hey everyone how are we doing today I
know my team was out partying all night
but it looks like you guys are all
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed so let's
get started this is gonna be a dark talk
this is gonna get really really real I
don't want to be clear like I think that
this is a conversation that we need to
have this is not me like burnt out on
crypto or hating crypto like I love this
space but I think that sometimes we're
just a little bit too keen on patting
each other on the back so we're gonna do
something a little bit differently so
I'm gonna go through these slides really
quickly but basically in the beginning
blockchains
sort of emerged as the next logical step
from the internet and the internet
allowed people to transfer data transfer
information and the block chains then
are gonna enable people to transfer
value and when we talk about value we
talk about assets we talk about property
we talk about money we talk about all
these things that are tangible and
intangible and Marc Andreessen recently
had a podcast that was really great and
he said that one of the original sins of
the web like back in 1993 was that
payments weren't incorporated into the
browser and because of this so many
people ended up relying on advertising
which then led to you know all the data
collection all the invasions of our
privacy everything just being misaligned
and you know the general state that were
in today but the reality is that
blockchains and the internet and any
sort of innovations don't solve the
human or the social problems that we
have it doesn't create new humans it's
just new technology and it's what we do
with that technology that matters so
technology can aid us but the reality is
that people in general are never
satisfied they're generally pretty
selfish they're totally willing to
impoverish others
and it really manifests itself in greed
and vanity and all this other stuff and
we see this all the time in the space
with I CEOs with the scams with the
Fisher's with all of these terrible
terrible things and you know when we
talk about history we talk about the
early internet days and then we look how
crypto is evolving it's not going to be
the same history never repeats itself
but it does rhyme and so we can take
lessons that we learned from the
internet and we can hopefully maybe not
make the same mistakes as we're building
out this ecosystem so there's a lot of
lot of really really big similarities
between early internet and like early
blockchains
so small players are thriving there's
not really a super commercially viable
situation going on it's not really super
organized and there's this deep-seated
belief that we should decentralize and
she's distribute that power and that we
should share the knowledge but as we
have seen the web actually enables more
abuse of power and more surveillance so
while we wanted to decentralize well we
wanted to you know give the information
and give the data and give the power to
all of the people the reality is is that
the web resulted in both the government
and private corporations like Google and
Facebook in beating our privacy
constantly and so we should ask
ourselves why won't crypto turn out this
way the reality is is that when we look
at block chains is a public ledger and
anyone can obtain basically your entire
financial history and then when you
combine that with all the information
that cops are going to have you know
we're talking about healthcare dobbs
we're talking about social depths we're
talking about governance ops you have a
huge data set just willing and ready to
be mined and we want to make sure that
nobody nobody is going to profit and
benefit from basically us right
we don't want that
so why the heck does this even matter
well because when I got into space I was
excited to build something new I was
excited to be part of like a revolution
right I think everyone has their
blockchain rabbit-hole moment and it's
new and it's exciting and there's all
this potential but there's also the real
possibility that we're building the
exact same system that we currently have
and there's also the possibility that
that system is going to be worse than
the system that we currently have
blockchain technology in itself is
actually really interesting from a
technical perspective but when we talk
about humans we talk about people we
talk about social issues blockchain is
just a tool that we can use and it's how
we use that tool that will determine
what comes of it and if we aren't
careful and this is by the way like the
path that we are currently on we're
gonna see more centralization we're
going to see more intermediaries we're
gonna see more information asymmetry
we're gonna see more risk and whenever
you have those things when you're ever
you have a centralization of power and a
centralization of risk you're gonna end
up basically dead or in a really really
really really situation and back to
like how I started this talk right like
if we're not honest with ourselves and
what we're building and what we're
trying to achieve and how we're going
about achieving that we don't have
accountability we don't have
accountability to each other we don't
have accountability to ourselves and we
don't want to sit around and pat
ourselves on the back because we
overcame some design hurdle or some
regulatory hurdle you know especially
when overcoming those hurdles was done
basically by centralizing things right
like making sacrifices making
compromises because as we all know death
by a thousand cuts is still death so it
doesn't matter if we got our heads just
chopped off right away or over time it
just degrades and we make compromises
and we make sacrifices
the end result is going to be the same
and if we are building this beautiful
nicely painted Lego castle but it's made
of
eventually that Lego castle is going to
erode and the is going to be the
foundation for the world that we and our
children and our grandchildren live with
and we're gonna have to live with
ourselves knowing that we helped create
that future so what exactly is the angle
what are we trying to achieve why are we
here I can tell you this the
centralization is not an end goal it's
not a value proposition it's just the
centralization right it's a feature it's
a tool it's a means to the end but it's
not the end goal just because you made
something decentralize doesn't make it
valuable we want to centralization
because it can lead to this distribution
of power and it can lead to a single
entity not having power and not having
the power to amuse us if I think about
what I want this piece to achieve and
what I want sort of like the the end
goal to be what success looks like this
is what I came up with as a very general
sort of globally applied goal it's a big
goal but I think that everyone can take
this and sort of narrow it down to their
own product or what they're building or
what they're doing or even just their
personal day to day lives I want to help
create a system where power naturally
occurs to individuals rather than
central entities and the reason for this
is that if we're able to succeed at this
then we can just naturally have power
going to individuals we can distribute
that power more equally we can give the
people power to consent we can give
people more choice we can start aligning
incentives and by the way this doesn't
mean that this will happen right it just
means that it's more like
to happen like we're going down the
right path at that point and when we
talk about success and winning and what
we're trying to achieve we have to also
keep in mind night you are what you
measure and what I mean by that is that
if you are hyper focused on some metric
you were you will become that metric and
you will succeed at increasing
decreasing whatever that metric is and a
perfect example of this is reducing
crime so we have all these things and
all these metrics on crime but it's very
hard to tell and a lot of research shows
that when people are hyper focused on
quotas and reporting crime and
monitoring the metrics and stuff
basically less crime gets reported but
there's not less crime right those are
two separate things and so when we're
talking about the blockchain we're
talking about crypto we're talking about
our products these are the things that
we're measuring right now right we're
measuring market cap worth measuring
price we're talking about daily active
users we're talking about transactions
for a second we're saying that my coin
beats your coin right these are the
things that were hyper focused on but if
you think about it these aren't
measuring the success because remember
success is a system where power
naturally occurs to the individual
rather than in these central entities
and nothing on this list measures that
success so we need to figure out a new
way to measure what we're doing and
measure whether we're being successful
and evolve from there my biggest fear is
that if we're to focus on this money
aspect and more people more active users
all of this stuff we're gonna end up
hyper focus on competing with people
like PayPal the bank's venmo etc and
we're gonna basically sacrifice and make
compromises with decentralisation so
that we can improve the design we can
improve the usability we can compete
with them on that front but then are you
really competing with PayPal
are you really providing a user choice
are you really providing these are a new
system right because for me
PayPal verse venmo isn't really giving
the user a choice though the same thing
with a different name the blockchain is
supposed to be more than that I really
don't want to see this ecosystem go down
a path where we end up reproducing a
system that we so vehemently attack so
just a hammer this point home
there's not like usability design
availability to the middle class
availability of the Western world right
these are not issues like I can use
PayPal I have a bank right
those aren't problems and if you're
trying to solve a problem then you
should probably go over to the other
column and look at things like where the
asymmetry power lays where the e
symmetry of information lays where's the
lack of access is it in San Francisco is
it in Silicon Valley I don't think so
okay where's the lack of insight where's
the lack of consent where's the lack of
choice solve those problems because if
you're only going to compete with
usability and design you're basically
going to be an existing product in the
existing system competing with an
existing product in the existing system
not in the new system that we're trying
to build so to be a little bit more
optimistic well how do we do that right
we're we're do we need to go how do we
get from where we are today to where we
are tomorrow and it's a quite simple
when you put it like this obviously it's
much harder to execute successfully but
basically you want to find a problem you
want to solve that problem then get your
solution in the hands of people and then
you change the world and it's really not
easy okay and getting like one of the
biggest things right now right is
getting users getting people getting
people that aren't in this space to use
our products to understand our products
to understand this world etc and so
things that make adoption easier okay
use cases duh solving really common
problems making things easy to access
making it a fun experience that people
can enjoy and people can experiment with
and especially if they can experiment
with little to no risk and then just
general awareness right so how do we get
our message and our philosophies and our
values out to the bigger broader world
and prove to them that this stuff is
actually worthwhile and at the end of
the day there's no technology that is
gonna solve these problems right they'll
help solve the problems there'll be the
tools that we use but people like me
like you like anyone who watches this
ever you guys have the ability to solve
these problems because at the end of the
day the problems are trying to solve our
people problems there's social problems
or human problems the technology is just
we just have to evolve it and we just
have to use it with everything that we
know and we love to actually solve the
human problems and make the world a
better place and some of the most
important things when we think about
adoption yeah so we want things to be
easy to use yes we want things to be
fancy yes we want things you just want
all the users right we want the graph
that goes like hockey stick up into the
frickin atmosphere but how do we do that
and one of the most interesting things
about sort of social change and how
people and culture like evolves over
time is that collaboration education and
like shared vision shared experience are
all really really common so when people
work together when they're personally
invested in something when they
understand the vision when they
understand the philosophy when they
understand the underlying stuff they
therefore are really empowered to help
out and join the cause and then over
time the entire sort of system the
entire society slowly changes and this
is not an exhaustive list but one of the
things that we've seen historically is
things like narratives and storytelling
and rituals are like so common right
this is how information got passed along
in the dark ages and this is how
information still gets passed along
today so we should be focused on things
like that
we should be focused on our
communication we should be focused on
creating shared experiences with people
that are maybe not a hundred percent
like us and we should share our optimism
and we should share a belief and we
should share examples of why this is
useful and we should get people excited
in the same way that we're excited I
don't want anyone to ever underestimate
the value of sharing our values because
a lot of times we want to abstract
things away right we want to not let
people know how the sauce is just made
but especially in the early days and as
we're building it's very powerful to
share our philosophies to share our
vision to share our passion because
those people can also help us build
right it's not us first them it's like
us and then there are also us and that's
where the power really lies and lastly
honesty and open discourse are probably
some of the most powerful tools that we
have and some of the most powerful
things that we can do at conferences
like this where us the current US
situation is together and in person it
allows us to be accountable it allows us
to be honest with ourselves which then
in turn allows us to be honest with each
other and in turn makes our products a
lot a lot better alright okay two
minutes so that was my talk but we have
some freaking so super exciting news
Ambo our mobile application we just
launched a huge update to iOS Android is
like literally coming out the door this
week we have new tokens we have new Fiat
on ramps we have new designs everything
is better the liquidity is like through
the roof now it's amazing
the design like really they did a just a
great job I'm super super excited
they've been working so hard and then my
crypto we have like a whole new freaking
thing okay so if you guys know my crypto
it's a wallet interface thing but
typically when you arrive at our site
you like doing action like you want to
send you unlock you send and then you go
away and that's it right so we're gonna
change that up a little bit and we're
gonna give you a dashboard and the
dashboards gonna have a breakdown of all
of your stuff so you have all your
tokens across all of your accounts and
these accounts are any account on an EVM
blockchain thing so if you're young
Courtley Rob's ten if you're in classic
I don't know if he needs it coin is
still a thing but it's there if it is
and you can check it out right now
I paid it on that crypto at home it's a
little rough around the edges but we are
like literally pushing commits every
single day and we're super super excited
and then we also redid this and assets
flow and it's freaking amazing because
it just works and you can just send from
any account and any asset from any
account directly from the interface and
a vineyard designer is like literally
amazing and click the whole thing on its
head and it just works it makes sense
and I love it and our team has literally
been at this conference pushing commits
and I'm pretty sure they're pushing
that's right now to get this ready for
you so please go to beta know my crypto
comm use it love it report bugs to us
every like literally just tell us
anything we want to make this amazing we
want to make this better and we want to
make it better for you all and how you
use our product and thank you and I love
you and I did not even go over time
[Applause]
you