#674 Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies w/ Jihan Wu

Jihan Wu is the co-founder of Matrixport, a crypto asset management firm with more than $10 billion in AUM. He previously co-founded Bitmain, one of the largest mining companies in the industry. In this conversation, we discuss bitcoin, Bitcoin cash, blocksize wars, Matrixport, Bitmain, Bitdeer, his personal portfolio, and what Jihan is most excited about moving forward.

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. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Jihan Wu is the co-founder of Matrix Port, a crypto asset management firm with more than $10 billion in AUM. He previously co-founded Bitmain, one of the largest mining companies in the industry. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, the block size wars, Matrix Port, Bitmain, Bitdeer, his personal portfolio, and what Jihan is most excited about moving forward. I really enjoyed this conversation with him, and I hope you do as well. If you like this type of content, I highly suggest that you tune in to our new show. It's a live stream on YouTube every day from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern, called The Best Business Show. Why is it the best? Because we said it was. We

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  cover the daily topics that everyone wants to hear, and we also bring on great guests. So go head over to YouTube, search Anthony Pompliano, subscribe to the channel, and tune in every day from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern. Hope you guys enjoy it. Let's get into this episode.

• 1:02Speaker 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.

• 1:25Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I'm here with Jihan Wu. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Hi, good to meet you, Pomp.

• 1:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Let's just get started. Obviously, a lot of people know who you are, but they may not know the backstory as to how you got into Bitcoin. So maybe walk us through kind of when you first discovered Bitcoin, what drew you to it, and then we can start there.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like 10 years ago, exactly 10 years ago, 2011, when we were reading some like a technical news report, and I found out Bitcoin news, and it got, draw my attention, it made me. Then I started to research and read into the English news reports, and then finally I found out that BitcoinTalk.org, the forum, and a lot of other white papers, things. Just in a few days, I just found out that this is the thing I'm going to do with my And it's really exciting. It was kind of a coincidence, maybe.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  It's a very good arrangement by the. Like God or something. That's in the university, I studied finance, but I spent lots of my time on the. Monetary history, which is not really kind of my class. I read lots of books about it. I feel very interested about the gold and the paper money, the fat money. Lots of the history, I I know a lot about it. When I found out the Bitcoin, I knew that, okay, this is just a kind of. Our private money and it's private money based on the internet.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  So it will be things that we have never seen before. Because the the internet plus private money, this could not happen before many like decades ago. It's only can happen right now. At that time, if you want to sell an idea about, let's build a kind of a private money. Based on the internet without the approval of the government, the support of government, I think. Maybe like ten thousand people, you can get one supporter of such kind of ideas. But very lucky that we got to have the internet.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  So that so that we can gathering such kind of very scarce people on the internet to be a small community. And on two thousand eleven, when I went to the Bitcoin Talk.org. I see like just tens of thousands of people, just like. It's a very small crowd people, but people manage to build a small community there. They already have lots of economic activities. People are renting service to each other's V P S, V P N, torrent downloading service. And you can also buy. Hardware, mining hardware from each other and secondhand hardware.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  And of course, the most famous deal was done by the pizza, right? That was the most expensive pizza in history because the guy spent

• 4:45Speaker 02

  tens of thousands of Bitcoin to buy a pizza. That was really fantastic. Yeah, that was the early day. And the first day I found out Bitcoin, I just gave up the other studies like I was trying to go to the CPA exam, passed and I just gave up. I just spent all my extra time from work just focusing to this.

• 5:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And so at some point, you decide to start Bitmain and build what has become the largest or one of the largest hardware providers for miners. Talk a little bit about where that idea came from and then those early days of actually starting that business.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it was, I think the most original ideas is from the Bitcoin Talk forum. At that time, people are starting to sell shares, raising money. Very early, I think in 2012 or somewhere like that, people are starting to do such kind of things. Back at that time, there is a website called Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange. It was by a British guy and but he but he married a Chinese teacher and he started teaching English in China. And he built a website that make people possible to easily shares, raise money to do something.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  And most of the companies, so-called companies on that website is mining companies. It's about kind of a high school students ranking up some GPU and mining Bitcoin and starts to distribute such kind of mining rewards to its shareholders. And I still remember that one of the United States high school boys managed to sell such kind of shares and with lots of money and a man Bitcoin. And then Bitcoin appreciated, he got his university tuition just fully covered. And that's really fantastic story.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  And from there, we got to support and invest the very early Bitcoin company. And the ticker was ASIC Commander. It's quite straightforward. Doing ASIC design and doing the Bitcoin mining ASIC Commander. It was once take like seventy or eighty percent of the hash rate on the network. And that company, the investment was owing around one hundred thousand US dollars. But it got maybe like one thousand times of return and has time to invest. But I only got a lot of shares in that company.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  And I was also forcing that ASIC Commander company because some problems means later stage. Maybe it will got beaten down by BitFury, another competitor, which was very famous as well. So I think I need to start Bitmain. That was two thousand thirteen.

• 7:42Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you started, when you started Bitmain, walk me through in terms of how did you capitalize the business? And then you all grew really, really fast at one point there, especially going into two thousand sixteen, two thousand seventeen. So just kind of walk through how how you built that business.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, Bitmain is the funding was mostly from, I think, a foundation from the investment reward. I got from the ASIC commanders, which was quite a lot. And I also raised money from other group of other investors, which we call ourselves like a business source. It's a small group of people and I found other partners. I found another partner, co-founder of Bitmain, and he has quite a few years basic design experience. And we, and he bring their team and I bring the money, bring the idea together. And we started the company together. Firstly, I just position myself as kind of a VC investor.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  I believe because I was a kind of a financial background. I, for quite a long time, I'm a teenager, I think I want to do something like a good investor, like Warren Buffett, like Soros. Or some other very good VC investors like Cikoya doing that support a very great technology companies. So what do I, I was dreaming is that I just want to be invested. But only after I invested the money into Bitmain, I found out that I just cannot leave the company. Company without managing it. So it's kind of that investors became a co-CEO, something like that.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  So I managed to, so the company just consumed my time, seven years or eight years.

• 9:31Anthony Pompliano?

  So you basically went from, you wanted to fund the business and be more of the investor. You said, you know, Warren Buffett, George Soros. But as the business grew, it kind of consumed more and more of your time. It obviously was becoming a bigger portion of your net worth. And then you kind of became a co-CEO. When you look back at Bitmain today, what was like the biggest lessons learned that you had in building that business?

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Well, I, I think I'm kind of quite lucky. I would have to say, I think just quite a few entrepreneurs, they tried, they tried very hard. But just only a small number of them can achieve this kind of very prominent position in the industry. I think I'm quite, quite lucky. I think the most important, I think there is another kind of a single biggest lessons that I learned from. I think I learned lots of things before, as I said, before I started BIM, I just kind of a financial background. I want to do investment, but after BIM, I think it's just kind of a very hoping lesson. It's like a university.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  That's maybe it's really, I just learned a lot from the semiconductor technology and the manufacturing, the sales, marketing, and managing a small team and a very large team and how to build it and lots of those failures, difficulties. And I also managed to, to save a company that was almost bankrupt.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  And of course, in essence, and then fight from my fight against my co-founders, very ugly and later. Uh, we just reached kind of agreement. Okay, let's set it and let's have a peace. Uh, so I think it's a whole journey. It's a very great journey and a lot, a lot of things from it. Yeah.

• 11:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's very interesting because you, uh, you funded it, right? It grew incredibly fast. There was a fight and then, um, I think one of the things that, uh, people didn't expect or didn't understand was, uh, at some point, basically all of the co-founders came together. Uh, and there was this kind of agreement. Okay, look, no more fighting. Let's move forward under a plan. Um, around, uh, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen and, and, uh, kind of leading up to that time period, uh, was the block size wars. And I think this is one of those things where the further we get away from it, uh, there's fewer and fewer people in the crypto industry, all these new people, they don't really understand what that was or, or kind of what the, the different perspectives were. Walk us through kind of your recollection of, uh, that time and then kind of the decisions that you all made,

• 12:08Anthony Pompliano?

  uh, in terms of, um, you know, what eventually became Bitcoin Cash and, and all that.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, at that time, I think, uh, it was kind of driving by a kind of a passion. Uh, you know, um, the Bitcoin changed my whole life, right? From a kind of a poor students and, uh, later, uh, become kind of so-called billionaire or something. Uh, and, um, it's also kind of a boost of my confidence, right? I can do things. I can make things happen. Uh, so, um, I have to say, because of the whole journey, have kind of a very strong attachment towards Bitcoin. I, I, I think I believe lots of the audience here, even including you, Pom, may have the same kind of it. Um, feeling instead of Bitcoin is something that changes the, the life of you guys and you just feel

• 12:56Speaker 02

  quite a passion about it. You want to do great things about it. We all know that the scaling debate was a very. Important at that time. Um, and two different uh two different group of peoples have different ideas uh about what is the best uh for the Bitcoin. Um, I think Bitcoin uh was able to uh enjoying quite a good life. Uh, very good uh golden times, happy times uh before the scaling uh was an issue uh because uh Satoshi Nakamoto uh coded a uh one megabyte harder uh limit there, but he left it uh a word that one day we should raise it, but he left.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  He never made it happen. He never did that. And um uh later uh people started to have a debate whether we should have hard fork, whether we should have um a large block size and if um uh the large block size will lead to decentralization or not. And uh whether we need to run uh the Bitcoin node on a Raspberry or not. Uh, it's uh, I think there was uh lots of debate is getting more and more bizarre and more and more unrealistic. Um, and uh um first I started to take a um stance that we should increase the block size. And uh obviously, uh such kind of um uh debate was uh hmm

• 14:16Speaker 02

  what was not able to happen on lots of them, a traditionally important discussion values like Bitcoin uh talks or or Bitcoin. Uh, it was kind of uh uh sensitive there. Some of us believe that uh this uh if uh the block size uh cannot or could not be um increased, it may mean the uh defeat or failure of Bitcoin. Uh widely uh supported by lots of users. So uh even though uh we may not get to uh the support from the Bitcoin core developers. Uh, I think it's better to have a kind of a branch or a kind of um different branch, different ways. We need to reserve kind of a seed for the Bitcoins original uh design.

• 15:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh. So when you think about uh Bitcoin and that scaling uh debate, right? Obviously, uh we get the fork, we get Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash. Um, there's a whole bunch of questions that people want. Want me to ask, I'm not going to get to all of them, but maybe I'll ask you kind of two or three of the the top ones that do our best to kind of cover what people want to know. So first is in terms of your personal portfolio, do you still hold Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash? Do you hold other assets? Like, how do you think of your personal portfolio and really kind of using that as a proxy for, you know, kind of how you want exposure moving forward?

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I held lots of different kinds of coins in the early days. I kind of was, I think, just born of a light coin. Just a few days, I started to mine light coin, you know that. So I know probably that you have only Bitcoin. I just listened to other podcasts, but I'm kind of a very different person than you. I hold a lot of coins. I my portfolio, I have like a 20 to 30 kinds of coins, but the majority of them are kind of Ethereum, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and there is still some kind of light coin and XCC, right?

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Ecash basically, it was a kind of fork of fork of fork of Bitcoin. And there are lots of other coins, like lots of DeFi tokens and some other blockchains like SOL. Yeah, I hold lots of it.

• 16:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, do you think that you hold more Bitcoin or more Bitcoin Cash now?

• 16:39Speaker 02

  More Bitcoin Cash.

• 16:40Anthony Pompliano?

  More Bitcoin Cash. All right. And then when you think about kind of where we are today in hindsight, knowing everything you know now in terms of how the block size debate worked out, prices of assets, et cetera. What do you think like the biggest one or two lessons are that you learned, you know, through that time period up until today? You mentioned earlier that like there was this really interesting thing where you went from a student to a billionaire in like a short period of time. Like like just what were some of those lessons?

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, first, I think I have started to got some very, very deep understanding about the network effect. I know about network effect quite early, but you know, it was kind of paper knowledge.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  But when you got to such kind of experience, you know that the network effect is really strong. It's really something. And also, I know that it's really hard to reach kind of a good governance or kind of governance or consensus in a purely crowded or decentralized crowd. I think that would be really hard. And people, it's very easy for people to have a kind of disagreement that cannot be consolidated or be

• 17:57Speaker 02

  reached kind of agreement upon with each other. So I think if I know that for lots of people, they have a different great different opinions with the Bitcoin developers, but what they are really choosing to do is that let's just go to Ethereum. Let's start some other blockchain protocols and they are doing quite fine, doing quite well. I yeah, I think maybe in the future, I think I should take this the same decisions as those people are doing.

• 18:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And then in terms of what I'll call the like social aspect. So there's definitely a technical aspect to this whole thing, right? In terms of do we increase the block size? Do we not? But then there was an entire like, I don't know, like social civil war within Bitcoin, right? It's probably the best way to describe it. And I feel like you and a couple of other folks, both on the Bitcoin Cash side and on the Bitcoin side, really, really went at it and kind of were in this like Deep debate and argument. Is that something that you think is healthy? And like it had to happen in order for us to get the technical side worked out? Or do you feel like that was just something that like is a one time event?

• 19:14Anthony Pompliano?

  And we're unlikely to see something that kind of serious and aggressive in the future?

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think honestly speaking, I think it was really bad.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  I think in kind of a confliction like this, the first things to die is the truth. Right? And the second thing to die is the this kind of rationale. People starts getting very emotional and I think both sides have a line to each other. I have to admit that I think it's better that the two community separated. And less kind of very meaningless and very destructive. People with each other, I think Bitcoin are doing quite good, are doing pretty well these days. It's a star wide view got less position is very strong. And we still lost some institutions are coming to this.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  And no matter what other coins they are buying, but they are always buying Bitcoin. And I see Bitcoin Cash, even though it's in a lot of very strong position right now. Because it did not get the name of Bitcoin, which was very important. And right now the market cap is like in behind. But we see that Bitcoin Cash people are perish extreme of peer to peer electronic cash. And trying to deliver various kinds of infrastructure that waiting for people to use.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  And I see that those infrastructures are building from zero from to one and to even more. And right now there are kind of even compatible side chains on the Bitcoin Cash. So I think both communities are more focused. On the constructive work to do and to promote and to grow its own community. Um. I believe that that's it's kind of a good situation. But right now I still see that some of the community members are kind of hate with each other. Uh. But I guess it's much, much better than before, than many years ago.

• 21:33Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And so coming out of this scaling war, a lot of people I don't think know, but you went on to found a new company called Matrix Port. Uh. And I think I've been blown away by how large this business has gotten how quickly. Uh. But maybe walk us through what is Matrix Port and kind of what was the idea for this new business?

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, Mr. Ford is kind of a crypto asset management company. Um. It tries to provide sophisticated and full stack financial products to its customers to help customers to navigate in this quite a volatile, but a highly fast growing sector. Um. And Mr. Ford started two years ago in the beginning of 2019, which was a very bearish time in the crypto industry. Uh. And we managed to grow the business to one of the the most leading

• 22:35Speaker 02

  crypto financial service companies in Asia. Uh. Right now we manage more than ten billion assets on our platform. And we help our customers to earn quite lots of interest in revenues. And the monthly revenue is around, sorry, the monthly trading volume is between like five billion to ten billion, depends on the timing. Um. And right now we have two hundred employees. Uh. We have offices in Singapore. Hong Kong. So I think it's a pretty good growth.

• 23:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, the stats that I pulled off your website were 220 employees in 40 countries, $5 billion in monthly trading volume, up to $10 billion depending on the month, over $700 million in outstanding loans, and over $10 billion in assets under management and custody, which is insane, given how quickly you've grown. What's driving most of that growth? Is it a focus on a specific geographic region? Is it certain products that you have? Is it just you and your co-founders and kind of the name and brand you bring? Like, why are so many people flocking to the product?

• 23:46Speaker 02

  We, when we started the company, there are already lots of exchanges. But we found out that this is not a thing we are going to do like one year or two years. And I believe, and I feel that lots of the crypto people already become kind of crypto natives. They are going to, it's their life, it's their belief. They are going to put their savings into crypto for their whole life. They are not going to sell, maybe they will switch from one crypto to another, but they are not going to sell. And in such kind of belief, we see that, we also see that the growth of this whole crypto space,

• 24:31Speaker 02

  it will grow to very large, more than 100 trillion or somewhere like that. It will be much bigger than the stock market right now. So in such kind of wide, big, and open financial network, there will need to be financial services. It's not only about change, it's not only about wallet. People will need a kind of financial products to help them to navigate for. And we brought lots of innovative products firstly around the world. For example, the dual currency product, which indeed is quite common in the private banking industries. But in crypto, Matrix Port was the first company to brought the dual currency product into this thing.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  And we also invented products like a smart trend. Basically, it's, we help our customers to buy the option with the interest of the principal.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  If they have a wrong judgment about the direction of the price of a next period, they are not going to their principal. But if they are right, they will get a kind of APY up to like a forty percent or sixty percent or something like this would be very high. So it's kind of very safe a gamble or

• 25:56Speaker 02

  safe investment based on the price judgment. We have lots of structural products like that. So we have kind of branding that we brought the best products to our customers. And even if other companies are learning from us, but people in the circle, in the custom basis, people know that it was initiated by Matrix Port. So we gain lots of trust. And Matrix Port also, we need to know that Matrix Port was kind of swung from BME. At BME, we spent lots of money and trying to do the future technology about blockchain. But in the end of 2018, BME was in kind of a serious financial stress.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  We need to spin off such kind of non-profitable teams into a separate company. So we got a kind of inherent from BME that in the very beginning, in the first day of Matrix Port, we got like more than 100 employees. That's really a big startup.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  So we got lots of knowledge and lots of teams that are working with each other. We have such kind of experiences. So we managed to do things quite well.

• 27:09Anthony Pompliano?

  So a couple of things there. One is when you started Matrix Port, you had 100 employees almost on day one. I'm assuming that a lot of them had already worked for you previously and kind of followed you when you started this. And then two is, not only are you providing what I would consider kind of standard products in this industry, but you also are trying to create and pioneer new types of products. You described one where you can basically hold an asset, earn interest, use that interest then to buy an option that can protect you or you can double, you know, double down on your bet, which is a kind of a very nuanced thing that really only crypto assets themselves can provide. When you think about the business and the products that you're building, do you have a framework that you use to evaluate building centralized infrastructure and products versus decentralized infrastructure and products?

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Like, how do you think through where to focus? Yeah, um, I think it's a kind of decision that we have to make. If you ask me, I think both of the C-Fi and the DeFi have got lots of benefits in it. You know, I invest in lots of coins. If you ask me, what kind of choice do I make? I think I want to choose both. And for my personal investment, I do both. I use DeFi quite a lot myself. But as a startup, we need to choose in the day one. And once we make that decision, we have, I don't think we have the luxury to

• 28:40Speaker 02

  just swing back and forth. No. I think in the beginning, we decided to do C-Fi and we see that such kind of, especially in the early days of 2019, such kind of very complicated, sophisticated financial products. It's much, much easier to be developed on a C-Fi platform. But the later, I think it's still a very important driver of the growth of Mr. Port is that we are, we were the first C-Fi platform that helped our customers to do the DeFi mining and to earn the DeFi revenues on a C-Fi platform.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  People just, just one click in the apps, they will be able to participate. Those DeFi's like in Yuli Swap or in Curve or in other, on Compound, you have kind of protocols. We are the first company to bring that as well. So we call it kind of, kind of C-DeFi, yeah? So, so I believe the both of the ways will grow quite well. But at the Mr. Port, as a company, we choose the way, we choose the centralized finance. So we don't have a choice. We just. Grow on this road.

• 30:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and talk to me a little bit about regulation and kind of the geopolitical element of all this. Obviously, a lot of people just saw kind of the China reemphasis of some of the existing rules, their crackdown. I know that you all have offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, you have customers around the world. I think you have employees in forty different countries. So I'm assuming that you spent a lot of time just thinking about kind of how all this is playing out. What's your view on the various regulatory regimes and kind of where the rules seem to be, you know, welcoming and embracing this stuff versus where maybe it's the exact opposite?

• 30:40Speaker 02

  The regulation, I think, is a kind of a problem that we will not able to avoid in the crypto industry. And right now, both of China and the United States, the very powerful governments are trying to look into this problem. And the China government already take a very clear stance that they don't like crypto. They don't like this decentralized blockchain. But I think that that's that's quite understandable because China is quite a very large country with a one point four billion of a population. And the situation there was really complicated.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  And the China government spends like ten years to know this crypto to grow quite freely. But I think right now the central government has already make a decision that this is not good. This is overall, it's bad for China. So they decide to keep the crypto sector out of the China's main line. And I don't think this is only kind of a re-insistence of the past point of view from the Chinese government, because at this time, we see more departments of the government are coming to this regulation. And we also are working.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  They are quite different. It's just stating that this is a strategic decision and a planning from the party central. Such kind of warnings are not used randomly. It means that the government how will they make a decision? I think in quite a few, you know, very short time, the China retail investors will disappear from, we're just, they will all retreat from the crypto. And owning those high net worth Chinese families will stay in the crypto.

• 32:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it it's fascinating to me how the geopolitics of this play out and kind of regulation ends up serving as both a carrot and a stick. Right? And I think that we're kind of seeing that really, really happen right now. When you think about kind of where we're going and moving forward, what are you most excited about in the Bitcoin or crypto industry in terms of either products or companies or opportunities?

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, overall crypto is quite exciting. We see that the protocol and the ecosystem are more and more change the world. It's already sector about two trillion US dollar market cap. And we managed to see those DeFi protocols on Ethereum. They have built some stable token changes that is the best best in the world, like a curve.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  This the spread and then the liquidity is much, much better than any other centralized service in the world if you swap between the stable tokens. And this is only being achievable by the DeFi protocol. And we also seen in the game fight areas, we see that those very early startups of game fight are getting the revenue more than very large established game company like Tencent. So generally, I believe many, many years ago, the economic magazines say that the blockchain is

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Machine to build trust. It's realizing this, the whole industry is realizing this. Uh with such kind of trust building machines. People are uh getting together to build uh the game five IPs and the DeFi, which was only manageable. Uh uh only was uh uh possible by a very large financial companies. Uh right now, uh I think uh we are uh in the beginning of a next phase of a blockchain growth. Uh um maybe there is kind of um downturn uh in short term like six or nine months or twelve months maybe.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Uh but uh after this short period of uh downturn, we will see uh next phase of growth. Uh we will uh right now, um we are seeing this starting point of the blockchain started to have an impact over the uh real world. But if we have another one year or two year, we will see that more real world impact from the blockchain to the uh real world. Uh what we are talking about nowadays um is about tokenization, everything. Um and we can have the real estate, our cars, um and uh and the land. Um the stock of the company and the debt or other financial instrument uh be brought on the blockchain.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  And we maybe soon we will see that the companies are the uh inventions be funded by the blockchain uh financial market. And we will see some other uh collaborations um happening. Uh that will be able to break the monopoly by lots of uh big techs. Uh for example, uh uh the gamify is definitely a a proof that a small um just average Joe.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Combine together um with the help of uh trust building machines blockchain uh they will be able to beat those very big game companies. Um I think such kind of um uh um exciting things will happen uh one and after another. But such kind of exciting things will be uh by the help of a of lots of a small um building blocks uh in this industry. Like we will need um um decentralized uh identity uh protocols. And we will uh need some uh infrastructure companies that help to tokenization the uh real world assets.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  We will also uh need some kind of a help um from the regulators uh so that we will be able to see kind of IPO. Um or some other kind of finance activities uh from uh real world companies happening on the uh blockchain. Um and uh or maybe just we reshape the organization way of the company into a DAO. Or something that we we will need uh some kind of the work from the regulators. It's also a building block um in the future of the uh blockchain economy.

• 37:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, before we finish up, I've got three questions for you and I'll kind of just throw them out there. You tell me whatever you think or what comes to mind first. The first is uh if we look forward five years, what's your goal over the next five years? Or how do you want people to uh kind of evaluate on whether you are successful or not with what you're trying to accomplish in the next five years?

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Uh right now, I spend most of my time on my support. I hope that uh uh in five years, uh my support will uh have a much more impact uh and a build better product. Um and to serve more uh populations in this world. Um so five years uh later, uh my support's success uh will um kind of define my success. And another company I'm chairing right now is B D A. Uh I hope that B D Can uh just expand its uh hardware uh and a software uh technology. And to build better products to this world and owning within uh um Bitcoin mining or crypto mining.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  It can be a technology development platform to build better technologies to the world. Um I also uh want to see that uh um uh the blockchain technology can fulfill my uh expectation that we can have uh some kind of impact towards the real world. Um right now, the blockchain, I think, is uh is quite successful because it's building kind of a it's technology, it's literally, I think, it's kind of meta universe, right, the Bitcoin, Ethereum. And lots of them don't have a a real world connections, they manage to build a protocol. Uh they don't need a real bank, a real world support, but can sustain itself.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Uh but uh the next step for blockchain, I believe, that it will uh or it will require to have a much more exchange with the real world.

• 39:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then my second question is gonna be around Bitdeer. Uh right now, you have uh kind of like a digital uh mining uh offering, uh virtual mining offering. And then there's hardware as well. Wha- what's kind of the goal there with that business?

• 39:39Speaker 02

  In the beginning, Bitdeer uh was also a part of a BIM. Uh uh we be sent to Norway, to a lot of Europe and to United States. Uh but later, uh since I decide to separate it away from my tree. So uh I just decided, okay, just uh let's separate all the overseas assets towards independent company and that is Bitdeer right now. Um and we, right now, our dream is quite small. Uh we were just trying to be the best mining service company. Uh we have a lot of tailored products, um depending on the requirements from our from our customers. If they want a mining farm only, we just build a mining farm for them.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  If they want cloud mining, we have a just one click solution, so they can start to mine on the cloud. Um and we maintain the uh uh mining machines, we uh repair it, or we do them. Uh we also uh build, or they also help customer to source uh the mining machines. Uh, um, it, um, um, but, uh, I hope that the video, uh, is a to have a kind of mindset, a startup that, um, there I wish the team can be quite ambitious gender to grow into our other areas and to grow the business much larger.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Right now, we have, uh, around a one thousand gigawatt, uh, one, one thousand megawatt in the United States uh, and, uh, four hundred megawatt in, uh, Europe and, uh, um, this, uh, numbers is going to double, triple in the next few years, um, and, um, um, and we will see, uh, what we can do more next. In video, we have kind of an innovation fund that we encourage our, uh, uh, employees, our colleagues to have more ideas of their own and not necessarily related with Bitcoin or Bitcoin mining. Uh, if it's a technology, if it's about improve, uh, the life of, uh, human beings, uh, we,

• 41:44Speaker 02

  uh, we will evaluate and invest such kind of ideas.

• 41:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And then my last question for you is, uh, through the end of this year, we've got another, you know, three, three and a half months left, uh, what do you think about asset prices? Do you have an idea as to where Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, any of the other assets, uh, are going from a price perspective?

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, since, uh, the Chinese, uh, retail investors are quite soon going to, uh, retreat from this market. I, I think it's, uh, a little bit bearish in the short term, but I still have a strong, uh, sense, uh, I feel strongly that after this kind of a small, short period of a bearish time, we will see a kind of, uh, very fast growth of a blockchain asset. Uh, we see that, um, the, um, money printing is not stopping all over the world. Uh, and everything is in kind of a high inflation and the people need to stop value.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  And the people will also want to, um, have a kind of money that can do the trade on the internet of freely without a restriction, without friction. And, um, people will also are building lots of stacks, uh, in the, uh, uh, smart contract. Um, in the end of this year, maybe, uh, it's just kind of sideways right now, uh.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  But it's quite a, I'm quite optimistic about the next year.

• 43:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. So side you think sideways through the end of the year, but next year we get a pretty big move up both Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, etc. All right, last, last, last question for real. When you think back to your career in this space, you went from student to billionaire, which I think is one of the most incredible, you know, kind of stories throughout the creation of an industry like this. We've seen this happen before in the 80s, 90s, in the 2000s, and now in this kind of crypto boom of 2009 all the way till today. For the young people that are watching, what's your best piece of advice for them from a career

• 43:51Anthony Pompliano?

  standpoint in terms of many of them aspire to build a life of wealth and kind of success? Is there any lesson that you've got from your kind of run here that you would impart on them in terms of how they could pursue the same thing?

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, very great. Very good question. Just focus on what you are really good at. And don't let other people's opinion about what you should do in the future to impact you. Just focus what you are really good at and what you are really excited about it.

• 44:29Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a great piece of advice. All right, Jihan, listen, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I know you're a busy man. You got all kinds of stuff going on. I think people will really appreciate kind of just your transparency and honesty and kind of the thoughts you have about everything in the past and everything you're doing now. Where can we send people if they want to learn more about Matrixport, Bitdeer, or find you on the internet? Is there one place where they can kind of send you messages or they can get in contact with you?

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, they can follow my Twitter.

• 45:00Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So follow you on Twitter is probably the best place. Awesome. We've got it. Just pulled it up here. All right, listen, thank you so much for doing this. We will, we'll definitely have to do it again in the future and best of luck. And we'll, we'll talk in a little bit and we'll see, see the progress you guys make.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, very great. Thank you. Thank you, Paul.