Humans of Crypto #2 with Kalani Moe

[Music] thank you so much kelani for here for being here with us so for everybody who doesn't know him kalanimo is the marketing director at villas he's a creative director at coin payments he's involved in a bunch of adventures in crypto and kalani thank you so much for being here today oh my pleasure my pleasure thanks for having me so what's up in san diego man like i'm staring out my window right now and it is sunny and i kind of can see the ocean a little bit like i can get a glimpse of the ocean because i live on a hill and i'm just thinking i want to go to the beach as soon as i know this podcast i'm gonna hit the beach wow is that your life is that like crypto and then the beach well i'm from hawaii so you know i'm a beach kid i grew up surfing and stuff so that's my thing um due to like the industry that i'm in i uh being in in you know in the states is a lot better than just being you know secluded on a little island in hawaii and um yeah like i like being up here a lot better for business purposes so i guess me being in san diego is the closest thing i can get to hawaii interesting did you when did you move from the island to yeah so um so i i moved up to the continent like continental united states i moved up um when i was about 19 i spent my whole life in hawaii born and raised and um yeah i went to school out in va in las vegas and then i moved to california i've been in california for the past 10 years but i mean i travel around a lot but yeah i call this home base so san diego's home base and is that where you also discovered a crypto wow where did i discover crypto so i knew about bitcoin and stuff when i was when it was probably about 2014 you know i had a little bit of bitcoin and then i sold it when it went up to like i don't know like a hundred bucks or something and everyone has that story right and um everyone that's been in this space that long yeah yeah yeah the way that i actually really got into the industry is um i launched my own coin in 2017. um that's still going today i no longer work on operations for the project but i'm one of the original founders of the divi project and they're like a one-click masternode solution and they have like a smart wallet they're putting out so um me and the me and the other founders that i started it with we kind of had a little bit of disagreement so i had an exit from that and then they're still going and then i just kind of kept in the industry kept working with different projects and here we are today in 2021 and everyone in crypto i mean business is booming so everything's going good i mean i'm pretty sure everyone in crypto is having a fantastic year so yeah definitely but it's it's interesting to see for someone who's been in the space for so long it's gonna it's there's i'm guessing there's so many stories we could go into today and it's just i i wish we could be like in person and just hang out and obviously you know discuss these things and and and see each other and right now we have to do this crazy remote uh interaction tell us more about i don't know how was it with uh the divi project that was your first and i understand that it did yeah go perfectly but that's your first relationship in crypto well it was it was it wasn't that it didn't like it did go perfectly because we launched and we raised about 3.5 million dollars and then um our coin went from like 30 cents to 14 in the height of the 2017 bull run and we were just like you know we were looking at our coins and we were just like whoa we've got like you know 40 million dollars with the coins here and we've got like all of our ethereum went up to like a thousand and we i think we had raised it at like less than 100 or something you know so we were just like like our 3.5 million all of a sudden turned into like close to 30 million and then all of our like we were sitting on this massive project and um yeah we just i had some differences in how the project should go forward and just um some of the like kind of the ideas behind it so i said rather than you know sticking it out and working on something that i'm just my heart's not in um i'll just take my shares and go and they can have it because i knew that i would have more success doing things in what didn't you like um just some of the people that they brought on and and just just kind of the way that they they were pushing the the project forward because i was the original guy that you know made the concept of the whole idea of the project and i was the one traveling all over the world going to conferences and doing all that kind of stuff kind of like one of the faces and then i just said you know rather than make a big deal like do something publicly damaging the project because we had differences in how we wanted to go i was just like you know like i'd rather just you know there's a lot of people that believed in this project when it started and i don't want to do anything to damage it or damage the reputation right so i said this is the best way i'm just gonna you know i'll pass it over and you know i'll take my shares obviously i made money on it but um i still you know list myself as a founder on my linkedin and stuff but um i don't really i don't really have anything to do with the project anymore um except i'm the one that created it wow so what was so what because one click masternode sounds really nice for everybody out there who knows about you know dedicated proof-of-stake blockchains and and what happens when you have a certain people with more stake and they're validators and they're more part of the governance uh one-click masternode sounds really nice like the as a concept did you come up with that yeah we we well that was all of us together but when i was part of the project like we hadn't even delivered that yet like we were still in development right so then after i left it finally like a year later i think in 2018 they delivered it um so yeah i mean it was i put together all the concepts and you know ideas behind it but um they're still going i think they're still in the top you know 300 or something i i don't even really look at them i kind of just i don't really pay attention to it yeah so but it's yeah i can i can't imagine and but it's difficult we just mentioned the whole being the face of a project and being sort of that flagship ambassador and then yeah at the same time you're the one you know building trust with an audience or with a community so it's i can imagine the it's it's difficult how did you deal with sort of yeah you the individual and then the difference with the project you're representing yeah so um i don't think it was too big of a deal i just kind of like kind of bowed out because i was i was my official title i was one of the founders my official title was marketing director right so um because that's where my skills lie but i also have project development skills so like con i conceptualized and you know did a lot of the planning and all that kind of stuff but i mean as far as like position wise like it was a little bit easier for me to bow out and just kind of let all my people that knew about me as or just say hey i'm not with these guys anymore clean like i didn't i didn't make a big deal about anything i just kind of slowly transitioned they brought another person on and then i just you know started working on other ventures yeah it wasn't anything uh crazy you know nobody really cares about the marketing director of the project i mean i mean they do but it's not like it's not like i'm the ceo title or something right so but yeah that's kind of how it went yeah so and how was the the scene back then i can imagine just the conference you know the the 2017 phase for those that are just jumping in right now it's hard to imagine but we actually had a lot of conferences going on what was it like oh i think that that was like that i would say right now is the golden age of crypto like 2021 i feel like we're in the golden age i would say that 2017 was a precursor for us to learn all the stuff we're not gonna do in 2021 like there was so many things that people did wrong um in 2017 and i i'm actually thankful for it because you learn what not to do right so especially when you're on the project side when you're on the project side during a bull cycle like in 2017 you learn exactly what you shouldn't do and what's not going to work right the industry changes fast but i think that there was so much money going around with ethereum and the icos in 2017 that it was just it was insane i mean the amount of money people were making on icos and and and it was really to me that that was the really the first real time that retail like retail investors fell in love with crypto you know it was the first time that we got put on like that that that mainstream audience before then it was just something that people had heard about but in 2017 is when we became something that everybody in the world knows about and i feel like that was like the introduction to crypto and i feel like right now is our golden age so just my opinion um did that answer the question i don't know i'm not sure i think it's it's so difficult because i came in late 2017 so i could the the electricity of the ico phase was still there but it was already deflating end of 2017 i would say so you saw already a pre i i knew a lot of people that were part of of that phase and i think no one really understood what was happening was so crazy and it was just crazy craze greed and it was yeah what would you do differently you said we learned from 2017 yes we do differently now i think that um i think that nowadays well are you talking about building a project like if you were to take a project from scratch or just like what you would do just in general yeah both like for building a project and in general like what did we learn if we've matured at all we definitely learned about security how to keep our you know our private keys and stuff secure a lot more um i think there's more utility for crypto in general like back then it was a lot harder um to do things because there just wasn't enough tech out especially with how ethereum is now there's just you know there's that for everything now so um back then you kind of had there was there wasn't very much options um especially on ethereum and everyone was doing their raises on ethereum um and they were they were doing all these you know like for instance like in 2017 if you were gonna do a raise there was literally like a handful of websites where it would just be like a block where it would say okay this is when the countdown was and then everyone would just like jump into the rays you know and just throw ethereum and it was crazy they didn't even care about what it was if it was on this website people would just jump into it you know nowadays i think like when from a marketing standpoint i think you have to be a little bit more careful who you associate yourself with i mean that could be from influencers to you know like uh the marketing companies that you work with because you know like cryptos is about onboarding people and bringing people towards a project that they see value in and hopefully they'll invest in it become long-term supporters but you also that also carries like a responsibility like if you're introducing people to different things and you know there's there's a lot of i mean there's a lot of bad actors but there's also a lot of really good actors so um i think i would be a little bit more selective with some of the money that we spent when we were doing it because like we wasted money on some really bad marketing back then and uh i've learned a lot like you only spend money on stuff that's going to be effective you know so um yeah i guess that would be one of the things just be smart about where you put your money because these projects were raising so much money and they were just throwing money at all these crazy overpriced marketing things and it just half of them weren't effective it's just because we had we didn't have the the results to see hey this doesn't work this does work now we're a little bit more dialed in so yeah i guess just i mean i guess just learn from your mistakes and yeah so that's interesting the the association with bad actors i think and crypto well like in any industry there's good and bad apples right so it's like but it's i i feel like it's it's still really hard to point out those actors sometimes it's and no one wants to be out there just being a crazy person waving a flag and saying oh that person is crazy it's like you know it's like you just sort of step back and don't associate it's really difficult i would say well i feel like just from like a just from like a general like trader's perspective when the market is in like a bull run a lot of these guys are not even doing any due diligence on the people they're listening to you know they'll see a youtube video and then the guy will say something good about it and then they won't even think just go buy the coin right but that's like something that i would stress to anybody listening to this podcast is like i know everyone always says they do your own research but most of the people are they just see some hype behind something and they're going and buying that coin but like you're not doing your research on this project and you know that's that's what is the number one thing man you got to know what you're putting your money into and you got to make sure that there's a team like there's i see so many of these people throwing money into anonymous projects i'm like you don't these guys literally could just disappear on you and you have no idea like you know what i mean like it's crazy but i don't know i guess it kind of falls into the whole defy how how do you vet a pr yeah but how do you vet a project that's actually a very very important question you know sometimes anybody i've seen so many people just put fake people on their website and you think well how can you then check that that linkedin that they're referencing is i mean how deep would you go in your research how do you vet a project let's that's actually a really good question so one of the initiatives that i'm starting um we actually just put the website up today and we've we've locked down a bunch of different partnerships is um we i have a platform called ido booster which is basically we we help platforms get locked in with ido platforms like top level ideo platforms and we also help them with that extra little bit of marketing that um can really help make their ideo successful since it's such a you know big thing in the industry right now ideos are everywhere i mean you got bsc pad you have duckdaw you have you know all the vcs are getting involved with it now so like um what we're doing is we're basically doing stuff like helping projects with like crisis management um how to dispel like flood campaigns because that's a real thing um but we one thing we do is on all the pictures of the projects we do a reverse image search there's a website where you can search the web to see if those images are anywhere else so we grab all the team photos and we'll do a reverse image search on all the team photos you'd be surprised how many people pop up that are not real people you know um so we do that and then obviously we like to talk to people on a face-to-face video call um that's always a good one so like we do a zoom call with them and then obviously heavy heavy research into their linkedin and stuff to make sure that you know all of the stuff on their linkedin is actually what they say it is um and then you know a lot of it is is basically checking out if if they have social media already it's checking out how much of that's authentic and real and then also checking if they're the type of people that would do stuff like fake followers and stuff like that because that can always put up a red flag and then a lot of it is is looking at their pr previous projects like looking how like what type of news and publicity the previous projects got and how long they've been working on it and if there's any content out with them from that previous project because then you can learn a lot um about about it right so um yeah i mean it's it's just a it's just a due diligence process but we go we go pretty heavy into the team members because that will tell you a lot about a project um so yeah that's kind of one of the main things we do is we we just really really vet them and we love personal one-to-one calls so that's um yeah that's probably our biggest thing that we do before we take on any project have you ever had one of these all right have you ever had one of these no no but i love the the color and the marketing sorry i didn't mean to cut you off i was just i've just been drinking it no it's the first time i bought one today i was at the store i was like i need a drink for this podcast what is it i don't know it's like urban yerba mate but it's um the brand is guyake and it's organic i always they always get me with the organic oh it's organic i gotta have it um i mean it's pretty good you know marketing you know better they just slap that on it like don't fall for it it's probably not anybody especially how it's written like at least we have labels here and stuff that doesn't look like actual organic label it just looks like if they could have put vegan on it it would have been the same you know same feeling same good feeling pure impulse buy the packaging got me yeah that that's okay i also like impulse pack yeah what was it what was that i didn't cut you off with my pointless questions no no i actually like to see what the states are drinking since we can't i wish i could travel and have that impulse by myself in san diego and go to a beach and then you know fine for now for now i'll stay put no we're talking about how to vet a project and how diff because you're right i tell people as well you know do your own research but what what is i mean obviously this new website that you're launching it has a different purpose but in general what do you look in a project like do you have any do you have any favorite things that you like to see in a project except i mean of course good people right but then is there something else that you really want to see tokenomics are huge right i mean at the end of the day you know i don't care what anyone says like people are in crypto 90 of them percent of them are in crypto for the money so the tokenomics have to make sense they have to make sure that like the tokenomics aren't ridiculous and like because if your tokenomics are bad you could have the best project in the world and and it's going to ruin the project if you have bad tokenomics right so we look at that um and we actually advise on tokenomics like we we take a look at the entire cap table and say hey okay so we need to project where we're going to be three months from now and how this is going to affect the people and are they going to you know is this does this have longevity are you going to be able to consistently keep you know this coin up with good marketing so yeah tokenomics are huge huge huge thing and then obviously partnerships what what type of token economics because i think i see a lot of white papers and do you like what type of token economics economics you want to see like what is it like the supply is it a certain consensus algorithm is it yes governance the inflation yeah what would you like is number one um and we need to look and make sure if they have like a private round that they did you know where there's backers that a lot of those are vested so that they make sure that you know the people that do come in um you know after those people that got it in a private round that they're not just going to get dumped on and you got to look after your people that are supporting your project right so like you got to make sure that those are vested and there's a good investing schedule and you got to make sure that they're doing things um really fair because some projects will raise a bunch of money and then they're not going to have good vesting terms and then that just all that does is put the early investors in an amazing position and the people that come in like when say they launch on uniswap it gives them a horrible disadvantage so we don't we don't like to do that we we like projects that come in with pharaoh economics you know um and it's and it's a lot it seems like it would be simple but it's actually a lot more difficult um than people think like a lot of the planning and like okay so when is this gonna be unlocked and are we gonna have this update around then because if this gets unlocked over here and we don't have any updates for like you know a month or our tech's not out then that could weigh badly on us because we'll have a lot of downward selling pressure um so we look at that kind of stuff right like we look at like perception like how how the the community is going to look at things and and you always no matter what you always need to take into account the sentiment and then like where the token value is going to be because i mean i hate to say it but like if a token is doing really well people are a lot more lenient they don't even care if the token's doing well and the project doesn't release their tech for a year everyone's happy but if the token's not doing well and they haven't released their tech for a year everyone's going to just complain about when the tech's coming out you get me so like if you can keep people on a nice like you can keep the sentiment nice and you do things the right way you give yourself um you give yourself a lot of advantages and you keep your community happy and i mean crypto's all about that tribalistic nature right like keeping like that tribe of people like we've seen what's happened with like safe moon and dogecoin like it's crazy right and this is all driven from their fanatic fan bases regardless of what you think of the projects i mean they're moving the needle right um so yeah community really is is such a it's them i feel like alongside tech and obviously good leadership that's the number you know that's in the top three things that matter um for a project so and marketing i guess yeah it's yeah mark well i guess community you mentioned something here um in the beginning how distribution should be fair or basically how how the how they raise funds and if it's fair and how how that works for later investors and that distribution is always so tricky right i feel like it's it's hard to you know that's one part of the token economics that are really important to go and look at is what is the initial distribution and how much our people have raised what are the lock-in periods etc but also to make sure that in terms of the token economics themself that there's demand for this token in the future because if there's no demand yeah then it even if you build the best tech even if you deliver in a year but that token doesn't have incentives to be used on whatever they're you they're doing then no one was is going to buy it's only going to be bag holders that will dump eventually basically yeah so i think that one of the things that we like to do is we like to line up like partnerships like i work for coin payments as well so a lot of times that's a huge utility for coins you know i'm a director over there and what i'll do is i'll i'll line up some of the projects i work with to be able to be integrated into coin payments um merchant services and coin payment says partnerships with shopify you know um like some of the they're like the oldest crypto payment processor in the world and um literally if it's it's a huge utility for your coin right like if anybody can accept your coin as a payment option all of a sudden you know you've got way more utility you can do that with your merch store any any merchant that wants to accept your coin can do it with coinpayment so i love to connect um my projects that i work with with that because it it just adds another layer of utility um utility is is key like you need you need to like a circular flow of your coins right like you need your coins moving like token velocity is is a big thing because like you said people will just dump otherwise and if it's a purely speculative or like everyone's 100 holding the coin just because they want to make a profit they're just it's it's um it doesn't bode well for like a long-term project so the more utility you can add the better um i think that's why like all these d5 you know protocols like ave and stuff and compounded they do so good because people are there's so much token velocity with people just fiddling around moving back and forth and trading this borrowing you know i mean they're constantly on it and what happens when you have that when you have that type of utility what happens is people are more locked into your site like if you don't have any utility they just look at their phone and they say oh okay my coin's doing like oh it's doing all right today and then they stopped thinking about it but if they have that utility where they can play around and you know borrow from here lend from here do this do that then they're like spending hours on on your site you know what i mean like it's becoming a bigger part of their you know of their crypto journey so um that's why all those d5 platforms are doing so well is because they're capturing people for a long time um i think that that's something that is will help any project right so yeah yeah you mentioned community as well huh is that a big poster that is a mushroom poster i'm a i'm a an avid uh i was born and raised in switzerland and i'm an avid mushroom forager um but i don't do it in the netherlands we don't have the right climate here for or at least the mushrooms that i know how to pick or more like mountain and it's just what's your favorite one really here [Music] uh [Music] i literally don't know okay apparently is also in english all right it's it's yellow it's very tasty and it's in um you find it uh like an autumn and like in a lot of humidity type of very humid forests um like and uh yeah and i just i think i love mushrooming because it's like it's hiking but it's like fun hiking it's like hiking with a goal you're hiking but you're searching for stuff you know it's not just enjoying nature because you're in nature there's like you know it's a game and when you're a kid it's like you're you have to look for something it's the it's yeah it's the best fortune i just had a visual of you like with a basket just like skipping along through the forest and grabbing mushrooms yeah yeah that happened that happened for sure no it's crazy you get lost it takes hours it's a kind yeah it is a family thing i've never done it like on my own and yeah for me it's definitely uh something i do with my dad and it's it's that's awesome i love it i want to go foraging with you one day maybe you know what in the states oregon portland area my my uncle used to forage for mushrooms there so i know that you can definitely but but then every different ecosystem is going to have different types of mushrooms and then i don't have the knowledge for all the mushrooms i'm like it's very i feel like there's this big scary part when you're foraging for mushrooms of like picking that one mushroom that's going to basically poison your whole basket because that's what happens and then you come home you cook it and then the whole family dies like that actually there's horrible cases of people you know they don't you know it's just by accident because they can look a lot like each other and then some of them are actually really bad for you or you can just get really sick right that's like the low key version and then the scary version is you know they're actually gonna they're talking about legalizing like psilocybin in like like magic mushrooms in denver like they put some bills in place for people because a lot of tech companies are like having their people micro dose those because they feel like it makes them more creative um i don't i'm a big hype right now i almost honestly during the bear market i was like okay crypto's cool but right now it's like so let's do some micro dosing tea or something i almost went into that um obviously amsterdam is very there's a lot of these smart shops where you can get you know your your yeah your microdose your stylus sobin and there's like i haven't again thanks to covet i haven't been able to really be active with different communities but i saw meetups around micro dosing and yoga like there's really some niche people here there's really like some fun whatever hipster hippie places and i think it's just gotten more mainstream it's actually i'm saying hippie but i actually have no idea it's like i feel like it's it might be just mainstream normal 95 people that are also are you born and raised in amsterdam no no born and raised in geneva switzerland wow okay and then amsterdam later in my life you speak such good english it's crazy like i can barely hear your accent that's my mommy my mother is american american i'm a i'm i'm a chinese-american what are they called a b so you're a half half like me my mom's yeah i'm uh polynesian half uh canadian so my dad's this big hawaiian guy and my mom's like this tiny little canadian white lady so they were like wow and then you uh born and raised in hawaii on on which island oahu yeah am i i want to go to okay this is uh yeah i really want to go back to the states and we kind of want to go to hawaii and we want to just like you're going to go in another world when when we're all i guess i just don't like this whole oh we have to all get vaccinated to all see each other again but i guess that's what's going to happen like i've had kovit already twice what yeah that [ __ ] like i am not scared of covet at all because if i catch it a third time i'm just gonna go live in a cave somewhere for the next 10 years because that's crazy i don't i don't i i hope my body has the antibodies by now after catching it twice wow because i'm not trying to catch every single strain of covid two is good enough for me wow was it how was it because how did you know how did you live it i just i just isolated myself and like ordered a lot of doordash and like post mates open cart you know had them deliver a lot of food delivered and um yeah it sucked you know kovitz sucks man it's you know how people are like oh it's just a flu it's not a flu like i can't there's so many different weird things that it does to you um and it lasts longer than the flu i feel like um yeah i didn't it just wasn't fun either time like just generally and then when you're done with it you just feel weaker like it's taken a lot out of you so it takes you a while to build your strength back to feel like normal again you know um whereas like before when i would just get sick with like the flu or cold or something like habit it would run its course then i'd be better i'd be a little bit run down for a couple days after it's gone but then you get back to normal i don't think it's the case with covid like it takes a while like it took me like a month to really feel normal again after the last i had it like three months ago wow yeah and then yeah it's not wow not really fun my brother got really sick too like my younger brother like got really really sick and that was it was actually kind of scary so yeah i'm not a fan of covid as a stale wave stay far away from me with that coven as you can because uh it's been a kind of a yeah it's been it's been a kind of a rough year when it comes to that for me i'm sure it was like a lot of year yeah um yeah we can change this subject seems like every conversation always somehow goes into covets somehow because it's this it's the weird world we're in you know when when this happened march 2020 i hosted my first and last in-person crypto canal event in amsterdam and we had a big last conference exchange it was great and then i got sick for three weeks and it's funny because we were saying we're like okay after these events we're quarantining because we're just you know uh we have to stop going to all these to these events we can't organize anymore and at the time i was also global events manager for bitcoin.com which is not a title you want in 2020 no one wants to be in the events business that was really difficult so yeah i think coven definitely changed our life everyone's life uh in one way or another i've definitely been on more zoom calls than i in one like in a condensed period of time than my entire life in this past year like it's like i've got at least four or five zoom calls a day it's like all right i guess that's what we're doing um yeah but at least you have this this massive cool backdrop tell us about the boxing you do i want to tell tell us about your your sport routine or something you have to so so i uh i do like boxing and kickboxing um i just i just love it's just a really good workout um and i figure like if i'm always in front of my computer like right here working on stuff and it's like i need to have something like close to me like you can't see it but in the um those yellow crates there's like yeah i have like gloves and all the pads that kind of stuff so uh i just do it right here like i have like the black matte behind me so yeah if i need to break from sitting down and like staring into the internet i just get up start running around my office and that's that's how i do it that's great yeah that's great might as well right do you have a sparring partner do you have someone who can't or you just use that uh i can see that boxing bag that's on it's got like sand in it on the bottom yeah are they are those good i feel like those were always a bit right you knock it off right it's easy to like you can't you can't really punch i punched really hard so yeah i didn't knock it off but i'm just noticing so it just looks good basically do you actually no um yeah i mean it's fine i don't i don't kill it like i don't like try to knock it off so it's good it's just good for like technique and stuff you could totally hang one don't you have like nice beams go hang out nice this is like my um my office is is pretty cool it's like um it's kind of reminiscent of like a loft um yeah like it's like the bottom floor of my house so like it's got like all these like i don't know cool little like those big giant pipes that go across and then like the ceiling has all these little compartments in it so like i can like hide stuff up there yeah and like put things in there it's kind of cool and uh is that where we have to go look for your private keys in one of those [Laughter] no i love your background and i i want to there's shoes as well which i you mentioned before but i'm not a sneakers person but i can see that you have a nice collection right there did you already make your nfts out of your own shoes that's only like half of them um so like i so my story behind shoes is like i grew up i didn't have much money as a kid and i remember like i don't know what it is about it but like when i was a kid i used to be on the basketball courts and like me and my little brother we always had like the cheapest payless shoe source shoes and i would look at all the other kids with like their jordans on their nice shoes and as i got older when i started getting money i was like you know what i'm gonna get all the i'm gonna get all the jordans that i ever wanted and i don't care what anyone else and i don't even wear half of them i just like looking at them so is that like your lambo is that like that's um i was actually i i really am tempted to like look at some lambos but like i don't know i i just feel like i just bought a nice new truck so like if i make it like crazy crazy big in crypto over the next couple years maybe i'll get a lambo just to have one i don't know really just to have one just to flex when you're driving it and you're like and then you put like vlx as your as your license plate oh my my founder alex alexandra he's got like three lambos i'm flying out to i'm actually flying out to dubai um to go meet up with him uh end of the week so i'll be flying to dubai on the 29th oh nice that'll be cool get out of the states for a little bit so yeah it's it's it's gonna be good man i've been stuck in the states for like a year and a half now this is my side as a european non-vaccinated waiting person for just shops to open you know at this point we're just still shops okay shops are open if you make an appointment four hours before wow so forget walking down the street and have like an impulse buy moment it's like you have to plan your shopping and you can still go food shopping of course but we're still under curfew like it's we're still under that we're really months behind you guys in terms of you know economy starting again and stuff i mean coffee restaurants everything's still closed it's supposed to open up at the end of the month but it's still it's been long geez it's been really long a warehouse party like last weekend like and there was a bunch of people there and they had like art and stuff and like i was like damn this feels good rubbing it in rubbing it yeah obviously i don't even know what a crowd is we're allowed to invite one person per day in our houses that's crazy that's crazy you know and we there's people protesting of course there's people protesting that that against these overarching governments paternalistic policies that make no sense that are killing businesses and at the same time there's the whole covet and we have the whole i don't know i don't know but cases aren't going down and they've shut down the whole economy but kind of so it's like the world how long are we going to pay for this you know and mental health and there's so much i mean everything what are you doing what are you doing to keep sane good topic turning into me interviewing you yeah you flipped the switch i see um uh went through a great beautiful depression last year really spectacular one um had a tent in in my kitchen that's how i was like just i could just cope with that so you know but that lasted a while and then dragged myself to get help basically um and ever since it's been making sure that actually crypto is not all my life you know i think i was lost in it since 20 i mean since october 2017 it's just been non-stop crypto all day every day you know getting a job in this industry then also not getting that job any more than being an entrepreneur being independent different clients just getting lost in each different clients that i would get and learning mistakes as well and just personal development and growth like you can't be a people pleaser all the time you have to say no to things you have to put limits you have to take care of yourself so that's a great whole subject in my life and then i think what's been really cool and thank you covet i guess but just being more creative like remembering that actually i'm not just a crypto peer-to-peer electronic cash militant i'm also someone who likes to draw who likes to paint who likes to do pottery yoga meditation all those things and also you know actually we also have a nice mat at home and we also like to do uh some sparring and some some case boxing and boxing at home some light judges we're not we're not experts at all but uh we we at least have that outlet and actually yeah do a bunch of stuff basically that's not crypto just take care of yourself so you said at home like are you in your home office or is this like your office that you're doing the podcast from like that's separate it says home but it's also my office it's all in one you can't right now we could go to the office but no it's too it's i think i actually like working from home i've been working from home from before covid right before covet i was already working from home and it hasn't really changed for me but at least we used to have meetups and events to get with other people to get us nerds out of our screens and not geek out all day every day yeah you know what the thing is that's really missing and and this is like one of the ways i've built like my best business relationships is like that person-to-person connection like i really feel like if you meet someone in person and you actually get to talk with them and like look at them and like shake their hand um that goes so much further um to you know what i mean it really does like oh leaps yeah yeah oh it's it's just completely i think all the business i've ever done almost well has been from from from peer-to-peer connections have been from from actually engaging in persons completely different you know and i think with resume calls and how we've been sort of trained this last year to be so professional so so you know i'm guilty of it as well and i also wanted this podcast because i wanted to meet people of course i want to like share with people but i wanted to meet people and when i met you on that digital online uh event that we did together i thought oh yeah that person if i met kelani in person we would have a good time i want to talk to that person again this is purely a whole selfish enterprise right now it's just like how can i bring people and meet people that live across the world to me you gotta come visit you gotta come visit uh san diego or california when everything opens up you come down and we'll hang out and we'll take you to the beach and we'll uh go do something i'd love that [Music] yeah i mean in the days honestly traveling just sounds like just such an alien concept right now really it's like it's so far like mentally it's so far it's like my my zone last year when they opened up so we had this sort of release right so kovit hasn't been like this for this until now it's yeah we had a summer kind of last year and i just went to visit family in geneva and i want i want to see the world we nev we took so many things for granted i think i was so used to traveling and and you know just was such a casual thing um but definitely seeing the world seeing people but seeing family as well like realizing yeah you'll get back to it don't worry it'll it'll come it's gonna take some time then you'll be able to it'll be good but um yeah so okay so yeah so i just i just turned the interview on its head you know i was interviewing you for like the past 20 minutes i like it i don't i don't think this has to be a you know a give and take thing it shouldn't be just the two-way street all right yeah yeah that's the relationship because that's how it would be normal that's how it would feel like if it was in person so that's cool yeah so um i guess what what what what are you like working on as far as like you know projects like what are you like what would you say what projects are you working on currently besides this yeah um so this is one of my favorite little babies right now is definitely the humans of crypto podcast i just it's just so nice to finally have a platform when i can invite people another big part of i guess my life right now is education i realize i think after you know that tent moment and crypto and pottery phase last year why why am i in crypto like what motivates me why do why do why am i dedicating my life to this industry my why am i so passionate what makes me what makes me passionate basically and education it was just it screamed at me i was like it's been on my okay okay putting people together sure but next thing is it has been to bring people in you know new people is really something i like to do and i think it it's started from my first job actually like with btc.

com when i was content and community manager at the time and i would on board people to crypto it was the perfect i loved that job and it was so so much fun we had such a great team um and basically ever since i've been trying basically to recreate this job for myself and so education is something i'm really passionate about and so as of december january february i was organizing a lot of events online to just welcome people but i was doing it per country so i did like hong kong lebanon italy vietnam i was a bit all over the place but basically i realized that the netherlands maybe don't need cryptocurrencies as such as like there's so many other places in the world where you know financial freedom is is not something you can take for granted it's something that you actually feel deeply in your pocket with your bank it's a struggle and so that's why i was doing these meetups for these specific regions where it's it's really difficult and lebanon digital content do you ever do like educational content for like like pieces you know what we're gonna have to talk offline because i actually have i've actually been tasked with finding someone for coin payments that wants to do like content payments get me there i i you know for me my my hometown or my home community has always been bch so i've stepped out a little bit as of last year just to be less sucked in i think to a community even though i totally vibe with the values and the ethos of bch which was is you know bigger blocks to enable cheaper transactions to enable peer-to-peer electronic cash and for payments and for utility and for cryptocurrency to be more than speculation based i feel like a lot of people in bch vibe with that libertarian ethos which vibes with me and i think is why i'm in crypto because i realized i was doing i was working with different wallets different exchanges and sure you know money's nice you know of course money is nice but having meaning and purpose i don't know and every time i have a class and i teach and i give crypto to people and i explain to them their private keys and i explain to them i've given you just a little bit of internet magic money here you go just now fly little bird i love it it's my favorite it's my favorite part so yeah a lot of joy so now what i do is i host a crypto 101 um meetup every month every last wednesday of the month and it's free so that one's free and that's one hour and then q a and then drinks that's new i added drinks because i realized that some people just wanted to hang out and not wanted to do the whole crypto 101 and then i also offer cryptocurrency deep dives so three hour really hardcore like private lessons for people that want to get all their basics and check because a lot of people haven't and the profile i would say is people that already have invested but kind of casually maybe not really super deep they might have everything on an exchange and they log in three years later and they're like wait what and now they're like okay what's a cold wallet wait what what what do you mean what's a what's a wallet what's a non-custodian wallet so it's like they have to like they've made money but or or they want to get into the space so i've had different profiles but i would say people that are joining the that are you know willing to pay and and go for three hour class with me are are very are very interesting crowd and i got just frustrated by seeing all these classes and diplomas that were like so expensive and like over three months and i was like i looked at the program and i was like yeah we can do this faster i can i can do this i can teach people probably enjoy like learning from you too because you have a very like nice and like calm kind of demeanor you're probably not making them feel like they're idiots that don't know anything about crypto you probably make them feel really comfortable so that's good i'm nice that's my yeah that's the swissness you know in me i'm still like very diplomatic i do we had like really interesting moments when we go and look at a blog explorer and it's like it's their favorite chain and they've made so much money and then we go to the blog explorer and there's no volume there's like no transaction in the last hour and they're like is is that bad and i'm like well you know it's um a ghost chain has um you know is is interesting it's just it's yeah it's it's interesting so they learn so i try indeed i try to not have that whole shaming angle i'm not there for that and so being the content creative director for coin payments i'm going to offer you a content piece on our coin payments to do you let you pick the content you want and you can come and have a like a guest content piece with us and we'll push it out [Music] we would love to have you you heard it here it's up to you though you don't come back i will edit this out of the podcast if it doesn't happen you don't have to yeah but it's it's interesting because no no it's uh it's it's something that yeah you're right i need to learn how to say no to people but we'll totally discuss this afterwards if you want it's difficult i i get i get i'm very i'm very lucky i'm very lucky in the sense that people want to work with me and they like what i do it's just been so difficult to finally do things for myself and i think that's also part of the learning curve of crypto um i used to it's funny people people used to ask you know how do you start in crypto how did you get in and i mean first year i was just basically kind of pimping myself out you know what i mean is like my time was what i was selling so i was like i give 20 percent here 30 there 30 to this other company and that was exhausting exhausting it's only now that i'm like yeah it's no it's good when you do it for yourself like it's more rewarding when you you know like you basically you the buck stops at you so it's not like you have like expectations or anything and you can kind of make the stuff you want to do and you can you know you can be very independent on that in that aspect so yeah definitely respect that so that's what i've been doing outside of the podcasts and other stuff but it's really nice i can't complain sweet um what time is it over there it's almost uh it's yeah almost 11 wow i got you up late that's okay i know it sent well i had to you know i wanted to accommodate for our san diego pacific time people no but it's it's that's why you don't really sleep in crypto right sometimes you just get sucked in by the community and that's something maybe it was something i want to talk about with you because i think you have a lot of marketing expertise really you've seen so many different things from different coins from different projects and i feel like community management which is also something i'm very passionate about how how do we do that how do we do community management what is community management in in your opinion in crypto like how what is that that's one of that's one of the big like one of the things that we kind of specialize in when it comes to um like like for for like a launch off point for a project uh the first thing you do even if you don't have any other information ready or like you don't have any of the announcements ready like just from the concept stage the number one thing you start is the community because you want to peak people's interest you want them to want to learn more and you basically want to capture them there so that they can you know be waiting for all of your good updates and really be attached to the project from the very beginning everyone wants to learn about something early so that i mean there's a there's a peak point of interest there but i think that the main thing with community building to me is you'll see projects or you know crypto projects where they'll just put some guys in as community managers and the guys aren't com is there they're literally just answering a question and just posting links but i think when you start getting into the higher level narratives where they're actually you know making people feel connected to the project making them feel like it's an actual person they're typing to rather than just so like somebody who's just giving them responses and isn't asking them questions or really kind of diving deep you need to make your admins feel like there's a human touch there and that's a big that's a big thing um i think that uh yeah i think far too many projects just have guys they're real people but they just seem like robots because all they do is just respond with like generic answers you know um i think that yeah that that personal touch for your communities to start out with is really big and then you have to have like a figure that is actually a core part of the team needs to be in that community right you can't just have a couple of admins and then they never hear from the actual team members they got to be in there talking to the community right they want to feel like they're connected to the people that are really behind the project consistency is a big one and then obviously you know like from a marketing perspective you want to supplant the link to your telegram or your discord or whatever is your main focal point for your community you want to be having those links everywhere that's relevant like you want for instance like if you're an nft project so i'll give you an example so like we're helping this this nft project called nafta they're really really cool they do like um it's like an instagram only fans for nfts where people can like snap a picture mint an nft and like have it on their social platform it's like you know instagram people will be like nft support me you know like like it's like really quick nft creation um what we did with them is we grabbed their link and we went into like really high level nft centric groups and we talked about them we brought them up a little bit and we did some really high level discussion about it we didn't do anything spammy or chilly but we got people interested in it by telling people like hey check this out you know we want you guys to tell us what you think if you guys want go audit then go check them out and uh what happened is we just post the link and then now you're getting your target market of people that you want in your community right because you can you can do marketing tactics that will bring a ton of people into a community but are those really the kind of people that are going to care about that project right so i'll take i'll take more i'll take less highly targeted people than more you know um just randomly targeted people if that makes sense do you know what i mean i'd rather have a thousand solid people call it quality yeah yeah quality but like some of these projects will just go with the shotgun approach and they'll get like you know 50 60 000 people in their telegram group but i mean how many of those people really care about the project you know so um we try we try to start off making it really focused and like people that really care about that particular type of project um and then just amazing admins like don't waste don't spend money on cheap admins like if you got a budget for admins for your community make sure that they're really good you know and that that goes a long way it's well worth the money um people that can start good conversation and and make people want to come back and you know make them feel at home so community building is huge it's like the biggest part of everything and then obviously a good content flow like you can't have like a week where you just have nothing no updates even if you don't have any updates create some kind of update you know to keep people engaged right so many places for them to go um keep them in line like if you have to like do a little you know fun activity or even just like you know i don't know just what whatever it could be to keep people engaged so they feel like don't feel like the community's stale that's what you got to do constant updates so it's it's not that hard but it it's not that hard in theory but it's the actual application of building a really strong community is there's no substitute for the hours those people have to put in to build it right it just takes time and effort like genuine effort so i don't think there's really any shortcuts for that did i talk your ear off there that was a great answer oh that was that was that was amazing no no because um you mentioned so many good points like the genuine human touch like not having a robot huge quality over quantity of anonymous users that will never interact with your platform that you paid for that are just weird you know accounts or whatever um and i love the sort of you're right sort of the you know keep the ball rolling keep the content rolling um and that's why i feel like and that's where it's a bit blurry between community like people like you know you and i right now talking to each other and when you scale and you have hundreds or thousands of people and how do you keep that going how do you keep that connected that human touch at that i think that's that's where it gets difficult it's it's to keep that that when that's feeling when you were 10 20 100 how do you keep that momentum and that that the you know the core going when you when you really reach scale that's really difficult yeah yeah so i think that first like new startups i think that it's actually can be a bad thing if you have too many like open format communities like i suggest projects to either pick a discord or a telegram or wherever they want to centralize that at first so they can you know cultivate a good group of people right and then as you grow as you feel stronger because it's a lot of work to cultivate a genuine community as you get bigger then you can introduce like say you started with this you know telegram then build out let people know that a discord's coming because some people might like discord but like build out that telegram strong and let people know that you have the discord coming and that's kind of like a good marketing tool because it's like okay we're expanding our communities rather than just starting out with all of those communities at once and then now you have to tend to both of them and one might be a lot stronger than the other then it's gonna make the other one look weak you know what i mean yeah that's that's the problem with having all these platforms you know i realized like i'm on linkedin i'm on facebook i'm on tel but right now i think for cryptocurrencies my community is definitely more on telegram but it's interesting that you're mentioning discord and then what's the next place we have to be where do we but it's such an effort to move people and you don't really want it's really difficult and like if your admins are better in one area then you're going to be lacking in the other right and you don't know somebody might the the one that's lacking might be the first impression that somebody gets of this project and then that might give them a bad impression if you're lacking in one side so like i say like until like you've built the infrastructure like it's until you if if community building is really a big thing i say you focus on that one so you make sure those people are really dialed in there and they feel like they're a really big part of that community and then you expand afterwards um unless you have the resources to allocate all the way across the board and make sure that the same amount of efforts being put in both of them at the same time you know is is community management for you just marketing is it just you know and i mean that in the shallow way and i think that that's something that we get as a criticism when we're you know is it just fluff is it just all fabricated or right look so it depends on the project like let's say like if this is a project that is financial based and it's you know um they're they don't have any kind of like art for instance like you take like an nft project and then you go take like a uh let's say a project that's like a lending platform right so the nft project i feel like that community and that's why i feel like nfts are so big is because you can cultivate a community of really artistic creative people that are are thinking more than just dollar signs they're thinking like wow i love you know the the artistic you know initiative that this project's putting out i really love the you know the craftsmanship they put into this you know uh piece that they did you can get a lot more i feel like you can get deeper with those people if it's a lending platform that has his own token yeah people are there for the money but you know make no mistake they're there for the money like they you know what i mean like they might love what you're doing but they're there because they want to make money um so like with with you know communities that are a little bit the project is a little bit more diverse and there's kind of other aspects just aside from the financial defense side i think it opens a lot more doors to you options in in as far as like cultivating that community and doing more creative cool things um yeah so that's kind of my take on that um yeah absolutely you just gotta pick like you know you got to know exactly what these people want and then you got to cater to them um you can't cater to like a a lending platform community the same way you would cater to an nft platform community because it's just different mindset you know people are in different kind of stages of their crypto journey so yeah yeah absolutely yeah absolutely you can't talk and do the same activities with yeah depending on basically the values and the profile of your community and your audience and what what do they like what's important to them etc i think one more thing that i didn't mention is it's always really good to have a guy that's good at high level narratives because sometimes you'll get hit with hit with flood attacks and this is mostly on the project side where you mentioned that before damage control is big for like a project what's a flood attack maybe for those that don't know what's a flood attack yeah so like for instance there's guys that will look at a project that they like and they have this big group of like let's say 20 30 people and what they'll do is they will say okay guys this is doing really well but we want to come in at a lower entry point so what they'll do is they'll make like a reddit article that's like making up a bunch of lies [ __ ] and then they'll get a bunch of their guys going into the community like spreading like fud and then what it'll do is it'll bring the price down so they can buy it cheaper and it's a real thing in crypto that happens so like you need to be able to dispel that quick because it can snowball if you don't take care of it fast enough you know um that's one of the things that we do for projects is like a lot of damage it's it's not a pump and dump it's a dump and pump group so they first dump and pump they've done their due diligence and they're sharp you know they're sharp like crypto guys but they're just have no values and there's bad people so what they want to do is they want to get it at a cheaper price so they're like hey let's go flood this let's go make some [ __ ] up and then we'll get it for a way lower price because we're going to scare all these people and then we're going to get in for such a nice entry point because we know the project's quality happens all the time crypto it's like the darker side yeah it's it's not it's not it's not fun i'm kind of sheltered i realize i'm sheltered i think by not yeah by not doing too much marketing for a certain coin or i mean yeah i mean i saw bch i saw the whole but i don't i think it was that was yeah that was not that was more genuine community discussion and disagreements more than a flood group attacking to get into a lower that's insane that's very strategic and very yeah i mean they're everywhere it's wild exactly it's crazy like they'll do they'll go like crazy with it they'll like make up just straight lies and and they're real clever with it so you need to have all your ducks in order like they'll attack the team they'll make up lies they'll make big reddit posts and they'll have guys with reputation on reddit that'll post it and like then they'll get seen by like thousands and thousands of people and then they all start [Music] you know and then it's like we call the marketing director there's a reddit emergency so we have like a high-level narrative guy that like will be like hey we're getting hit so like here and then he'll come with the narrative and he'll like inform everyone in all the communities like hey this is what you this is how you respond to this we need to let people know unequivocally that this is all [ __ ] this is lies point out all the stuff that they're saying which is lies you got to hit it fast because if you don't take care of it people in crypto are like they're like sheep they might see one thing that's a lie and then they're just gonna freak out and sell their coins because they've probably been burnt before um you know so that's that's definitely it's like it's kind of weird it's like the cyber security of of community building is like damage control like you know how you have like a like a cyber security for ddos like ddos protection for your website yeah i would say like every project that's kind of reaching good point needs to have a guy that can prepare everyone for like when that kind of stuff happens especially in d5 it happens a lot so like wow okay so like you need a spin master or you need like when you say narrative person like you mean can take the problem like so let's say like an actor or a public figure has some bad news come out about them that's fake you need your publicist to be able to say the exact right words so that your response to that lie that's getting a lot of attention you're not actually making yourself look worse in your response because you're not like let's see you know what i mean so like you gotta you gotta be real clever about the stuff you say publicly because a project you got to think of a project like a celebrity right like there's like everyone's looking at this one project so like the voice coming from that project you need to be careful with you need to be very careful with the words that come out of the project because things can be misconstrued um yeah it's it's it gets pretty intricate so yeah wow okay that's good insight for all of us out there who might not realize what the backstage of the flood management crisis control look like the sewers the sewers of d5 yeah it's bad that's a nice title for the sewers of defense i just swim along in the sewers maybe maybe this is a good time for you to to and this is a bit out of the blue but i i want you to do the the show and tell before uh unless that was maybe the can of of a drink that you had before but do you have uh an object that we can all remember you by i mean obviously your shoes and your background already but like do you have something special i actually have two things and there's a story behind it is that cool yeah go ahead please so so this is my dad um his name is joseph moy and he was a like a famous hawaiian entertainer and um he he kind of looks like me right um that's when he was about my age good luck yeah he used to do like the samoan fire knife dance and like used to dance with all like the hula girls and he was one at one time he was the most famous uh he was the most photographed polynesian in the world and uh he was he was like probably my biggest role model he's passed away now but i keep a picture of him near me all the time and uh yeah he's probably been like my biggest inspiration in life so yeah his name is joseph moy if anyone wants to check that out wow thank you so much nice to see you josefo even in picture i love that the necklace what's the necklace that he was wearing wow when i was a kid i would be with my dad a lot and we didn't have that much money um so like my dad would always have this rolex on his wrist and um i would always be like dad that's cool that's a rolex you know this is when i'm like 11 12. and he i was like is that real and he's like nah it's fake son and i would always like like to because he just loved rolexes and um i said i said oh that's not a real one he's like nope but you're gonna have a real one one day and i remember him saying that to me so um i i just that always just stuck with me that my dad just loved rolexes and and he passed away and when he passed away i was i was still like kind of building myself up and i never really had the money to like get him one you know if he was still around that is what i would have done so like as i kind of like made my way and i got a little bit older into my 30s um i actually got this and i i um i put this near him when i when i go to sleep so it's like a it's a it's a rolex that i bought basically for him i don't really wear it but it's like a like a gold rolex that i put by his picture every night um and it's like it's kind of like my way to be like hey dad i got you so that is my thing that i wanted to share i can kind of show it to you a little bit more hold on i don't really wear it i just kind of like leave it by his picture it's got like diamonds and stuff it's really cool but i feel a little bit weird wearing it maybe if i go out somewhere nice or something but yeah i bought that for my dad after i started doing well i am i don't know just it's just something that i just always knew i wanted to do so that's what i wanted to share oh i have i have i have no words this is just wow this is thank you so much it's just it's beautiful it's so beautiful oh so beautiful um really and uh for everybody out there take care of your parents really enjoy them um while they're there while they can still be there around you and i'm it's so beautiful that you're splurging on him you know later thoughts oh you're gonna make me all emotional too and i usually don't talk about my dad but we talked about dad today it's so sweet oh wow thank you wow really beautiful really beautiful and it's a beautiful watch the swiss in me is like yes rolex dominate uh but wow that's a that's very touching um yeah it's just it it's crazy because like i always knew and i know know that like if he was still around i would just give it to him like i don't care to you know have it it would be like hey dad i got it for you you know wink i i did it i got you that real one yeah exactly wow it's not really even a material thing it's more like the gift right yeah yeah absolutely i think it's it's it's interesting as well that he inspired you you know he said that that one day that you would get it you know what i mean like it's kind of manifestation much you know yeah what i'm gonna do i have a son you know so i'm gonna pass it down to him so like when i get older i want to give it to him you know and i'll actually give it to him so it's like kind of like maybe passing it down yeah it's cool so that's very cool that's you know what forget the lambo just get more watches just they're you know cars they depreciate in value the moment you you buy it and you can capture cars can be crashed i don't know yeah i think rolex's actually go up in value too like as they get like older if they're kept nicely they yeah they just might they just might i actually have um wow okay watches interesting you can you can go really far with watches uh you can engrave them you can you can you can you can really put so much meaning into this object and it definitely is part of the swiss narrative to have that legacy tied to these things it's more than a watch it's more than time it's the craftsmanship but it's also the you know what it means yeah yeah oh wow but it's interesting wow well thank you so much for sharing and to see your your dad uh yeah so handsome oh polynesian uh uh dancer then yeah look he has a wikipedia um you can check him out if you want it's j.o you're gonna have to share it with uh we're putting it we're putting in the podcast yeah j-o-s-e-f-a and last name moy mo apostrophe-e and that's my yeah that's my father and i'm one of 11 kids so wow yeah he had a lot of kids i guess that's what they did back in the day right how many do you have i you have two boy and a girl yeah so he's getting the rolex what is what is she getting um well i think i'll give it to you yeah i think i'll give it to both of them i don't want to like single one out you know like i want to be fair so i'll be like this is for both of you and then you can they can figure it out but i mean it's a men's watch get a woman's romance rolex you know just oh those things i need a referral link from rolex these are expensive i can't keep buying all different rolexes now [Laughter] yeah it's interesting wow yeah family i think it also ties it back to why we're you know this this industry of entrepreneurship and freedom and also showing our parents you know yeah it's just there's a generational thing with crypto for sure it's new ways of doing new freedom new financial empowerment and also opportunity for people that just would never had had any opportunity through these types of markets just really in the traditional world you just couldn't it's like people are looking at things different now too like for instance even just the way i look at it like i am not putting a college sun fund away from my kids i have a ledger on each of them and i put crypto in there and i know by the time they're 18 i know that that's going to be worth way more than it is so i got them bitcoin in there and ethereum and i just said i'm putting this on a ledger and this is your college fund and i know i am 100 sure that by the time they're 18 like that's going to be more than enough to for all of their college you know so like and if i'm wrong then i'm then i guess i'll just pay for their college fund but like it i know i'm not wrong you know what i mean so like probably this is not investment advice but probably not yeah yeah i'll i'll argue another day on on the whole bitcoin thing but that theorem is good i'll stop now okay you're like no utility on what um no it's it's fascinating to do how do you do you do you talk to them about a lot about crypto do you like do they do you have private key management ceremonies at home a 12 year old and how to write down all his private uh his seed words and everything and he knows how to use wallets and he knows how to transact with it but obviously i don't want him to be focused on money because he's a kid i don't want him to be too focused on money but i also want him to be like have an understanding of it you know what i mean like 12 years old i just want him to be riding his bike and you know getting rolling around in the dirt and getting into fights with other kids like i don't want him to be worried about money at that age you know what i mean i want him to just yeah yeah yeah so yeah i i worry about that stuff too much so like i want him to just have fun and be a kid so i've taught him like the basics so he's really he loves computers and stuff so i know he's to be fine when maybe when he's like 16 we can get a little bit deeper into like strategy and stuff like that you know but right now just let him have fun let him be a kid and he can worry about that when he's a bit older cute cute cute i think it's it's interesting to see that the yeah all of us in crypto are you know having babies having some depending on how old they are they have families etc and to see how crypto penetrates different generations and then how we teach the next generation about crypto and they will be ah it's beautiful they really i really believe that all of this is we're just you said this was the golden age where it's either still the stone age we're just we're so early in terms of i mean sure in terms of you know markets all doing well but in terms of changing monetary world how how that's going to change how fiat is going to be when your kid is 60 you know how are nation state going to still use you know fiat yeah i think that the thing that's so different about this cycle for all those other cycles i've been through is like i think we it's possible we could be in a super cycle i really been thinking about that a lot like because there's so much interest right now and there's so much other people coming in right now i keep thinking like most people like in traditional bowl cycle like if you were to look at 2017 and then the one before that um you we'd have about six months left or somewhere around there right like four to six months left before we start declining but like i really feel like this one could be a super cycle that lasts like a year and a half more because i just feel like there's so much stuff happening right now in the space and i just feel like i feel like that's going to outweigh the i feel like the interest and the amount of institutions and the amount of big companies that are recognizing cryptocurrency as a viable source of you know viable like monetary like option or like as an asset class is gonna outweigh any of those like you know people that are just gonna dump in the bear market obviously you're gonna have areas where it comes down and we have this decline but i don't know i think we could be in a super cycle it's something that i've been going it's been going through my head a lot um because crypto actually hasn't had a super cycle yet right like everything's been kind of pretty much on the dot but like if you look at most markets like if you look at like like the tech you know like the dot when like the dot com came and like all that stuff just kind of like changed the way that the world like you know interacted i feel like crypto's gonna do the exact same thing but we still haven't hit that super cycle that that crazy wave where we don't you know it doesn't it doesn't go into a bear market like on cue like it's supposed to like how it did in 2017. like it could just keep going you know what i mean there's a chance that that could happen um you know so yeah i think interesting i haven't personally thought of it i think it's just been like this bull market has just you're right just it keeps inflating it just doesn't whereas 2017 i got in october right sharp and then the sharpest decline was just generally it was very sudden right it took people by surprise whereas this one it just feels kind of more mellow but it also feels more stable bull run i don't know the thing is i think we'll have a blow off top like i think that like so like i look at everything like and obviously in terms of bitcoin and like ethereum where they're at um i look at like price wise right so like i think it's gonna blow off top but i think on the decline i don't i think there's going to be enough interest that we're not going to have like an eighty percent uh drop pull back you know i i don't think that we're ever gonna see a ten thousand dollar bitcoin again you know i don't think so i don't think we're ever gonna see you know a 300 ethereum i think we're past that you know what i mean like i think that i mean can you imagine that was only a year ago or something well i don't i don't think we're going there i don't think that there's way too much involvement and too many big players in the industry for it to happen because they're going to find value in that and they're not selling like all these big institutions that are buying in at like 50 000 of bitcoin they're not in it to to make 10 000 on their bitcoin they're holding that long term you know what it means like uh yeah and and the amount of bitcoin that's coming off exchange and just being held in wallets is is huge right now it's more than it's ever been and um it's just it's just it's wild like it's you know the market is just so different from what it's been in the past like everything's not speculation now like this is being looked at as the emerging industry you know so so like it's different it's different you know not every single you know i i i this could go for another like 18 months it really could you know let's see we don't have any uh magic crystal ball i think it's always difficult with markets and and you know it i i wish i i wish the market good i wish the everything good in this industry but um yeah we never know and it's but it's the price is definitely something very interesting and it does bring people in and i do see a lot of interest coming in and it's everyone it's not just like in 2017 where it's like a couple of people like people i would say like my profile like i'm from that wave right of like not even ico but price was going up and there was more events and more meet up so it was just more in your face um and right now it's just yeah that momentum just feels more like these even right even these dips that we've had they haven't been that bad and then they just come right back it's like if you look at it like it doesn't dip for long like you know what i mean like in like the dips aren't as hard they're not you know um but it's isn't it isn't it due as well to i know we're going to bring back to that nice little trend that we have now called covet but it's that whole it there's hope in crypto you know like covet and the economy and the s p 500 are just such a weird place to invest right now well it's it's it's because you have to divest well the technology's gotten way better too you know like if you just look at ethereum right so like look at how much utility there is like look at 2017 and then look at the utility for ethereum right now like how many d5 products there are how many different you know things there are things that you can actually do with your coin in 2017 if you owned ethereum you couldn't really do anything with it yeah you could just there and look at it you know and now you've got all these other chains that are starting to you know hop on the d5 bandwagon and and like decentralized like you know financial options are like a legitimate like a legitimate option that people are interested in there's people making money on it you know so that's that's big and then the technology is getting better you know blockchains are getting faster you know like um cross chains you know cross chains here you know like people are doing cross chain ethereum is going to fix the scaling issues i mean you look at a uh block i don't mean to show my own project but you look at bellas we just did a 3.0 mainnet upgrade we just um built uh we forked solana's code base and added evm compatibility so like anybody that knows how to code solidity can build on velos but we're doing like 75 000 to 100 000 transactions a second now so like we're so scalable you know um because we want to be like a next-gen blockchain you have social media platforms that are launching that are inherently crypto products you know that are actually using the blockchain for that social media platform um you've got cross-chain compatibility you have decentralized custodianship you've got um there's just so there's so much utility for crypto now that yeah that's also the biggest catalyst oh yeah we're we're working right now on an article for uh called the rise of dex the case of uni swap and it's just so beautiful to see that space grow and succeed and a amms and decentralized exchanges was kind of in 2017 was kind of this obscure thing that everybody wanted but it wasn't working and liquidity was always a problem and people couldn't you couldn't match orders and it was like this whole but it's you know use it for the beauty of it and now it actually works and it's there i don't even trade on sexes anymore i i'm almost all decks now like obviously everyone has a finance account and like stuff like that if they want to go get like a altcoin that's on its own blockchain or something or like an up-and-coming one but like when you're talking about like trading like into stablecoin or if you're talking about like the top like i won't i don't care about the fees because i just i just prefer the experience you know it's yeah because i know how to use it and it's easy you know it's so easy they've made it just yeah blindfolded you can't yeah you can't it's i i appreciate that as a non-tech person that it's just it's pretty can we also like as fellow marketeers just appreciate their marketing and how how nice the platform also looks i i like it and when i've seen like copies like sushi swap just their marketing was insane i loved it i think it was so good so smart well they started vampire mining right so like that was what they started like they set that whole trend trend of like and then they stole a lot of the liquidity moved over from uniswap you know it was brilliant you know that was so smart but but that's the next game where the community is maybe more than your it's your liquidity you need to re retain your liquidity providers and give them good governance basically well have you seen them yeah have you read uh what they're doing with version three that's coming out next month unit swap version three so they're gonna let people set their liquidity ranges so that's i don't think enough people are talking about that that's a game changer so like you can literally say where you want your liquidity to take effect so basically in theory like i know there's gonna be people that try to game it but i was just thinking about that the other day and i was like so let's say i'm a project and i launch and i get some really nice multiples and i get my uh i don't know my coin goes 10x right out the gate what if i had what if i were to say hey we're having a liquidity event where we want everyone to focus their liquidity at this price to keep their the price of their coin up right so like if all the liquidity is at a certain price like above when they've hit that multiple and it's like even if people don't the liquidity is there it still keeps the coin in that price range i mean how does that affect how does that affect things does that mean that projects that's gonna be that we're gonna be able to yeah you know you got to think about that yeah as as marketeers we have to think about that because we have to think yeah of what are going to be the marketing strategies of tomorrow so as as the technology evolves what does that enable how does that enable people to express themselves for their money can they do more uh it's it's gonna be cool right so exciting yeah yeah it's like capital efficiency and all that kind of stuff that they're implementing and then the liquidity the lp tokens that they're they're minting now when you add liquidity is it's it's now a nft it's an ercl it's i forget the 1150 721 no no it's it's in let me look hold on uh unison i didn't know but think about that oh yeah i see yeah yeah so now it's now it's now it's a different um it's a different uh format oh my god that's wild right so it's it's kind of that's really cool yeah so like think about it really cool think about like the uh like the type of like properties that they'll be able to like attach to these to these lp tokens you know what i mean so no lp tokens gonna be the same right um and i think that's gonna allow them to have more flexibility with the different type of stuff that they can do um so yeah it's it's definitely super interesting and i don't think enough people are talking about it it's coming out in like three weeks yeah yeah and actually yeah i feel i should do wow do you um [Music] are you yourself do you dabble as a liquidity provider uh on unisop or just as a trader um i've done a lot of trading this year um just dude the d5 has been heard my per my own personal space where i've just i've just loved researching these projects and and you know getting in like when they when they're bullish to me like i'll go in hard and like i i think that there's so much interest in defying and i love how honest the liquidity is there you know and i love how honest the trading volume is you know what i mean it's like it's just i just lost there's no wash trading anymore that just doesn't that doesn't fly if i want to cash out i can cash out i mean i love that so that's where i've spent a lot of my time trading um i'm a hodler though like if you know i all my trading just is to turn it back into bitcoin or ethereum and then i just hold um and i've been holding bitcoin and ethereum for a long time so it's like my yeah i don't know i just i i just love i just love the excitement in that space i think that there's just it's it's only going to get bigger too watch when ethereum in june when they fix that when they come up with the next upgrade and then the gas fees are just taken care of um sky's the limit you know and i think it's good for the whole industry it's gonna be good forever absolutely absolutely anyways yeah i feel like i wanna i wanna close our wonderful conversation on this beautiful positive uni swap moment i think it's such a nice place to leave it like it's like you know we're just saying this we're not saying anything we're just saying that this is the future and you know just just jump on here and it's just yeah i think is there anything you'd like to to to add this beautiful conversation to no i mean i just uh give you a big thanks for having me on i've had a lot of fun getting to know you a little bit more and talk to you i feel like we're in the same room talking and i think that right when we meet up in real person it'll be the exact same the exact same way we're just gonna it kind of yeah it will be this and i think it will be the same as well it's funny with with certain people you just feel it you know it's just like there's it's like that um yeah but crypt i think crypto brings a lot of people like us like i don't know like we're lucky in this industry to have crazy people and i just i feel so thankful to be able to share people's brains and and to get access to all this information because it's we need to share it more i think that's it that's what's happening right now is that certain niches of people know are super deep into something and then the information needs to spread a bit more if you want me back on just just shoot me a little telegram message i'll come on just let me know i'm here i had a blast oh thank you thank you i had a yesterday i had my first and and matt aaron was uh he was the host of humans of bitcoin so that's why i kind of had him as my first guest because i wanted him to sort of pass the torch and he challenged me to reinvite him for my 100th episode and i was like um i'm i'm not on an everyday right now especially because i still i i want i want to do some post-production and i want to give time as well for the podcast to breathe and and start and launch but it's yeah i'm getting a lot of requests to to come and join and i'm a bit um yeah humbled humbled by the interest of people wanting to yeah to talk to me but also of course to present what they're doing and obviously the space is doing so well and people are doing well and they want to share they want to share the excitement they want to share that their yeah their hopes and dreams were for this space so it's it feels really good i love you yeah i mean i feel very privileged yeah yeah i mean i think you're doing a great job at it so keep up the good work and you know if you ever need anything you holler at me i'm right there we're in contact now um you can just hit me up whenever and if you want me to come back on i'll come back on we can talk about all kinds of stuff you know we talk about foraging and oh i really want to this year this year it's happening i'm going foraging again it has to happen you know what's the best part about foraging is that you eat what you pick it's a full cycle thing it's like you sweat you search for it and then you make nice food so it's it's i guess it's like going fishing you know it's that feeling of like i would put that in the same category as fishing fishing foraging anything yeah if we go foraging you gotta make like a nice mushroom soup after i gotta eat it [Music]