Miko Matsumura, General Partner with Gumi Ventures | How De-Fi is Changing the World

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Today my guest is Miko Matsumura Miko is a general partner at gummy ventures a US 30 million dollar investment fund focused on early stage block chain startups and he's also a co founder of the crypto exchange Evercoin. Miko fell in love with open source software 25 years ago as chief evangelist for the Java language and platform at Sun Microsystems since then he has been building open source startups in Silicon Valley including raising over 50 million dollars in venture capital for developed platform companies such as Gradle and financial infrastructure companies such as Hazelcast. He is participated in multiple exits including in fravio web methods and DB 40 he is an advisor in successful startups like Celsius idle finance pundex and keyless he has been an investor with focus ventures a firm with over 800 million under management nine IPOs and 44 exits and blockchain firm. He's a master's degree in neuroscience from Yale where he worked on abstract computational neural networks he is a name and blockchain crypto defi what do we speak about we spoke about the future of defi we we spoke about the growth of crypto markets is it stable is it going to continue to grow we spoke about some basics of blockchain crypto and defi. We also spoke about biggest misconceptions about blockchain and just some incredible entrepreneurial lessons that he's lived throughout his career and at now he imparts on some of the startups that he works with I hope you enjoy let's jump into it this is Miko Matsumuro general partner serial entrepreneur and crypto blockchain defi evangelist. It's really I think I have to go like way way back and I'm hoping it's not too grinding but like you know I think I was always sort of a computer nerd and when I reflect on it I really think that the thing that I was most seeking is like fairness and like order. Right so rules like a you know it's basically a place where I could go where it was peaceful and everything was orderly and lawful you know so that I think that's why I became sort of a computer nerd my first computer was in a Tari 400 it had a 16 K of RAM which is pretty amazing like these days you can't even put like a gift image into a 5 16 K look at this it's pretty small and you know I really like it. I really just kind of was geeking out the with that the whole time now it's so it's so crazy because you know the journey I've been on is just extremely nonlinear I'm three years now into venture capital as a general partner you know and before that like 25 or so years in entrepreneurship. You know and and before that academia so you know I went I went to Yale University for neuroscience so I was really studying mostly abstract neural networks and computation so I kind of have a bit of an AI background but you know it just turned out that the twists and turns that I got I got really interested in open source software you know and I think really if you want to stitch it all together from the get good. So like I think the biggest theme that kind of stitches every phase together is really this quest for kind of fairness and like a better like a better world you know so I think machine adjudicated rules kind of for me have always been you know whether it was kind of dealing with and going up in Michigan and you know I really kind of retreated to my computer is just this very peaceful place where everything followed rules you know and if something was going wrong you know it was because you made it wrong you know and you just fix your software you know you know things will be set to right right so in a sense it was just this ultimately it's just an amazingly kind of judgmental environment and you know in a way and an amazingly harsh environment right because you know you just make one little time. A tiny tiny mistake the thing is completely like doesn't do what you want you know and that kind of like crucible you know gives you these lifelong lessons you know and ultimately you kind of start steering towards the idea of freedom as being you know the option of basically submitting to different sets of rules right so that that's kind of the way I see human freedom now as I just see it as you can see. So if you have a sense to abide by a set of rules and that gives you freedom the thing that I think ultimately gives you freedom is the ability to withdraw your consent and to have a decent place to go right like if you have no decent place to go and then you can't you're not free right so even if you're in a system that you consented to you can't withdraw your consent if you don't have like a safe place to go right so in a sense like choice is really important but you know what I'm going to say. I guess you know it's all this is very philosophical but I think you're probably understand where it's going you're talking about crazily philosophical guys you know it's it's kind of my nature to think did the reason about this but you know this is really how I got into open source software you know an open source is about nonviolence disarmament and choice right which is basically if I'm writing software and I open source it. I'm basically surrendering before the relationship even start I'm surrendering my ability to coercively control you I can't control you because of my control over the software because because you can just leave right like so the idea of like fork it and go right it's essential to my idea of what freedom is right because you know if you can imagine if you're living in a home that's unsafe right having a safe place where you can go. It's like the only way you can actually have freedom right if you have nowhere to go your trap you're just stuck there in this kind of hellish scenario right but like if you have a safe place to go right so imagine with open source software that you can actually just replicate the place where you are exactly and then subtract the parts you don't like anytime you want right and anyone who wants to come with you to this new version is free to do so right that's that's this idea of like forking a blockchain. Right is you can fork it and you can just change the things you want to change so the thing to me that's very beautiful about this so this is kind of ultimately how I landed from open source software all the way to kind of blockchain technology which of course is in the large part open source so that that's been my kind of musing and fascination you know since I was you know 14 years old sitting in my house you know just playing on my computer. But even blockchain is is an attempt at freedom from institute from ingrained entrenched institutional systems right that's yeah that's what it is. And the thing that's fascinating is is that the existing systems aren't able to offer us the freedom they're not able to and the reason why I assert they're not able to is is even if you like it there. You still don't have a choice but you don't have an alternative financial system where you can basically choose to go but now you do right so you know what what has emerged out of blockchain technologies is this alternative financial system. And the thing that it does is it does two things right the first thing it does is it competes for consent so you know what that means is is that it's trying to serve you the best right and if you don't like it you don't you shouldn't. You shouldn't come over right so so it in essence but the other thing that it's doing other than providing an alternative is it does what all alternatives do which is it keeps the competition honest right so it actually now says i'm going to compete for your consent. So the existing system must also compete for your consent right and if you like me better then you'll come over here and if you don't like it then you'll stay right which is like what a nice thing right so it helps everyone and what I mean by helps everyone is is you know let's say there's a safe place where you can escape like let's say it's a safe home right and let's say it's in. It's in a neighborhood that's a lot like where you live right so like the existence of that is great for people that need a safe place to go right they need to go somewhere so they're going to go and that gives them freedom right if you like where you are then you should stay right so you. But I want what i'm suggesting to you is it gives you freedom to even if you don't go over there the existence of that gives you the ability to withdraw consent so if it suddenly you find yourself in a situation where you're like okay the system was working beautifully for me and now it's not. So now I have a place to go right and even if you don't ever go there it's still going to keep the system you're in honest right because you know because of that competition so you know that's that's really kind of the mindset that you know i'm excited about because you know when we talk about this kind of blockchain tech like. Satoshi Nakamoto created this entire paradigm around fork it and go right that's what he created and so in a sense like you know that means we're you know i'm not like a. Bitcoin maximalist because like the whole point of it is anyone can fork it at any time. And if they don't like anything they can just change it right and so a lot of people are like oh i don't like this feature i don't like that feature like great fork it and go like you know. If it's better everyone will go with with your version everyone will leave if it's better so the issue the issue with the evolution of this environment is that. You have these highly technical individuals that adopt and and subscribe to that mindset but for the rest of the world that is just trying to keep up and understand. Because of the ability to fork it and go and to just create new and to create business and to create you know alternative blockchains and to create a different applications and whatnot it's very hard to keep up and to figure out what's good and what's not which is really right that's the that's the issue you're in it. You see what's good you see you can you can besides being a venture capitalist you understand the actual technology but then you also work with these you know these founders and the developers day and day out so the people behind. Certain other projects obviously not Bitcoin but other projects like some of the ones that you've invested in some of the ones that i'm sure that you know you work with every single day. You have an idea of what works and what doesn't and why it would work or why it doesn't make any sense but you're you're deep like you're you're in the weeds so that's the issue that everybody's running into right. I think that is very very legitimate right which is that it is like this revenge of the nerds type of a universe and the thing that I think is so important is this right which is I think to me. If I were to give any single advice to people who are new in this area is I would say like don't be in a big hurry. Right like like just go in don't invest like a huge amount like just just see what happens right because the point is is. Like there's some games where you consent not call them games right i'm talking about a system of rules that you consent to operate under right so this could include a country where there are laws or it can include a monetary system like a Bitcoin or it can include open source software it can include a literal kind of a video game right like all. All of these systems have rules that you consent to agree to so the thing is is that oftentimes the rule sets are complex right it could even it could even be like a cult that you want to join right it's like oh I want to join this cult right so so there's all these weird rules and you're kind of like okay I don't. I consent to these rules until I don't right and so so there's this process that I call that that's called mechanism discovery right so mechanism discovery is is you play right you play around and you're like you know it's just like going to a new. Country or a new place you just you're at first you're a little bit like I don't know what the deal is here you know and you know you can immediately be like I don't like the way people are acting you know but maybe if you have curiosity and maybe if you're like. These seem like okay people like you know then maybe you kind of are like well why do they keep doing that or why do they keep saying that after a while you might discover that there's pretty cool stuff behind that right you might discover like oh wow like I get why they're acting like that that's so different right and then you kind of grow as a human right so or or or. It's a cult there after a little while you're like wow like this whole freaking deal is rigged against me like they're they're trying to like mess with me and like take over and you know steal my house I don't know what they're doing but like my point is is that um that's why the ability to withdraw consent is so important for any reason at any time or for no reason at all right like if you just are like I'm done here like boom. You should be able to get out now the thing that's a little unfortunate is that there are systems in blockchain and in the Bitcoin area where you can't leave right like for example in in some cases where there's like a scam like you deposit a bunch of money and then you go over to the withdrawal section like okay I'm ready to withdraw and I'm kind of sick of this place and you click with draw and then it's just there's some it's a software bug like you know you can't get your things out ever. Right so like how many times if you see that in the news every month right I think there was just one South Africa it was like 3 billion to just just like last week but it happens it's a little unclear one of the really funny things about that is there was reporting about it that had their website and a past version of their website fairly recent actually was bragging about how they have like a hundred million in assets right and so like it's not unclear that it's as big as 3.6 billion that is definitely what was reported you know if so it's the largest so-called hack in Bitcoin history but you know I think that but you're absolutely right like that that's an example right that's an example where it's like oh you can deposit but you can't withdraw that's a problem right like so so you know and obviously that's you know that's the opposite of freedom right because you can't leave right you know your assets can't leave right it's a part of part of part of part I love this by the way I actually love the philosophical it's the way that you you first went into this I appreciate that a lot because that really helps frame it for somebody who is trying to understand the nuance of what Bitcoin blockchain crypto defi is so one one thing that I would also point out is and I just I was watching one of your pizzas you did like the surviving the wild west of defi and I think there's a lot of great lessons in that for people that are seeing defying trying to figure out what the hell it is and even people that understood blockchain and Bitcoin before and then what's defi so one thing that is important though is sometimes it's not the system that's like you said it's not always assisted of course a system if they scam you they scam you and the system doesn't let you leave but also it's your own personality it's your own it's your own perhaps over indexing on on a system and over trusting on a system before you fully understand it which has led to issues and you spoke about that a lot that is absolutely core right which is I think to me people don't have a really good sense of like risk management right so if you watch professional asset managers like venture capital right one of the key principles is diversification right because you know the thing that's really important to ask yourself is like do I know what I'm doing right and the by the way the definition so if you read the book zero to one by Peter Thiel right he effectively defines an investor as someone who doesn't know what to do right and the reason he defines it that way is is an entrepreneur is someone who is basically quote on quote knows what to do because they're just doing the thing right there that you know so for example if you take you know his most famous investment right like if you're Mark Zuckerberg you're not diversifying you're just going to go 1000 million percent into Facebook because that's the thing right and so the thing that so by investing you're immediately someone who doesn't know what to do right because you're diversifying you know and so diversification is a very fundamental pattern of dealing with risk right so so in a sense like if you think about it like uh you know one approach is play right so when I describe play right the idea becomes that you know play has to be based on a loosable amount all right so I kind of call this like grand canyon money imagine you're at the lip of the grand canyon and you're throwing an amount of money into the grand canyon right like so whatever that amount is for you like that's probably your first kind of Bitcoin purchase amount you know so if it's five dollars or fast too much maybe it's like a buck fifty or whatever you can imagine throwing into the grand canyon you're right because you know and obviously like you know if you're picturing throwing your life savings into the grand canyon like you know like good luck but you know I think broadly speaking like that's that's that's the first thing right play and then I think as you start to kind of get your feet uh wet then diversification right where you basically take the number of grand canyon units and you may be multiply that by like three or four and then you try three or four different things you know and and each time you're kind of learning more and more about these games you know and as you learn more you have a better and better chance of like deriving your own opinion because that's the thing that I think is unfortunate is you know the existence of influencers in crypto is like just human weakness like it it's really it's been you know it's been a toxic effect because you know most of this so-called influencers are are you know they're self-interested parties right they're they're basically predatory so you know that that's so just just blindly following what other people tell you to buy on the internet is it's just provably bad for for any reason but especially when it comes to investing your money yeah absolutely absolutely if somebody is telling you to invest in something on the internet uh you know you should you should question their motives right and and you certainly should you know I mean I I talk I have a show and I interview like I've interviewed over a hundred founders you know and you know every time it is something that I have made an investment and I certainly do disclose that and you need to kind of judge for yourself with whether on how much that's influencing the way I think and talk about this but you know as it happens like I'm a human and so like you know it turns out that I get excited about things and then I invest in them you know so if I talk about them in a way that's excited it's because I was excited to begin with as soon as I saw this but you know I think everyone should you know watch and watch how people behave and understand what their interests are um what is your is your because you've invested in a variety of different startups so um you've invested in some in some various blockchain applications but you're speaking a lot about DeFi now so why the is DeFi just a big a major focus for I guess is that like the next iteration where all the the founders that's what they're really focusing on various applications of decentralized finance um what is why is DeFi such a big thing right now in 2021 I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode canva they put together a special offer for all success story podcast listeners go to canva dot me slash success star if you want to take advantage but what is canva well making content is an essential part of what I do to keep the show going but it hasn't always been easy canva pro allows me to design anything like a pro on any device and I've been using canva pro for a while now for all content for all social that I create for success story so canva pro is a design platform that empowers you to create stunning content with just a few clicks designing with canva pro is fast and fun you choose from thousands of 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get a free 45 day extended trial so you can try canva pro all the features they give you everything canva dot me slash success story i just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode posty now it's no lie that in the competitive world of marketing advertisers marketers are trying to find a way to better connect and get in front of their audience i'm trying to figure that out my entire career you want to accelerate the growth of your company and you want to reach new customers with measurable results but most of the existing channels are oversaturated there's so much noise out there so the best marketers are turning to direct mail but wait for it direct mail reinvented one of the best kept secrets in marketing is that direct mail gets close to a hundred percent open rate and is one of the most impactful ways to market a product or service but it's expensive and it's cumbersome posty is transforming direct mail they're adding all the digital marketing capabilities 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how much kind of sort of excitement that you can get by kind of having automation kind of taking over finance so you have properties in defi like transparency you have properties like pseudonymity you have properties like automated liquidation you know so you have all these really really super powerful properties that enable this kind of decentralized finance system to scale much much bigger than traditional finance you know which is subject to really complicated issues so you know we definitely are exceedingly bullish because you know ultimately blockchain you know back in 2017 that you know it was mostly just speculative projects you know that that never delivered right whereas we're sitting here in 2021 and you know we kind of already have a whole bunch of killer applications in defi so like defi is it's real it's real software it's shipped the shipped software is carrying economic value you know and that value is is moving around you know so it's that that to me is like really pro-positive that this stuff works and it actually does what it says on the tin and that people are actually now getting value out of it because I think in a way like obviously they're sort of a speculative value but I think that what's more important is that the system serve you know users right and when you if you think about defi users those users are basically you know opting into a financial system you know and they're getting financial utility out of this financial system so that that's why they're using it and that's why they're doing it and you know they're they're doing it quite a lot so the difference between the difference between defi and excuse my ignorance but say Bitcoin so Bitcoin Bitcoin is just an asset that you're going to invest in like a gold or a silver it has obviously has no has no application in terms of replacing and existing process for example defi would replace potential existing processes much more efficiently can scale it to a you know scale it globally but does it also it also has an investment component so that's so there's still an investment component there could be an appreciating asset depreciating asset this layered onto these decentralized finance applications or are those things separate is there no more investment into yeah no no it's absolutely fair to say right so broadly speaking the emergence of decentralized finance has produced an investible unit which is about effectively governance right so you know effectively these kind of governance tokens are being used because effectively they allow for future participants in the network to govern the state of cash flows within the network right so in in effect you know those votes become de facto control over the network so that that's kind of as opposed to a central authority that would have that that's right that's right that's right yeah correct so the governance is basically done you know in most cases by things like voting yeah you know by by the stakeholders so that's that's what you know we're seeing obviously decentralized governance has kind of quite a ways to go before it hits maturity there's going to be a lot of tools a lot of incredible discoveries some chaos you know so it's definitely a young it's a young field but you know I think it's handling you know billions of dollars in value you know on a daily basis so it's definitely you know reaching a critical point you know where it's effectively deterministically a thing you know with respect to kind of defining terms you know obviously DeFi is decentralized finance there are a lot of different definitions flying around right so I think it's it's important to kind of like you know stand on on a bit of a grounding right so the way I look at it is is that it is about programmable money right so you know effectively what it does is it secures the computations around transacting right so so it's effectively automation right so so you know if you're doing lending or borrowing as a financial service you know these these are they take the form of like vending machines you know so it's just these automated lending and borrowing systems there's automated exchange systems so-called automated market makers or AMMs right so it basically just about everything in DeFi is automated right because it's just a bunch of rules right so in a sense it's sort of just like we going all the way back to the beginning of the conversation right it's really just here the rules you can consent to playing by these rules you know and the thing that should give you some degree of confidence is the data is open it says transparency you can see everything that's going on the code is open so you can actually read the code and you can understand I mean you know some some of us can understand what's what what's going on you know and then and then further you know that that all informs your consent right where you're effectively looking at it and you're like I agree I cannot buy by that and the thing that I think it gives people confidence is machine adjudication right so you can just say okay well the machines will will follow the rules like I'm very confident in this system that the machines are going to follow these rules and I don't have to worry about someone trying to do something weird because you know because I think the machines will take care of the rules so that's the fact of course and I think that and this is actually sort of as you see the as you see the defy landscape evolving instead of still early on but I think that what a lot of a lot of issues that people had with early blockchain applications is they they couldn't easily replace a consumer application the the interface the the lack of ability for most people to understand and read into the code that that's a major inhibitor so with some of these applications maybe just like walk walk the audience through a practical example of something that does have significant market share versus its non decentralized counterpart that is easy for people to use yeah I mean I think that to me it's so early days so you know if we're going to try to point at things that are easy for people to use I think you're going to have a hard time coming up with much right to be perfectly honest you know that's the thing that I mean I'll tell you why the reason why is that it's really this thing called cryptographic custody is the problem right which is so I had a friend so you know my fund is invested in something called OpenC which is sort of a non-fungible token it's sort of a collectibles marketplace you know one of the biggest ones and and the thing that's amazing is I had a friend try to buy an artist NFT off of this website and you know he ended up just really just being pissed off and he was kind of cursing a lot on Twitter because you know he was like why is this so bad right like this is so hard to use and blah blah blah you know and I think he's kind of got a certain point right which is that in essence like in in the normal traditional finance there's something called a bank and a bank is an intermediary and you trust the bank right so in decentralized finance you don't have to trust intermediary right because intermediaries are basically all kind of automatically compliant to the rules that are governed by the software itself right so in a sense like what happens is is people become their own bank right so so if you if you're if you're a bank then you need kind of bank-grade cybersecurity procedures you know and so the point is is that self-custody of cryptographic assets is still janky and hard and confusing and not ready for consumer prime time so you know ultimately if you point you know to point at like consumer applications you know and say okay well these are going to be the consumer applications that are ready for prime time in blockchain they're all what you call custodial and what I mean by custodial is is that they all involve having a trusted intermediary right because the trusted intermediary handles the custody that's how Coinbase works by the way right so Coinbase every user of Coinbase has to trust Coinbase right and if Coinbase decides to kind of screw everyone like it's possible that they can they have the ability to screw over all their customers I don't think they will but I bet it's but it's possible it's possible so my point is is that you know if you don't trust any third parties then you need to have cryptographic custody and that's what makes blockchain applications and DeFi kind of the domain of nerds and it's very complicated right so you know I think what's going to increasingly happen over the next few years is that we're going to have kind of blockchain as a kind of a global system of record you know and that but at the same time I think largely consumers will use trusted custodial services right just like they used to you know but I think that that people will be able to withdraw things you know off the service right because the thing that I think is important about the ability like I said about freedom at the very beginning the ability to leave right basically means I can withdraw from the system and then I can kind of have a decent option of a place to go right so the thing that's interesting about this becomes you know uh for example let's say for whatever reason Facebook uh like just imploded right so the question becomes well what about all my posts and what about all my images and what about all my data what about all my social graph what about all my friends and you know like can I just take all of that with me and go to another really nice place where I can get the same thing it's like no you know and you can't right because it's controlled by Facebook the company which by the way became a trillion dollar company recently so that's just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode better help if you want to take advantage of a special promo better help is offering all success story podcast listeners go to betterhelp.com slash Scott Clary better help.com slash SCOTT CLARY so what is better help better help is therapy for lack of a better term it's the best way to give yourself routine maintenance for your mental and emotional well-being and the best way to think about therapy is usually through analogies we always get our cars tuned to prevent bigger issues down the road we get annual checkups and we go to the gym to maintain physical health so that we don't get at a shape we want to prevent injury want to prevent disease we do chores regularly so they don't all pile up and have a huge giant mess in your house by the end of the week going to therapy is like all of the above it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you it just means that you're investing in yourself and keeping your mind healthy better help is customized online therapy from the comfort of your home it offers video phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist so you don't even have to see 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meet customer demand align your teams work smarter not harder scale up without having the need to slow down with total control and over 650 integrations hub spot enables your team to succeed no matter how big or how small whether you're just getting started or looking for a robust system hub spot is the number one CRM for scaling businesses learn more about how you can customize your CRM platform at hubspot.com did they oh that's news i didn't know that when was that very recently oh okay in the past week though you know that's incredible it is it's been nine years since the IPO in 17 since inception so you know it's a 2004 era company but you know it's but the point is is that you know they are they are a monopolist and because of that you know people feel like they don't have freedom and they don't have anywhere to go and you know if they become de-platform then they don't really have any option right so that's that's that's that's kind of a currently an issue that people are working on so you know i i think we have a ways to go in terms of replacing the whole internet with blockchain but you know we're we're working on it now do you feel like so applications applications aside because the the evolving application environment i find is very interesting but like you said we're still early stages which is sad because to me that's the real utility of blockchain but obviously that's not what most people look at blockchain as they look at blockchain as okay i want to invest and i want to make you know x percent return um yeah where do you think the market is is standing in terms of uh investment opportunity of course not not uh not and not at a recommendation just you know for entertainment purposes i'm curious as to your opinion if this growth of the market is sustainable or if there has to be again like mass adoption milestones that have to hit so the whole market can continue to sort of grow at this trajectory uh i i've become a little bit leery of kind of mass adoption you know a mass adoption is a little bit like democracy like it's it's pretty nice kind of in theory but without education it can have it has a dark side to it right which is you know i think our last attempt at mass adoption featured like a bunch of you know doge coins and yeah i know that's not the mass adoption we need no that's not that that's not what we need right what we need is you know we certainly need all of those people to come back right but we need them to come back smarter right like like we need them to have learned a lesson right and it's it's a bit like you know a training that i mean you know it's it's a little insulting to talk about people in the context of a dog but you know hopefully you know they got swatted and it's an analogy yeah yeah and and you know hopefully they're going to come back a little smarter you know and and some of them won't come back at all right so the lesson that a lot of people may have learned is oh up you know crypto's are bad right and that they have learned that lesson you know but yeah you know i think everyone will eventually come back you know because it's my theory that uh all of these systems like all they do is they constantly experience developer improvement and they just evolve and the one that serves the most people the best is is going to you know just become bigger and bigger and bigger and harder and harder to kind of uh you know become unstoppable so like you know i think that in a way like one segment that i think is fascinating is this a gaming segment called play to earn so if you go in if you go into uh youtube and you type play to earn documentary you're actually going to learn something really fascinating which is that there's a there's a blockchain game called axi infinity right and in this most recent month the game actually generated eight and a half million dollars of profit right and and this is really interesting when you start to think about it because that's an IPO level of right that's like a hundred million dollar annual revenue rate right so it's it's if it were a company uh and not a decentralized network you know it would it would be able to IPO um and effectively what's happening is that people in places like the Philippines and Indonesia are playing this game axi and they're basically playing to earn like a living right and and so that's one of the things that's incredible about this phenomenon is is that people went during covid from driving a taxi to driving these little video things called axes you know and they're and they're actually making more money doing that than they were doing things on on you know so when you when you want to talk about things like massive option and you want to talk about you know infrastructure you know and rules and consent right the thing that i think is fascinating is that this is a system that is definitely serving the people who are using it you know and so that's that's an astonishing kind of uh growth and uh you know we we my fund invested in uh like a gamer guild and this guild is their entire goal is to collect players of this game and effectively rent them the game pieces so that they can play the game and earn money so it's it's it's really this absolutely wild and incredible frontier uh but if you if you understand the size of what we're talking about economically it's not only is it already massive but you know it's it's probably going to become tenix bigger so you know it's it's truly uh you know so that that's an impressive corner of the world you know i guess what i wanted to say is i wanted to say that this is such a strange place to look for massive option but to me you have to look in the application arena right which is you have to look at people using it because they want to right and the thing that's really interesting is is it turns out that these players are willing to jump through the complicated hoops of custody and self-custody of blockchain assets and the reason they they're willing to jump through those hoops is is that's how they put groceries on the table for their families right so it's you know it's like should i learn how to do this blockchain stuff it's existential like it's basically like oh COVID hit my family we don't have any jobs like what do we do you know so now they now they join this metaverse economy and they're playing this game and you know it's it's really like a rocket ship so that that thing is very powerful very interesting so it's you know i hear what you're saying it's less about it's less about global mass adoption which is almost uh any like almost like a a goal that's a little bit too large to even understand and it's more about so the applications that we are investing in rolling out they're serving they're serving the communities that actually want to use them effectively to to quite literally like to change lives at this point yes yes that's the thing that's amazing right is that is that regardless of what you want to say this this firm uh yield guild has has tilted up two thousand to date players of this game and two thousand people's lives have already been changed right and and people are like buying houses and they're you know they're definitely being transformed by their participation in this economic network right so you know it's it's a stunning realization you know and the reason why these things matter so much is because the idea is is that there are only a few ways for these so-called games to end right like one way to end is that somehow the rules were not fair right and then that so that the end of that game is what's called rage quit right where people just are like okay this sucks I'm out right so that's one right um but so what if the game continues to be fair right if the game continues to perpetually be fair right then the question becomes what are people getting out of it and if they're getting something valuable out of it then they'll stay right as long as you know the only situation where someone will leave a system that's been fair to them that's producing benefits to them is that they actually find a better system right they find a system that's almost exactly like this one that's serving them so well except it has this improvement that serves them even better right that's when they would leave right but to me like that would be great too right so you know that would be great too but but they're on the bleeding edge right now like we're now we're now we're dawdling in human psychology and absolutely and why human psychology will by this definition I don't just agree with you is going to almost guarantee the the future progression of this this entire I don't want to call an industry because it's not an industry but this movement if you want to agree agree agree agree right which is that ultimately the thing that matters is freedom and fairness right and and the reason why those things matter is because it turns out that people naturally so to me there's there everyone knows that there's something a little wrong with the economy the way it is right it's a bit like when you're watching the movie the matrix right and this kind of idea that that something is bothering everyone right and in a sense what's bothering people about this economy is that it is extractive right so essentially it the economy performs an extractive function on everyone in it right so the thing that's really interesting is the transition to an ownership economy right and so the thing that's very interesting is that an ownership economy is inherently disruptive right because it's offering ownership to people who've never had ownership right so it basically saying the user of a system is an owner of the system and that that user then gets the profit share of being an owner and if you if you describe a system like that Bitcoin is exactly that right which is Bitcoin is a basically reserve bank and a reserve asset and the percentage of bitcoins that you own represent your share ownership of the bank of Bitcoin and you will become the beneficiaries of the profits of said bank of Bitcoin right and so you know in essence that's the ownership economy in a nutshell and it doesn't matter if you have like one Satoshi which is like the smallest possible divisible unit of Bitcoin or if you have 10 bitcoins like you're going to be treated fairly according to you know what's Pari Pasu according to the amount that you own is the amount that you share right so you know it's a it's a perfect cooperative model so so what I really wanted to say is that's why I kind of really hold out hope for these systems because the systems by their nature are forced to compete for consent right and so to me the thing that's fascinating is is that part of the evolution of like human society is to kind of become smart about offering your consent right so so you know in a way I think well that's one of the problems right now is that people are offering their consent to systems that are not serving them you know and they're not really smart about like why they're doing that right they're not there they haven't really sussed out like why does this system get my consent and why does this system you know not right and so I think people haven't kind of understood that you know that's that's what they need to do and obviously like this this is part of the entirety of human existence right which is we enter into systems where we don't understand the system and we figure it out and then maybe we leave right like that's almost the same with human relationship where you're basically like I'm entering into this system you know I don't really even know what the rules are and maybe we're making up the rules as we go along you know but at some point you may be like I don't like it here anymore you know and obviously if you have the ability to go to some place that's safe and equivalently good and you're free to do so and that that's that's what I think is uh you know gonna drive the growth of this amazing Miko I feel like I feel like you you could go on for a while about a variety of topics I don't want that I that was that you know what let's you know we this is like a nice little primer into the philosophy and psychology that drives blockchain um application defi I really appreciate it um I want to I always like to go into a little bit of like rapid fire to pull out some life lessons out of your career because you obviously have had an incredible one before before I pivot um was there anything else that you wanted to go into or bring up that we didn't touch on the you know no I mean I think I think we're good uh let's let's go straight trading I appreciate it Miko thank you so much okay so let's do a couple rapid fire um just to pull it from your career so over the course of your career uh the biggest challenge and how did you overcome this challenge yeah I would say this right which is I spent a really long time not understanding like who my boss was right which is I used to be under this impression so like uh you know like when I was a kid like I you know I had a really strong dad he had a lot of strong opinions he was kind of like hot headed you know and so in a way like I kind of found myself falling into a pattern where I would think my boss is like the next kind of hot headed kind of impatient guy that I could find right but eventually what I figured out is I figured out that my boss is actually two things it's it's sort of uh my personal nature right which is what is it that I am best at and put on this world to do right and and like universal nature right which is what what is the world up to what is the world trying to do right so if that's something that I call the big idea so if you look at someone like a Steve Jobs I definitely don't compare myself to him but like you know but if you look at him like his big idea was what's called personal computing right that's a big idea and you know I don't think anybody and even Steve didn't know at the time when he was talking about how personal computing could could become it's insanely personal like it knows it knows way more things about you than even you know about yourself right like it's it's ridiculous what these things know but you know to me that's kind of what one of my well one of my biggest challenges right because you know in a sense we all because of my experience with my dad like like I always said about being a follower and having a dependence on things like influencers like my dad was the greatest influencer in my life he wasn't on YouTube but like he was an influencer right and so you know way my dependence on him and my psychological dependence kind of like you know it was it really wasn't pretty big barrier for me you know and what I ended up realizing is I ended up realizing it my boss is like whatever my personal nature is and how can I align that with like what the world is doing right because if you can align your gifts with what the world needs or wants like you're you're all set like that you know like you're gonna go a lot further than if you sort of are looking for someone to become dependent on that's that's very good advice very very good advice um what I know we've gone over a few but what is the biggest misconception about blockchain let's say uh that you potentially had or you've seen that you just wanted to to sort of clear the air on yeah I mean I think to me the biggest thing is is you know I touched on it before right which is that the idea that we can depend on someone else is something that we've been like struggling with for for a long time like if you if you watch the Wizard of Oz right the whole movie is about finding this wizard that's gonna fix everything right so like in an essence that one of the things that really kind of gets in my craw is is that people want to just passively be told what to do right they're they're they're just kind of like tell me what to buy you know and then they just buy it right and it that's so toxic right like to me the thing that people really need to do is they need to make up their own minds there was an incredible tweet by Dan Moorehead of Pantera and he basically showed this beautiful graph on Twitter and it showed that what you ought to do is you ought to buy Bitcoin's when there's blood running in the streets and everybody's kind of in a panic right and then you ought to hold on to it you know and then you've got to sell it whenever people are going bananas about like some stupidity of like I don't know what it is right so so you know so my point is is that is that being your own person is is that's the kind of absolute core lesson right which is that you have to have your opinion and you have to develop your opinion and you have to have enough patience to actually study and and look at things and learn things you know as opposed to just kind of asking people what to what they should buy you know like that that doesn't that that can't work and shouldn't it won't it won't end well yes as we've seen as we've seen multiple times um okay uh what is the lesson that you would tell your younger self yeah I guess the only thing that I think is really important to communicate is that you know I think that you should manage your energies and not necessarily as much your time and I think because it turns out that your time is non-fungible and it turns out that your convictions are non-fungible right so in essence like it means that you need to develop your own convictions because that's how you really are able to kind of do do things your way and you know so to me like that's the most precious thing right and I think the other thing that's really important if I had a time machine is just to be reassuring right which is you know I think if I'm talking to my former self like um you know I would just say like don't worry too much about it right like if you if you're if you're if you really feel like you're on your path you're doing the things that people are kind of genuinely excited to see you do right if they're like keep doing that or or good job with that or whatever if some people if you're getting a lot of positive feedback about something that you're doing like write it down and just keep sharpening that and keep focusing on that because like you know that's that you know because that's your nature coming out right and and I think people who are kind of trying to buckle down and and do things that are against their nature like that that's not gonna end well I think very good um who's one person who had an incredible impact on your life and what was that impact what did they teach you all right it's really uh it's it's a it's a really incredible question and this is kind of a bizarre answer but like uh no bizarre hope uh Homer the epic poet from teaching green so you know my favorite book in college was the Iliad and like in a way it's about like getting pissed off you know at the man you know it's a it's a bit about kind of like uh you know loot and loot dramas you know it's about kind of fairness you know and and you know it's it's really like it's really also about a person who's unable to work and you know I think everyone in this extractive economy that's paying any attention will come to a point where they stop being able to work and I think that's that's really a deeply instructive story from from Bronze Age ancient Greece so you know I would say that like you know Homer if it was actually a single person is like a big a big influence very good um can you recommend a book or a podcast the people go check out yeah absolutely I think the cheap shot is my own which is meko.com slash bits and but I think if I were to recommend the book I would recommend the book of Satoshi which is the Satoshi Nakamoto collected writings that's a that's an awesome book uh you know and definitely uh I think the best possible place to learn about blockchain and bitcoin is from books because books take a long time to write so like you know you they're not going to tell you to buy a douche coin or something they're going to actually like you know it's going to actually be a deeper uh understanding of the phenomena and that you know that's that's that's going to be good I like the little bitcoin book that's a great book and uh for big coiners and you know as I think uh those are great places to kind of educate yourself very good and then um last question what does success mean to you yeah I think success absolutely has to do with that perfect these perfect moments and the perfect moments are the perfect alignment between what you're supposed to do and what you're meant to do like your own nature and universal nature right because if you see some crazy guy in the Olympics doing something weird like the triple jump right like it's that crazy combination of a person whose legs are kind of abnormally long like all the way up to his neck you know and so it's sort of you're seeing a person who's like designed to do the triple jump right and then but at the same time that person has like worked their ass off to do that right so so what do people do when they see that what they do is they just instantly think like go get them like they just they're everyone wants to support that person right because they're just like that's incredible like I can't believe my eyes like that person just went like 30 meters in three jumps or it's just it's insane what people can do right so like if you are able to kind of express your actual nature of who you are you know and you're able to align that with stuff that's happening out in the world like you you will be unstoppable you'll become a force of nature so that that I think is you know that that would be my closing comment is you know you got to find out what that is for you I love that and then you mentioned you mentioned your podcast but your socials your website podcasts where people go connect with you yeah yeah the easiest thing is meco.com is my website myco.com all my socials jump off from there my show everything else so it's also easy to find