2023 and Web3 – AdLunam co founders

2023 and Web3 – AdLunam co-founders

Participants:

• Jason Fernandes (Co-founder of AdLunam)

• Nadja Bester (Co-founder of AdLunam)

• Lawrence Hutson (Co-founder of AdLunam)

• JP (CMO of AdLunam)

00:00

JP

01:16

JP

Should any of our speakers drop off, we will pause for a moment to let them come in and continue with the show. That being said, also, the last thing today being the final show, ladies and gentlemen, please feel free to use those emojis. They're there for a reason. Send us some love. Send us some comments at AdLunam Inc. or to the speakers directly. We will have a segment at the end of the show. Excellent. We will have a segment at the end of the show. That is for question and answers. I'm loving the sound effects from that. Lawrence, that's brilliant. Please do that one more time. Okay. All right. That's brilliant. That's brilliant.

02:06

JP

So, ladies and gentlemen, we have on the show today the panelists. As I said, our panelists today are the co-founders of AdLunam, Jason Fernandes, Nadja Bester, and Lawrence Hutson. Each of them are stalwarts in the industry, and I'm going to let them give you a brief about what got them into the Web3 space, a bit about their journey, and then we will start with the program. So let me see who's first on the list here. Jason. Yes. Jason, let's start with you. Jason, I know that a lot of people in the room are familiar with you, with Nadja, with Lawrence, but in a capsule. Tell us what got you into Web3 and the time that you've been in this industry. Go for it.

02:56

Jason

03:57

JP

Well, Jason, I'm glad you stayed in the industry and glad to have you on the show today. All right. Thank you so much for that introduction. Nadja.

04:08

Nadja

05:04

Nadja

Really intense lifestyle, was traveling all the time away from my son. So at some point, I just felt, you know what, going to take a break. I don't know what's going to be next for me, but it's not going to be the way that my career had developed up until this point. So took my son, started traveling the world, and told myself, I am going to take at least one year, if not more, to do nothing and just learn how to relax. And it wasn't even one month, or maybe it was just over one month. And I got introduced to Blockchain. I got the opportunity to become a journalist. And it wasn't so much about the technology. It was more because I love writing. I'm a writer by heart, not by trade, because I had never wanted to work as a writer, but I had been a journalist at school, so I really wanted to work as a journalist.

05:53

Nadja

And I was like, oh, my God, this is my chance. I'm going to do it. And of course, I had to learn on the job because I had no idea what any of this was about. And the more I learned and reported on it and the more people I spoke to, I was like, oh, my God. Just like digital marketing was the inevitable future, this is the inevitable future as well. And, yeah, I mean, this is now six years ago. I'm still here. I don't think it's possible for me to leave, because once you're in, you stay in because ultimately it really is the future. It's a very early future, but it is the future, and I am super happy to be a part of it.

06:31

JP

Awesome. Lovely to have you on the show today, Nadja. Thank you for being here. Lawrence, go for it.

06:37

Lawrence

Okay. Hello, everybody. Yeah, so for me, I'm a computer scientist and an economist, and I was involved or helped in most of the early inventions of the Internet itself. Even before that, Web1, web2, which was TCP IP, which runs the Internet today, then on to launch some major brands in that area. So I was always involved in the kind of the cutting edge. And after we launched Travelocity, and then after two more projects after that, I really became very, I don't know, disenfranchised with everything that was going on, because what would happen was the Internet was a copy machine at that point. Web2, the Internet is a copy machine. You take a picture, you send a picture. You're not sending the picture. You're sending a copy of the picture, and copy, copy. And then I had one of the guy, a friend of mine who's a house painter, he tried to tell me he was buying Bitcoin.

07:54

Lawrence

08:55

JP

Awesome. Thank you, Lawrence. It's always heartening to hear the stories of how people jump into the industry, and it really does tell you a tale at which that moment of enlightenment comes in, where we go beyond the fact that, okay, this is just about for the money or the bad rep that comes with it when it comes to crypto. So that's absolutely fascinating. And I think that given the collective experience that the three of you bring to the table, I really want to know from the industry, from the points that you were there before till now, you would have seen. So. Many cycles, you would have seen so many of the statements that people make today and are able, in many ways, to fall back to that experience and say that there's been an evolution, there's been a change. Some of these cycles, of course, are repetitive, of course, being the nature of a cycle.

10:03

JP

10:21

Nadja

Yeah, I mean, it's exactly to your point about having seen a lot of these behaviors and heard a lot of the statements before in a previous bear market. But I want to zoom out even a little more. I started my career in psychology and then I did a postgraduate degree in education. So I've seen these two things play out this year more than anything else. The human psychology approach, psychological approach to things is really so much heightened in this industry. We are not a patient species in general, but at the same time, if you look at society and you look at how long things take to change, whether we are patient or not, as a species, we are very used to change taking really long. But web3 is the exception. None of us want to accept that the same cycles need to happen in this industry as well.

11:25

Nadja

I mean, you constantly hear people going, oh, but look how early this is, it's obviously a scam. Or look how early it is, it's obviously failed. And this is also where I really saw this year how important education is, because for those of us who work in the industry, we are educating ourselves each and every single day. We speak to people every single day we are involved. We know what's going on. We see the behind the door activities. Unfortunately, if you are just a retail investor and you are only in this space because you see what Bitcoin is doing when it's going to 70K, or you only see what XYZ Coin is doing because it's 10 x, 20 x, 60 x, then that's your only understanding of this space. And understandably so whenever things drop, oh my God, I have to get out or this is not working, or this is a scam.

12:22

Nadja

So for me, really, the highlights of this year has been to witness people come to an understanding that there should be more to this industry than just getting to the next elevation in gains. Because that's when you lose. If you have the mindset of someone who's only in it for the profit you're going to make, profits are there and profits will be made and have been made. But if that's the foundation that you think all of this is about, you are setting yourself up for failure. But if you are somebody, I mean, those of us in the room now, if you look at how many people are in this room and how many people are in all of the twitter spaces that you attend in a bear market versus a bull market, in a bull market, everyone is everywhere. But as soon as there's a bear market, everyone runs away.

13:16

Nadja

14:08

JP

Fair enough for you? The highlight has been being able to watch behavior that's gone through the cycle. Great. Okay, Lawrence, how about you? What's your point of view for this year?

14:19

Lawrence

Yeah, so following up what Nadja said about the cycles right, for, I guess, tech and people using Facebook compared to 30 years ago, it's a good point. So this is this cycle is happening, but it's happening at an exponential rate. So what you guys are seeing in front of your eyes is exponential. This cycle exponential.

14:55

JP

Right.

14:56

Lawrence

15:24

JP

Right.

15:26

Lawrence

But you're seeing this. I guess my point to what to follow up with what Nadja was saying is these cycles are exponentially increasing and it's not going to stop. Right. It's going to be faster and faster. And you're just witnessing this before your very and just my final comment on the things that have happened, I think they're very good because it just cleans out the space, lets us go forward with what's important in the future.

15:57

JP

All right. Thank you, Lawrence. Okay, so finally, Jason, what was the highlights for you this year?

16:05

Jason

Yeah, I mean, this year has definitely been somewhat of a cleansing year for crypto. I think I would probably second what Nadja and Lawrence are saying in that we've just seen so many projects sort of go by the wayside. I think what's going to end up happening is that the projects that sort of come out of this are going to be much stronger and sort of better prepared to deal with these massive swings in the market. I think there's a lot of companies that, for whatever reason, not really able to raise funds just prior to the bear market kicking in, and so now they're in a situation where they either suspend operations or they kind of stay around as zombies until things sort of change. And so the one thing that we've started seeing is founders try to raise at much lower valuations, which I think sells the industry short.

17:11

Jason

So I think it's really important to not get desperate to just sort of realize that things pick up in bull markets. And the point they need to do right now is sort of to focus on survival. And that's not great news for people that are sort of wanting to actually make money off this industry and actually grow. It's not really that easy to do it in a bear market, but it's just one of those things you got to buckle down on and work through. So I think we'll see a lot of a huge shake up, I think, going into the next year. This has been the first full year of really difficult year, I would say, compared to last year. And I would say pretty much it started around this time, right around November. December is when we saw things sort of collapse. So hoping we're sort of at the tail end of that and it'll be interesting to see how the next year comes out.

18:18

JP

Yeah, well, I'm glad you said that, because right about this time last year, were looking at, hey, October, bitcoin hit 67,000, and then come October it went down to 45, and then it started just plummeting lower and lower. So collectively, what we're seeing is, of course, an accelerated cycle in the industry. The second part is also that we are seeing that the cleansing, so to speak, or if I may borrow the term from bitcoin, the halving of those that are separating the wheat from the shaft, those that are actually providing value, those providing value, those that want to continue to provide value are still in the space. The rest of them are being cleared out of it just by virtue of these market forces and not knowing how to survive it. That being said, Jason, since I've had you on last, I'm curious to understand what's your forecast?

19:11

JP

19:22

Jason

Sure. One of the things I think that's really glaring is sort of how the bottom has fallen out of NFT prices. We've also seen record drops in volume, so NFT trading as well as at an all-time low. And so I think that the next year is going to see a lot of shake up in the NFT industry in particularly like projects that are focused more on hype, they're focused more on design as opposed to providing utility. That goes along with the token. We've seen so many cases of influencers that are promoting a coin that have actually not gone anywhere. Right. So we've seen boxers. I don't want to name any specific name, but we've seen boxers, we've seen social media personalities turn boxers who have tried their hand at NFTs that have really suffered in the sense that these people have lost massive amounts of value, those that have invested in these NFT collections.

20:30

Jason

So I think that people have learned their lesson. It's a very tiny market, and it's like once spinning, twice shy. So I don't think that you're going to see a lot of very successful, celebrity driven NFTs, particularly if the NFT in question is not central to what they're doing. Right? Like, it's sort of like a get rich quick scheme. A lot of artists don't really the NFT is a technology, right? It's not what you're doing. Basically, you're not releasing an NFT per se. You're providing certain services. And the access control key that you're giving out to those services is the NFT, right? So that's like saying we're releasing a ticket. You're not releasing a ticket, you're releasing a ticket to a concert. Right? So the NFT is just a ticket in that sense. So artists, musicians particularly, that see NFTs as just some sort of as a product in and of itself as some sort of art project or art product or collectible.

21:39

Jason

22:28

JP

23:02

Lawrence

24:32

Lawrence

I would say one of the things I would tell everybody to look for is those fundamentals in the projects instead of just being what I saw a lot was a lot of hype behind projects that really didn't have any fundamentals. I think one other thing I'll say is that one utility that I've seen that actually legitimately makes money in decentralized applications was gaming. Okay. That I have seen that really makes so that's kind of my forward looking thing there. JP.

25:16

JP

25:53

Nadja

I mean, it's difficult to not want to copy what the two of them said because I think this really just underlines exactly what all of this is about. But I'll summarize it in two words, what my own outlook is trustless technology. Because we stare ourselves blind in the hype. And look, as someone who has been in the marketing industry for the past 16 years, I'm very familiar with why hype exists and why it's important, and especially in this industry, how much of the narrative it has shaped. But at the same time, it's really damaged the industry. I was watching this morning a video that someone sent me about I don't even know who this guy is. It's some YouTuber. I'm not sure if he's well known or not. I've never come across him before, but he had a guest on and they were discussing if crypto is a religion.

26:55

Nadja

And I don't typically watch videos like this, kind of outside of my own echo chamber bubble, but I was so grateful that I listened to this video because well, A, what they were talking about clearly indicated that they had no idea what they were talking about. But B, I was listening to the points they were making and this is the points that it's like an octopus's tentacles. These are the tentacles that reach out there beyond our own little world here in web three. And it was all the negative points that we as an industry don't like either. But that's the only narrative that they have. So I think it's so important to come back to basics and understand that at the end of the day, this technology is about removing trust. Because as humans, if we have to be brutally honest with ourselves, some humans might be more trustful and trustworthy than others.

27:55

Nadja

But fundamentally, as a species, we set ourselves up for failure if we place our trust in other humans. So what we have created, what we have evolved into technologically, is we've created the ability for people to remove the element of trust from certain transactions. And this is the magic behind this technology. But then you look at all of the scandals that have happened this year, all of the fallouts, FTX being the latest of them, this is all because we still place trust in people. And I think that is something that is so important for people to understand, is, as I said earlier, the education element is super important. But second is the technology. Because any of the utility that you build on top of the technology is because of the technology. So you stay yourself blind in what this project or what these people are selling you, but without an understanding of what the technology is actually doing.

29:00

Nadja

29:59

Nadja

Because the message that I really want to get out there is, at the end of the day, it's about the technology. It's not about what this company is doing or that project is building or this token is promising. It's about the technology and human creativity, human imagination, and what can be done using the technology that's available to us and the technology in our own minds. Right? And so anything that you understand to be the definition of something, then I want to extend an invitation to you and go, but are you sure this is really the definition do you know enough? You don't have to learn solidity to understand the definition. But do you understand truly what the definition of something is? Because if I say web3, what do you think it is? If I say crypto blockchain, NFTs, the metaverse, what do these things mean to you?

30:54

Nadja

Because it might not be what it means to other people and that's really important.

31:01

JP

32:11

Lawrence

32:40

JP

32:46

Jason

Well, I would say bullish wearing a bear coat. I don't know if that we're allowed to wear bear coats in crypto, but yeah, it's one of those things where I think it's going to start off bearish. I think it's going to take a while before I do think it's going to turn bullish eventually before it gets I think in the short term we do have some more bearish market to look forward to. Speaking of looking forward to, I'm looking forward to SPF getting bail and his next interview. So I think he'll probably be home for Christmas or maybe New Year. That'd be interesting to see his next interview because he's just flying in from the Bahamas right now and he probably very soon end up with getting bailed and being out on the street. So hopefully he'll come join us on Diving into Crypto. One of these days.

33:54

JP

34:04

Nadja

Since there is so much emphasis on fashion and the metaverse these days, I'm going to go with what Jason said about one market wearing the coat of the other one. I think definitely to also just emphasize on what Lawrence said, there's a definitive shift happening in people's minds and this is at all levels, whether this is institutional investors changing. Their approach. Obviously, because of all of the scandals that we saw this year in terms of due diligence as an industry, people are shocked to think that some of these companies just pass through due diligence processes without any questions being asked. So institutional investors are definitely checking themselves, reorganizing themselves, becoming much more cautious. It doesn't mean that the space is going away. The industry is alive and well. I always say that if you work in the industry, you have a very different understanding of a bear market than someone who is only a retail investor.

35:13

Nadja

Because as a retail investor, you look at the space and things are dead and you don't even want to look at the space because you've been burnt and all you want to do is just go cry in your room, right? But if you are a professional in this industry, you see on a daily basis, we always talk about this great cleansing, this weeding out of actors that are only there during a bull market. Because during a bear market, you can see that people, individuals, companies, they are regrouping, they are reevaluating how they show up in this industry, what they are building, the way they are building it. So my big prediction, and this happens after every single bear market, is that there's a huge shift in some sense in the industry. The rules that applied before will no longer apply and they will be something new.

36:03

Nadja

So I think it is going to take a while because we are still in this cleansing phase. But if you've ever seen time lapse photography, for example, let's say of, I don't know, a flower or a plant or a tree or whatever the case may be, if you sit there staring at the plant the whole day, you're not going to see any changes. But if you look at the time lapse photography, you can really see how things change and evolve. So I think exactly the same premise in this industry is if you're looking at it every single day, like prodding it with a stick, like, come on man, stop playing dead, wake up, you are going to feel frustrated. But really, the undercurrent of what is happening is there's a lot happening and important things are happening right now. Humans don't learn when we are having fun, we don't learn when the fat cows home and we don't want for anything.

36:58

Nadja

37:59

JP

38:32

Nadja

39:38

Nadja

40:26

Nadja

40:58

JP

Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that particular point. I think this crypto winter also helps us remember that climate change is real. I'm going to just put that out there and that's something we all have to do our little part in making things better the same way that we're going to be doing for the crypto industry, waiting for crypto spring. Sorry, Lawrence, did you want to weigh in on that?

41:25

Lawrence

Mean when Nadja mentioned that to follow up with her, it's like one of the things the reason I see this coming pretty heavy is that if you look at the venture capital guys, not only venture capital, but major asset managers like BlackRock who jumped in to get on, in particular like an FTX with no due diligence. I've been through the process back in the days with these venture capitalists and there was due diligence, like out the ying yang for everything, right. They want to look up with a doctor exam on you. So now they've all of a sudden jumped in without doing any diligence, obviously. So major VC players, not minor. There's going to be a reckoning with that come the new year. But I don't know how that's going to turn out. The foundations of the blockchain Web3 space were crowdfunding right with ethereum and all of these the VCs felt that they were, in my opinion, missing out and they started chasing it and chasing it to the point where they literally just failed to do due diligence on behalf of their investors.

43:05

Lawrence

So we'll see what happens with but there's some VC firms that didn't like Pantera and companies like that are solid. So I don't know exactly what's going to happen, JP, but it's going to be super interesting to see how this plays out. But I think it's all good. It's solid. Go back to the fundamentals, work on the fundamentals which they didn't do and benefit from their mistakes in this space. That's my opinion.

43:41

JP

Perfect. Thanks, Lawrence. Jason, you want to weigh in before we move forward to the next question because it's going to dwell a little deeper on exactly what both Nadja and Jason and Lawrence have said.

43:52

Jason

44:31

JP

Yes, the bears are acting unnaturally and that's the reason for this mess, okay?

44:39

Nadja

That's climate change. That's what's causing this.

44:42

Jason

It is the climate change. Just because there's not enough trees.

44:46

JP

Yeah, well, it looks like we just have to grin and bear it, okay, till such time that things get better. That being said, but I want to dwell a little more into what you spoke about with due diligence, right? This has been the year that we've seen some major dominoes fall. Celsius, Three Arrows Capital, FTX, and we're still unsure which is the next one that could possibly fall. But of course, through all of this, and as you've been saying through the show, the arc that's been created is focus on the tech, focus on value, focus on fundamentals. Right. What do you think is going to come up as a shift because of all these events where it comes to due diligence now?

45:43

Lawrence

Well, I'll jump in, obviously. I think the companies, like I mentioned, Pantera, I'm just starting like at the top of the tier, down to crowdfunding like we're doing with the ability to vet companies and put them onto the market, like at AdLunam is going to be people are going to trust more in the due diligence. Basically. They're going to trust more in the people doing the due diligence because at the end of the day, that's what the VCs do. They're not doing everything. They're having people go in check and they're trained in this, right. They brought up in trust. They're going to trust companies like AdLunam basically to make sure that these companies are vetted and the projects are legit. They're not just based on hype and that they're in line with the fundamentals of what we're trying to do in blockchain. So that's kind of my take on it.

46:51

JP

Thanks, Lawrence. Jason?

46:53

Jason

Yeah, just to add to what Lawrence said, I think there really ought to be some sort of standard that investors can expect in terms of accountability from blockchain entrepreneurs and blockchain startups. There are companies that keep their investors regularly in touch in terms of what they're doing and updates and other stuff, and then there's other companies that will basically ghost you. The interesting thing is that with a token investment as opposed to an equity investment, you're not going to get a seat on the board, right? So you definitely don't have any sort of hard power, any actual ability to affect change other than, again, exerting some soft pressure on saying, hey, what's an update here? What are you guys working on? And so on. And so I think that, especially given what happened with FTT, that people are going to know there was no CFO, for example, at FTT.

48:02

Jason

So people are going to start asking questions in terms of, again, many companies don't have a CFO, but it's just a question of like, if you're FTX and you're dealing with billions of people's, other people's money, somebody needs to be out there accountable for that, right? And conversely, that person needs to be then accountable to the investors. And I think ultimately there's going to have to be some sort of investor protections that come out for token investors. Token investors in the seat of private round and some degree of not quite a seat on the board, but certainly a seat at the table in some sort of philosophical sense in how the company is run and decisions it makes.

48:54

JP

Well, that would be certainly interesting to see how that one plays out. Nadja? Yes. You wanted to weigh in on this. Go ahead.

49:01

Nadja

Yeah, it's interesting. I was watching the documentary that's on Netflix last night about the, you know, the Canadian exchange. And then just after I finished watching, I saw a news headline. I don't know if you guys know the story, for those that don't. This founder of the Canadian exchange, he mysteriously died as soon as users couldn't withdraw their funds a couple of years ago. It's funny because he died in India, and I was in the same province in Rajasthan at the time of his death. So I was like so random that this guy, as soon as the trouble hits the fan, suddenly he's in India going off to die, and now no one can get their funds. And then as soon as I finished watching the documentary, I saw the news headlines that 100 bitcoin had just been moved out of that account after so many years.

49:53

Nadja

And it was something that I reflected on for the rest of the evening because we talk about how this is a trustless technology, but at the end of the day, you still have to put your trust in somebody. Because the technology, if companies are run by a person and as much as you can remove the trust element from many aspects, at the end of the day, you still need to trust people. This is unfortunately something that cannot completely be removed from the equation. So the thing that comes to mind for me is this concept of there's nothing in the world like you get something for nothing. So if you want to, I don't know, earn money, you need to work for it. And if you want to get fit, you need to exercise. And if you want to live happily ever after, you have to be a nice person that another person wants to spend their life with, for example.

50:52

Nadja

So in the same sense, if you're in web3, in the investment sense, it's very difficult for you to just put your money into any random company because other people say that it's a good company and then forget about it and oh, well, you just trust all these other people. Unfortunately, it's the dream that has been sold, but it's an illusion because unless you understand what's happening, I mean, if you speak to the average person, we're talking about due diligence. If you speak to the average person who invests into Web3. Ask them what due diligence needs to be done. Most of them don't know. And this is as an industry, I always say the onus is on us because we are promising investors the sun and the moon and the stars. But if we are not educating them, if we are not making it abundantly clear how incredibly important it is, we all say, do your own research.

51:54

Nadja

But what does it even mean? I mean, if someone tells me to go do something, okay, great, you told me. So what, I should google it now? What do we google? How do we Google how to prevent FTX from happening? So I think this is a collective effort that needs to be done institutionally. Things have to change. From company perspective, things have to change. Projects really have to do things differently perhaps than they've done it previously. Retail investors need to shift how they approach. So it's really a team effort. I don't think it can come from just one avenue. We have to work together because what has happened now is with all of these really bad things that have happened, especially this year, it's just giving regulators so much ammunition to say, you know what, you guys cannot do this by yourselves. You need us.

52:54

Nadja

And this is unfortunately the sad thing because in a sense, it's difficult to argue with that, right? Because, I mean, look at the fallout. If people are losing hundreds and millions of dollars, then how do you argue against regulation even though this industry was birthed to be an alternative to regulation? So I think really, fundamentally, at the end of the day, we all need to come together and we need to redefine how we show up and how we do things. Because otherwise the good thing is we cannot continue the way that we did because that wave is over. Right. Like we've come to the other side of that wave. The question is what is next? And as an industry, we are the ones that need to shape what is next. So, as Lawrence was saying, companies like AdLunam, the work that we are doing is so important.

53:50

Nadja

But as a retail investor, you still shouldn't just put your confidence in a company because they say that's what they are doing. Make sure you know what's going on, make sure you understand what's going on. And that does require extra time, extra attention, extra effort from your side. But there is nothing in the world like you get this for free just because you want it. Right? So you want to invest, make sure that you become an educated investor.

54:20

JP

Fair enough.

54:22

Jason

Yeah.

54:22

JP

55:19

JP

Okay. That being said, goodness me, we're coming towards the end of the show. So very quickly, this one particular question is what are some of the business shifts you're expecting to see occur?

55:36

Lawrence

Okay, I'll jump in on that. To follow up with what Jason was saying, I think he was speaking towards governance, which is a proven fundamental in the over thousands of years, is governance, as Jason was saying, an equity investment. Normally there's some kind of board seat, some kind of protection. And I wonder if we see coming in the future some kind of DAO where if it's a token based, non-equity based system, as Jason was saying, which normally results in no governance, that we can implement some kind of DAO where there actually is governance. That's my take on it.

56:30

JP

Thank you Lawrence. Jay.

56:40

Jason

I think I started off with that, right. I think I was the first person to respond to this, I think is right. I believe so.

56:49

JP

Yeah. Okay. Super. Nadja?

56:55

Nadja

Yeah. For me, because I've been involved with business on the Internet for so many years, I've seen this play out not only in web3, but also in the early commercial Internet, where in the beginning you had really the stereotype of the young kid sitting in his garage. I'm not talking about the Amazons of the world, but just random young guy or woman girl having this idea, throwing something together. In those days, it was a website and people go on and they buy something and okay, before you know it, they are the next Internet millionaire. So we've seen the same thing happen in web3 as well. But I think what is happening now is we are seeing also the maturation of the way that business is done. A lot of people in web3, and this is extremely important to keep in mind.

57:55

Jason

It’s just you.

57:57

Nadja

Okay? It's always just you.

57:59

Jason

JP.

58:03

Nadja

In terms of JP, can you hear me? I don't think so. Maybe put your, okay.

58:12

JP

I can now. Yes.

58:14

Nadja

59:09

Nadja

This is not how it works in normal business. And it was a brief period in time in web3 where that was possible, but with the effects that we've had because of it. So really, I think what we will be seeing is just people schooling themselves a lot more on how to actually run a business.

59:27

JP

59:53

Nadja

I'm going to do a shameless plug for AdLunam because I can, no definitely. Coming back to education, I don't only want to put the onus on the retail investor because this really is almost like blaming the victim. I think in some sense, it's so important for us as an industry to understand the reason that we don't have people beating our door down right now is because as an industry, we've scared them away. Right? So this is the first really important point, is we need to understand that we are, as an industry, responsible for people being put off and being afraid of and having run away from what is happening. But as a retail investor, you need to find a space where you are able to, on a daily basis, understand what is happening. And this needs to be a place where you go beyond the hype, because super important to differentiate fact and truth and objectivity from hype.

Nadja

JP

Got it. Thank you. Nadja. Okay. Jason? Lawrence?

Jason

Yeah, I would just know for the retail investor, I think the one thing that they should keep in mind is that people tend to look at crypto as sort of this homogeneous industry. And we are an industry in that there are certain overarching similarities. But in essence, it's very similar to the stock market in that we represent individual companies that have very different missions, have very different outlooks, and are doing very different things. I'm often asked what token to invest in and then somebody will come to me with four or five tokens that are doing completely different things, which is fine, I mean, it's like diversification. But the thing is, I think they tend to think of these things as Solana, for example, is such a different thing than, let's say, or even ethereum something that where you build smart contracts and you essentially have apps built on.

Jason

It is very different, for example, to another company where, let's say, the token value is some sort of service that the company is providing, wherein how good or bad that company will do will be dependent highly on the service that they're providing, not necessarily the overall crypto market. So even though people tend to look at the crypto market as this homogeneous thing, it's actually like there are very many different use cases, as we will see in Web3 explained. When Nadja gets down to that, there's just so many different use cases and different even though people tend to think of it as like one homogeneous industry.

JP

Thank you for that, Jason. Sure. Lawrence, you want to weigh in?

Lawrence

Yeah, I mean, I have no pushback on any of that. It's an issue of, like you said, education, involved with the product from a retail perspective, from the VC perspective, due diligence, and then introducing governance to the deal that we're going to get through, people paying attention to a product project, being involved in it, maybe having ideas, hopefully having some sort of governance. I think that's the future.

JP

JP

Nadja

Personally, I hope so, because I would love to buy some bitcoin below ten K. But yeah, I'm not sure that's going to happen. And that definitely would not feel good, but no, I don't think so. But if it does, I will momentarily be very happy.

JP

Thank you, Nadja. All right, Lawrence, you wanted to weigh in on that?

Lawrence

Yeah, there's a couple of events that could drive the price down, I think, fallouts from what has already happened. So, for instance, if you see GBC Grayscale somehow have to unload 650,000 bitcoins on the market, that's going to cause a significant so there's certain leaky things that are going to happen. However, if you can wait to get in at that point, if you're smart enough, which I never really personally have been because I wait too long, there's some significant events that could happen that could drive the price lower. But I still think where we're at, not financial advice, but where we're at is a good place. It's always going to like a friend of mine once told me, Lawrence, quit waiting. Just buy and believe in the technology, believe in the fundamentals and go from there.

JP

Fair enough. Thank you, Lawrence. Jason?

Jason

Yeah. Could you repeat the question, please?

JP

Jason

Right? Yeah, I can certainly see some situations where that could happen, but mostly I would think that would be due to macroeconomic forces. I think if something like something bad happened or hit Binance. Right. I mean, there's a lot of controversy right now about.

Jason

BUSD and USDT. Something like that could cause major shifts. There's been a lot of flood around USDT, basically stable coins in general. BTC, USDT is like the number one pair in the world. So that's something that you can't if there were to be any issues with that, you'd have, like, a massive market crash. But I think barring a black swan event, I doubt it could dip below 10,000 unless there's again, macroeconomic factors. But even then, I think that it would very quickly pick up faster.

JP

All right. Okay. Thank you, Jason. Thank you for weighing in on that question and hope that answers it, because, ladies and gentlemen, we are out of time. As a matter of fact, we've extended this program, but we've had such a great time listening to our speakers. So Nadja, Jason, Lawrence, thank you so much for being on the. Show. Thank you so much for sharing your insights. Always a pleasure to have a conversation with you guys. And thank you once again for sharing your knowledge with the audience in the room. You're welcome.

Nadja

Jason

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everybody.

Lawrence

Yes.

JP

All right, Lawrence, go ahead. I think I cut you off.

Lawrence

I said second that. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy Hanukkah. Yes.

JP

Jason

Ahead, no matter what happens.

JP

There you go. The alarm bells have already gone off. That means I got to get off the show. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you once again for being here. This is JP from AdLunam, Inc. wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Cheers.