I'm bringing us in. I'm doing it.
All right, welcome back hashing it out audience. This is another hashing it out personals
I know that you're used to personals being personal like one-on-one, you know real intimate, but
Stephen Mackey is an amazing friend friend of the show long time friend been in crypto
Since forever with us on our journey as well. I know I met you back in 2015
So that's eight years now holy cow. That's a long time
Stephen Mackey, I don't know man. I want you to introduce yourself
easily
Easily yeah, so my name is Stephen Mackey and I've been in the crypto space now like 10 years
Still still just as beautiful as I was when I was 22 God bless me
And I've I've worn many hats many roles because I'm just addicted to learning and crypto
Is like one of the best places for you to constantly be learning about everything if you want to be a multi-disciplinary
And so to speak and I like to put myself in that bucket personally
So yes, I have a hedge fund CC fun. I've made open source like software contributions
I've helped the Bitcoin ecosystem grow the Ethereum developer ecosystem grow now more recently with like handshake
big proponent of you know decentralized finance the D web
Regenerative like economics coordination around like sustainability
Literally just whatever people are getting hyped about at that time. I try and dive deep down a rabbit hole
I told myself I would do it and so far as as long as it doesn't exhaust me
And it definitely doesn't anymore
Every every day is a new chance and an opportunity to like learn and grow and I've like kind of I've really fallen in love with
The crypto industry and it's all I know now
so I can't go anywhere my job is my livelihood and
Beyond you know all that my main day-to-day job is to run my fund and momentum capital and we doing that very
successfully as an OG crypto fund
I would say one of the better of the crypto funds just is not just from returns and
Capability, but we're just good people and we've kept our heads low and tried not to fall into the being the main character or the villain each cycle
Hoping to make it another one
Doing the same thing
And yeah, so that that's like that's been my core focus and on top of that
I also have a podcast myself block channel that I've done with D and
Corey for since I think like
2016
It's kind of taking a little bit of a break in 2022 as I've been working on my soul
So to speak
But I've come out the button is that now so now I'm just like now I'm back in the saddle trying to get myself back out there to see what I've been missing
So in your opinion
What's the point like?
Why crypto?
Why make a fund that focuses on the various aspects of crypto and
What's like what's like if you were to tell a GPP?
General purpose person though like and and profletize it to them if we still do that anymore. Why?
Yeah, I mean as you gentlemen know, you know crypto China has
Permiated into multiple different different sectors, right?
You know, we started with just like peer-to-peer money with Bitcoin
And then we move to like programmatic smart contracts and finance and to
Regeneration and now there's a focus on sustainability and you know, there's this imp this confluence of like green solar
You know different types of you know clean energy solutions to you know power like proof of work mining
There's a lot of research around you know how to how to best
You know manage and secure these assets, you know with things like proof of stake as well
It's just a constant evolution and a constant need to apply
Decentralized governance as well as coordination and incentives in places that it didn't exist prior to make humans like more efficient and
Kind of like that's what draws me into it every day is that you know, even right now as we have this
Emergence of people using like AI with things like chat GPT
Especially being here in San Francisco being in the heart of that sort of excitement
It's it's it's a constant resurgence of here's the new hot thing and then we realized a new hot thing
Could be used by crypto and so it really excites me to stay inside this industry because you know
It allows me to be at the forefront of every new bleeding edge technology and still be paid to research it
So yeah, it's a sustainable way for me to kind of be this forever academic that just never wants to grow up
and only wants to learn forever and I definitely think that like my youth and my
Excitement for life comes from the con the constant learning. So it's just it's the best space to be in where we're always going to be
Parallel to whatever is like happening now
I definitely have a at least a similar feeling of like
This was a sustainable way for me to just keep learning about stuff from a from the aspect of like I'm gonna get paid well
to learn about interesting things and new technologies that keep popping up that
May change the world or not, but like I'm saying academia was not gonna get me that for sure
Mm-hmm. You mentioned I want to get personally. So so you mentioned
You your fund is is aiming to not be you know the villain and not necessarily be the main character of each investment cycle
So can you can you kind of expand upon that what you mean by that?
Yeah, so I've been in here in crypto 10 years and here's just something I learned you you want to be well liked
but you also want to be well disliked and
Because otherwise if you don't find yourself in the middle
You either find yourself as this joyful loving kind of main character that can eventually fall from grace
And if you lean too far into the darkness into like your own greed then eventually you get kind of like snuffed out
as like one of these other like bad actors like a like an FTX or or Mt. Gox or insert XYZ here of like different, you know
fantastic failures in the past so
You just want to be there kind of like on the balancing act on like writing walking around the tightrope of you have your earn
legitimacy you're contributing to the space you're sharing your opinions with those opinions and those belief systems and what you're building might not always
be loved by everyone equally and that's the best space to be in and this sort of like
intersection between order and chaos right this sort of like chaotic element and
myself as an individual I've always put myself as an
Equa balance of the two like if you go into a room with crypto people because I've been around for a while and you say
Who's Stephen Mackie? They'll be oh, I love Stephen Mack. He was part of this dad of the other
That's awesome
But if you go to the other side of the room you might talk to someone like oh Stephen Mackie man that guy's an asshole
And that's okay. That's that's the space that I want to be and I want to be I want to be well-liked
but also well-hated
Because if you're not both then you're not actually innovating and you're not actually doing anything useful
That's like challenging the status quo in my personal opinion and again
It goes back to if you're too good
Then eventually people will like kind of like look up at you and they're like oh, you're you're the person that we're all gonna
Look towards and that that's way too much pressure for me
Especially that someone that's like always so extroverted and there's always like speaking their mind
so in order for me to like you know maintain my own personal professional safety and
Continue to get great deal flow and to get opportunities to like, you know, like earn money
Just myself personally and through the fund. I found that's the best place to be because if you're not always seemingly perfect
People know that you're real
Right and you know, I've approached this industry on always being real and I think Corey and Demetri can you know
Kind of attest to that like, you know
One of my very first interviews that I did in podcasting in crypto was with the Bitcoin podcast and I'm pretty sure at the time
It was a very like
It was a good
It was it was hard opening I was like, yeah, you know come from a tough background a tough place
I'm just I'm just trying to do my best and get raised by loving adults online
And I would say like that's that's the man I am today
Because I would say I operate it with some of the most
Influential and some of the most intelligent and kind people that I could find on the internet that like resonated with me
energetically so Corey and Demetri were some of those two they were like a pseudo internet podcast ads that sort of like help show me
Help show me the ropes and you know, you know, give me like the motivation to be like, hey, yeah
You're good at this. Yeah, keep on doing it and you know as this like extraverted
Person who's like secretly low key and very introverted nerd
It was the best intersecting for me to like find the joy that I need in life while at the same time
Like being able to gain at least enough notoriety in my professional world where I feel like I could make a career out of crypto
Because before it was cool to be in crypto
It wasn't and then it was cool again and then it wasn't and then now
I think it's I think it's kind of cool again and then people like it
But they're also complaining because they just lost money
So I just kind of like wait around until the next cycle where I'm up
It's I don't know if it's ever cool so the GPP
I'm here to get personal this call hashing out personal store personally up personal me down reason
What's your favorite breakfast and what's your favorite breakfast as you make for yourself?
Mmm. My heart is
Mmm. I usually start I usually start today with a nice
Vegan plant-based like protein shake that has like all of my ami amino acids and everything in absolutely various San Francisco
And then of course
I use that to chase down my array of
different supplements that I take whether it's like in 80 plus or
um
Terchastarone or whether that's
different types of like multivitamins to like help like kind of just keep my just my overall like energy levels like high like I
dated many
Biologists over the past like 10 years as well and like I kind of use my spare time to balance my own
Biochemistry and to into I don't want an attempt to stay young for forever because that's God's job
But I do like to be the scientist to help at least like understand how I can
Best take care of myself like I earn wealth in crypto and I'm a very minimal person
Yeah, I mean my very empty room that I'm in right now is probably a good attestation of that and I've never lost that
That minimalism that frugalness and that's very important to me
So the things that are real wealth for me are friends connections and like in my health so that always comes first
So definitely not like a spinach omelet man. No actually like because like I grew up as you guys are aware of that
The audience says no grew up poor as hell
No, I grew up. No, I grew up poor as hell
So like I got used to like not eating breakfast so so what I can do eat breakfast is usually liquid based
I usually don't eat hard food until I pass like 12 noon when I can stomach it
so again
my life is is very
structured and very minimalistic and
Even as far as my like food
You're kind of like Corey Corey doesn't eat breakfast either Corey likes to just look at food in the morning
I have a cup of coffee that watches down my my multivitamin supplements
And I maybe it needs lunch and then I have a healthy ticket. Are you taking metamucil yet?
Have you gotten to that? No, not that
He's like I take my metamucil in the morning
You got to drink all of the two audience because you don't leave a little goo in the bottom of the cup. It's hard
You told me the grossest thing the other day. I was visiting Dee last weekend. I don't want to keep this
Put your business on blast in the street. How gross is he talking about the bidet? No
What about your morning routine? Oh
Maboos oh sorry we can go to that later audience that'll be on hashing out person was deep or two
Yeah, I'm a whistle that open ended now honestly
I'll let y'all all let y'all play into that. I'm curious about how you walk that line
between
being well liked and
Well-hated and how you tell you don't stray too far in any given direction and like if what indicators are compromised you may see
Absolutely, so
What I realized well what I've learned about myself over the past few years is like my intuition is really good
And if you follow me and crypto for any amount of time you'll realize I'm gonna do issues pretty damn good so when it comes to
Interacting with so many different people's and energies because I come from such an interesting background
I feel like I can always I hear the words that people write online and hear the words that people say out loud
And like I kind of see the real truth behind them kind of get kind of get blessed with that sort of like intuitive insight
And I and I use that to my advantage
And so effectively it's like if I feel like you know if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck
I have no problem calling it out for being a duck and
In an industry that prides itself on so much hardcore intellectualism
There's a many people here who've always been on this sort of egoistic pedestal that might not be used to someone saying
No, that that's just a terrible idea like not that's just bad it'll fail and
I think that that is what has driven me to like my level of like success and like notoriety and what I have obtained as far as like
legitimacy goes professionally
And why I get like you know invited to invest in the companies and end up on cap tables and stuff like that is because I'm gonna
Tell you what's real I'm gonna tell you how I feel but I'm gonna do it with a level of self-awareness
Where it's just like I'm not telling you this because I don't believe it
I mean I'm not telling you this because I'm trying to like bring you down a peg excuse me
I'm telling you this because like I genuinely care about the industry that I'll work in and
I want to try and protect everyday people and when there's been instances where you know, I've been very right
You know ahead of time, you know the protecting investors
Both retail and on the large side accredited qualified, you know the bigger boys
That's really really appreciated
And I think that yeah, it's like I've never been I've never had a problem with being on the receiving end of someone saying ah
Well, you know what screw you Steven like you know, I'm gonna go win and I'm just like, you know bless your heart like good luck
I hope that works. I hope that works out well for you. And so yeah, it's just like
really unapologetic honesty delivered with a very like
intelligible level of tact which I think is like incredibly like important so and you know and if I'm sharing my opinion on a project like I've
Talked to many different people that might be adjacent to it many people that maybe like directly involved into it
And I kind of formulate my own opinions and pattern match in a world where myself
No one ever had a way to sort of pattern match someone like me and my own personality and like my background
So, you know I take it as an opportunity to look at every person with a fresh set of eyes and not take
verbatim what they have painted themselves in their career as like okay
This is who you claim to be online
And I'm gonna try and discover who you actually are and I want to bring that to light early in case it might be of detriment to the greater community
Are there any projects that your intuition has kind of
Sense that this project may not be a good project in terms of its contribution to the community overall
Yeah, I mean many layer one projects
called out like FTX and
Sam Bankman fried like very early as like, you know kind of a very sketchy like operation to avoid after
Doing my own due diligence myself as someone that has a hedge VC crypto, you know crypto phone
I guess we'll just call it that here in the space like, you know, I had to look into myself
Should I use FTX? Ah should I invest in this project?
So because I'm actually looking at these things not just investing in risk with my own money
It's also other people's money
So I feel like I I of course just by design. I have this fiduciary duty
To to share, you know, my the types of insights that I'm deriving so if I'm telling you this online
I'm also telling this to a limited partner or another investor like in private, right? And the faster that this types of maybe
Uncertainty can disseminate, you know the faster
We can kind of clear it through the bullshit and each cycle where we have these massive sort of like increases and like kind of
You know net market cap of the space and everyone's making money left them, right?
There's always gonna be there's always gonna be down period nothing goes up forever and as long as I've been in crypto
I've learned that though our greed every cycle wants to convince us that it will go up forever
It's never the case. So if we can eliminate as many potential bad actors on that ride up the roller coaster
You know what I mean? There's gonna be less folks with their, you know, the hands up complaining when we come like come back down and
Yeah, and again, it's just all about finding an echo balance between
Intellectual honesty and the fact that you want to make money because I feel like some people especially like maybe larger voice retail
Type investors are just like general crypto investors that maybe don't have funds
Maybe don't have startups and they're just very loud voices on they Twitter or whatever social media site
Or you know work on at the time a lot of people don't have an obligation to actually tell you the truth
And especially when all this information is transparent open, you know
So many people might get a certain insight and say well
I derived this from this data set and it's transparent and everyone else can see it
So I don't have any obligation to really tell people the truth because if they can't see it then they're just not as adept as I am
And you know, that's a very common place personality that you'll find too where people are just like, you know
Hold in information like personally to themselves and hold it close to their chest
So within legal bounds, I like to do my best
Intelligently to to tell people what's up before it actually goes down
So whether that's you know uncertainty of like a certain projects technical viability
You know, I've interviewed so many different people's have a technical background myself, you know, I've spoken to like
Probably thousand plus different entrepreneurs and you know and builders in the crypto space and over the like past like six or seven years
Since I can start at my podcast and stuff and before then just interpersonally
That you know, I kind of have a good read on the different personalities in the space
So when I see certain types of people interacting with other certain types of people my intuition sort of just like rings off
It's kind of like a spidey sense where it's like mmm. Something right here. Yeah, the man the Mackey the Mackey spidey
sense goes off and I'm just like mmm
Let me talk about it and I'm not a shy person and I mean maybe I maybe a little bit
Maybe a little bit less ego applied to this now these days, but I wouldn't have any problem in the past being like well
I told you so
But now that the miss the space is much more mature and there's a lot very a lot more very intelligent people around to give their perspectives
I feel a little bit less obligated to kind of play that
Kind of good cop back cop who sort of deal I lean towards just being good cop these days
But you know, hey, you know, we all we all we all live and learn like slowly and if I can share some insights
I'll allow other people to pattern match and I think overall just the industry can be make more resilient
Yeah, something I've been trying to figure out or like understand
And the process of trying to explain FTX to people is that a lot of the
The great you'll see from mainstream media that the
Had each and that's heard whatever
That it's a downfall of crypto, right?
It's it's proof that crypto is a fraud or blockchain in the fraud or scam or it's not actually useful and when I believe in reality, it's
the hallmarks of
Whatever you want to call it centralized web crypto blockchain, whatever is the reason why we were able to root out
such a bad actor in the first place and
I'm trying to figure out how to explain that to people properly or like it one would you agree with that too? Yeah, how do you help?
Bring that narrative to light to a broader audience
Yeah, you know, I've had quite a few conversations with them people thankfully not anyone that's invested into my phone because you know
they know what's up in the industry, but
And just just in general relation to like people understanding that what FTX did was
Wasn't exclusive to crypto. It was just straight up normal fraud. It was just business fraud
You know what I mean? It could have happened in any industry
It's unfortunate that they've paint they paint themselves very large important crypto stock exchange, right?
Given like all their like media promotions and stuff like that people were just like oh, this is like the equivalent of a coinbase
Scott also got all this legitimacy and it's not even to this day
You know coin bases at coin bases a bank. It is regulated. It's legitimate
It is in the US just like my fund and is audited every year just like my fund
They pay the taxes every year just like my fun
You know what I mean? Like there is a certain level of
Assurance there when you have these regulated firms that effectively are like banks and so though we've
Griped on them many times over the years. They were really necessary evil to
the growth and proliferation of the crypto story and then you had like new folks come into the door
like SPF and
FTX which I hate saying that with all these acronyms but scam scam Bankman fried and his
shitty fly-by-night exchange
And the Bahamas it's just like if you are anyone of decent investor
Worth and you weren't just a normal retail person you wouldn't have put your money on FTX unless you were a hedge fund that had no
Choice because you do have a very large LP pool
Which is looking at you to have the same level returns because you're getting all these institutional investors
So they're like well the fun XYZ is swing trading doing heads trading on FTX
Well, why aren't you? Well thankfully for myself since my fun is like mostly like self-funded now and then it's basically a private family office
Thank you God
Like I had the flexibility to handle these things like and to approach them without the the LP bias where I'm like
I've got to be making my people money
Like after five or six years I've been long enough in this space
I'm just like no the goal in crypto is to just stand in the longest without losing money
because if you stick around in the right place with your money in the right spot, that's really hard not to make money and
You know when you're a hedge fund like you of course you're always trying to do things like you know leverage and
But what I have found time and time again in crypto
Is that those big players always end up like getting burned because they start taking on too much risk
So for me, it's just like those crypto native applications
So to speak are the best ones to like invest in going forward and there are of course money-making
opportunities with these different sort of like hybrid platforms things like these like sort of like crypto like stock exchanges
But I just don't really ultimately think that they're worth the risk
It feels less like hedge investing or investing in general and a lot more like gambling and
You know I got in the crypto to invest money and to create wealth
But also at the same time, you know create like
opportunities for other people to do the same and
To take that away from people just sort of like feels that yeah kind of dirty
so, you know ultimately I just I
Try and I try and make sure that I
Try not to be too greedy because it's easy to do that in crypto and any time
Everyone and their mom goes to an exchange
That's usually a bad sign like coinbase is successful because people openly hate it
If everyone really loved it like out loud even the retail even the people like don't have any like you know
fiduciary skin in the game for any investors. They're just a loud cartoon character on Twitter
That's no good. That's gonna tell me that that's a how that's potentially like a house of cars that I wanted
I'd want to keep my money off of so I like to keep my money in the old school majors
So to speak as far as exchanges so like crackin and coinbase and those types of guys because like they've they've been around the block
They know the crypto native importance of real decision
centralization self custody
And they lean into that so when folks like SPF came into the space
You know was launching tokens here there left and right, you know people were doing leverage trading on his exchanges
You know effectively like with these like I'll use and it was just it was like red flag red flag red flag
So much to the point actually and I wish I still had the message to prove it
But I sent a message to Sam very early must have been like
mid 2020 when I saw that he was launching all these like tokens like Sierra Man stuff
And I was actually talking to a good friend of mine. Jeroga Jer
Joe ergo, excuse me from district zero X a very old school like ICO project from like back in the day
And I was telling him about it and he was just like man
He's like man that thing is like such a scam and I was like yeah, and he's like he's lever trading
But he's just like pretty tokens out of thin air to leverage trade and I was like yeah
Maybe people aren't gonna see that so I could probably DM'd SPF on Twitter one day and I was like hey man
Just want you know that like I'm watching like not in like a threatening way, but I do this often I do this often
I do that I come down like it like like like some don't curly on like just let you know like you're being like like
I'm observing you right like I'm autistic. I've got nothing better to do than I percess over you
Maybe losing somebody money money or me money and his response back to me was quote verbatim
You're going to regret that you don't know who I am and
My response back was that I was like alright buddy sounds good to me
Five minutes later. I got the oblox key from him on Twitter and then I was just like well
This is beginning your downfall
We'll see where this goes and so there's one thing that I've learned is like if someone tries to be critical of what you're doing
As a founder in the space and like you're not willing to take advice
Or opinions from other like you know perceived like a more senior people in the industry
That's a huge red flag for me. It's like if you can't take hard criticism
Then you're probably going to fail like as a leader in this industry that is incredibly unforgiving
Like you mess up once in a big way like it's really hard for you to get your trust back right whether you're three arrows capital
Mt. Gox now with like FTX
DCG and Barry Silver are going through that right now
You know there's probably gonna be a couple of more people that saw themselves as bulletproof and
Reality in the industry just like continues to humble them
Hmm man. I have so many questions. I'm gonna let you do one that hey though
Do write them down so you don't forget them. Okay, that's good idea
My so you said due diligence. It's a phrase. It's a phrase. It's thrown around quite a lot in crypto
Back when you know when we started in crypto due diligence was relatively easy
Right it was like Bitcoin and like two other tokens that meant anything at all Bitcoin what like coin
Ethereum was a little later than those two, but it was easy to do due diligence, right? It was easy to stay locked in
Now we're talking about tens of thousands of tokens, you know hundreds popping up every day
And so how do you do your due diligence? Like is there a formula that you approach thing with is there? Yeah? Yeah, absolutely
Absolutely, so I kind of I'll give you a little bit of insight from maybe my OG pitch deck from way back in today and it
Comes down to this. There's um
There's only a few ways really to do effective
Crypto due diligence because it is the industry in a space that moves constantly so much so quickly and so of course
You can do the whole Rickammer role of let me let me check out the github who's making commits here is a community excited about it
What are the what are their past contributions like what industry do they come from?
How confidently did they speak about like their project? These are just kind of the normal sentiment analysis of kind of understanding like kind of
If a project stands a chance, but real due diligence and crypto is done in real time
All day every day
Watching things as the industry changes and watching the perspectives and the interactions and the comments that certain entrepreneurs make in a space
And what you'll find is, you know, if you find if you follow a certain entrepreneur for a while, let's call out somebody that's on my
Potential gray area lists were probably is gonna go shit soon
Massari
Massari and Ryan's okay, so I'll tell you my I'll tell you my intuitive due diligence there
And while I know like I know that he's probably next on the hit list give us the juice
I'll give you this so the juice the juice on selkis and massari is you know
He was very very early with working with DCG right in Barry silver like energies attract like energies
I firmly believe that right and then he left from working with those guys at DCG and then as a very
Prolific writer so to speak
If you want to call that
You know
He made his contributions and was at coin desk and helped them build up their events and all that then he went and pivoted into
Like his own entrepreneur venture once he built a large enough network piggybacking off of
Barry silver and coin desk
So he's a you know he's an opportunist and raised money for Massari at the time for what he claimed was an absolute need
We need a platform where we can get the data and get transparency on all these projects going on in the industry
But if you remember from my point earlier real due diligence is every day
I'm not I'm not I'm not concerned with the the token lockup period and releases and all these different problems
That's what he wanted transparency on
He couldn't operate in the industry in such a way where he could do that real time like due diligence
So he sought to centralize that data into a platform and then wanting to like extract rent off of like disseminating that that data
Okay, that's all well and good and I'm sure
During the cycle like that probably serves a good purpose for educating some people on projects to invest in or certain ones to avoid
But ultimately like at the end of the day like you know, that's that's not enough and so like and when
Someone gets very vocal about other people who are being
What's the best way to phrase this?
sketchy in the industry like
Sometimes we speak our karma out loud as a mirror when we lack certain levels of like self-awareness
And as someone that operates in the fun, you know kind of in a in the in-between space is like, you know kind of like a you know
developer
investor
You know trader type of person
I'm constantly seeing all these different personalities and like how to interact with each other and I see that you know
People aren't being disingenuous
With what they're actually trying to accomplish
So if you go out of your way as an entrepreneur to really shit on other projects
And I mean really shit on it like egg a day in and like day out and like basically saying oh, I'm better than you at this
Dad or the other
Then ultimately that's a good sign that you're like working through something through your own subconscious
So I also lean deeply into like behavioral psychology and like pattern matching to being like okay
Is this person really upset about this other thing going on in the industry?
Are they projecting and if you if you really start paying attention to that point
You'll realize that a lot of people that have failed in crypto do a lot of projection
Right like I am like, you know, I all the projects that I invest in and work in like I put my heart and my soul
I soul into them and you know and I and I do it with with with goodness and honesty and my best
intentions and my heart and
Because like, you know, I don't have a centralized like entrepreneurial venture or something
That's like my sorry, you know, I have this open-ended thing
That's a fun and it's private and it's only for qualified investors and you know, I don't have any retail exposure
You know, I I of course like have a more better understanding of what like what investors are expecting
and versus like what the retail expects as far as like legitimacy like in crypto and
Yeah, so it's just like keeping my eye on the people that like
Overindulge themselves as being better than we're holier than thou
and those people like often end up being some of the
most egregious offenders in the industry and
Yeah, so it's it's more so just like pattern matching people but also knowing the history of all these people
Like I'm a high functioning autistic person. My memory is amazing
You did something bad six years ago and you said some bullshit and a response on a tweet and I saw it one afternoon
I'm never gonna forget it
So it's just like so everything that I see in here
I'm constantly aggregating in my mind to understand to find out what the real story is and as someone who's been a writer in the
Space too as like a pseudo journalist through like my podcast or my newsletter
At that we had it, you know through block channel and then and then of course now my funds newsletter
Constantly keeping people informed on what my perspective and opinions are like are like really important but doing it in a kind
gentle
Semi academic way is the way where I approach it in a in a point of non-bias and I always go into everything
Hoping to be wrong
But that's usually never the case
so
Yeah, so it's more so just like years and years of like pattern matching and understanding that people are not always what it makes
It appear on the surface
It's interesting that
It's just interesting as a whole in crypto that do diligence used to be like we used to focus on tech
We used to focus really hard on how it's built and now it seems like slowly the inevitable is we're focusing hard on who is building it
And that's interesting
Yeah, we used to go from the top we used to go from the top down right from like quality to you know
Like shit and now we go from like the bottom up because everyone has all this money
So you've got a really got to wait through the marketing dollars and ad spend before you can actually get to the truth
It's really I just avoid all marketing also at this point
point even reading any marketing pitch or deck and for most
Conversations that usually means the conversation starts about 10 minutes into it
You have to get past that initial like introductory marketing material
And this is a I don't know maybe this is just my
difficulty with society in general is there's no real good place to find information other than like
We're the source of the development is and having some level of intuition on how it's supposed to work
Otherwise like if you try to go to what people want you to read it's not gonna come out very well
There's no question that Jesse you had some
Yeah, so my my question that I wrote down before was in terms of I guess
Some hedge funds that are quite large like I have written down here sequoia capital had an exposure of 225 million
Into FTX right that's that's pretty big
You know you also had a tiger global I guess or tiger management group maybe a subsidiary like one of the tiger tiger cubs
You also had soft bank you had you had these you know quite prolific
Investment funds who had exposure to FTX. Why couldn't they see what you saw?
Because they had to play the me to game the me to money game is a very hard
One to get away of once you've like dipped your toes in that water
And what I mean by like the me to money game is if you are a huge fun say you're like a paradigm or
DCG for instance, right you have such a
astute level of professional developers
Excuse me that's professional investors that are investing into like your funds that you have this certain level of expectation
Where you should always be the bleeding edge of everything that's going on and if the right company the right opportunity come on like FTX
Where they've branded themselves as this more
legitimate, you know company more than they actually were then you're gonna have LPs your investor base coming to you but hey
Are you on that exchange? Are you doing that?
And like how are you making money and you've got to tell these people through your like your LP updates?
You're you know your internal investor letters
That yeah, no, we're taking a look at it. Yeah, no, we've got an allocation in it right?
That's like X percentage of our AUM like and as crypto has gotten more mature
So to speak
We've gotten more more different types of these like professional level investors that are just like upping the check size
Upping the ante but in actuality. It's the same level of experimentation and potential like, you know bullshit and fraud that's existed for like the past 10 years
But you've got these junior analysts that come on board and like their job is like be on Twitter all day
Join every telegram group be a part of every discord
Like and then they leave that sort of general due diligence to like the younger folks
Maybe more a little bit like less experiences experience to like build rapport with these different projects and stuff
So they pull away this whole different perspective that is just
Probably not very conducive to like how these how these funds should be putting in money like when we raise money back in like
2018 right the original goal for like raising was like ten million dollars. I got bored
After about a month of fundraising we raised like close to three million dollars
And I was like that's three million more dollars than I had before let's get to work
And you know, and we've grown our fund substantially since then but when you start with a large LP base, right?
Think of it like cooks in the kitchen. There's so many different opinions and you know that when you take their money
Then they're gonna have a certain level of expectation of communication and a level of like insight into space a lot of these investors will put a small chunk of their
money to right like you know
It's like 200 million sounds like a lot
But depending on if you're a bank or you're a larger like, you know head fund or you know a VC fund to drop in the bucket
Yeah, how much money you had hundreds of billions. So yeah, exactly so it's like
Exactly. So it's just like so so so they don't have the same level of risk profile as like I do like my rep
My social capital my reputation was the thing that was allowing me to get
Access into these different deals when only thing I had to offer with my intellect
Or just like my general experience and perspective and but these companies are like where
XYZ we've existed for 50 60 years
We know we we know what to do with our money and that's all well and good if you're in the traditional baking sector
That's like rife with so much like like regulation and you know like actual professionalism and expectation
But you know this industry is filled with a bike. I call
misfit geniuses and
So if you're a misfit, you know, you're not always in like myself included you're not you're not always you're not always a perfect person
And but these people are investing into that like they're investing into someone that went to Wharton or went to Brown
Or went to Harvard Business School and they're thinking and investing with that type of mindset and it's just like no
and
That's what happens as you
Slowly pool the kind of the crypto spear
Into its own world like where it's like it's not the banking sector
It's not that at all and so you can't approach it with that same with that same level of um
enthusiasm
And you know, I think yeah
I think a lot of these companies and funds just ultimately get burned because they you know like are to want to put too much risk
On an industry that they don't wholly understand just so they can say I thought that thousand X return
I missed out on that 10,000 percent return from Ethereum from a dollar
But this is gonna be the one where I can prove that I'm just as good as the crypto guys
Then it all goes back to ego
And yeah, I try to approach it with as little ego as possible
Try as a key word really to assess risk is that it's not nearly as easy as it is in traditional banking and
It's but it's it's easy to put on a front as if you are doing those things
Yes, I think what you were saying earlier like it's what people get burned because they're they're playing that means
I think the meet you game that you mentioned is a it's a real strong
reasoning behind why
Something like fx got so big in the first place and why it was called out as
Hard as it should have been
Peripheral route of persuasion. They got Tom Brady
I'm like that's what I'm saying if you're like Tom Brady uses it must be safe
There's some new England banker guy somewhere. It's like why aren't you investing in that Tom Brady exchange?
Yeah, and
I guess another question I had is how do you keep up like for me personally like my background is not as a computer science
Major my background is more hardware electrical engineering
So as somebody is trying to keep up with like some of the zero knowledge stuff that's going on
I'm having to like learn a lot of like concepts that like for instance
When you're talking about like the the embedded systems architecture that they're emulating with like some of the zkvm stuff
It's like you know the risk zero stuff
Like it should be you know, I guess for me
It's it's a struggle
But for you how do you assess like something if you were given the opportunity to best in something like that
How do you assess whether they're actually making you know valid contributions?
Yeah, like let me first foremost just be absolutely humble and say that that zero knowledge shit is fucking hard
Like I was good. I was I was good at math, but I wasn't that
Like you know what I mean? Like I got I have to have a certain level of like, you know
I got I have to be humble and admit that like I don't know everything
But what I don't know I usually have a friend that might right and so that's the importance of like
You know building a good decent network and not pretending like you know
Everything because then you can actually go to the people that do know these things as experts and ask them questions
But a secret to crypto investing
Is if you go to granular too soon you already messed up
So if you're trying to look at things from an implementation standpoint before you're looking at the team and the potentiality like a theorem is a great example
Again, you know petty and I'm sure you know Corey can agree here
But you know at first we were all you know, we were interested in a theorem
But there was so much skepticism from the Bitcoin side. Oh, it won't scale this out of the other
They're never gonna get proof of stake right this, you know, there was so much like, you know, like a
Resistance to like, you know that as a technology
But if you would have invested with that sentiment back then you would have missed out on 10,000 percent
20,000 percent like return, you know, and you know all the great stuff that you know
Dariam has like, you know brought to the table over the years and so it's it's it's it's definitely a matter of like the team
You know like their own background, but given myself like I studied CS I studied information systems
I have a networking background
That's what I did in like like high school and stuff and like those kind of high school enrichment programs that the computer
Networking and as over time even though I'm 32 years old
My skill sets have to constantly evolve but there's but I literally read a paper
It was like 60 pages long where it was like explaining like the zero knowledge proof systems and like Zcash one day
And I must have got about like 20 pages into it of like looking at all these equations of shit
And I was like fuck this and I was like and I was like and I was like it was like at that point at that point
You're not you're not you're not actually making a good investment decision because you're not actually looking at you
Like oh I can prove that this math is corrected all things functionally important
It's like no like you really have to lean on a community of
People to like get through the weeds and if you're just an individual small person like analysts thinking that you have to learn
Everything like oh let me learn about every different type of like NFT you know
ERC 721 like implementation they have on out there. Let me learn about like every zero knowledge proof
Let me learn about every like like a
Optimistic like you know bridging system. Let me learn about every is like that
I don't know it's just like no follow the sentiment follow the joy follow what people are like actually nerding out about
Now I'm nerdy out about and then actually like you know like dig into why is this exciting?
Why is this interesting? What are the real use cases from this?
What is the what is the interoperability potential of this particular technology? If you go to granular too soon
You're gonna end up with empty hands like so to speak
So you've got to put a certain level of trust in the people in the communities that are evolving around these
Assets and like that's that's one of the most important parts like I I use my gut which is pretty good
But at the same time like I use my intellectual
Humbleness to realize that I'd and accept what I don't know and what I don't know
I'm not afraid to speak out out loud on Twitter or to like ask questions and you know get insights from other people
So if you're a traditional retail investor, right?
You're just a person with a couple thousand dollars to invest and you're like, ah, which is one of these zero knowledge coins like I
Invest in like you already lost
And so you need to be in the industry playing the game in real time with everybody else, which is very time intensive
To actually like get get a foothold into what is actually gonna raise you up and like you know create wealth for you I
Feel like you the pawn star of crypto
Look at somebody's project you like look it up and down you're like, hmm. This looks dope, but I know a guy
I'm gonna call a guy
Let me let me let me call my friend and get his opinion on it
I'm not ashamed to like hit up my buddy like Lollywood, which I know you know
I'm Demetriq one of them near the fastest talker in the West
But you know I have no issues being like, hey, man
Like hey, let's let's wake up. Let's get some coffee
It's been a while and let's catch but also like give me the dirt on this tell me your nerdiest perspective on why you think this is shit
And then so I'll get some opinions from that. I'm like, okay
And I'll kind of match that with my own opinion and then you know, for instance like a lot of what was like a theory of shit
It's never gonna be anything, but I still invested into a thereium
I was like so I took his expert opinion and I still threw it out right and
So it's like it's like you're still trading what you're still trading and investing with conviction and you got it
Yeah, you have to accept that conviction
And that you know these perspectives on these different technologies like evolved and patience is everything and if you don't have enough patience
You're gonna have to have a lot more money at the potentially loose
So I came in here with a little bit to be incredibly conservative
So I get to a point where I didn't know oh anybody anything
Like if I just raised a hundred million dollars and I 10 10 X that and I've got a billion dollars
I got real bad in the management fees and carry
That's all well and good
But how much more impressive is the person that raised two million dollars turned out into fifty to a hundred million dollars
And has never had a project fail and every single one has always been acquired
That is that's the real good investor. That's the person that you want to follow and
Unfortunately, I've been the victim of things like a 16z Sequoia other people that read our newsletter
You know kind of see how we're thinking and literally mimic us right and they're like oh this year like a 16z
They just recently put out a poster
You know that they're like we're gonna talk about sustainability and and green energy in the intersection of that in crypto
And like we've been talking about that for like a year and a half
We've already made investments in that sector, but I legitimized that sector for you. I help carve out that thesis for you
I help I help create that narrative for you and now you're gonna profit off of it
So who is the real expert here? Is it is it a 16z and so core or was it us right?
And that's when it comes back to like ego don't get lost in the ego
Don't don't expect to like always get
credit for for what what you knew ahead of time before others and to like approach things with a certain level of
Open-mindedness, but also yeah again without ego I
Really want to I want to ask about the
The potential thesis or you know the overarching narrative for this new cycle that might be Bellagie's network states
How does that smell to you? I heard a funny joke earlier today on Twitter and I say it and it was like it was like
The guy a guy that's never hosted a dinner party. Oh, I'm gonna create a network state, which is a great
Which is a great example like I've read his book
God bless Bellagie because he tried to be a mentor for me early on when he had
His company 21 and brought me into his office back in like 2015 2016
He said he had DM on Twitter. He's like Steven you're smart
You're really smart like I want to meet you come into my office and I was like alright alright random VC guy
who I don't really know anything about coming to your office and
Went to his office and like chat with him and you know gave me a 21 Bitcoin computer and I was like so gracious
Thank you so much
and so like now as someone who's been like writing about governance and coordination and you know the
decentralized like communities and how all these ecosystems actually work when I went to
This is cute. This is somebody that's trying to keep up with people who are much younger than him in the industry and like trying to like retain relevance
And he made a whole bunch of money ended up at CTO coinbase
Jumped out of there with his golden parachute or for however way in which he like got a decent severance exit package
However, it is he left coinbase and now with it. I'm a rich man. That's like 38 39
I don't maybe 40 40s to now. I think he's in his early 40s from from as far as I know he doesn't have any kids
so
His book reads like somebody that has too much time and doesn't actually understand like like a family unit and
And actually what it means to like build real community because he's only ever been important online
He's only ever been important as like retweets
I don't ever see him at a crypto conference like contributing in the trenches giving workshops teaching educating developers hanging out at parties afterwards
Smoking a blunt talking about the future of the engagement and governance. No
Just he's just he's just there in his free time reading reading blog posts regurgitating and spitting it out and like trying to pretend that it's not plagiarism
so
He's another example of a he's another example of a person who's on my
part of a shit list and
And who will eventually get what he is owed
for his like level of like perceived arrogance and
Again, I say these I say these things and confidence and
Because like, you know, and I always so careful
I like am I speaking about myself?
You know, I'm always very careful that like there ain't any that this level of self-awareness
I'm just like no like cuz my heart is always always in a good place and I'm always trying to be as intellectually
open as possible
Accepting that I could be wrong and I think that I think because I've always accepted that I could be wrong
And I would love to be wrong
like life gives me the opportunity to actually see what's true and
And actually I think that these
grandfathers of like the early like kind of Bitcoin community and you know kind of like really built their notoriety and their fan base around that
Those are the ones that kind of give me the largest perceive like red flags because they've got the most to lose
And they constantly want to like retain attention and again it goes back to me
I don't care if one day people don't like me. Oh, well
I did what I needed to do I did everything in my heart to like create something that was real and to educate people in the way that I
knew how
You know and and always give credit backwards do and and you know
I also had an experience with like I sent a sent velocity a deck for an early company
We invested in calls sent network that I was advising at the time
Which was like decentralized micro payment social network and he literally after I sent him that deck like a month is later announced
Oh earn calm
We're gonna start paying you like in crypto for all the sort of stuff
We're gonna do like you sort of social payment micro payment stuff
It never it never came to fruition, but that was just enough hype for coinbase to buy out earn
For way way more money than it was deserved
And I sent him a DM on Twitter shortly after that and I was like damn below
You just gonna take our shit like that and I'll think I'm gonna make my response is like I'm not gonna forget this
Five six years later. I haven't forgotten it and like and and I firmly believe karma always
Finds its way back to the soul unless you repent and you repent well, and you know, I'm a spiritual person like I'm a man of God
I love Jesus and so I you know
I would never I would never want to do something that would like make my father upset at me
And I don't think I don't think certain people in the crypto space hold themselves to that level of accountability because someone like
Elijah with his beliefs and transhumanism he's someone that wants to be God
So he's not somebody that has like the real humility to accept that when he's wrong
So he's gonna do his hardest to play God until God humbles him and put some back where he belongs back on the ground
Well, if you're hot that was a hot ass tape
But I doubt you're gonna hear this podcast
But if you do you need to start rolling up your sleeves a smoke of more blunts getting in the trenches my friend
I don't think that you hit exactly where you see was hoping you and him but I
We appreciate that. I was I was okay with wherever that question would have gone and actually
Did answer my question, which is you know, how does it smell like and and he definitely like it doesn't smell good to Stephen
Yeah, last mil shit. I got no problem looking on the bottom of my shoes and make sure it's not me first
So how do you?
It feels like in the world of a VC
Feels like the cards are stacked against you and how I guess they typically run
How do you still manage to?
Swim so well, right like what I mean by that is
You know, obviously money is pouring into these other phones and they have access to resources that are better and maybe their opinion is heard more
because that's where there is like
The Twitter sphere Twitter's Twitter, but how do you manage to?
Well, I guess how have you defined? Oh, we got internet problems. All right. I think I got it now
so in the VC world the world that you're in
You've already said the success the bigger success is going small and growing big and not just having tons and tons of money thrown at you
With all of the expectations that that money involves
Your starting you've started small and you've grown and you've grown and you're going to continuously grow
At a very manageable sustainable pace. My question is since you don't have as much of like a
visible imprint as you know, you a 16z and
Even you were just talking about biology like there were traveled hard and bad from the crypto sphere the Twitter sphere
How are you getting across to the clients that you have that?
Yeah
I'm your guy and before that, how are you defining the clients that you work with?
Yeah, well for clients for me
Because we're a crypto fund
So we you know we do it when then when we say crypto fund, you know
You can say you have a hedge fund or you can say you have a VC fund because those are these are hybrid structure vehicles
That allow for you to keep like liquid commodities on a balance sheet
But also enable you to like have like side what are called like side pocket
early stage investments in the assets or
Different like securities that ultimately you're going to convert into commodities and tokens or serve as like kind of like a core
infrastructure for the greater ecosystem and I think like, you know
What we were really good at early on was what we might have lacked in starting a UM capital
We made up for with much greater social capital, right?
And so for us it was like to get a seat at the table was was it was our reputation was everything and I would say it
The reputation of a momentum but because a momentum is just like just been basically just like three dudes and like our two advisors
Like this whole time. It's mostly just been like me and Mike my presence and then of course like Matthew Pruitt
Who's like our other research partner who's the president of radical exchange?
And so like you know
Matthew was a you know, he's a brown educated like lawyer who's a plaintiff side of turning in New York's turn like, you know
And amateur software developer now like you know crypto governance expert, you know implementation person
And they've been really killing that at racluk exchange my other partner Kyle. He was a civil engineer
Now we use just a huge like software like development nerd like falling in love with that space
And you know myself. I like to consider like myself a
Intermediate of many things not a jack of all trades because it would be doing an immediate justice for all the hard work and hyper obsession
I put into things so it's just like when we're you're getting in an investment for us
We're not we're probably not gonna
We're definitely not gonna be leading like your investment round of like, you know, you're oh you're raising like a four or five million
Dollar round we're gonna put in two and a half million dollar like a six easy the reason they put in so much capital is because that's all they got
You know what I mean?
They can give you the money but many other these different funds and companies when you when you go to these entrepreneurs
I said, well, what did this unless you were like the the golden child investment, right?
Which is like feeling far in between?
Usually get that check and you never never hear from you again
And so they need like data and information from you each year for like their taxes and their audit
Otherwise like you're not gonna really get much assistance
They might hire on a slew of crypto specific analysts that might be able to give you like insights into like, you know
Kind of like how you could perceive your business
But that's no different than hiring like a management consultant from you know
Like from some of these other companies and like bringing them on to like help you like solve a solution
Like so it's just like what is a value these people are really presenting what I can't teach you
From a business or a technical strategy perspective
I can definitely introduce you to somebody that is an expert or is adjacent to an expert and
Because you know we crypto with a lot of like younger folks early mid 20s early 30s, right?
If you can kind of like speak that language
I can sit down and have a coffee with you have a beer with you smoke a joint with you and you know what?
You know, I like Steven. I like I don't you know, I like I like I like those
I like those a minceome guys like they're real they're being honest with me like they maybe told me my project was shit
But they had a good reason why they said that maybe they said like our project is really legitimate
And it's really gonna pop off and like I never really saw it in that perspective
And so you know like you know what we bring in from a minority check
Perspective is much greater in the sense that you know, you got me you got my soul
You got you got me in any in connection that I have so you know
I'm gonna do my best because my social capital is what I have to make up for and like in a lack of a you
Web would one day I like it one day in the near future what I like us first to have like a you know
Now I like nine digit like a you am raking in money left and right sure, but I want I want to earn that
You know like I want I wanted to be there from the very beginning with like these projects and to like help them
like it's like that level of growth and and you know, I though I haven't like
From a fun perspective because I can I make I make I have my own personal, you know, like wealth and then I've got the money
That's you know inside the actual fund itself
So, you know and in some ways like, you know, I'm like maintaining my fiduciary duty
But I'll be dual exposed because I'll come I'll come on very early as like an advisor
So I'll come on I provide you some, you know general advisory, you know
Get you some assistance helps you get help you get your marketing bootstrap help you get your messaging like correct
And make making sure that you know, you're talking about the technology and what you're building and your architect is is is is appropriate
You're speaking to the right technical experts to like get you to that point where you are confident in what you're building as you iterate
Right because like these startups like many people start over from from zero from scratch and you've got to come into this like knowing that
So like I'll be there with you and then once you've built confidence in me
Right and you know, you've you've shown that you're like actually trying to like bring something real to fruition
Then I'll come along with like our LPs money with our fun, you know, and I'll put that in the only thing invested for me
In that point is just like my sweat equity time and my love for what it is you're doing
Then I'll put then I'll put other people's money at risk the crucial and yeah
Yeah, you got it. You got it. You got to make it through like and and there's been at least two occasions where I'm glad
I did it that way because if it went the other way around when I gave a check because I am a smaller fund
It would have been money that I would have just lost or not lost
But the pathway to getting a return on that liquidity would have been so long
It would have made better sense to just put that into like Bitcoin or Ethereum, right?
Like there's so many different investments and investors out there that probably would have been better off
Just putting their money into Ethereum and just forgetting that it fucking existed and they probably wouldn't they probably would still exist
So I've got to keep that in mind too
That night not everything is gonna be like a ridiculous 10,000 X like return
Dada, especially now that we have all this regulation in this space now to right in this sort of like regulatory like
regulatory oversight
When it actually well either more so like in regulating post-mortem unfortunately like the SEC
It's just like again like I can't invest
It's all about risk management and and I don't want to invest and because I come from a frugal background
I am not going to put anyone else's money into something until I would put my own money in it and because I have my own
money in the fund now
As you know and has been since inception and that you know
AUM has grown like now now it's gonna affect me even more if I put this risk in you
So I kind of I kind of yeah
I definitely like I have to put everybody through that crucible
And if I don't and if I don't then you know I can end up with like a flat investment or just like losing out on
I'm losing out on you know an easy return having just put that money into crypto and then I've got to explain to an LP
Why are returns on is like great as everybody else?
Thankfully, I've not had to be in that position ever you know had a really incredible incredible 2020
Really incredible 2021. I think I think it was in like our
rate or a return for
2020 was like
326% and then in 2021 or like 247% and
So it's just like those are egregious numbers
When you think about you know like the overall like risk of like of crypto
But also at the same time like you could have gotten much better returns if you would have stuck that money into one of these other illiquid
Bullshit-ass like tokens or whatever that have just come and flopped
But you're investing your money into into me and you're also investing money like long term into the industry
So I'm trying to put it in the right spaces
And that's incredibly yeah, and that's that's incredibly important to me
So it's just like yeah, I put my where my
investor like heart on my sleeve and I think that like that speaks to that as an entrepreneur myself too
That kind of speaks to entrepreneurial spirit of other people and they know
I'm not just like some guy in a you know in a suit that just like needs to get something for the quarter of the report to look good to
Like all their banking institutional investors
Okay, I like it
other you
who
Who's your client? How do you define it going who you work with?
Yeah, so we have you know, so we only work with qualified clients
So we've had this 506 c exemption if you're aware of what of what that means
So, you know, we're you know, we're regular regulated by the CFTC out of Florida
And so we took in an initial pool of investors back in
2018
Started the fundraising in March of 2018 and
Finished it and launched everything on April 1st like almost a month later
So I'd already had like a bunch of really awesome early investors like that were on my side
Jeehan Wu at bit main
Has been like our anchor since the very beginning
I literally sat down with him and got coffee here in San Francisco and he's like you're smart
How much money you want and I was like this much. He was like cool awesome. You know anyone else smart here in the Bay Area
I was like, yeah, but they're over in Oakland. He's a cool our driver will take us over to Oakland
So I get in the car with you know, jeehan Wu feels like mafia ball style
He's like sitting there meditating in the backseat
And I'm just like we're going over in Oakland and to meet network friends and he's like cool
So it was like it it was like in a network exchange
Of you have this legitimacy here in the US
I need access to these people but I also like, you know
Want want to have access to the type of the deal flow that you have so we don't so we don't have any clients
So to speak our clients are just our limited partners are like our investors
So so our fun in a way is basically like a startup
Right so it's like I'm building like my own startup
But it's also sort of this sort of for-profit think tank because we make our money based on like our level of perspective
We receive intellectual output in the industry and what we can actually provide you
And so yeah, so like that's that's that's my main job is basically playing the role of this like pseudo academic with the access to a coin purse
Whereas before if you're a normal academic, you've got to like come up with something that you think is worthwhile
Think we're studying and researching and then apply for a grant
But it's but now it's just like I can find those people through like myself learning and then give them money
And it's great because I have some I have an expectation of a return
So it's almost an even better model
And so I like to see other people like copy that many people have
Some some with a great success and some of none at all
But that's kind of just like the name of the game and again very conservative sort of very small
Still incredibly small in comparison to like everyone else, but that's because the money wasn't always the thing for me
I want to pay my bills. Yeah, I want to be able to afford to live in San Francisco, right?
Yeah, I want to be able to like go around all these different conferences and stuff like that and be able to like
You know expense those things like accordingly and you know be a member of the community in real time always but from 2020 to 2021
I went to like one no, it's 2020 to 2023 now
I've been to one conference to want the consensus to speak when to eat Denver to speak and that was it
It's just been my ass sitting at home talking with my
My partners and like our connections and our portfolio companies
And I've just had like my my nose in the dirt just like learning and staying on top of things for every
100 crypto projects. There's probably only about five that are worth investing in and so there's way more
Projects that are going to lose you money that are actually going to make you anything at all and so like yeah again
Like I'm just incredibly careful on where I invest my time and my attention because ultimately
That's the best thing that I have to give these individuals now somebody came along now because we have this very like rolling open structure
And so so so someone came along and they're like Steve
I like you've been around here for like five six years going on now like I just I want a way to invest in like
You know mid-to-like long-term vehicle in the space
Would you take like ten twenty million dollars from us like right now? I
Would actually think about it
Do I want to have that type of responsibility because I still want to have fun
Right and it's from for me. It's not about the dollars
So it depends on the type of person that like come to law and maybe I will do some like fundraising
Maybe maybe this year would be a good year for that but like fundraising. I don't know if you've ever done it
It sucks. It's not fun. Especially if you're a brown person fundraising is not fun. There's a lot of code there's a lot of there's a lot of code
Switching I don't like wearing suits, you know what this is what you get. Okay, if you say Steven
I want to invest in a mensom come have a chat with us. This this is it. This this person does not change
Okay, I had to I had to wear too many masks for too long and I realized that being me and
Really loving and embodying me. That was my superpower
So I get you need to do that and and I'm sure you know more and more cycles will go by like over the years
But hey, you know life is what it is and I'm just here to you know be the
be the best pseudo investor
developer project manager
marketer podcaster writer researcher I could be and there is no word for that and
And I love that and and also it allows me to like speak proudly to my family about what I do
You know I've had conversations with my dad before because you know
He's not a college educated man and it comes from a very simple farming background
So my dad was like, you know, I'm so proud of you son and what you're doing and what you're building
But I've gotten phone calls from him like especially during bull runs and stuff where I'm like talking about like that
I'm like making money hand over fist. He's like son
What you're doing is not illegal, right? And I'm like, yeah, no, no dad
It's a it's an actual functioning business. I get audited. I pay my taxes. It's all real
Okay, okay, you would tell me right and like yet. No dad. No, it's like it's real like
I got the article's written about me on the internet like this is legitimate and so
And so yeah, so it feels good and you know
Like I've had all these cool accolades. I've been a part of like all these cool companies and had you know companies acquired and you know
Made money myself, but you know just past November. I was on
Cryptode coated which was like a documentary that PBS put out
And they had handpicked like 12 or 13 different people to bring on to the show as like experts in the industry that were not just like normal business
I co, you know decentralized the money anarchist libertarian types and people that they're just gonna actually talk about the real use cases
And so then that aired on PBS like sometime in like mid mid November
And my mom was like you've done all this cool stuff
But now that you've been on PBS now you're legit like my mom was like all the cool shit you did did matter until I was on PBS
And then she was like you're on you're on like public access television now so
It must it must be legit and I was like, yes, mom. It was legit all long
So I've come a long way from my dad yelling at me across the living room telling me to like stop smacking the keyboard so fast
I'm like that that's what typing sounds like
And he's like and then this was like back in the late 90s
And so, you know, they still don't understand what the hell I do and that's okay
Um, you know, it's as long as it as long as it satisfies me and it makes me feel joyful and it makes me feel legitimate
That's what matters. So I had trust try and stay my way away from the bad actors
But sometimes I get a little bit of close a little bit closer to them than I should just to get an idea
What's going on through their heads and what type of risk is out there?
But yeah, ultimately, I'm just like a loving good person that's just like trying to continue to be mostly liked
And if if by doing that you need a come across you, I might I might rub you in the wrong way
That's probably a good sign that you got some demons that you need to work out that eventually will be exercised by the public market
So time will time always tells the truth
I want to I want to witness one of those interactions where you rub against somebody who's got demons
They're more they're more abundant than you think
Think you anything just no, I think I think that was good