Fireside Chat: CZ - TOKEN2049 Dubai 2025

Let's start. It's great to see you back publicly talking because a lot of people listen to you. First, I want to go through what you've what you've been working on with the Giggle Academy because that was the last thing we heard from you is like, I'm going to focus on this. So, talk us through that journey. Uh, sure.

Yeah. I mean, it's a very fun project to work on. Um I actually don't spend that much time like I do have two calls with them every week status calls and then I kind of talk to them a bit more about like the AI side of things like what AI technologies to use so that we can build the content faster. Um I think the uh Google Google Academy has a very good product market fit. Uh it's very sticky.

So if you give the app to a kid they will they beg for it. So um I think we we the original hypothesis is right with the technologies we have today. It's not that hard to make an app that will stick uh that that's educational but also like you know glue the kids to the to the device. So um now we just got to scale up more content. Um and I'm we're always exploring more different uh ways to speed up the process.

So I think right now there has about 60 lessons and about 300 story books and just today we launched 15 languages for the story books. So the story book itself will be read to you in 15 different languages. Um so and u u and now it's with AI so much easy to add more content and more more languages too. So um yeah it's a very it's a very fun project and we are educating about tw 200 thou sorry 20,000 kids already. Uh this is less than six months that you know in the last six months.

Yeah. I mean you've scaled businesses at lightning speeds. Now having AI does it even scale faster for you? Oh yeah. Yeah.

I think AI should be much uh will help us to scale much faster. Um so now we create we create the story book in one language AI translates to everything and then even the story books uh is heavily AI assisted. So before you have to create the images etc. Now um now we just use AI to generate like even like um even three months ago it was quite difficult to get AI to generate the consistent characters on multiple images through different pages of the book. uh but that's improved like in the last month or two and video generation is still a little bit challenging but now the characters much more consistent um and we want to get to a point where we can use AI to generate the specific format that we need which is a Unity gaming engine spine format so we want to get to that format so then then uh because that format saves a lot of um storage um so yeah but AI is uh gig is a post AI app uh so it's going to use it's going to be AI native And where is this all going in a few years time?

What are you trying to get to? Um, in a few years I think I want to teach 100 million or billion kids for free. Uh, 18 years or more. Yeah. Now there's the 100 billion kids that you're teaching, but you're also doing something else, which is going around the world talking to countries about crypto.

Talk about this because not a lot of people realize what you're doing in the background, but you're doing a lot. Uh, yeah, sure. So I like I interact with about a dozen countries right now. Um top leaders in in this countries. So I think we've seen a big shift in the last six months or so.

Uh with the US election uh now the US new administration is extremely pro crypto. Um and with Elon Musk wants to use u blockchain for government efficiency. Uh we've seen that in many other parts of the world including Abu including UAE both Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Um they're uh they're exploring how to use blockchain for government uh projects. That includes like decentralized IDs.

Once you have an ID, you need a wallet. Once you have a wallet, then you can do anything that you need with an ID. Um land title rights, opening bank accounts, uh e visas, border crossings, uh uh uh diploma, education diplomas, etc. So there's so many things we can do. Um and this is kind of a passion project for me as well.

So because now today the blockchain is kind of single dimension on the trading right financials which is great but you know we want we want we we with this we can expand blockchain to multiple dimensions and um with the industry getting bigger there will still be more trades so we still bet as a as a shareholder of a large trading platform I still benefit um and then uh also uh actually before this um most countries are thinking looking at how to regulate crypto um and uh there's a there's about a dozen countries that come to me and says well we either they have CZ here or they know somebody who knows me um they come and talk to me and then because I have nothing else to do so I'm more than happy to talk to I'm more than happy to talk to this country leaders to advise them on how to what are the things to watch out for uh in terms of adopting crypto regulations how to make them more favorable to our industry uh we want to protect consumers but also advance innovation so did the young kid from Canada think he'd be going around countries telling them about blockchain technology. Uh no, I think even today it's a bit surreal. Um so I view myself as a technology geek. Um and um just never imagined going to different countries talking with country leaders about things that could impact a huge number of people. So but it again it's a I think it's a very meaningful thing to for me to do.

Um so um again I don't charge for my time. I like you know it's all it's all pro bono but for I think um again it's very important for our industry and it's also important for each country's economy now here the UAE has been extraordinarily good at adoption and seeing this talk through the journey here because you came here and people like what why is CZ moving to Dubai and then it's become almost the epicenter of the industry you can see by the crowd and all the way across these countries it's extraordinary what's happening yeah absolutely so four years ago um in end of 2021 in September 2021 I came here for the first time um and based on my friend's recommendation saying like look you should explore Dubai um UAE is very pro crypto pro business one of the best business environments in the world so I took I took up his advice I came here for three weeks I booked a three-week trip so came here actually I when I landed I only had one meeting lined up which is with uh the his excellency minister of AI uh Elama Um and uh I landed on a Friday night. Um and Friday is not a working day. Friday, Saturday is not a working desk back then. Uh Sunday is a working day.

Um he met with me and then he know introduced everything. And then um I just within like about a week or so I knew this is the place to be. U they are extremely pro business really pro crypto. The ministers knows exactly what's going on, very smart, very sophisticated. Um and the speed is really fast.

So um so we uh at the time Vera didn't exist uh so we were discussing about how to regulate crypto etc. Um and then at the time we recommended setting up a new separate agency and they actually took that advice. Um so like a month later Vera was incorporated uh literally just within a month. Um and then um uh by November we signed anou uh to uh advise them on the crypto regulatory framework for Dubai. By February next year uh 2022 it was signed into law.

Um so and then by March uh we got a appro in principal approval uh together with three or four other crypto exchanges. So um it moves really really fast here. Um and then um uh so and then I explore Abu Dhabi as well. So Abu Dhabi this is like a little bit of a friendly competition. I think our friends from locally knows.

Um so uh but both places are extremely pro business, extremely uh thoughtful and uh here you know Dubai Dubai UAE is a extremely safe country. So the the the fact that like know a lot of western media kind of portray uh Middle East in a in a sort of a negative way but this is one of the safest countries in the world the safest city in the world. So there's actually no crime here. So um so you can see that if you manage if you regulate well you can you can you can encourage business while keeping all your citizens completely safe. So um this is one of the best places.

So back then it was like there was probably like five 10 crypto companies in 2021. Now there's like thousands. Yeah. So it's incredible to see those growth. So when you go and talk to countries are you talking more about just starting them on the Bitcoin journey you know the first thing that we get all of our friends to do or do you open up and say okay this is what blockchain rails can do for a country because we've got a world of AI where digital ID is going to matter a lot of things are going to matter yeah I think the conversation today is a bit more advanced than that um there were there are very specific issues about like you know how to adopt this um I'll give you a couple examples that that are typical uh discussion points u Many regulators still want to regulate everything locally.

Yeah, they want a local uh custody wallet solution. They want a local order book. They want a local everything, local team, etc. But that's usually not the best way to go. Uh because setting up a secure custody uh uh solution for like billions of dollars, requires a lot of money, it requires a lot of funds and requires a lot of expertise, which is very lacking today.

Um just setting up a global one is already difficult enough. Um if we have to do like 200 times, we just don't have the people, right? like for each uh for each really cold wallet, you got you need to have like 15 signers. You can't find 15 signers that are not public, that are extremely trustworthy in different parts of the world uh in different geographies and they don't and they're not incentivized by more money. They have a steady job, they're they're high income, they have nice family.

Um so just you just can't find like you know 100 times more of those 15 people, right? So and also local order book uh again if you divide each country with their own order uh local order book liquidity going to suck uh and so when you want to buy like a million dollars the slippage is going to be super high. So those type of issues are very like you know real concrete issues. Um many countries have the capital control so capital flight issues. uh mo almost all of those countries wants foreign direct investment but the thing is if you have if you if you don't open up open up your if people can't get money out then the money is not going to come in right so uh so a lot of those like issues that are very real u very tangible issues to uh to address and the two big ones that are still addressing this are China and India where are they in the process because they open close because they got capital issues capital control issues where where do they stand right now Um I think China's adopting the use Hong Kong as a sandbox kind of approach.

So I think Hong Kong is extremely pro crypto now. Um I think they started changing about two years ago. Um they started issuing licenses. Um but two years ago the licenses are quite restrictive. Um so in terms of token listings etc.

So now they're exploring ways to open that up. Um and then but Hong Kong still also have to worry about the um capital control issue of China. So they cannot know blatantly help Chinese mainland users move money out. And the thing is in crypto um once you buy Bitcoin where which country does that Bitcoin belong to this there's no border right so whereas in in traditional banks if you have if you have your money in your Shanghai bank account that's in Shanghai when you move it out of to Hong Kong that's kind of out in Hong Kong you kind of know um but with but if you buy crypto in Shanghai when when you move to the US the crypto is in the U like it doesn't have it doesn't have that concept of a of a border. Yeah.

Right. So um there's some real issues to to address there. Um but in the uh so you mentioned you India um I think India I have less interactions with to be very frank um I think based on my knowledge is pretty much based on public knowledge. I think the tax there is quite high um and to to the point where it doesn't make sense to do transactions um anymore. So uh we would I personally I don't have any much interactions with the Indian uh uh governments but I would very personally very much to see some of those being loosened.

And what about the kind of strategic reserves idea as well because that's the hot topic people are seeing happening. Talk us through that and what you're hearing. Um there's a few countries who are extremely advanced on that topic. Uh I think Bhutan uh I believe his majesty king of Bhutan is actually in the city today. Um and um uh he's he's a he's a early crypto adopter.

He's a very smart guy. Um, and they they have excess energy, clean energy, hydro energy. So, um, they've been mining Bitcoin for years. So, they have billion they have billions and billions of dollars of Bitcoin for a very small country. Um, and, um, now they've added Ethereum and B&B to that to their national reserve.

So, um, the early adopters are moving forward. Um, based on public information, US seems to be using the uh, holding at least they're no longer selling the Bitcoin. you know, some of the OGs like us actually kind of hope that governments will sell their Bitcoin so that other guys can buy them cheaply, but you know, with this US administration, they're very uh business savvy. Uh so they understand what's valuable. So um so now they figured that out.

Uh with the US with the one of the world's largest economy holding Bitcoin now or holding making a crypto reserve, other countries are forced to do it. Uh because the later you do it uh the more expensive your crypto will be. So um uh yeah. So I think we are talking with many countries on advising them how how to set up a crypto strategic reserve and also like even very simple stuff very basic fundamental stuff like u what wallet solutions to use do you use a uh professional custodial or do you use your own code wallets do you have the do you have enough expertise to build that kind of infrastructure etc so for most countries we when they start when this most countries starting amount are not as big as US right US have like uh 200,000 bitcoins or thing uh for most other countries when they hold much smaller amount we actually just recommend them to use a c professional custody solution that's multisig right so no no single person can move the money um when they build up to a certain large amount then they move they should move to their own code storage solution so there's a lot of discussions uh along this lines yeah where's Europe in this whole equation uh nowhere it's it's unbel it's unbelievable yeah um yeah so uh I we we don't I don't I don't see Europe in this discussion Yeah. No, it's extraordinary.

Yeah. And you know because in the end this this technology enables average people to generate wealth to be involved in a financial system and Europe's actively blocking them out. Yeah. I think so far the only actually let's exception. Uh Montenegro is actually quite pro crypto.

Uh we have an active dialogue with the u uh prime minister there. Um and he's a he's a very forward thinking person uh uh leader. So, uh, but other than Montenegro, I don't have any other like, yeah, it's kind of missing on the map. Yeah. So, what gets you excited when you're looking at the crypto markets these days?

What innovations, what things are happening that you're like, this is really interesting. Um, I think the crypto industry, so there's a lot of money flowing around. Um, but they're all chasing like, you know, short-term gains. So, I would like to sort of, um, help the founders to build real products. So, I'm a builder myself.

Um I like to see products built that a lot of people use. So I think that's the single most important metric. Um it's not the token price, it's not everything else. Uh it's just building use cases for people. So uh this is why I'm sp I'm actually spending majority of like the biggest chunk of my time today is spending on easy labs with funders.

So talking with founders looking at different projects uh and just trying to help them. There are very there are still many many strong founders. It's just that they their their their voice is a bit muffled right now. So I think we got to help those funders to be more uh vocal, more active and also more engaging in the community and help them to raise money uh help them design proper long-term token economics etc. So that's where I spend actually quite a lot of my time.

And when you're looking at the applications layer that you might invest in, what are you seeing that's outside of finance? because there's a big focus on DeFi and stable coins and all of this stuff, but there's a much broader use case here, whether it's social media at large or or whatever it may be. What are you seeing people building? Are they take are they grasping the opportunity yet? Um, to be honest, I think they're all very early stage.

Um, I think crypto so far has not expanded beyond trading. Uh, so but this also represents an opportunity. So, um, uh, right now, no, RWA is quite new. It's growing uh, but it's still finance related. still like um sort of incentiv tokenizing real world assets etc.

um decide well or decentralized social social media hasn't really taken off yet. Um there's number of really interesting attempts uh that we're looking at. Um and um uh but when I talked about the government solutions, I think that's another area that most likely can take off. Um uh and that's not finance finance related, right? So those are just pure blockchain uh for efficiency and for transparency.

Um for example, land land title rights. Um in many countries, they don't have very good systems. Even in Japan, they still use a piece of paper where with a scratch off code to verify you own that piece of land. And if you lose that piece of paper, it's actually quite difficult to replace uh or to to like you know to get it back. So um uh and in other parts of like you know in Africa there's many land you don't know who who it belongs to.

So and also even in countries like US where there is fairly mature uh record keeping but the record keeping is done manually and the local municipal office keeps that record and it's not it's not digitized. Uh so when you try to buy a piece of land you don't know the history of that land. You don't have data. So then you cannot price it and then you have low liquidity. Um so there's all of this issues which can be addressed.

Uh and we are actually investing a company that uh that's solving this problem. Uh we uh we recently invested in sign which is another project that does digital decentralized ids uh and they are building layer 2 for governments etc. So we're I'm I'm spending I'm pushing them really really hard. Um so yeah so there's a lot of interesting solutions being built. Yeah, I think everything that can be digitized will get digitized and and we're seeing that trend and there's so much efficiency particularly like government level and stuff like that.

One of the things that um you um were known for was the investment in X. Yeah. Now, what did you see in that because you don't make a big investment like that unless you see something in the future that could be related to crypto web 3. Yeah. To be honest, um X was a different type of philosophy.

I think uh freedom of money is important u but to have freedom of money you have to have freedom of speech freedom of speech is kind of the bottom layer layer if you don't have that then nothing no other freedom kind of works um so uh when we invested in X the Twitter back then uh it was based on that philosophy and um uh so uh and then I actually didn't expect that they were turned to become XAI so now we're a minority shareholder in a in a leading AI company. So, fantastic. And talking of AI, how are you how are you thinking about how AI is going to change even this industry? Oh, yeah. Uh, outside of just developers using AI to write faster code, but yeah.

So, I think AI has a lot of use cases. Well, number one is uh AI, I believe, will completely revamp the user experience. The inter how you interact with blockchain. UX feels like it's all going to it's all going to change, right? So um so I think AI has so many different applications uh that u uh unfortunately this industry happened before AI.

So we need to change this industry to a AI enabled industry. Yeah. Uh both in terms of apps we're building, uh product tools, um customer support, risk management, risk monitoring, um uh and uh also AI itself can use blockchain, right? So I think as I said tweeted before, um the currency for AI is crypto. Uh AI is not going to swipe a card, you know, um enter SMS code.

That that doesn't work for AI. Um it's going to be crypto. So um and then AI needs a lot of data to train. Um today they exhausted the public data but there's a lot of data we don't capture today. Those those data can be captured in a privacy preserving way using blockchain.

Um but if you give those data to a third party company then you can't you can't ensure your own data sovereignty. So um capture of data it logically should be done on the blockchain. But today it's easier technology technology wise to do it on a centralized platform. So uh we will hope to see that transition happen. Um and then um today many people there's so many different AI agents with a token.

Yeah. U but the the agents doesn't have a lot of utility, right? So it's experimentation still right now. So what we want what what I would really want to see is like real agents that that have real utility like that can really help you that that have tokens. So today like you know you can there's so many platforms you go to AI token launch platform you click a button you get your own AI with your own name.

um takes three seconds and then you have your own token that token is useless. Well, most mo I would say 99.99999% of those tokens are useless. Then maybe one or two for sentimental value, for culture value, for for other things. But um what we want to see is real AI um agents that can do things like you know the today the big ones like you know chat GPT uh deep etc.

Those are real big AIs that can do a lot of stuff. U there's smaller AI than those guys that can do a lot of stuff that know video uh video editing imagery editing um and I've just seen a demo of a AI paying for literally paying for hotel uh booking um and but today that those AI have to go through a website hopefully in the future that should be AI talking to AI um to book to book that right so I think in the future u we will see a very heavily automated world um I think I was talking to a fund manager yesterday they say um of 8 billion people in the world uh of this uh of the data that we we p we we generate every day uh it's about 300 trillion tokens like token meaning not not a crypto token meaning the words for AI tokens uh today open uh AI is generate AI is generating about 10% of that today wow uh in the future though AI will generate 10 times more than we do so when we have AI AI will interacting with each other um there'll be so many exchanges uh in the tokens in the in the word tokens or in the interactions and then there will be more commerce the AI will be trading with each other. They will be paying each other. They will be like, you know, transacting. They will use crypto.

So, yeah, I've talked a lot about this is people don't realize right now the agents are being essentially subsidized by VC capital in these large uh AI companies. Over time, agents need to get paid for comput and electricity and it happens at lightning speed. The only way of doing that payment is crypto payments. And then they will be building their own businesses of which they'll build in profit margins as well. I it's a strange world where we may not be the profit drivers.

We may not be the economic engine. They'll come from the AI. Uh absolutely. I think that's that is coming like with AI so far in our world um population is related to productivity. So the the higher the population the more GDP etc.

But with AI plus robotics uh plus robots uh that's going to change. Uh so who whichever country has the best economy or manufacturing and AI techn technologies AI plus robots plus uh blockchain um they're going to they don't need that many people. So um uh so the productivity is uh uh equation is going to change. So it's uh innovation that matters. Um so uh yeah in the future world I think we can live a much more comfortable life with much less work um like where we how we should be.

Yeah, I think there's this whole nexus of AI in crypto is very interesting. The other part of AI that people don't understand yet is if we're not careful, we're going to have two or three giants and we need decentralization within that industry too and I think blockchain plays a role in that. If you have any thoughts on that? Absolutely. So today um the big AI companies use our internet data to uh to train their models and that happens to be with a few large internet companies know Microsoft, Google, whoever else.

um it's um and but going forward uh as I said before we there's a lot of data that we don't generate we don't we don't store uh and now we're going to be smarter about how we store our data so uh we should they should be stored in a permission way that we uh we only allow access when we want to and we should be able to monetize out of it um so your health data um u you know you can be anonymized and then used to train um uh uh different AIs um every interaction you have every thought you have etc if you want to you should be able to digitize that uh blockchain tokenize it and then be able to monetize it. So uh and then so uh in the future I think the u uh and also we're seeing the I think we'll give credit to the first few centralized platforms that you know that that have the scale to innovate but once the industry is proven then the decentralization will happen. Um now we've seen that with deepseek they open source their model and now everyone can use that at a fraction of the cost. Um and uh so I think we're going to see more more and more of that coming. So I think the future is going to be quite decentralized.

Yeah. It's also interesting because crypto is the fastest moving industry most of us had ever seen until AI came along and now it's multiplied the whole thing. Yeah. So that's that's normal though. Every new industry is going to be faster than the previous one.

So uh internet developed so much faster than traditional industries. But with blockchain now we have internet. So we can develop so much faster than uh internet companies. So I think Binance is probably the first at the time the first company to reach $1 billion in profits from startup to $1 billion in profit. Uh but that's because we had the internet and we just and we and then we had the blockchain.

Um and then uh AI companies are now post blockchain. So now if they do it well they can easily monetize um they can easily use distributed token econ economics um and uh they should be able to grow much faster. Yeah. Yeah. I think OpenAI got to 100 million users in 3 weeks or something stupid.

Yeah, a few days. Yeah. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. So, let's go back a little bit.

So, 2017, I think you started Binance. When you had a vision of the industry going forwards, what you were building for, how different is it today versus then? What did you get right and wrong? Um, I think we got a lot of things wrong. Uh so um and when we first started I think we said uh maybe like you know top 10 in three years and maybe top one in five years.

So uh that that we got wrong um and you know we didn't expect the growth that uh we had but the industry changes very quickly. Um this another example we got wrong is like we didn't think stable coin is going to be that big really. Yeah. So we just like stable coin should be an intermediary thing between fiat and crypto. It's a it's like a patch.

It's a it's a it's a it's a band-aid solution for people who selling crypto funny holding holding holding stable value for a little bit. Um but so I got that wrong. Um and so there's a lot of things we got like uh for me I can never predict markets. Uh I don't predict industries but the long term is easy to predict. Uh blockchain is going to be really really important.

AI is going to be really really important. Um this field is going to grow. Um so but then u on a week-to-eek basis we have to pivot. We have to adjust. Um I didn't expect memes to be this this big, right?

So this they're just things that you cannot you cannot expect. So u but when they become big you have to adjust to it. So um yeah I remember when I first interviewed you I can't remember 2020 or something and I said well how long is your strategic plan? You said about two weeks because you were just very focused on what do I need to deliver today and what does the market need. Yeah I I think today I can look a little bit longer.

Uh but back then I was like we're just putting out fires, right? So um the system you know is always under stress. There's always some stress point somewhere. Some some stuff's always like you know uh there's always some crisis somewhere. So back then it was just more about like you know getting through every week uh and continue to build a and also our product development cycle is very short.

Uh especially back then today it's a bit longer which is a bit frustrating. Um so u uh back then it was like oh every feature when we talk about a feature in the morning usually by afternoon that feature is live. So uh wow then that was a fantastic feeling back then. Today it takes quite a bit longer. Today we have a larger user base and every change if you screw up it's it's it's going to be quite quite uh quite quite bad.

Yeah. So when you're looking out at the industry and through your investments in startups what should people be building? What are they missing that you're just not seeing enough people working on? Um so actually look at differently. Um what we're short on is not ideas.

um the same ideas the same people have um uh what we lack on is uh strong founders that are that have very strong conviction. So uh founders who are missiondriven uh founders who are money driven um in this industry in in the crypto industry like it's quite easy to raise 10 to 50 even more millions of dollars. Um people who are money driven once once they come into a hund00 million dollars they sometimes get like know they they they kind of think they made it and they kind of slack uh they kind of you know just the the the drive is kind they kind of lose it. Uh whereas people who are mission driven they will continue to go. Um and also people who are mission driven when there's a when there's some adversity they they they plow through.

So um what we lack the well from our perspective what we lack the most is strong founders in in the space. Uh I think we have a lot of strong founders but we need more. We need way more. We need 10x more. So that's where that's where the shortage is.

U so strong founders with conviction with ability to execute. Um and yeah, if you have if if you if you have all three like there's so much money to be made. I mean you don't have to think about making money. The money will just come. Yeah.

And it's not we probably don't need more infrastructure layer stuff. We need the applications layer. I mean you guys have got what 260 million users and growing stupid fast. But that's still all money apart from stable coins. Yes.

But it's still all the money system. But there's so many things that can scale to a billion users. Yeah. I think well again I think sooner or later there going to be some app that will scale right. So sooner or later there will be another app that's might be like blockchain AI some combination of it that would just like you know that will just grow like wildfire.

Um they will get like you know uh 100 million users in a few days. uh I think those those things will come uh because now we have the infrastructure infrastructure to support it both on the tech side cloud AI uh everything's scalable so uh today the successes will be like phenomenal successes that people don't even expect so but again I cannot predict where those are I I believe any idea that we have today can become that it's just all all execution if you can execute well um those things are very very possible so there's a lot of new people in the space as there is every cycle They want to hear your advice for them how to how to deal with this. It's hard for people. They're not used to it. So, let's give CZ's advice and coming into the industry from new what to do, what not to do.

Sure. Um, I think the fundamental thing is um like there's no magic bullet. There's no magic formula. Um, stick with fundamentals. Um, don't get too excited.

Um, when people say, "Look, this project's really hot. Uh, if you don't buy it to this minute, then it's going to you're going to miss it." Don't don't go for that. uh just you know stick with fundamentals. Um uh what what happens in traditional investing in traditional markets is the same thing that happens here.

You should look at fundamentals. You should look at project. You should play with a product. You should you should believe it. You should understand it.

And then um uh don't follow don't follow advices um just because don't buy just because you s you saw somebody tweet about it something on Twitter, right? So don't don't don't just follow blindly. Uh uh don't invest in a large number of tokens or coins. um you know uh play with three or five that you can understand deeply so that you know if they're good or not uh if you don't understand don't invest um and then for the uh for the builders um again fundamentals right so uh don't don't try to raise a big amount like that's that's not the benchmark uh the benchmark is five years from now how many users do you have what's your valuation five years from now so uh build uh look at product or market fit build prototypes test it if it doesn't work pivot uh if it works then scale Right. So um and uh just know uh there's not there's nothing magical.

Everybody comes into crypto thinking that the crypto somehow is different. It's not. U it's a bit more volatile. Yeah. So like you see very often right many people who are in who are not traditional stock traders.

They come to crypto they become active traders. Um doesn't work. Crypto crypto is no different from uh if you do day trading it's the same everywhere. It's just different asset type. Um there's some guys who are like you know uh entrepreneurs in traditional internet well not traditional just internet tech fields they come into crypto somehow this they want to do it they want to do something very different um there's nothing different crypto does help you raise money more more easily is a very effective uh fundraising tool but still the fundamentals apply you got to have product market fit you got to have a strong product that people use um so all of those things still apply so there's nothing too magical about this magic internet money kind of industry uh there's nothing magical about it.

It's a lot of hard work, a lot of basics, a lot of fundamentals. Do you think capital formation will grow? We saw ICOs back in 2017, right now it was experimentation. It was the wild west, but it was experimentation like memes are now. Do you think we're going to come back to more of that kind of capital formation via some sort of format of ICOs?

Uh, I think so. Um, but I think there's always going to be a combination. So, we've seen the evolution, right? So no uh say 70 80 years ago if you want to start a business you can only get a loan from a bank and it's very hard to get fundraising right so then like you know 30 some years 30 something years ago VCs started to appear and it makes sense for internet businesses because you know they got to pl they got to burn through a lot of money before they have a a revenue model and that kind of work for internet and then now we come to ICOs ICOs are so much easier to raise money right that's 2017 but for ICOs you actually still have to have a website and have a white paper at least, but that's super easy compared to like traditional VC fundraising. And then um now like and then and then we went through like sort of the NFT craze etc.

But now you just need one image say like one meme and then you you and and then uh and then you go to a pump u uh platform and then off you go. Um and uh so the fundraising has become so much easier which is kind of u it's a bit too easy now. Um so I think uh but I think there are still still many there's still many strong founders who are using the like know the solid approaches white paper product and TGE much much later after the product have product market fit um and uh I think we still see a lot of uh strong projects in uh in in those categories I think uh long-term those projects will win uh and what do you think is going to have higher returns VC in the space or listed to uh liquid tokens because it's actually very hard for anybody to build a business and beat Bitcoin's returns. It's phenomenally hard to do. Yeah.

How do you think about that? Yeah. So, uh it's very hard to outrun Bitcoin. Um that's I think there's only a few projects uh that kind of outrun Bitcoin for for a period of time. Um and uh the yeah, I mean in the industry if you industry for any period of time, you say look instead of investing in crypto projects, just buy Bitcoin and hold uh much less work.

And uh uh but uh but even as a crypto OG like myself uh I invest in many many new projects to uh we have to do that to grow the industry. Um and there are projects that that have outright probably be richer if you hadn't. Uh actually no uh I think B&B have out outran Bitcoin so far in its existence. Yeah. Uh Ethereum probably has as well.

Yeah. Even though I know a lot of people have a lot of opinions about Ethereum. Even Doge has. Yeah. Even Doge has which is crazy, right?

So um so there are a few projects that outr run outperform Bitcoin u but those are a small number but I do think that they all continue to be new projects that will outperform uh bitcoin uh and um but they're very small in number and also they start at a much smaller market cap right so it's easy to if you look at the multiples yeah they can go they can go higher but once they if they reach to the size of the bitcoin today they will slow down too it's much harder to grow a large market cap than a small one so it depend it depends on your risk pro risk risk appetite, risk profile uh on what you want to invest in. But I do think there there are still many good opportunities u but it's true that u if you want the least amount of work uh with very good returns just buy the top few tokens you you're you're in good shape and you'll be fine. So in our last few minutes where are we in the current market cycle? How are you thinking about this? What should people how should people be thinking about it?

Uh I'm always bullish. Me too. So um if you ask me though at the deepest winter in uh 20 what 2019 I'm bullish uh 2022 2023 I was bullish. Um and if you ask me at the peak I'm bullish and then the market goes down have a correction you know so um so I'm it's very hard to time the market. Um so far the markets go on four year cycles but it's very hard to tell like know if this one is going to be sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh shorter or longer etc.

So um but I think if we take a long view we're so early and also what we know about state level adoption asset management adoption you know there is a lot of big players coming in and that feels like that's a this cycle thing where people start yeah so actually on this one um I think what we've seen is that this cycle so far has been ETFs the US instit institutional money going to ETFs and those money go to Bitcoin because the Bitcoin ETF is the biggest so in that regard yeah Ethereum didn't go up that much, right? Because the money hasn't u the money is kind of stuck with Bitcoin. Um um but what's good for Bitcoin is good for other crypto. Uh eventually the money will disperse. Uh when when they're in an ETF, they usually take longer because the institutions for them to uh move uh go from Bitcoin to ET uh Ethereum to other Lcoins will take a bit longer.

But uh what we've seen and I I still believe 100% is um what uh uh Bitcoin is the usually the first uh crypto that people interact with when they come to crypto. That's the first one that learn. That's the most stable that's the most uh decentralized etc. And that's the biggest market cap. But once the money is in crypto u they will eventually explore other things, right?

So it you will come. So um I so yeah I think we're I think we're still quite early. Um well I think we're still in uh if we go by four year cycles it should be end of this year u but um we don't know for sure and do you think the because of where we are in the network adoption that growth has slowed down yet in Bitcoin or do you think we're actually early because there's a argument or discussion going on where we are on the adoption curve and i.e. our returns coming down.

I don't think they are but what do you think? I don't think they are. Um I think we're just getting started. So um uh yeah I think right now there's a handful of countries that's that's talking to me about blockchain adoption. Um and most other countries I don't see anything going on.

Um so uh out of 200 countries there even there's 12 countries that just starting right. So US is just starting. Um so uh ETFs is only like the last what a few months right so um everything's just starting. Uh I think people people when they invest they're they very impatient right so of course when I invest I want to see my money 10x tomorrow uh why not right but the market doesn't work like that uh so I think if you want to chase if you're chasing things that are against how this world works you're going to be always disappointed right so basically you're chasing something that doesn't make sense and if you keep if you chase too hard then you're going to it's going to backfire you're going to lose lose money but uh I think in this world we got to understand how how how the world works uh Money takes time to build and uh what's good for crypto is what's good for Bitcoin is good for crypto and you will filter to other things. So uh and it will take time as long as we understand the right time horizons then then you can set your expectations correctly and then everything will make sense.

So your overall summary is just hold on be patient pretty much don't mess it up and if you can build something important and do it with a mission pretty much yeah and use AI while you're doing it. Yes. Perfect. There we go. CZ, thank you.

Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you guys. Thank you.