The Next Crypto Boom Has Already Begun (And It’s Not What You Think) - Nansen CEO

Transcript

We're probably going to see trillions, if not tens of trillions of dollars of stable coins. >> It's pretty convenient that they misplaced a lot of texts and emails, >> which is insane. Like, someone should seriously look into that. That affects the onchain economy. Alex Vanovic is the co-founder and CEO of Nansen, the onchain analytics platform used by top funds, traders, and protocols to track capital flows, wallet behavior, and cryptos power players in real time. With a background in AI and data science, he's helped turn blockchain intelligence into an edge for the entire industry. >> Can you destroy like a multi-billion dollar business overnight? Welcome back to the rule.

>> This is your home to learn from the biggest guests, the brightest minds at the tip of innovation. >> Our goal is to help spread the collective knowledge of everyone in our community. We are breaking crypto out of its echo chamber and taking it to the real world. >> Sit back, relax, and enjoy it. >> Well, let's talk about it. The new Nansen mobile app is live on the app store. >> That is right. >> And it is the best agentic experience in crypto. >> Yes, exactly the words I would use. >> All right. So, yeah, tell tell us more about it. Why why is it the best agentic experience? What what what's possible on there?

>> It's pretty funny because our domain name is nonselson.ai. And for a long time, people are like, what's the AI angle? But we we always used AI behind the scenes a lot in the product. to label addresses. We have like 500 million addresses labeled and a lot of that is agentic, right? So, we have literally a team of AI agents that go out and figure out who's behind this address, for example. Um, but now finally AI is making its way to the front end. And so, the number one problem we've had with our product over the years is that people find it hard to use.

>> It's like where where do I start? You know, which dashboard should I look at? which table, which metric is the highest alpha, whatever. So, we thought, why don't we just think about what investing looks like in 2030 and then try to build that today. >> And I think for a lot of software products, the user interface paradigm is maybe going away and you're going to just be talking to AI agents instead. And so, when you download the app, uh there are essentially two things you can do. The first one is to set up your portfolio. So you can track all your onchain holdings in the app. This is not that different from like a DBank or a Zerion or a Zapper. But the cool thing is that you have an AI agent that has

your portfolio in its context when you talk to it and it has literally every onchain transaction at its fingertips. So that means you can ask it, you know, what are the meme coins that Smart Money has been buying in the last 30 minutes on Salana or Bass or any chain you use >> and it has access to that in real time and can pull it out to you in seconds. And you can choose between a fast mode and an expert mode, which is pretty, you know, standard for AI products. Fast mode, uh, we're aiming to get, you know, get your response in like less than 5 seconds. Uh the expert mode takes a bit longer, but it researches things very deeply and it's pretty amazing what it

can do. Uh like if I go on a podcast, I I'll actually just ask the agent before I go on. Like if it's about a specific chain, I'll be like, "Tell me about what's happening on Sonic, you know, in the last 30 days. What are the most interesting things?" And it does the actual onchain research for me. And I could even ask it like, "Well, what about the last 30 minutes or the last 15, last five minutes?" And I can even paste in like a transaction hash. And so you have like an agentic block explorer and it tells you, oh, this is a user that sent 500 USDT. They tend to use like casino products like roll bit.

They're depositing that into buy bit for their probably for their account. >> And it's like a completely novel way to just navigate the blockchain essentially. >> I think it's pretty intuitive where this is going. It's it it's going to towards okay, you know, I I can I can prompt it. I can ask all these questions. I can ask what smart money is doing in in various time frames. It can give me that information. I can eventually, I'd imagine, say just do it for me. Just you have context now on my risk tolerance and and my preferences when it comes to my trading portfolio. Go and execute some of these transactions.

>> I Yeah, I love that you went there directly because that's exactly what we're going to do. And and so I think the next thing you know that's happening with this app like we we gave it to users so that they could start using it now but the obvious next thing is hey I want to be able to execute transactions from this thing right like now I've discovered these tokens I want to be able to pull the trigger within the same app so that's going to launch in November and I think what we'll see is that as people do these kind of agentic trading u they have these agentic trading experiences. You do that like 5 10 15 20 times and they're going to have that feeling like you just described like, hey, why don't I just I I trust this

thing because it's it clearly worked for me these times when I was in the loop. >> Why don't I just give it an overall strategy and then I let it execute on the strategy and then I monitor it and check in. And I think it's pretty analogous to how like a Tesla full self-driving road map looks like, right? like you have your hand on the wheel, but you like if if Tesla launched today and no one had heard of it, I don't think you'd be comfortable just sitting in it and like, "Okay, take me there and like hands off the wheel, >> but they've built up the trust with their customers >> where they've literally had their hand on the wheel for years and you know, you let it run like more every time and

eventually you're like, "Okay, I trust this thing. It's going to take me from A to B." Um, of course, where the analogy breaks down is that every investor is different and there are lots of different destinations you might want to go to and different ways to get there. So, I think you also need it to be highly personalized. Like you have different trading preferences, different trading strategy or investment strategy than I have and the agent should basically accommodate for that. >> So, yeah, I mean I think people are going to look at this as vibe trading, you know, vibe coding. Vibe trading is going to be the next method.

>> And I've been using some prototypes for this internally with trade execution. And it's just way more fun. Like personally, I find it much more fun than like clicking around on dashboards, like looking at the price chart. You want something that is more fluid, more fun. And I think AI is great at lubricating these kind of complex processes >> and just taking away everything that's friction and annoying, >> right? and then just lets you do the thing that you wanted to do in the first place. I I can imagine a social element to this as well where right now again we're prompting these things. Maybe it's prompt plus execution and then in in a certain sense it's just autopilot but I imagine one intermediate step before

getting there is suggestionbased algorithms where it has my context it has my persona and it can understand what it thinks I may want to trade or what I may want to know. Hey, do you want to buy this? Do you want to trade this? Do you want to send this or that? And then it's asking me and I'm able to confirm. I'm able to say yes, I do want to do that. >> So the very cool thing about this app even right now is once you have um entered addresses that you want to track for your own portfolio, >> the home screen has personalized pre-created prompts for you, >> you know. So it's like imagine you know your portfolio is up and the main driver is Pangu let's say

>> you know hypothetical could be Pangu it could be any token then there's a little card that says why is Pangu up today and so immediately you don't even have to think about hey where should what should I prompt it we've suggested prompts for you and I think you know what the example you brought up too on suggested trades is interesting because I think actually that's what user would users would want. You start bordering like investment advice potentially and it gets a little bit hairy but I think you have to try to get like as close to that as you can without stepping over the line because I think at the end of the day people do want help with their investments but you can't claim and

obviously the AI can make mistakes. This is kind of like the cliche in the user interfaces of AI products but it's true. you know, they can make mistakes and so you have to be a bit careful, but I think at the end of the day, you don't want to just give the user like a cart blanch, you know, blank slate where you have to figure out what to prompt. You want to sort of guide them and make it smooth and easy. And I think it starts with helping them prompt it and then maybe you do more things when you get trading live later. >> That's a big philosophy around our show is user education and and we started out uh as DeFi Slate. We were doing tutorials and walkthroughs helping people use onchain DeFi apps ultimately because these things were so foreign. no one really knew how to use them. And it

it was important that we help people understand, hey, this is what you can use this for so that ultimately they can use it to accomplish their goals. And that's that's, you know, the essence of technology. And so, yeah, the the easier that it is for people to use these applications, the more likely it is that they end up collecting these wins and they use this technology, your app, Nansen mobile app, for a win on chain and then they come back to it and they continue to win. I don't know about you, but I as a as like a human being who's influenced by like emotions, FOMO, all these different things, it can be quite difficult to just look at your own trading or investment performance and get like a a sober assessment of it. And you can do that with the app. You can

you can ask it like, hey, what are my top trades? What are some mistakes I've made? What patterns do you see in the mistakes I've made? Right? and like okay based on that now let's try to go and find some new investment opportunities right so I think that's another cool thing where you get a bit more of like a learning loop and over time we want to add more memory features right where you can imagine that um beyond what you see on chain you could enrich the agent with information like you know here's why I did this trade or you know here's overall what I'd like to do and that memory file becomes just like your memory and chatbt or gro and so on makes it much more personalized and and makes the agent

more helpful. So yeah. >> Well, Alex, I'd like to switch gears a little bit because uh Nansen is one of the biggest validators on Hyperlid. >> That's right. And we've done the biggest besides the foundation. >> Besides the foundation, the biggest validator on Hyperlid and there's been all kinds of actions. Hyperlid is just continues to be at the center of attention, center of gravity for the industry. What is it like operating a validator of that size? H >> what are some of the trials and tribulations you've faced? I'm sure you know adversity and you know controversy. Maybe you could just tell us you know any stories that you may have before dig into specific >> the wait is over. The Talis test net is live. Be part of the revolution. Join now at testnet.talis.network.

Asset management redefined. Built on ERC7621. Standardize how you launch, manage, and trade onchain baskets. This is Alvara, the standard for onchain asset management. Habachi provable. Trade pers with speed and security. Earn rewards. Visit hibbachi.xyz. Trading on fire. >> So, the history here is that uh about a year ago um you know, we had been actually running a validator for Ronin, which is the Axi Infinity chain >> for a while. And we thought this was interesting. It was a good way to kind of align incentives with that community and we thought, you know, how can we double down on this? Maybe do this for other chains. At the same time, there

was a company called Stake with us, a small Singaporeanbased startup, uh, that was looking at potentially selling the company. And so, we ended up acquiring that company. They had about $60 million worth of assets staked with different validators, about 20 different validators. And we realized that with nonsense distribution and the product we have, we could basically supercharge their growth. >> And so um you know, fast forward to today, we actually have more than $2 billion worth of assets staked with our validators. So the thesis turned out to be correct. You know, more than 30x growth uh in a in a year. And one of the chains that we integrated um early on

after the acquisition was Hyperlquid. So I think it was maybe 27th of December uh it was around Christmas that we decided to move uh with Hyperliquid. One of the founders of stake with us uh Michael was quite deep into that ecosystem and so we decided to co-run the validator with hyper co >> right >> which is uh one of the kind of community teams >> in Hyperlid. So we actually run it together with them. We run it technically because we have, you know, a great team that's really experienced with security infrastructure and so on to make to make that happen. And then Hyperco is kind of our joint venture partner in that ecosystem, right? Because they know they

understand the hyperlquid ecosystem really well. They run events. Uh obviously for the USDH vote, they were instrumental in how how to run the governance process for it. >> There was some controversy around that vote. Yes. And uh you know I want to dispel this this myth that this was all determined up front. Of course I can't speak for all the validators in the ecosystem but for us genuinely we looked at all the proposals. We engaged with all of the biders. We spent time looking at this and at the end of the day it was actually the stakers with our validator who ended up deciding to go for native markets. It was very close. Paxos was right behind.

>> Um but we actually ran a process. We spent a lot of time internally. We created this kind of tabular pointsbased system where we counted stakers but also we considered having our own sort of council internally uh vote. We ended up abstaining with that council. In other words, it was fully based on you know stakers. >> Okay. >> Um but the idea that it was it was like predetermined is is not true. Yeah. >> Uh I think you could I think it's fair to maybe question the short timeline of like the the RFQ uh process. Um but within that time frame I think you know we put a lot of effort into making sure

that we looked at all the proposals. We even encouraged people who were on the fence to put in proposals to make it as competitive as possible. >> So yeah that's kind of the back story there. And so maybe just you know rehash what you know why you chose the native markets because on the face of it it was like okay well Paxos and there was relationships with Venmo and PayPal and all of this wide distribution >> there was other you know uh encouraging proposals from Athena FRA even had had so so what was the intention behind choosing at the end of the day it was literally decided by the stakers. Okay.

So, like I could sort of it was funny because we were talking about the the coms around it like >> should we really be spending a lot of time on why you know the validator selected native markets because at the end of the day the stakers decided >> right but we looked at the proposals and we thought native markets was a great choice. >> Uh but at the end of the day it was decided by the stakers. So I I don't really have much beyond that to add. >> Yeah. And so, you know, Native Markets now has gone, they've uh staked and locked away, I think it's $200,000, $200,000 hype. Yeah. Uh which is, you know, quite a quite a sum. And so, now this kind of embarks on like this new era, right? What? And one thing that stuck out was that most of the stable

coin issuers said that they're going to continue to run their they're going to continue to launch their their exactly what I was hoping would happen actually because these are fantastic ecosystem players like >> you want Paxos and you want Athena and you want all these guys to build in your ecosystem and I think they're going to do super well. >> So besides the ticker I think these stable coins are going to crush it. >> Yeah. So, so from your perspective running, you know, one of the one of the the the most uh the highest validator, like what what do you think comes next?

What is this next era of Hyperlid entail? >> Oh man, it's it's tough. I mean, like >> it's packed with so much stuff. >> The funny thing with this overall governance process, like man, Hyperlid even managed to make governance fun. Like they can do anything >> because when was the last time governance was fun? >> Dows haven't been cool for years. Yeah, maybe MakerDA had some fun stuff going on back in the day. I remember some fun proposals. But yeah, what's next for Hyperlid? I mean, clearly there's a lot of competition right now, right? And you know, I've talked about this before. I think in crypto almost every narrative or every innovation follows a three-stage process. Stage one is the innovation. There's one singular product that is the innovator. In this case, for

like a full stack per stacks, it's hyperlquid. Stage two is you get the clones, which are slight variations of that same concept. Uh, you know, I don't think I have to mention names, but there's a bunch out there now and probably more coming. And then stage three is what I call um, uh, industrialized over supply. Someone figures out a way to manufacture clones. >> Oh, okay. Okay. And so if you look at say meme coins, same pattern. Dogecoin was the innovation. Pepe, she enu and so on were like the clones. And then arguably pumped up. Fun is the factory that that generates literally 84 million memecoins, right? So it's like and you know do the same thing with NFTTS, do

the same thing with ICOs, do the same thing with layer 2, you know, like >> decentralized exchanges too, unis swap v2. >> Totally right. So it's like innovation, clones, I mean clones maybe is a harsh word but like variations of the innovation >> right >> and then industrialized over supply. The funny thing with hyperlquid is that there's a project called based based.1 is their website u little plug there. Um they have created essentially like the word press of hyperlquid dexus where you can just deploy your own front end.

>> Okay. >> And on the back end is hyperlquid and the builder codes. Okay. Yeah. >> So the smart thing about that if you think about it is that maybe industrializ over supply is all a bunch of hyperlquid front ends. >> That would be fantastic liquid, >> right? And I think it would make a lot of sense because do you really want to run the full stack infrastructure or do you just want to have a per stack that has great liquidity and sure you're paying some fees to hype uh but at the end of the day it's probably worth it instead of trying to build your own.

Well, as you were describing this, I'm I'm trying to think about, you know, who who are the winners because sometimes the innovators get innovated, right? Like if there's an industrial pump is doing quite well, the industrialization of the over supply, you know, they have a moat in terms of the volume in which they can produce the these the supply of these things. But the clones rarely ever kind of supersede it. >> It depends. It's interesting like you could look at I think in NFTTS some of the clones have done well, right? Like arguably Pudgy Penguins is a clone, right? Like the first one is probably either Punks, I think we're PFP, so I'd say Punks is the innovator.

>> Yeah. >> Then you have like hash masks, you have board apes, you have Pudgy, and then you have a bunch of other ones. And eventually you got to like ways to just manufacture NFTs and none of those are doing well. So I think some of the clones can do well also, but >> typically not as well as the initial one. Ethereum itself also followed the same path, right? Like Ethereum is the innovator. Then you have like you know eh EOS Cardano like smart contract platforms that didn't do super well but of course some of them have done well later and then industrial industrialized over supply is arguably like layer 2 framework >> right and it comes back to Ethereum.

>> Yes. Yeah. Ex. So it's actually kind of analogous to hyperlquid in that sense potentially. >> And I think it has this biodal distribution where both of those tend to do well. the clones I think fewer and far between but but on most cases you have the innovator that does quite well in the industrialization >> I think the factory can do well in the industrialization and some of the results maybe >> um but this seems to be like a pattern if you look at ICOs you look at smart contract platforms you look at layer 2 you look at NFTs memecoins >> you know it it tends to happen in a lot of these narratives so it's kind of funny but I think as an investor You have to be mindful of like, oh this is clearly like stage three, you know, like, you know, how do you

position yourself in stage three? Maybe it's time to sell some of the stage two holdings if you have some of those. >> That brings something up which you know, Paulo from Tether recently said he's like 0.25 out of 100 on this like >> dude, Tether is same stage one, Tether, the innovator, right? And then >> USDC, right? Industrialization, we have all these things. So, I'm actually curious like where do you think stable coins or maybe some of these other categories like are are we getting overextended on some of these and we're we're still quite early on others? Well, the interesting thing with stable coins is that they're not investable, >> right?

>> You know, in the in the sense that I mean some of them you have like you could buy, you know, Athena's token instead of buying the actual stable coin and you're betting on it, right? Or you could buy circle stock plasma these like what is smart money saying you could buy infrastructure right so there's ways to bet on it even if you can't bet directly on it I mean I think stable coins were like super early actually and maybe one thing to you know to to sort of call out here is that the narrative I'm describing right obviously there's a big difference if the overall narrative is sustainable and has like is is useful And stable coins clearly are useful.

They have product market fit. So I think we're super early on stable coins for sure. Um I mean we're probably going to see trillions if not tens of trillions of dollars of stable coins be minted in the next years. >> Um so so I'm I think overall I'm somehow I feel like that that's just going to do but super well. But I think you you might see u more white labeling like arguably Paxos that's what they do, right? They they white label stable coins. They had Binance USD. It was super successful until Gary Gensler killed it. Uh which is insane. Like someone should seriously look into that and and see how can you destroy like a multi-billion dollar business overnight.

Uh because Paxus was I mean it is a great business. Binance USD was a great business. Pretty convenient that they you know he just misplaced a lot of texts and emails that he was supposed to retain after his uh term ended. >> It's insane. Yeah. It's it's shocking actually and it's it's uh it must be really frustrating if you're like at the other end of that. Well, now CZ has Aster and he's doing quite well. So, that's quite all right. I I'm curious actually uh when when you're looking at um stable coins actually because this is something that is quite early and I think this is something that you know very rarely do we have CT and agreement on you know several on on on really just one thing but but the consensus does

seem to be that there is and maybe it's just coming straight from you know the secretary of of the US Treasury saying that there's going to be three trillion in stable coins. How do you think that affects the indust the the onchain economy? >> Blockchain shortcuts, templates, and widgets launch without friction for builders by builders. Visit enso.build. Relay low fees, lightning speed, and the power of multi-chain at your fingertips. Instant multi-chain payments. Choose any token on any chain. 75 plus network supported. More than 5 million users, 8 billion plus volume processed, 70

million plus transactions, fast, reliable everywhere. Start swapping today only on relay. >> I think the way to zoom out from stable coins is that they are an example of a traditional finance asset making its way onchain. And clearly, you know, dollars aren't the only thing that should be put on a blockchain. So, I think the if you if you sort of like broaden the aperture, securities, stocks, real estate, all of this stuff is going to come on chain in the next years. And I think it's going to literally like dwarf all of crypto, right? Because crypto is tiny. And I've

said this a few times before, but I think when you write the history of crypto, like 2040, 2050, you write the the history of crypto uh up to that point, the this first era is going to be called like the toy world era where we had all of these tokens created. Frankly, most of them were valueless, right? They they were kind of worthless, speculative, >> very experimental. >> Very experimental, right? And it's like I I say that, you know, and maybe it sounds harsh, but it's not really criticism. It's it's just like a fact. I think >> it's just the way it is. And that era was crucial in order for all the infrastructure and the products to be built.

>> But the real world era is going to bring like 10, 100,000x more value on chain, >> right? And so like why shouldn't, you know, nonsense equity be on chain? Why shouldn't like winter mute stocks be on chain and then also public companies obviously but I think there's a bigger um value ad by having private equity come on chain >> and you know why should you have to own a piece of property 100% or nothing. Sure you have riots and stuff like that but like >> if you're a young person the way it works today is you have to take up a mortgage and own the whole house and now you have a lot of debt. like what if you could just buy I don't know 1% and you

could accumulate a position in your home over time, right? There's a lot of these things that I think in hindsight are going to be kind of obvious and it's going to look silly. The way we bought houses and like the way we owned stocks and that kind of stuff uh in the past. So I think that's really the thing that's going to make crypto so much more valuable. And if that thesis is true, you have to think about what are the things you want to own today of crypto native assets and what are the things you probably don't want to own, right?

Then to me, I think owning layer 1 assets is a good idea. Um, possibly some layer 2 assets too. Um, I think owning things like a Camino that obviously are going to benefit from a lot of value coming on chain, right? it's probably a good thing. Um, but there's a lot of stuff that is like high up in the stack that I think possibly is not going to do very well because it's going it's going to get crowded out by real value. >> It's interesting to hear you call out the lending markets a and chamino as the primary beneficiaries of more value coming on chain.

>> Yeah, because you'd want to like if you have I don't know Google stocks or you have like you know your your home maybe not the the home is is this tricky one admittedly. It's going to take a while before we get that get there, but you'd want to collateralize that probably and like just borrow money against it and that's just very convenient and it's what people do in you know wealth management and private banking if you uh you know are at a higher echelon of wealth right but if you can make that accessible to anyone who has savings uh through DeFi I think that's uh that's super exciting and I'm really bullish on that >> and generally the the the blockchain mechanism is it enables collateralization which

I I think you know there's kind of two ways that that you can look at it and and probably many more but one way is you can take collateralization you can say okay that is going to lead to more leverage in the system it's going to lead to more rehypothecation and bad bad bad but then the other way is like no we actually can build a much more efficient system where we have a better understanding of how much money is in the circulating supply where the leverage exists >> if it's transparent and and blockchains by virtue of their verifiability should make that transparent at least if it's on public public blockchain.

>> I I'm curious as we build further and further into this direction, we bring more and more onchain. a general question about the hyper financialization of the world. >> You know, I I've had conversations usually conversations with my normie friends. They don't like this hyper financialization. But then any kind of like libertarian-minded um independent thinker, marketsdriven person is usually make a market, make it more financialized as a way of kind of understanding the truth of the matter and understanding the world around us. Where where do you stand on hyperin? I'm probably more in the Milton Freriedman camp uh of if people own things, they take better care of them. So I think it is good for the world if people own

things. And um generally I think we should strive to create a world where billions of people are owners in some way instead of a world that the World Economic Forum preaches where you will own nothing and you will be happy. I think, you know, the the better future is you'll own something and be happy. And so what we probably don't want to do is, you know, have people waste a bunch of time on like financial acrobatics, but we should give them easy ways to become owners. Uh whether it's in their own homes, whether it's, you know, in companies that they believe in or networks that, you know, they use. I think these are good things,

but we we have to make it quite easy for them. Uh and then people can kind of choose their own adventure with regards to how deep down the rabbit hole they want to get. >> But I think actually like collateralization is interesting because >> it could be that you get almost a bifurcation of like hard money and and and soft money because you would save in hard money, Bitcoin, ETH, soul, like whatever you believe in. uh and you save that in your sort of defi bank, you know, so to speak, and then when you need to consume, you just borrow against it. So, and as long as you have a healthy buffer so that like a draw down is not going to liquidate you. Um that

seems actually like a better way to to do your personal finances potentially, >> but you do need to have a certain amount before it makes sense, >> right? And like today those types of products are really only accessible to you know wealthy people through wealth management. But DeFi kind of makes that available to anyone. So um so I think I think that's that's pretty exciting and maybe will have profound implications for like fiat currency and you know how people save and so on and so forth. You know, you mentioned uh people owning things like being stakeholders in their in their networks and in in you know their goods. This is a core tenant of the network state which is you know

Bellagi's uh uh philosophy. >> I've been to his school across the border down here. >> So I was going to ask you know he's got this thing on Friday. What what is I I can understand a lot of the you know the same learnings and teachings that that come from there. What what was that experience like when you were there at the network? >> It was great. So I I did um kind of founder to founder uh session where I was talking about my experience building Nelson to a bunch of founders who were at network school. Uh and I also did one-on- ones with with uh a bunch of them sort of backtoback like 15 minutes talking about their products and I think it was great. I mean um it's still at the kind of early stage. Um I'm a big believer in in what he's building and

it's also pretty smart to place it there. you know, it's in Forest City, which is kind of this semi- ghost town, which you might be familiar with the history of in terms of the real estate development. Um, but it's actually a pretty like it's a great facility and like, you know, you can it's very spacious. It takes on a good day maybe one to one and a half hour to get there from Singapore. So, it's very well connected and um yeah, I I think it's a I would love to engage more uh with the network school actually and I'll I'll probably be back there soon. What do you like about it so much?

>> Um I mean it really has this feeling of kind of it's futuristic in a way like people are building the future and uh it's good to be among other builders as well I think because it creates this like atmosphere where you can do anything and like you can push the the boundaries. Um, and like I said, it's like literally a pretty large physical area >> and so it doesn't feel crammed at all. It feels like you could kind of sit anywhere you want and like they have even pretty, you know, they have some like Brian Johnson inspired foods you can get and like Yeah. So the whole thing feels very very like forwardleaning and like optimistic about the future >> and and what do you find most appealing about the network state philosophy?

>> Oh, that's a good question. Um, I mean, I think generally as someone who, you know, so I grew up in in Norway and I think over time as I've lived abroad, I've sort of become almost more connected with people through crypto. That's like my first community in some ways and I feel a belonging to that community. But obviously crypto is not a nation. Um, and so it's hard to be like patriotic about crypto, but I think what he's doing is trying to take that feeling and make it into something that is more tangible.

>> And so I think a lot of us kind of we relate to that feeling and we would like to be sort of members in that overall like ecosystem. And so it's a little bit, you know, intangible and like handwavy. Um but but something about it tells me that you know there's something there even nation states are like abstract notions right and I kind of like the idea of cities more than nations in a way because you live in a city you don't live like in a nation in a way like in a country.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. The country notion is like hey we have a flag we have maybe a common language we have shared history like you learn stuff but it's much more abstract. And so if you could do like city and then totally like virtual, you know, nation. I I like that concept. >> I was speaking to Yatsu from Anamoka Brands about this and and he said the only difference between a network state and a nation state is a military >> arguably. Yeah. And maybe some land, you know, but yeah, >> I I could imagine a scenario where a network state effectively hires its own military. But yeah, but how like maybe that's like a cyber security military of sorts that protects its citizens like virtually, which actually is something that's going to be, you know, more and more important for people, especially in crypto, to to keep safe.

>> Um and um but yeah, I I think I think like experimenting with the notion of like what a nation is is uh is a good thing. And um I I went on a walk with Balaji after he moved to Singapore. I think we moved roughly around the same time, Singapore. And uh clearly this is a guy who has a lot of super interesting ideas and just being kind of part of what he's doing and just seeing where he's going. I think actually like a great great um part of leadership is that you just want to follow someone even just to see where it goes.

>> Yeah. you know, just out of curiosity. And that's the feeling you get with him and what he's doing. You just kind of want to see what what it ends up becoming over time. And I think the overall vision is the right one. It's like quite timely for where we are now in in history. And so, who knows, maybe we'll both have, you know, network state passports in a couple years. >> Yeah, sounds great. That's been the the nature of our angel investing is just just genuinely curious, see where it goes. >> Yeah. Well, Alex, thank you so much for coming on, man. It's it's uh it's been a pleasure because I think you've got a bird's eye view of this industry, which, you know, some people are so zoomed in on meme coins or this or that, you can really connect a lot of the dots and I

and I think that is very valuable when it comes to drawing some of these insights. So, thank you for sharing. >> Thanks for having me. >> Yeah, absolutely.