Full transcript: John Patrick Mullin on London Real
3:22 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is John Patrick Mullin, the entrepreneur, investor and blockchain expert. You are the CEO and Co founder of Mantra and has spent the last decade investing and building in the crypto and digital asset space. Mantra is a layer one blockchain for real world asset tokenization with the goal to bridge the gap between traditional and decentralised finance. You are on a mission to become the world’s preeminent and most trusted ecosystem by bringing security, compliance and democratise access to Defy.
4:08 You believe we are witnessing a transformative moment in finance where tokenization is bringing these real world assets or RW as onto the blockchain and unlocking a $16 trillion industry. You’ve said that tokenization has the potential to revolutionise traditional finance and will redefine wealth distribution on a global scale. John, welcome to London Real.
4:31 John Patrick Mullin: Thank you so much for having me, Brian. It’s a it’s a pleasure.
4:35 Looking forward to the conversation.
4:37 Brian Rose: Yeah, let’s just jump into it. Look, Bitcoin just broke 71,000 and it looks like it’s going higher. And yet the total crypto asset value is only $2.4 trillion. You’re talking about 16 trillion, and you even said before it’s even bigger than that.
4:52 You know, that’s a crazy amount of assets to bring into this ecosystem. It’ll dwarf all the value. Now maybe you can talk about how big of an opportunity this is. Will this be the biggest thing to hit the blockchain, the biggest narrative you think over the next couple years?
5:09 John Patrick Mullin: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I do think it is.
5:12 You know, it’s going to take some time. You know, I think if you’re looking at, you know, tokenization on permissionless, you know, public block chains, it’s still a drop in the ocean. I mean, I think we’re talking like less than 10 billion of tokenized assets on, on permissionless block chains today. There’s still a long, long, long way to go to dwarf that, you know, 2 plus billion, a trillion that we have for the broader crypto market. But if you look at institutional tokenization, you know, JP Morgan, you know, my namesake JPM has done I think a trillion dollars of tokenized asset transfers on their permissioned private blockchain, JPM Onyx.
5:46 So you can see that the institutions are trying this thing out in a more closed loop fashion. But I think we’re seeing the tide turning and obviously we’re excited to hopefully play a big role in that.
5:57 Brian Rose: Yeah, you made a really good point because what is RWAI know you hate that term and we’re going to get into it, but there’s all sorts of things people might think of. Real estate, financial assets are interesting. I mean, you know, it could be horses and all sorts of things.
6:12 But let’s talk about the financials because like you said, you know, JP Morgan, BlackRock with their, with their Biddle Network, all these people, Franklin Templeton, they have been tokenizing these financial assets, some on, like you said, you know, decentralised blockchain, some on their own internal ones. Maybe talk about how much activity there’s been and how surprising that these institutions are embracing it. I actually started my career on Wall Street in 93 and I was trading fixed income derivatives. So I was trading tonnes of treasury bonds and futures contracts.
6:45 And so I’m surprised that the banks in BlackRock are this ahead of the curve. I thought it would take them years more.
6:52 John Patrick Mullin: Yeah, I mean, I think the the floodgates opened, you know, the beginning of this year with the Bitcoin ETF approval, it really just like solidified that, hey, this asset class, crypto assets, not even just token assets, crypto assets are here to stay forever. And now you can actually have it at, you know, major financial institution level. I think the other thing that was really important and we’ve seen this shift throughout this year was people started actually not thinking, talking about it in public as taboo. And fortunately you had, you know, people like Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock coming out and talking about tokenization. I refer to him as Uncle Larry because of what he does for, for our Devas and tokenization, you know, going on CNBC every once in a while and, and effectively shilling the idea of tokenization as, as the future of finance. And when you have someone of that calibre, of that pedigree, of that level of a financial institution talking about this concept, it just becomes normal.
7:48 And that normalisation of the idea has really given a rise to, you know, a lot of things that we’re working on. But if you again, go back to that kind of base level of where these things are existing today, it’s still just a drop in the bucket. And that’s important because you’ve seen people now feeling comfortable talking about this in public at an institutional level. And that’s brought a lot of people who honestly would have laughed us out of the room, honestly, even earlier in the year. The ability to start talking about it, investing in it publicly, you know, taking bets on it, these type of things, which has been really important to to help, you know, bring the the real world asset tokenization, you know, space forward on these permissionless and public blockchain networks. Like what mantra is.
8:30 And there’s still, like I said, a long, long, long way to go. The real word asset, you know, asset class of, of just pure crypto tokens is still miniscule. I mean, there’s really, I think there’s maybe only two or two or three tokens that have over a billion dollar market cap. We’re one of them. But there’s, you know, there’s still many different projects, many different protocols, many different apps that need to be developed before this really becomes the thing that, you know, we’re in, we’re expecting it to become.
8:55 Brian Rose: Yeah, Larry Fink has been a godsend. I think Michael Saylor jokes that he’s the chief marketing officer for Bitcoin.
9:01 Now you’re making the A reference. Maybe he’s got two jobs. He’s the chief marketing officer for RWA as well. But it’s been amazing. I had Anthony Scaramucci here in the studio a few months ago and he tells me about having a conversation, I think in Davos in a hotel lobby with, with, with Larry a couple years ago.
9:17 And he said, look, he he said this Moochie said Moochie, you like Bitcoin? I don’t. And then Mooch was like, look, I really think spend 10 more hours, 20 more hours. And I know he’s got a really great team over there of some younger guys as well that really embraced it. And now I think they own over $27 billion of Bitcoin through their ETF.
9:36 And it’s amazing to see Larry on Kramer telling him what what it’s like. It’s sometimes he’s not even the most articulate about it, but he’s pushing it forward and even calls out the dollar, which is crazy because people say JP Morgan and BlackRock are extensions of the US government. I won’t comment on that. But it’s amazing that he says, look, this is an asset you might want to bet on if you don’t trust your government’s currency. So, yeah, that’s been really helpful.
10:01 And I guess it’s helped you a lot. You know, when it comes to RWA assets, do you think the majority over the next 12 months will be financial assets, so tokenized bonds and stocks? And do you think that’s what’s going to bring the initial users on? Do you think or you think it will then get out to real estate or what else is real world assets because it can mean so many things.
10:25 John Patrick Mullin: Can definitely mean a lot.
10:27 You know, anything under the sun can be tokenized, but we say regularly that doesn’t mean it should be at least today. And, you know, I think a lot of people have gone for many of these kind of niche and or, you know, totally illiquid assets with the expectation that creating a token with, you know, makes it more liquid immediately, makes it more attractive to investors. And that’s just not the case. It really needs to go down to 1st principles of actually creating value for the issuer and then also value for the secondary market participant. Where we’ve seen a lot of traction is actually on three verticals, one being real estate. And I can, you know, dig into that a little bit more in detail.
11:04 Obviously, being in Dubai right now, that’s probably the place where this is going to take off. That’s where we’re betting that that real estate tokenization is going to take off for a number of reasons. Financial assets, as you mentioned, money market funds, private credit funds and private equity, these type of things are, are definitely of interest. And you’re seeing, you know, traction of these things being tokenized at institutional levels on, you know, permissionless block chains like Biddle as you mentioned earlier.
11:30 And then the other one that I think is really exciting, you know, we’re, we’re exploring, but haven’t done anything too, too much yet is, is actually on IP, whether that’s related to, you know, musicians, you know, sports teams, artists, you know, things that have a really emotional draw and massive fan bases. And you know, I think you know, those things, those three asset classes in general, one have the ability to have big dollars behind them, but they also are things that people understand and or are already investing in, right? You understand your favourite musician, you understand your favourite artist, you understand your favourite Sports Club. Just like people are already buying money market funds, already buying private credit funds and they’re already buying real estate.
12:12 And I use the example of, you know, I think there’s an interesting use cases for tokenizing more niche items like watches and, you know, rare cars and whiskey and wine. But honestly, how many Rolexes do you need to tokenize to tokenize a billion dollars worth of Rolexes? That’s a lot of Rolexes. And you know, that doesn’t make make it a lot easier to just say, hey, I can go down the street and, you know, tokenize a billion dollars in real estate in Dubai. It doesn’t really work like that. But there’s a big difference there, right? You can talk to 1 developer and you can do a billion dollars worth of real estate versus, you know, God knows how many Rolexes would be, you know, a billion dollars worth of tokenized assets.
12:47 So I think when we’re exploring the space, we are seeing where the traction is. And frankly, it’s my job as a founder to say, OK, traction’s here, double down, traction’s there, double down. And hopefully this becomes a little bit of like the the spigot unleashing where then once you have a little bit more proliferation of these bigger assets, people are actually bringing new new sources of liquidity, new sources of capital on chain. You’re starting to have secondary market venues where people can trade these things, which has never really happened before. Then you can say, hey, OK, now let’s tokenize some watches. Now let’s tokenize some Pokémon cards or, you know, something rare that is a little bit more niche because there’s now new on chain liquidity for something that maybe, hey, you do want to have a little diversification or it’s just a something to speculate on a little bit.
13:32 Because hey, I do like watches and I do like whiskey and I do like Pokémon cards. But in the end the day, the the majority of your portfolio most likely will not be in those types of tokenized asset classes.
13:42 Brian Rose: Yeah, I think that’s super important. I mean, you have to go with the liquidity is one of the biggest criticisms of blockchain in the last few years is, you know, we build the tech without a use case. And so, yeah, we dream of these things of having your watch on the blockchain and it sounds amazing, but then it doesn’t really have a use case and then it doesn’t go anywhere.
14:00 So I think the reverse engineering the product market fit is not always the smartest thing. Talk to me about Dubai because I just got back from there a couple days ago. I’m a huge fan of the place. I’ll be back in January. We’ll move our studio there for a few months. And I know you’ve announced some cool partnerships there. I think you’ve done a partnership with the Real Estate Empire Mag.
14:21 I think you’re talking to a bank called Zedbank over there as well. And you’ve announced a few other even partnerships with Ondo Finance and some things. Why’d you buy? I’m, I’m having a recollection that Doctor Marwan Al Zarouni, who runs a Dubai blockchain centre, who actually gave me my golden visa. So I’m a huge fan of him for that.
14:41 He had told me one time and he said, Brian, every property here is on the blockchain. And I was like, whoa, I didn’t even expect that. And so I’m just wondering if you chose Dubai because they’re the city of the future, they’re forward thinking, they’re completely digital. Or did you choose it for other reasons? And what are you actually doing there?
15:00 John Patrick Mullin: Great questions. I mean, I think there’s a number of reasons why we felt Dubai was a good home, but I’ll you know, maybe I’ll tell you the story to kind of get there. So you know initially when you know we’re building Mantra Mantra’s a four year old actually over 4 year old project now and it’s gone through a number of different iterations to kind of our current status quo. And at, at one point in time, we’re actually looking at other different markets for where we could operate compliantly effectively. And it just ended up becoming a very slow regulatory process there.
15:29 And this was actually in, in, in the United States. Obviously, when you know, FTX imploded and you had all of the other, you know, big blow UPS of the last cycle, it, it slowed things down. And, you know, I think people are still searching for how they can operate, how they can build crypto businesses in the United States because of that kind of slow down. Honestly, we looked in other different markets of where we where we could operate and we just needed a place literally to operate.
15:56 We were looking in Europe, we’re looking in in Asia, we looked in other places in the Middle East as well. And really Dubai was just the place that honestly opened up at the right time and we were just in the right place. We felt that there was a really strong progressive regulatory framework of how we could operate here. So we started going to the process working with FARA, which is obviously the the, the regulatory authority for digital assets here in November of Dubai.
16:20 And we’ve really seen a very kind of like open progressive mindset about how to actually embrace this technology, how to create, you know, different types of products and frameworks that maybe are, you know, new and haven’t been done before. So that that mindset is really important. And I think it’s, it’s also because it comes from the top, right? It comes from literally the leadership of the country that says, Hey, we need to be forward thinking, we need to be progressive, we need to embrace this technology and we need to become a global leader in it.
16:53 And I think that combined with timing, combined with, you know, honestly, just people coming there during COVID, during the pandemic, a lot of people walk to Dubai, good weather, interesting nightlife, it’s a fun place, great, you know, great food scene and people just could actually go on living the lives here during, during the pandemic. So you had all these crypto people coming in, you had all this, you know, regulatory stuff happening at the same time. And, you know, just became a, a home and, and, and eventually it also became a home of where we set up some, some offices where we have team and a lot of our investors, our biggest investors are, are based actually in the UAE and Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
17:30 So we’ve had a lot of support here. We’re really, you know, almost locally homegrown, even though I technically live in Hong Kong. So, you know, we’re in between Hong Kong, Dubai, you know, we had the test net, the Dukong test net, which is for Dubai and Hong Kong. Obviously now we’re in main net. So that’ll continue.
17:43 But you know, a little bit different today. And it’s been a really, really, you know, supportive place for what we’re trying to build. You know, it doesn’t mean that everything’s easy. It’s taken a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of relationship building, but it’s been a really, really beneficial thing for us to be here. And, you know, some of these different partnerships that we’re working on, as I mentioned, like beginning of the year, they would laugh you out of the room.
18:06 I don’t mean necessarily our partners, but you know, some of these other, you know, if you’re, if you’re going into another jurisdiction, another place, you’re not going to be able to have the type of outcome that we were able to get because of our network, because of our connections and our relationships here. And it’s become just in our opinion, the place for real world assets. It’s going to, you know, put it on the map where you can actually have real use cases, real liquidity, real composability first. Obviously Wall Street, you know, the US is still the kind of the golden goose.
18:35 But you know, until that, you know, kind of eases up or, or, you know, maybe the the ice melts a little bit there, it’s going to take some time. So I think it’s really well positioned for those reasons. And, you know, obviously we’re excited to to be a part of it here.
18:50 Brian Rose: Can you talk about what you might be doing with MAG, the real estate people or Zenbank, what that might actually look like? I’m also curious what you think maybe one of the first actual real estate use cases would be like, what are people actually doing with it?
19:04 John Patrick Mullin: Sure. Yeah. So for example, you know, MAG is one of our our, you know, strong real estate partners. We’re actually tokenizing one of their new the off plan developments here in in Dubai called the Couture Reserve. So effectively the product is you know, a tokenized note where you’re actually participating in the financing of this off plan development.
19:25 You’re going to be able to get paid in both stablecoin. So an attractive, I believe it’s 8% in stablecoin on an annualised basis plus an additional kicker in in our native token OM home. So I think it will end up being roughly between 13 to 15% for this, this product. It’s over collateralized. It’s collateralized by the land that the development’s being built on, which was purchased years ago and has gone up so much in value that, you know, the whole value of the land is worth more than a note itself.
19:54 That’s just to buy for you. It’s, you know, over collateralized by a, you know, key real estate asset from MAG Group. So it’s like a $70 million mega mansion. And also it’s guaranteed by the issuer, which is MAG. So, you know, multibillion dollar, you know, conglomerate. It’s a pretty safe investment, just not financial advice to your own research.
20:12 But it kind of structured it in that way. So it’s kind of meant to be a bit of a home run and something of significant interest. But then because it’s tokenized, actually what you’re able to do is not only participate in the financing, but also be able to then convert that into the equity of the home at a pre agreed discounted value to the in the present day value once the home is completed. And these are really luxury developments and, and you know, really key properties in in the UAE and it’s development here in Dubai. So it’s a pretty interesting and attractive product. You know, some of these things that we’re looking at with Zanbank.
20:44 So they’re, you know, owned by the chairman of EMAR. Actually, EMAR is obviously the largest developer in the UA. So no, there’s, there’s no, there’s no limit to the amount of real estate opportunities here in, in the UA. And, you know, we’re fortunate that we have a number of different strong partners, but Zambank is obviously a, you know, a big financial institution. They’re one of the digital banks here, although they do have actual physical presence, but a digital bank that’s focused on, you know, SMEs, crypto businesses, and they’re, you know, obviously very receptive to Web 3 technologies and are doing things like crypto custody, custody.
21:18 I think they want to do a number of different Web 3 initiatives. So we’re, you know, obviously collaborating with them as one of their, you know, block chains of choice effectively. And it’s just a, you know, it’s a, it’s a really interesting ecosystem here to be a part of, you know, real estate as a, as a concept. I mean, I go quite public and, and, and, you know, quite adamantly saying that just tokenizing SPV’s to own something and then, you know, factorising it. You could do that in the Web 2 space. So I think, you know, you know, trying to create really interesting products, trying to create something that’s actually new and moves a needle.
21:53 And that might include, you know, collaborating with the government to actually change the regulations, change the framework so that you’re actually moving the needle in that in that instance. But these are the things that we’re interested in and that we’re trying to do because it actually does, you know, tick those boxes. It actually benefits the issuer and it ends up being better for the end consumer. And if those two things aren’t met, then we’re not going to tokenize it basically.
22:15 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s a good, that’s a good metric for making that decision. Look, I know a lot of people in Dubai have made money investing in off plans is something people in the last five years. But I guess to do that, you know, you have to buy an entire piece. There’s probably no liquidity in the meantime and there’s no way to tokenize with what you’re describing. Could I buy in for like $1000 or $10,000 potentially and get a small piece of this opportunity or would I still have to do kind of a unit?
22:45 John Patrick Mullin: Nope.
22:45 You could absolutely buy a a portion of it does not need to be an entire unit or entire property.
22:51 Brian Rose: And then anyone that’s also one that could do it as well, right? I wouldn’t have to be in Dubai 100%. That’s a beautiful 100%, right? And I can get a high yield not correlated with crypto. That’s exactly what what we need, isn’t it?
23:04 John Patrick Mullin: Yeah.
23:04 That’s our bet. That’s what we think.
23:06 Brian Rose: Interesting. You know, I just had the the founder of a company called names in here and they’re doing something similar with the insurance business. And yeah, Dan’s a really interesting guy and he had a similar offer. He’s like, look, you can get, you know, it yields in the teens to invest in insurance and reinsurance. That’s completely not correlated really to anything, not the economy, not crypto, not whatever. And I guess that’s maybe another type of RWA play. But that’s really exciting for crypto people because when we look at crypto, everything is usually highly correlated to this market and the success of this market.
23:42 John Patrick Mullin: A. 100% I mean, we were, I was at a family office event last night and you know, one of the questions was like, you know what the success of mantra, like how do you think about managing your own wealth?
23:53 And I was, I mean, the, the first response was like, it’s irrelevant. I’m all in mantra. I’m all, I’m long myself, I’m long mantra forever. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not important to think about. And honestly, like a lot of the things that we’re building at Mantra with respect to real world assets and tokenization just solves that problem of being able to actually have a, you know, an on chain ecosystem that you can participate in new different types of diversified investment opportunities, you know, like private credit, like real estate, you know, like XX, you know, etcetera. There’s so many different things that currently would require a lot of friction for me to, you know, take wealth out of the OR out of the crypto ecosystem off chain and put it into a bank, put it into a brokerage, put it into, you know, whatever friction tax, you know, time.
24:41 These are all things that no one wants and no one has. And, and, and, and in this case, we’re trying to create an ecosystem that even when you take profit within the mantra ecosystem and and the on chain kind of economy that we’re developing, you can still just plug it right back into all these different products that you’d want, maybe even more products than you didn’t have access to in the in the web two world, which becomes a net benefit to the ecosystem as a whole. So it’s much different than this, like the empirical farm and leave mentality.
25:11 It’s actually farm and stay and keep contributing and continue to farm and continue to stay. It’s like this reflexive circle that we want to create. And that’s the great thing about real world assets is it’s hopefully legitimately net new capital coming into the space rather than just a small group of, you know, defy whales who are, you know, farming and leaving and farming and leaving and continuing to make the rich richer. That’s kind of exactly the opposite of the crypto ethos, right?
25:36 So, you know, hopefully we’re able to create a product and create an ecosystem that supports that. And I think one of the things that we’ve seen that actually shows a little bit of validation of that idea is many of the people who are, you know, participating as like reordered acid, TVO, you know, supporters have literally never done anything in crypto in their life, right? Like we’re teaching them how to stake, we’re teaching them how to, you know, buy home and, and, and, you know, deploy TVL and all these types of things. So there’s a lot of education, but it is, it’s, it’s refreshing to see one new money, new people, new, you know, new, you know, new mindset coming into space. It also shows that there’s still a long, long, long way to go, both from an education perspective and definitely from a user experience perspective, because the on chain user experience today is still not where we want it to be.
26:23 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s amazing you’re bringing new users in. And I know that’s been one of your criticisms of the past of Defy and Summers and things that it was, you know, just a few whales farming and leaving or it was just the ecosystem participating.
26:36 And I think you have a good point. You know, there’s a really interesting post on Twitter today that said, OK, Bitcoins back at 71 K when it first hit 71 K in March, you know, the Coinbase was one of the top apps in the App Store. And now it’s #400 as in we have a long way to go. We still need to onboard people into this ecosystem. You know, we have two from Animoca brands who’s a regular guest here.
26:55 Always says games will bring the next billion users. But do you think it could more likely be real world assets that bring it?
27:04 John Patrick Mullin: You know, I think yet’s a visionary and you know, he definitely has a very clear picture in his mind about how, you know, Web 3 gaming can bring that next billion users. I have no doubt about that possibility. And it’s, you know, if you have a few different options, I would put it up there as one of the one of the better bets. That being said, you know, obviously we feel like the amount of people who can benefit from just tokenized assets on chain is almost everyone in the world. I mean, whether it’s myself, you know, my, my, my parents, you know, my friends and family, or it’s someone in developing world who has a smartphone in USDT or USDC in their wallet. Literally it’s open to everyone, right? I think you know, why was that AI was at a event in at KBW and Chris Dixon, you know, general partner at A16D crypto was talking about how he felt this is at the story protocol event. He was saying how he felt that IP could be blockchain’s iPhone moment.
28:08 I believe that IP is a real world asset in its core. At its core when you tokenize it, it’s one of the real assets, a trillion dollar opportunity in and of itself. But I actually feel more broadly speaking that generalised real world assets or tokenized assets will be blockchain’s iPhone moment when all those different products we just talked about, all those different things are accessible in the palm of your hand at any time, anywhere in the world. And not only can you invest in them, can you trade in them, but you can, you know, lend. You can lend them, you can borrow against it. You can do all the different types of financial primitives that you would need in your day-to-day life in the palm of your hand from an iPhone, from a smartphone, wherever you are. And that to me is the zero to 100 opportunity more than anything.
28:53 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, we’re actually investors in story protocol and big fans. I’ll have SY in here in the studio soon. Nice. That’s why I think I like SY and Jay-Z. They’re awesome guys.
29:03 Yeah, amazing vision of where he wants to take this. And I mean, they’ve been tripled, tripled down by Andreessen, I think invested now in three different rounds, taking it from like 200 Val last year to 2.2 billion this year and just an up round. So yeah, it’s going to be really interesting and really interesting to hear. You mentioned that IP as well as being something that’s that’s on your horizon. Question for you.
29:27 You got to buy. You obviously know Hong Kong really well and Hong Kong’s making all sorts of great moves when it comes to the regulation of crypto. And then, of course, there’s the US You know, the US is, you know, I don’t know if it’s the Holy Grail, but it’s a huge market. And, you know, we’re days away from a potential regime change, which could see the Robin Hood CEO become the next SEC chair. It could see the president have his own, you know, defy token. And you could see changes there really fast. You know, I’m curious what you think will happen in the US and it will that be the biggest market or not necessarily?
30:55 It’s a good question. And, you know, obviously it’s a highly charged political environment. I was just in in the States and, you know, people are going crazy. I’m American myself. So it is a it is a crazy time not just for Americans, but for the world. And, you know, without saying whether either candidate will be better for crypto, I do think it’s actually more relevant about who are the people that are surrounding the the presidential candidates.
31:22 So who’s in their cabinet, who’s really progressive and forward thinking on this technology because these are the people actually doing the work, right? I think that’s really important. And of course, you know, it matters who’s the ones writing the rules and enforcing the rules. So, you know, I, I think we can most assuredly say that Commissioner Gensler will not be completing a second term, irrespective of the, of the, of the, you know, administration that comes into power, you know, in, in just a few months.
31:49 And I think really that’s what matters for crypto in the United States at at present. That being said, you know, regulatory change, the legislation change takes time. And I, you know, people in crypto tend to have very short term mindsets about pretty much everything. It’s like a get rich quick and forget, you know, forget everything real quick. If it doesn’t, you know, immediately give you that dopamine hit or a, or that fix.
32:16 And that’s just not how regs work, right? That’s just not how regulators are meant to operate. I mean, they’re meant to be so honestly risk adverse. They’re meant to take their time and they’re meant to do what’s best in their opinion for the, you know, the retail populace. So I, you know, even if there is a change, even if, you know, we have a shift in, in, in, in the SEC and the regulator there, it’s not like, you know, you’re going to snap your fingers in.
32:41 This is just like, oh, great, now it’s all, you know, all held loose. Like, let’s go to the moon. You know, US crypto, it’s going to take some time and that’s not the end of the world. I mean, I think the fact that we’re having this as a significant talking point in a presidential election for the US is a massive win for the industry. And over time, particularly as, you know, younger people start coming into power who have grown up with this technology and are completely immersed in it, that’s when we really see the proliferation.
33:12 So that’s just also makes me more bullish on the longer term of of the space. I mean, like, I know that my future, you know, votes will be going to pro crypto candidates and hopefully, I mean, who knows, I might even run at some point and I’ll definitely be pro crypto if I was ever to go into some sort of a political office. Only if I need to though.
33:34 Brian Rose: Wow. I’d be careful.
33:35 Like say it’s a lot more. I ran to be Mayor of London in 21 and 24 and it was a very sobering experience going into politics. But I think everybody should do it once I can. Imagine. So I got a PhD in political silence, that’s for sure.
33:49 So yeah, look, I agree with you, although I don’t know, you know, there’s rumours that Gary could get promoted to Treasury Secretary and start, you know, Operation Choke .3 Point O. So I think it does matter, but I respect your answer there for sure. Want to ask you about something, Raul Paul, who you know, is a guy a lot of people follow in the space. He’s been on the show. He said once that RWA needs a layer 1 and I know you’ve quoted him before, obviously. I guess that’s what you’re doing at Mantra. Why can’t we use ETH?
34:19 Why can’t we use polka dot? Why can’t we use someone else? And do you see other competitors out there? Why will Mantra win?
34:29 John Patrick Mullin: Sure.
34:29 Great question. I mean you can the shorter instance you can, you know, people are tokenizing things on Solana, they’re tokenizing in Matsui, on Aptos, on Polygon, on Avalanche. You know, these are all great protocols and are having, you know, very unique ecosystems that they’re developing as well, Ethereum as well. But I do feel like there are some fundamental flaws maybe in this strategy, not necessarily in the tech. I think the tech itself is highly commoditized and that’s not really differentiated of what we’re trying to achieve.
34:59 You know, again, we are focused explicitly on tokenization, explicitly on RWBASI know, I don’t like the term RWBAS, but that’s our focus, right? We’re not focused on gaming, we’re not focused on NFTS, we’re not focused on any stuff. It can be part of the RWA, you know, ecosystem that’s being developed, but it’s not the focus of what we’re building. We feel the tech is going to be highly commoditized. I believe it’s already highly commoditized already.
35:22 And in the end of the day, if you get to that, you know, iPhone moment for RW as you won’t even know that you’re interacting on a blockchain anyway. But who actually cares? What we want is to be the Ledger of record for rewrote assets where issuers feel like they have the right tooling, the right technology and the right safety and trust. Really it’s all built on trust to be able to issue real world assets with a click of a button very easily. And they know that if something’s going to go wrong, they know how to fix it or we know how to fix it. And I, I think I said this at, you know, at, at, at Cosmo versus last week, like there’s a reason that people tokenize on mantra and it’s because you know, they literally, if you’re putting hundreds of 1,000,000 billions of dollars on chain, you want to know what’s going to happen if something goes wrong, right?
36:08 You really actually do. And you know, the reason that they trust us is because we’ve spent time, effort building a relationship, building credibility, building a reputation that persists ourselves. And you know, people then know, hey, if something goes wrong, literally the CEO of these issuers can just say, hey, I’m going to call John. And they would literally, we talk regularly and you’re not calling Vitalik, you’re not calling Tolley. You know, you’re not calling these other guys because that’s not their focus.
36:35 And not only do we have that level of trust and that level of access to to us and to the senior leadership and, you know, to our team, but we’re also focused on the two key issues that I think no one’s really solving. It’s not a technical issue, right? Anyone can create this technology. It’s really a distribution problem and that stems from where’s the liquidity coming from and it’s built up over time. Bringing on new capital into space. Like I said, that is a grinded out process, takes time, takes relationship to take network and I think it’s going to stem from here in the beginning.
37:05 That’s the best bet in our opinion. But the other thing is where are the secondary market venues that these things can actually trade on? Where are the other applications that these things are composable within? We’re taking an application first approach in the sense that we’re building some of this infrastructure, we’re getting licenced by Vara, as you mentioned, or as I mentioned before, and we’re focusing on this idea that, hey, it’s so it’s all great to, you know, create some unique tech. But in crypto, anyone can fork open source code. You cannot fork a regulatory licence, right? And that’s a really important thing. That’s a that’s a unique advantage. You know, it also helps that we have, you know, significant backers and supporters in this region that are all aligned with the mission of bringing real world assets on chain at a retail, at an institutional and at a sovereign level. And those three things have now become aligned for the first time in my opinion in history.
37:53 And you know, hopefully they’ll be doing that on Mantra. Actually, they will be doing it on Mantra. Let’s put it like that.
37:59 Brian Rose: Great explanation. Look, we, you know, we’ve been an investor in Mantra since the beginning of the year, just for full.
38:05 Disclosure. And I spent time with you and the team in Singapore a few weeks back. And each one of the members is, is really impressive. And you got up and spoke at this event and you said something that that really resonated with me, John. You said to everybody, it’s not the tech, it’s the team.
38:24 And I’ve never really heard anybody in crypto ever say that because, you know, I don’t know, maybe it’s because traditionally in crypto there is that reverse engineering. Maybe look, I’m an MIT engineer geek myself. Maybe people, they love the tech so much that it becomes something that you get fascinated with and maybe obsessed with. But you got up there and said, it’s not the tech, it’s our team. Anybody can do the code and everybody can try to do RWA, but it’s our team is why we are winning and we’re going to win.
38:52 First of all, do I did I quote you right? And can you explain that a bit deeper?
38:57 John Patrick Mullin: No, you definitely did. And it’s definitely a deep belief that I have. You know, I think it’s incredibly important to create an environment both within your team and also within your ecosystem that has a unique culture, you know, and then the day I just, you know, I’m, I’m young, you know, I’ve been an entrepreneur for, for several years, but not nearly as seasoned as as others.
39:18 But I really feel like one of the things that I learned very early on was that culture is everything. People matter more than anything. And having a strong team by your side can get you through the UPS and the downs of this like roller coaster journey that you know, that you’re on. It’s hard to been enough being an entrepreneur, let alone in, in crypto, which is obviously highly volatile. You know, price is everything and you know there’s nothing that you can do and the market Mike Tank and everyone sad now, but nothing happens in token spikes 20% and everyone it’s like totally out of your control. But being able to have the team that’s not just there for that purpose, but actually they believe in the mission. They believe that they’re creating something of value. It’s something that we’ve been very cautious and I’ve been very intentional about building within mantra. You know, I, I still have a, you know, we’re about 90 ish people now within the team, grown a lot this year and will continue to grow into next year.
40:11 And I’ve, you know, I, I interview every single person that comes into company, everyone, whether you’re, you’re an office admin and you know, an intern. So far, I literally have talked to every single person. I want to continue to do that because it really matters that. I want to say I like you. I love to like you as a person because I want people to be, they don’t necessarily need to have like be friends, but they need to like each other, respect each other and be good people at the core.
40:38 I think that’s one of the things that I’ve been very intentional and very intentional and very, you know, cognizant about. That’s been, you know, a very unique point of our history. You know, last year was very tough. We went through a lot and the team stuck together throughout that. And that’s become, you know, one of our our strongest points. And that also persists within the ecosystem as well. I mean, I think there’s so many ecosystems because there’s so many different, you know, block chains and infrastructure and things that have not focused on anything related to culture within the ecosystem.
41:05 It’s just, hey, let’s give you grants and then you come build. Where’s the staying power in that, right? I actually think that grants are the worst things the block chain can do because all you’re doing is inviting parasitic developers and you know, people to come in, farm you and leave. But if you create an environment that they want to be there, they’re having fun, they’re enjoying what they’re building, they’re building cool stuff, they will stay right.
41:29 You know, Solana, I think is a perfect example of that, right? If you look at, you know, people gave a lot of Flack to a lot of the projects at token 2049 compared to Solana break point, because it was just chilling and, you know, retail and whatever at at token. That’s kind of the conference in general. It’s it’s a, it’s an amazing, you know, platform, but it that’s kind of the conference. But then Solana was developer conversations, ecosystem builders, like everyone was having a great time.
41:54 And I think that’s something that we want to emulate. And you know, obviously you like out of all, you know, alt L1, Solano’s the one to emulate there. So a lot of shout outs to those guys and hopefully we can do something similar.
42:06 Brian Rose: Yeah, I’m reminded of a a great phrase that the customer experience is a lagging indicator of company culture. And I think it was that guy that used to sell shoes online. I forgot his name.
42:15 He he died a few years back.
42:17 John Patrick Mullin: But Zappos? The Zappos CEO.
42:18 Brian Rose: Right. Yeah, Yeah, exactly. That’s him Zappos, and something I always meditate on as an entrepreneur as well.
42:24 It’s like, yeah, ultimately, if your team isn’t happy and not enjoying it, it will result in a lousy product. You know, that’s just the truth. It lags, might take months, might take years, and also, if your company culture is so good, it’s only a matter of time before the customer feels that and then buys in. I love your comparison to from token to break point because I had my first break point at, at Singapore. And so I went over there and I was like, what is going on here? I mean, the thing that I was joking about, John, is that the, the, the CEO of a DEX comes on stage in Solana and he gets a standing ovation.
43:02 It’s like he gets so much love and the CEO of a Dex walks in the token and like, you know, there’s nobody in the room. And so for me, it was like, they just, they celebrate the people that helped them build and give them their liquidity. And a guy pulled me aside and he said, Brian Solana is all about free speech and free expression. He said, you know, base might say you can’t launch this meme because it’s maybe not good for the corporate brand. But on Solana, yeah, there’s a lot of rubbish. But it’s the essence of blockchain, which is freedom. You can do what you want.
43:32 And there was a vibe, There was excitement. It was a club. You were you were like in their club and they were going to change the world. And I could feel that, you know, even walking around in a three piece suit that like this was a vibe, you know, and I finally I could get Solana. So I know what you mean, you know, by that culture.
43:50 John Patrick Mullin: Absolutely.
43:51 I mean, we, I think it’s a it’s a really good North Star for us to emulate. And there’s so many different projects and, and, and, you know, builders in this space that, you know, we look up to, or I look up to founders that I look up to, but Solana’s definitely up there. And, you know, now that we are, it’s funny because like, I’ve always kind of considered us an RWA play, but really we’re an L1 play now with the main net launch last week. So, you know, hopefully we’ll be up in those ranks someday too.
44:14 Brian Rose: Actually, we will be. So talk to me about, you know, what you called OM Tober and your token is OM. So this was like a huge month for you guys. When we spoke in Singapore, it was September and we were like, OK, wow, lots coming up. Let’s have you on the show.
44:28 How did Omtober go so far? How was the mainland that launch? And then I’d love to to dig into a little bit of the RWA suite because you got like about 5 really interesting products features there.
44:42 John Patrick Mullin: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, Omtober was really an idea where we just felt like, hey, everyone feels like basically that October is going to RIP.
44:52 It’s, you know, October rate cuts, US election, maybe a regime change. Everyone felt like October was going to be a crazy month for crypto. So we’re like, why shouldn’t we not at least try to start mantras run early? So we started this by being president. Like, I mean, I’ve flown all over the world this year. We’re at KBW and I think Istanbul Blockchain Week and then token and all these different places. And we started kind of having this idea about October’s coming because everyone knew the main net was coming and what we had basically said was like after the summer before US election. So it’s a little bit of just like, OK, let’s generate some hype, let’s generate some buzz for what’s coming. Obviously we have all these different partnerships and deals and announcements and and main net coming. So let’s kind of get it, get it moving and and see what we can do.
45:35 So that was the initial idea. I would say that it was definitely a success. You know, we we went to all time high and and passed. So just on that particular metric it was definitely a success.
46:52 You shouldn’t just make sure that it went smoothly so we could start integrating with exchanges, data providers, infrastructure support and what not and then released it to the public last week. And one of the things that I’m really proud of is that I did both of those launches from the United States, the team was in, the team was in Hong Kong, you know, and, and Dubai, you know, grinding away. I was kind of on the road and, you know, I, I, I remember like just no sleep basically for this month.
47:17 But it’s been a really successful 1. You know, it’s launch went smoothly. We’re here at BBW and, and so my name is Blockchain week in Dubai this week. So we have some interesting stuff coming. There should be something coming out in just a, just a little bit here as well.
47:32 So I, I know this is live, so I won’t, I won’t say anything just yet. I won’t front run the news, but but yeah, this is going to be a big week for us. We’re going to close out October strong. And I keep telling everyone internally like we just made-up this idea about October as an, as a way to kind of generate some buzz. And you know, end of the day, we did the two things we needed, we wanted to do.
47:51 We broke all time high again and we launched the maintenance successfully. Like that’s an amazing accomplishment in and of itself. But October is a gimmick that we just made-up, right? We are just getting started with all the things that we’re working on. You know, there’s a November, there’s a December.
48:07 I mean, every month should be our month. And that’s the mentality in the mantra that we should have. And you know, again, with main net launching like everything that’s ahead of us is really the next, the next chapter, the next generation of what we’re what we’re up to, what we’re building. So.
48:21 Brian Rose: OK, nice. I like November and De Sombre.
48:23 John Patrick Mullin: Yeah, November. Januomber
48:25 Brian Rose: And can you tell me about like your suite of projects, you have this like Mantra digital identity, you’ve got the guard, you’ve got the token service, the decks and then you’ve got this leap, this liquidity protocol. How do those all come together And, and maybe you could just briefly talk to us about that.
48:42 John Patrick Mullin: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we’re built on the Cosmos SDK as kind of like our base layer for the blockchain.
48:49 We felt this was a really strong technical stack to build upon and then create a customised use case. And in our instance that is, you know, asset tokenization and we created several custom modules. So we have this like modular stack for builders to interact as well as, you know, users to interact with the RDBA suite that’s comprised of this decentralised ID. So basically like a digital identity on chain, you know, sold out an NFT concept. So people can, you know, do KYC one time and then be able to passport around the ecosystem much more easily and accessibly.
49:20 Because, you know, we have the opinion that KYC is not something that people, I mean, some people don’t like KYC at all. There’s obviously a kind of an anonymous and, and libertarian element of the space, but in general most people do KYC all the time to trade on centralised exchanges. But what you really don’t like doing it is a lot. So do it one time, set it, forget it. And you know, that’s kind of the idea. Then there’s a token service, which is just a basically like a, an RDB tokenization module that allows developers and asset issuers to very easily, you know, create customised tokens that fulfil their needs, that have different types of metadata within them, different smart contract functions. Will they need burning, freezing, you know, seizing in certain instances.
49:59 Like use the example of real estate. You know, if you get your wallet hacked for whatever reason and someone steals your house token, are you now homeless? Obviously not. But if the actual equity of that house is tied up into the token, that would be a problem if you couldn’t retrieve it. Obviously you need to verify all these things, but you know, these are these like edge case uses of governance that are quite important.
50:21 Then you have this kind of guard module in effect of the guard module is just a customizable governance framework that ties together those tokens with the digital wallets. You can say, hey, people from this country and that country are able to talk and interact with this product or that product or this asset or that asset, but not with this one or that one. So it creates a, you know, a simple user interface that developers can create these customizable governance frameworks that allow on chain permissioning very easily. So you don’t have to be a Web 3 developer to go in and, you know, know exactly what you’re doing at a smart contract level. You’re literally just pushing buttons on an interface and it automatically spits out this framework that allows, you know, app developers to build on chain applications without having to worry about, hey, am I going to run afoul of securities rules or AML and KYC rules or my local regulatory rules in whatever jurisdiction you’re operating?
51:12 And then the last two bits are the exchange or the decks. So we’re actually, we’re kind of rebranding and spinning out an on chain RW exchange called, we’re going to call it Omega. It’ll be one of the core projects in liquidity hubs for RW as on on mantra that is looking to launch the beginning of next year. We will have sometime in the sometime next year, let’s say the beginning, we will just have like a simple swapping on the permission list side of the chain. But this would be a permission platform particularly for real word assets.
51:41 So an actual, you know, on chain order book exchange spot first, eventually perpetuals and derivatives. But that’s kind of the idea to to roll that out for for real word assets. And then Leap is actually just a liquidity module. You could kind of understand it relatively similar to like Bear Chain’s proof of liquidity, but not at the consensus layer. So we’ve just separated that out into a smart contract layer where people can actually determine how to divert, you know, rewards and incentives to different auto Bay assets to again start incentivizing that on chain transaction volume and, you know, on chain liquidity.
52:16 Brian Rose: Wow, that’s quite a complete suite there. And then looking out to next year, looks like you have plans, you know, to create that whole onboarding system and that that real interaction with the real world.
52:27 John Patrick Mullin: Absolutely, Yeah. So I think the kind of the the three big things that we’re focusing on next year, you know, 1 is that, you know, launching the exchange product, you know, getting that on board and and I think that’ll be a really important part of the RWA ecosystem like in the whole world rather than let alone just mantras, you know, vision of it.
52:46 The next part is obviously just continue to bring high quality products, high quality assets that people are interested in buying and interested in participating on chain and really pushing that TVL game. So we’re not talking, you know, ten billion, we’re talking, we want to have built hundreds of billions. That’s how we’re getting to that trillion dollar opportunity that, you know, that we firmly believe in. And then the third bit, which I think is exciting and and you know, something that we’re we’re focusing on is actually creating enterprise layer twos that are built off of the mantra L1 that work with some of our institutional partners or asset issuers that they can own their client within their own brands. But then you have effectively like a almost like a gasless side chain where you know, they don’t actually need to transact with OM, but it’s just abstracted way in the background.
53:28 So you’re still using OM, you’re still creating value for OM. This change would basically be like, you know, renting security from the mainnet L1. So you have again, a token sync for, you know, staked OM at this L1 level. But it allows, you know, all these different brands to very easily create their own tokenization use cases, whether it’s real estate or financial assets or IP or watches or whiskey or whatever that then can have their own kind of like basically community ownership. So that’s like the the big technical leap that we’re that we’re building for next year.
53:59 Brian Rose: That’s nice, so JP Morgan could have a layer too and their customers wouldn’t even know how to spell OM, but everything would be settled there. But their customers would just think it’s their own chain.
54:11 John Patrick Mullin: I would love if JP Morgan wouldn’t make an L2. You never know. That would make my life. Stranger Things have happened 10. Percent.
54:19 Brian Rose: Tell me about your journey because you’ve been doing this for four plus years. You went through a very brutal and very cold crypto winter. We went through it here and just kept investing alongside of it. And then contrast that to this year, because this year you guys went from I think under 100 mil Val and crossed the billion dollar mark, which is a huge, huge accomplishment. And I know you’ve, you mentioned recently that only now you’ve just started paying yourself a salary and you’ve just kept it really, really tight and lean.
54:51 That’s quite a journey to be on, and every founder is thinking through the winter, man. I know we can make it, but very few actually make it. Can you talk to me about how all that felt, how you kept the team together, how you stay focused, Maybe even a couple dark moments there?
55:07 John Patrick Mullin: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think one of the things that was was helpful is I, I’ve done this before, right?
55:13 I’ve put everything, I’m all in like almost anything I do. But I’ve put everything into a business to keep it, keep it afloat before mantra and it ended up transitioning into, into what, what is now mantra today and then had to do it again a second time. So, you know, fortunately I have a very strong partner and waifu is supportive of the volatility that my life brings. But you know, I think one of the things that’s pretty important for me is that I’m just not like I’m not motivated by, by this. I’m, I’m motivated by the people I work with, by the, you know, the problem that we’re solving, by the, by the mission and purpose that mantra has.
55:51 And that makes my life, you know, really one track or single, you know, single mindset focus. Because, you know, I just get out of bed and I don’t ever feel like I’m working. I’m just living. It’s just my life. And I think one of the things that was really helpful in beginning of 2023 was I saw AI, saw the Coinbase documentary and within the Coinbase documentary, coin Brian worked with a coach, CEO coach called Matt Machari.
56:21 And I reached out to the Machari group and, and started doing some of their executive CEO coaching, which has been very, very instrumental. And throughout that I kind of realised, Hey, actually, I legitimately enjoy the pain. It’s a little sadistic, but I, I, I actually like it when it sucks. It makes it, it makes it exciting. It makes, you know, I’m super competitive. So it just makes me want to, to win and to figure it out and to, and to make it work.
56:44 And obviously once you’ve done that a few times, the challenges may be different, but you know that if you don’t give up, you’ll be able to, you know, get through it no matter what. So that was obviously, you know, something that was really instrumental for me. And this was a, this was a year where I just felt like everything, you know, last year at least was everything was going wrong. I mean, whether it’s like having to lay off half the company, whether it was, you know, issues with, you know, not getting licencing or, or, or, or, you know, former partners or, or whatever. I mean, there’s so many different things that just were, were horrible and hard to deal with. So I just felt like life is testing me right now and I just got to keep going.
57:21 And then fortunately, you know, at the end of last year, we met some of our investors who are, you know, now our biggest supporters. And it was really just like this catalyst to finally have someone who believed in me, believed in what we’re doing and, and believed in the opportunity. And, you know, everything kind of clicked, right place, right time, right group of people, right technology, right everything. And it’s just been one of the craziest years of my life. I mean, every day is different.
57:44 Every day is, is a, is a, is a blessing. Honestly, I’m, I’m very, very fortunate. And I, honestly, it makes me hungry than ever, though we have this, this mantra internally. Stay hungry, stay humble. And that’s definitely what we are.
57:58 So that’s that’s how we just do it.
58:00 Brian Rose: And how do you deal with the token price and how, how would you advise other CE OS to deal with the token price? Because like you said, it could be up 20% on no news. It could be down when you know secretly you’re developing the greatest tech or you just signed a partnership and people can get happy or get sad. I remember I used to when I used to trade on Wall Street, I used to like, you know, every day I’d have AP and L And so I would be happy when I made money and I’d be sad when I lose money. And I think after like a year or two, I looked and I said, wait a second, this is silly.
58:34 I’m not a better person today or I’m not a worse person today because the, you know, the treasury markets are up or the Fed wanted to cut rates. And I was like, I got to separate that from my life and what I’m doing or I’m just going to go insane. And I’m just wondering how how you separate from from that and even how you might advise other people in the space because otherwise it literally will drive you crazy, right?
58:57 John Patrick Mullin: A. 100% it can.
58:58 I mean, I would, you know, that being said, I still like, if you look at my phone, I still have the own price right at the right at the front from finance side. I mean, I see it now more than ever, honestly. But but yeah, I mean, I think it’s actually more from my side now. It’s more about like, OK, what’s in the market, what’s happening? How do I need to react? So it’s more just about planning and being an operator rather than like, am I going to be happy or sad about it? Obviously, I prefer it when it’s green and not as much when it’s, you know, red.
59:27 But you know, I think if you’re very, if you have a lot of conviction about what you’re doing and you know, part of that coaching was I just felt like one. I found that this is my calling in life. I mean, I’m built for this. This is what I was put on this earth to do. And because of that mindset, it is an inevitability that we will win, that we will succeed.
59:48 That mantra will be whatever it’s going to be, that we’re going to be, you know, a leader in this massive opportunity, that auto BAS are going to be this massive thing. It’s just an inevitability. And and and that just means that it’s not going to exactly turn out 100% like I just said, but we will not stop until we get to whatever that ends up looking like in the future. And because of that, you know, you start separating out the short term fluctuations.
1:00:11 And price movements from what you’re actually doing. And you know, I think the one thing that’s really important is like, if you, you know, when in doubt, zoom out always right? And, you know, I think we remember we had this like moment in the middle of the year where we had this dip after big run and people were really, you know, upset because we’d launched something and it didn’t really work that well. And I’m like, listen, the market is is irrelevant and irrational in these things, right? Like they don’t, like you said, they don’t know what’s coming, They don’t know what we’re working on. They don’t know the partnerships that we have. So just keep doing it, keep building and good things will happen over time.
1:00:40 And I think that’s also shown in that, like the last two year history where, you know, we were down only for a long time after, you know, our initial Binance listing back in 2021, D 5 bubble pop industry was going through a hard time, but we kept building, kept building, kept building. And I think if you have the mentality of building in the bear, you’ll be a success in the in the bowl. And I think we’re like almost case in point for that, that the the winners of the current cycle are made in the previous one, right?
1:01:07 So for founders, don’t give up. Don’t, you know, like you’ll find your moment if you keep trying, if you have conviction on something. And the other thing I think just in general for anyone considering launching tokens is, you know, you have to own that responsibility. It is something that I take incredibly serious. You know, I think it would have been honestly easier for me to leave. The mantra was down only.
1:01:27 And, you know, technically there was very little financial opportunity for me as a person anymore, But I felt like there was a fiduciary responsibility, even though not not technically, you know, that’s just tokens, right? But there was a responsibility that I have because the minute you put out a token, you’re a public company, you’re a public asset and and you have responsibility to your community. So because of that, there was no way that we could ever stop until we until we win and until we, you know, do what’s right by our community.
1:01:54 Brian Rose: It’s. Amazing. Do you believe that if you never quit, you will always win?
1:02:01 John Patrick Mullin: Yes.
1:02:01 Brian Rose: Yeah, me too, me too.
1:02:03 I’m sure people could come and argue that, but I believe that’s true. I just think it’s true and that’s you kind of want founders a little bit like that. John, just a couple last questions. What is what does Mantra look like in in 10 years time and will you still be at Mantra Building I.
1:02:23 John Patrick Mullin: Certainly hope so. OK.
1:02:25 Yeah, I certainly hope so. I mean, I don’t like I said, this is like, this is my life. Mantra’s almost like my baby. I mean it like it’s, you know, companies are like children in certain instances that they grow, they mature, and that you have this love and care for them. And I 100% feel I don’t have kids yet, but I feel like this is my child and I’ve seen how it’s grown.
1:02:44 And you know, honestly, right now, you know, I’m a big sports fan and I have this like a lot of analogies of, of company building to professional sports. And also that idea of like, hey, you know, I wasn’t ever going to be a professional basketball player. I can’t jump that high. I have small hands, although I love sports, I love basketball. But this is like kind of my moment.
1:03:03 This is like my this was my GoPro moment, right? This is Mantra’s GoPro moment. And now that we’re here, you know, we had our first professional contract this year, right? But now we want to, we win playoff games, we want to win championships, we want to win All Star games, we want to win MVPS. Like that’s where we’re headed and that’s what I, you know, see us doing in the next 10 years. What that means in practise, honestly, I don’t know. But if we do all those things, I know that as a group, as a business, as and as a community, we’ll be incredibly, incredibly successful together and we’ll do a lot of really exciting, cool stuff and hopefully leave an indelible mark on the world. I mean, legitimately, I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think that there was significant change that we can, you know, make in the world, even if it is purely about finances. But I do think that, you know, for us being an industry leader and doing it the right way is incredibly, incredibly important.
1:03:56 You know, it’s not always the easiest to not cut corners and, and encrypt us so much because there’s this like financial temptation and, and things all around you, people getting attention for, you know, crazy stuff and, you know, things that are like, you know, what the heck, Why aren’t we getting the, you know, the recognition that we deserve? But staying the course and, and staying true is really an important thing to us. And you know, I just feel like now is an opportunity for me as a founder to leave my mark and to, you know, hopefully be like the next Gen of crypto founders who actually does it the right way.
1:04:27 It’s like time to put a, a good crypto founder on a pedestal. You know, not someone who’s going to rug you in the end of the day, right. So I just feel, you know, there’s a unique position that we’re in and if we do what we’re supposed to do, which we will, we’ll be incredibly successful, the community will be incredibly successful and we’ll we’ll leave the world literally a better place.
1:04:47 Brian Rose: John, what’s the best way for someone to get involved with Mantra? That means maybe someone that maybe just simply wants to buy the token.
1:04:54 Maybe they want to get up, set up to own some of these assets and get these incredible yields and diversified opportunities. Maybe it’s someone that actually wants to put the assets on the chain. I don’t know an investor. Maybe someone wants to work for you. What’s the best way for people to get involved in different levels?
1:05:10 John Patrick Mullin: Absolutely.
1:05:11 So I mean, I think, you know, obviously we have our access via Telegram, discord socials, you know, please do reach out if you have questions, You know, we’ll happily, you know, take care of you. I’m honestly super active on well, Telegram and, and, and Twitter X particularly. So you can even DM me or, you know, comment at me and, and on posts and things and, you know, ask questions will happily help. I actually really like engaging with the community. That’s a, that’s an incredibly important thing.
1:05:39 But you can obviously, you know, get and learn more about how to participate in the ecosystem. We’re on many major centralised exchanges as well as Texas, you can check as the the major one. Let’s give a shout out to Binance because it is BBW this week and we are here in Dubai. So, you know, Binance is probably our our main liquidity hub and liquidity partner from that perspective. And if you’re looking to kind of be able to participate in some of these opportunities, you know, come out and check the Montro website and, and you can actually start, you know, investing in some of these products and, and learning about them.
1:06:11 And, you know, being an early mover, I think that’s an exciting, exciting thing as a community member to, you know, be on that first mover, you know, track because this is really cutting edge stuff. And you know, all these things are, are brand new and, and, and exciting, frankly. Yeah.
1:06:27 Brian Rose: Look, it’s cutting edge and you’re leading the way. And you know, we’ve alluded a couple times to maybe not liking this term RWA.
1:06:34 And you know, we’ve been investing now for about 3 years. And I’ll be honest, John, I had tonnes of people coming on pitching us. We’re RWA. We’re RWA. And when I drill down, I’m like, no, you’re not or you’re not going to really make a dent in this because I don’t see it happening.
1:06:49 I don’t see this growing. I don’t see the liquidity. And we passed on so many opportunities. And so it’s it’s amazing when you see someone who’s doing it right and the market sees that everyone has seen that. You know, you guys have grown tremendously this year and it looks like you’re going to continue to grow.
1:07:04 So it’s just exciting being on this adventure with you. We’re with you probably for another decade or or so, because I think you guys are just getting started. And you know, it’s funny, I got I got hot miked at the blockchain life. And the guy was like, give me your top five cryptos. And I just blurted out, you know, mantra because you know, we’ve been watching, watching, watching what you’re doing and just watching the growth of it.
1:07:27 And you’re now, you know, right up there in a super high market cap and you know, one of the few places that is actually doing RWA and that’s amazing. So look, it’s been great getting to see you and your vision. I still think in crypto, we we invest a lot in the vision and the mission and the founder, which trickles down to the people. That makes a huge difference. And even back to your quote, it’s the team, not the tech. So yeah, thanks so much for the time. Congrats on Omtuber, Congrats on the main net launch. Congrats on what you’re doing with Dubai. I love that ecosystem.
1:08:00 And honestly, my job is to help contribute to that when I go back in January and tell the great stories of that city. And then hopefully we’ll see the US come on board and everything goes up from there. So thanks John, wishing you all the best and for people, they should go follow you on Twitter, follow mantra on Twitter and then just start engaging and figure out what they can do to get involved.
1:08:20 John Patrick Mullin: Absolutely. Yeah.
1:08:21 Thank you so much for the support. Thanks for having me on. It was a really awesome conversation and hopefully we’ll do more of this in person and and in the future.
1:08:28 Brian Rose: Yeah, definitely. All right. Thanks so much, John.
1:08:30 Thanks everybody. We’ll see you next time on London Real. Take care.
