gonna run off with the money, etc. And so these two points that are negative towards this experiment kind of contradict themselves. So it's nice because it feels like I'm still at the middle right now. But I can see both of the sides going wrong.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  And I think I don't have any regrets, but I do have some potential things to advise future tokens. If your personal tokens, which is maybe have some recourse, have some trustless, you know, quote unquote. Ways to make sure you don't rip off the community. I have, I haven't done it personally because it was so early on, but I think we're gonna learn as a space. And so far I am towards worthy, you know, I didn't do any exits cap. I'm a great person so far. So it's okay. And I'm actually willing to enforce myself some rules, maybe, you know, I don't know, maybe like a buyback program in the future. Or something like this and or add recourse retractively.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  So I'm really open to keep security high and like keep every investor safe, right? This is a playground. This is not even investors, to be honest, it's more like shareholders of my community.

• 18:46Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you say that you're a good person so far, are you planning to not be a good person in the future?

• 18:52Speaker 02

  No, but like I advertise, like, you know, even for my token, so anything like I can technically run away with the money. This is, you know, not trustless. You know, it's the opposite of the trustless protocols in DeFi, for instance, where it's like set up on Ethereum. This is just a person that you have to trust. But at least my reputation is on the line and most of my career has been on that reputation. So I have really no incentive to run away, but I just wanted to let know people that I could still turn bad. But of course I want, it makes no sense, but I just want to be honest.

• 19:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then in terms of you're giving a percentage of your income, I think it's 15% for three years. How do, if I'm one of those token holders that get that income share, how do I know how much money you made?

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Right, so we discussed this a lot and I won't give my tax return and people will have to believe what I made. And so basically like I did it for the first time last month because it was the first quarter. And I described all my payments I've gone through. And yeah, that's it. Like, I don't know, there was no, there's no trustless way again. And even then, like perhaps like fake my tax return. Like, I think it's really based on trust. And if you don't trust me or trust that I will do good, you probably should stay away from this.

• 20:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, why not give the tax return? I think most people would say like, oh, that would be the easiest way to prove it. Is it just because it's got sensitive information or what's the, the thought process to not share that?

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe. I'll do it in the future. It's just that I haven't filed a tax return for next year. So it was by a quarter. So like I kind of had to do gross income, which is actually more money for the shareholders anyway.

• 20:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And in terms of those payments and stuff, are you publishing that for anyone in the world to see? And just the people who hold the tokens get it? Or is that information that's just shared with the token holders? Like, how do you think about, I guess, like the transparency and information sharing versus income sharing?

• 21:00Speaker 02

  So the income sharing is public on the Ethereum blockchain. I haven't advertised it. I think I've said it on Twitter, like, you know, the ad drop has happened, etc. Maybe I put the link, but I didn't want to say the amount that I've made too loud. I have a newsletter that people have to pay Alex for to access it, where I disclose it, even if you're not one of the investors. So if you want to go that route, that's fine. But I probably, I don't want to reveal financial information too publicly on Twitter. And yeah, I'm, I think people, if people can dig, they can see. But actually, it's quite hidden because it's in a currency that's not actually pegged one-on-one. First, we thought it was the COI stablecoin, but now it's in Alex LP tokens on the E-sweeps.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  So like people are printing liquidity. That's how they pay me. So it's actually a very funny way because although it's public, it's quite hard to reverse engineer how much I made, which I find funny, but people can if they, you know, book my newsletter.

• 21:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then in terms of how this evolves over time, do you think that people will have to

• 22:07Anthony Pompliano?

  kind of diverge from the, oh, just trust me model to something that's like on-chain cash flow or some other model where people say, no, I want to be able to verify what your income is? Either for you or for like a big, you know, athlete, musician, whatever.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. I think, and we saw Spencer Dinwiddie, I think he closed his say, so he's a NBA player that tokenized his contract. He's the first one. He got some pushback from the NBA, but I think he ended up doing it. I think, yeah, I think, you know, I haven't done this properly because this was the first time with a very tiny reasonable amount, but I think I could see some regulations around it and making it like the kind of new seed investment, the new Y Combinator. I can totally see that in action and there will be some rules and enforcements to protect the shareholders.

• 22:59Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the craziest thing that somebody's asked you or the craziest pushback that you've gotten? Like, I'm, listen, and for those that are listening, I'm fascinated by this because I can't tell how much of this is like complete bullshit and this is gonna go like, you know, it's gonna like fall off a cliff and then you're gonna call me one day and be like, dude, that was a fun experiment, but like it didn't work at all versus, like, there is this like small glimmer that I see where people have kind of income sharing via like tokenization or something like that. Now, what platform does it get built on? What's the currency? Like, there's so many questions as to like how it actually gets implemented, but the idea of like just a simple on-chain cash flow,

• 23:42Anthony Pompliano?

  but that's interesting, right? And so how do you kind of start to incorporate that? Okay, well, then you can get access to that information. It's easier to, maybe there's not true corporations, right? Like, I know that there's companies in, I think, both Bitcoin and Ethereum kind of communities that say, look, we're not going to go with a traditional legal structure. Instead, we're going to do everything on-chain and like your ownership is basically held on-chain and therefore you have a claim on cash flows and things like that. This feels very similar to that, right?

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Right, right. Well, first of all, yeah, let me defend personal tokens because I don't think it's, I don't think it's bullshit at all. You know, Kickstarter works. Kickstarter is a model to invest in people before they achieve their potential. ISA with them that's cool indication for software engineers really work. And so we know that if we add like the capitalism speculation and financial aspect that crypto brings so easily, it would be great because it would attract more revenue for creators, which are typically a persona that doesn't make enough money and is struggling to monetize, right? Like people spend hours listening to podcasts. Do podcasters really get paid for the amount of time that people consume versus Netflix or music?

• 24:55Speaker 02

  And even Netflix or music are quite on the paid. So I think it would be huge to have more monetization for all types of creators, athletes, entrepreneurs, politicians. And so that's, that's for my defense.

• 25:08Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, hold on, hold on, hold on, before you continue, okay? So I will buy most of that argument, but what does that look like? Let's say that, let's take a musician and an athlete. So for LeBron James and then let's say for Drake, right? Is this something where they create tokens? They, once they're already a star, they then have like a token sale ICO, whatever, you know, whatever your, the latest, you know, kind of vocabulary is for this. But they basically sell the tokens into the market, they hold some back. Maybe there's vesting, maybe there's not. And then they create like an economy or an ecosystem where you can only use the LeBron James token

• 25:48Anthony Pompliano?

  to go to his games or buy things in his store or attend, you know, maybe movies he produces or stuff like that? Or is it something that's more of like a loyalty point? So it's within this closed ecosystem, but all you can really do is maybe win like a cool experience or do something like that. Like, how do you see it actually in the steady state, somebody like LeBron James or Drake using this stuff?

• 26:12Speaker 02

  So I think it can be either, so either the revenue income or the loyalty discount. And maybe the latter is gonna be easier legally, right? Because it's just, you know, 15% off my merch as Drake. Then, you know, the superstars, I don't think, unless the first one. I think, you know, the first one will have a premium because it is the first one that is a superstar doing it. But I think long term, the best people to, uh, that should do a personal token should be B-list celebrities that have potential to go A-list. And so that way, the more potential is the more gains for the people who want to invest in that token.

• 26:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And is the thought process that, uh, literally you're like buying a rising star, right? Like similar, similar to buying a stock that is poised to break out. You're basically being able to quote, quote, invest in the person before they break out?

• 27:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. That's how I see it because the person has potential, you invest in it. So you've got the early fans now and the speculators who objectively think that the star is gonna rise. So that's just monetization and that's great. Uh, I think crypto is about making everything liquid and this is a fun step towards it.

• 27:24Anthony Pompliano?

  You're either out of your mind or, or you're dead on. We're, we're gonna find out. And, and, and look, and, and I think there's a lot of people who will hear me talking about this stuff, right? And the, but why are you even talking about it? And what's interesting to me is, uh, the more that you get it to like, hey, I have a currency. Like, look at this thing that you can use to pay me and do all that kind of stuff like, and probably not a sold on that. The idea that, uh, this is just the next iteration from Kickstarter to ISAs to, you know, tokenization of this person and basically, um, you know, what's the difference between somebody's, uh, parents giving them a loan? Right? Versus them using this as a, a way to, uh, raise capital, right? It's just, it's a new capital markets mechanism, uh, for an individual.

• 28:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, there's probably all kinds of legal things that need to be figured out. But in terms of like that as a use case, uh, you can see the use cases there. It's just how does it actually get implemented? That probably determines whether it's successful or not.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Um, we'll see in the future, to be honest. Yeah, like we can't know if it's ridiculous or not, but I tend to think the most ridiculous ideas actually end up being trillion dollar companies.

• 28:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Look, that's why I'm saying you're either out of your mind or you're gonna be really

• 28:34Speaker 02

  Yes, but that's the good part. It's like, it's very rare to find ideas that look really, really dumb and weird, but at the same time, it's like, well, I'm not sure if it's going to nothing or to like a massive world-changing thing.

• 28:50Anthony Pompliano?

  I, uh, I think that you also are, uh, the sense I get from you, and you tell me if I'm right or wrong, you either think that this is gonna end up being very kind of foolish and a toy, or this is gonna end up being a trillion-dollar thing, right? Like, I, like, I think you have a kind of a binary outcome, uh, in terms of how this plays out, or am I wrong on that?

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, for sure. I think the biggest thing usually startups, toy, and Bitcoin had the same treatment, right? So, and now it's not a toy anymore.

• 29:16Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, that's fair. We're on the same page. Uh, you, you, uh, because of all the things that you're doing, uh, you've been building a bunch on Ethereum. Uh, two questions. One is just, how much of this are you building versus you're leveraging tools and, uh, platforms that other people have built? And then we'll get into talking kind of Bitcoin and Ethereum, but just help people understand, like, how much of this is reliant on you doing it versus you're able to leverage other things that are built and they could go do it if they wanted?

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Right. So, uh, first, since I'm not very technical, of course, I know basics of coding to be in the space, but, um, if doing means coding, no, I haven't coded any of my stuff. A little bit control my life, which is one of my experiments with the Alex token. Uh, I've done some front-end, but that's like very difficult work. Uh, no, I think the huge part about Ethereum is composability, meaning that people build a smart contract, you can build on top of it. And so, for instance, I can give an example. So Rocket is a lending platform that take NFT, which is unique items on Ethereum. And so I've taken, like, the DAO governance, so like the way people can decide how to give loans to people, like,

• 30:24Speaker 02

  I raised $50,000 for those lenders, um, then give out NFT, and it's like a transaction to like a multi-sig that holds NFT. And so I've used all the tools available to me on Ethereum, and there's so much positive-sum experiment.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  To be done, there's not enough people. I mean, there's so many builders coming to Ethereum, but the space is still so vague. Like, I remember, one of my marketing technique is like to say, this is the world's first ever, like, I said, this is the world's first ever domain name as a collateral, or the world's first ever crypto art piece as a collateral. Like, we took Josie Berini, she's a famous Ethereum artist, and we gave a loan against it because we knew it would be valuable long term, in our opinion. And so, yeah, you know, building on top of others, but it's still the very first, you know, foundation. Anyway, I think right now Ethereum is a bunch of APIs, and we need the front end for the end user, and that's not being built right now, but it will in the future.

• 31:27Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Then you keep saying this Bitcoin is to Ethereum as email is to the internet. What the hell does that mean?

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Well, it's because, you know, email was the first form of data on the internet, and it was the, like, one of the best, and we still use it, and email is never going anywhere. There's superhuman and other companies doing some niches, but mostly it's like a free service, and it's really awesome that it's decentralized. And then there's the internet, which is billions of ways to see data. And I see the same thing with value, right? So Bitcoin is one kind of value, and that's great, and it's not going away because of its brilliant marketing and branding. But Ethereum, which has a less good marketing in its name, but the platform will speak for itself because billions of smart contracts will then become startups, which will become extremely successful. And I think right now it's unsustainable. At this point, they reach escape velocity,

• 32:18Speaker 02

  and even if some other competing blockchain builds on top of it, it will be a layer two solution. So I'm extremely bullish on Ethereum, and the fact that you can create so many different sauces of Bitcoin for each flavor that you want, whether it's lending, insuring, boring, any kind of usage of value, I think for me, it's really revolutionary.

• 32:37Anthony Pompliano?

  So there's a bunch of people who listen to this that are into Bitcoin. There's a bunch of people who listen to this that are into Ethereum. I would put you on the spot. What are the pros and cons of Bitcoin first? How do you, how do you look at Bitcoin? And what do you say, hey, these are the good things, but and then these are the bad things?

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Probably Bitcoin as a regulatory edge, because I guess, you know, all the politicians, etc., are going to look at Bitcoins first before Ethereum. The cons, it's that it's a bit boring, like, you know, there's nothing happening, there's like a halving every four years or something. Like, I want exciting stuff to build on, I want to be useful, like, how can I be useful in Bitcoin? Besides being an influencer, I'm not sure how can I do anything. And so Ethereum, you can build so much stuff, it's so impressive, it's like, this is the future, this is the internet, this is where, like, the next innovations happen, this is where the next superstars are born, so of course Ethereum any day.

• 33:37Anthony Pompliano?

  You know that you're trolling and you're laughing, which I, which I respect.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  It's not, I'm not trolling, like Ethereum is so amazing as a platform, and, you know.

• 33:46Anthony Pompliano?

  But why, but okay, hold on, hold on, hold on.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  We don't trade gold every day, but we use the internet every day, and so we will maybe have some Bitcoin, it will be like, you know, the family treasury, if like, your dad is a Bitcoin, you know, old addict, but, like, every single person is gonna have lending solution based on Ethereum.

• 34:07Anthony Pompliano?

  What, why is it gonna be based on Ethereum?

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, of course, like, the, like, if tomorrow data says otherwise, I will jump off Ethereum, but right now the data is like, obvious, it's everywhere, it's just working so well, and Ethereum 2.0 is not even live, Layer 2 is not even live.

• 34:25Anthony Pompliano?

  But is it, hold on, hold on, i- is Ethereum 2.0 ever gonna launch?

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Well, I'm bearish on the timeline, maybe it won't be this year, as some people say, phase zero will, but it's gonna happen, it's some of the smartest engineers in the world working on this. Like, if it's not them, then who?

• 34:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, well, it could just be nobody, right? And it could just never launch. I tend to think that it will launch at some point. I'm with you on that timeline is always the hard part for everything in Bitcoin, Ethereum, crypto, everything, right? So not just them. In terms of Ethereum, what are the pros and cons?

• 35:02Speaker 02

  So the pros of Ethereum is that it's the next single biggest financial infrastructure of the universe. And then the cons is that it's still work in progress. It's still slow, expensive, and not scalable. And the UX still sucks. So there's tons to improve, but the fact that despite all of its flaws, it's growing so much, especially DeFi right now. So finance under all forms, including tokenized Bitcoin, that's going very fast. Makes it really, really impressive and something to follow. So this is just my opinion. Like, I grew up like listening to your podcast when I started getting into crypto.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  And then I slowly started saying like, oh, Anthony is a bit too much into Bitcoin.

• 35:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, listen, we've invested in a lot of things that build on top of Ethereum and are related to the DeFi stuff, right? So I don't know why people think that I'm necessarily a maximalist as much as I think I'm more of a realist in terms of. There's just a lot of, and actually react to this, right? So what do you think about this? My whole position on the Ethereum and Ether world is that there's a lot of technology being built, but there's not a lot of products being built. And what I mean by that is everyone is saying like, oh, look at this shiny thing that I made it do. And when you show a bunch of other technical people or people who are like really in the weeds, they're like, oh, that's awesome. But then if you go and you try to get any mainstream user to use, I would argue almost any DeFi product.

• 36:32Anthony Pompliano?

  There's nobody outside of like that small technical audience who could figure out how to use it, has an interest in using it, etc. So it's still to me, very kind of technology being built, not necessarily like user-friendly products, whereas I think Bitcoin was like that at some point, right? So there was a point where, you know, if you, even before Mt. Gox or even Mt. Gox, like there was just. You know, not the average Joe was going to buy Bitcoin, right? It was always people kind of on the fringes and super technical, all that kind of stuff. But eventually there was products built that now make it really easy, right? And so the thought process is at some point, probably, and hopefully for for the DeFi community and Ethereum and all that, you get the products built. It's just that we're not there yet, right? So agree or disagree with that?

• 37:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, completely agree with that. I would just disagree on the Bitcoin part. I don't see any product built on Bitcoin. Maybe Lolly, which is, you know, cash back on Bitcoin, great company. But apart from cash back on Bitcoin, there is no product. None of my friends know how to buy Bitcoin, a part of the in Revolut, which is already like a quite next gen fintech startup. But yeah, I do agree, like, I think DeFi six months ago was not even $1 billion locked. So that's ridiculously tiny. And so, yeah, like, I'm not saying Ethereum is nowhere near yet in terms of products. There's some things going on with Foundation and Zora, which make the design very pretty for artists to tokenize, and it's actually quite adjacent to personal tokens. But apart from those, yeah, all the lending platform is really hard.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  And that's actually what I'm trying to focus on in my next startup, which will try to help bring consumers, but we're all trying to do this and it's really hard. And maybe the hard answer is as long as we don't have ETH2, it's just not scalable and it's like for nerds and it's the Netscape of the internet.

• 38:21Anthony Pompliano?

  You are of the belief that Silicon Valley has kind of dismissed crypto. Explain that.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, for sure. But this is, again, just like my last argument, DeFi is just way too tiny for Silicon Valley to care. And so this is why. And so Bitcoin is probably dismissed as, you know, it's just for people who hate governments and super libertarian, and it's not the end consumer. And Ethereum is extremely tiny, but right now it's growing at the magnificent pace. So it's, it went from, I think, $10 million last year to, I think, right now it's like 10 billion, 15 billion, I can't even keep count. But there was this famous video of Shamat that you go on your podcast, the billionaire. He said he didn't know about DeFi and it's funny because I think it's gonna become a household name probably next year.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Maybe not a household name because it's still a geeky term decentralized, but I think some DeFi products will cross the chasm very soon. And so the reason why Silicon Valley dismisses it is simply because, yeah, the, the value being exchanged and locked is ridiculous compared to Bitcoin, which is still ridiculous compared to traditional finance, but the rates at which it's growing is enormous. Just like Jeff Bezos, I think he said in the nineties, I started Amazon where the internet was kind of dead, but it was growing at nineteen thousand percent a year and we are at this time. Ethereum is growing at nineteen thousand percent a year or something, maybe I'm exaggerating, but it's growing really fast.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  And this is the reason why it should not be dismissed and some amazing, maybe next thing companies are going to be built.

• 39:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you want to know the number one thing I think that the Ethereum and DeFi community could do to accelerate all of that?

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, please do.

• 40:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Is, is to say Bitcoin is the first DeFi application, right?

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Well, but it's not really. Bitcoin has to be custodied by banks and things that you don't control trustlessly.

• 40:20Anthony Pompliano?

  No, Bitcoin is the only thing that is trust, trustless, right? In terms of on Ethereum, it's not encouraged to run a full node on Bitcoin it is. And from a custody standpoint, Bitcoin is much more secure, much more decentralized, right? So I think the reason why I say that the DeFi and Ethereum community saying that, what it does is it actually allows them to draft off of the market acceptance of Bitcoin, right? It, it, it, there's no, uh, there's no confusion or lack of interest when it comes to crypto. Almost everyone talks about Bitcoin, right? In terms of the people who aren't like the hardcore crypto enthusiasts. And so what I think is rather than trying to say, hey, we're different.

• 41:04Anthony Pompliano?

  What you really want to do is you want to basically say, no, look, we're just like Bitcoin and we're smaller. We're going to grow to be that size one day too, right? Cause that would represent from a, a market cap standpoint, I think what Ether's like one tenth the market cap of Bitcoin.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's gonna flip it.

• 41:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it?

• 41:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course, like the internet flipped gold ages ago. And I mean, yeah, I just, it's inevitable for me. And I don't.

• 41:29Anthony Pompliano?

  But did the but hold on, but hold on. Did the internet flip the global money supply?

• 41:34Speaker 02

  No, but that's also an Ethereum task. Bitcoin is not global money supply. Bitcoin is digital gold.

• 41:42Anthony Pompliano?

  What? Why is it not money?

• 41:43Speaker 02

  Um, it's not money because you can't spend it every day. So that's medium of exchange is that a requirement for your definition of money?

• 41:51Anthony Pompliano?

  But if sorry, so I'm going to give you economics lesson. Ready? If you go down this path, Bitcoin is used how much more than Ethereum every day or ether every day?

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Uh, I think the ether fees flipped the Bitcoin fees. And actually, I think Uniswap now equals Bitcoin. So Ethereum is equal.

• 42:12Anthony Pompliano?

  No, no, no, not not not exchanges.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  Now you have flipped Bitcoin as well.

• 42:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Hold on, hold on. Not exchange volume. We're not talking about exchange volume. We're talking about actual on chain transaction volume. So not trading, right?

• 42:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the fees, the gas fees actually outpays Bitcoin for Uniswap, which is just one protocol on Ethereum. And the crazy part is that, uh, you know, Bitcoin wants to rely on block space value, but Ethereum has more expensive block space value. Just imagine the price of block space value that's going to be much more than Bitcoin when Ethereum flips Bitcoin.

• 42:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you making the argument that more people use ether than Bitcoin right now?

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Uh, maybe not, but

• 42:55Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't have, maybe you have one statistic that would like be against me, but.

• 43:00Anthony Pompliano?

  No, no. So if you look at, if you go and you use adjusted on chain transaction.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  You use Bitcoin every day? I just don't understand. Like you store Bitcoin, I guess.

• 43:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, hold on, hold on a second. So there's two pieces. First of all, a store of value, right? Holding on to it is a use case, right? Same with ether, right? If ether wants to be a store of value and a medium of exchange, holding it is a use case. Fair, right? But the second piece is the adjusted on chain transaction volume. So if you take out all the exchanges. And anything going in and out of exchange wallets, all that kind of stuff. So, right? I think it's coin metrics has this stat. And you look at Bitcoins transaction volume on chain with all that removed. It's called the adjusted on change transaction volume. It is more than the amount of volume that's done on PayPal, Venmo or Apple Pay last year. Right? So 2019, more people used the Bitcoin network for transaction volume.

• 43:53Anthony Pompliano?

  That was not going in and out of exchanges or using on exchanges, but actual some sort of transaction. Now, what it is, we don't know, right? Same with Ether, like for a lot of the transactions, we don't actually know what are people sending it for? Right? But we do know that they're sending it. And so I think that the, um, the, the argument here, and this is kind of my point is like making an argument that Ether is used more than Bitcoin. I think is one data disproves that, but also two is rather than, um, trying to, uh,

• 44:25Anthony Pompliano?

  make the flippanting argument. Instead, what ends up happening is Ether and Ethereum is used for something completely different. Right? And, and to your point, like there's things that people can do with Ethereum that you can't do with Bitcoin. Now, people in the Bitcoin community, I think, would argue like, that's a good, that's a good thing, right? And then there's a reason why that's true. I think people in the Ethereum community would argue, no, the fact that it does something different is a good thing. And, and, you know, we should continue to double down. So my whole thing's always been like both communities and products just double down on what they do best. Right? Rather than, you know, Bitcoin try to be the next ICO platform or capital markets type platform, or Ethereum and Ether try to be money, right? It's just like double down on what you're good at.

• 45:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And then that's what ends up actually, you know, providing 90 plus percent of the value of that community and that piece of technology.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah. I mean, the biggest pie is the pie left to eat, right? So Bitcoin is still quite tiny compared to the entire traditional

• 45:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  finance system. And maybe your data deep proves that Ethereum is more valuable and more like often transacted in volume. But I don't care about today's data. I think in the next few years, this is difficult to happen because, just because consumers lend, they exchange stable coins. They borrow, they insure, they stake, they bet, they play, like they do so many things. And in Bitcoin, it's like they hold. So I think the data is going to disprove, uh, your point very, very soon.

• 45:56Anthony Pompliano?

  How much uh stuff, how much value is locked in DeFi right now? Do you know?

• 46:01Speaker 02

  I think something like fifteen billion dollars and it was.

• 46:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Fifteen? One five?

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, one five. Yeah, it's.

• 46:07Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a lot.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Last year it was eight hundred million, I think.

• 46:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Was it earlier this year it broke a billion, I think?

• 46:15Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah. It's insane the growth. I think we're gonna end the year with like fifty billion locked in DeFi. That'll be fair.

• 46:21Anthony Pompliano?

  But but the the thing I always wonder, uh, and I don't know if you know this answer or not, uh, and so whoever's listening to this, if you can figure this out, uh, tweet at both of us, is how much of that is what I call like net new capital inflow? So I took dollars or I took Bitcoin and like and put it in versus uh you and I create a token and then we stake it somewhere, right? And like, that's not technically net new capital inflow. That's like, we created, you know, half a billion dollars of market cap and now that counts towards that metric. I don't know the answer, uh, but that would be one of the questions of like, what's the net new capital inflow? So when it goes from a billion to fifteen, is that literally fourteen billion dollars flowing in, right?

• 47:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Ether's market cap, I think, is like twenty five billion, if I uh remember correctly. And so like.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Oh, it's.

• 47:07Anthony Pompliano?

  What is it?

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Billion.

• 47:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Fifty?

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, yeah. So so it's it's tens of billions, right? So like fourteen billion dollars of capital, uh, new capital inflow, like maybe, right? Or maybe it's fifty fifty, you know, whatever it is. It's just like, to me, that feels like a really important uh difference. Because to your point, like, there's Ether and then there's the stable coins and there's all these other things built on top of Ethereum. And so how you count all that stuff, I think, illuminates not only what is the overall growth of the ecosystem, but also, um, what are the things that are actually driving the growth, right? Because my guess is, let's say that that is, you know, fourteen billion dollars of growth. There's probably two or three things where, you know, ninety percent of the growth happens. And then everything else is kind of maybe trending slightly upwards, but really it's, you know, Uniswap or something like that that's driving mostly growth.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Right. Well, first of all, I think DeFi Pulse, which tracks the value locked in DeFi, actually accounts for this. But yeah, like I think platforms like Token Daily and other blogs have said, you know, this might be recycling the same old money over and over with new protocols. And perhaps, but in each bull cycle, it starts with a group of degenerate people. You know, like the core group, and then because of the excitement, it brings more money from outside of that see the growth. So I think definitely we are very early in this bull cycle as of August 2020. But I'm sure that next year, there will be retail and consumers going on for those new strategies

• 48:36Speaker 02

  of investments that are way healthier, by the way, than the ICO in 2017. So I'm super proud of this.

• 48:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Before we do the rapid fire, which I know you're you're ready to talk about some aliens.

• 48:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Help me understand, how do you think of portfolio construction in terms of, do you own Bitcoin? Do you own Ether? You obviously own Alex tokens. Like, like, how do you think about kind of your portfolio? Don't tell me amounts, but just like percentage wise. Do you own things other than Bitcoin and Ether and Alex? Like, like, help me understand that.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  So I dumped all my Bitcoin for Ethereum last year or something. And now, like, you you talk to the least wise investor ever. Ninety nine percent of my net worth, no, sorry, maybe like 90% of my net worth is in Ether, long Ether on on the Maker Vault, and it's insured by Nexo switching, which is an insurance solution on Ethereum. And that's basically most of my net worth. And then, of course, I have Alex, but I don't really count Alex of my net worth, because I don't think I will sell Alex on the market. That's quite unethical right now, especially as the market is illiquid. So yeah, like 90% plus of my liquid net worth is long Ether.

• 49:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so you sold all your Bitcoin and then you don't own anything else in terms of like other major crypto assets that people

• 50:03Speaker 02

  I own also, I own also other DeFi protocols tokens.

• 50:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  Whether like for marketing campaigns or for like the SD5, which is like a basket of all the DeFi coins. Because I think, you know, like the less liquid a token is, and the better it is, the higher the returns, right? So that's why probably Ethereum is gonna have a better bull run than Bitcoin, other than having the actual use case, which will be like the DeFi stuff that Bitcoin doesn't have. So yeah, the less liquid it is. So like DeFi protocols, I think are gonna go like 100x or something, at least the great ones.

• 50:38Anthony Pompliano?

  I love, I love your enthusiasm. And, and the fact is, I know that you, that you're enjoying this just as much as I am. So that makes me happy.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:46Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So, uh, last two questions. Uh, what's the most important book that you've ever read?

• 50:52Speaker 02

  I think Steve Jobs, the biographer.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  Cause he's like my idol, like, yeah.

• 50:59Anthony Pompliano?

  What, what would you ask Steve Jobs if you go to dinner with him?

• 51:02Speaker 02

  I don't, that's so, yeah, I would love to like, but I don't think, I think, uh, you know, the young makes room for the new. Wait, the old makes room for the young. Uh, and so that's fine if I never meet him, but I would love to.

• 51:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, you can't meet him. He's dead.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So that's why it's like, I am, I am relieved because it's fine. That's like how time passes. And I think that's what the wisdom he wanted to share as well, which is like, I don't need Steve Jobs. He inspired me and that's great. And now it's my turn, uh, to have an impact and to inspire people.

• 51:36Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Aliens, believer or non-believer?

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I guess believer statistically, like most people, but then I read Max Tedmark, Life's Road, oh, which argues that, we might be alone if we consider like the, um, like distensible universe, like, uh, like the universe that you can go to. And it's just impossible because it's just so vast that there probably are some aliens, but there's just so far away. And we would need either civilization to be at the speed of light and going towards us full speed. Uh, to we have a chance to meet, uh, aliens. So I don't think, probably they are real, but we probably won't meet them because we are nothing in the realm of time, right? So that's why, uh, yeah, aliens exist. We might never meet them.

• 52:24Anthony Pompliano?

  I actually think that's the most realistic perspective is they definitely exist and there's some other life form out there, but.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  Twenty twenty, right? So we can expect anything from twenty twenty, even aliens.

• 52:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. All right. You could ask me one question. What, uh, what question you have for me?

• 52:41Speaker 02

  So would you tokenize yourself or when are you going all in on Ethereum?

• 52:47Anthony Pompliano?

  So I thought you were going to ask me if I would buy some of your Alex tokens. I thought that's where what you were.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  Buy Alex, please.

• 52:55Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I cannot. No. Uh, so here's the way that I think about this. Um, I would not tokenize myself. For a whole host of reasons from.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I'm an American citizen. Uh, my, I just have a lot of complexity already in terms of investments and all that kind of stuff. Uh, and that would just like, I can imagine sitting down with an accountant and trying to have this conversation. They would just laugh you out of the room. Um, but the, uh, the thing that I am interested in, um, is, uh, I love the collectibles market. I think that's super interesting, um, especially when you get digital versions versus the analog versions. Right? Um, I'm shocked that given the popularity of like the sports trading card world, uh, that there hasn't been like more, you know, how do we do digital trading cards, all that kind of stuff?

• 53:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Then the other thing I would say is, uh, I think that, um, the whole idea of like tokenizing companies in a way to use technology to have a claim on the cash flow. Right? So, um, I think it's Basecamp maybe is the company that, uh, it's like an LLC and the two founders, uh, they let Bezos buy into it and he owns like 10% or something. And so like at the end of every quarter or every year or whatever, they just like distribute cash. Right? And so like to me, it just feels like, um, as much as the last couple of decades has driven like complexity and financial engineering and capital markets and like all that kind of stuff. This technology just like simplifies things against and starts to automate. Uh, so what you end up doing is like, one, you

• 54:30Anthony Pompliano?

  reduce accounting frauds to you end up actually having. Much bigger incentive for people from an equity ownership standpoint. And then three is it becomes really interesting when now all of a sudden. There's no difference in in somebody in the United States, in Europe, in Southeast Asia, in South America, or on the continent of Africa. Everyone with an internet connection is quote unquote equal, right? In terms of their ability to participate in financial services and ownership of assets, things like that. And so I think that's just one of these like inflection points in human history that ends up saying, wait a second. If now I can basically empower people, if I can teach them to fish, right? Rather than give them the fish, what are humans capable of? Like, who the hell would have thought that, you know, a 24 year old sitting in Europe was gonna go and tokenize himself?

• 55:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, nobody, right? And so it's just like, like, there's so much more that will happen. Some of it will be good, some of it will be bad. You know, literally some of it will be shitcoins and some of it will be, you know, real value. But I think that's kind of the encouragement of innovation experimentation drives a lot of this stuff. And so like, you know, you definitely fall in the category of like, either you're a genius or you're absolutely lost your mind. But I think that like, you're comfortable living in that spectrum, right? And and the world needs people like you and others like you to go try some of this stuff. And like, either you're gonna figure it out or you're not, right? But like, if you're comfortable doing that and it's important to you, then like, knock yourself out, right?

• 55:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you. And of course, yeah, you might not need a personal token. Because maybe you're not young enough, or maybe, or not just that, because you're already like A-list in your industry. And you will go with the bull market and you're already, you know, master monetization with your newsletter and everything. And so you might not need that extra boost that, you know, emerging creators need. So I totally get that.

• 56:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 56:20Speaker 02

  But you have any Ethereum?

• 56:22Anthony Pompliano?

  No.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Okay, can I give you some?

• 56:26Anthony Pompliano?

  No.

• 56:28Anthony Pompliano?

  No, listen, here's, I mean, I've talked about this a million times on the podcast, but basically, my whole thought process is.

• 56:35Anthony Pompliano?

  It's not just a financial evaluation for me, right? And so if you think of in a financial market, like this is one thing that I think the Bitcoin community doesn't talk about a lot, but I do think is intellectually honest. So if you look at in a bear and a bull market, just the asset sizes. So the largest assets are likely to actually go down, to go up the least, right? From a volatility standpoint, and the smallest market cap ones, when in a bull market should go up even more, right? Well, same thing happens when you reverse it in the bear market, right? Is a large cap assets likely to go down the least, a small cap should go down the most, right? Now, there's always outliers, I get it, stop tweeting at me already about the fact that like, you know, there's some example that violates that principle, but in general, that is true.

• 57:20Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you bring that to crypto, everything is quote-unquote "small" compared to the traditional market, right? But there still should be some spectrum in terms of if the largest cap assets go up 2X, then there's going to be a bunch of these super small assets that go up 8 or 10X, right? That's just the law of market caps. And so I think that there's a lot of people who confuse, you know, just the financial returns with other things. And people just have to ask themselves, like, are you here just for the financial return? Well, then like you should go, you know, 10X leverage and go buy some shitcoin that pumps 800%, you know, and you're good, right? But if you have interest in other things, which I think you do to some degree, right?

• 58:05Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think others, then it's evaluating not just the financial outcomes, but also the, the kind of non-financial impact, right?

• 58:13Speaker 02

  Makes sense.

• 58:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Fair? So you're gonna buy some Bitcoin?

• 58:16Speaker 02

  No, because Ethereum just, it's very fair. Ethereum will make the world better. It will enable collectibles that you like. It will enable, you know, investing in cash flow earnings. That's like the new wave of DeFi that's happening right now, and it will dominate the bull market. So I don't see why, but I get it. Like it has the best branding, Bitcoin, and it is great. And I would probably be bullish Bitcoin if I was maybe having like a older and like more wealth, perhaps. Right now, I know that- If I maximize Ethereum, it will probably go higher than Bitcoin and still it's like, you know, auto rebalancing DeFi basket where it will capture the best protocol that is on Ethereum.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  So it's a safe bet. So I don't like, yeah, I don't go too low in terms of liquidity for my returns, but I'm still a bit more aggressive than Bitcoin, but I think it's gonna pay off.

• 59:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. All right. Where can people find you on the internet?

• 59:09Speaker 02

  On Twitter at Alex Masmej, M A S M E J. That's it.

• 59:15Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you pronounce your last name?

• 59:17Speaker 02

  So it's a cut from my real French name, which is Masmejon. And I just said Masmej on Twitter and I, it's weird because people think I'm Polish now, but I'm French. Yeah, I don't know how to cut my last name. If anyone has suggestions.

• 59:32Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, man. Listen, I appreciate all the work you're doing. Thank you so much for doing this. And I think people will find this fascinating. So I'll have to do it again in the future as you launch other things.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me. Huge fan of your podcast.