Fireside Chat with Unit Network | EBC11

Thank you so much for the warm introduction. Um, I'm I'm joined on stage by Michael Healey, who is the co-founder of Unit Network. And guys, I'm not sure if you're all familiar with his work, but one thing I really loved about Michael's work is that he's one of the Bitcoin OGs, who basically discovered Bitcoin back when it was um I think still trading at 9 cents. So, Michael, from from from Bitcoin and the Vikileaks era to getting to co-found network, tell tell us about this wild journey. How did you get here?

Yeah, for sure. Um, so it's a pleasure to be be here. Thank you so much for the organizers. I think it's a super well organized event and it's great to be here in Barcelona. So, my name is Michael Healey.

I'm half Singaporean, half British. Um, been building apps and uh technology for the past 15 years. I got into crypto in 2010, building the app for Wikileaks. Um I I was very passionate about the the mission behind Wikileaks, you know, offering transparency, um access to the uh documents that Wikileaks had. So I I put the Android app together.

The governments froze our bank accounts, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, donation channels, so we were forced to use Bitcoin. Um built one of the early social networks in the UK. Uh grew it to a few million users. Sold it in 2013. Worked at the third biggest venture capital firm in Europe.

uh we were seed investors in Spotify and um what excited me most about crypto and and blockchain was the ability to democratize ownership right if you look at how the way most companies in the world work you look at how businesses distribute value it's usually held by the founders of of companies as well as the early investors what what's really cool about blockchain crypto assets tokens is that everyone can be a stakeholder So with unit network, we've built a blockchain that wants to be the global stock exchange. You know, there's hundreds of millions of companies in the world. There's billions of people, but there's very few people who own these assets or who partake in the value creation. We're really excited to provide a tool where anybody can issue an asset and the value created from all of these businesses and people can be democratized um globally. Now, Michael, I'm I'm really curious about this from the perspective of the startup or or perhaps founders who are here who are first time hearing about unit network.

Um, this this theme of true ownership really comes out a lot. Um, why is this important and why is it important really for startups to to build on a on a basis that can allow this?

For sure. So, you know, creating a startup is is very challenging, right? So, usually the people talk about the difficulties of a founder, how hard fundraising is. If you look at what the internet did to information, you know, it really democratized information. Now, if someone wants access to, you know, some niche information, they search on Google, they go on to Wikipedia.

You look at what the smartphone did to access to communication. You know, regardless of who you are in the world, you have your smartphone and, you know, that gives you easy access to communication. I I think the big opportunity for blockchain and crypto is to democratize how capital formation works. You know, there was an earlier panel where people talked about um legacy finance or traditional finance, you know, structured products, bonds. I I think there's a very small demographic in society that is able to tap into deep financial markets.

There's 8 billion people in the world. Most of the world lives outside big hubs like London, New York, Hong Kong, Dubai. They don't understand many of these products that people, you know, on the previous panel talked about. Our mission is you know if you want if you want to start a small business in you know rural Africa you you're in Eastern Europe or you know I grew up in Singapore like most of Southeast Asia right it's really hard to raise a small amount of capital I think the big opportunity of ICOs we saw with NFTTS you know the we we saw a little bit with meme coins was how quickly capital could form I think the big issue there was there was no good frameworks for valuing these coins right you could see things do a 20x a 50x 100x but I I don't think government should introduce produce this. I think our industry needs to come up with tools and and frameworks by which coins are valued.

And I think how we're going to do this, it's going to be no different from how companies are valued, you know, based on earnings, based on revenue, based on cash flow. So my big excitement is, you know, people said with the internet, it was all about eyeballs, right? It's how many people you get to look at your website. People said with apps, it's all about downloads, right? Both of these it was all it moved to being backed by revenue and profit and earnings.

Now we see with coins, you know, people don't really talk about revenue or earnings or profit, right? It's all about onchain revenue or it's all about, you know, liquidity, high market caps. I I think our industry is going to progress to where there's real products, real services which generate profit and these profits are going to be closely tied to token prices. And we're going to be able to look at the top 100 coins and see very real companies and businesses. Right?

If you look at the early internet, you know, it was maybe gambling, maybe it was porn, maybe it was um um I guess those are the two main keys. And then there were real businesses that that formed on the internet. We saw the same with with the smartphone. I I I think we're at a stage in crypto and blockchain at the moment where we're going to bring on board a whole bunch of entrepreneurs and business people and they're going to be launching coins and these coins are going to be backing real businesses and and for me that's what excites me a lot. Yeah,

I I'm definitely very fascinated about that and there's a lot of other um uh really high level industry industry leaders like yourself calling um for the need for more balanced tokconomics, sort of a more balanced way to to evaluate token beyond just these these sprite hubs like like real revenue as you've mentioned. Now, one more thing that really fascinates me about unit network is that as you said yourself, Michael, um, businesses can really do everything here from raising funds to establishing a business and to essentially have a blockchain based business which does provide true ownership to everyone. Um, c can you tell us about a bit more about this process?

Yeah, absolutely. So, we we believe unitwork is the most powerful tokenization tool. So, it's it takes seconds to create an asset. You know, whether you have an idea for a business or an existing business, we want to be the global stock exchange. So if you think of NASDAQ, you know, NASDAQ or the London Stock Exchange, those are for the biggest companies in the world.

You know, if you're a few hundred million dollar market cap or tens of millions, we want to focus on the hundreds of millions of companies in the world and be the global NASDAQ or the global London uh stock exchange or Hong Kong stock exchange. And if you look at something like Binance, you know, or Bit Panda or OKX or these crypto exchanges, they're trading crypto assets. What we care most about is real businesses, you know, so if you walk along the street of Barcelona, you know, you'll see businesses all over the place, but none of these businesses have coins, right? So, we believe we're the only solution or, you know, one of the few that makes it easy for every business in Barcelona to have a coin and have these coins be backed by earnings and revenue and cash flows. And if you think everyone in the room, right, we probably all have a smartphone.

We probably all have a social media account, but we probably don't all have a token yet, but we're convinced that in the next 3 to 5 years, every single person in the room will have a coin. And what this coin will represent is one's future earnings, you know, one's maybe net worth, someone's cash flow, and it will create society where people are more supportive of one another, right? The the the way uh money works at the moment is is very um it works for a very small minority of people, but we believe that what we're doing at the unit network is going to revitalize the economy and really provide a new financial system that works for everyone.

That's certainly something that we need, Michael. And just speaking about tokenization, I feel like when it comes to the current crypto market cycle, it was one of the biggest institutional teams. We've seen large asset managers like Black Rockck joining in um launching tokenized products and basically predicting that everything will be tokenized. Um what do you think about this? Do you really feel like everything is finding its way on the blockchain in terms of real world assets?

It's a great question, Zultan. So, you know, everyone is so crazy and excited about tokenization and RWA real world assets. You know, we're we're so pleased about that. Though, we still think that all of what people talk about with tokenization or is is legacy finance or, you know, tradi wrapped in crypto. So, they're trying to sell um Wall Street products or traditional financial products to crypto people.

What we care most about is the vast majority of the society which is not connected to Tradfi yet. So the hundreds of millions of companies, you know, the billions of people around the world, you know, the hundreds of small cities and towns where, you know, Trafa just has no time for, you know, if if you're not big enough and you go to Wall Street or you go to the city of London or you go to any financial hub, most of the time you get turned away, right? But one thing I like about crypto, one thing I like about Bitcoin is it's open to anyone. You know, you don't have to, you know, write a minimum check or, you know, I'm an LP in a bunch of funds. The minimum is is is X amount.

And what I love about crypto and blockchain and tokens is it's open for everyone. and it really works for everyone. So, you know, at UNIT, we want to be the global stock exchange, global um exchange for every single asset and business in the world. Um, we make it super easy to create an account. Um, I I highly recommend everyone to set up an account on Unit.

We'll send you $100 worth of Unitcoin. The Unit Coin effectively backs up is backed up by the exchange earnings. I was a crowd um investor in BNB in 2017. And, you know, there were so many crypto exchanges. We're like, why do we need another crypto exchange?

And what we saw with B&B, it became a pioneer now in in pushing centralized exchanges. I I think now it might not be clear, you know, to see that every single thing will have a coin, but I think in the next 3 to 5 years, we'll look back and go, "Yeah, it's pretty obvious, you know, why wouldn't you want to be an investor in your local um businesses? Why wouldn't you want to invest in friends you grew up with and, you know, build a a a very localized portfolio of all the companies that you support?"

Yeah.

So, we we're slowly running time out of time, but just a quick question to make sure I understand. So you're saying that essentially we have these large institutions who are tokenizing Trafi but in the background you are going to be helping small businesses, small business owners and even cities just slowly come on the blockchain and get get a share of that revenue.

Exactly. So every business as well you know the next Google, the next Amazon, you know, you don't want to buy into something when it's super big and going public and you know you get very little upset. You want to get into stuff a lot earlier. We're also launching 25 different apps. One of them is like an onchain Airbnb, an onchain Uber, an onchain Shopify, a ticketing app.

And we're demonstrating what we believe the next generation of companies look like when they're owned by the community, when customers are helping to promote it, to market it. You know, if you're an early user in Instagram or Spotify or Uber, you know, you didn't partake in any upside, right? You maybe have a cool story if you're the first rider or driver or the first Airbnb host or Airbnb guest. But we believe that the future is democratized in ownership. There was a big theme about Dows and you know democratized governance.

We think democratized governance is cool but really democratized ownership is really what's going to change the world. So we would love to um join together on this journey and and hope you have a great conference everyone. Thank you.

We will certainly want to follow that along and I really look forward to the first on Airbnb. Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up to Michael of unit network. Thank you so 2