Mind, Money & Meaning: A Fireside Chat with Christian Angermayer - TOKEN2049 Dubai 2025

to give you guys a quick background on myself. Um, I've been in the space for about eight years. Most of the time has been the liquid markets. Um, and you know, it's been a real pleasure to kind of see the token events grow in the last few years. What, you know, it' be great if you could do a quick intro as well.

Yeah, welcome everybody. My name is Christian Angaya. I'm running my own family office of Pyron. We have a very broad mandate. Um I'm always intellectually saying I'm I'm investing in companies and projects which personally I'm excited about.

If I want to say a little bit funny I always say it's things which get you laid at the date because they are very exciting. Um uh we have four themes. Crypto is obviously the biggest one. Um the second one is biotech which is the industry I actually started in 27 years ago uh as a young founder. Um then we do a lot of deep tech in general from AI to space tech.

uh and we have one bricks and mortar pockets hospitality because my big belief is over the next 10 years human talking about meaning will stop working practically. Um so we investing in everything where people will spend their time in the future from very banal things like hotels and hotel brands. We own the largest life entertainment in Europe, life entertainment business in Europe and stuff like that. That's the overview. So we can talk about a lot of things.

The favorite one is psychedelics if you want to talk about that. That's what I really want to be known for, but we come to that for sure. 100%. And that's a perfect segue into into mind, right? So, you know, between your different business ventures, you you know, I was here yesterday with Paulo from from Tether.

Um, you have uh, you know, kind of joint vested interest in in uh, Black Rockck Neuroch and you know, that kind of business and in the BCI space and you know, you're you're deeply involved in that world and then you're also involved on a Thai doing, you know, working on psychedelics, working in the biotech space broadly. How does this all fit in together for you? Well, there's there's many ways to as I said before really like I I had my first company or I started my first company when I was 19. It went public when I was 23. So I was sitting there and was looking at my life and was like I'm coming from a very ordinary family.

I grew up in a 100 people village in in Bavaria in Germany. So I was like what do I want to do in life? Because I sort of from from my back then sort of thinking about what is a lot of money I was like oh I made it. Yeah. And I was like, I just want to do exciting things because why should you not do that?

Like I don't even understand why people would do things which are boring or they don't like. So that's sort of one thing I I'm just looking at the world. I'm a very big optimist. I think the future will be awesome and I just want to be involved uh building it. So then there's the more philosophical uh part which because a lot of people asking oh is there any connection between crypto and and for example all the neuroscience stuff we're doing um and I think there is one I think crypto people u are inherently libertarian or at least a lot of us and if you if you are libertarian there is obviously the political thing to talk about but there is more like what what else is restricting you in life and there's two things the one is like we're all aging um and somewhere at least for now we're going to die uh and it sucks.

Yeah, I think at nobody like we don't talk about it but like it's first of all by the way if you look at neuroscience is one of the the big traumatizing things in your life is that you're uh and our culture is deliberately bad or the western culture to not sort of talk about it but also it's something which is opposed on us from the outside and you at least for now we feel we can't stop it. So that's why in biotech half of our business is focused on longevity. So how to slow down hopefully somewhat reverse aging and by that to pushing life expectancy dramatically. So my dream is that even in my lifetime or my lifespan we coming to a point where we're living that long that we want to die somewhere but deliberately and voluntarily because I think that's the ultimate libertarian dream. I want to live this amazing life as long as I can and then when I don't want it anymore I call it a quit.

Um so that's the one big I would say inhibitor aging and dying. But there is another one which is maybe even more important. Um and that is conceptually your ego. You might say what is he talking about? But like um if you look at like all the problems you might think you have 90% of them are not really uh relevant worrying about.

So your ego which is a very vital part of your brain and by the way the fascinating thing in the brain is and that's why we focus on it in biotech since like the last 10 years we finally started understanding it till like 10 years ago the brain was the one unknown thing uh in our body. We learned a lot over the last 30 years about the rest. But the brain was completely not understood. And we started with new imaging technologies whatever. We started to understanding the brain.

There is a part in your brain which is called the ego which is very vital. It's the one which makes you get up. It's the one which wants you to succeed. So it has many many many vital functions. But also a lot of your pain and drama of your life is coming from that part because that's the part who's constantly saying oh all the others are more successful.

You're a loser whatever. So if I look at mental health, the ego is the problem. Uh and psychedelics, if I make it very short, uh help you mastering your ego and realizing that you are not your ego. Your ego is a subp part of you, but there is something much bigger. And it sounds very simple, but if you take one thing away of that, think about that later.

There are great books about it. Because if you master that, if you turn the hierarchy around, if not your ego is controlling your life, but if your bigger self, whatever you want to call it, I can go in the spiritual direction, I can go more in the in the psychological direction, call it soul, call it subconsciousness or call it your your mind, when you master your ego and see it as a part of you, but not as your your master, you have a much happier life. And that's what we're doing a lot with psychedelics. I mean, you know, and I think it's like when we go from talking about psychedelics, right, and and the portfolio companies that you manage and I I haven't seen anyone who runs a family office. I mean, it's it's even kind of crude to call a fire a family office in the way that you're so involved with every founder that you work with.

You're so involved in every one of the companies that that that you're behind. How do you think about it? You know, now you have such a big role in crypto as well. How do you think about, you know, the different ways that these things can interconnect? And we're going to move into the money topic as well.

Well, one thing is like meaning again I like to do meaning I'm still a founder. So for example, a Tai the psychedelics company uh I've mentioned I founded I started with our friend Paul together plasma a new stable coin purpose-built for a new god Jesus a new blockchain yeah purpose built for stable coins the other way around. Um, and so I like still to start companies because that's actually what I want to do which I saw on a psychedelic trip. Like I want to create things like I want to create experiences with our hotels. Yeah.

Uh I want to create companies um and I like to be um as much uh involved as I can. So I'm not the operator for Plasma for example. Paul is amazing. So I'm try to use my network but also what I've learned like I have these sort of helicopter view. um what I've learning sometimes even in biotech you can apply it in crypto and try to be a good mentor for um my co-founders and portfolio companies 100% and I guess you know moving into the crypto world now into the money aspect of this conversation you've taken a you've always been in crypto you've been in crypto for what a decade now maybe more almost no 10 years nine years yeah and and now you're moving in more you know aggressively into the space what's the future for what you're working on within crypto you're deeply involved with plasma you We were here yesterday again with Paul and Paulo.

Paulo the co-founder of Tether and P uh and and Paul the co-founder of Plasma. What's that engagement look like? What is the goal for Plasma? What's the goal for your you know work in in the crypto space? First of all like meaning a ve a very bless sentence in tech is just solve problems which are in front of you and and together with Paulo we realized u that obviously stable coins are a newer thing a lot of the big change are older.

So none of the big blockchains uh where for example tether but also other stable coins are resting on have been purposely built for stable coins because they were not there yet. So we just like really went with Paulo through like hey how does the perfect chain look like yeah where tether wants to be on and we were like okay let's make notes and uh and very simplified that how how plasma started. So we just want to solve problems. I'm I'm very with Paulo um talking again which is a very big topic uh in my portfolio about freedom that crypto in general but especially stable coins and hence indirectly plasma uh can sort of really help especially people in the global south like there are meaning you heard it surely here a lot but like there are still billions of people yeah who are kind of enslaved by their governments by their systems because they don't have access to uh to financial innovation so I really it's not just a sounds always so uh like a PR agency has written it but I really mean it like crypto has um or plays at least a very vital role in helping people to get sort of control of their own u destiny and again plasma is a little bit the facilitator for that uh I also think we're at a very uh I told it to you in the car like but I want to bring it up because like especially when you build a new chain uh like plasma uh a lot of people come comments like, "Oh, you want to steal business from that chain and oh, and you're attacking that one." And I that is really sad.

That's the one thing I want to tell everybody who works in crypto uh with a little bit of psychedelic. But again, I don't want to be cheesy, but like if I look at it, we're just at this amazing inflection point where I think crypto going to positively explode because like finally real life big sort of applications, money streams, whatever are coming to crypto. So that means the cake is really growing. So and I just learned this new term and it's a sad term because I was never a real a gamer like this player versus player. That's what everybody's bringing up when we say we start a new chain.

Oh, you again player versus player. I was like no because I I don't want to take things away from somebody else. I want to build something where the future growth, for example, if you look at Tether, I deeply believe Tether will have hundreds of billions. They already have 150, but they're going to have hundreds of billions very soon. And obviously I want that a big portion of that growth is on plasma.

But that's what I want. The new business, the new volume being on my chain. I don't want to take it away from somebody. If somebody says, "Hey, I like plasma more than X." And moves over, happy.

But we shouldn't have as an industry that player versus player mode. We should have a player with player mode because our industry is really taking off and it doesn't make sense that we pit each other against each other. like rather let's grab it from other thread fire sectors whatever right and and I guess that's the takeaway PVP to PWP exactly play the new thing right and and I guess you know that segus really nicely into the meaning aspect of this which we talked about with the psychedelics we talked about a little bit with with BCIS right but so much of your kind of involvement now is also in the political game too which is not really talked about but is massively interesting right like what's going on in Africa Africa, what's going on in kind of, you know, what you're focused on in these different countries. Talk a little bit about if you can, you know, the the way that psychedelics and also the money aspect of crypto is kind of, you know, uplifting that meaning for you in in these places that, you know, generationally have been traumatized from, you know, a lack of financial inclusion. Yeah.

So, I'm I'm very proud. I'm the um economic and political adviser for a very dear friend. So he's primarily a friend uh the president of Rwanda. Um I think Africa first of all is the future but Africa suffers from in some places from um sort of political elites holding their people really um hostage. Rwanda always has been even without crypto has been sort of the shining example the positive example what what Africa actually can be with a with a great leadership.

for the ones but first of all I haven't been I can just say Ronda is kind of my second home. It's one of the most beautiful countries to go. Um it has these on the one side very horrifying sad history because they had a genocide which my friend ended um but then sort of turned it into these sort of amazing turnaround um is no word does justice a genocide. I tried to make it really respectful but in a positive very positive way. It's practically like it's Singapore in Africa like zero crime, zero corruption, everything is clean.

And he the most important thing I would say again coming to more the mind he has given a country where 1 million people died within um uh within four weeks out of 14. he has given the people meaning uh and a future uh and also like hope and and sort of respect for themselves back um by by the way embracing new things like Ronda is a technology hub um uh they very early on crypto uh we're working on uh implementing stable coins yeah in government payments within Rwanda with other governments so um so that shows you need both by the way so I think again like what I'm trying to do for my portfolio but also for my thing is always a holistic approach. It's never at least for the big problems that one thing will solve it. Stable coins for example play a role but you also need great leadership. If the leadership sucks yes they might make it a bit better but in the ideal world everything comes together.

You have great leadership in a country. You embrace technology. Um you have financial inclusion and so on. But Rwanda who wants to go do it. It's amazing.

They have the last mountain gorillas which is nature- wise uh amazing and it's a good example as well to see how technology can be at work. Yeah. And you know one of the first things you told me was you know I asked what was your motivation to you know keep going and keep kind of like traveling and and and going to conferences and events and meeting people and doing all this work and you said there's never enough resources never enough money never enough to do all of the things that you want. And I think of the people that I know and the people that I've you know studied there's no one who really has as big of a ambitious kind of pallet to say you know what I want to you know fix the political system in a country while also making you know millions of people kind of uh free from them you know from their lower self in a way and then also at the same time work towards you know uh an environment that you know financial inclusion is possible. So um you know it's it's an honor to be your friend and it's an honor to you know share the stage with you and I sincerely appreciate it Christian.

Thank you. Well, the simple answer is by the way, last question and then I think we need to end talking like but again and by the way I want to make one compliance statement which is very important. My lawyers told me that um on a serious note we're working when when we talk about psychedelics uh we had other talks and hopefully next talk we do more. I'm meaning like the medical use of psychedelics. So if you know the term it's what they colloally call magic mushrooms psilocybin DMT 5 DMT.

My company Atai is bringing back those substances into the medical world, right? Um, as treatment for mental health issues, fully FDA approved. We just finished phase three for psilocybin. The others are shortly behind. So, I'm not advocating because I really mean it.

Yeah. For like party use like truth is it's much healthier than alcohol. Yeah. However, I'm advocating because that is what really is giving you the upside. just described for a therapeutic use with therapists together you can call a therapist a shaman but with some guide uh who really opens up the full potential but then they also have by the way they there's a whole other topic of if you look it up it's called neuroplasticity they're not just giving you the mental health but also they really rejuvenate now most of you are young but your brain somewhere starts aging at the around at the age of 30 in terms of that you narrowing down and it's sad because you shouldn't you should always be as open for the world as you have been when you were 20.

And that's one of the positive side effects psychedelics give you. They keep you on your feet uh to want to be part of the future. Okay, I think we need to stop otherwise they kill. Thank you guys so much. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Christian.