Crypto Predictions: What's Next for 2025 and Beyond?

Transcript

guys welcome welcome welcome for the last panel actually of the two-day event very very excited to be here with you guys to close us off really we're going to talk Sebastian is on his way he's getting miked up in the back really over the next couple minutes our goal is to talk about the big trends to watch for the next 12 months we're going to cover a whole multitude of developments uh I can promise you it's going to be insightful interesting and hopefully exciting as well and because we have the dream team today we have Alex draus is next to me the CEO of Chile's one thing by the way you may not know about Alex literally he runs Chile's socios like a sports fan club platform but he's not a big sports fan believe it or not he's a tech fan which never ceases to amaze me

great to have you Alex and of course Justin's son the founder of Tron who's also with us today uh interesting by the way uh with Justin just recorded the new Tor Anem with hand Zimmer so here we go a new first in the industry and Sebastian is joining us as well in a second Sebastian by the way many may not know he's an avid collector of Japanese comic books by the way so that's another interesting thing with Sebastian guys let's kick it off we're going to cover a lot of topics today I'm going to jump right in so I'm gonna you go Sebastian is here sorry how are you how are I thought you got lost in the in the sandbox metaverse I was in the metaverse and right here with you now here we go here we go I was telling about how your Avid

comic book collector uh Sebastian so guys let me let me give you guys how it's is going to roll I'm GNA we're going to talk about really the entire sort of topics today as I start I want to I want to number from 1 to 10 whether you're bullish on it or not one you're not bullish 10 you're super bullish on on on uh whatever I'm going to talk about okay ready let's C off the first one stable coins we saw a great presentation earlier about what's happening on the tther side how bullish are you for the growth of the stable coin ecosystem from 1 to 10 for the next year I'm massively bullish that it will stay $1 okay one to 10 one to 10 10 10 10 Justin nine nine Justin why are you so bullish on what what what are you watching for in a year to come on the

stable coin side yes I I feel like stable coin payment uh and the mass adoption is one of the most important use case actually being used by people outside of the block world right so we have like defi nft like Bitcoin ler to solution like Risk staking but most of them people outside of cryto world have no idea on what's going on right then you keep tracking on all the new terms um but they just want to use like stable coin as a payment which is fast cheap and instant transaction so that's that's a use case only use case I think in our industry the the people outside of the

crypto world can understand and they can start you from the stable coin start you gradually on board onto all the crypto infrastructure yeah and actually the data we saw today from Paulo from teder was very impressive actually how much the growth is happening uh but I think lot lot going on second topic the metaverse this is uh Sebastian's favorite how bullish are you for the year to come 1 to 10 oh that's that's unfair uh six and a half six and a half Justin um eight all right Sebastian how bullish are you next year 10 so let's start with you of course I'm not surprised you're a 10 on this so what are you watching obviously there's a lot going on with the sandbox but what are what should we watch in the next 12 months in the broader metaverse ecosystems so looking at a few things

one is like really the growth of the Creator economy uh like now I'm boarding more and more people to become Creator to make experiences we just passed a thousand experiences live on Sandbox in a matter of few months so anyone can start building experiences without any knowledge thanks to AI thanks to like no code tools can publish experience we're working on the ground in different region of the world to on board them to one of the most concrete use case through gaming and through the user generated content to the use of blockchain technology to make people feel like what they create is their can be used where they want can be monetized and the asset they own can also be utilized somewhere in other application um that's one exciting thing also the metaverse has this power to bring us

together through culture and boarding a lot of brands from music from sport for entertainment so it's a very intuitive use case as well and it's driving a lot of Engagement a lot of loyalty people enjoy exploring people enjoy getting rewards their time is actually very valued in the space and and I think it's here like there's no denial like the meterse is far from that it's active people are building we're building it together and it will keep growing from the years to go so sebasti you mentioned engagement and sports I have to ask you like what obviously there's a lot of people I'm sure that into sports here on the fan token side and broader Sports engagement what should we watch for the next 12 months I think in our case it's mainly about the utility of the tokens

yeah we've been very lucky for the last six years in building this fan token economy um and we work with like 80 sports team and these teams have to provide more to their funds right now um we are still very early stage and and we are trying to to to Brand these sportsy you know you have defi gamei sporty is the next um generation or the next vertical we're going to try to promote um and again this football team this Legacy brand as I like to call them they have I'm not going to say hundreds of millions of fans but they do have thousands of millions of fans but these fans are not customers so the question is how do you translate a fan to a consumer and I think web 3/ web 2.5 as I

would like to say sometimes uh is the right path related question the Creator economy Sebastian mentioned the Creator economy okay how start from Sebastian this time how bullish are you 15 20 20 20 um a a for eight eight is a a fair one yeah tell me more like what so let me start from you on Sebastian why this Creator economy then I'm going to move to you Justin yes I think it's essential like anyone of us can become a Creator and like there's no future of gaming where like the players are not contributor and extending that Beyond gaming I feel like uh but participating creating content being engaged in community uh having our

own social token and going further it's all the ultimate form of Engagement that we're looking for and so like we need to provide the tool the technology to empower the people to become Creator yeah like against AI like allowing people to be more creative is actually the only way forward for Humanity I would say that will keep us like really distinguished from robots and machines so yeah I think that's super bullish on the Creator economy Justin are you as bullish as Sebastian or a bit less um yes for uh Creator economy actually for most of people don't know I Devol like a live streaming platform actually you know uh 10 years ago um is actually have lots of creators on my platform um we

take also uh a very big Commission on uh the contribution so um at that time I started started to feel like um the Apple tax and the Google Play tax is so high um it's uh impose basically 30% on the yeah all the contribution so that's why I really believe blockchain has this kind of the way to democratize the uh Creator economy to really empower the Creator to create content at the same time they can get much more compared to the web two days yeah it's very very interesting actually on That's So we related a bit to the Creator

economy meme coins I mean there's a lot of controversy around meme coins you believe the will have a grow like how big will be the growth of meme coins in the year to come 1 to 10 oh again I'm the bad cup holders uh well actually eight eight Justin mcoin 10 10 wow 10 same 10 it's cultural and what do you think so Justin why you think you're so bullish on them yeah sure first of all I believe meme coin is the first thing in our industry differentiate ourself um from traditional industry right because you know we have like Sheba like DOI like all different kind of the animals like U valuation is like about like 10

billion dollars right which like traditional Finance guy will feels like make no sense right but I think behind the 10 billion valuation is the community engagement like Fair launch you know Community participation actually I think create a very successful M coin is just as hard as create a a good crypto project right that's also one of the reason why like elom mask like keep endorsing uh Dogecoin I think because Doge actually is one of the top like crypto brand I will say so that's why I think in every cycle it will have New Meme token right

dogecoins back to 2014 and then we have Sheba I think for the next Bo Cycles we will see other mem but uh consider the limitation of the animals here we will have too much of the small we never know there's a lot of creativity industry but it's incredible Justin as well the number of people I meet in crypto where their first entry to the space has been by mem coins from Dogecoin to others very interesting I know you want to you want to add to this Alex yeah what is a mimco it's actually a community that tokenize their community so when you think going to promote fun tokens but a fun token is a mon is a tokenization of a community related to a legacy brand Paris s gerain FC Barcelona Etc a MIM Co is the same except that the

brand that you're supporting or the community that you're supporting is new and that's very interesting and and in crypto you we've seen in the last 10 years that um organic SL native communities are actually more powerful that usually really traditional brand and even for us it's a challenge um as a as a entrepreneur in that space I hated mcoins um we have 300 employees and our job is to try to bring utility to crypto and blockchain and then you see these things happening and they're very successful it is frustrating but then you have a way to embrace it you have a way to embrace it because it does create a a wareness to blockchain to crypto uh people want fun well you know what you

have to give people what they want I always say it's like how do you put a value to a Reddit Community right I think that's what a lot of these token uh memes are doing next one AI in crypto how much activity you space in the conversions of AI and crypto this one we started from Sebastian I'm giving you a break Ai and crypto Sebastian nine nine Justin uh 10 of course 10 n and a half even though I have no idea why just because I don't want to be the black duck on the side Justin what do you think what's what's exciting you about that yeah sure um first of all I believe uh AI is very powerful technology uh I actually use lots of Technology um please go on the Twitter and the YouTube of Justin to see how AI is used because you will see him

talking in English very differently than how it is right now and it's fascinating what's wrong with his English you know well look at me I'm French yeah exactly yes so uh I think AI is very powerful too you can create lots of things and also I recently been obsessed with robots so uh I have like a robot dog I also share on the social media um so I putting some codes and the program with my robot dog actually can doing lots of things so so that's why I believe um AI is a very powerful tools and recently um I start to realize I also read something about the robot dogs uh I'm considering

if my robot dogs is controlled by other person and try to rob me and then they can just give me a Bitcoin or like TR like QR code tell me to send the usdt or Bitcoin to the robo doog or he do going to do something bad to me right so I think the combination with AI and blockchain will have uh a big potential because once if we enable robots with money right with financial services yeah they can do like like whatever you ask them to do so especially if it's happening behind the

scenes as well right completely on it yeah this is going to be I think Sebastian's favorite gaming and crypto what are you guys watching gaming crypto Sebastian from 1 to 10 10 not surprised Justin 10 42 because it's the answer to everything Sebastian what are you watching I know you have even before sandbox you spent a lot of years in the gaming role yeah so I'm also like president of the blockchain game Alliance we growing as a Association that now counts over 600 members really excited to think like we are still into a very early and experimental phase of like how blockchain and decentralization can be used in gaming mechanics like we've seen like now like fre drop of nft such as game characters equipment to onboard Community into games we've seen

new mechanics that touch around like decentralized Finance as well like you need to stake certain of your cryptocurrency to be able to access uh like um certain content and nfts we've seen everything from traditional gaming and esport like uh battle pass leaderboard competition and now it goes as far as like uh touching areas of like twitch and contributor of live streaming and also platform around prediction gaming as well and competitive orts so essentially I believe like the technology here blockchain nft crypto is essentially contributing to redistribute the value between all the actors of the value chain within the gaming and even creating more jobs with guilds with cont

contributor with a Creator economy as well Etc so it's very powerful marriage that's like going to change the whole gaming industry specifically as it is very challenged right now if you look at web 2 and free to play the traditional uh equation which is like CPI versus LTV like how much a user cost to acquire versus how much it you generate revenue from by selling in a purchase ads Etc is is that the worst moment ever in that uh 15 years long industry why is because like uh privacy laws have forced like the platform to stop collecting data on how users are behaving so you cannot Target users anymore properly so the CPI is rising and the current economical context of the world with inflation has

made that people are spending less and less in entertainment so LTV is decreasing that has led this year I think in 2024 massive layoff around like the whole gaming industry postco 20 25% of large companies even including unreal unichi Etc have been LED off so it's it's it's the time to reinvent it's challenging but it's also an opportunity to reink the model that we sustained for so long very interesting when it comes to gaming but obviously say Esports for example are you seeing this conversions um I'm not the I'm definitely not an expert like Sebastian so um Esports is a bit of a different animal because orts is a is a way where you you watch games and you watch

competitions we do work as a company with or as a chain even we work with six or seven of the biggest Esports team in the world and because we are between friends here it's very difficult why because fans of Esports teams they are very fragmented they are not high Spenders they are very dedicated to the games they support um they are not very big fans of crypto probably because we haven't collectively provided the right product uh yet um but it's a very difficult um space so so we we've been more successful in uh traditional Sports ironically uh actually if you look at the white paper of Chili's in 2018 when we launched the first two years we were going to focus on Esports I can tell you after three months we changed everything

we said no no we're going to focus in traditional Sports because it's much more Global and the sports company as like entities are easier to work than with orts company ironically interesting wow next one nfts are a tough this year nfts how bullish are you on the on nfts for the year to unfair again we start from you Alex uh nft is a tech it's not a product so uh as a tech 10 the question is which product Justin uh I will say eight eight 10 10 as well yeah why why why say well I think like nfts are more store of culture like we only seen the first iteration of what nft can

represent whether it's art collectible sport asset gaming asset like Avatar virtual land or content made by creators but there's a lot of updates around Dynamic nft around like Technologies like account abstraction that allows to basically make an nft a container that include its own logic with building smart contract and segregation of so so it's going to become ultimately U it keep evolving and and and allows like new form of interaction also like with the overall blockchain gaming industry is so nent that it's still uh a lot of use cases to be derived from the use of nfts interoperability is great concept but so few games have leveraged it so

far for us acquisition and more and even everything touching to real world asset I'm sure like there's a lot of like different uh asset classes that haven't yet been tokenized and whether they will be tokenized in a fible or non fungible form like like there lot of opportunities right yes you mentioned Acquisitions let's talk about m&a we we're entering in the bull market what what's you guys view on m&a and fundraising in the crypto space I start from you Sebastian m&a in the crypto Space six wow interesting Justin uh 10 10 as well Alex 12 12 why why are you 12 I do believe there is um and I've been public on this so that's why I do

believe there is already too many tokens there is too many every day there is a new layer one layer two ZK something whatever and so and there is a lot of VC money behind it because they're washing their money and cycles and every Cycles it works so good for them but from a token perspective which at least as issuer and as platforms it does matter uh the more tokens the less liquidity the more it's fragmented and I think the next one of the next big thing uh in the next 12 months will be token m&a and when I say token m&a I'm not talking about corporate m&a where two companies will merge I'm talking really companies merging their token to either one new one or old one and working on the same ecosystem working on the same platform

actually having aligned interest and trying to grow that ladder and creating a I would call that not a meta token but a super token where you have all of this token aggregated I'm a big believer in that interesting interesting why why are you by the way well if I look at like more traditional crypto and corporate investment like there's new investment that's being deployed finally in 2024 but all the money is only going to early stage and SE stage companies there's no money going in follow on series A B C D and so on and actually all the actors right now like the one that kill still survive like they might need at some point I know more cash injection before they do

go back to more acquisition so that's one thing that's missing the second is like we've seen the rise over the past year or two years of a lot of new ecosystem blockchain ecosystem s upts and so those are like deploying cash and grants for developers to join so we we we still in this phase of like everyone is going to fight to capture like the best application the best Services Throne as well probably you can talk more about it and not in know like okay now there are some dead pieces and only the tech team remaining and it's time for m&a to consolidate I mean there is a point where today there is more chains than there is the app that are successful and that's a problem and it's it's 100 times

easier to raise money for an infrastructure than it is for a Dap which is fair because it's actually much difficult to be successful creating a Dap that an infrastructure and that's a problem so so it's coming but I don't know if he here I'm not so guys we're GNA go on to the fire round of questions the Bell is here now we're going to use them for Rapid questions right so I'm G to ask questions I want one or two Word answers and we to get rock and roll and the bell is here to keep us honest you guys ready yes what is the region in the world you're the most bullish about crypto for the year ahead Alex to words not [Music] us a lot of anti- us sentiment in the room Justin what region your most

bullish uh Dubai and Hong Kong Dubai Hong Kong here we go Sebastian Hong Kong and Asia Hong Kong and Asia interesting we're in Dubai here what's your favorite thing about Dubai Sebastian it's a great uh both like financial and cultural Hub that connect three major continent Europe Africa and Asia beautiful favorite thing about Dubai Justin uh I believe here is a mix of culture so we can see all people from all around the globe come to Dubai I think Dubai is not only a crypto Hub but also a culture Hub in the region yeah absolutely Alex towards French restaurants French restaurants sh okay if you you could go back to

school today what is the one class you would take that you wish you had taken back in the day Alex Chinese Chinese Justin what's your favorite course uh computer not favorite course what course you wish you had take in University Computer Science computer science Sebastian what course you would take I I took computer science but I think I would a network and Engineering but I would go even further into like data science and anything touching to AI it's such a basic Elementary thing you need to have now and financial itac as well unfortunately we don't teach it enough in France mostly in Europe and only a few part of the world like people are are learning early on this is a controversial one I'm starting with you Sebastian if you could

hold one coin it could not be signed it could not be thrown you can hold one coin for the next 10 not chilies either can what is one coin you can hold for the next 10 years you're not allowed to sell what coin do you hold sad Sebastian it cannot be sand mine sound no no you're not allowed s uh yeah if still if ah e sorry I was not okay Justin uh Bitcoin Bitcoin Bitcoin Alex non-financial advice okay this is another one I'm starting from you Alex if you could launch tomorrow a new crypto startup and you can choose any existing CEO of crypto company who would you choose as

your co-founder I don't know as a co-founder I love Seb Seb is he a hustler no actually no I'll take yat y y yat and Seb y from anima they traveling the world like you never seen that and it's it's actually very valuable Moka Justin who would you choose as your new co-founder CZ CZ here we go Sebastian who's your new co-founder who do we choose if you can so I've been together with my co-founder AR from Madrid for 16 years I think we don't need to change the recipes that works yeah exactly very good very impressive by the way launching new start with new one that's the

answer this is a special one I'm starting with you Sebastian Sam bankman freed gives you a phone call from prison what do you tell him that's exciting Sebastian what SB give youf gives you call calling from prison what do you tell him do you have any regrets any regrets Justin what do you tell SBF uh why you do that Alex um I hope they have a good haircut hairdresser there and last question guys a typical tradition whoever comes on stage with me

to finish off token 249 Dubai the 2024 Edition Alex I'm starting with you if you could have lunch or dinner with one person dead or alive you could have lunch or dinner with one person Dead or Alive who would you have lunch or dinner with Steve Jobs Steve Jobs Justin who would you have lunch or dinner with Warren Buffet that was good Warr buff if only that was available and Sebastian to close after the conference what if you could buy lunch or dinner now you could have lunch or dinner one person that are alive who would you have lunch with Bill Gates Bill Gates my God here we go ladies and gentlemen a big hands of Applause for the panel that was the end for the show guys thank you very much everybody