Brock Pierce talks about the Bitcoin Foundation, Rand Paul, Goldman Sachs and more

Transcript

hi yeah well just um first do my short introduction hi everybody Welcome to our weekly Hangouts about Bitcoin and much more I'm your host Paul boutin and my co-hosts today are yob harto of blog trail.com and Tim pastor of identify today's guest is Brock Pierce managing partner of blockchain capital and freshly elected chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation we have a lot to talk about with him today such as the current and future state of the foundation his Investments his chat with the presidential candidate ran Paul the party Richard Branson throwing Goldman sex investing in circle and much more and we only have 30 minutes in any case we invite the audience to engage with us and ask questions to using the Q&A too hi Brock welcome well thank you for having me yeah you just uh came back from a

conference in New York right yeah uh the uh inside Bitcoins conference in New York uh was going Monday Tuesday and Wednesday uh the event had over a thousand attendees so uh one of the most highly attended Bitcoin events you know anywhere in the world of uhar faces catch up with uh businesses and where they are as well as meet a number of uh new entrance to the space so always nice to to gather at these large events that bring people together from all over the world yeah cool let's uh talk about my subject of course that let's talk about that in a bit more detail later on let's first um address the situation at the foundation you've

recently been elected at the chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation while Bruce Fenton is the new executive director in the road map published by Bruce I read that he wants to remove all founding members to make it more decentralized um so my question is with founding members being scrapped and with funding close to zero with all the bad press the foundation has received and with MIT funding developers now wouldn't it make more sense to um dissolve the foundation and focus your energy on some of the other clubs like coin Center and Bitcoin Association um well I'm doing different things you have to look at the Bitcoin Foundation is being sort of the longest T and what

looks like a sort of an industry or trade Association more than a foundation and it's been filling the void and trying to uh with the resources it had you know address all the things that this industry needs that are not being uh addressed by the companies in the space things like education advocacy policy and the lobbying that goes with it the funding and the financing of you know core development to the extent that there's resources to do so holding conferences that brought people together and historically the foundation was filling you know most of those roles because there were no other organizations that had stepped up to do so as the industry is matured you're starting to see organizations specialize in you know focusing on each of those

you know call it Endeavors you know in the case of coint Center and uh uh Perry Anne's digital champ Chamber of Commerce uh both of those are focused on you know Capitol Hill in DC by great teams and lobbying lobbying is you know one of and policy is one of those areas that you can never make everyone in the industry happy uh because not everyone's going to agree on the positions uh uh that are going to be taken and as a of that are probably best doing just that I don't think policy organizations are well positioned to do more than policy as a result of always going to be you know alienating some segment of the community um but I think those are great

organizations and I think they're doing great things and I'm happy to see both of them uh uh doing the things that they're doing and educating uh those on Capitol Hill um in terms of core development uh the foundation board and team has spent the last you know three or four months uh evaluating how as you know the foundation is a nonprofit our goal is not to own things things our goal is to you know support you know aspects of the industry that we've determined to be important and where we have resources to do so and uh you know funding core development is expensive and we've talked to and you know we we talked to pretty much every major potential Finance here in the industry and the feedback that we were given was

that uh uh the foundation's organizational structure and governance is such that no one wanted to give us the millions of dollars that core development needs uh and we were only able get access to the small funds and so we made a conscious decision and and the feedback we were given as well is that larger checks would be written if this existed within you know an academic environment and so you know as a board we made a decision to to spin this out uh and let it uh find a home within an academic organization and I don't think we could have found a better one or the the team couldn't have found a better home than you know being where it is at MIT and I think as a result of that there's going to be more funding available to court for core development and I think that's a great thing for the

industry but it's still not enough uh more support more doing it right um I'm not sure if the others also noticed but um it seems like um the connection your connection isn't that um great Brock maybe you can uh close a few few other browsers or programs or I'm GNA close Skype to start that hopefully helps uh did you did you

follow most of what I just said yeah yeah I did um well thanks for clarifying that um just one more thing one more last two sorry it one the last two sentences who fell away Brock so if you can repeat those I think yeah I I was just touching on the uh the the dev core conferences that the foundation has put together and I think those are great events that are specifically focused on dev and and as a result of that it will hopefully make developers in the industry better developers but hopefully it brings more core developers into the ecosystem because I think that we're still severely lacking in that department uh you know there is there are not enough

people focusing today on supporting the underlying open source project and the protocol itself and anything we can do as an industry to Advocate and educate people that will encourage you know more developers to focus on contributing to the underlying open source protocol I think is a great thing and I think the foundation's efforts around Dev cor uh uh hopefully we'll continue to do that we're not we haven't said we're out of you you know development we've just found homes for uh those that were working on the uh uh the Bitcoin foundation's salary and hopefully MIT can expand that program hopefully other academic institutions can do the same hopefully more companies like bit pay

that you know have been paying Jeff garac and blockstream that is paying a number of you know core developers hopefully more organizations are doing this we're not relying upon a single entity and a few people uh you know being paid and anything we can do would be great I had a I had a great conversation with um uh some people at the uh the conference in in New York and one of the ideas that someone had raised which I think is great is the idea of creating a mining pool but where the fees are going to core developers uh I think you'd probably see a lot of people do that call it something like Dev poool um and I would love to see someone set something up like that because there's a lot of work that needs to be done and anyone that's doing anything to

encourage and uh uh bring more core development to uh to bitcoin I think is a very good thing yeah Tim actually uh Tim maybe you can um explain a little bit of what you've been doing recently you've also tried to help funds cour developers maybe Brock is aware of the initiative but Tim can you explain what you've done and possi Brock can help yeah sure uh little while ago I posted something on Reddit and it was called funding on De the idea was just to see if we could find any consensus on uh yeah funding the core development of Bitcoin and so it wasn't focused the core developers who were paid by the Bitcoin Foundation itself but practically everybody um who was working on the project on the get up page so a

lot of discussion came out of that because the the way money is being distributed in that way it's not truly fair you know it's probably not the best solution it's totally not perfect um but it was for me it was sort of an experiment to see if people uh wanted to fund the development of Bitcoin itself and we raised about three or four Bitcoins I believe so um for an experiment personally I think it was pretty successful and it was actually meant as a way for people to start thinking about it so how can we do this how can we do it better and that's why I said from the start this system isn't perfect but it's a way I just want to uh yeah make people start thinking about it

and the discussion was started with that so um that was a good start I think yeah that sounds fantastic and I would encourage you know everyone to do all that they can if they're willing to contribute the time and energy to you know to push forward with projects such as that you know Bruce uh Fenton who I'm incredibly glad uh the foundation was able to attract to come in as the lead uh and to run the organization as executive director is still finalizing you know his revised 2015 operating plan but uh you know I I would be supportive you know individually of the foundation continuing to try and find projects that need funding that are not being funded to help organize those things into Lighthouse campaigns to hopefully

Finance projects on a on a special project by project basis uh anything we can do as an industry to you to support core development um you know I think uh benefits all of us greatly all right so you've been extremely active um Brock in the in the space ever since you've entered and um it's almost impossible to keep track of all your Investments and Ventures but could you uh maybe pick two of your most interesting projects you're working on right now and and what you have in store for those projects well I mean my day job the main thing that I'm doing today is I run a um uh I'm one of the managing partners that runs a fund called blockchain capital and we do is invest in Bitcoin

and block exclusively uh we have 34 investments in the space between our first and second fund if you go to our website which is blockchain.com used to be called cryptocurrency Partners uh you can see most of our portfolio there and we can to provide Capital to you know those businesses that were able to to again support building out the the infrastructure on top of the protocol the bridges roads and tunnels that makes you know all of this possible and uh you know we're doing what we can to fund as many of those businesses as possible and we clearly are very active uh some of the exciting um things that have happened within the portfolio recently um I guess we'll talk about Circle in a

moment but uh zapo partnership with americ social I think is quite exciting just with their uh could be very interesting in terms of uh creating greater accessibility to the you know to US citizens uh uh giving them access to bitcoin products um and by being a bank versus a traditional Money Services business I think uh there's some pretty interesting advantages there that will open up the markets for uh for everyone else but pretty much most of the businesses in the portfolio are doing great things we're we're lucky to have backed uh you know phenomenal entrepreneurs you know that are uh working hard to to make

great products and services that will allow this uh you know the industry to flourish yeah you're also um investor in change tip right I am and one of the uh it's one of my favorite companies in the space and I think it's most likely to drive uh Mass adoption in the US this is one of the first times I really noticed like of course I I travel a lot so I I've been using Bitcoin for for years and I I like the fact you can pay um internationally but I when whenever I first got my first donations through chain ship we had a video with Andreas Andis in January and we got like $14 donated in like seven or eight transactions it's still of course a very small amount but it's it's so funny to

see those donations and coming in that something that you would not be able to achieve with the dollar or Euro so then it was like a mo brother this is such a nice use case that we need to expand upon yeah I mean it's it's one of my uh favorite companies in the space and I think it's the one that's most likely to drive Mass adoption here in the US and that's because most US citizens don't need Bitcoin you know it's going to improve their their lives but only a little bit and a little bit is not enough to get people to you know know you know create massive lines to to get in on this it's going to take time um but I think what change tip is is doing is is a thing that I can see you know every you know American benefiting you

know from a product or service such as that uh because it's useful microtransactions are a thing that uh the web has needed for decades and Bitcoin and I think change tip is doing the best job of that is is making that possible and the human behavior has existed for you know in the analog world for thousands of years you would you know put money into a a a hat when you saw street performers singing dancing doing tricks whatever it might be or tip jars on counters you know the the human behavior has existed for a very long time and instead of just your Facebook like button or that uh that Twitter star button or whatever it might be you now have the ability to uh uh say thank you to those people that have you know

shared good and interesting content with you uh with some monetary value even though it might only be you know a penny worth of bitcoin um I think that's pretty pretty exciting and what's your whole take on the the Bitcoin maximalism um discussion what was that question what's what's your what's your uh take on this whole discussion about uh on one hand we have Bitcoin maximalist are people that think the bit the Bitcoin blockchain is the blockchain to rule them all on the other hand we have all the other initiatives ethereum un name it um are you are you a Bitcoin maximalist or are you more of a a pragmatist or more in the middle well I try to I'm I'm I'm obviously you know incredibly bullish

about Bitcoin uh and and every aspect of it including bitcoin's blockchain and some of the other things that can be done with it um but I also try to maintain my objectivity uh I don't want to drink the Kool-Aid to the point that I lose you know an ability to objectively look at situations and that's often difficult especially when you know like most of us we've committed a lot of Our Lives I mean in my case almost all of my time is spent you know supporting this ecosystem whether it be investing in companies whether it be you know helping entrepreneurers you know think through their businesses whether it be contributing my time to organizations like the Bitcoin foundation and others whether it be out there just generally evangelizing on behalf of the industry and educating

people that are not familiar with Bitcoin yet I mean most of my time is is committed to it so it's very easy to you know fall victim to drinking the Kool-Aid you know to the point that you've lost sight of you know reality yeah and so I I do believe that Bitcoin is is likely the winner uh and I've said many times I'm not sure if Bitcoin is the frster the Myspace or the Facebook trying to use a general you know sort of Internet social networking analogy that will resonate with most people at least people in the tech industry um but those organizations also failed you know as a result of human you know human failures in the case of frster uh the VCS had never seen a company uh skate

like that first social network did it was an unprecedented event and it was going to require an incredible and exorbitant amount of investment for that business to be able to scale in line with the consumer interest and the VCS at the time not ever having seen one of these uh uh didn't fund it in the way that it should have and they had a unicorn on their hands now when you get a business that's scaling toward a billion users you pour all the money on it you have to to make sure it stays operational but uh you know frster failed largely as a result of of the issue that I just raised in the case of Myspace it got sold to News Corp you know once it had been sold the founders had exited you know the ambition and the motivation and the hunger of the team to

continue to you know be aggressive and to compete against Facebook just just isn't what it is you know and it's inside of a big bureaucracy and sometimes you know doing the things that you want to do as an entrepreneur where you didn't need need a bunch of approvals and three months of discussion to make a change you know once it was in that larger organization it ended up failing due to a number of things that you know Bitcoin doesn't suffer from as an open source project you know that's running in a distributed decentralized environment it's not subject to those same risks um though it clearly is subject to a number of risks so if Bitcoin were to be you know uh Sur planted by something else I think it would be as a result of something that is substantially better I mean if you

look at the first wave of altcoins they they're Forks of of Bitcoin with very I think little uh in the way of differentiation certainly not uh something that could that that's compelling enough to uh make someone want to move away from the thing that everyone's heard of that has all of you know this mining infrastructure and the security that comes with it and all the developers that are working on it uh all of the capital that's been you know coming into the industry from Venture supporting businesses building around it you know it would have to be something substantially better uh to replace you're an advisor to new coin right I don't know how to pronounce it nocoin or new coin but you're an adviser to that new um Venture uh which claims to be like most Alco altcoins of course but

claims to be much better than Bitcoin and claims not to suffer from some of the things bitcoin's suffering from um is there so how do you how do you how do you manage those kinds of conflicting interests in a way well I mean I I I don't see myself as you know conflicted I I I philosophically what we're doing here in terms of democratizing the Global Financial system and allowing every person on the planet to have equal access and the improving the lives of billions of people you know that's the the fundamental philosophy of you know what it is that I'm doing and uh you know anything that's supporting that sort of initiative in a way where we can also profit um you know uh I'm there and I'm again is to maintain my objectivity I don't want to just say oh proof of

work is the only way to go I want to understand proof of stake I want to understand other consensus-based algorithms and say you know is there's something there uh right now bitcoin's proof of work system is the one that I believe is the only thing that's proven uh and it's been around for years and it's secure it's got its issue of mining sort of concentration and centralization occurring as a result of efficiencies and scale but uh you know my interest in new coin is I've known Dan kofman the founder for 10 plus years I I I know a lot of you know people in this industry long before there was Bitcoin and I brought a lot of them into the industry you know just as a result of having been an an entrepreneur in the in the tech Bas for many years prior to this and um

yeah I'm always interested I understand what you're saying I'm curious to see you know how proof of stake develops over the coming years yeah um as of right as of right now it's still you know unproven but uh but interesting and I can say that Dan Kaufman and the team new coin are are some of the best I've seen in the space yeah did you also get Rand pull into Bitcoin because you met with Rand last weekend you talked like an hour with him and he's um for people that don't know he's the first presidential candidate that accepts Bitcoin so what did you guys talk about and did you get him into Bitcoin uh no I I can't take any credit for uh having got uh Rand Paul into Bitcoin and I'm not sure who specifically did it though

it's one of a couple so I want I want to be careful and and I'm happy to give you know those people that did the credit when uh when that's clear but no I think it's it's exciting uh um you know a lot of us in the Bitcoin Community certainly those that uh uh have sort of a Libertarian uh view of the world uh are are probably fans of of Ron Paul his father to some degree uh and I was asking a bunch of people the questions is you know did Ron name his son after his favorite author um but uh I was told by someone that no that was not the case and it's not it's it's Randall Paul and short so maybe was not named at no i i b and you know it was an honor to get an

opportunity to meet him in person uh spend some time with him along with a number of other people from the Bitcoin uh community and and to be able to ask him some questions he his answer to okay why are you you know why are you interested in Bitcoin what are you you know what made you chose to accept it uh his answer was great he he was asked and he said money we're politicians we all need more money those weren't his exact words but that was more or less the sentiment we all we all uh were very amused and and and and and clapped and applauded that and then he gave a legitimate answer and that was that um you know the part that resonated with me most is that he believes that uh the government shouldn't have aoly on currency and uh that competitive

currency should be allowed to exist uh and you know there there's a lot about Rand Paul that I like and uh I look forward to learning more uh about him and seeing how he performs in the uh the upcoming Republican primaries U but um you know I think as an industry we it's great to see that one of the candidates has acknowledged that we exist and is you know doing what they can to cater to us as a as a constituency it means we're starting to matter yeah very exciting um some other exciting news this week was of course Richard Branson's announcement of uh throwing a private party on on this island and you one of the um people going to speak there are going to be part of that event um could you tell us

a bit more about it well uh it's not Richard Branson's event for say uh Richard is attending but it was put together by um uh a group of people within the Bitcoin ecosystem uh and specifically uh uh Bill Tai who sits on the board of bitfury uh who was a you know very famous VC back in the 90s active investor in semiconductors you know the sort of stuff that's being used for Bitcoin mining uh he ran uh I think Charles River Ventures one of you know preeminent Venture firms and uh Fury and on the board of bit Fury and he hosts a kiteboarding uh event around the world called M Tai uh with with h

with Susie M and so uh Richard Branson is a big kite board they hold events there frequently and I know that some of uh uh the people from the Bitcoin Community have gone down to the island a couple of times over the last year to do the kiteboarding on bitcoin clearly he's been blogging about it he's a fan he's an investor in uh in bitk and perhaps some others and so so you know a group of people within the industry put together this uh this event that was solely focused on on bitcoin but um uh I think as Richard reported today specifically because of uh there were not enough uh women in attendance at the event um that a few people have been uh disgruntled uh I I I know at least in my

case I I invited uh uh and suggested a number of the female entrepreneurs in the space to uh to participate uh I'm not sure why they didn't attend whether they had conflicts or cost or who knows what but I'm going to be uh submitting another longer list of names who I think would be um good potential attendees and are you going to uh convince him to um to use Bitcoin in his virgin bank because he has a banking um Empire in UK I think virgin bank or maybe also in other countries um could be a good opportunity to persuade him to fully adopt Bitcoin there as well I never waste an opportunity to pitch uses of Bitcoin to everyone I meet and

certainly uh if given an opportunity to spend some time with someone is important an influential as Richard Branson uh you know I will clearly do my best to convince him to do more than he's currently doing well keep us posted um okay well um another interesting news of course with golden sax um investing in circle um can you can you give us your thoughts on that again I think uh that's a a great for and I often say and try industry and we're still very fragile I like um uh Julia's recent uh YouTube video where she said that Bitcoin is not a honey badger um you know we're still small and we're still

fragile and anything that's good for anyone in this industry is good for everyone anything that's bad for anyone in this industry is bad for everyone we you know Rising Tides raise All Ships and I think as an industry we need to do more to support each other uh and and to uh acknowledge and give credit to those that are you know making great things happen because we all benefit from it and owning Bitcoin itself is like owning shares in everything so uh you know we all benefit in some way as long as you're a participant no matter who's doing what as long as they're getting big things done so I think Goldman Sachs investment into to Circle again is a major validation of the industry and the things that we're doing and uh uh you know the financial uh uh world and the major banks have you know that we exist

they acknowledge that uh you know the technology that uh we're working with is you know disruptive and presents you know interesting opportunities and threats and uh uh and they're stepping up and I'd say over the course of the last year that's been a huge change I mean you have coin bases deal where you had the USAA a bank in the US that invested in the company you have BBVA a major Bank in Spain that invested you had the New York Stock Exchange you know that invested you've seen UBS announced that they are you know uh starting to experiment in the space you've seen do the same we've seen now Goldman

Sachs make a direct investment you know these sorts of things uh POS we so often uh we so often receive you know a lot of people that are not knowledgeable about the space and haven't committed the time that all of us have uh you know still most of have a pretty negative impression of of Bitcoin if you walk down the street and you say hey have you heard of Bitcoin you know you're still going to get a lot of answers of oh that stuff for drugs or oh wait isn't the CEO in jail or oh wait didn't it go bankrupt you know we've had a lot of very negative Sensational headlines and when uh uh when the broader public that are not yet in the space see oh Goldman Sachs invested in Bitcoin uh it does a lot for us I think as an industry to you

know correct some of those awful uh uh misperception misperception ctions that we have as an industry so you know I'd like to congratulate Jeremy entire team at Circle at pulling off you know what many would have argued a year ago was impossible yeah and what do you say to people especially maybe um like the Libertarians that you mentioned earlier or some of the the people um involved in the space uh also for philosophical reasons um if what do you say to those people when they say look um I'm not particularly excited about a bank like Goldman Sachs um you know being built out and and having um having been part of the crisis in in a way participating in the Bitcoin space what do you say to those people well I

mean some people I obviously could you know uh take a very negative view of that because they you know just don't like banking institutions but uh it's it is a free world and you know people and organizations are going to do what they want so uh uh uh I'd rather have them participating with us and you know validating us and it causes the rest of the world to acknowledge us and take us seriously and uh when all is said and done over the course of the next you know couple of decades the chips will fall where they fall and uh uh whatever disruption is here and is going to happen as a result of the things we're doing you know participating or not it's a

net for us as an industry but not everyone's going to agree and that's the you know that's a beautiful thing we don't all have to agree and we're all going to do what we can to move the industry forward and some shape or fashion and it's I'm glad that we are such a diverse and opinionated uh group it's what makes us special it's what makes us interesting and it's what's going to cause us I think to ultimately Change the World um how do you look at the regulation part that's going on in in different states in America right now I saw that uh New York is finalizing the the last draft or at least a statement about it by Ben lski um how do you look at that is it worrisome are are you involved in any way in in educ getting the the parties in there what's your

opinion I mean my my personal view is that I'd like to see Regulators uh uh take as much time possible to understand what it is again this is an industry that's it's in its infancy it has the ability to change the world for the better and uh you know regulation typically only makes it harder uh you know for us as a the industry to to operate and do some of the the basic things that we need if we want to innovate you know putting in place regulations like this is going to uh you know cause a lot less companies to get started that could or would or should uh and you know only the really well capitalized companies are going to

be able to operate and you know I I don't think that's a good thing for uh for We the People um but uh you know Regulators are going to do what they're going to do and it's I think uh up to all of us to do our best to try and educate them to the best of our ability so that they may make good sensible decisions to the extent they do um but you know from my perspective I'd like a lot more time uh prior to these sort of bespoke regulations being put in place but you know there like all things there's nothing that's completely good or completely bad there's certain positive aspects to events that occur and and negative and the reality is you don't it's impossible to say whether something is good or bad at the time that it's happening until you have the

benefit of hindsight um you know so a few years from now we'll we'll be able to really tell you know what was the impact of it you know it could be positive could be negative you know from a positive perspective it says that you know again we're being taken seriously uh and uh that we're real and uh you know that's I guess a positive thing in some ways and you know from a negative perspective it's going to make it harder to innovate uh and uh the freedoms that uh you know we all you know feel strongly about you know it's going to be bad for New York it's unfortunate for the people there that they're not going to be able to have access to the same quality of Bitcoin services that some of us have elsewhere in the world but uh I like uh I don't know if you saw

what Fred Wilson posted but he made an interesting comment on the regulation specifically saying that hey you know Silicon Valley may be the new Wall Street you know because of overly burdensome regulation and that might not even be Silicon Valley maybe that's London maybe that's Singapore maybe it's somewhere else and I think that Regulators should be mindful of the fact that this is a hugely disruptive technology I I think that we're one of only three disruptive Technologies of the type of scale that we're looking at here there's the invention of the PC the internet and us I mean we're talking about something so disruptive every business and industry and life on the planet is going to be changed as a result of this technology at some point in time and uh as a regulator uh the the

future of your nation and state could largely be impacted by the decisions you make imagine what the world would look like if all the internet entrepreneurial activity you know had been in Europe Russia China Latin America you know think about if the PC was invented somewhere else how would the world look today and when you're looking at a technology that has the ability to impact the world as much as this does and in a positive way you should be doing what you can to embrace you know that Innovation and try to have it happening on your home soil uh because you stand to benefit a great deal from it am to death so I agree so what do you see as the biggest I couldn't understand

I should say sorry Tim I couldn't understand that question if you could ask again that'd be great please oh I'll repeat no problem um what do you see is the biggest challenge for Bitcoin or maybe even all cryptocurrencies in order to uh reach Mass adoption apart from the regulatory issues that we uh that we are seeing the moment and maybe also the negative image that it has for some people yeah I don't think think the regulatory issues are the ones that are going to prevent us from succeeding or failing it just slows things down it makes things more difficult but it's not going to prevent you know the outcome is going to happen either way um the the obviously the uh negative

headlin negative that we have uh is is a big big issue is ultimately the last option it probably 100 million or a billion you know Facebook went from zero to a billion users in five years you know WhatsApp went from zero to a billion users in two or three years uh we have a long long long ways to go and I think a big part of that is in that that that basic infrastructure phase the bridges the roads the tunnels it's that last mile we talk about things like remittance and the $550 billion doll industry of people sending money from you know the developed world to the developing world whe be the Philippines

India Mexico Etc uh and we talk about this great use case and we talk about how people are going to be able to get money home faster and cheaper but uh the reality is it's very hard for people to use that money to pay their bill groceries because that last mile doesn't yet fully exist in a lot of these places but I feel comfortable that the entrepreneurs and the people around the world that are advocating and evangelizing this you know we're solving those problems slowly I mean we've had call it a billion dollars of Brock you're still

there connection isn't super today unfortunately um guys you can still hear me yeah Brock everyone now ah you're back yeah you're back you're you were black for but you're back yeah I'll have to look into the internet connection here in my office yeah but uh but anyway we were over half an hour already thanks for for everything um Brock is there something you want to share I just's one thing I

want to say anyway because I just talked to Twan frince the guy who who um connected us he um wanted me to mention a congress you guys are organizing in uh in San Francisco coin Congress the 13th and 14th of August right yeah yeah uh San Francisco is obviously a great place to go uh in general it's you know still probably the it's the Hub of innovation certainly in the technology globally and so it's great people in and outside of the space and uh I look forward to seeing everyone there cool well thanks Brock anything you want to add no just uh that I'm uh grateful the

opp here and uh and join you today um thank you yeah pleasure was ours and good luck with all your adventures and uh maybe let's do it again in the future one day all right everyone okay bye bro bye