East vs. West in Crypto & Neo-Capitalism with Yat Siu

Transcript

if you really want to buy an established Network effect and you think value will keep crewing go buy Bitcoin or ethereum Bitcoin was created as kind of a revolution against that and so now we're coming full circle and where we need to then now go appeal to these people and also because at the end of the day institutional investors are willing to lock their tokens up welcome back to the rollup your home for technical talks and open conversations that shape the modular future nothing on today's show is to be construed as Financial advice you can see our full disclosures list at the roll up.co Ventures sit back relax and enjoy today's episode after a quick word from some of our awesome Partners Redstone is def's modular Oracle supporting over 100 clients on over 50 chains offering 1,000 assets

Redstone is the leader for Bitcoin staking and yield bearing assets they offer the most robust customizable price feeds available in any model join the Redstone exhibition today [Music] all right we're in Hong Kong um I'm here with yatsu yat welcome on Welcome to the rollup um how you doing today great and it's lovely to be here especially in my hometown I mean this is where I live and this is where anoko Brands is based it's like a home field advantage for you out here yeah it's also kind of a bit of a proud moment for Hong Kong and web 3 because consensus which is of course a Mary event is now in Hong Kong uh and you know ever since we joined sort of

the web3 task force which is kind of a government initiative to try to really promote web 3 in Hong Kong you know back in 22 and then 23 and those were dark days in our industry it's great to see sort of the culmination of various efforts not just in regulation but also in activity uh and you know Hong Kong has had many uh blockchain and crypto events but having consensus here I think is a really big win for the city and it's great to see most definitely and so so what are some of your key takeaways from from the conference so far uh I know that you guys had a big announcement maybe you could tell us a bit about that and yeah also just for those who aren't here like what's the what's the what's the alpha what's the takeaways that you that you've had from

your circles well okay so let's start first with Hong Kong um you know consensus has been great you know I think something like you know 5,000 people from overseas have come over or more I don't know but anyway it's been great the city's been buzzing and the energy has been electric so that's been really great to see uh you know we had a big announcement on stable coins uh us and Standard Chartered and H have basically announced the Hong dollar stable coin in Partnership uh in the JV that we set up and for those of you who don't know stard charted is basically a note issuing Bank in Hong Kong so they're one of the sort of most prominent Banks here uh and you know we see this as a really good way of onboarding people who are just not sure but then they can do it through a stable

coin which really think about it the kind of stuff that sort of circle and tether have done for the industry we expect that to be replicated with something like this but the difference is that this one is essentially um sort of Li licensed under the hkma which is our Central Bank which would make it um quite possibly maybe the only if not the first U sort of um stable coin that's issued that's basically licensed as a stable coin as opposed to like a remittance or payments license right and also one that is issued by a bank which is also really interesting so the whole combination of that I think we're really excited about uh but the other thing about Hong Kong is that you know with what's happening in the US there now really pivoted sharply Pro crypto versus from what it was before Hong Kong is now

doing things to become more competitive as well they basically licensed more exchanges um you know they have regular meetings with private Enterprise to understand what they should do better so I think Hong Kong is you know really since 22 has tried to sort of you know late 22 has tried to really become a leader in web 3 and I would say that you know it's you know Singapore Hong Kong Dubai they're kind of all vying for that position and now with the US entering the race I think uh there's a more comp competition which is good because that means that um more competition means more Choice uh means better options uh for for industry at large in terms of animal Brands I mean we are based here and and and one of the things that we love about Hong Kong is you know Hong

Kong U what the magic about Hong Kong is that it's always been a financial center so it's really got a lot of financial talent but then it also has Tech talent and it's a kind of place that is really friendly for people from overseas I mean people speak English here uh actually the everything is written WR in English because it was formerly a British colony um you know the rule of law you know um the legal system these are all things that actually really work to Hong Kong's benefit and Advantage um as a platform and of course tax friendly regime flat tax no capital gains uh no dividend tax all these things have always been an attraction point for other areas of business in Hong Kong and I think for web three guys it's going to be exactly the same so so when you C when you came

to this event knowing that it's your home base that you have a lot of friends family connections here what from from Adam oka's perspective what what what are you guys aiming to kind of either provide to the community here or also uh what you know outside of this deal what is some of the goals for yourself and and for anok here so I mean not just here but globally our mission statement is basically delivering digital property rights right the whole idea basic is to make the space you know Mass adoption around people moving into the space because for the first time they can actually own digital property right on chain you know whether this is a token whether this is an nft it doesn't really matter right you know the history of Anima Brands was we actually started off as a as a gaming company yes right and

we were really early with nfts uh and you know we invested in openc ax Infinity bought the sandbox all that kind of stuff to really sort of kick off essentially that whole sort of nft sort of gaming cycle and it was because we really felt that Gamers understood virtual ownership better than most even if they really didn't own it they felt that they should right it was kind of natural you talk to a gamer and you say should you own that skin they're more likely say yeah it should be mine I paid for it or I earned it that's the Le assumption and you know virtual currency and tokens while not exactly the same thing have a lot more parallel similarities uh and so people can relate to that a lot better uh than say you know traditional fiat currency so that was kind of uh how it started off but

we've since then really branched out a fair bit um and and you know we have over 540 portfolio Investments you know more than half of revenues comes from advisory treasury management and basically the digital asset sort of space broadly speaking we have the operating businesses there things like moch open campus sandbox and then of course we have Investment Portfolio management with the 540 plus portfolio companies many sort of companies that you may have heard of whether these are the layer zeros the openc the magic Edens you know Igloo Yuga Labs um you know the whole range of of Brands all over the world that we've invested in and of course Investments that we have here in Hong Kong and supporting the local ecos system system because we're based here and we're sort of funding local projects and supporting them and

helping them sort of grow as well we really think that web 3 uh and we see this basically in other parts of the ecosystem is sort of very native for the Youth right young people intrinsically understand digital right right they're they're born into it you know my generation is really we're digital immigrants right we we weren't born into it we have to learn our way into it and even though we have some fluency it's not as natural to us as a youth and so to me I also see this as an incredible opportunity for young people and that's basically what we want to also do for places like Hong Kong how to bring more young people and include them in the space and what excites us about digital property rights is that once you own digital property uh and you have an interest in it you start to learn about

financial systems and capitalism and that's one of the reasons why web 3 tends to accelerate faster in places where you are more Pro capitalist uh in America that would be places like Miami right uh in and Hong Kong is a or bu Singapore these are all very Pro capitalist places in contrast to places like Europe uh that are a little conflicted on this sometimes and that's on also one of the reasons why I think crypto adoption isn't as quick although it's still Rising quickly uh relative to markets like this because people have an appreciation and understanding of the value um and of the structure of money agreed yeah I think New York City is actually becoming like theis you know it's a Renown crypto Hub now correct

it's kind of coming back I'm actually going to go moved there for 3 or 4 months this year makes sense and just kind of buckled down after 2 and a half years or so of just kind of traveling around outside the states yes um it feels right it feels like the time it is now absolutely um there's a lot of opportunity and there's just a lot of Buzz and smart people and and that is something that I think that being around in an early stage of your career is important um so I'm going throw you a curveball here I think your original thesis of web 3 kind of gaming the original an anocha it somewhat fell flat um in its way right like we we we've kind of seen this iteration of of the of the last cycle and then now like I I don't know Gamers didn't really like

crypto for some reason like there was like this hostility where like they were anti- crypto or some capacity so so like what's your take there like so let me give you a couple of stats first um because I understand the sentiment and I think the reason why that comes in because in specifically the crypto World we're so narrative focused correct on sort of that token project that thing does it go up 10x all that kind of stuff but when you zoom out yeah uh web 3 gaming is about $18 billion market caps across we have 6.6 million daily active players playing web3 games today okay now how many did we have 5 years ago close to zero zero correct you know we I think we when we first invested in axi I think they had a thousand users yeah you know maybe like I 100 do like it was

like nothing like people were simply not playing those type of games because they didn't understand it all that kind of stuff right uh and it's rising and one of the reasons why it's rising so much quicker in the last year is because of ton right in fact a lot of the ton ecosystem really grew because of uh because of because of gaming particularly web through gaming yes you know click to earn play to earn these are may appear to be very primitive but these are the first set of generation of games like this they're evolving and becoming much better and you now have real active Gamers basically participating in the space so that's kind of the macro now zooming into a little bit yes what you're experiencing and I presume that's because you live in the US right uh or in the western hemisphere is that you're experiencing

essentially the same type of culture war that we saw in America in crypto why so America has been at War itself on this idea of capitalism right there's a capitalist which are let's call them most of them in the Republican camp and then you have the more socialist minded people mostly in a democratic Camp tending to be young as well right correct um and you know I won't go into the details of whether it's woke or whatever the point though is is that they were generally ante money if you are rich you're bad guy right why because you're you know extracting value extractive all that typ of stuff you know give your money to to everyone you know you don't deserve this you know that kind of narrative uh which is the narrative that I understood back in Europe when I grew up because I grew up

in Europe uh and so I've definitely saw a similar type of thing and I see America was at war with itself between these capitalist values and so if you're a gamer uh and you basically have these values which many of them do uh then you don't like crypto but you don't like crypto because it's an nft you don't like it because it's basically digital capitalism yes right because in real life money seems to be in your mind perverting your social order so when I basically bring money into my game then you're actually the risk is you're going to pervert my social order inside the game right so that's kind of the feeling whether they understood it intellectually that way or not it's the same sentiment in Asia though we didn't have that issue no Asia is pro

capitalism a huge difference always differ huge difference whether it's Vietnam Philippines or even Korea or you know greater China region they love3 games ownership right no problem right um even paying money to have a better experience problem I think they like gaming more like when I'm in a Subway in New York or in Europe it's New York City it's finance apps it's stocks it's emails and texting Europe is like a mix of that and some movie watching and some Netflix and some Instagram and some gaming in Asia my time in Korea Hong Kong it's like almost everyone's gaming yes on the subway yeah so they cultural difference there's a cultural difference they're gaming but also remember Asia has really only

experienced the benefits of property rights capitalism and forms of that sort of democracy over the last 30 40 years right so South Korea had a GDP lower than North Korea 40 years ago imagine that wow okay and you've been to Soul right yeah it's beautiful it's beautiful it's it's bustling it's bustling it's a democracy it's capitalist it's the 12 largest economy in the world right you know going from being poorer than North Korea while it's Northern neighbor never embraced capitalism and guess where it is the poorest country or one of the poorest countries in the world right so in living memory you know my parents generation had nothing they basically lived in a time where they owned no property where the governments could take whatever they wanted they

experienced socialism communism at its extreme and so they appreciate it regardless so that's why this is so important to you that's right whereas in contrast to and of course when I grew up in Europe um I'm of an older generation so I grew up when we still had the Eastern block countries right and I grew up in Vienna which was right in the middle between East and West my mom used to work at the K Opa in Berlin so I would cross the border to visit her sometimes and I would see what Eastern Germany looked like and basically experience you know what communism looked like so outside of that experience the point being that um Americans for instance today especially young ones have no idea what real communism is like when they talking about sort of you know socialist values there an aspect of

socialism that I am sympathetic to but they have no idea really what they're talking to for the most part uh they're just thinking from the lens of their perspective of equality and justice uh because they have an experien this and their parents generation have really enjoyed the benefits of a very stable country with capitalism and democracy really working for the most part right but that's also part of the issue for Our Generation I'm 25 without crypto and without like this entrepreneurship Journey that I've been on like I look at at a lot of my peers and they have the hardest uh background or landscape if you will to thrive in I think since I don't even know if it was like the Great Depression or something like a hundred years or something and and I I know it's very privileged and

entitled to say that in such a world where there's so much opportunity online there's always opportunity but inflation cost cost of everything that's right Education costs everything is just so expensive and I think like I mean crypto is kind of solving that but my generation is also in that camp where it's like we are we're kind of fighting Against the Machine raging Against the Machine in that way yes and I think that's exactly the struggle that you have in America because for young people they don't see another path and then they view crypto as another form of capitalism and they say oh no this is just basically like they don't actually appreciate that many of the people who actually made generational wealth in crypto are actually not people of that same wealth class right actually could

be like your friend exactly crypto is actually a brand new wealth wealth class it's not actually existing New York Bankers that sort of decided to do this and make more money but that's the mental model they have whereas in Asia it's it's appreciated uh and again you don't have that sort of negative sort of perspective on capitalism which is why I think like crypto gaming is much more welcomed here because they don't have that type of stigma as they have in the west I think that's from that's where that question comes from right is that is that kind of Western and this is something that I experience a lot where Western there's like there's also a really large bifurcation in Western versus Eastern crypto Brands yes uh where there's a lot of I think the Western culture values technical Merit uh research and like deep kind of like

level of innovation or like like perceived Innovation and not not that the Eastern culture doesn't but the Eastern culture responds much stronger to uh community and uh speculation and kind of this type of uh this this new age of of of um well the relationship with money is completely different forance in Hong Kong you know um we have the horse races and it's actually a social thing and it's very normal to go and bet on it as a family right and it's not that people go and you know I wouldn't want to sort of um necessarily dare to say that it's the same as a meme coin right but but it's essentially a kind of culture that develops from let's go as a family let's B on the horses it's fun to make some money we don't

have to it's entertaining you know it's just just having some fun but there's a relationship that begins with money and then you know you you know walk through the alleys in Hong Kong there's this game that they play it's like basically think of it it's like a Chinese Poco ma right and you see it everywhere and you hear the Clashing of essentially those Marble Marble Marble pieces uh and again it's that culture and and that's a culture that when I went to for instance Taiwan my my mom's family was there uh and you would hear those noises all the time and it was so normal for them to just have fun and play cards essentially uh and and you know with a little bit of money and and of course with that comes an appreciation of money and there's Game Theory and so on whereas when I as

I grew up in Europe you know money is a dirty thing you can't even talk about it right uh and I think you know when we went from a labor economy and switched into a capital economy which is really what happened over the last 30 40 years in full force the ones who understood money really had an advantage and their wealth sort of you know became outsized in growth whereas the ones who didn't understand money were still stuck in the sort of classic labor idea that I do good labor good things will come but actually if you look at the labor economy it's mostly flat whereas the capital econom is going up asset valuations and things and that's actually why we're so fascinated about web 3 because we think to solve this kind of inequity we have in the world we need everyone to become a capital owner

but you can't be a capital owner in the traditional sense of owning stocks and shares or owning real estate because it's not possible but through tokens you can do that because you can now be a member of that Network the the mental model to me is imagine what Uber would have been like if every Uber driver actually had some shares in Uber for for for driving for Uber like they kind of some kind of public stock option scheme if that was possible of course they never did that well then when Uber starts replacing the drivers with AI the drivers wouldn't have an issue with that because they're actually part of the you know the incentive alignment is it's better for the business and it's better for My Equity I did my part in terms of helping grow the value of the network correct and then over time the Network

rewards me for having done so that's possible in token economies that's why s are so interested in tokenomics and in sort of incentive and value alignment uh in this new kind of capitalist framework which we typically describe as stakeholder capitalism as opposed to the more more sort of current form of shareer capitalism where value is really concentrated so I think like the the problem or the situation that we're oscillating around here is crypto's Got a Brand perception dilemma happening right now right I think that like the the lat Libra uh mem coin stuff is the latest example I think Trump's mcoin is an example of this I think um I mean there's just a lot of that kind of behavior and I think a lot of those who don't understand the core ethos of

decentralization of unability censorship resistance like like the core principles of the philosophy of blockchain all they see is the negative so when you're approaching portfolio companies when you're approaching uh High net worth individuals in Asia in Europe in the states investors family offices like what is the what is the conversation tone like now what is the what is the perception like and like how are you shaping the conversation to improve crypto's perception much much improved in comparison to anything that we had before I remember when I gave a TED Talk in 23 on Main stage uh around web 3 in the metaverse U you know most people didn't understand that the metaverse wasn't meta right that was the first point uh and the second thing is is that

they had no idea what was happening um basically in the world of blockchain and crypto um and back then for instance Dows um you know had like about 3 million people governing it uh and about $12 billion in value and today you have about 20 to $30 billion of value depending on which day you look at um but 11 million people governing it like so you could say yes it's capitalism but it's Community capitalism it's a way where everyone can actually sort of partake and have a role in it and have governance over the value or the equity or the capital that's at stake here so it's actually just a better form of capitalism as we see it uh and this this this uh sort of explanation really appeals okay to U people with wealth because they have an interest in making

things better I mean there's some people who don't but most people when they reach a certain type of wealth they're like how can I do better things but they also don't like to just give away for charity because even though they do that and they appreciate it uh it's it you know you you become a capitalist because you want to think in terms of productive assets right you're want to create reward and yield that you can then productively sort of use and spend in a certain manner and actually again um blockchain and crypto actually provides a real good platform for that uh the thing that we need to often do is explain how it works and the fact that crypto and blockchain and tokens in particular really mostly represent a new kind of asset uh and we call them essentially um Network assets so you don't buy ethereum or Solana

because it gives you great yield right I mean if frankly T bills give you better yield right uh what they actually do is they give you membership in the network that of course you make some money on it but actually it's a participation of you know what everyone else is building for instance in in ethereum um and you're buying the token because you basically believe that the network effects of ethereum will grow why will it grow more developers maybe more l2s more value generated more tvl whatever the factors are the network grows the network effects grow and therefore the value grows as well right uh and I think what uh and one thing we try to explain to people is a lot of people conflate viral effects with network effects okay so and and and that has to do with the incentive mechanism for instance if you

want to get listed on an exchange to get liquidity which is a form of a network effect uh you want to show that there's sort of a good sort of signal of volume of users so they would engage in viral tactics to grow the users correct but it doesn't matter if the users will leave afterwards which we see happening which happens a lot you know so you people come in they Farm some tokens and then they leave and there's almost nobody there because the application that is using blockchain technology actually only used an incentive to create a viral effect but not actually create a network effect so Network effect is many sided right you have like you know 15 16 17 18 different type of network effects you know when you think about the first Network effect of Bitcoin it was basically a belief system right it's

like I believe this is better you follow that right um meme coins are actually very much belief and tribal first the utility is zero but eventually what happens those that actually last they start to want to deepen their Network effects and they deepen the network Effects by creating applications or having developers that's one of the reasons why L1 l2s and all of these sort of um blockchain layers are actually so popular because they're the easiest way in which you can imagine building Network effects on if I basically build an L2 with my community which is what I set up initially then with that Community I can have them you know basically make a game or an application that then brings the community closer to each other so to speak which tightens the network effect um and of course liquidity is another kind of network

effect right the more liquidity you have the more capital and people you attract the more the more users you have right um so so it's something that most people who are not in web 3 don't really understand and even people in web 3 maybe they intrinsically intuitively feel it but have a difficulty time articulating it so we typically translate outside of rwas essentially tokens as stores of network effects okay and and people understand that they do and they resonate with it they resonate with it also because it's a new type of asset that you couldn't value before correct because everyone was trying to there was a time where people were trying to sort of conflate tokens with equity completely two different structures have nothing to do with each other for the most part but but people were just trying oh it's like selling

shares but non dilutive how's that work make sense whereas if you're giving away tokens in your network you are diluting your network but you're expanding the network effect by giving it right which is why you know you don't want to give away tokens to a bunch of bots who don't use it no right you want to give it to real people real humans that actually create something um and build Network effects as opposed to those that basically are just here to ractor innovating Finance Global institutional and onchain deep liquidity to drive Capital efficiency now maximize yields on institutional grade liquid staking with M unlock trillion dollars of capital via F

Bitcoin all of this secured by mantle treasury of billions in stables and E Capital Pools this entire ecosystem system is coordinated by a vast network of season BCS that are aiming to create the next generation of Banking and Financial technology this is mantle so now that you've kind of developed this thesis from your personal perspective as well as through your experience with Anoka how does that apply to the next several years of your investment strategy personally and for Anoka how does this network effect oriented I idea lead to uh successful Investing For Those in the audience we have a lot of

VCS researchers Founders Builders how do they build Network effects and how do you find and identify successful projects that have that so you can think of it a little bit like what stage you're investing in right so early stage Network effect is zero concept is there right right it doesn't matter whether it's revenue or whether it's a building of of a network a typically founder driven versus if you really want to buy an established Network effect and you think value will keep crewing go buy Bitcoin or ethereum right you know it's very simple because the the the network effects are measurable they're clear they're there when a new L1 L2 launches you're taking a chance you don't know whether they can really build a network effect maybe they can maybe they can't and then what are the elements that help construct them do they have a special IP

is someone building on top of it is it a great game like how is the potential there but the more earlier it is frankly the more speculative it becomes right that's just the way it is right but often if you're really good at community building which is the first kind of network often it happens in web 3 then from that basis you have an audience so if you know we for instance we expect that a lot of games are going to start launching that will support mem coins or meme coins themselves are going to launch games of their own why to deepen those Network effects right uh and other type of applications I expect certain kind of meme communities to become l2s or l3s right just as a way to sort of build something on top right we're going we're going to absolutely see this for

the ones that are more persistent um communities that out out there so that's kind of sort of maybe the framework to think of it right so the other thing of course is and I think this is really really important especially in light of what happened you know in the last 30 days in our industry you know with really I think of Trump trump token as a as a as a vampire attack on mcoins yeah followed by Melania and now with Libra I think we're starting to hit a certain kind of peak in the cycle uh because of this Mass extraction it's also important to note though that most of the people who got hurt by this are actually people from the crypto World correct right uh which is both fascinating uh upsetting a little bit but also interesting because unlike teral Luna FTX or even icos where

a lot of regular people were hurt uh actually here was mostly the people within our sort of um world that were hurt so it's it's it's it's a bit different that way uh which is actually in some ways good because that means uh um they've been isolated it's like an interesting headline but they're like well whatever I don't it didn't affect me right no um so that's kind of um that's kind of um one part but but it also means that institutional crypto as I call it is going to be much more important so what I mean by that last year I wrote an article where I said the institutional error of crypto is coming yeah it really was because of Bitcoin ETFs signaling that black rock Fidelity all those guys are coming in right think about what happened in the last 30 days including the tariffs close to $10

billion of liquidations yeah that's teruna FTX level of of of of liquidations Bitcoin is still under care I know that's why is that institutions right um and ethereum and Frankly Speaking you know yeah people complaining but still holding up pretty well in comparison to where it was when FTX um and Luna happened right again it held up really well because it has institutional backing and support because people understand it yeah which means that if you're a founder of a business um and with the companies we want to back are you able to appeal to an institution we're not going to see less tokens coming out we're going to see more tokens coming out right but that's the new era yes it's a building for compliance it's building for a different audience now and it's it's

while it's building the the different audien is also to say who has holding power and who can speak to an institution is this team doxed so that they can talk to an investor or is it run by someone who's a cool dude but actually never wants to um Talk to an investor or never wants to be accountable for something I mean I'm being I'm drawing extremes but that's a that's a priority for you from a thesis perspective now it's like is this founder or project applicable to invest to institutions exactly and also because at the end of the day institutional investors are willing to lock their tokens up yeah their time frames much longer and they're willing to invest longer and they also buy liquid right whereas mcoins essentially it's a casino um and now that we know I mean some of

us may have known earlier but some of us now definitively know that fair launch was never fair right it was always an illusion and I think that's the issue where the rules of the game weren't clear right and the power of blockchain and the power of frankly any econom transparency transparency and the trust that the rules of the game are the same for everyone right whereas in in in mem coins it didn't happen it was trading that illusion uh again institutional if you've got their token unlock investing schedule Who's invested you know the structure around the teams that's not to say that these projects will all succeed clearly not but these are elements you need because you know an institution is not going to buy Libra yeah okay but yeah I've got kind of an existential

point then like the entire point of the space at least when I joined in in early 2017 and even before that even more so it was all about putting kind of putting the middle finger up to institutions to governments to central banks to the entire idea of the money printer to the people that are closest to the government and big corporations getting everything Bitcoin was created as kind of a revolution against that and so now we're coming full circle and where we need to then now go appeal to these people uh no I think there's a differ there's a difference here that I have Clarity I know what you're saying but this isn't about the institution co-opting blockchain it's about bring bringing the institution into the space so that they follow the same ethos at

the end of the day if an institution buys Bitcoin they don't change Bitcoin no right no they can't they can't right at the end of the day um I mean unless Black Rock starts buying mining pools and and and suddenly wants to sort of control the hash rate right good luck exactly but my point is is that that them buying the asset to me is blockchain co-opting them right right because they were essentially entering a world where we are already in that already has a much more democratic access than any other form of Ames right so so when a token launches in the beginning remember the institution isn't going to buy a token on day one no right he's going to want to see what happens um they're going to want understand is it a good project or not that's the

opportunity that was never afforded to the common person before before and this is still true it was true then it's still true today so it's it's not about appealing or kind of you know you know sucking up or some or some way to institution it's about building a longlasting company that is is is appealing to institutions from the perspective of in investability correct and and an because investor can take a long-term view correct and also becomes a signal for someone who say oh well if this company likes it well then maybe I can feel some safety more importantly it gives a level of accountability to the founder because the thing is the founder is accountable to who if he's accountable to only a community raise and he's anonymous he's not accountable at all he can just go wherever he wants

right and he or she whatever it is however if you've got a set of investors in the beginning and then thereafter you're accountable to the investors uh there is a certain level of sort of you know truth and trust that needs to come from that right and again there's always risks you know it's it's uh there's no such thing as no risk but you mitigate that and you want to be able to be in projects that are serious uh and so so to me this institutional appeal means that you stand out from the crop yeah I'm not saying that you know there won't be tokens out there that could be wor Millions maybe even billions right but if you're really looking for the project that will stand out that really sort of continues to have consistent growth even during difficult times uh then it's going to be the ones that in

institutional appeal and then the signal will be is the institution buying what are they saying what do they think because more and more research now we started as Anoka putting out research again for the same reason to say we back this and existing research houses as well as new research houses are going to come up and start talking about why this is good or why we don't like this and then you know there's more information and more knowledge in the space overall yep well yeah as we kind of come to a close here again just want to ask for those who couldn't make to Hong Kong any uh spe uh special uh closing thoughts takeaways Alpha ideas investing Trends um something to leave us with a a bit of a gift here um well maybe a shout out to a couple of projects that we really like

right um obviously we like Humanity protocol right great but partially also because it's become really important to as I said earlier to be able to identify you know what is um you know sort of proof of human uh and to know that you're actually really building a network right again it's all about how do you build powerful Network especially in the age of AI especially in age of AI having said that um we also basically very focused on digital reputation because in our view digital reputation in the case what we do with mocha versus mocha ID uh can also be an AI agent you don't necessarily need a human to build a strong net you can also build a strong networ with an a agent that is doing good things right and so we can totally see that then you know the future is such that with especially with crypto AI

actually has power now because it has the ability to generate earn uh and give tokens Y which is no different than a protocol giving an airdrop which basically means that we'll be working for AI for those purposes right that's kind of the way the the way that we're going uh so we're very bullish about Moochers um because of this digital reputation layer and again why is it important I go back to the whole network effect sort of thesis if I can build with people that have a good reputation because we're giving reputation score based on what you do you do you dump your token don't you do it are you building on it you know what are you doing in the network and as you improve your reputation score you can maybe earn more but that also means you're more likely to do business with someone right

it's like in real life if I trust you I'll do more business with you if there's no trust there is no economy and I can't trust anything and I think in web 3 we have this problem where everything is over collateralized for a reason because outside of the capital I can't trust you because you're a new wallet you're anonymous I don't know what you are which again I think M ID will solve two other things we're excited about once's a little more longtail you know with education open campus very excited about that because they're trying to solve student loans with Defi and that's actually really fascinating because again Mass adoption right in America alone student loans is a $2.2 trillion space um everyone has student debt it's really really difficult but with defi you can create better yields and actually reduce the interest from students when a student

receives essentially crypto uh as a loan that he pays off the loan and then he has to pay back the loan through crypto this person is on board for life right and many other aspects around it so so that those are the things that we really like finally we're really bullish on gaming this year okay now this me seem like oh really right comparison here we go again um so our space is very narrative driven yes and the economies of what happens in the outside web through world really affect the web through world like I think of tokens very much as sort of um indicators of attention right in some ways that's a form of a network effect so I think even of mem coins pre all this sort of Insider crap that we're hearing about as essentially like an open polymark right so I often share the story where

my you know I I ended up becoming somewhat cool with my kids because I knew who chill guy was I'm not on Tik Tok I can't see it I don't really look at this why because of the token I'm like hey I heard about chill Guy what's all this about right but that's because at that moment the popularity of the token indicated where some of that attention was correct um and you know why you know what has been the big sort of Market thesis particularly in the latter half of of last year ai agentic ai all that kind of stuff you know which we're in as well uh but why is that because AI is everywhere The Narrative on AI is really big and popular right uh so we're really affected by sort of narrative there's a narrative premium to our space uh because of the kind of sort

of you know Financial poly markety like energy that exists with tokens there are two major events in gaming this year that will change everything for good or for bad hopefully good because we think they're going to do well the first one is the launch of Nintendo switch 2 uh Nintendo basically hasn't launched a new console in 8 years and when someone buys a new conso console people buy new games there's popularity um gaming funding has been low growth in gaming postco has been flat so macro gaming actually hasn't done as well as people thought it would so has been no growth trigger for it right uh and the even bigger trigger due for September but probably Q4 is GTA 6 yes there's nothing bigger culturally in the sidec of this year and probably

the years to come than GTA 6 um and you know there's you know and I've heard Rumblings that crypto is going to be in like there will be Take 2 is not going to adopt crypto inside the game but in GTA 6 uh actually GTA you can run RP servers uh and and there's already talk around essentially putting essentially crypto inside some of these user Le servers it'll be really interesting to see uh point being though of course GTA you know the whole thematic I think crypto fits really well into it you know given everything in the mcoin things that we've seen before but but not just the crypto narrative just the gaming narrative yeah how many people are going to start buying a new Next Level console so they can play GTA 6 yeah everyone right also GTA 6 is going to push the pricing to $100 we

think or above 90 gaming income the the buy purchase of a game have you noticed I don't know when last time you bought a game it's about $50 maybe 60 it's been the same for the last five six seven years yeah they're going to increase it yeah um because it couldn't increase the price cuz Gamers wouldn't like it yeah what happened to our money supply during that time yeah it's G up a lot so actually gaming companies are struggling where they basically selling for the same kind of money in a effectively non-inflationary way in a heavily inflationary Society right our food costs have gone up gaming cost has not gone up um so when GTA 6 comes out and pushes the price to close to 100 if not $100 uh and successfully does so this will change the entire gaming industry people pay a lot more and suddenly

things in crypto will seem cheaper as well the whole cycle will change and so if GTA 6 does well which we really think it will we think it's going to really reawaken the gaming narrative by the end of the year in a pretty big way awesome yeah I appreciate your time and your thorough responses it's been an absolute pleasure man thank you thank you for having me cheers