A New Paradigm for Trust with entrepreneur Yat Siu
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Welcome to Cheaters and Backstabbers. I'm Shadi Diaz. And I'm Kate Robards. And we are New York City stand-up comedians and best friends. And we love a good cheating and backstabbing story. So this is a series where our guests reveal their most shocking cheating stories. Join us as we learn how to avoid getting our hearts broken or our backs slashed. Listen to Cheaters and Backstabbers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Web3, NFTs, blockchain, the mere utterance of these words makes one glaze over and want to change the channel. I am exactly the same. I am not that interested in these things, but I know I have to be interested in these things. But every time someone tries to explain them to me, I understand them even less.

which is why I was really excited to talk to Yatsu. He talked to me like I was the idiot that I am and helped me understand them in terms that actually made sense. Born and raised in Vienna, a Hong Kong-based entrepreneur and angel investor these days, he is the co-founder of Animoco Brands, which is valued at over $6 billion, so he knows what he's talking about. And I have to say, talking to him...

I'm actually really interested in these things a little more than I thought. This is a bit of optimism. Your trajectory is one of those magical trajectories of which there's only a few stories of somebody who at a very young age figured something out that ended up having commercial success and you sort of abandoned your formal education to go be one of these tech pioneers.

And the company now is a gaming company. So gaming is a big part of what we do. But Animoca Brands is a Web3 company that is focused on delivering true digital property rights, basically, to the world. And we're known to be doing this in gaming first because we feel that gamers themselves are ones who already believe and more intrinsically understand that they have sort of digital property. So I want to get your, like...

I'm curious on how you explain to your parents what you do. How do they understand the space in which you work? Yes. So maybe I'll start kind of right from the beginning. I think it's helpful to basically describe how we define Web3 and what Web3 really means. To do that, we need to understand a little bit about the evolution of the web because the original internet started as utility and has actually become our life, right?

So in Web 1, we were able to access information. There was a way in which data was freely available. And that was a way in which we could get all the information in the world. It was the beginning of the early internet, the days of Yahoo and so on. And then came Web 2. And in Web 2, we were able to actually write to the web.

But that means things like, you know, not just Wikipedia, but, you know, Facebook, Instagram, all these social networks, the beginning of the social web, because there we were to contribute to the web. And so we were able to write to it and create value. Web one is taking content from the web exclusively. It's unidirectional. Web two is now bidirectional. I can take and I can give to the Internet.

Correct. And what happens when it goes bidirectional is that the quantum of data that comes through is much larger than just one directional because now you're contributing and it feeds off each other because I have a comment, you have a comment, you add to it, this knowledge that comes from there. But then the differences about Web 2 versus Web 3 is where is that data written to? And in Web 2, the data is written on private databases that belong to Facebook, that belong to Amazon, that belong to Google, that belong to these platforms.

who eventually were able, because of the power of compute and AI, harness incredible value from it that wasn't fathomable 20 years ago. But today, the data has become the most valuable asset in the world. It's the new oil, as it were. If it wasn't for the fact that we had all this data, you wouldn't have ChatGPT, you wouldn't have Google, you wouldn't have Facebook, right? You wouldn't have any of these things.

So, what's happened now in the world of Web2 is that we have all become digitally colonized. We live in a digital feudal society where every time we contribute value to the platform, as in Instagram, as an example, and we share a photo, we might think it's fun and entertaining, but in reality, we're working for Zuck. We're basically just giving him free data every time we do it. We're engaging people freely, and we don't get paid for it. Meanwhile,

through the value of the data we generate and the derivative that comes from it. Not only do they generate huge quantums of value, they also then package and know stuff about you and send it back to you in a refined way. Like, "Oh, I know you like Japan," or, "I know you like t-shirts," or whatever, and let me sell that to you because now I can target you. So we've become the product. And essentially all the value is centralized around these platforms. That's Web 2. There's an irony in all of this, which is it's capitalism that produced Web 1 and Web 2,

And functionally, Web 2 became a series of authoritarian regimes, right, where the people had no power, but the large data companies and social media companies controlled everything. I was making a joke recently with somebody. I was at an event, and this girl stood up in front of us. Somebody was taking pictures of her, and she was doing all of her poses. And the person sitting next to us leaned over to us and said, she's a famous influencer.

And I responded very cynically, do you mean she's a freelance employee of an algorithm? That's a good one. Sure, she makes a lot of money and sure she has quote unquote influence, but she works for an algorithm. They can change that algorithm tomorrow and she has to constantly work hard for the algorithm. That's her boss. That's her boss and she's owned by that algorithm. Right. But Web3...

is not that. It's more democratic. It's more egalitarian. It's more, this is ours and we all get to choose what it looks like. The irony being that capitalism created the authoritarian model and now we're rejecting it. I think this is part of the issue, which is that when you think of shareholder capitalism in a classic way, it's always about maximum extraction. It's about the zero-sum outcome.

And it's no longer thinking about what is sort of broadly beneficial to a society in a sustainable manner. And often when we talk about sustainability, we often talk about green and energy, and that's fair. But there's another aspect of sustainability I think we forgot to think about, which is how do we sustain a capitalist framework in a manner where everyone can make a reasonable amount of income?

together. So meaning that someone can have great success, not at the expense of others. Not at the expense of others. Exactly. And I think this is the problem that we have in society broadly as well, because of course, many of the issues we have today, the revolt against capitalism, and frankly, the threat against many thoughts around democratic institutions comes from the fact that there's huge inequity. These people have so much money, that's not fair anymore.

We always looked at America as the place of the American dream because anyone can make it, so to speak. Whether that was true or not almost didn't matter. It was this meritocratic dream. I think that's gone. That's disappeared for many Americans. They no longer believe in the American dream because it feels like the person, if you have money, is just big money. Money has become futile in itself. Part of it is because the government

governments weren't set up to deal with data monopolies. They didn't understand the value of data. And now they've become so big that you really can't take them apart. And it probably isn't feasible anyway. So you need a new paradigm that is more equitable. And that's actually really what Web3 means. So what Web3 does and why blockchain is relevant

is that now the data is written to a public infrastructure, which is the blockchain, which is effectively a database structure, where now I'm able to have data that is owned by the community as opposed to owned by a central power. What happens is you can own a stake in the network that you're contributing to through the blockchain. So imagine if

Every time you were posting something on Instagram, instead of basically getting nothing in return, you receive a bunch of tokens that represent your stake, essentially, in the value that you've contributed to the network.

In this new paradigm in Web3, everyone becomes a stakeholder. So your customers are no longer just consumers to be extracted from. They kind of become quasi shareholders in the ecosystem that they're basically helping contribute to because you're providing more value to that network. You become a stakeholder in that ecosystem. And so become a co-contributor. That's why Web3 is known as the web of ownership.

And sometimes people get confused about it because they say, "What do you mean? Well, that means you can own a piece of the internet?" It actually does. Because whatever data paradigm is now existence created, you can now own a stake in that. And this is perhaps best represented in a network layer like Ethereum. A lot of people go like, "Well, what is this?" Well, really it's a public database infrastructure, which has banking grade facilities, which is why you can have all these financial transactions and the safety and security around that.

But then any person who can basically build on top of it, it's a public infrastructure. It's like having Goldman Sachs banking infrastructure available for the world to build on. But it's not owned by any one entity. It's owned by everyone who owns Ethereum, which also means that if someone builds value on the network, another person who happens to own Ethereum will benefit from it just because he's also participating in the network. And so everyone grows with this together. So this is the stakeholder capitalism perspective.

This is an important distinction because you and I are both diehard capitalists, just not the version of capitalism that is the predominant one today. You call it shareholder capitalism. And it is a bastardized version of capitalism that is basically run by a few for the benefit of a few. And it goes counter even to the invention of the stock market. I mean, the stock market was invented so that the average working person could share in the wealth of the nation.

And now we see massive decline of middle class involvement in the stock market. I think in part because of cynicism, because it's no longer for us. The stock market is controlled by a few to benefit a few. And to your point...

We have to be careful about throwing the baby out with the bathwater, which it's not capitalism, quote unquote. It's not Adam Smith capitalism that's the problem. It's this Jack Welch shareholder Milton Friedman version of capitalism, shareholder capitalism that is the issue. And what you're describing data, data is followed in the same path. It's run by a few for the benefit of a few.

You and I are capitalistic idealists that say, no, everyone should share in the wealth. And we have no problem with people making more and we have no problem with people making less. But the disparity can't be as great. And it has to be a fair system. Correct. It used to be a more fair system. I don't think there's a perfectly fair system. But a more fair system was replaced with a grossly unfair system. And government was completely left behind where all the regulations about the internet are from 1996. Yes. Which is a joke. Yes.

It's created a great sense of injustice. And so society, including our democracies in the world, are not recognizing that actually if you reject capitalism, you also reject innovation and growth and all these things. So it's just how you reform capitalism. And so this is a novel problem that we have today. And the concentration of data, I kind of liken it to this example of imagine if you had oil in your backyard a thousand years ago.

You'd say, take it away. It's something I don't need because you didn't understand the value of it. That's what we're doing with data right now. We're giving it away. We're posting stuff because we don't know what the value is. And Facebook and Instagram and all these platforms intentionally disintermediate us from the knowledge of what that data is for. So I don't know, for instance...

what I'm worth to Facebook. And they don't want you to know. So I'm mixed in this sort of mix of all these users where maybe I'm worth $10,000 to Facebook, but maybe I'm worth $1 to Facebook. I don't know. But as far as you're concerned, you're worth just $1 and therefore I shouldn't bother about it. But I guarantee you, like yourself, for instance,

you're probably worth millions of dollars to Facebook and Instagram because you're creating engagement. You're creating people to come to you, right? How many followers do you have on all of your social media platforms that are engaging? Yes, ostensibly for some value for you, but you don't own the networks of these users. You don't even know who they are. So the user that came to the platform because of you, because of your content, might then go and buy a product because you were saying something or you brought them there

Why don't you pay for that? You were the reason they're there to begin with. And eventually it reverses. Eventually they have all the power and suddenly you have to be there because of them. Ironically, even though you gave them the customers.

And that's basically what's so unfair about the whole system. We should all be paid for our time online. We'll be right back after this short break. AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested. So buckle up.

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For 25 years, Brightview Senior Living has been dedicated to creating an award-winning company culture so residents and families receive best-in-class services. Across our 50 communities, Brightview associates help deliver peace of mind, safety, security, transportation, daily programs, delicious food, and high-quality care if needed.

When you think of the context of someone like John Rawls in terms of how he thought about in terms of justice, that it's

That essentially it's okay to make a lot of money so long as everyone else actually benefits from it as well. And you're not worse off as a result of this, right? And that's actually, I think, what really capitalism used to do. We used to talk about how capitalism was broadly good because it created employment and it created networks and it created opportunity.

And capitalism wasn't this extractive thing that it has become today. But again, I think Web3 will solve that because it gives it to us at the data level. For instance, if every time I used Instagram and I received a small share in my value I contributed, I actually become a stakeholder. I actually benefit from the growth as well. Not only do we become a stronger and more loyal customer, that's the other thing, I also basically benefit. What we really mean is that it's okay for people to make money. We don't mind that

people make more money than us, so long as you don't make money at our expense. And it used to be the fact that executives have always made more money and CEOs have always made more money, but they took care of their employees. And if you did good work and you looked after your fellow colleagues, that you could stay with us for as long as you wanted, and in good times and in bad times, that we're in this together and we'll take care of each other. And the reason we were okay giving our leaders more is because we trusted that our leaders would take care of us.

and there's a deep-seated social contract there. And where I think capitalism broke is where those in positions of formal authority, those in positions of leadership broke the social contract where I will take more, but I will not reciprocate by taking care of you in bad times. And things like trickle down economics and so on. I mean, these are all the theories based around that didn't work for that reason. And it sort of came from this other perspective of this free market liberalist idea of efficiency.

So this is the thing where, you know, we basically were willing to sacrifice everything for efficiency. It didn't matter what kind of efficiency. Efficiency through the machine, capital efficiency, this efficiency, that efficiency, sort of removing the human equation out of this because basically we were trying, we were reducing everything to what could be faster and better and supposedly more efficient. No, I mean, you're creating sparks in my head right now. It was never about efficiency. It's about constant improvement, which is not the same.

And constant improvement is fundamentally about people and their ability to generate ideas. And it's not about looking at numbers and trying to extract value out of the number. And in typical American fashion, we left the people out.

And I think what you and I are both debating, which is capitalism is by human beings for human beings. The value of competition is it should ultimately create a better product. And the way Adam Smith described it is it's not so much about the butcher or the baker or the cheese maker. It's that if the butcher is driven by competition to make the best meat and the baker is driven by competition because there's other bakers out there to make the best bread, and the

and the cheesemaker is driven by competition to make the best cheese, what you and I get is the best sandwich. And that's what competition is supposed to do. And that's Adam Smith, that we are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the competition. And we are no longer the beneficiaries of the competition. And what Web3 is attempting to do is, ironically, in a technology product, reinsert the human being back into the equation.

So I often describe blockchain not as a sort of pure technology, as often people critique blockchain as, isn't it just a database, a decentralized ledger? What's the big deal?

What blockchain is, is a consensus mechanism. What is consensus? It's agreement. It's a political system because you have to vote on things. Now, at scale, you basically have a protocol that navigates itself based on how people vote on it or decide on it at scale, which is how the consensus mechanism works. And that means that we can now actually have trust in the network itself because now you have to negotiate with the network.

which you didn't have to do before. In a classic shareholder model, you don't negotiate with anyone, you negotiate with the top, a small number of people. But in a network, you have to negotiate with the entire network and in the past. So for instance, democracy. How do you create a democratic framework in your organization in which you can practice democracy every day? Well, you can actually do that in a physical way.

because in the physical way, you have to prove, first of all, are you Simon? Are you there? I have to get your voter record. I have to get your background. And then basically, you have to make a decision. This whole process is so lengthy and so expensive that every time I basically exercise my democratic muscle...

It can only happen once every few years. It can only take place in certain structures because it's difficult. Even if you're a corporation, if I'm actually going to make a vote, I have to issue the prospectus. I have to send it to everyone. Everyone has to read it and then vote on it. And then they have to send in the records and the ballot. It's just a lengthy process. On blockchain, you can actually make a vote, issue the decision on a daily basis if you wanted to. And because I own the NFT, I own your digital certificate, I know exactly who you are. I can basically enact it.

instantly and at scale. So I can literally make decisions through blockchain because I can trust basically what happens at net worth. Okay. NFTs. I struggled with understanding the value of the NFT. You converted me. And I think because your definition of an NFT or how you understand its value is very different than I've ever heard, which is you view it as a reflection of cultural value. Mm-hmm.

So let's delve into that. Okay, first, this is why you must never let engineers be marketers, where you name something a non-fungible token. The only word I understand of that is none. Yes, yes. Like, I appreciate it's not a fungible token. If only I knew what a fungible token was. Right. So, you know, tech terms aside. So the way that we should, you know, think of the point of an NFT or non-fungible token is that it's a way to store information

permanently on blockchain, a receipt of a digital item that you own that is yours and that is unique through this unique ID, hence why it's called non-fungible token, as in it is not something that is the same, it is unique. So maybe another way to say it's uniquely identified token might perhaps be the more obvious framing of it.

Which is, by the way, in my world, I'd rather name things by what they give you rather than what they don't give you. Okay, so it's a uniquely identifiable token, a uniquely identifiable receipt. Exactly right. And so what does that really mean, right? Well, what it means is that it's a way in which you can now store your digital history, your digital context, and all the records attached to it.

And so I'll give you a simple example of our wedding rings. Wedding rings may start off with something that is quite tradable because all wedding rings in a Tiffany store might be exactly the same and they cost the same. But the moment you give that wedding ring to your partner, actually it becomes tradable.

non-fungible. It becomes unique. It becomes special, but only to you and them. More than likely, it's something that is priceless to you. It means some history to you. We're so attuned to sort of collecting and owning things because they form part of our identity. They're our history. It's our photos. It's the clothes. Oh, I hiked there. I climbed Everest with it. There's memories attached to my stuff. More important than memories, there's stories attached to all of my stuff. Exactly. Exactly.

And stories is our culture. Like we're shaped by these stories, right? They form everything about us. Why do we care about ancestry? Why do we care about our legacy? Because we care about our history, which is our story and the story of our people and our culture and even our nations, right? These are all attached to it. And how do we get attached to them? They come from essentially these items that are rare, unique, and personally identifiable.

So this could be flags, this could be clothes, this could be all sorts of things in your life. You probably have thousands of them. Now, in the digital world, we couldn't have that. We only had our memory.

But now with NFTs, you can actually do that. For instance, if I'm playing a game and my skins were NFTs and I won this victory, actually that now becomes my NFT. And I can know that this was proof because that's the other thing about blockchain. It's proof to say you did this as well. It's like this notch. It's not just your memory. It says, oh, you've achieved this victory or you've been to this place. And so it accumulates.

through the blockchain a record of what it's done. Maybe the skin had 100 victories or 1,000 victories. So a blockchain is simply a ledger. It's simply a book where we keep track of

In a very old fashioned way from the 18th century, you open up the book and there's in beautiful cursive writing, a ledger of all the transactions. Exactly. Of everything you've done with this. Except it happens to be in a digital form. That's pretty much it. Exactly. But it can now do this at scale with every item, which means also that you can share the culture of that experience with a much larger audience. I mean, how many people buy a Rolex to tell the time?

How many people buy a Birkin bag so you can put stuff in it? And of course, the answer is you don't buy it for the utility of the bag. You buy everything around it. You buy the story, the culture, the context, the meaning, the membership. And that's basically what NFTs represent. But here's the thing about NFTs, what makes it more powerful. Now I can certify you, prove on the blockchain that it's authentic.

You know, when you go and buy a fake Rolex and you go around pretending you have a fake Rolex, you don't go and say, look at this fake Rolex. It's great. Great deal. You should do the same thing. You go around wearing a fake Rolex to pretend that you're part of the membership. And how will you know? Well, someone has to analyze it. They have to look at it. They have to study it to actually know whether it's real or not. You're not going to say, hey, that Rolex looks fake. Right. They just assume that you have it and assume so.

But in Web3 with NFTs, you can tell the difference between a fake NFT because of the fact that the blockchain certifies it instantly, which also means I can now give you network effects based on the real boarded user. For instance, I can go to someone with the real NFT and say, I'll let you into my club because I want you to be a member of this, or I give you a discount, or I give you a special exposition because I know you're just a real customer. I mean, if a marketing company could

market authentically to every Ferrari owner or every Tesla owner, then that's worth a lot of money. I mean, what are we paying Facebook all this money for? To try to target your customer, right? But actually, I have no idea who this customer is because I can't certify this. But with an NFT, I know exactly that you're this customer. You can't forge that. You can't fake that. Okay, let's back up a second. And I want to double click on your analogy because I think it's so good, which is if I ask somebody who's got a Birkin bag, why on earth would you spend tens of thousands of dollars buying

on a bag. And clearly putting stuff in it is not going to be their answer. A lot of other bags worth less money can do that. And they'll say the quality. And much better too. Yeah, exactly. They'll say the quality. They'll say the leather. They'll say it's Hermes. I've always dreamed of having one. So there's the status symbol. It's the projection. It's not that I just have it at home. I carry it out because I want people to see that I've got it.

it. You know, it's like I always joke that there's a reason they put logos on the outside of things. It's because we want people to know. But the reality is it's worth whatever I think it's worth. And it's the story that I'm trying to tell about myself. And to some people, it is a complete waste of money. And to some people, it is worth every single penny.

And it's for the holder of the bag to determine what the value is. In other words, you're absolutely right, which is the value of things is 100% reflection of how we perceive the world, the stories we want to tell, and whatever's going on in the world today. It is a cultural reflection. And the only thing an NFT is, is it's in a digital format and allows the digital world to participate in the real world. But also because it's digital, it scales faster and more transparently. We'll be right back after this little break.

For 25 years, Brightview Senior Living has been dedicated to creating an award-winning company culture so residents and families receive best-in-class services. Across our 50 communities, Brightview associates help deliver peace of mind, safety, security, transportation, daily programs, delicious food, and high-quality care if needed.

Discover how our vibrant senior living communities can help you live your best life. Visit brightviewseniorliving.com to learn more. Equal housing opportunity.

For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold, with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. But the murder of Carmichael Ante marked the beginning of the end, sparking a chain of events that would ultimately dismantle the most powerful crime organization in American history. It sent the message to them that we can prosecute these people.

Discover how a group of young prosecutors took on the mafia and with the help of law enforcement brought down its most powerful figures. These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way from the federal government. From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcast, this is Law & Order Criminal Justice System.

Listen to Law & Order Criminal Justice System on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes I find that a lot of people don't understand how ownership works. That's why they just take it for granted. Often people, you know, I talk to sometimes think that I own this house because I live in it and it's made of bricks.

Like, you don't own this house because of the bricks, you own this house because you have a certificate that proves the ownership. And that certificate exists because of the government that is stable. But if that government was not stable, and if it was removed, it doesn't matter what certificate you have, you no longer own that house.

So what actually is ownership? It's the cultural context of the society that shares the same story, that shares the same reality. If you no longer share that reality because we went from a dictatorship to a democracy or from a democracy to a dictatorship, whatever that is, then whatever you thought was a reality is gone. Which, by the way, is also one of the reasons why I think so many people in Asia appreciate, for instance, NFTs and blockchain so much more than the West, because we haven't had the benefit

of property rights for most of us in the last 34 years. My parents grew up in a time where they could lose a property at any time. South Korea,

40 years ago was poorer than North Korea. Can you imagine? And today it's the 12th or 13th largest GDP in the world. Why? Because it's a democratic system that has embraced property rights and by extension capitalism and all the network effects that come from it and the freedom. That's why people in Asia, I joke about this sometimes, but I think it's true. The American dream is much more alive and well in Asia because people see the opportunity because in living memory, they know how it's benefited. It's things broadly have gone better.

Just because I'm curious, I'm confounded by Mark Zuckerberg doubling down on the metaverse. He built a business that a lot of people hate Facebook and hate Zuckerberg because we are starting to understand how they control our data, own our data, treat us as the product rather. We have to give it to him in the sense that he's a super smart guy, right? So on one hand, you can say, what are you doing? On the other hand, you can say, wait a second, what does he see that others don't see? And so we take the lens of he sees something.

And he sees the future of the metaverse that we're engaged this way. He sees the future of the metaverse, but it's the old business model where we're going to control all the data and we're going to own everything underneath and you'll go and live a life here, but we will track you, watch you and sell shit back to you and make you a product that

And we will control it. We will control that. And we will control it. And your version is, no, just like in the real world, we'll give you a piece of paper that says you own your car. We'll give you a piece of paper that says you own your house. We'll give you a receipt that says you own your clothes that you chose.

will give you receipts for everything to demonstrate that you own all your own things. And that's basically what you're doing. You're saying you can have any life, a little or a lot, big or small, expensive or inexpensive, and you will provide all the receipts to show that you own everything. And you can choose to sell your stuff if you want because you have the receipt to prove that you own it.

And here's the big opportunity when it comes to things like fan engagement and how to create your community and your networks is that because you have ownership, you become the center of the network that you're building as opposed to building networks for others. So you'll see the stories of musicians, whether it's Snoop Dogg or whatever, that when they started, you know, why do they love Web3? It's because they have so much more direct engagement with the fans and so much more

financial benefit. You see the stories. Musicians say, I've made so much more money in Web3 than in my history making music. And that's not really surprising because this is an interesting stat that a lot of people might not know. Last year in this bear market, NFTs did $24 billion of sales in a nascent industry, I would add. What was important was that of that $24 billion, 90% of that value went to the creators and owners of these NFTs.

So the platform received billions of dollars, but the majority of the value went to the end users of the network. Spotify, which is the largest creator musician network out there, in that same year paid out less than $8 billion. But they serve hundreds of millions of users and way more millions of creatives, which is why every musician will publicly tell you, I can't make money on Spotify.

because the economics don't work for you. And that's one of the reasons why we think ultimately the Web3 paradigm will win because it's so much better for anyone who's in the creative economy. And I would also argue that everyone is a creator ultimately. I mean, you know, when you're writing a story or anything, whatever.

The technology started however the technology started, right? It was designed to solve some unique problem of the day, which is how all technology started. And we made the technology better and better and better. And we adjusted our lives to fit the way the technology works, often to our detriment.

And now what we're doing is we're changing the technology to fit how our life actually works. I feel that for every problem technology creates, technology also has a solution at the end of the day. So when you think of the history in where we are, like there's these problems that happen caused by technology, there's a counter-reaction.

And the reasons may not necessarily be for that reason. Like, for instance, blockchain started as a reaction towards a betrayal of the monetary system. That was the birth of Bitcoin. It was like, wait a second, why are you bailing out the banks? Why aren't you respecting the value of money? It is a bigger aspect here, which is we live in a world where we have lost trust in almost everything.

We don't trust our politicians. We might not even trust our employer. We don't maybe even trust some of our friends. We don't trust our communities. We are tearing ourselves apart because we don't actually know what's true anymore because we cannot actually process the information at the speed in which it's coming at us as well. This is just the nature of where things are.

But actually, if you have a way in which you can have a trust network, which is what blockchain ultimately is, then I can have verifiable aspects of it where now I can actually trust the network again, which to me is the fabric of society. Like if you can't trust people in your society, then you don't have a society.

So you need a system to do that. And government used to be in that role and still is in a way. You have to trust your government. You have to trust the elections to work. Otherwise, how does it work? And so this is, to me, where blockchain technology will come and essentially rescue. You have to understand it, but will basically help us think through this because now we can trust the algorithm.

to basically give us, at least in a consensus-based system, a way in which we can now trust that, oh, you own this Bitcoin and you own this asset. It's immutable. Wait, hold on. How can I use... And you own this vote. And now you own this vote. And now you own this identity. This is who you really are. And you really posted this. This is the other thing with what you can do with AI.

I mean, we could have this conversation and it would not be the two of us. We could have this conversation in Chinese and nobody would know for the better because AI can produce all that stuff. How do I know for sure at scale that we are who we are? And again, you need a system that can scale that trust network. And it's not going to be because we say, here's my passport, by the way, which you can forge very easily.

it's going to be because we have some on-chain dynamic. So I feel like blockchain will help solve these issues for us. And that's basically why Web3 is so critical to our future. Yeah, I could talk to you forever. You were endlessly fascinating. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.

If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simonsynic.com for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself. Take care of each other.

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