#883 What The Hell Is A DAO?! w/ Alexander Taub

Alexander Taub is the Co-Founder of Upstream. If you are confused about what a DAO is and hoping to learn more, this is a perfect starter episode for you! In this conversation, Alex gives us a complete breakdown of what a DAO is and explains why they will be Important in the next decade. Alex also provides insight to what him and his team at Upstream are building. ======================= Crypto is all about giving the power back to the people and our sponsor, Pipe, is doing that in a big way. Pipe is the world’s first trading platform that allows you to trade recurring revenue streams for up-front capital. And with Pipe’s new API, companies with recurring revenue can build seamless, embedded financing options into their platforms. One of the most interesting uses for Pipe’s new API right now is Compass Mining’s “Mine Now, Pay Later” which powers payment plans on bitcoin mining hardware so more miners can start or scale with a smaller up-front investment. Whether you’re looking for mining hardware or scaling any business with recurring revenue, check out Pipe to access growth capital with: No loans. No dilution. No restrictive covenants or warrants. Just growth on your terms And right now, Pomp Podcast listeners can access tens of thousands of dollars even millions fee-free for 12 months. Whether you are a bitcoin mining company looking to enable financing for your customers or a SaaS, DTC, or any business that has recurring revenue, sign up at pipe.com/pomp to start trading today. ======================= Exodus is leading the world out of the traditional financial system by building beautiful and user-friendly blockchain products. With its focus on design and user experience, Exodus has become one of the most popular and loved cryptocurrency apps. It’s supported on both desktop and mobile, allowing you to sync your wallet across multiple devices so you can have access to your funds anywhere. You can instantly exchange around 100 different cryptocurrencies straight from your wallet. Interactive charts let you view an asset’s price history and your portfolio’s performance over time. And maybe the best part, Exodus is integrated with the Trezor hardware wallet - making advanced security easy for everyone. Visit exodus.com/pomp for your free download or search Exodus on the App Store or Playstore. ======================= Today’s episode is sponsored by Abra. Based in California and backed by top VC firms, Abra is an all-in-one simple, secure app that allows you to trade over 110 cryptocurrencies, get 0% interest loans using your crypto as collateral and earn interest with up to 14% APY on stablecoins and 8.15% APY on Bitcoin. Join nearly 2 million users by downloading Abra from the Google Play or Apple App store. If you download the app today, you will get $15 in free crypto once you fund your account. You came, you invested — now conquer. ======================= The Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. Go to https://www.eightsleep.com/Pomp to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, and the UK.

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. Alex Taub is the founder and CEO of Upstream. They just raised a massive round and we talk a lot about DAOs and the various instances of what's going on in that vertical of crypto. I really enjoyed this conversation with Alex and I hope that you do as well. Before we get into this episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by Pipe. Crypto is all about giving the power back to the people and our sponsor Pipe is doing that in a big way. Pipe is the world's first trading platform that allows you to trade recurring revenue streams for upfront capital.

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And with Pipe's new API, companies with recurring revenue can build seamless embedded financing options into their platforms. One of the most interesting uses for Pipe's new API right now is Compass Mining's "Mine Now, Pay Later," which powers payment plans on Bitcoin mining hardware so more miners can start or scale with a smaller upfront investment. Whether you're looking for mining hardware or scaling any business with recurring revenue, check out Pipe to access growth capital with no loans, no dilution, no restrictive covenants or warrants, just growth on your terms. And right now, Pomp Podcast listeners can access tens of thousands of dollars, even millions, fee-free for 12 months. Whether you are a Bitcoin mining company looking to enable financing for your customers, or

• 1:28Anthony Pompliano?

  a SaaS, DTC, or any business that has recurring revenue, sign up at pipe.com/pomp. Again, pipe.com/pomp to start trading today. Today's episode is brought to you by Exodus, the world's leading desktop, mobile, and hardware crypto wallet. They offer beautiful, user-friendly blockchain products that sync across all of your devices, making it easier to send, receive, and exchange over 150 or more crypto assets in one place. And with world-class customer service available to you 24/7, Exodus always has your back. But the fun doesn't stop with staking and trading. They recently launched a new NFT marketplace where you can buy and sell your favorite NFTs on the Solana network. By partnering with the popular NFT

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Platform Magic Eden, they're offering the full Monty on verified collections with more added every single day. Ready to check it out for yourself? Run, don't walk over to exodus.com/pomp for your free download today. Again, if you want the world's leading desktop, mobile and hardware crypto wallet, go to exodus.com/pomp today. Today's episode is sponsored by Abra. They're based in California and they're backed by top VC firms. Abra is an all-in-one, simple, secure app that allows you to trade over 110 cryptocurrencies, get 0% interest loans using your crypto as collateral, and earn interest with up to 13% APY on stablecoins and 7.15% APY on Bitcoin. You can join nearly 2 million users by downloading Abra from the

• 2:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Google Play or Apple App Store. If you download the app today, you will get $15 in free crypto once you fund your account. You came, you invested, now conquer. Abra, conquer crypto. Go check it out today. All right, let's get into this episode. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:33Anthony Pompliano?

  We've got a special treat. We've got Alex Taub joining us from upstream. Alex, how are you?

• 3:38Speaker 02

  What's going on, man? How you doing?

• 3:39Anthony Pompliano?

  We're doing fantastic. Last time I saw you, we were talking about Zed Run and potentially getting into the horse racing game in the digital world. This time, I want to talk to you about DAOs. What the hell is a DAO? Everyone keeps talking to me about DAOs and I'm like, look, man, I don't know. Let me find somebody who can tell me all about DAOs. So here you are. What the hell is a DAO?

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. So actually, out of all the like, the complex crypto blockchain concepts, I think DAOs are probably the one of the more easier ones for like a regular person to understand.

• 4:12Anthony Pompliano?

  So you're calling me stupid? Okay.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  No, no, no. But it's really like, conceptually, imagine you and, you know, nine friends all put $100 into a bank account. And then you, so now you had a thousand bucks. And then what you did is you

• 4:34Speaker 02

  You made proposals on what to use that money for. And then you voted on them. And then you executed based on the vote. So let's say you you and nine friends put a hundred dollars into a bank account. So now you have a thousand bucks. And then you said, OK, um, you know, let's uh, you made a proposal to go out to, you know, sushi in Miami. Uh, and like, let's say only three of you were based in Miami. The seven other people are probably not going to vote for that. They're not going to want their money being used for that. So what they'll do is they'll probably vote against it. It probably won't pass. But maybe you made a proposal that everyone wanted to do. Maybe you wanted to buy a a digital asset. Maybe you wanted to buy an N F T. Maybe you wanted to buy a digital horse. Uh, and you you made a proposal for that and then it passed. And then you execute on it. And then you sort of collectively own it.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  So DAOs have become really popular recently because, uh, well, initially it became really popular around collectibles. Being able to sort of, uh, collectively put money together to buy things that potentially, uh, individually they couldn't buy. Uh, but now they're becoming even bigger because a lot of people believe this year that DAOs are going to explode in a similar way that N F Ts exploded in twenty twenty one. And I think right now, in the next sort of three to six months, uh, some of these use cases are going to sort of pop up. Uh, the most popular one right now is like these investment clubs, uh, where it's like, you know, sub a hundred people, sub like twenty five million dollars where you're sort of pooling money together. And you're buying digital things.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Uh, but this is a really, uh, sort of exciting new way to, um, organize as a, as a, as a company, you know, as a, sort of like a potential future LLC replacement.

• 6:12Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about this, what, give me an example of a DAO that we can talk through, like, how it exactly works. What what what's one that you think is super interesting?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  So it's funny, the ones that are like the more public ones, they're not really DAOs. So like

• 6:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Explain that. Why? Why do you say that?

• 6:27Speaker 02

  So so Constitution DAO never became a DAO really. Um, and the reason I say that is because, uh, I contributed to Constitution DAO. I never voted on anything. So it sort of became this, and and maybe if Constitution DAO, they actually won the Constitution, it would have evolved into a a proper DAO. Um, but it just became sort of a weird, uh, alternative, like, sort of crowdfunding. Where like everyone pulled together money and then and then didn't deliver anything. But, um, so in terms of like a a DAO, you probably would understand is is more like, um, An investment club is probably the most popular one right now. So you and a handful

• 7:09Speaker 02

  of people pooling money together. And let's say you and 20 friends, you all put in $5,000. And now you go and decide you want to bid on things and buy things and own them collectively. That's probably the most popular and pretty easy to understand how it works. And you know, DAOs in and of themselves aren't legally anything. So if you set up a sort of like a DAO right now, the US does not recognize it as anything. So it will sort of be looked as a general partnership. So a lot of people wrap it in LLCs or C corps, or if there's other ways to do it, you could do, there's a popular UNA structure that Andreessen Horowitz put

• 7:49Speaker 02

  out there, where UNA stands for an unregistered nonprofit association. It's really like sort of seeking 501 status. Actually, probably the most popular one recently is ApeApecoin, which just launched last week. And Ape is a foundation. So it's, it might have been a UNA at one point, but they're seeking at least 501(c)(3) status, foundation status. So this is all just like really cutting edge in terms of blockchain and ways to sort of coordinate and pull money together.

• 8:21Anthony Pompliano?

  When you start to think about this, what is the perfect use case for a DAO? Right? Like, you're talking about buying collectibles, etc. Let's fast forward 25 years. Like, where do you think this ends up? Is every company replaced with a DAO? Is every, like, investment club now a DAO? Do we say, okay, DAOs actually only used for one very, very specific use case and everything else was all bullshit? Like, where do you come out on this?

• 8:48Speaker 02

  So, okay, let's do like a year or two in the future, or let's say five years in the future, and then let's do 20 years. In five years, I think one of the most interesting use cases are around nonprofits. Like, you contribute to a nonprofit right now, you don't really know, like, how they're using the money or anything. DAOs give this, like...

• 9:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I just assume they're getting rich.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Probably. Um, but like, so I actually, let me take a step back because the best way to think about the way that we sort of approach it at Upstream and the way that I think about it is it's the future of community. So, community 1.0 was like very much IRL. So it was like, where were you born? I was born in New York. I'm a Knicks fan. You know, it's not the greatest thing right now, but I'm a Knicks fan. You know, you're born in Brazil. You might be a fan of the Brazil national team. You're born in LA. You might be a Lakers fan. You go to a certain school. You're friends with people in that school. You grow up in a certain community and maybe you're part of a certain religion. So you go to a certain church or synagogue or mosque. That's like community 1.0. It's very IRL.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Community 2.0 is like, we call it URL. It's online interest-based groups. It's Reddit. It's Discord. It's Facebook groups. It's Twitter groups. It's LinkedIn groups. Slack, WhatsApp, Telegram. I mean, the list goes on and on. And it's like, if you have an interest, like a singular interest, you will find someone on the internet with that same interest. I have yet to find an interest where it's, you're the only person in the world that has that. So that's like community 2.0. And then in terms of the promise of community 3.0 or like, you know, web three in general, is it's not just IRL. It's not just URL. It's both. It's ownership. So now, instead of, you know, funding and admin of a community to make a bunch of decisions,

• 10:37Speaker 02

  you're funding the community directly. You're getting ownership in it. You're getting transparency. You're getting upside and you're sort of have the ability to know what's happening. So the reason I took a step back and explained that is because a nonprofit, I could totally see in a few years from now, the, you know, I donate to a certain nonprofit and I can see exactly they're making proposals. The people who are contributing have a say in what happens. I think that could be really cool. 20 years from now, I think it could be looked at as like you look at your local government, right? You pay, I mean, we're in Miami now, so we don't pay some of those taxes, but you pay taxes and, you know.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  You know, seeing how much money is in the local government treasury and the decisions that they're making and having that on the blockchain and being transparent and being a vote, you know, a paying, a taxpaying citizen and be able to make votes, why not? Why not 20 years from now that like it's all in the blockchain, it's all transparent, corruption is like if it's not on the blockchain, is it corrupt? I don't know, you know, like is someone trying to hide something? So there's a lot of potential here.

• 11:46Anthony Pompliano?

  So when we think about this, obviously this stuff's super complex, like you need wallets, you need voting, you need all this stuff. And in the DAOs that I've seen, or I've, you know, peeked my head into some of these discourses, madness, chaos, like it's like getting, you know, a bunch of four-year-olds in a preschool to come together and try to make decisions, like it's literally madness. And that's not because the people, it's just the nature of when you have 500 or 1,000 people trying to make a decision together, you begin to realize why corporations that need organization, clarity, leadership, et cetera, they chose to go with a hierarchical structure. Like, hey, that person makes the decision, these people help execute it.

• 12:29Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you think about that, how are technology, and this is kind of what you guys are doing with Upstream, in that you have this like DAO in a box, but like, how do you start to use technology to address the complexity and kind of chaos that happens when you just put a bunch of people into an organization without that hierarchical structure or some of the things that corporations have used for, you know, at this point, centuries now to figure out?

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that's a great question. Um, and sort of I look back at to like the decision-making process of like how we got here, because we were thinking about the future of community since we started, the whole idea of Upstream was like the future of professional community. And like sometime last summer, we started thinking through like, what is the web three community play? And very quickly, it was very obvious that it was it was a DAO. So we sort of look at the landscape and we saw, all right, starting a DAO right now is pretty, pretty complex in terms of the, the, it's not that it's necessarily complex, it's that it's sort of like starting a website in the 1990s. Like you could do it, probably had to pay someone out the wazoo to do it. But like, the number of people who could actually build websites was much smaller.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  And there wasn't a, you know, Shopify or Squarespace or Wix or even WordPress to building websites or blogs or whatever. So the first thing we noticed is that it's really hard to start, start a DAO. The second thing we noticed was that even once you started a DAO, all the tooling for it was really fragmented. You're using like Aragon for governance and Snapshot for voting. And, you know, Discord for the community and communication and Collabland for token gating. And, you know, Juicebox for the treasury. And the list sort of goes on and on. And we said, okay, the opportunity here is building a sort of no or low code. And then full stack, so everything in one place, sort of DAO in a box that you could spin it up really quickly.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  So that's what we initially launched in mid-November and, you know, we, the announcement last two weeks was we raised our Series A about twelve, twelve and a half million. But in terms of, in terms of answering your question, one of the things that we just released, that's, we haven't really even done a blog post about it yet. If you use the product, you know it because it's sort of live in there, is we have something called dynamic delegation. So if anyone here has ever bought, uh, you know, a, well, not ever, but at a certain point when you bought a dot ETH domain. So, you know, I have like, you know, a tab, twenty, Alex tab, dot ETH or whatever.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  ENS domains basically airdropped people the governance token. And you had the option, when you claimed it, to either keep your vote or delegate your vote. It was sort of an all or nothing. And that's, that's cool. That's great. But what we did is we launched something called Dynamic Delegation. And what that does is that allows you to, you know, keep, you know, portions of your vote, delegate portions of your vote. So for example, if I want to keep, you know, my, uh, my votes around, you know, adding people to the multi-sig wallet, I can keep that. But if I want to add just members to the DAO, I can delegate my vote to my friend Sarah. Um, if I want to keep, you know, all my votes for any proposals that have to do with five ether above, you know, that, you know,

• 15:39Speaker 02

  I can keep that, but I, under five ether, I can give it to someone else. And we think that's going to be a big change. Uh, you know, that plus the ability to vote from your phone, which is something we also released. So mobile voting, those, the combination of those two things will allow for, you know, the decision makers to get the power they need to, to move quicker, the more active people. So you don't have to just chase people to whip votes. I mean, that's not the whole point of a DAO. The whole point of a DAO, um, you know, is, is, is not to make it, uh, more complicated to do things. Um, it's supposed to get transparency and consensus, uh, in a, in a much better way. So we have some things we're working on to help on that.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Joe, John, what questions you guys got? Alex, what's going on, man? Uh, my question would be around, uh, just DAOs being labeled as a security. This is obviously a, uh, longstanding argument between people as to whether it could or potentially not be labeled a security by regulators. What are your just general thoughts on that?

• 16:34Speaker 02

  It's a great, it's a great question. Um, there's a lot of, DAOs are really bespoke right now. And what I mean by that is like, we're walking through the legal side of like four different types of DAOs. One is like an investment club. So an investment club is under a hundred people, under 25 million. There's no, that's not a security. Uh, you go above a hundred people or you're, you know, there, there's certain things you can do. So you, to do like a investment club, you wrap it in an LLC. And then you either can issue K1s to everyone, or you can, um, tax it as a corporation. Then we're doing one that's like a university. There's a bunch of people who own a bunch of land in Sandbox and they're starting something.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  I don't wanna say the name publicly because I don't know if they're like announced yet. But basically they're starting a university in the Metaverse. If, you know, there's a model, like you look at NYU, NYU owns a bunch of land in New York. They have a university, they're a nonprofit. So there's the nonprofit association or a U N A. Obviously, there's some things you can't do, you can't distribute profits, you can't issue dividends. But like you can hire people and have them be professors in the Metaverse University. We have one where we're working with a corporation that wants to do something that's like a collaboration DAO. Where the people, the members of the DAO are working on a new brand. This is a clothing brand and that brand is gonna be their like partner and supply the stuff.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  But the people in the DAO are gonna vote on what the outfits that they're gonna be sort of creating. So in terms of the security stuff, no, I haven't seen any case law yet that like has someone has gone after specifically the Howey test. Cause there's one piece of the Howey test that like might not apply to DAOs. And there's just no, for example, one of the, I think it's the fourth, I'm not quoting it exact, but it's like. It's like investing in an enterprise and, you know, the fourth piece is something around like. Like the others work as opposed to your own work. And in DAOs, it is your own work because you're involved and you own a percentage.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  So I think someone will probably try to take in, figure out if the Howey test applies to DAOs. But in the meantime, if you wanna be the most conservative and you wanna be the most in line with what like the legal sort of precedent is. Is you need to wrap the DAO in something that exists in current reality. Because if you don't, you're just opening yourself, A, for personal liability if it's looked as, because it's not illegal in and of itself to just like have a DAO. But it could be, if it, let's say you do a, an investment club with like five friends and there's a dispute. There's no li- there's like you, if you have an LLC, there's limited liability.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  But if not, it looks as a general partnership and they can go after your house, your car, whatever they want. Now, they might not get that, but they can do it. So that's how we've been looking at some of these smaller groups of like investment clubs.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  Gotcha. And one quick follow-up question off of that would just be around the LLCs, right? So is this something where one person owns the LLC and essentially controls the DAO? Or is the LLC essentially like fractionalized like we see in collectibles?

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the way that I've seen them so far is that you'll set up an LLC and then you'll also set up an, you'll set up an entity. It doesn't have to be an LLC. It could be, there's a bunch of different entities. You'll set up an entity and then you'll also set up an operating agreement. And that operating agreement will dictate how the DAO works. Are we just listening to the DAO? You might want just one person's name on the LLC. You might want multiple people. You probably put it in the operating agreement. Eventually, what we want to do is we want to prioritize that and, and, and make it something that like when you, when you set it up. Like legally, we don't have to require it. It can be optional. It could be recommended. Hey, like, we don't recommend you running a DAO without setting up an operating agreement

• 20:34Speaker 02

  with all the members in the DAO. But legally, we, we, we're also like a front-end experience for it. So like, we're not holding anyone's money. The DAO is truly decentralized. We're just like a nice front-end experience for the DAO. Our, our sort of logic behind it is most people don't know how to launch a smart contract. Most people don't know how to interact with a smart contract. 99.999 people will never learn how to launch a contract or how to interact with a smart contract. So you need like a Web 2.5 feel for it to actually use it properly. But it is truly decentralized. The, the, the people who are in the DAO own it completely. If you in theory wanted to go somewhere else, take it somewhere

• 21:17Speaker 02

  else, just interact with the contract directly, we have no control over it. So, you know, in terms of us, like, we're not in the, we don't want to put ourselves in the middle of the legal stuff, but we do want to help all the DAOs that start, do it correctly and do it properly.

• 21:30Anthony Pompliano?

  John, what you got for us?

• 21:31Speaker 03

  Alex, what are your thoughts around the governance structure and governance tokens and their use within DAOs?

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a hot topic right now. Um, you know, Apecoin launched last week. Um, you know, I have a, an NFT project called Illuminati NFT that I launched with a few friends. Uh, and we, a big piece of it was 50% of the mint is going into a, a DAO. Um, that's mostly set up right now. We're going to be, uh, launching it probably in the next, we need a little bit of design work for the DAO token. Um, I think there's two ways to go about it right now. One is you could do what like Apecoin did is, and you say, okay, there's X amount of tokens, you know, a billion tokens. And, um, and then, you know, there's different tokenomics, X, you know, X percentage goes to holders and X percentage is in the public market and X percentage goes to

• 22:21Speaker 02

  the team or investors. Um, my personal thoughts on that is that those type of things, uh, while it creates some liquidity, it gets a little bit weird in terms of, I don't want to say weird, but the people in the DAO are, could also not be holders of the, the, the NFT. So someone could just go buy Apecoin. That's fine. That's cool. What we're doing on the Illuminati one is a little bit different where we're going to be, uh, you know, initially from the jump, it was 50% of the mint is going into the DAO. So there's like a thousand ETH sitting there waiting for the DAO to start. And what we're going to be doing is giving people a token that is, if you own the Illuminati NFT, you'll agree to the terms and the bylaws of the DAO.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  And you'll get a toke, you'll, you'll be able to claim a token and that token will be your voting power in the DAO. So if you have one Illuminati NFT, you get one Illuminati NFT DAO token. So the idea there is that like, it's not like you're getting 10,000 tokens and you sell 5,000 of them. Like, you know what I mean? That to me is like, other people are going to be voting on how to use our money in the DAO for the members of the NF, you know, of the community. So there's a few ways to go about it. I, we happen to be going about it a different way, but I think will be better for the holders of Illuminati NFT. Um, because they'll be able to actually control what happens with that money.

• 23:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Alex, when you start to think about this, my last question for you is, uh, As people come in, this idea of like providing infrastructure, what's your vision for upstream over the next, you know, three, four, five years? Is it that DAOs have to explode? You guys are that infrastructure and then that's really the, the value proposition here? Or is it something else?

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think in the next six to nine months, someone will emerge as the OpenSea or the Coinbase or the Robin Hood of DAOs. I think, I think investment clubs in and of themselves are a little too niche for mainstream. Like there will be an NBA top shot moment for DAOs, you know? And when I say NBA top shot moment, I mean, you know, this was like end of last, end of 2020, beginning of 2021, and it just became like NBA IP is like super recognizable. You can come in really easily. You didn't have to understand crypto and you could go by this moment. And it exploded and that led to the apes and that led to the cats and that led to all these other things.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  So I think there is going to be an NBA top shot moment for DAOs. It probably could have been Constitution DAO, I think, if done a little differently. But something will happen and there will be, I just think the use case is not fully there yet. And I think the next sort of three to six months, three to nine months, people are just going to throw things against the wall. I think like NFT projects, like if I go and sell a million dollars worth of, you know, fuzzy flamingos and I say that 10% of that is going to go into a DAO for the community. I think that's a really interesting use case where the community can now control what happens with that hundred thousand dollars. And I think that might, you know, take off.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  But if you look at the sizing of the DAO market, it's like $10 billion. I'd say like 90% of that, probably maybe even more, is like DeFi stuff related DAOs, which is totally fine. It's massive. It's great, but it's not really consumer. And I would say like the rest of it is like a mix of, you know, consumer to, you know, single purpose DAOs to, you know, maybe investment clubs and things like that. And I think for it to take off in a similar way to NFTs, that's the pie that needs to grow exponentially. So what we want to do is we want to throw as many things at the wall as possible because the space is a multi trillion dollar space. And it doesn't really matter who's first, uh, if who figures out that initially use case that explodes.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  It's, you know, who builds the best product and continues to delight their customers and make them happy. So, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm excited for more people to get in the space and, you know, some, someone will figure out that, that killer use case for DAOs.

• 26:31Anthony Pompliano?

  I love that idea. Uh, one of our sponsors is Eight Sleep Miami Company, just like Upstream. Uh, what do you think about Eight Sleep? You got any, uh, any sleep schedule changes since the last time we talked?

• 26:41Speaker 02

  Man, my sleep is terrible. I probably need to buy Eight Sleep.

• 26:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Come on, man.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  All right. I got, what is it? Pom the code?

• 26:49Anthony Pompliano?

  You get money off. By the way, that's free alpha right there. If you use eight sleep.com slash pomp, you get money off. So, don't say I never did anything for you. Now you're going to sleep good and have more money in your pocket. A little extra change for a DAO investment that you're going to make.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  I'll buy another NFT.

• 27:06Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Where can we send people to find you on the internet or find Upstream?

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, personally, I'm AJT on Twitter and then Upstream is upstreamapp.com or I think it's at joinupstream on Twitter. And yeah, uh, thanks for having me here.

• 27:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Dude, super excited about this. Thank you so much for coming. You, you now are my DAO expert. Whenever I have questions, you're coming back to tell us all about DAOs. And next time they people do some crazy shit with DAOs, you're definitely coming back to explain why we should or should not participate in the Constitution DAO, then have Ken Griffin front run us and buy the DAO instead.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's something that definitely needs to change for DAOs is like, you know, showing your hand in poker, like you can't.

• 27:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yo, rich guy, we got 44 million. He's like, cool. I got 45.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 27:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, buddy. Sounds good. Thanks so much. Thanks, Alex.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  All right. Take care.

• 27:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Later. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more, and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.