#1317 Alex Tapscott | OG Bitcoiner Explains What He Is Excited About Now

Alex Tapscott is the author of a new book, "Web3: Charting the Internet's Next Economic and Cultural Frontier." Alex has been in the bitcoin and crypto industry for a long time. In this conversation, we talk about the current adoption of bitcoin, AR/VR, NFTs, metaverse, Web3, regulation, and how artificial intelligence plays into all of this. ======================= Base is making it their mission to bring a billion people onchain. But what exactly is Base? It's an Ethereum L2 offering a seamless experience for both builders and users. With near-zero gas fees and rapid transaction speeds, Base is shaping the future of the onchain world. Base is a canvas for everyone, with hundreds of apps in the Base ecosystem, whether you're an emerging creator, a seasoned developer, or someone exploring the onchain space for the first time, Base is designed to bring your ideas to life. So, if you're looking for a platform where the future of onchain is being built daily, Base is your destination. Join in and make onchain the next online. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠base.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and follow along on Twitter at @BuildOnBase to see cool things to do onchain, everyday. ======================= BetOnline.ag is a proud sponsor of the the Pomp Podcast. Use crypto to bet on sports, play poker and enjoy casino games at BetOnline. Visit https://promotions.betonline.ag/pomp and use promo code POMP100 to receive a 100% matching bonus on any crypto deposit. BetOnline boasts no crypto transaction fees, and processing is anonymous, instantaneous and secure. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ 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://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Today's episode is with Alex Tapscott. He's the author of a new book, Web 3: Charting the Internet's Next Economic and Cultural Frontier. Alex has been in the Bitcoin and crypto industry for a long time. He's seen many different cycles, and his new book covers a whole bunch of stuff. But where he sees the adoption of this disruptive technology

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  occurring, we go over Bitcoin, ARVR, NFTs, and how artificial intelligence plays into all of this as well. Alex spends a ton of time thinking about the future and how technology can both improve our lives, but also some of the potholes in the road that we should look out for. I always enjoy talking to him because it feels like I get to peek into that future, and this conversation was no different. Here is my conversation with Alex Tapscott.

• 1:12Speaker 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.

• 1:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Base. Base is making it their mission to bring a billion people on-chain. What exactly is Base? It's a layer-two offering, a seamless experience for both builders and users. With near-zero gas fees and rapid transaction speeds, Base is shaping the future of the on-chain world. Base is a canvas for everyone, with hundreds of apps in the ecosystem, whether you're an emerging creator, a seasoned developer, or someone exploring the on-chain space for the first time. Base is designed to bring your ideas to life. So if you're looking for a platform where the future of on-chain is being built daily, Base is your destination. Join in and make on-chain the next online. Learn more at base.org, or follow along on Twitter at BuildOnBase. Again, that's @BuildOnBase,

• 2:21Anthony Pompliano?

  to see cool things to do on-chain every single day. This episode is brought to you by BetOnline. Do you like making a profit from sports betting? Well, set yourself up to take home the most profit possible using crypto to fund your sports betting, casino and poker account at betonline.ag. You can avoid costly transaction fees, get your payouts lightning fast, and do it all securely and anonymously with the highest deposit and withdrawal limits in the industry. If you want to get in on the action, do it the smart way with crypto at betonline.ag. Head to the website, sign up with promo code POMP100 to get 100% bonus on your crypto deposit today. If you go and you deposit, they'll give you 100% bonus if you use promo code POMP100.

• 3:04Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:12Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys, bang, bang, I've got Alex here. Alex, you've now written multiple books. You've thought very, very deeply about Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, AI, where the world is headed. And I thought maybe what we could do is just like, where are we in the adoption of these new technologies? They're going to change the world and they're going to kind of revolutionize our daily lives. If we think of maybe Bitcoin to start, like where are we in that adoption cycle? And how much have we actually fulfilled the promise of what Bitcoin actually has provided?

• 3:40Speaker 02

  Well, I think overall, we're still pretty early. Bitcoin is an asset class, is widely held by a lot of people as a store of value, but is not used as often as a medium of exchange. And I think that is in large part a function of the fact that we're still early in the adoption curve. But a lot of other respects, you know, Bitcoin's made enormous progress. You mentioned that I've written a couple of books on this. You know, I, like a lot of people, got into this space 2014, 15 with Bitcoin. This is well before the word blockchain or Web 3, you know, entered the vernacular. There was this one asset and at first I thought I was investigating a new financial technology, but I kind of quickly realized that Bitcoin and the underlying blockchain was a general purpose technology

• 4:23Speaker 02

  that could potentially usher in a new era of the web. And at the time, the value of Bitcoin was, I think, like $5 or $6 billion. There were some other coins around at the time, you know, I think Litecoin had launched by then, Ripple and others. Talking like 10 billion dollars. So to put that in perspective, that's smaller than the market cap of like Under Armour or the Gap. Like if Bitcoin was was a publicly traded company, it wouldn't have made this S and P 500, right? It would have been considered like a small cap. So very early and now you fast forward to today. The asset's over a trillion, the whole market cap of the asset class is near nearer to 2 trillion dollars. And I think that Bitcoin and blockchain is really starting to shake the windows and rattle the walls of a lot of industries. And the longer it lasts, the more likely it is to succeed and to continue to grow.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  So I think it's it's anti fragility has been one of its great strengths and I think that it's got a bright future.

• 5:16Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you think are the areas that Bitcoin needs to most improve? You mentioned medium of exchange. Are there other things that you see as either areas of improvement? Maybe potential headwinds that that need to kind of be navigated or potential pitfalls? Things as to why it could fail or big risks that are lay on the horizon?

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Well, I've been a big Bitcoin fan for a long time, you know, wrote a book about the technology 2015. A few years ago, launched one of the first ETFs on the Toronto Stock Exchange. People don't know this, but Bitcoin and Ether ETFs have been allowed in Canada since 2021. We raised over 200 million dollars in that financing. So I've always been a big fan. But yeah, there are definitely limitations today still to, I think, it fulfilling its potential. I think that right now this renaissance that we're seeing of layer twos built on Bitcoin and of NFTs and other functionality. I think it's something that should be welcomed. I think it's a very exciting development. But I know that there are some people in the community who view it basically as, you know, kind of network clutter.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  As, you know, crowding out block space for other kinds of better transactions. And I think that's a flawed way of thinking. I think that if you want a technology to succeed. And by definition, you know, Bitcoin is a technology, an open technology. Then you have to allow all sorts of open innovation and exploration and innovation. So to me, that is number one, which is that let Bitcoin be Bitcoin. Let the platform be used as both a medium of exchange and store of value, but also as a general purpose technology, which is frankly what got a lot of People into this space way back in the day. And then I think obviously, we need to just continue to make it easier for people to onboard to the technology. And I think that's something that we're already seeing play out. You know, I interviewed Alex Gladstein

• 6:59Speaker 02

  from the Human Rights Foundation relatively recently, and he provided some interesting data. What he says basically is that, you know, there's like the the golden billion, right? People in the world who live in places like the States, like you, or Canada, where I live, or maybe Western Europe, Japan, and a couple of other places, who have access to financial services, who aren't worried about governments expropriating their money, who, you know, don't worry about hyperinflation. Inflation is a problem, but hyperinflation. But then the remainder of the world lives in a place where access to financial services is spotty, where it's difficult to find ways to store and move value, and where local institutions, including governments and banks, can be very corrupt. So that is the area where you're actually seeing the greatest adoption so far

• 7:43Speaker 02

  of Bitcoin, but also Web3 more generally, including, you know, applications like stablecoins, for example, or DeFi, or even NFTs. You know, NFT adoption is higher in places like the Philippines and Thailand than it is in the United States. Stablecoin adoption is higher in places like Turkey and Nigeria than it is in Germany or the United Kingdom. Ownership of Bitcoin is higher in places like Venezuela than it is in places like, you know, Canada, for example. So all of these different examples have something in common, which is that these are parts of the world where access to finance is spotty, where access to economic opportunity is spotty, and the ability to plug into a permissionless network or or network of networks, including Ethereum and others, is a superpower, right?

• 8:28Speaker 02

  It's a way to put yourself in a more level playing field with other people around the world. And so I see that as being the primary driver, but even still today, it's relatively small scale. So to me, that's very exciting, because it means that there's still quite a runway ahead of us.

• 8:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, when you look at kind of the next epoch or so, if you will, of the crypto industry, we went from Bitcoin and this, you know, great innovation and technology with blockchain technology. Then we added in smart contracts and that led to this explosion of activity, excitement, innovation, et cetera. What's interesting to me is those early versions have continued to gain steam. They continue to be bigger assets, more developers, more activity. And now also Bitcoin is starting to borrow some of those ideas and try to bring it back to Bitcoin as well. And so talk about kind of that maybe second bucket, which is a lot of the smart contract platforms, a lot of these decentralized applications, et cetera, which I think really this last book that you wrote is kind of more focused on, you know, trying to unpack

• 9:27Anthony Pompliano?

  what's happening in that part of the industry.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So my new book is called Web Three: Charting the Internet's Next Economic and Cultural Frontier. And the book basically explores how blockchain and other technologies are converging to create a new kind of internet and a new kind of web. You know, every once in a while, a new technology emerges that changes the world, transforms the economic power grid and the old order of human affairs. And we've seen that in history, you know, the rise of the computer before that, the television, the radio, the internal combustion engine and so forth. And I think today, we're actually in this really weird and kind of exciting and perhaps perilous period where there's not one, but several new technologies all emerging at the same time. So the first of these is blockchains. Blockchains are the first digital medium for value.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  They're ushering in a new era of the internet. And in the same way that the Bitcoin network allows you to move and store value in Bitcoins, blockchain networks like Ethereum allow you to basically move and store value in any kind of asset, right? Tokens are like websites for value. They can be programmed to represent basically anything, stocks, bonds, votes, titles, deeds, art, you name it. But the second big technology, of course, is AI. We're in this period where computers are really allowing us to reimagine or to rethink what we thought technology could do and what people could do when empowered with these kinds of tools. Then you've got the rise of virtual reality and augmented reality, or what's now known as extended reality. This Apple Vision Pro, I don't know, do you have one of these things yet?

• 10:58Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't have the Apple Vision Pro, but I've tried some of the other, you know, the Oculus and many others, which almost seem like, you know, cheap man versions at this point of how good the Apple Vision Pro is.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Seems like that. And maybe we're like one more iteration away from this becoming a mass market product, but it's pretty clear, at least to me, that the internet is moving from a two dimensional medium to a spatial web, right, to a three dimensional internet. And that can include, you know, virtual reality where we're consuming content, we're in virtual worlds, but also the web itself being imprinted on our physical landscape. And then the final of these technologies is, you know, the internet of things. And that's a term that's been around for a while, but I'm not talking about, you know, smart home monitors or things that measure your glucose. I'm talking about devices that can think and can do transactions, thanks to AI and blockchain. So all of these technologies are coming together. And my view basically is that in the, in the way that the term internet, you know, went from describing

• 11:53Speaker 02

  a pretty narrow set of technologies that were involved in like networking, to describing much more than that. Like, I think when we use the term internet, we're talking about new business models, new cultural behavior, other technologies, you know, smartphones, cloud, web browsers and so forth, and even new social behavior, all of these kinds of things. Like, we consider all of that the internet. To me, web three is about the convergence of these technologies. Blockchain is clearly the most important. It's foundational to all of this. But I think that as time progresses, we're going to stop talking about there's the web three bucket and the AI bucket and the this bucket and the that bucket. And we're going to see it all as coming together as under one umbrella.

• 12:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, when you see this kind of explosion of innovation and the melding of it together, are there one or two examples that you point to where you're like, this specific application or this specific development really highlights how entrepreneurs or builders are going to leverage all of this to build things that solve a problem for someone?

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Well, so my background is in financial services. You know, I worked in investment banking, what some of what people would call, you know, tradfi nowadays. And when I first looked into this, I thought I was investigating a financial technology, not a general purpose technology. And I still think that in financial services, that's where a lot of the rubber is really hitting the road. I think that stablecoins, for example, are a clear product market fit, where everyone in the world wants a way to move and store US dollars, but the majority of them can't access a US dollar bank account. Enter stablecoins, which give people a way to do that. It's a US dollar utility that's now widely used in many different parts of the world. So I think of that as an interesting example.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Stablecoins are also an on-ramp to DeFi and to other financial primitives that are being developed in the world of Web3, that give people away not just to move value, but to to store it, to access credits, to, you know, fund and develop new investments and new companies, to insure against risk, to organize financial information, and so on and so forth. And it's in that world of what's known, you know, colloquially as DeFi, that I see a lot of really exciting innovation. But what's really interesting to me about Web3 isn't just the way in which it sort of creates new ways to do things that we do today,

• 14:13Speaker 02

  but in the way in which it maybe creates things that weren't possible previously. And so I think about the rise of AI and the rise of Web3 or blockchain, and how these things are converging. And we've done a lot of work on this, you know. I'm a co-founder of the Blockchain Research Institute, which has conducted over 150 projects looking at, you know, the convergence of technologies like AI and blockchain and others. And I think basically at every single level of the AI stack, there is an opportunity to introduce blockchains and to introduce these Web3 primitives. I won't go into them in too much detail, but you may have already covered on the show this whole notion of decentralized physical infrastructure,

• 14:55Speaker 02

  that basically, in order to fulfill the promise of AI, And frankly, the metaverse and all these other things, we're basically going to need as much computing power as as humanly possible. We're going to need to marshal all the resources at our disposal. But we also want to make sure that these algorithms and applications aren't all controlled by a few very large companies that manage the clouds, right? The computing power that that enable them. And so enter decentralized physical infrastructure. So there are really interesting projects like the cash network, for example, or the render network that we feature in the book, where basically you create an incentive to pool computing resources together. And these decentralized clouds, in many cases, can outperform centralized clouds.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  They can do so at lower cost, but they also decentralize power in a way that I think creates a better footing for the industry to grow. So I think that's one area that to me is very, very fascinating. And then another one that that I'm very interested in is culture, cultural industries, you know? For for centuries, technology has been a tailwind for creators, for for cultural creators, right? You know, in the medieval times, not to go too far back in history, but in medieval times, we used to basically rely on on patrons to support great cultural works. You know, the Medici's or the King of England or something like that. And oftentimes, the art reflected the goals and the ambitions of the patron, right? There were tools of political power as much as they were expressions of creativity.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  And in the industrial age, finally, we had ways for creators to sell their works, one to many. So they could, you know, make a lithograph or sell a paperback novel or later cut an LP or sell a CD and so forth. And the 20th century to me sort of, in a way, is is a golden era for creators, where they didn't earn the majority of the income, but they got to participate in the creation of wealth from selling one to many, right? So if you're a, you know, a songwriter and you wrote a hit single and sold a million copies, you could expect to make about 50 grand, right? 5% if those singles sold for a buck apiece, back when people used to buy records. But these days, technology is less of a tailwind and it's more of a headwind.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  So number one is the web was supposed to make it easier for creators to access their fans and to cut out the middlemen. And this was something that was part of the big promise of Web one, right, of the first era of the web. But the only problem is Web one and the Internet as we know it isn't a medium for value. It's a medium for information. So the web took this thing that was an asset, like a CD or record that you could sell copies of, and turned it into basically a printing press for information where you can make copies and copies and copies. And the value that you received went to basically zero. So the web itself has become a problem for creators. And now platforms sit in the center and ensure that creators get less and know less about how their work is monetized than ever before.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  And now you've got the rise of AI. So I'm not an AI doomer. I don't know how you feel about this. I'm personally very bullish on AI. But a lot of estimates that I've read say that, you know, in a few years' time, ninety percent, maybe more of all content that we see is going to be synthesized, right? Whether it's film or TV or music. But it's going to be based on data, based on learning from existing IP, right? From the work of existing creators. So in that environment, we need to create ways for those who create cultural content to get paid fairly. NFTs are an area that I'm really excited about and have been, notwithstanding the ups and downs of the market. I think the idea of being able to prove ownership of a cultural artifact

• 18:33Speaker 02

  is an incredibly empowering and powerful technology and innovation. And I see lots of other ways in which creators can can benefit. You know, we have this way to trace and track the movement of value in these networks on on chain. And we should be able to do the same thing for for IP, for royalty rights and so on and so forth. So there's lots of really interesting. I read a recent research report that that shared shed some light on this. That basically fifteen hundred patents have been filed for blockchain and AI. And a lot of this is around data integrity and ensuring creators get paid. And it's still early, like I don't want to over promise on this, but it's an area that I'm very excited about as well.

• 19:12Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about the different technologies, nomenclature seems to be something that gets highly debated. So if I say to someone, "Hey, is the metaverse going to be a thing?" All of a sudden, you get very, very controversial, highly debated responses. Some people are big bulls, some people are big bears. If I say to you, "Do you think that ARVR is going to be a thing?" Some of the people who say no to the metaverse may say yes to ARVR. And now it kind of looks like those things are actually going to be the same thing in a weird way. And so how is a individual who thinks through building companies, writing books, investing capital, how do you kind of clear out noise from signal and really evaluate what is the thing that people are talking about and will it be valuable in the future or not?

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Well, it's a terrific question. And it's something that as a person who writes books about this, I think about a lot. Because I think if everyone's not on the same page, no pun intended, to start, then it makes the discussion really difficult to have. And I think that the metaverse is a perfect example of this. So I don't know that people have a clear definition of what that is. I think for a lot of folks, when they think about the metaverse, they think about donning a headset, putting on a virtual reality or augmented reality headset, and entering some virtual space where they go to be entertained, to play games, to socialize, to spend money,

• 20:36Speaker 02

  to occupy their time, right? And I think a lot of times when we think about this, we're imagining a world that is curated or enabled by some big company like Facebook, Meta, or by Apple, or by Microsoft. Eventually, there'll be a headset that allows you to access the Xbox library and so on and so forth. To me, this is not the metaverse. The metaverse concept comes from a book called Snow Crash. And there have been lots of examples throughout history where people have explored this idea of a virtual alternate reality. Sometimes it's sort of benign, sometimes it's really cool, like Ready Player One. Sometimes it's very scary, like The Matrix, this idea that we're plugged into this shared reality that keeps us...

• 21:22Speaker 02

  From seeing the world as it truly is. But ultimately, what what the metaverse is to those people and to those companies is basically like a virtual world where you go, where you where you spend money, where you play, where you interact. But you don't really own your own assets. You don't control your own identity. You don't have privacy. Anything you buy or earn in those environments can't be taken with you outside. They're closed and they're gated communities, basically. They're walled gardens. So to me, that's not really like the metaverse, even the the positive or the negative version. To me, that's just virtual Disneyland. It is, you know, a theme park, a place where you go to to play by the rules of some company, have fun, enjoy yourself. And at the end, you leave kind of with nothing.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with theme parks, you know. I've heard Disneyland is very fun. I haven't been since I was a little kid. But basically, like, if we're trying to create some new shared reality to fulfill some vision, to give the metaverse a second life, if you will, then we need to get some things right. And I don't think any of these visions really contemplate that at all. And the good news is that we actually have a very simple template to do that. It's called the real world. So the three things I think we need to actually create the metaverse or to fulfill the vision is, number one, a reasonable right to privacy. I think that that right, which is protected by law and the Constitution in the United States and in Canada, should extend to the virtual world. You shouldn't have, in companies that support,

• 22:50Speaker 02

  you know, your experience online, shouldn't have perfect vision into every bit of information about you. Number two is that you need to have property rights, right? You need to have the ability to own and control your own assets. And that's something that we already have, you know, in the real world, like life, liberty and the pursuit of property. Property rights are foundational to the liberal capitalist democracies that we all enjoy today. That doesn't really exist online. You know, people spend $100 billion a year on virtual goods and experiences and so forth that they buy, but they don't actually own. At best, they're renters, but really they're just borrowing it for a period of time. So we need to have a way to enshrine digital property rights. The good news is that blockchains allow us to do that, right?

• 23:32Speaker 02

  We can own our own Bitcoin. We can control and own our own stable coins. We can also own and control our own digital identities, our virtual goods, things we buy and earn in environments like virtual worlds and so on and so forth. So all of this now exists to add an ownership layer for the web. And that's incidentally why they call Web three the read, write, own web. Uh, because it adds this level of ownership of control to the experience of being an internet user. And then the final thing is freedom to transact, basically economic freedom. Like in the same way that, you know, you can do business between individuals, between companies across state lines in the United States, um, you should be able to

• 24:13Speaker 02

  conduct business and do transactions peer to peer or peer to, uh, you know, to another company and move between the state lines of the metaverse, right? Right now we have this federated metaverse where we've got all these different environments controlled by big companies. But you should be able to to move goods and value, goods in the virtual sense, between these different environments seamlessly. And currently that doesn't exist either. So to me, like, I'm just very concerned that whatever we get in these virtual worlds and experiences will do very little to push humanity forward. All it's really going to do is to, I don't know, perpetuate the Web two economic model. Um, but do so in with virtual reality. And to me, that would be selling the vision short. So I hope that we can get some of this right. And the good news is that there's a lot of Web three metaverse

• 24:59Speaker 02

  platforms and protocols that are trying to do exactly that.

• 25:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, this idea of owning via property rights is historically been something that creates massive prosperity for, um, uh, many societies, uh, and civilizations. When we think about it in a digital form, we're giving property rights, not necessarily to some societies that don't have it. In the United States, we have property rights. But now we're giving it in a different form factor in this kind of digital world. And so how important are individual borders, uh, nationalities, uh, or even maybe like the differences between you and I? When we get into a digital world, you know, one of the things I've always thought about is on a blockchain. All just kind of a random string of letters and numbers. And so talk a little bit as to like, yes, you're giving property rights,

• 25:49Anthony Pompliano?

  but the quote unquote receiver of the property rights now looks much more like the other people in that, you know, kind of ecosystem or that market participant. And the reason why that becomes interesting is like with the rise of automation and machines, you can very quickly see they are going to be transacting in these digital assets. And so now all of a sudden you're giving property rights, not just to people, but you may be giving them to machines as well. And the blockchain or these assets don't know the difference, whether it's a human or it's a machine, all they know is they're moving from one wallet to another wallet based on whatever the market participant is doing.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, geez, that's a really fascinating kind of idea and thought experiment. You know, people have property rights, you're right. But other other entities have property rights, like corporations have property rights and corporations have legal personhood. So to me, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that you can have inanimate objects or devices that have the same kinds of property rights as as individuals do. I mean, let's say you had a self-driving car that was self-owned because it could earn money from the fares that it generated. If it was incorporated as a legal person, which it could be, right? Then it could have property rights in the same way that like a company or an individual had.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  So I think that it's a strange, I don't know where we're headed exactly. I love that idea and I think it's it's one that probably is going to come to a head, not just from a technology perspective, but from a legal perspective and philosophical perspective as well. But your other point was another one that I find equally fascinating. You know, in the introduction to my new book, I basically said that say that, you know, technology, they say that technology makes the world a flatter place, right? That the spread of technology improves access to global markets, access to opportunities and so on and so forth. Thomas Friedman said that, you know, the world is flat. The reality, of course, is that the world today is not flat. The world is deeply divided and unequal.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  But it is true that technology has made it much more connected than ever before. So my view basically is that, yeah, technology makes the world a flatter place than Web 3 is going to be a steamroller. It's going to flatten the world in ways that we scarcely imagined, right? Like with the internet, the first era of the internet, Web 1 and Web 2, democratized access to information and democratized the ability to publish, right? To share information, your thoughts, your ideas and so forth. Those are pretty revolutionary concepts. What Web 3 does is it democratizes access to ownership. Ownership where maybe to your point, those rights may not exist in the legal sense in the places where those people live.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Let's say you live in a country where there's a dictator who can expropriate your assets. But on chain and in the, in Web 3, you have a program, programmatic right to ownership. Now, I think like, not to get too philosophical, but the political does supersede the, the technological in certain contexts. Like if someone knocks on your door and, you know, demands your private keys or they'll throw you in jail for the rest of your life, then you start to see the power of the state monopoly on violence. But in general, the idea that we have a way to express property rights digitally is incredibly powerful. And I think that we are entering a period in time where there's going to be access to opportunity in a way that has not existed previously. I think of DAOs as a really interesting example of this, you know, decentralized autonomous organizations.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  In, in Web 3 and DeFi and some of these other areas, a lot of organizations begin first as these internet native entities, right? I don't want to call them companies, but in some respects, they kind of function like companies. But the difference is that with a company, you know, Delaware C corp, if you're a startup, you might be able to access stock or offer stock to like your best employees or maybe everyone who goes to work for your company. But there's no easy way to cut your users, your vendors, your partners, contributors and so forth, as cut them into the ownership of the, of that platform. And with DAOs, you can, like if you wanted to start a, a software project today and make it available in 50 countries and

• 30:02Speaker 02

  Make it so that anybody who used it could access ownership, you know, over time as the more they use it, the more they earn because they're adding value to the network. They're helping the network effects to scale. Um, how would you do that today with a company like you couldn't? You'd have to have, you know, legal agreements in place in 50 countries and translate them into 20 languages. And you'd have to have lawyers enforcing the terms and so forth. But with tokens, with a, with a DAO, you can create an easy way for users of a platform to earn ownership in the form of a token. And that token can have, you know, governance rights to say in how that platform is run. It can have economic upside, it could pay distributions. You know, I've seen lots of really novelized concepts in practice where as a token holder, you can receive, you know, stable point dividends from the output of a certain network.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  All of that, um, I think creates lots of questions and challenges from a legal and regulatory perspective. But the technology tools exist and are in practice today. And I just think that that is something that's really exciting because the web is global. Web three is global, duh, because it's all part of the same thing. And now we've got a toolkit that allows anybody to participate, but also to, uh, share in the wealth that is created. So we had a way for everyone to participate, to share information, to access information. Now we have a way to share and access and the value creation. To me, that more than anything else is the most powerful concept of web three.

• 31:25Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the thing you believe is most likely to occur that most people do not yet think is going to happen? Whether it is AI related crypto, AR, VR, like we look out into the future. You have very high conviction, but you know, the rest of the market, uh, does not.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Um, it's a really good question, you know? I think that what people don't fully appreciate, like people talk about tokenizing the world and, you know, how we can put real world assets into tokens. Like my view is that most economic activity will happen on blockchains. You know, most transactions, most assets are all are going to be, uh, internet native or on chain assets. And look, some of those things are not, that's not possible. Like there are physical assets in the Real world where what you're putting on chain is sort of title to those assets. But in a lot of other senses, that's really not the case. Like if you look at stocks and bonds. I do return to finance because it's an area that I'm comfortable with and I've known my whole life.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  But like the the global stock market, you know, combined has a market value of a hundred trillion dollars. Those assets aren't claims on some physical assets. They're claims on ownership of of cash flows that a company pays out. They're a contract. They are a legal fiction, right? And and assets like stocks and bonds and and other financial assets, securities. All of those things can be represented as on-chain assets. So I just think that today, like the the and and I also think that's part one. And then moving forward, a lot of, as I alluded to in the last answer. I think a lot of future kinds of companies and projects and organizations will begin themselves as digitally native, right? Where they won't have a foot in the real world, where there's like, you know, a stock that trades on the exchange. And then some, you know, version of it that trades on chain. Everything will be on chain.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  And so to me, like, where are we? Where are we going? We're going to a world where there's hundreds of trillions of dollars of assets. That that exist on blockchains and transact on blockchains. And it's like the the question is like, well, why? Well, the reason why is that they're just better. It's instant. It's peer to peer. It's real time. It's auditable, searchable, and it's offers more flexible kinds of organizational structures, right? Tokens are, as I said earlier, kind of like websites in the sense that they can be programmed to represent anything. I've heard an interesting analogy. The tokens are like containers for information, right? Or containers for value. So in the same way a shipping container can contain furniture and clothing and computer parts. A token can be programmed to contain anything.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  And because it's programmable, it means it can represent an almost infinite number of configurations. And the same way like a website can be an infinite number of things, right? It can be, you know, where you access the sports scores, but also your social media page. It can be, you know, a government health website, whatever. So to me, the idea that the world will be tokenized has become a cliche. But it's something that that I've had high conviction on since day one.

• 34:17Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the thing that everyone is excited about that you think they should not be, or they are overvaluing will happen in the future?

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Geez, that's a really interesting question. I'm not sure that anybody is overhyping anything right now. And that's not because I'm sort of Pollyannaish and I think all of this stuff is great. I think that probably today, what I find really interesting about the moment that we're in, and I mentioned blockchain AI extended reality and IoT, is that they all seem to be hitting an inflection point at roughly the same time. In innovation, like in theory, there's this concept known as an S curve, right? Which I know you're familiar with. Where basically in the early days, it's a lot of capital and time that goes into developing a new technology, but there's relatively little economic output. But then at a certain point, it hits an inflection point where for every unit of

• 35:10Speaker 02

  time and unit of capital, it creates an exponential amount of economic growth. All of these technologies that I've discussed are all basically hitting this inflection point. They're all overnight success stories that are many decades in the making, right? People talk about this with blockchains. When are we going to get more real world use cases? What are hundreds of millions of people going to use this? Blockchains have only been around for like 15 years, really. If you look at these other technologies, they've been around for decades. AI began with Alan Turing and the Turing test. The 1940s and 50s predates the transistor. The virtual reality extended reality. There've been examples of that throughout history, going back to the 1970s and 80s. Connected

• 35:55Speaker 02

  devices, the idea of an internet of things, and again, a concept that is many decades old. But all these things are ideas whose time had finally come again, and they're all converging at the exact same time. So to me, like the tech hype is real. What I think people are probably underappreciating, or maybe undervaluing, is the potential both for positive, like the ability for these technologies to unlock an era of human flourishing and productivity and prosperity, but also the downside.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Of it as well. Like, I think that as a species, we are not ready for a world where ninety nine percent of content is synthetic and where deep fakes are photorealistic and where, you know, you can get a call from a friend or a loved one saying they've been kidnapped with a deep fake video of them holding today's newspaper. And it's all bullshit, BS, excuse my French. But it's like, you know, are we ready for a world? How do we figure that out? How do we prove identities? How do we prove data? How do we prove humanness? Like, all of those challenges, I think that we're so far away from figuring that out. But like, the technology is accelerating at a, at an exponential rate. And so like, we're not going to have time to figure this stuff out.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  And I think that's going to create a lot of chaos in the world. But at the same time, I think that all of these things taken together can help to bring humanity to a new level of prosperity that we have not enjoyed or experienced so far. So, you know, you take the good with the bad.

• 37:19Anthony Pompliano?

  You mentioned chaos in the world, and one of the things that seems to be developing is that on-chain, in the digital world, there's a lot of certainty. You understand when the blocks will be created. You can cryptographically prove certain things have occurred. There's not a lot of debate. It's very binary, like either one or zero, it happened or it didn't. The exact opposite is like accelerating in the off-chain world. There's way more uncertainty. There's way more chaos that feels like things are becoming less structured and predictable. And so, do you feel like those will continue to pull away from each other? Or can the on-chain world actually pull the off-chain world back towards a kind of cleaner, predictable, certain future?

• 38:05Speaker 02

  Well, you've, I think, really neatly described the potential to bring a whole bunch of certainty to this area that is exploding in growth and becoming more uncertain. And I could take that question in several different directions. Like, obviously, the world, I think, appears to be getting more unstable. You know, trust in our institutions is collapsing. People are living in self-reinforcing echo chambers where the, you know, purpose of news is not to inform, but to provide comfort. Like, all that is happening. But I think like, when it comes to tech-specific, The question is, what is the risk or challenge posed by by AI? You know, how do we determine or prove humanness in a world where,

• 38:49Speaker 02

  you know, deep fakes and synthetic content can recreate a person from the perspective of another with a high degree of certainty? And how do we prove that an AI model is sourcing the correct data? And how do we assure that if that data is owned, if it's IP owned by someone, that they are receiving recognition and compensation for that work? And all of this, you know, and I could go on and on, but like in all of these cases, there is this disconnect, as you point out, between this proliferation of activity, but it needing to be anchored in truth. And I think that to be able to figure out and trust, truth and trust, like, how do we trust that the data is accurate?

• 39:32Speaker 02

  How do we know, how can we prove the truth of who owns it and so forth? And I think that's where the the synthesis or the convergence of these technologies is going to occur. But like, it's not a, it's not like they're on a collision course and this is going to happen no matter what, right? Like, technology doesn't just work and it doesn't just create positive outcomes. It's a tool that can be wielded by people who have good intentions and bad intentions. It can have positive and negative, you know, societal, economic, cultural outputs. And so it really depends on how it's wielded. So if there's anything that that I want to sort of leave readers with with the new book, it's that this is a new economic and cultural frontier.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Like all frontiers, it's got its fair share of risks as well as rewards. And like any frontier, it's populated by some of the most ambitious and smart and brilliant people, but also by a fair share of of hawksters and criminals and, you know, ne'er do wells. And it comes with with its fair share of atfalls. And so if you're going to enter into this new frontier, if you want to help to lead this next era, you need a guide, you know, and that's what I hope the book does. But I also want People to leave, you know, reading, having read the book, feeling like leadership is their personal opportunity. I, I, I think it's pretty obvious now at this point that leadership doesn't come from the top down in, in the economy. It comes from the bottom up or the outside in.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  You know, it's not just random guy in the street, but like entrepreneurs, innovators, users, first movers can come from anywhere. And I think with Web three, they can also be anywhere in the world. And I think that that's something that should feel really empowering for people. Like if you feel the world's moving quickly, you want to play a role in it. I think there are ways to do that. But I, again, like, I think that to go back to the original question, you know, these things don't just happen on their own, right? They require people to actually take the reins and to steer the technology and to steer our culture in the right direction.

• 41:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, when this comes to fruition, how does regulation play into it?

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Well, that's a question that I chuckle just because how much time do you have? You know, I mean, I think it's a very fascinating and challenging area, right? So within the world of, you know, financial services, for example, something like a stablecoin. So even a stablecoin, which has, you know, shown clear product market fit and is widely used and is clearly providing a real utility to people is an area that's deeply contentious. And, you know, for those who understand the, the business model of stablecoins, I'll just explain it really briefly. So stablecoins are minted when people deposit cash on hand with the institution that mints the stablecoin.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  And that can mean basically that they're sitting on billions of dollars of value of money, which they go and invest into government securities. Now, what would be really great is if the holder of the stablecoin could receive the interest that the collateral earns from the treasuries and other assets that the issuer buys. But right now they can't because if they did that, it would be like a security. And because it's a security, then it falls under a whole other suite of regulations. But the, the upshot of that is that the people who use this asset can't actually participate in the Full value of it, right? And I know that seems like kind of an arcane example, but you're talking about billions of dollars of of interest income that people can't participate in because of regulatory uncertainty, right?

• 43:08Speaker 02

  So that's like one tiny example amongst many. I think the biggest, one of the big sticking points, and I I talked about that Dow example is that it would be great to be able to launch a project from scratch and to make it available to anyone to use and to earn ownership in. And the more you interact with the platform, the more value you create, the more you earn. But as a practical matter, you know, what are people actually owning? A lot of, a lot of founders go to great pains to point out that their tokens are not securities. But in my view, there's a lot of elements of them that are. And I actually think that's a really positive thing. The idea that you can have ownership of something and participate in the upside if it creates value. And as a user, be, you know, a stakeholder in how it's run and governed.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  To me, is an amazing concept. But the legal and regulatory infrastructure for DAOs just does not exist. And I think that that, more than anything, more than the technology, is the biggest cap on its on its development and on its growth, right? So on the other hand, there are many examples where regulation is useful or or necessary. And I think it's because I think the first two examples are ones where a lack of clarity has led to value not being created. I think there are other examples where it can be created. Now, I think that figuring out the balance between these two things is very, very tricky. And I think that it's something that, at least in the United States today,

• 44:36Speaker 02

  there isn't enough serious discussion happening about how to set the conditions or to lay the foundations for this next era of the web to succeed. And I think as a result, that makes it an economic opportunity that could be lost or forfeited just through inaction. Like the web, web three, inclusive of all these other technologies, it's the US is to lose. Like, come on, you got all the tech, you got all the capital, you got the universities, you've Got all of this going for you, but if you don't create the regulatory framework, then money and assets and organizations are going to move offshore and that's what's already happening today. So I think that there are opportunities for governments to take a proactive role

• 45:21Speaker 02

  in helping to accelerate the adoption and to accelerate capital formation and accelerate innovation. But it requires the political will to do it. And I think in some parts of the world that political will is there and in others it's not yet.

• 45:38Anthony Pompliano?

  When we view

• 45:43Anthony Pompliano?

  the future, as you're describing it, one of the questions that I think we can end on is are people skilled and trained in a way that can make it happen? What I mean by that is like some of these technologies are new and so we've seen a huge, you know, in the crypto world solidity, right? All these people have to go and kind of get up to speed on certain technologies. But is the workforce prepared to build this? Or do we just need time to pass and a lot of younger people who grew up with these technologies and is more inherent? And it's less about retraining the existing workforce and it's more about the new workforce growing up. You know, an easy example is growing up with a cell phone is very different than learning it at 40 or 45.

• 46:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And so how do you think about like the workforce's ability to build this stuff?

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Well, I think I have a lot of faith in humanity to embrace new technology. You know, Luddites notwithstanding, as a species, that's the thing that separates us from everybody, from everyone else. Everyone else, meaning other creatures on this planet, is our ability to use tools. And what are tools if not technology? You know, whether it's, you know, a primitive hand axe or a personal computer, it's a form of technology that enhances and augments human ability. So I do think that that people will adapt, that much I'm sure of. But I also think that technology innovation can sometimes be the vanguard of deeper cultural, social, economic.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  And I think that for leaders of today, that's something that scares them. That it's not so much that they need to learn how to use solidity. It's that this technology might shake the foundations of their reality. That it might lead to their organization being disrupted or their role in the workforce changing. You know, back in the 1970s and 80s, they said that personal computers would never take off. And the reason for that was that managers would never learn how to type. Typing was something that secretaries did. And so what did they mean by that? It wasn't just that managers wouldn't learn how to type or managers wouldn't, you know, developers wouldn't learn how to use solidity.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  It was that by learning how to type, they were doing women's work, right? This was challenging the, the sort of status quo of this, of this sort of sexist stratified workplace that had existed until then. So that's something I think has been true forever. Does that new technology can act as this harbinger of, of deep, deep structural change in the world? And it's that more than the ability to adopt new skills or to prepare the labor force that I think creates this resistance, creates this ambivalence from a lot of people about embracing new technology. It's not that they're afraid of learning a new skill. It's that they worry that whatever status they have in the world could change. Now, some people are really comfortable with that.

• 48:43Speaker 02

  They're comfortable with change. I think a lot of entrepreneurs and founders are like that, but most people are not. You know, they seek comfort in stability. And so I think that that's something that as a society, we have to keep in mind for sure.

• 48:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Where can we send people to find you on the internet or find the books?

• 49:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, the book again is called Web Three: Charting the Internet's Next Economic and Cultural Frontier. It's been out for a few months. It's a Wall Street Journal bestseller. You can buy it on Amazon or wherever you get books. And you can follow me on Twitter @AlexTapscott. Love to continue this conversation online.

• 49:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Alex, I appreciate it as always. I've, I've learned a ton today and you made me think more deeply about stuff. So I really hope that people listen to this and they get as much value out of it as I did and we definitely do it again in the future.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  Terrific. Thanks.