Ben Mincu - MultiversX: Reimagining The Entire Spectrum Of Human Experiences

Full transcript: Ben Mincu on London Real

2:46 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Benjamin Mincu the technology entrepreneur investor and blockchain pioneer you are the founder and CEO of the Elrond network now rebranded as Multiverse X a highly scalable secure and decentralized blockchain network created to enable new applications for users Businesses society and the new metaverse frontier Multiverse X is a set of products tools and experiences that you believe will drastically improve people’s lives and society as a whole Over the past 12 months you’ve announced partnerships with Google Cloud AWS Deutsche Telekom and Tencent with the goal of building the infrastructure for a transparent global systems accessible by anyone anywhere in the world you believe that without the blockchain the metaverse cannot exist and that the true metaverse is a technology that will Fundamentally reshape society as we know it your goal remains to build an ecosystem that will facilitate the next 1 billion users on the blockchain space Then welcome back to London Real Brian. It’s a great pleasure to be here I am looking forward to this. We had an epic conversation two years ago Remotely when you were in Romania and I was here and I’ve told you before I’ll say it again. I knew that I was talking to someone special I knew I was talking to a group of people that were special a community that was special because everybody rallied around the show and

4:27 I’m just so happy to see the rise and rise of what is now multiverse X and I want to know more quite frankly So I want to jump in and I think maybe the best way to start is Probably talking about the rebrand because that was conscious. It’s a challenging thing when you rebrand I know you guys had reinvented yourself in the past and that was a Challenging time for you, but also probably the reason you’ve been so successful It was a big surprise when you did this I think was last year on your big Expo day that became X day I think in the future talk to me about why you rebranded. What is multiverse X? What’s the future?

5:11 Sure Again, great pleasure to be here The entire conversation for us always boils down to sort of fundamentals first principles and The transition from Elrond to multiverse X was this idea where we looked 10 20 30 years in the future and looked at the most fundamental technologies that we believed were going to reshape society during this period and The idea was that two things came to mind. It was not only that blockchains artificial intelligence and Metaverse or spatial computing were specific technologies that we saw were going to Have a very fascinating interplay to shape society, but it was very interesting in a way where we Understood that what we wanted to be was this epicenter at the intersection of this technologies Where it’s not a focus on one technology. We definitely started with blockchains and made some Significant contributions and breakthroughs through blockchain architectures, but being at the epicenter We understood that this would be a kind of constant Repositioning it’s not like we’ve done some things in the past and then we just Sit on those and wait for things to happen But rather we are here present and instead of a rebrand we thought of it as a Refounding moment we’re looking from the future having this insights We said this is what we’re trying to do and the idea of a multiverse just expressed the vastness of what technology can become how positive it can be how large of a need impact it can have and then

7:08 It was multiverse to the power of X Which is the definition of growth if you want to express growth in mathematical terms you just express it in terms of powers and This is the idea of what? our contribution with Elrond and our multiverse X is about bringing this Expansion of everything we have positive bringing this acceleration of growth of positive things We have not replacing our experiences, but amplifying and significantly enriching our lives in whatever we are Attempting to do so we’re it was a surprise a big surprise for the entire community Right now we we had X day 2022 at that point in Paris and we’ve just had X day 2023 at this point I think with X day 2023 Everything came home X day 2022 Seems like a lot of concepts to take in especially if you were extremely close to Elrond loved everything that was happening This this was not something that we just came up with People loved it there. They poured their souls into it as we did And now with multiverse X we’re just expanding this tremendously And I do think that with X day 2023 The ideas finally came home It was clear it became clear why we did it how fast it can become and what some of the products are that then form this larger puzzles puzzle that enables a Faster acceleration of real-world progress, hopefully and that was a big day You did this you brought it home So did that in Romania and you had some big partners some global technology companies

9:04 Coming there What what did people walk away from that X day knowing about you whether it’s the community? Whether it’s the government whether it’s other people in the blockchain space. What do you think they learned? I think this was a sort of Moment where they for for a few days they teleported in this parallel world or saw the future Because X day was all about building the bridges building the bridges with the government Building the bridges with the largest tech companies in the world Building the bridges by attracting larger builders or more ambitious builder more resourceful builders And then also showcasing some of the products that we’ve been building to just accelerate the entire expansion So as you put these things together the entire idea was We might have built the most Perfect paradise the most robust the most interesting island we have this extraordinary technology But unless we build the bridges to the other parts of the world to the other islands There will not be acceleration. There will not be growth. There will not be expansion and so as opposed to some of these other projects or architectures what we’ve thought as Necessary if we are serious about the idea of onboarding a billion users is

10:39 Taking the technology and then having the difficult conversations having the conversations with several ministers from the country Having conversations with the central bank several central banks from the products under which were supervised by the central bank Now I must say two things about this idea One these conversations are not simple and are not easy each of these people have very significant backgrounds speak very different languages than we do and They want to understand that we are not only serious, but we are serious about creating positive impact we’re we are also very surprised because Due to the fact that we’ve been putting a lot of efforts for years and years now They’re almost secretly secretly are Fans of course fans is too much But they the conversations happened with a great deal of respect Not from someone that like is above and someone that is below but rather two people that are builders Contributing to something and there’s a kind of mutual respect This is very surprising because it’s unlike to what we see in this other parts of the world Whether it’s the US or some other parts of the world. So we’re Very very appreciative to that and also very serious in Continuing to take things to the next level for Europe for mania for some other parts of the world as well this this was with with a Government officials and again minister of energy minister of digitalization great people but also great to see

12:33 Ambitious people young people with energy in this type of positions This is very rare that you see someone with which you could have a coffee and an interesting conversation Incidentally being in the political arena and trying to push things there So great respect for any type of person that I see pushing the boundaries on that front to make progress now in addition to that We’ve been working for a very long time to bring some large partners together to take this technology put it in the hands of companies that already have billions of users because how else would you accelerate that expansion then Sitting with Google and having some conversations Sitting with Tencent and having this type of conversation sitting with telecom and having this type of conversations Still sitting with some of the other partners that that we’ve brought together and had conversations with and it was extraordinary to have these people on stage and Not only expand on how we might do it but expand with Significant partnerships that we are doing together where they’re coming to the ecosystem and offering grants or tools or other Integrations so that they can accelerate some of the journeys that our builders have or We’re doing something together with them So with each of them we have a very significant checkpoint that opened up a larger thread This is not the final stage. This is always just now we’ve opened this bridge Let’s start building on it. Let’s start expanding

14:15 Let’s start seeing what they have what they love and offering some of what we are building as a technical Architecture and so forth now in addition to all that We’ve also set some remarkable standards in terms of blockchain performance blockchain security and This we’ve done in a way that’s very different to the entire space in some sense many Discussed about performance But what we’ve done is remarkable from from a few angles. Not only is this network open source Run by three thousand two hundred nodes geographically distributed around the world. It’s fully carbon negative This is great in itself But then to move forward and say we’ve built the first on chain to FA To protect millions of users from getting their funds stolen is something that is Underscoring the type of effort that we’ve put into this because we’ve built architecture But that’s not enough if we want billions of users in order to bring billions of users We want one must make sure that the users do not die in the process if we bring all of them in But their money gets stolen then we don’t have any users left. So We’ve made this feature. It’s live. It’s the first blockchain that has an on-chain to FA implemented With Guardians and and so forth then we’ve also discussed about for instance sovereign chains tools where states companies or startups can build their own Separate sovereign chain with all the features that the main chain has just

16:13 Defined With rules that they choose Benefiting to the maximum and then offering this to the world open source again That’s extraordinary. And then we’ve seen a lot of Fascinating conversations with companies and with different strategic players that might want to leverage this technology to move it forward And then we’ve also discussed about something that is going to come during the next period which is zero knowledge Technologies zero knowledge proofs and zero knowledge roll-ups embedded in the multiverse X protocol to set this foundation as Close to the cutting edge or leading the next the next wave. So this Discussion with the government’s this discussion with the largest technology companies in the world the discussion with the protocol side Set a very interesting context, but we’ve also Had a few threads on products that we’ve shipped us some shipping some products directly with different teams that we have Community projects shipping some extraordinary products and making some remarkable progress And then new builders coming in in one of the largest hackathons that we’ve organized In Europe that concluded with x day where we had the builders on stage and so forth So just to give two examples from the products that we’ve unveiled We unveiled a very significant upgrade for export all this financial super app That has crypto a non-custodial wallet that sort of bulletproof. No one can touch it

17:58 No governments no banks only you hold the keys, but then it also has fiat Fiat in a way where no crypto wallet has this type of Embedded integration with a card that we we’ve issued ourselves in collaboration with MasterCard under the close supervision of the central bank This has taken three years to actually pull off. It’s it’s been Extraordinarily difficult painful in a way. That’s not technical. The pain is a different type of language that you have to learn and put in the effort and and all of that, but the wallet does not only do crypto and Fiat It will have I bands in the wallet directly peer-to-peer payments It has a kind of app store for decentralized applications And we’ve also moved the X world’s discussion directly Tied to export all in a way where we have now an a metaverse and spatial computing Experience platform with the developer kit inside the application that you can leverage. So this was By far probably the one of the most exciting moments for the community. It was like The community was raging with excitement as they they’ve seen all this progress and This is not stopping. This is just one checkpoint on this path We’re going but then there were also some very remarkable Projects from within the community that build Something that I believe sets a new standard for the entire blockchain space And if we just take a look at DeFi, you can look at Hatem as this lending protocol that grew probably something like more than six hundred percent

19:51 Only during the last one or two months, but the thing is not only the immediate growth The product that they’ve shipped that works in a flawless way is just one of several products that are going to Push within the community and then make multi chain as swap again With several upgrades that they’re doing That essentially enables anyone to just swap their token exchange them And now they’re adding several new features just expanding the different DeFi ecosystem on multiverse X and like them There are several others That we’re discussing about whether it’s the x25 more on the DeFi side where it’s Tada on the AI And blockchain side and other projects like that. There are now tens and hundreds of people building now the one thing if you zoom out is Putting all of this together at x day for three days a three days conversation and Experience and touch base bringing everyone together has been an extraordinary experience people have been Amazed and I’ve been surprised to always I’m always curious to hear this type of feedback Interacting with them and touching base and there was one one framing that stuck with me Where I asked someone how they felt how how they saw the entire interaction and event and they they said something like it was everything and much more and so I’m saying all this because We’ve been spending a lot of effort on many products many initiatives But taking the time to put all of this together and share it with the world share it with the community in a proper way

21:52 Has been Extremely important and now we’re just building up that momentum on all the axis because It’s not one product, but it’s this very significant ecosystem upgrade that is live and then Building up as a momentum as we move forward you mentioned the x world product and the x portal And I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about This first of all quote-unquote metaverse I would say that a lot of people in the world still struggle to understand what a metaverse is And the next thing I want to ask you is You’ve intimately tied it in to your payment system And do you believe that fundamentally the metaverse can only exist with a blockchain or that it must exist with a blockchain as well And since how this is part of the name of your company I’m sure you’ve thought long and hard about it. How do you explain that to people or how do you see it from your seat?

22:49 Maybe a very simple way of walking through this chain of reasoning would be to start by saying that Blockchains are most Useful seen as a kind of new type of computer That’s a truth machine So they have a few properties whether it’s transparency cryptographic guarantees And then programmable contracts This give them some primitives some special type of features By which you can write a new type of application set so Understanding this then gives us an idea about where we can use this type of computer And I believe we’ll have to use it in the physical world Across the entire economy across the entire society and in this new virtual worlds that we’re creating Because without this rules embedded at the foundation of what we are doing There will be no world. There will be no society. It will be a chaos unlike anything we’ve seen And i’m stating this just because i’m the first to love the new opportunities that we’ve seen to Just vouch for the acceleration of this type of technologies whether it’s artificial intelligence spatial computing and blockchain and and Metaverse, but I do believe that by having the blockchain as the core layer That enables this type of transparent interaction that enables this type of deterministic Computational interaction that enables cryptographic guarantees not paper probabilistic guarantees This sets us on a different plane so that we can interact defend but then also very practically and synergistically

24:52 Leverage some of these tools that exist today. So coming back to the central point. I believe that the multiverse x blockchain can exist as this truth machine for the world whether applied to finance or applied with interactions to artificial intelligence or Applied as a kind of layer that defines rules for the metaverse and spatial computing space This is the same truth machine that has the same properties It’s just leverage or applied very very differently And so if I move one step further you have this truth machine it interacts with all the all the services That you really want in your life whether it’s finance whether it’s navigating searching the internet Whereas you running applications writing applications and so forth. You have this layer. That’s fundamentally transparent You want to see everything that’s happening monitor it observe it You want to have cryptographic guarantees when you’re doing something?

25:56 This should not be like a question of is it done? Has this person said it’s done, but it’s not done and so forth you should be able to Verifiably prove that this is done and it works and then this idea of deterministic programmable contracts Is something that is almost on the other? Or opposite spectrum of what the current large language models and transformers are doing You might remember in our previous interactions Conversation we’ve discussed specifically about artificial intelligence and spatial computing and metaverse But it’s very useful To distinguish between what the larger language models do which is a kind of probabilistic Exercise where they give you some non-deterministic results and what the blockchain does which is very clear very precise and deterministic and these two pieces of computing put together Create a much larger super productive piece Now maybe coming to the last point of you have the multiverse x as this layer that you can interact with then there will be a lot of applications of many varieties and we believe that in order to achieve this Grand idea And accelerate it of having 1 billion users interacting with this technology one of the major flaws Has been and will continue to to be or major challenges Is Interaction and user interfaces that enable you to touch this technology In a way that makes sense for you as a user not for you as a technical architect because Of course, if you think even about the internet in the first

27:57 Internet days you had two important breakthroughs that happened One was this transition from dial-up to broadband. This this is everything we built on the blockchain space as well This is crucial without it. You cannot have widespread adoption But there is another much more new ones, but interestingly enough perhaps even more fundamental And high impact breakthrough which was the browser moment without the browser moment. It would have been five geeks Talking to each other from the army from the universities and so forth. And that was the great internet With the browser now everything opened up to the public. Everyone could surf the web at first There was not too much to see but they could surf the web by surfing the web Interestingly enough they created the market with the next millions of users coming in then Applications had a group to which they can serve something sell something and and so forth so coming back to our point, I do believe that we’re In a very interesting place where we’ve built this new type of computer And we’re now figuring out what the best interfaces would be for people to be able to natively and seamlessly interact with it in their lives without having to think about it because at the end of the day You don’t need a phd to just send a transaction. You don’t care about it’s great that the technology is there It’s great that it serves you it’s great that if it’s simpler if it’s more effective

29:38 It is more cost effective especially and it works faster You definitely care about that But you don’t care what type of technology it uses and so forth you care Does it solve my problem if I have that then I can build on it then there can exist a market and so Coming to the product side We thought a lot about three products three directions within the ecosystem where the ecosystem focuses already on d5 focuses on already on gaming focuses already on payments But we thought if we were to make three fascinating intentional determined bets that would accelerate this entire process. What would those be? And it was obvious in some sense that one way of looking at it was There are more than six billion people in this world that have a mobile phone So it should be obvious that a kind of super app that served on a mobile phone in a very seamless way Would be one of the interfaces through which you can really achieve this type of large-scale interaction with the main computer This is what export is. It’s this super simple super cool and effective super app that Serves you crypto serves you fiat cards But then it has also this new suite of applications that you can play with and and so forth now this other interface was xfabric and xfabric was this idea that One way of interacting with the computer is defining an operating system for technical people, but for Maybe people that speak a different language that than writing smart contracts

31:29 Let me write in the languages that I already Know rather than having me learn this new interaction and so forth. So This is what we’ve been trying to build with that such that other people can build tools Then for the builders themselves, this should be a no-code tool that just gives you more freedom to Write something create nfts deploy that scale within your communities to have dao tools and all of that This was xfabric and then x worlds was this idea that of course there is An unlimited number of worlds and experiences that will create We now have even better tools than last time we’ve discussed But the there’s always a discussion. What’s the simplest most effective way of Leveraging what we have in a way that it interacts with the blockchain layer. It gives you for instance Identity it gives you this avatar it gives you a native Financial interaction such that you can collect items sell them exchange them and so forth And it gives you this native rules that are a fundamental layer in the world that you’re going or in the experience that you’re going And what we’ve concluded is that Again One thing is clear namely that the full Metaverse experience where you’re just jump in new worlds Will probably not happen overnight It does happen. It’s clear that it’s accelerating But it takes several iterations until we nail something that works for the user that the user is excited about at scale now what we’ve also discovered is that at first the largest impact is

33:31 In enriching our physical lives with virtual or computational artifacts now imagine you’re in a in a town a city like london And then you want to visit something and as you visit this museum or this restaurant or whatever you might University here you can plant computational artifacts That you can discover with your phone that you can collect that you can play with And this what what it essentially does in a very simple way Just in reaches your lives creates a different kind of behavioral incentive for you to do different things to explore them And makes the entire interaction wherever you may be even more valuable even more interesting. This is happening as we speak This is Already available with xportal as we launched this at xday We created a treasure hunt around buccarest where people from the conference went to discover different clues artifacts historic elements and so forth and by collecting this thing they they then one of I think something like 400 egold so This is just the first step that I believe for the metaverse space will enrich and will be present Everywhere around us almost like pokemon go but taken to the next level with real value that enables us to Enrich our lives, but then this is just the bridge Toward a much larger interaction where we’re teleported in this new world For instance, we’re having a discussion with aristotle instead of reading the books the dialogues and and so forth

35:19 We first have a conversation with aristotle Then a conversation with plato then a conversation with caesar then a conversation with napoleon All those conversations if you think about them are incomparable in value for a human being As a learning tool than just merely reading a book or having someone else tell you about the story So I believe we’re again at this frontier Probably before a tipping point we’ve we’ve seen a tipping point in the mean in in the meantime Not only on on the blockchain front the metaverse front but also on the ai front especially accelerating Now this type of interplay between the three technologies will yield Some of the most fascinating breakthroughs that we’ll see during the next period and it’s an exciting time right now because that’s all coming to play Um, I know you visited the open ai headquarters in 2018 and I want to go deeper and we did speak about it Last time you were on. Um, i’ve got to ask you about the elephant in the room, which is layer one competition Now when I spoke to you, I think two years ago I was trying to go through all of the layer ones and find out What made them different? What were they talking about?

36:40 And now we’ve seen as the crypto winner kind of came in and now the bull market seems to be back Some have survived some have not some have gone up some have gone down But you know when you talk to people like aws or google or george telecom I’m assuming that they are also looking at other layer ones and i’m curious Do you what do you think of the landscape? Do you think there will be a handful of players and that certain ones will specialize in finance or ai or metaverse? Or do you not think of it that way and again i’m thinking about names like avax or cardano or Hedera or tron or you know the names that a lot of people think of How are they doing as far as competition?

37:22 I the the way I usually look at these things is Zooming out first almost approaching it from two two angles zooming out. It almost seems like There are a few applications That once nailed They can scale to tens of millions hundreds of millions and billions of users This is almost everything it boils down to if we get To billions of users as I was mentioning last time. This is not a zero-sum game. This is growth that will Lift all boats a wave so large that it will lift all boats exchanges will have much more users to serve Some of the other chains specialized app chains maybe will have different users to serve what we focus on is Creating the most robust architecture that could accommodate and indeed Create some of these use cases some of these applications because if this is done the only question is It almost feels to me like There’s an intermediary. There’s the point where you start working on this There’s iterations countless iterations until you nail that thing and then scaling that thing now imagine Applying this to AI, of course, there have been many many conversations around the AI field AI winters AI summers new breakthroughs new excitements But you could almost boil the entire field down to a point until OpenAI Launched chat GPT and then it launched a completely new phase reaching 100 million in one month just Told you a much larger story that’s about to unfold. So I do believe that In this intermediary state you of course want to draw some very hard conclusions like is this it is this it?

39:30 But every question that makes you Ask is this the thing prompts you to some higher level conversation where this is clearly not the thing if you have to ask if this Is the thing it’s clearly not yet the thing or it has not come to that point where it hits you super hard so I believe that everything we do up until this point is about maximizing the chances and intentionally building some bold things bold making some bold bets on things we can build to accelerate that point Once that point comes it will not come overnight. It will come usually How it happens is you work 10 years then something hits It’s the 100th hit on the rock that just breaks the rock Uh, you would say and this is how people interpret it This is it’s this event right there that you hit the 100th time But it’s the fact that you’ve hit for 99 times without giving up looking around Making the changes refining the stuff that has brought you to that final point when you hit and then it finally cracks So so multiverse x is the open ai of the blockchain?

40:50 I I I do could be and your job is to continue ping away ping away ping away ping away And when it becomes this game-changing technology They’ll look back and you’ll say no don’t look back to what I just did look back to what I did in 2018 2020 2022 and now exactly and so now you’re looking at these and saying oh Avax has a 5 billion market cap and and uh multiverse has a 1 billion market cap and you’re just like what do we this is Nothing, we’re looking at the big moment. Whatever one’s gonna have a hundred billion market caps or more Whether that’s a metric or not and you’re saying that’s we’re building these things And you’re saying if we’re arguing about who’s first now, it doesn’t make sense You’ll know it when you see it and the open ai is a perfect example 100 and no one knew if open ai was going to be there I mean, I had dr Ben gertzel on the show of singularity net back in 2019 and he told me all that ai And it was an amazing conversation and I forgot it all the next day And then you wouldn’t open ai in 2018, you know, you they probably welcomed you in the door, right?

41:50 Now it’d be hard to get in the door Nobody knew if it was going to pop and nobody knew they were going to be the ones that make it pop And then it does. Yeah, and so that’s the way you look at technology iteration Yes, and and I do believe that what matters here is users adopting this technology and using it to some great extent where the utility is Incomparable to what they had before so this is how chat gbt popped up because it was Extremely useful compared to everything that people thought before And what we’ve done even compared to this other Blockchains and so forth each of them may have their game. We’re not Given that this is not a zero-sum game and that the outcome is something that will enrich all the Let’s say fields Interactions value and and so forth. I believe that the most important thing is If you look at some of the use cases like the financial super app xportal I invite the users to just download it play a bit with it and Let us know the feel The utility that it conveys now having this in place You Don’t usually get to know how this happens that it took years and years that we we’ve had to acquire several other companies supervised under the central banks with scrutiny with reviews and so forth going through the The the pain and the hell of building this product putting it together Launching the first thing launching the second thing Now at some point this things come together And then it explodes then people find it sufficiently useful to do this as opposed to almost everything else

43:46 I do believe this is a very strong and robust bet that will definitely contribute to whatever we’re doing And will definitely accelerate adoption now how it happens This is the entire conversation. Is there something that we can do to have a kind of ai moment? on that front Apply to the blockchain space. I do think there is I do think that the blockchain interacting with everything the ai can do and with the spatial computing part is Something that not too many technologies can do in a way that you cannot only do it with the ai Part or with the metaverse part and it’s necessary in the grander Accuasion so having these tools that enable what we’re building right now is um, I believe puts puts multiverse x In an unparalleled position not only because of the architecture but because of vertical integrations Because of the type of community and and people that are building on top And the entire point is when the wave come Comes you should be already pedaling. You should be already building You should have started a few years back because the opportunity Is there there there are countless opportunities around us as we speak The question is only do we have the eyes?

45:17 To see them to integrate them to use them to the extent that they can be used So it sounds like you’ll take the pepsi challenge with anybody with the x portal you’re impressed with it I know some of the acquisitions you made the stuff you’re describing this is not a simple thing to do And so the idea is to put the product in people’s hands where they just want to use that more than anyone You think you’re way ahead of the curve on that? It’s interesting because with layer ones It’s really hard for the public or even somewhat intelligent people to see what’s underneath You know a lot of times they have similar promises similar speeds similar transaction times But it’s really hard to know the nuances like is the community really there are the people going to develop on it?

45:57 Do the apps really work all the little details? And so that’s what you’re focusing on all of those details. And if every single one of those things is strong Then the open ai moment will happen. But if one of those things is missing it could be delayed It could be pushed to some other network Sure, the the you remember our discussion right before almost every moment every phase that we’ve crossed um Seemed impossible for the level we were playing the fact that we started in romania and the small like 150 000 people town Not in the capital of romania and so forth the fact that it is romania and not all these other Cool countries around the fact that it is europe and not silicon valley all those things just prompt A larger question. How did this happen? How did they cross the great filter the first time? How did they fund it? How?

46:57 How come they did not die All the steps that they with all the steps that they’ve taken even die in the process of getting the the confirmation from the central bank and so forth All of these elements are just steps on this trajectory. We’re taking it’s clear Where we are going it’s clear that things are accelerating But it’s also clear that the most important part we can do is put in the effort The results will come i’m convinced the results will come. It’s just about making sure that the efforts are there and We know what breakthroughs we’ve put in place. We know what Applications we have and we we can see The kind of reaction that the people have when they test the application It definitely takes some time even if you have the perfect technology today To distribute to penetrate the market that takes a lot of time. So we’re in this process of Not only continuing to execute and elevating the the conversation with the different features the different architecture upgrades But we believe this is not enough and this is why we need the products that go out and um offer extraordinary compelling solutions to people’s problems And with each new iteration We see a much larger group of people getting excited getting on board it to the extent that this becomes as simple As just sending a normal transaction to the extent that this becomes this thing where you have finally um digital financial system That works at the scale and speed of the internet. I think we’re coming close to what will

48:46 In one way or another Come to fruition come to pass What we are trying to do is do our part to accelerate that moment because we’re convinced that we’ll come to that point Well, you guys definitely have a different philosophy I must say and when I watched you during the winter and I would stop by your booths at the various conferences I’m telling you your whole team. They all look like they Like the cat that swallowed the canary They’re all got these big smiles on like you guys are about to drop something on the world You guys are like oh man, but big things are happening here and it’s weird because it’s not just you it’s the whole team And probably the community they’re just stayed ultra positive ultra focused and ultra excited Through a market that crushed most people’s souls and a lot of companies. We won’t hear from again Um, and so yeah, you guys are definitely doing something different looking at the world different planning different And um, I think you’re right about that kind of open AI moment, you know If you’re building and building and iterating doing the right things I think this is inevitable. I think it’s only a matter of time I always tell people 10 years from now every minute of your day will involve a blockchain transaction You know, it just will now whether you’ll know it or not I don’t know but it just will and I like this truth machine concept I got to think a little deeper about that. Um, I want to ask you about artificial intelligence. It’s on everyone’s mind

50:07 The chat gpt moment happened. I’ve gone pretty deep with some pretty senior AI people on this show Um, I got pretty dark in the early parts of this year because I spoke to mo gaudet who’s an old friend of mine who was google x wrote a book called uh scary smart about the machines I spoke to All sorts of people from peter diamandas to max tech mark at mit Who’s the future of life institute who wanted to slow things down? I spoke to Professor hugo de garris who wrote a book called the art elect war where a billion people die in the future And I got two young boys and you know, not far ages from your from your boys And um, I was really worried But then it’s clear to me that with the blockchain and the metaverse and ai all happening at the same point Like we have a lot of accelerating technologies here So I want to get your take on first of all the existential threat Second of all, how does this work with the blockchain and the metaverse? I had a A guy here yesterday named mark long who just released a triple-a game on web 3 called shrapnel. It’s a very impressive game And um, he said look we’re already using artificial intelligence So people can create artifacts and then stick them in the app store and trade them amongst each other I mean, this is clearly gonna affect Metaverse and game development right now Um, so i’ll ask you how do you personally feel about ai?

51:26 Existential threats and then how will it interact with blockchain and metaverse and I guess multiverse x going forward I know you have your own AI Plays and developments as well. So that’s a big question. Oh, and what was it like at open ai in 2018 as well? Um, yeah, i’ll start with that. Um, it was super cool. Uh, I actually Wanted to meet with musk And sam at that point met with sam, um initially wanted to meet with paul gram as well because he was the Founder of y combinator and so forth. So had a had a chat with sam Wanted to convince him to somehow be part of elrond Be close be an advisor explore some applications that that would Um touch on what they were doing and and so forth definitely a cool conversation But coming coming to the point where we are right now I believe that During the next period even during the next one or two years things will become so exciting on the one hand with an accelerated pace that Uh will yield new applications new things that we’re using And so scary at the same time because we won’t be able to discern control and just Be on top of the world as we once were that People will will get very bewildered You’ll always have this two two front emotion on the one hand very positive very exciting because Where where there’s this is definitely the best Time to be alive in terms of opportunity. There was no better time, but then on the other hand you’ll also not be able to help yourself notice the challenges because

53:31 These opportunities pose challenges for some people that either don’t understand them Don’t want to understand or leverage them or have some other interests or stakes in in different other technologies And would not want the world to change in that respect but having said that I believe that historically speaking we have had Many many challenges posed by technology through which Throughout which humanity has always answered in in one of certain several ways first Um Fearing the technological change fearing that it will take everything away from us that we won’t be humans anymore We won’t have the control anymore and so forth So if you can just take a few examples the first tools With which you can farm and do this other stuff It was always reluctance first and and opposition first and resistance first Um, but then afterwards You have this moment ideally if you have children Or have some other people around you that you can trust through which you see this in in a completely new new light And once you see it, you cannot unsee it and so um People fearing that for instance in london Horses would bring so much shit with everything that was happening that london would drown In horse shit and so forth and then cars appearing and changing the entire game Then with electricity was the same with every sort of technology. We’ve had this psychological reaction to the technology which speaks much more about human nature than reality itself

55:30 Now specifically to ai I do think that We’re at the point where there is There is very likely a scenario where this literally becomes one of our final inventions that if we do this, right Will advance to a point where life becomes extraordinary meaningful fulfilling For the greatest majority of people and increasing that number constantly to a point unlike any other point in history So overall the net positive is extraordinary. I do think there are some challenges And i’m positive that the challenges can be addressed I I of course read all the different scientists and so forth even max tech marks books and and all of that but believe that There is no limit to human ingenuity That the infinite resource resource we have is not the fact that we Recognize some more resources today. Just think about this one idea what we call resources Has had a very different meaning 10 000 years ago 1000 years ago 500 years ago 100 years ago And right now because it always depended on human ingenuity on learning capacity to one person Only wood was a resource to another person Everything around them was a resource. So this just tells you how large of a world with opportunities we have around us and This may be one of the largest opportunities that enables several other Advancements acceleration points and and so forth there is an existential threat if we don’t manage this well in the sense that If a dictatorship gets the technology

57:40 Then it can end very very badly if for instance terrorists get the technology it can end very badly The question is how do we address this and there are two Let’s say largely two schools of thought one is let’s stop And think about it and see what solution we get Um, that that’s sort of deceleration And then the other school of thought is uh, essentially saying no we need to accelerate And what we need to do is make the technology open source Give it to everyone such that there is not one single person who can overpower everyone else Without them having a chance to wield the technology themselves so and and this is very counterintuitive at first because Initially you would say yeah, let’s maybe stop. Let’s think about it for some time But then as you think about open source technology and giving this to everyone Then you understand that this is a much more powerful force for everyone to have And that there will be not be one single person one single company corporation or state that will control this coming back to our point I do believe that Everything we’ve done with blockchains for instance is now accelerated through ai. We have some tools Even within multiversex where we make the writing testing and deployment of smart contracts Extremely, um simpler, uh significantly similar simpler than what it was before through ai tools that we train on Different other smart contracts on the languages that we’re writing and I believe this will during the next

59:28 One two years Rise to a point where it almost becomes trivial To write any smart contract because the ai already thinks is trained to think in the terms And in the language that we want and then you can test the contracts and so forth. I still think that in this loop You’ll have humans involved because it’s safety critical like you can You can essentially miss a coma And then the code will blow up you can lose the entire money you have but the speed is now 10x In terms of what you can write deploy and and so forth now you’ll also have interactions We presented the text a for instance the idea of a genie That you let loose out of the bottle that He can be either your assistant explaining you whatever concept you want um Explaining you everything about the blockchains. What’s happening? What are the news?

1:00:33 But then also maybe your advisors advisor you want to invest in something what’s happening right now in the market? Is it a good moment? What’s a good strategy things that we usually don’t discuss or Try to refrain from discussing publicly because they’re they’re always complex to navigate and and so forth with this type of Assistant you can not only navigate but level up significantly because you have access to all this knowledge You can play it in different ways And not only that but then you’ll also be able to interact and make transactions send money to your friends and so forth just by interacting with the assistant that prompts you with transaction that you need to validate and and so forth so zooming back out Fundamentally speaking. I do think that AI will significantly accelerate everything that is happening within the blockchain space just because it’s financial technology and at scale there might be a way to um Create a different type of economy force for society a different type of economy where people have this assistance You have an army of assistants doing this and that and so forth and you’re interacting with them prompting them in in different respects That would be an interesting world world to to live in But this would also mean that you need a different type of training. You need to know what to ask you need to Give them the space to interact with them. Um, and then maybe they would

1:02:14 Essentially bring you the money back almost like an uber for work where you’re managing your entire army of agents That do this different things for you I’m convinced that If we zoom out in in five ten years from now life Will revolve around If I take these three technologies Um, you you’ll have blockchain networks That are almost this network states That have superseded some national powers that have connected people beyond The the different borders that they have to something much greater that ties them together based on their interests their passions and and so forth Um, and that enables them To make value transfers enables them to have automatic Assistance that work for them that interact with them amplify their very thoughts Ideas and and so forth and take them to a completely different level. But then Life will also evolve in a way where you’ll be able to enter these experiences whether in the physical world or in the virtual spaces where Those will probably be the most meaningful productive and fruitful experiences of your life just because The system knows you so well the the your assistant has access to your data and can tailor the information such that It is this revealing moment based on your journey based on what you’ve been through in your life I can project some moments that just bring the ideas together and reveal the next step. So, um Ideally an economic system that starts to be a lot automatic with machine to machine transactions

1:04:13 Ideally an army of assistants that just seek to amplify thoughts ideas creativity and and so forth for people and ideally Experiences and interactions whether with friends or with new type of people across the worlds virtual worlds physical worlds and Having blockchain at the foundational layer. I also think that Coming back to something. I was saying some some years ago, which at that point probably seemed a lot stranger And outrageous than it seems right now that will have networks like the multiverse sex network That will exceed the gdp of countries. They were built in And this is not to to understand this metric or to make sense of it We need not leave leave it in like a vacuum just stating it. The only question is how many users does a network like this need to pragmatically exceed 10 billion gdp a 10 billion market capitalization 100 billion 1 trillion imagine bitcoin When the first guys started to trade it for completely nothing paid the 10 000 bitcoin for a pizza How many of those thought that it will exceed trillions of dollars in market capitalization?

1:05:43 Why didn’t they think? That because it’s very clear that given enough time and adoption There’s an inescapable conclusion at that point The only alternative is the world ends technology somehow breaks down and and so forth but given enough time Even the point where we are right now. The trajectory is extremely promising. You only need time and adoption and then the scale is I’m sure will be Extremely surprised to what it can come So you’ve made some very interesting points there You talk about these blockchains being bigger than governments I might argue that some of our web2 companies are already bigger than governments namely totally my lover and nemesis google and their companies like youtube, um and without these truth computers I don’t know what goes on inside there And so I don’t feel comfortable trusting the future of artificial intelligence to a google I don’t feel comfortable quite frankly trusting it to an open AI That’s run and financed and controlled by microsoft and just what happened this last weekend with the wild coo and the in and the out and the um, the melodrama that happened there You know shows that a few individuals can potentially control this technology That’s going to change all of our lives and I would rather have that On the blockchain and decentralized and open source. Yes, it produces problems Do you want the nuclear fission open sourced? No. Okay, so there is a fine line, you know

1:07:18 Um, but I agree with you, you know, I’d rather have it on the truth computer And I like that kind of version of the future you mentioned this effective acceleration philosophy I wonder if you could speak a little deeper about it because it feels like you’re in that camp And i’d say most technologists are in this camp that when in doubt Keep going You know, and if you go to the front page of andreson horowitz, they have an entire Manifesto, I would say that I stumbled on because we’re about to invest in a company with andreson and I stumbled on it And i’m a big fan of mark andreson He’s been on rogan a couple times and he’s a great counterpoint to this other narrative Maybe it’s a leftist narrative that is against technology maybe against humans Maybe against ourselves. Um That just seems to have this underlying philosophy that somehow humans are bad and we’ve ruined everything and we should be ashamed And the opposite of that seems to be this other Effective acceleration and that technology will solve problems and when you have the right person arguing that it’s pretty impressive I mean mark andreson even said that the nuclear You know The nuclear missile has saved hundreds of millions of lives because we haven’t had world wars like we had in europe in the 40s And he’s got a good point And so where do you stand on that?

1:08:34 How has people like elon musk and something like twitter changed that and then how does that? Actually apply to what you’re doing at multiversex I do think that this is one of the most Fascinating conversations of our time because it It dives deep into an undercurrent That flows throughout society And there has been A really strong clash of some schools of thought on this front, but things essentially boil down to this idea that you usually solve problems by Adding more technology better insights by accelerating things Rather than by stopping and then just not consuming or ignoring the different problems and trying to avoid them because At the end of the day all the There is indeed this effective accelerationist Camp and then the decelerationist camp, which is a very interesting school of thought in in itself but what we’ve seen Is that this idea is just a reformulation Of different ideas that have existed throughout history, but it almost seems like people have not thought through What this actually means in practice because the deeper you think The harder it is to conceive of such ideas to conceive that by stopping all the progress by not bringing by not having children by not bringing in new resources Um, you’ll solve anything in fact is exactly the opposite It’s the children that are the infinite resource that we bring to the world the children that are expanding The horizons the fact even this this idea the fact that

1:10:37 We can have children That’s something extraordinary it’s fundamental we got used to something that is completely mind-blowing the fact that A child first starts with no Capacity and then grows to become richard feynman large language models is what they are, right? Isaac newton einstein Exactly. This this is a great metaphor. So coming back to the point of Acceleration or or deceleration the entire idea is that if you can achieve growth Through growth you have a larger pie By having a larger pie Everyone is happier by growing the economy even the thieves have more to steal This is the paradox. This is the irony of growth that Everyone has a much better situation if they have growth now Many many of the ideas that you see in deceleration are just fallacies Logical mental cultural fallacies of people not understanding some things with respect to economics With respect to technology and and so forth. So I I usually give them the benefit of the doubt But the entire point is when it comes to Finding the solution We should always strive to grow the pie first Because if there’s a larger pie even with a country like romania’s or any other country in europe The entire point is that if you have economic growth That’s the one proxy that will tell you as an indicator everything else that will improve as a function It will not be it will be very counterintuitive first because you’ll want the politics to improve You’ll want the education system to improve you want the health care system to improve you’ll want the lifestyle to improve

1:12:31 But all of this are just Different verticals that are tied to economic growth if you can bring productivity and economic growth Then things will improve given enough time now the question becomes how do you gain productivity? How do you bring economic growth? Well, it seems that historically speaking Technology is the most important force through which you bring all this growth Now people have in a very strange way When they’ve forgotten this truth, it’s almost like with the dark ages you forget something that is So fundamental so simple in some respect that you then Start to wander in circles and there’s almost this cancer Popping up where people start to self-destroy people start to go against themselves They start to punish themselves for the different good things that they’ve been doing the contributions. They’re doing they’re start to Ratio everything that they’re just consuming. We should stop consuming anything We should stop building. We should stop bringing children to the world where this is literally death It’s just a different form of that you stop Civilization growing and then you have civilization collapse then you have population collapse and then you cannot sustain the economy Then you need to stop specialization. You cannot expand you cannot build the technologies Everything we’ve built we’ve built via growth now This is fascinating to observe because whether it’s in the body Whether it’s in a group of people whether it’s in a corporation or whether it’s in an empire or state

1:14:21 Growth is the one thing that almost The the one virtue that makes you forgive all the other sins in a strange way if you have growth Your own this different trajectory when you don’t have growth you have this very strange symptoms At the state and empire level people starting to kill themselves People starting to stab themselves in the back people starting to do all this weird things And then the empire collapsing in the companies as well Just politics happening all the way because people don’t have anything to do if they have stuff to do You don’t have time to politics. There’s growth you want that growth and then in the body as well with cancer like when when the body starts to Have all this autoimmune diseases. It’s because of lack of exposure to stressors That bring actual growth. You just see it. Everything is comfortable. Everything is nice. It’s warm The body was not created for that was not designed for that. It has not evolved to Leave in this type of conditions. It requires novelty variability challenges without this type of challenges you forget the most basic thing and then You’re wondering how this type of situations pop up in different parts of the world, especially where?

1:15:55 You normally would have seen almost A modern version of rome being built in silicon valley and now without growth silicon valley turning against itself because for Understandable reasons some people are excluded. They have no chance to be part of this growth They are not given the tools or not explained what is happening and then You’re mad at someone and who can you be mad at other than the elephant you see near you It doesn’t mean that this elephant is the reason for your misery but if the elephant is there you want to slay the elephant because You you’re mad and in pain and all of that. So Just concluding on this idea. I do think that the greatest thing we can do is Um expand the economy because this takes People out of poverty this gives new opportunities to everyone else. Um, this opens up New worlds for people around us The most potent force of doing that is technology And whenever we stop or someone convinces us to stop We should consider the almost cataclysmic Side effects that it will cause downstream that this will in fact kill people this will put them into poverty This will stop things that we’ve been doing for a very long time Now i’m not saying that everything is perfect. It’s far from perfect But at least it improves the world it contributes in some respect Not having this creates a much worse situation than everything we could have so this is why we’re We’re pushing as hard as possible on technology to to build multiversex to build this type of technology

1:17:54 To make our contribution. This is why I believe Bringing people In the world having children is an extraordinary contribution to the world that people should be doing that people should Try to go through the pains of because it’s not simple It’s not at all a walk in the park and i’m sure you’ve been through different things you’ve seen Different things but it’s also the way the world moves forward because just imagine that all of a sudden we all stop having children It has all ended at that point you understand how bad things can become and the world even right now has Um a lot of problems systemic problems that could be triggered because of population collapse There’s there’s funny enough. There’s this economist Called brian caplin who’s written a book. I think it’s one of the best Books i’ve read on kind of having children It’s it’s called selfish reasons to have more kids It’s very Entitled intentionally polarizing but in reality it dives into all the methods All the benefits all the contributions and how life can actually be great with kids If you think things through and let yourself enjoy it a bit and um see some of the contributions that people have sort of forgotten I I could go on and on but I do think that acceleration is incomparable to stopping To cutting things down and cutting things down only delays the solution With acceleration, it’s interesting that some problem You don’t solve You outgrow

1:19:48 Even some problem in life this shifts the perception completely because as a child you’re in kindergarten you have Whatever you you might have some problems Some of those problems do not get solved you just outgrow And then you see the world in a new light and this hopefully happens When we continue to live life and push for it I think there’s a lot of problems we can outgrow but the problem is is it’s very hard for people to see that But if you look through history, we’ve outgrown many many many problems I’m a big fan of acceleration and obviously you wake up every morning working in technology that has the The possibility of going exponential so you probably feel good about yourself And it’s a good uh battle against the the mind virus out there. That’s trying to get everybody to stop Um, tell me about what you think about the broader crypto ecosystem You know bitcoin’s pushing back through thirty eight thousand. There’s rumors of etfs for bitcoin and ethereum It feels like we’re now officially entering a bull market Um, what do you think is going to happen over the next few years with crypto?

1:20:51 Um and with regulation, uh, how big do you think this market’s going to be? How do you think it’ll be different and how do you think it’ll be played out in all sorts of different blockchains? um Maybe a good framework of of thinking about growth and how scale what the scale Will be that this market will have is to just think in terms of Gdp That the country has because this in some sense is the largest scale that you have in a country I do believe that Several blockchain networks Will exceed the gdp Of many many countries I do believe that multiverse x will do this if we execute well on what we intend to do um and In order for this to happen I think a lot of the conversation during the next period will have to do with the bridges that are being built from virtual worlds to physical worlds From virtual economies to the economies that influence our lives today um This means building the bridges with the regulators This means building the bridges within the economy and start doing some Transactions start demonstrating some use cases some start iterating on that This means building the bridges with the largest companies in the world and this means accelerating the iterations For builders to just build on these networks if this happens um And I I don’t I essentially don’t think it’s an if it’s when this happens will See a different type of game being played as adults just Understanding that will not be able to only exist in this parallel world. It’s definitely great to have a sovereign

1:22:55 World in parallel, but isn’t it better to bring the effect in the physical world as well? Isn’t it better to have both? Definitely better. So this is why I’m extremely excited about all the conversations where we sit down with the biggest regulators have the difficult conversations Make progress on that front for me to be able to state Five years ago when people did not even believe that this breakthrough could actually be delivered could work in practice For me to state that we will sit with the ministers of countries and have these conversations And they would be curious and eager to understand and to do some of their part Um, it would have been a dream now to see this come to fruition I’m also very aware and um Eager To push on all the threads that we can because if And when this happens we’ll gradually see The market caps that we see right now in the order of billions We’ll see in the order of tens of billions and then in the order of hundreds of billions the thing is that This regulation is what enables the large trust funds the large institutional people To come in and to know that they have a common thread a common language through which they can settle Some things that maybe they do not understand and and so forth. So I I think Regulation will be extremely important for the game to go to a completely different league That’s necessary. It doesn’t mean that everyone will play by the same rules It’s great that some networks like bitcoin

1:24:51 Plays by some very different rules but I also think that the people who have these conversations and can have A very because this is not a technical conversation. This is very much a diplomatic conversation of understanding some Some other party that speaks a completely different language and conveying a message that they can take home think through and say You know what this doesn’t seem as strange as I initially thought there might be an opportunity here that we could use and leverage now starting on that Uh road is the most difficult thing once you’ve started on the road next thing, you know You discover some other conversations some other opportunities. So I I believe one real world Difficult conversation with regulators with banking system with the Society and the economy around us are crucial for bringing in completely new flows of money much larger scale of adoption and This is the point where Will give birth to even larger systems larger systems for interacting with uh, let’s say having a purely digital financial system having new worlds in which you get Educated can explore these new opportunities and so forth having even games that simulate real life That teach you all these different lessons much better than you would learn in a classroom

1:26:34 Incidentally I I do believe that life at its best it’s almost like a game You learn the stuff you don’t take some things too seriously You take other things very seriously because you want to beat the boss and level up and go to the next level and so forth but Stating that we’ll see Many market caps in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars exceeding the gdp’s of countries Is stating where the center Of power will shift how many of the people that exists in the space right now Will be the people that can make things happen in the world Growing to that point. That’s a different thing That’s very much to growing an initial country Imagine the early founding fathers the people who sailed What what? Their thoughts must have been the the risks The difficulties the things that they thought and then how much of an adventure it was it was crazy Definitely crazy. Definitely as risky as it can get But it opened up a completely new world now as we look at America as it was at that point. It was very much like a startup very much people Super determined to make it happen with not too many bridges To return everything burned around them to make sure that they put all the efforts possible And just look at what a wonder it has been for a very very long time Can we build?

1:28:16 Something like that. Can we build several iterations several versions? I’m convinced we can I’m convinced We now have the tools for the financial version for the worlds that we want to build and AI assistance to just accelerate create armies of agents around us that would help us Build this type of empires around us How fast will it happen? That’s that’s very much a kind of shifting play depending on As you mentioned what’s happening with the u.s What’s happening in some other parts of the world the the interesting part for me has been to see a divergence between the different Empires of the world to see that they’re not as aligned as it once seemed to see that They have some different viewpoints and this essentially Comes down to a very interesting point about the crypto space which is if Two three buy in as this being the next thing through which they had Defense Through which they had economic sovereignty Through which they had And prepare some some alternative options to what they had up until this point This becomes an arms race in itself because all the other ones will by necessity want to have Sovereignty as well to have the independence as well sure will playing this game But behind the scenes i’m preparing this other Architecture or infrastructure for me to be able to exist independently as well I do think that this is happening as we speak. I do think the experiments are being done that the governments the countries

1:30:06 Are not if you look at how things looked five years ago The by the negative bias was incomparably stronger the problems were incomparably larger but As we look at the different metrics that matter Well, we’ve seen Adoption grow we’ve seen use cases Grow in number and in impact. We’ve seen progress being made on fundamental technologies and we’ve actually seen Some of the largest trust funds some of the largest institutions prepare To take their place now when they come they usually don’t come with small money When when one of these elephants moves in It’s a different market. That’s the moment that we’ve been discussing about the 100 stepped that You need to prepare for and when it happens you’ve graduated to the next league again, another set of challenges another set of Opportunities, but they’re very very close. They’re inching with the etfs The etfs open up the bridges again to the larger institutional investor Investors and I don’t think the etfs will stop to just these two to bitcoin and ethereum When they see that one has worked and another one has worked they understand one language very simply money Can they make?

1:31:39 Extraordinary amount of money and bring some more growth. They will want that There’s no discussion about that The only question is again, will it happen as fast as we want? That’s always tricky to tell that’s always tricky to discuss in practice But everything we can do to accelerate that point is again building the bridges again building much better technologies Building much better legal compliance infrastructures to make sure that everything is in place And then results will come so let me ask you a question 10 years from now 2033 What’s ben minku doing?

1:32:18 And What’s the market cap of multiverse x a trillion dollars? I do believe that There is a significant likelihood that What we’ve built Will far exceed the gdp of romania gdp of romania is something like 250 billion I do think that there are some very clear milestones very pragmatic milestones that if achieved Would open up a completely different game and I don’t think that Exceeding a one trillion dollar is an impossibility What does it take? That’s that’s a different conversation, but We’re on this very very Very promising trajectory What we’ve put in place?

1:33:23 Is extraordinary now it’s all about having the bridges Bringing more adoption and more adoption and with each new cycle The reflection in the market cap that reflection in the economics Will be very very clear Now What’s even more interesting is how would the world look around? with a one trillion dollar market cap And that’s that’s going to be probably very Very hard to map out other than saying these are the forces that I believe will exist and then life will take a very very different shape I mean our children Are already living in a different world with different premises But the way I’m thinking about even starting a conversation. I’ve mentioned this several times probably It will probably be a podcast or series of conversations called the roaring 20s because I see several tipping points on technologies that once put in place from one day to another it will change everything and I’m convinced that its life is not perfect. I I know we’re in a very fortunate position that we’re Pouring our hearts and minds and souls into building this but we’re doing it for years and we’ve been through hell’s more than Many many many people through actually reach each of these milestones And I do believe that um What we have today?

1:35:18 Overall is much better than the entire history throughout so Very very excited always find myself being amazed excited thankful and then responsible channeling that into pushing a lot harder and then Making sure that we move as fast as possible to the next checkpoint A couple final questions about ben minku himself You are the leader you have a vision How do you? Take care of yourself You know, what are your practices personally as a family man as a father as a leader? Because you have to stay consistent and from what I see you do stay consistent And that’s tricky to do in a world that’s throwing you challenges. We don’t see 99 out of 100 of your challenges I know that from team personnel technology government regulation and then all the other stuff. We don’t see Um, just some thoughts or advice to people out there of how you do it or how you’ve been able to do it so far

1:36:30 I’ve I’ve thought a long time about this Because it’s very different than um, let’s say what the books would tell you In a sense that it almost seems that at every level the set of Practices processes or habits um Look very very different and they look probably very different for different people And for us for for myself This I remember before starting elrond I was at the point where I already said this must be peak Of whatever can exist just in one year Just looking at the last year. I I thought about writing some books especially one book about This idea of economic growth what it really means technology and how this can all happen. I i’ve reached a point where Uh even financially speaking I I was well beyond the Target that I had for just being able to stop not to anything and so forth But then I I understood that even the best of books Would probably not have had the impact that I would have liked that it would not have been enough and that even though I felt like During the last years I lived 1000 lives with Challenges and how crazy it all was I thought Maybe there’s a much better way. Maybe there’s a it definitely is crazier riskier and and so forth But maybe there’s a better way. So Why not start this technology company which takes the Idea and puts it into into practice and looking back Um The book that I would have written would would definitely have been cool and interesting and so forth because uh, I already learned a

1:38:41 Great amount at that point but What has happened since then? and the level of difficulty how uneven it was how how much I could have uh, let’s say decided the fact that we were let’s say at level 10 and then we got a problem of level 100 to solve in terms of technical architectures the had the The fact that you can read about psychology about dealing with people and so forth read the books but to build a team with which you can build rockets of brilliant people and then in a record time you jump out of the plane and then before you reach down you need to find this great solution technical architecture and so forth the pressures The way people react the way you navigate around that the fact that as things change you change That a lot of people around you will not understand the change that it will be extremely lonely at times Extremely challenging at times and the fact that you you may pour everything into this You may invest your own money. You may invest your own life and and so forth and it can still fail. There is no guarantee Those were lessons that I believe um From the outside. It always looks Like things are great. Look at this guys. They they’ve made all the money. It’s all working great Then from the inside there was this joke that mark and reason was was always repeating where you have extreme Variations like extreme depression Not speaking of myself, but generally how it feels when you’re trying to build something

1:40:35 We’re going to be doomed. It’s super problematic. We’re not going to make it. It’s very very problematic Then you have this euphoric Sensation we’re going to conquer the world. It’s going to be extraordinary We’re doing this and then you’re having lunch so During the same day the variations are very very crazy being able to detach a bit And then live to the maximum at the same time. I think that’s That’s a bit of what I found Keeps being a thread because the waves change And if the waves change it seems that the only thing that can can give you this sense of navigation is Having a feel for the waves And it seems if you can do that Life will throw at you the most crazy things possible In many many ways that you do not expect There is no handbook for all the situations that you’ll you’ll deal with But it seems like if you have a feel for the wave and understand that there is always a solution There is always a way out or away to the next level and you strongly believe that then things will slowly fall into place value will come Effects for some of the decisions you’ve made habits you’ve formed and and so forth and Funny enough we we have this way of discussing internally For for years now again just crafted Throughout the situations where every once in a while we have this internal town halls. We discuss some things We discuss the progress the technical progress the product progress and so forth and at the end we discuss about

1:42:32 What we’re doing to stay alive literally discussing about to stay alive because While you’re pushing for all of this, you definitely need to find some things. What are some of the things that work? Well Reading books has always Been the one thing that I if I were to to say There’s one thing that I could credit for all the different worlds. I’ve discovered around Is reading books it has Changed my life completely. Of course, the internet has just magnified that 1000x because otherwise I would have probably read all the wrong books Available in some corner of the world with the internet I’ve discovered that there’s a greater map of different things that you can learn about and figure out and and so forth then of course finding some ways of Staying in shape whether it’s running doing something whatever works for people. We we encourage them Just because you’re not only a brain in a vat You also have a body and the body can influence everything that you’re doing ideally you want it to be hardcore Getting getting used to Living life hardcore seems like a hack Just because almost everything will will feel easy if you had it hardcore And then we’re also looking for improvements these three things we we discuss at every town hall usually we discuss it with everyone and it’s almost like a fun way of Coming together and discussing some some ideas Um it it may sound very simple but the idea of Getting a feel of the wave

1:44:29 Maybe Maybe the one thing that then can take different shapes the shape of Reading books when you have to read books the shape of Living life and pushing to the maximum when you see that you need to push to the maximum the shape of getting out of the comfort zone and Battling like really because you see the big wave and you need to get involved and you need to contribute But um, yeah, i’m sure people have their their versions I even though my schedule is extremely crazy There was a point in my life Where and this is bewildering to me why I don’t have a recipe and this boils down to something like filling the wave is there was a point in my life where I woke up at 5 am every morning by Myself because I wanted to not because I had to and then Went for a run then started reading some books. I had a different field each day of the week I was mind-blown with the books It was an intensity of pleasure when reading and discovering this that I cannot express then going through different things Getting stuff done and so forth And then I had periods where we sleep at the office We had to do this kind of almost ongoing internal hackathon to deliver some products do it While still having fun and be able to move forward and not feel like the world is falling and and so forth so If you feel the wave it seems you’ll find A way around it you’ll find the way that enables you to make progress learn and contribute to the world if you can do that

1:46:23 I mean What what more can we ask exactly right? I think it was Helen Keller the woman that was like deaf dumb and blind that said uh Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. I think it’s what she once said and so It’s an incredible way to live your life It’s got extremes, but also if you are contributing, it’s a great way to really find meaning in life I’d stress that for anybody. I spent a lot of my life Creating meaning from me didn’t make me very happy But when I can create meaning for others and maybe even some type of a purpose for the world It really shifts the balance entirely And so, uh, i’m just really excited to watch this next part of your journey It’s been amazing watching so far for the past two years You guys have something special going on at multiverse x it’s a je ne sais quoi But i’ve had a lot of exposure to your teammates when you’re not there and you’re not around and everybody Is just like I said, they’re on some next level shit. Let’s just say that And now it shows in the product. What do they say? The customer experience is a lagging indicator of company culture So you’re clearly doing something that’s now coming out the other end. It does lag, but your products look really really impressive and Through London Real ventures. We’ve invested in ash swap, which is one of the defy protocols you mentioned Neil and his team there are very very smart people And I know you got a bunch of more projects coming and I hope we can be involved in the future as well

1:47:48 And so i’m looking forward to the future the trillion dollar market cap, which like you said, what will the world look like? That means the world will have probably Adopted to the truth computer in all aspects of the life and I look at that as a better world You know, I really see this transparency is making us better humans when we’re held accountable as humans we’re just better people and uh, this is the technology to do this and it’s really exciting and Right now the whole world doesn’t really get it the word crypto has lots of connotations But this always happens with innovations and I am a huge fan of this effective acceleration. I think when in doubt With respect put your foot on the gas pedal and outgrow the problems out innovate the problems And technology has always created those solutions And again, don’t let that world fool you just picking a better path in the jungle to go get your fruit Is a bit of technology, you know finding a way that helps you cook your food faster is a technology Finding a better way to communicate is technology technology is everywhere. It doesn’t have to be a microchip So it’s always it’s always represented the upward surge of humanity And I think we have to remember that and not let the mind viruses and the other cancers eat away at us because we’ve gotten too smart With probably not enough problems to where we really start to go too far inwards So I appreciate people like you and mark andreessen and the people out there that are really hammering this home

1:49:12 And I think that is the solution and so um really looking forward to uh What happens the next few years in the next decade with you guys and just want to thank you guys for leading the charge and? Doing this amazing homegrown story. Like you said this came out of not even the biggest city in romania It wasn’t in silicon valley. It wasn’t in silicon roundabout here in london It didn’t have fancy vc backers. You guys have built something. That’s a real player and a contender and uh congrats on that then Thank you brian. Um, I I um, I came with this idea Uh at at the xa conference and then have been repeating it over and over again of just build grow accelerate That we should always come back to this build grow accelerate and it will open up a completely different world around us I do think that we’re just this is just one checkpoint and there’s a lot more to build a lot more to discover For the entire world and um, I could not be more excited to see the entire ecosystem bloom Take the steps and push to the maximum possible So thanks for being part of the ecosystem and it’s awesome to have these conversations with you I love it man. Until next time wishing you all the best man. Thanks, right? Thank you