Jon Mui - The $1 Trillion Power Shift: How Moongate Is Unlocking Web3 For The Next Billion Users

Full transcript: Jon Mui on London Real

3:24 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose, my guest today. This is London Real. I am Brian Rose, my guest today is John Mui, the investor, entrepreneur, and Web3 expert. You are the co-founder and CEO of Moongate, a next-generation protocol redefining how value is created and exchanged in the $1 trillion attention economy.

3:52 You’re building what you call an Attention Asset Protocol, a brand-new infrastructure that aims to shift power away from centralized platforms and back into the hands of brands, creators, and consumers. Moongate has pioneered an innovative engage-to-earn mechanism that allows your 2 million users to be rewarded not just for attention but for meaningful participation, giving them a stake in the ecosystems they help build. You’ve said this isn’t just about blockchain or brand engagement, but about creating a more open, decentralized, and equitable internet where value is shared and attention is earned, not extracted.

4:28 John, welcome to London Real in Dubai.

4:30 Jon Mui: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

4:32 Brian Rose: I want to start by saying that Moongate is one of our portfolio companies here at London Real Ventures, the world’s first media-powered investment firm, where our mission is to transform the world by investing in cutting-edge Web3 and AI companies while giving our partners marketing exposure across the London Real Media platforms and academies. We heighten awareness, create customers, and build communities by leveraging our global audience and extensive network.

4:55 John, super excited to be part of this journey with you. So let’s jump in. What is Moongate?

5:01 Jon Mui: Awesome. Well, first of all, thank you for the invitation.

5:04 It’s always been great working with London Real and all the kind of media exposure, fantastic. Just quickly about Moongate, I think I’ll dial it down and just make it simple for our audience. Effectively, we see Moongate as a gateway for users to access and utilize different Web3 technology. And simply put, there’s basically two layers on our kind of ecosystem. On the surface, we have what we call kind of like an onboarding layer whereby we issue tokens, digital assets to retail users so that they can easily kind of complete kind of different activations, different engagement into real life activities.

5:45 And we’ve had a ton of success on that front with ticketing, membership, et cetera. And I mean, we’ll highlight that a bit later, but I mean, we work with top brands in Web3 and also Web2 and have a ton of success in bringing in fresh new retail users into Web3. And once they enter into our ecosystem, that’s kind of where our second layer comes in. Our second layer is basically an application layer, whereby all of these users can actually then utilize Moongate to access different web three native applications.

6:18 You mentioned earlier in the introduction that we have this engagement system where basically people can monetize their engagement data. And that’s kind of one of the exciting piece that we’ve been building and super excited to share more about. But another piece that we’ve also been building is actually a platform where people can actually start to copy trade top traders in crypto. And effectively I think how the audience should see Moongate is that it’s an access point for users to access all of these cool innovative applications that’s only possible through blockchain technology.

6:55 And so over time we’ll continue to develop and incubate more of these Web3 applications to share to our millions of users that are already on MoonGate. And I would say basically what we’re trying to build is an empire for Web3 consumer applications. And so yes, we started off with ticketing, but that’s really not our end goal. That’s just our plan to kind of expand our top funnel to bringing a ton of new users. And now that we have millions of users, now we’re starting to actually kind of execute on our grand scheme, which is these consumer applications where we can bring more value to Moongate and also bring more value to our actual users.

7:37 But yeah, that’s a kind of quick intro of Moongate, happy to kind of dive into any more of that as we contain this conversation.

7:44 Brian Rose: You know, I distinctly remember when you pitched us that the number of customers you had, real world customers, just like stood out like a sore thumb. And you had this real world engagement with people via your ticketing platform and early stage that really blew away anything in Web3. And again, these people had like a physical interaction with you where they had a ticket with your logo on it when they went to a token event or a Binance event.

8:10 And that got our attention. It’s one of the reasons we really were excited to partner with you because you could then take these customers that had been activated, not just on a wallet or not just engaged with the DeFi exchange, but they had like more of a real interaction with you. and then you were taking them to other pieces. Is that one of the things that makes you very different than most of the Web3 protocols?

8:32 Jon Mui: Yeah, I mean, that’s a great way to look at it.

8:35 I would say like 99% of crypto applications and platform just exists online. And there’s not much kind of real interactions and not much connection to our real day-to-day life. And to me, I mean, that’s a missed opportunity because obviously like, yes, there’s a lot of real use cases online, But we also see that there’s a ton of other opportunities offline. And so that’s where we stand out. And as you mentioned, we are actually the biggest NFT ticketing player globally.

9:05 And we actually power major conferences. Basically, all of the top web three conferences are utilizing the Moongate technology. There’s brands like Token 2049, Binance. And actually, even outside of web three, we power quite a few web two music festivals and talk to major brands to kind of utilize our tech. Because I think ultimately all of these web two brands and web three brands also recognize the potential in like the human interaction and being able to kind of record that engagement and kind of reward people based on that.

9:41 So that I think when, I mean, even us kind of talking in person, that’s a lot more kind of rewarding versus, and we’re remarkable versus just our, if we talk on Zoom or just text on Telegram. And so I think we are really the pioneer in kind of focusing on that in real life interaction piece. And I’m very excited that that has worked out well for us in the last couple of years.

10:02 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s big and those are big names that you’ve partnered with as well. I mean, how do you go from tickets to copy trading?

10:09 That’s quite an evolution. I like the fact that you didn’t just stay with the tickets because there are web three players that solely focus kind of on the ticket, the ticket experience and competing with other ticket people. How did you open up the aperture and say, okay, we can make this so much bigger?

10:27 Jon Mui: Yeah, so, I mean, the way I see it is that I’ve always seen our platform as just like a consumer empire. I don’t really see ticketing as our end goal whatsoever.

10:37 I mean, I’m sure a kind of maybe guest knows, like when you do a startup, obviously you start with like a small niche, you kind of try to solve that and then you expand out. For us, I mean, we solve that ticketing need. I mean, we’ve dominated the ticketing space And we realize where our value really lies. It’s not in, OK, selling tickets. Yes, we do that, and we make quite a bit of revenue from that.

11:01 But actually, we realize where our value lies is in our user base. And it’s in our ability to bring in fresh new retail users into the web3 space. And when I look at that and think of different ways that we can actually capitalize on that, I realized, you know what? We don’t have to be a ticketing company whatsoever. Like ticketing is just our way to expand our top funnel and bringing more users to other applications that we may build or incubate.

11:33 And because of that, a kind of realization, I just thought of, okay, you know what? What is the real, what are kind of couple of like clear product market fit themes in crypto that definitely makes sense. And to me, obviously, one is speculation and trading. That’s the reality of crypto. Most people do that.

11:54 Unfortunately, 99% of people lose money. I mean, I’m barely profitable, but still.

12:00 Brian Rose: I would say I’ve definitely had periods where I lost a lot of money, too.

12:05 Jon Mui: But regardless, even if people win or lose money, I recognize that everyone is just addicted to trading. However, as mentioned, we know that most people lose money.

12:17 And so I just thought of a way, you know what, I recognize that there are top traders out there, like the top 0.1% of people, that actually makes tens of millions of dollars, whereas everyone else loses. So how can I actually make it so that our user base can tap into and copy these top 0.1% traders? And that’s kind of how the idea of copy trading first started. And I mean, we’re about to release our beta for that product in about three weeks. And effectively on a high level, it just allows all of our users to copy trade literally the top hundred on-chain wallets and kind of do like perps trading, spot tradings, all powered by Hyperliquid.

13:02 So I’m really good, obviously is one of the hottest kind of chain and kind of platform out there. And we also see the potential and we wanna also kind of capitalize on that as well.

13:13 Brian Rose: interesting, and Hyperliquid is known as kind of the decks that’s more like a sex, right? The one that might actually replace centralized exchanges, which most people in crypto see as a good thing. Why choose them as opposed to working with other centralized exchanges on the country trade?

13:30 Jon Mui: So, I think the number one answer is that with centralized exchanges, you always have to risk of them just taking your money. And that has happened to me with FTX, And I lost a lot of money with FTX because of that centralized party risk. I think with Hyperliquid, I mean, it’s fully some kind of self custody. So all your funds are owned by you. And I also recognize that actually they, in terms of volume, obviously as a trader, that’s kind of one of the most important thing.

14:00 In terms of volume, they already at about 30 to 40% of finance level, which is basically liquid enough for you to just actively trade in size. And then finally, I think the reason why we’re kind of partnering with Hyperliquid here is because, I mean, they have built their platform such that they really welcome kind of people like us to build on top of them and actually provide kind of a mutually beneficial system for us to build applications and also kind of monetize on that. And so for us, we’ve evaluated all the different taxes out there and we realized hyper liquid is definitely the place to go And that’s kind of where we why we decided to build this copy trading application on that.

14:41 Brian Rose: Okay now They recently had an issue. I think they had to de-list a meme coin on there and there was a little controversy Do you see that as just kind of a growing pain of?

14:51 Something that is decentralized having to deal with kind of real-world issues where sometimes there’s a manipulation going on where you’re gonna take a big loss. Was that a positive, a net positive that it was like a learning experience? What did you see from that? Because we all want this to work. We’ve all had issues with centralized exchanges, not the ones you’re talking about as well.

15:09 They also rip out fees we don’t know about. They front run. I mean, look, I worked on Wall Street for 15 years, and these guys are just stockbrokers in disguise. There’s nothing blockchain about them. They’re just stockbroking digital assets.

15:23 And on Wall Street, we got 100 tricks to take your money and 100 more. you figure those out and I try to teach my students all the things and they’re like oh my gosh and so I’m the first one to want to get rid of that but there’s also growing pains when you try to do that what did you make of some of this recent news

15:41 Jon Mui: yeah so I think with all kind of new platforms especially ones that are fully kind of decentralized and all transactions are on chain it’s very I mean conducive to manipulation like that and be affected I think it’s just the reality of a platform that’s on chain. But I think with Hyperliquid specifically, they dealt with the situation quite well.

16:01 And they’ve also then progressively made changes to how their system operates, where, again, their kind of validators can vote to delist kind of lower liquidity tokens to prevent that from happening. But for us, like that kind of situation was also quite eye-opening for us building that copy trading platform because we recognize that when people copy a good trader, sometimes they don’t actually want to copy every single token trade that they do because what if like they happen to trade something that’s super illiquid or manipulated and then as a user, you would be actually kind of screwed from that situation. And so for our platform, we’ve actually built in blacklists of tokens, meaning on our platform you can actually just say hey I only want to trade I don’t know the top 20 tokens on Hyperliquid and everything else let’s just blacklist it and not execute those trades. So because of that incident specifically that helped us built in that safeguard for us to protect our users. So I mean in hindsight I think it’s good that Hyperliquid went through that because if we had not gone through that we wouldn’t have built in this kind of blacklist idea for our platform too.

17:10 Brian Rose: Okay nice yeah it’s good to learn from this and kind of iterate.

17:14 What’s on tap for the next 12 months for Moongate? I know you’re traveling all around the world you’re really experienced in these B2B plays and these massive corporations which takes a long time but that’s some of your IP I would say. What are some of the big corporations you want to land and what do you think it actually evolves into in the next 12 months?

17:35 Jon Mui: Yeah so I mean the way we’re kind of where I sit I kind of just focus on two things number one continue to expand our top funnel as mentioned we just want to ingest more and more users to moon gate ecosystem and second of all continue to expand our application so in terms of like the top funnel and when we’ve as mentioned before this conversation we’re talking to quite a few major web two brands that are interested in our tech and what’s interesting is that back then it was It’s very difficult to even get contact with these Web2 organizations.

18:08 But throughout the last couple of years, as these organizations start to attend these major Web3 events and see our tech in action, they realize that, hey, actually it’s such a good experience and it’s actually beneficial to users without additional headaches. And so because of those interactions, they actually reach out to us. There are a lot of international brands that we’re in conversation with, and there’s a ton of exciting activations that we’re in talks of building with them.

18:39 At this stage, it’s a bit too early for me to share, but we’re super excited about that, so in the next 12 months, we’re definitely focused on doing that as one of my major items. The second piece, as I mentioned, is these applications. I want to create and incubate these applications such that, even by itself, it’s a very successful and kind of a real business by itself, but together with the entire Moongate ecosystem, it would allow it to grow even faster, it can help tap into our millions of user base, and just have a really different growth speed versus the average, I guess, like Web3 platform.

19:21 Is I would say the average Web 3 applications doesn’t have the millions of users that we have. And I think that’s where we are trying to play to our advantage of having a massive wide funnel and continue to grow on that. And so it’s a very exciting kind of next 12 months for us. And I mean, I’m more excited than ever now that we kind of have kind of launched our token and now we can kind of focus on actually just building and continue to growing MoonGate.

19:49 Brian Rose: Let’s talk about the token and the launch.

19:52 A lot of Web3 founders are gonna be listening here. They haven’t launched their token. What can you tell them, now that you’ve done it, about a token launch? What are the do’s and the don’ts? What are the lessons you learned?

20:05 What are the things you would do over again? And what are the things you wouldn’t do again? And then we can maybe talk about the future of the token. But maybe talk about that.

20:14 Jon Mui: Sure, that’s a really good question.

20:16 I mean, in terms of do’s and don’ts, I think, number one, don’t over-engineer the whole thing. I mean, we spent a lot of time designing different mechanisms, et cetera, to try to make it work.

20:27 Brian Rose: Like media, and the roadmap, and the influencers, and the engagement, and the airdrops, that?

20:32 Jon Mui: Yeah.

20:32 Brian Rose: And you think it was sometimes-

20:34 Jon Mui: Some of it is quite distracting, and actually not that net positive.

20:38 Brian Rose: Okay.

20:38 Jon Mui: Of course, there are certain kind of elements that are very useful, but I would say what actually matters at the end of the day is having a good product, where your token’s actually integrated well. And I think to be honest, like for us, that’s kind of a point where we could have done better because at the point, at the time when we launch our token, the token itself.

21:01 London Real promo: How do you get out of a rat race? How do you create wealth, not only for yourself, but also for the generations to come after?

21:09 I am absolutely amazed with the quality of companies that we’re getting exposure to. We go on to Zoom calls with the innovators and the folks who are building new applications in metaverse, blockchain, artificial intelligence, decentralized finance. What’s going on, everybody?

21:48 I view it now as the best investment I’ve ever made. The upside, I view, is unlimited. And as a retail investor, I would never get this exposure anywhere else outside of investment club. It’s the only investment club.

22:02 Jon Mui: Was not really utilized just yet.

22:04 Like there wasn’t really that much utility on it besides like governance. I think in hindsight, like what we could have done better is actually building in those kind of different token utility, token sinks on day one, such that our token holders can see that, hey, actually we can use Moongate Token to do this and that. And that’s kind of where we are kind of doing now. I mean, like the tokens would then in the future when we’re kind of building this, be able to participate in different applications.

22:35 If our applications launch a token, you can participate on the Moongate Launchpad and get first dips into these awesome projects. And I think the other kind of key learning point I have is really don’t see like launching token as like the end state, right? Like I know a lot of people are just trying to sprint to that and just think, okay, once I launch token, everything is done. That’s a very naive way of thinking. That’s when your real problems begin, right?

23:08 That’s really when your real problems begin. And that’s when you start to own the community on where you have to now execute to prove that, hey, this is why you guys bought into me and this is why you guys are right. And that takes a long period of time to kind of develop, right? And so I think for us, if I were to do it again, it’s just that mindset, knowing that, hey, this is not the end. Yes, it’s very difficult to even get to that stage, but we have to recognize that, hey, is just the beginning. Now we have to focus on actually execution and building and continue to grow so that our token holders and our community would be rewarded for their trust in us. And so that’s what we’re doing now. That’s why we’re continuing to build. That’s why we’re out here doing these interviews. I mean, I think a lot of other crypto projects, once they’ve launched a token, sometimes they would just kind of disappear and kind of fade into kind of nothingness. But for us, we have a real product. We have real revenue.

24:10 We have major clients that are onboarding with us all the time. So we’re definitely here to stay. And even though, to be honest, in the short term, our token price has definitely been depressed, I actually think that now it might be a very good opportunity to reevaluate our token and see, hopefully, you guys agree with us in our direction and our vision of building a Web3 consumer empire and see that, hey, we do have that real traction to back that up.

24:37 Brian Rose: Well, let’s talk about that because you launched a token like so many people have in the last three to six months and a lot of these tokens are depressed, much below their TGE price, you know, sometimes 80, 90% below and everyone’s sitting there going, oh man, this kind of sucks.

24:53 Now, some people are looking now and saying, okay, where are the gems here? You know, where are the potential M&A opportunities? Where are the things that really have value? How do you make a case for them that Moongate is one of those things? And you mentioned the utility.

25:06 How quickly can you engineer real world utility into your token to where it actually has a purpose, its value can go up because it will do things or that you actually have a real launchpad coming up and it will get any access to those things. Like how soon can you execute on those? What would you tell people that are looking at you saying, wait a second, these guys have two million users. I see their logo when I go to Binance conferences and token, this is something special.

25:32 How do you then explain that the token is also something that’s gonna appreciate?

25:37 Jon Mui: Yeah, I think the reason why we’re kind of where we are today, obviously like I think a lot of projects when they launch a token price do kind of go down. I think the reason why I think the kind of retail is pricing us where we are today is because they’re just seeing us as a ticketing, pure ticketing play. And in my opinion like that is actually a miscategorization because like I said our Our value is not actually in just monetizing on ticket sales.

26:07 That upside is quite limited. I would say our value is actually becoming a consumer empire and being able to utilize the massive user base that we have and be able to funnel them into different applications that we have and be able to design our tokens such that it’s actually accruing value as our applications grow. That’s why I would say we’re definitely mispriced. In terms of how quickly those launchpad can be implemented and these token utility can go live, actually the tech itself is very, very easy, doing the launchpad.

26:49 What we’re actually more focused on is building the application well, such that, like I said, by itself it’s actually a very real product that’s very profitable and where it’s actually bringing a ton of real value to our users, and we think that once we get there, like then we can kind of turn on the launchpad switch like just almost overnight. So we see a lot of projects where they launch without anything built and just kind of selling air. We don’t really like to do that approach. We much rather build something that people are already using.

27:27 They can see the real value in that, then we turn on kind of the token switch. And so that’s why we’re taking a little bit of a different approach. I mean, as mentioned, our copy trading app should be coming out at the end of this month. And so actually in our kind of private alpha testing group right now, we already have like a couple million US dollars of people that are using our platform and we’re already generating revenue from that. So, I mean, the traction is fantastic.

27:53 Brian Rose: Amazing.

27:54 Jon Mui: But we wanna make sure that everyone that uses our platform actually does make money. So far, in fact, everyone that’s have been using our platform is profitable. Really? Because you can imagine like, if you can copy the top traders out there because all of their trades are on chain and you can do it in an instant, like that is definitely a profitable strategy.

28:17 Like in like what to with stocks, like people can copy like Nancy Pelosi, for example, but with stocks, there’s a 45 day reporting delay. So it doesn’t make as much sense. And you also don’t really see their whole kind of portfolio. But with crypto, because everything is on chain, and you can take leverage as well, you can copy their trades in, well, instantly. And our platform does that instantly for you in like a mobile app.

28:45 So it’s awesome. We’re super excited about it.

28:48 Brian Rose: I remember I was talking to the guy that founded Pantera and they have a liquid token fund. And I remember asking him about trading crypto And he said, Brian, we have, I think they had 40 or 50 or 60 people on their desk trading that liquid token fund. And he said, we barely know what we’re doing.

29:05 He said, so if an individual without all of our knowledge thinks that they’re gonna be able to beat the market, it’s extremely rare, and we all know that. The stats are like 95% of crypto traders lose money, it’s probably true. So if you can crack this, that would be epic. And you have something that everyone else is jealous of, John, and that’s that user base. And so, you know, like you said, you’re right now doing your private beta, even if you tap 1% of that base, that’s bigger than anybody else’s user base.

29:33 And so, and let me say one final thing, and all this is a question for you, you really get one chance to launch that, right? So you got to make sure that product is excellent, right? Before you do it, because if you lose out to your own audience, you might not get a second shot. And that’s kind of why you’re being careful, I guess.

29:50 Jon Mui: Extremely careful, like we have a ton of interest and using our platform.

29:54 Like I literally have WhatsApp conversation of people like begging me, please, I don’t care it’s not fully done, just let me use it right now. And I have a big wait list of people that want to use it. But as mentioned, like I understand that trust is actually everything. And because we are here to build a product that lasts, rather than just our base on hype. And so that’s why we’re just very, very selective in who we let into our private beta, so that we make sure everyone’s winning.

30:24 And we actually provide the wallets that people can copy. And we have very comprehensive data analytics built into the mobile app, where you can see like, hey, this trader is this type of trader. This is kind of their risk return profile. These are all their advanced kind of like, I don’t know, like sharp ratio, sertino ratio, all of those built into the app so that they can decide, oh, this guy is good and I’ll copy them. And so we’ve kind of been very meticulous in designing our platform such that most, if not all of our users, should be profitable because in the first place, we only show them profitable traders that have a long history of execution.

31:02 Brian Rose: Okay. So there’s a real education component here with what you’re doing?

31:07 Jon Mui: Yes and no, because our platform is made such that it’s super user-friendly. We’ve looked at a ton of Web2 FinTech platforms like Robinhood, such that the whole user experience exactly like that and I think for only people that do care about like the really detailed analytics they would care about those like sortino sharp ratio that I mentioned and we also have actually built in our own proprietary scoring system for these wallets but I think for the most day-to-day kind of retail users they can just look at the total P&L, the drawdown, the monthly returns that we show and that should be sufficient for you to at least kind of and try a little bit of money and see for yourself that, wow, I’m already profitable versus myself.

31:57 Like for me, I’ve been using my own platform for about a month and I’m up about 80%. Crazy. So it’s really crazy how much upside there is in just delegating this investment to someone else that’s good. So it’s almost like a fun of fun. You can think of it that way.

32:19 Brian Rose: This is so important, John, because I know so many people that get into crypto and they punt a meme coin and they get burned and they leave. And I know so many people that get in and they follow somebody on Twitter who pushes a coin that maybe they don’t own, maybe they were paid to push, and they get burned. And they walk away saying, crypto sucks. And it kills me because I’m such a big fan of Web3 and the internet of ownership and all the upside that it has and the fact that it democratizes finance and all these things.

32:47 And yet most people’s first experience is terrible. And look, I started trading on Wall Street in 1993 and I worked in finance for 15 years. And I know one thing, I’m not a good trader, okay? I was a better guy at running a derivatives book and structuring and being a market maker. And what I would love, and so I know I don’t try to trade crypto because I know I’m not good at it.

33:09 But I would love to make money in crypto. And so why not copy someone who, like you said, has a track record for years of making money. It doesn’t, what do they say, past results don’t represent future returns, but it’ll give you a much better idea. So why not start someone with a positive experience?

33:27 Jon Mui: Exactly.

33:27 And I think with our platform, to be honest, taking a step back, why did I build this in the first place? Because I was managing my own list of wallets that I was tracking for meme coins. And I thought, hey, you know what? This is definitely a profitable strategy, but I cannot just sit in front of my computer all day, just waiting for them to trade and then instantly copy. That’s just not a sustainable strategy.

33:51 So I thought, you know what, maybe I can build a system to kind of automate this. And then I observed that, you know what, just trading meme coins alone is not a sustainable strategy either because meme coins gets just a bubble, right? It could go really hot or it could go really bad. What’s more sustainable is in trading like the top coins out there. And so with Hyperliquid, as you know, all the coins out there on Hyperliquid are already like the top coins.

34:18 And so you have much less manipulation there and there’s a ton of liquidity for you to actually trade in size and copy in size. And I would say like what’s unique about our copy trading platform is that unlike a lot of other copy trading platforms where the lead trader creates a portfolio and where They just get a share of the upside like a carried interest. For us, it’s very different actually. The lead trader themselves don’t even know that you’re copying them because we are just looking at on-chain data and we’re just ranking based on on-chain records like who’s the top trader and we almost like shadow them without them knowing that we’re copying them.

35:01 And so what that means is a couple of things like number one, these late lead traders, because they’re trading their personal account, right? they are not gonna be doing like really reckless leverage as their own money is on the line. And number two, you don’t have to share any carried interest with them, so you keep all the upside. So it’s a very interesting approach that we took, which I would say is definitely not something that you could do in like web two.

35:26 And so super excited about this platform.

35:28 Brian Rose: Do you have names for these people or you don’t know who they are?

35:31 Jon Mui: They’re all anonymous by definition.

35:33 Brian Rose: Or do you know some of them are associated with certain people?

35:36 Jon Mui: So we I mean I right now have a list of about 500 wallets that I’ve been monitoring and we as mentioned we’ve built in like a really detailed Kind of filtering system to kind of categorize and rank who’s the top traders.

35:47 Brian Rose: Do you know who they are?

35:48 Jon Mui: Yeah, so for some of them we do know public We do know yes some of them are public, but to be honest most of them are anonymous

35:55 Brian Rose: and you have a name for them

35:57 Jon Mui: Yeah, we just got them smart wallets and small wallet 4 to 45

36:00 Brian Rose: smart wallet three, is that what you call them? They’re just numbered?

36:04 Jon Mui: Yeah, well, some of them are like whales, institutions. We have different names for it. But yeah, for now, that’s what we kind of label them.

36:12 And to be honest, it doesn’t actually matter. Because you just have to recognize that these traders are trading their own money. It’s like your personal account. And so they generally would not do stupid trades. And like I said, they have a long history of execution.

36:28 And so, yeah, I mean, we’re building a very new type of copy trading that’s only made possible with Web3.

36:35 Brian Rose: Now look, copy trading has been around for a while. So, how do you go head to head against the competition? What is the competition like right now? Who’s top three in copy trading?

36:48 Jon Mui: Yeah, so, I would say like most of crypto, like let’s just only talk about crypto, as I mentioned, Web2, it just doesn’t make sense because there’s a 45-day reporting delay. And blockchain, it does make sense because it’s right there. I mean, it’s the perfect thing for blockchain.

37:02 Brian Rose: You’re leveraging one of the beautiful things about blockchain, the transparency. And it lets our 99% of traders who usually lose money actually start to win money.

37:10 Jon Mui: But for us, in terms of competition, there’s two main types of competitors. Number one, centralized exchanges like Binance, Bybit, et cetera, they have their own copy trading system. But they’re built such that it’s like a fault system. So very similar to like a GPLP structure in hedge funds where the lead trader creates a portfolio and they deposit a very small amount and lets other people copy them. And so in that case, their own personal capital at risk is super limited.

37:41 And for them, they’re actually just incentivized to take very massive risk because if they make money, they get 20% of the upside. But if they lose money, all they need to do is close the portfolio, start a new one. So the incentive is absolutely not aligned whatsoever with decentralized exchange copy trading. The second type of competitors that are on chain are actually built on like Telegram. So there’s a lot of Telegram bots that copy trade for you.

38:09 Most of these copy trading bots are just kind of really copy trading memes. As mentioned, it’s not really a sustainable approach. But more importantly, for our retail users, like none of them really use Telegram on a daily basis, right? such a bad user experience. So for us, we took a pretty radically different approach where we spent the resources to actually build a very easy to use mobile app.

38:33 Basically kind of like a Robinhood where you can actually copy trade on Hyperliquid, which has the most volume anyway, top tokens that are not memes. Of course there are some memes on there but they’re already like multi-billion dollar memes. So that’s kind of how we’re different compared to a lot of these different guys. And we have a history of building consumer products that are easy to use. We have two millions users on Moongate.

38:58 So we know what we’re doing when it comes to building user-friendly products.

39:03 Brian Rose: Okay, do you think the Telegram hype is over for now? Because for a while it was big. Obviously, they made a big decision that you had to ultimately launch your token on the TUN ecosystem, and a lot of people stopped developing on the back of that. And then they never really had Really a decentralized finance system there. What do you reckon?

39:24 Jon Mui: Yeah I think also there’s a lot of bots in there

39:27 Brian Rose: Yeah, and a lot of third world country users and there’s a lot of issues Of course, they you know, they say there’s not a million users and in crypto we use telegram But in America, they don’t use telegram. So what do you reckon?

39:41 Jon Mui: Yeah, I agree. It’s not really like a Open platform where like non crypto users can participate in And I think that’s a really big issue.

39:49 Because at least for the users that we’re trying to target, they’re not on Telegram. And Telegram’s just really difficult to use. There’s tons of bots, lots of scams. And it’s just very distracting. The whole user experience, your app is secondary.

40:04 It’s just a subset of Telegram. And for me, I want to build out a copy-trading-only app. So where you can focus on, if I open this app, I’m just using it to copy trade, nothing else. Like ignore all the different scammer and bots that are trying to DM me. Like all I’m trying to do is just make money here.

40:24 And that’s why I think a lot of these other Telegram apps, obviously a lot of them have done well and have launched a token, but you don’t really see much noise about them anymore because a lot of them really are just farming the numbers. Like they’ll have, yeah, I’ve had like a hundred million users that are clicking every day, but like what real value does that bring over time, like, are you actually, besides the airdrop that people are literally just farming for? Like, what, how do you retain users post-token launch?

40:53 Like, there’s no value whatsoever. And so I think that’s why a lot of these telegram apps don’t really last after token launch.

41:00 London Real promo: Peter Thiel took a half a million dollars and turned it into a billion dollars using the exact same techniques we’re using inside the investment hub. He met a CEO, his name was Zuckerberg. He pitched him the deal and he said, But okay, I’ll give you a half a million dollars.

41:14 Mark went public and sold the shares to people like you. Well, what happened to Peter? Well, he exited and got a 2300 extra turn. The wealthy invest in early stage companies, folks. The public markets are for suckers.

41:28 It’s a rigged game. By the way, this happens in crypto as well. It’s called pre-sale tokens. This is Solana, does anybody know this chain? They sold pre-sale tokens for four cents and you can see the date on there, April 5th, 2018.

41:40 Look at Solana today, folks. That thing’s up over 1000X. The media and Wall Street and all these hype people get you to buy the top. Meanwhile, they put their clients in at the bottom and they use you for liquidity to make their clients rich. You can play this same game.

41:58 You just have to have the financial education and the deal flow, that’s it.

42:03 Brian Rose: And why we are not building on that telegram but direction as well. You said your user isn’t on telegram. Who is your user? That’s a lot of people.

42:13 Jon Mui: I mean, we serve clients across, I think, 40 plus countries around the world.

42:18 Brian Rose: But who’s your avatar? Like, what top 10 countries? How old are they? What’s their income?

42:24 Jon Mui: Yeah, so, I mean, as mentioned, because most of our users are through, like, people that attend these Web3 conferences. So the demographics are basically those people. So these people are quite wealthy, obviously, because if you’re flying into a country to attend a crypto conference, You have to be somewhat well off. They are very active in crypto or at least they’re very interested in crypto to attend the event. And most importantly, they’re not passive people that are just exposed to crypto but not doing anything.

43:01 They’re actually actively trying to learn and utilize different crypto applications. So they’re inclined to try different things that we kind of throw to them. And I think what’s unique with our top funnel is because it’s a B2B to C platform, where if token 2049 brings in new users, in a way they’re actually kind of helping us to grow our user base too. And same case with Binance, with EAF Denver, and all the other kind of top clients that we work with.

43:28 And so it’s such a kind of efficient way for us to scale. because that business it by itself is actually already profitable. So now we can spend all our resources to just build out apps that make sense and just be around for a long time.

43:43 Brian Rose: But you can’t go after the web 2 user which is the growth strategy for many web 3 companies right they’re trying to get the web 2 user you know to use their game and then later give them a wallet or they’re trying to get the web 2 user to use this system but you really are waiting for that web 3 user right now.

44:03 Jon Mui: So I guess that’s a good way to put it. So I mean we’ve also serviced like major like music festivals in Web2 as well.

44:10 Brian Rose: Okay. And that’s a younger demographic that might be more crypto savvy. So you’re kind of onboarding new people or making them aware of the possibilities.

44:19 Jon Mui: Generally those people are like more tech savvy. I mean we work with like Complex, like ComplexCon, Wonderfruits, like quite a few other major institutions that have a lot of Web2 users. But I would say also like, yes, we have a top funnel to bring in users, but even on application level, we can bring in users that way as well. Like with the copy trading platform specifically, I’ve talked to a lot of my Web2 friends who, like you mentioned, they want exposure to crypto, but they know they suck at trading.

44:51 So this is just the best way for them to participate and be able to capitalize on the upside if it does come. And so, actually, a lot of our wait-listed users are actually Web2 people. People that we know back in my finance days, people that are just around us that know what we’re building and are genuinely super excited because they recognize that this is just not possible in Web2, and it doesn’t hurt to try.

45:18 Brian Rose: Okay. Do you think that when the copy trading goes live to the public, would you think the token price will start improving?

45:26 Do you think there’s a demand for the token or not necessarily in the copy trading? Maybe it’s in future product iterations. Tell me.

45:34 Jon Mui: Yeah. I mean, as mentioned, I think one of the most immediate kind of value accrual back to Moongate is that eventually when the copy trading is more kind of mature, we’ll probably do a token there.

45:45 And in order to participate in that token, we’ll make it so that like Moongate MGT holders are able to participate and kind of contribute that way. Like that would be like the only criteria and I mean our token price is not trading very high right now and if you see the potential and the revenue that we’re actually generating at Moongate level and also application level, you realize that on a price to sales ratio, it’s like 1 to 2x P to S or even lower. So it’s just, if you compare it to a lot of applications that aren’t even making revenue, it just doesn’t really even make sense.

46:21 Brian Rose: So it should be what, 10?

46:22 Jon Mui: I mean, there’s a lot of platforms that are trading at like 30 hundred X price to sales, right? Now, of course, like, I would say like maybe our platform is a little bit different because it’s not infrastructure. It’s like more consumer application. But for it to be trading at like one time sales to me, it doesn’t make sense.

46:41 Brian Rose: Okay. And so you’ll warm up these people doing the copy trading and pretty soon you’ll say, hey, guess what? We’re now going to give you access to a pre-sale token via Launchpad. whoever has the most Moongate is going to get the priority. And that’s how you’ll start to give other options to that user base and create more demand for Moongate.

47:01 Jon Mui: Yeah, exactly. I think that’s, and I think with each individual application that we build or incubate, like we’ll have kind of mechanisms so that MGT token holders would still benefit from, because we will actually have a ton of premium features in our copy trading app. Like some of them are actually just, if you want to access like in-depth advanced analytics and those data and our propriety score. And actually we’re building out an AI for them to automatically help you select the best portfolio and help you rebalance at this right time.

47:33 If you wanna access those, you’re gonna have to pay in our tokens. And so like for each individual app that we build, we’ll have like value accrued to like MGT tokens. And I think for-

47:44 Brian Rose: So that happens sooner. Yeah. That happens before the launch pad.

47:48 Jon Mui: Yeah, I think that would happen.

47:50 Brian Rose: And that’s coming out in a month.

47:52 Jon Mui: Well, our private beta will come out at the end of this month in, I think, like two or three weeks. Okay. I mean, our wait list is already super long, but I think public beta may be another month or two.

48:05 Brian Rose: Okay.

48:05 Jon Mui: We just wanna make sure all of our users make money. That’s all I care about.

48:10 Brian Rose: That’s a nice goal. Yeah.

48:11 Brian Rose: Can I get in early as an investor?

48:12 Jon Mui: Of course, yeah.

48:13 Brian Rose: All right. Definitely, yeah. No, I’d love to play it.

48:15 I don’t really do anything with that on Web 3 right now because I don’t trust myself, and I’m busy doing what I do best, which is media and investing, but it would be great to play with. I actually haven’t played with other platforms. I’m wary of centralized exchanges. I’m wary of my tokens being held on a third-party platform that I don’t know much about. Like, you know, you see these bots and things like that.

48:37 I’m just suspicious, so it’d be great.

48:39 Jon Mui: That’s good to be suspicious.

48:40 Brian Rose: Yeah, I know. It’s all great until it’s not all great. Yeah. That’s the thing.

48:43 And some of these algo or bot things, maybe they show you some track record, but I don’t know if it’s legit, and then again, they could disappear because I don’t know much about them, so yeah.

48:54 Jon Mui: I think for us, I mean, we’re using Privy, which is, I think, the industry standard for self-custody solution. So you know, at all times, you fully own the funds that you’re using on our platform.

49:04 Brian Rose: Nice, and you guys just have the APIs to go ahead and access until I say no, basically.

49:09 Jon Mui: And for our API, importantly, we don’t have withdrawal rights, so we can’t take your money. We’re just helping you execute the traits, that’s it.

49:18 Brian Rose: Wow, okay, nice. So you execute and switch between this and this until I decide to say no. That’s powerful, okay, very cool.

49:25 When it comes to the next product, do you listen to your user base? Like for example, you brought in copy trading because you were scratching your own itch, it sounds like, but I’m sure you got some early feedback that they wanted it as well. They always say your customer, if you listen, will tell you what they want next. For me at London Real, I didn’t listen for five years until finally I listened and they said, We want education, we want you to teach us these things, we want you to give us investment opportunities and that’s how we started building London Real Ventures.

49:55 But do you listen to them or do you sometimes say I wanna go here, I wanna go there?

50:01 Jon Mui: So we definitely listen to them. But as you know, we have a ton of users that are quite diverse. So we can’t listen to everyone. Yeah.

50:10 And so what was the better approach for us is just taking a step back and just looking at What are the real product market fits of crypto? What are the real use cases? Obviously stablecoin is one of them, but actually underlying a lot of it is just speculation. Like that’s the common theme. And so we knew that that’s definitely a real product.

50:31 And again, because I was scratching my own itch with copy trading and I was asking around, I realized that, hey, everyone actually wants a product like this. Because I think a lot of people are just like yourself. Like they’re very successful with something else crypto, that doesn’t afford them the time to be actively monitoring the markets and just trading actively. But of course, like a lot of people, yes, maybe a lot of them are just hodling Bitcoin, but I’m sure they also want to have a percentage of their portfolio where they can participate in like active trading.

51:04 I have so many friends that are exactly like this description. And they just told me like, this app is like the perfect solution for them. Like they still retain a ton of control in selecting which manager to shadow. But ultimately like all the trades are automated and you get notified every time a new trade comes in and is executed. When it’s close you know how much money they made or lost and you can instantly adjust your trading balance for each portfolio manager.

51:32 And so to me like that’s the perfect solution for a lot of these people that are in crypto So because most people that are in crypto are actively, well, they’ve tried to trade, but most people have lost money, and they want exposure, and that’s what I’m giving them.

51:49 Brian Rose: Do you make money on this trading? Do you have some fees that you make?

51:53 Jon Mui: Yeah, so how it works in terms of business model is that every single trade that we feed into Hyperliquid, we add a small kind of transaction fee.

52:02 So every order that’s executed, we make money.

52:05 Brian Rose: But then long term, you just want to onboard that customer and then have them into the premium services and drive demand for the Moongate token, or both?

52:15 Jon Mui: Yeah, both. I think they all accrue value. I think on the application level, we actually make quite a bit already on these trading fees.

52:24 I mean, I won’t disclose the amount, but there is actually quite a bit of revenue on that front already.

52:30 Brian Rose: Good. And this is CoinPilot, or that’s something else?

52:33 Jon Mui: Yes, that’s CoinPilot.

52:34 Brian Rose: Okay, there’s CoinPilot.

52:35 And so beta soon, and then the public might get it in three months?

52:39 Jon Mui: We’ll see, I think we’ll be, it’s gonna at least start off as a very, like, closed platform, where only people that we’re connected with or people that are investors are able to use. Because, I mean, if we have everyone onboard it, like, it doesn’t really work anymore, because these top wallets might start to recognize, like, hey, when I buy something, there’s some $10 million that buys the same thing, then they can instantly sell.

53:06 So I actually much prefer to start off as a smaller scale ecosystem where my early participants, I wanna make sure everyone’s definitely making money and then just grow it slowly over time. Because even with a small group of users, we’re making quite a bit of revenue. So we don’t have to just open it up to public on day one.

53:26 Brian Rose: Okay, what other products are coming, do you think?

53:29 Jon Mui: Yeah, so I mean, copy trading obviously is one of the main focus.

53:33 The other that we have been building is with the engagement data and how people are able to monetize their data. I mean, for that front, what’s interesting is that there’s quite a lot of Web3 companies that are also focused on that same vertical.

53:48 Brian Rose: The attention economy that I talked a bit about in your intro.

53:52 Jon Mui: Exactly, the attention economy. And so right now we’re exploring a few different ideas where either A, we can partner up with other projects that have already built that and have some traction, or B, like we can build that out ourselves.

54:06 And we’ve had a lot of productive conversations with a lot of different people on this trip and even just like the last couple of weeks on potentially working together. But at the same time, while those conversations are progressing, like we’re also building that out ourselves because we know that that’s definitely very valuable. And I mean, the ability to let consumers monetize their own data, rather than letting the platforms monetize, it’s just so powerful.

54:35 But for this to work, you really need scale. You really need a ton of data. For data consumers to be actually willing to pay for your data, right? And so that’s why we’re trying to think of like, and maybe it’s a better approach is just partnering with someone that already has a ton of data like ourselves and just like built a massive platform together that way.

54:53 Brian Rose: Okay, all right, so you are still deciding on how you wanna move that forward?

54:57 Jon Mui: Yeah.

54:58 Brian Rose: Okay. Anything else? Product-wise, I mean, it sounds like you wanna be in lots of things.

55:06 Jon Mui: Yeah.

55:06 Brian Rose: Is it just kind of recognizing something profitable and moving forward with it?

55:10 Jon Mui: Yeah, I mean, we don’t wanna bite off too much at the same time. We wanna make sure that whatever we do, it’s gonna be sustainable. And it’s gonna be there for a long time. Because I think what I recognize with a lot of crypto companies is that every three months they’re changing their narrative.

55:27 It’s like, oh, now I’m AI, and now I’m Metaverse. And for me, trying to build a real business, that’s just not the most sustainable. I’d rather identify opportunities that are really there and as long lasting and just go all in on those than just building 100 different ideas and doing it that way. But I’m always open to look at different ideas, Because, I mean, we do have the resources to continue to execute, and so, yeah, I’ll be mindful. I mean, we thought about doing something in AI as well, but those are, again, fairly early stage ideas.

56:08 So, for now, we’re just kind of spending more time on, like, CoinPilot and the data monetization piece.

56:14 Brian Rose: Okay. And ticketing’s profitable. CoinPilot sounds like it’s soon to be quite profitable, and the attention, that’s enough to probably get your coin 20X to 30X to 40X if people actually see the numbers. So you’re just gonna focus on the low-hanging fruit and execute.

56:30 Jon Mui: Exactly. We just wanna generate a ton of revenue, do buybacks, and just continue to accrue value to the Moongate ecosystem.

56:38 Brian Rose: How important is the token price versus say the equity value of your company and how do you think about those as a CEO?

56:46 Jon Mui: I mean, it’s an interesting question because there’s like a fine balance between oh, like I have like equity investors and then I also have token investors. Obviously, the goal is to have everyone win.

57:00 And so like the way we design it right now is such that like, oh, when we generate revenue, if it’s profitable, I mean, we’ll share a percentage with the token holders, but also a percentage of equity holders.

57:12 Brian Rose: Does that mean burning tokens or buying tokens? Is that how you share?

57:16 Jon Mui: Yeah, but also actually our equity holders also hold tokens. So, I mean, they win either way.

57:21 Yeah, but it’s a thing that I do think about a lot, like how can we continue to benefit all of our users, community, and also investors.

57:30 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s tricky. John, what is the state of the market as far as crypto, and what do you think happens in the next 12 months? We’re currently in second quarter of 25. We’re 100 days in the Trump presidency.

57:44 We see tons of positive news coming out of there from lawsuits being dropped by the SEC to a new SEC chair, to two different stablecoin acts, to Trump’s family-owning world liberty financial and seeing very pro-crypto. But we’re also seeing the altcoin index in the teens and it doesn’t feel like it’s bumping off that anytime soon. Obviously, there’s a ton of demand for the Bitcoin ETF and maybe other high-level ETFs. Institutions are moving in, corporations are putting it on their balance sheet, but it’s not obvious that that news, any of the news I just mentioned, lifts up altcoins which currently you’re in and a bunch of other great utility lower market cap coins right now.

58:25 So what do you think happens in the next 12 months? You’ve been in this market for a while.

58:31 Jon Mui: Yeah. So I would say like the policies and regulations have definitely been like most positive as I’ve recall in the last couple of years. Right.

58:41 Where we are today.

58:42 Brian Rose: By a factor of 10.

58:44 Jon Mui: Yeah. So directionally I think we’re definitely and the right space, but what I observe is that there’s a lot more volatility these days. I mean, I think the reality is that Trump is a little bit more volatile of a guy and with that in mind, I think, I mean, a couple of things, like number one, if you’re trading, you need to be much more like active and be setting like stop losses and taking profit when it happens.

59:13 But what that also means is that If you’re a passive investor or trader, it will be much less effective, I think, if you want to capitalize on that because maybe one day you’re up 50%, but the next day you’re down. So it would be much better for actually a platform like ours where you can just copy these active traders that are just in and out of the market and in the tranches all day. So that’s one. I think the other that I would say is that It’s very clear to me that there will be more and more retail adoption of crypto applications.

59:51 As I mentioned, that’s the overall arching kind of vision that I have just to build out the consumer empire for different kind of Web3 applications. So again, I think we’re in the right space for that. In terms of the altcoin market, I totally agree with you that with institutions, I I think most of the institutions that are coming in nowadays are just buying Bitcoin or ETFs. And that capital is not being flowed into, like altcoins. I mean, previously it is, because these institutions have to buy on exchanges and on exchanges they see altcoins that they can buy into.

1:00:23 But nowadays, that doesn’t get translated as easily. So I think now, in terms of value accrual, maybe the onus goes back to a little bit more to the project themselves, like actually buying token and the project itself generating revenue. or like actually having a real product and just like gradually through their own means just like building up that token price so that people start to recognize the value. And I think in that case, not necessarily retail users but like existing crypto participants would see that value and kind of participate that way.

1:00:57 Brian Rose: Okay, when do you think we’ll see that happen with the top projects?

1:01:01 Jon Mui: Well, to be honest, a lot of it has already happened. I think in the last couple of months, like quite a few projects have already gone up.

1:01:08 Brian Rose: Like what? What comes to mind?

1:01:10 Jon Mui: Oh, I mean, there’s a lot. This is something like a hyper liquid, for example.

1:01:14 Brian Rose: Something that is shown traction and revenues. Yeah. And people are drawn to it.

1:01:18 Jon Mui: Yeah. Though, like, I think, I mean, crypto is a…

1:02:02 As mentioned earlier in our conversation, crypto is a very unique space where there are projects where you know have nothing but are worth billions of dollars, whereas there are projects that have a ton of traction generating a ton of revenue that are worth a lot less. And there’s a reason behind that because these market makers or the projects themselves are controlling so much of the supply, like they can paint the whole narrative in the whole chart. But at the end of the day, once all the tokens are vested, in the longer one, it’s just a matter of fundamentals, right?

1:02:47 Because yes, like these projects in the short term can manipulate their stock price, their token price, but over time, like fundamentals still win out. That’s how you make a project that’s sustainable, how they can generate revenue and continue to grow the system over time. And I think with Hyperliquid as an example, people see that it’s a very real product that, I mean, I think they have hundreds of billions of dollars of volume every day now. And so it’s going to stay.

1:03:19 And that’s really the direction that I’m trying to head as a CEO of this consumer platform. I just want to build products that are here to stay for the long term. I’m not here just to make the quick money, because I would have probably made a lot more if I just launched like a meme coin or something, or like an NFT project of like three, four years back, but I’m here to really change the world and really try to build something that major enterprise will use, which we’ve already done with ticketing.

1:03:48 But now we want to do something more consumer-focused and really change how consumers see and interact with Web3. Like I don’t want them to just see it as like a quick cash grab or where, I mean, They’re just losing to like rugs. I want them to see it as a viable opportunity that they can participate in. That’s not too difficult. And almost like just like a one-click solution to participate in Web3 and that’s what MoonGate ultimately is.

1:04:16 It’s just the easiest, the gateway for these users into Web3.

1:04:20 Brian Rose: Thank God you’re building that, you know? Because again, it’s this shift in human paradigm, the whole concept of Web3 and sometimes that seems to be lost on all the new people getting into it. And then they get burned and rubbed and they won’t want to come back. And there’s so many incredible innovations in this market, you know, that I want people to stay.

1:04:42 And so that’s why they need a platform like Moongate and what you’re doing with CoinPilot so then they can actually see that and see the wins and see something unique. They can’t find the equity markets as well. What will be the high price of Bitcoin in this cycle? When will it happen? And are we still in a four year cycle?

1:05:03 Jon Mui: Honestly, at this point, I don’t know. Like, I mean, I don’t really trade tokens day to day anymore. Obviously, I do think in the next, I mean, within this year, maybe in Q3, we will get an all time high again. I don’t really have like a price target in mind. Because to be honest, like, I’m just really focused on building.

1:05:24 That’s what I’m most excited about. That’s, I mean, I know that once this product goes live, Well, it’s kind of already live, like we’re using it privately, like that’s the most profitable way to deploy my capital. And so that’s my number one goal right now, rather than just looking at the high numbers, because I know that regardless of what it is, like in the long term, like it will appreciate. And so I’m just huddling my bitcoins and just waiting till my platform is more kind of built out for us to really deploy a ton of more capital to capitalize on that overall trend.

1:05:57 Brian Rose: At Treasury Capital in your copy trading, maybe?

1:06:00 Jon Mui: Yeah, possibly. I mean, yeah, one thing I should mention as well, like our copy trading platform, it starts out at hyper liquid, but it absolutely does not end there. Like my vision with that platform is actually making it almost like an on-chain passive income. Like you can participate in different on-chain yields, different arbitrage strategy, really different things that you can do on-chain with a simple click.

1:06:24 Because we recognize that right now, Yes, there’s a ton of these on-chain opportunities, but retail users don’t actually get to participate in them because these, a lot of times, are very sophisticated. You have to understand how the capital flows. Maybe there’s a lot of different messages that you might have to sign, et cetera. There’s a really crappy user experience. And so, in the future, once we finish this copy trading on Hyperliquid, other products that will launch on top of this application are just other ways for people to just participate in these on-chain yields, on-chain farming, et cetera, with a simple click.

1:07:02 And so I want to open up the entire on-chain economy and on-chain trading space to retail users, and that’s what CoinPilot will be.

1:07:09 Brian Rose: Nice, okay, so not just copy-trading the whales, everything you can do on blockchain, you want to offer them, and all these incredible opportunities that only exist in blockchain, you want to offer them. It’s a suite of products, basically. Okay, I like it. It’s quite a fascinating, not pivot addition to starting and ticketing.

1:07:27 Jon Mui: Yeah, it’s a very different way to look at our product. And that’s, I mean, when I had that realization that we’re not actually just a ticketing company, we are, well, we have the potential to be like that consumer empire. That’s when, I mean, the whole thing became a lot more exciting to me. That’s a paradigm shift in itself. Yeah.

1:07:48 Brian Rose: A lot of people never get to even see that in their own company, see what those people really are, you know? It’s interesting because with London Real, we put out conversations that we thought were interesting ourselves. I wanted the answers and then our user base found the answers and then later I listened to them and they wanted to learn how to do their own show or they wanted to learn how to do their own business and then they said we wanna learn more about crypto and now they wanted access to investments they wouldn’t normally get and we’ve been able to provide all those things for them and none of that I would have ever guessed would have happened from the beginning.

1:08:20 Well, we knew we had a user that trusted us, was engaged with us, and was a lot like us. And then from there, we just tried to follow the yellow brick road, you know? And listening to your customer is hard sometimes.

1:08:31 Jon Mui: It is, it’s a lot of times, I mean.

1:08:33 Brian Rose: It’s an ego thing.

1:08:34 Jon Mui: Yeah, sometimes it’s like counterintuitive as well. Like, hey, I don’t really wanna build this. At first, we didn’t wanna build ticketing. Okay. But people were willing to pay us for it.

1:08:43 And I saw that as like the clear signal of like, obviously, there’s something here. And so, I mean, because I had a couple of other startups before MoonGate, that’s in like Web2, I realized that that’s the best signal. Like you can’t just build what you think makes sense. You have to build something that people are willing to pay for.

1:09:03 Brian Rose: Pay for is key.

1:09:04 Because you can’t build something that they say they’re gonna pay for. Express interest in buying. Because, again, you gotta be careful. Because that can send you on a wild goose chase. And you build it, and then nobody pays for it.

1:09:18 So, that’s why you get paid the big bucks to the CEO. Tell me about your big mission, because you’ve alluded to it a couple times, John, saying that I’m not here just to make money. Sounds like you could’ve done that many times, but you kinda wanna change the world. You kinda wanna be a part of building web three. You really wanna show people that web three is something very different.

1:09:39 Like, I’ll take it even further. Like, what does it say on your obituary? What does it say on your tombstone? 30 years from now, when you’re bouncing your grandkids on your knee, what do you want them to know the grandpa did or great grandpa did? What’s your place in history?

1:09:57 Jon Mui: Yeah, I hope that in 30 years, I’ll be seen as someone that really unlocked a ton of Web3 opportunities, Web3 applications to the mass retail users. I think right now, most people are just seeing it as purely trading, which yes, there’s obviously a ton of real product market fit there and obviously our copy trading is kind of that too. But there’s really a ton of other opportunities with Web3 applications that could change how we live and I want to be seen as the guy that really pushed that needle and really moved that forward.

1:10:39 And I started that company, I mean, started Moongate in the first place because of that belief. Everything I saw when I first started in crypto was just all theoretical. And just yes, like they can have, like a new blockchain can have higher like TPS, higher transaction per second, but no one’s using it. It doesn’t even matter. Like I felt like that push didn’t really matter and did not impact my day-to-day life at all.

1:11:07 And I told myself that if I was gonna build a web three company, like I don’t wanna build those stuff that doesn’t impact my day-to-day. Like, I was in private equity before. I could have made a lot more money just doing that if I just stayed. But what I wanted to do is really change the world and really use Web3 in a real, like a real, tangible, meaningful way. And we have stuck with that vision and that idea ever since in the past kind of three and a half years that we’ve been building Moongate.

1:11:40 Everything we build is very tangible. There’s very real use case that change how we behave as a user on a day-to-day basis. And I would say we’re definitely one of the few companies, I mean, I guess there’s a bit more these days that are kind of focusing on this vision, but we’re definitely one of the bigger ones that have this grand vision, rather than just focusing on short-term gains. Because it’s not, I mean, if I was to just focus on short-term gains, like I said, I could have made a lot more money doing something else.

1:12:12 But for me, going through this process, it’s a lot more rewarding, because I can see the tangible impact that I’ve made, the real connection that I’ve built with these major enterprises that trust me with their product, I mean, sorry, with their clients. And that’s the most rewarding thing. It’s not really only about money. Money is just, I could make money many other ways, but it’s more about building something that people use, that millions of people use around the world.

1:12:41 That’s something that money cannot really give you, that kind of feeling.

1:12:45 Brian Rose: It’s amazing. Do you miss private equity? I think I joked when you came on the call that part of you acts like a private equity guy and you dress like a private equity guy. I get those private equity vibes, but do you miss it?

1:12:59 How do you explain the difference between private equity and blockchain? Because most people on blockchain don’t really know what goes on there. And is there anything you don’t miss about it?

1:13:12 Jon Mui: And so when I was in private equity, I think by and large, my day-to-day is just sitting in the office and just like writing reports or like evaluating companies to buy or sell. And I felt like I was quite replaceable.

1:13:26 And I was just almost like just another Excel monkey just sitting on my desk. To me, like I wasn’t proud of anything. Like if I recall back in the years that I spent in private equity, there really wasn’t anything that made me super proud of or something that I really remember doing in my years in private equity. So that’s something that I was very glad to let go from leaving private equity. Something that I do miss with private equity, I think it’s the people that I work with.

1:14:01 I think everyone is obviously extremely smart in the private equity space. I mean, compared to crypto, where sometimes you just meet people that are more just building up an image and just trying to act like they’re someone and they’re very smart, but it’s all just a facade. I think in private equity, you don’t really see that as much because I think everyone is quite smart in that space. But what I would say ultimately really glad that I took away from my private equity experience is just that I learned that I don’t ever want to go back to a corporate, because I don’t have any direction.

1:14:45 I don’t have any ownership in what I do. And to me, there’s a lot of other ways to make money. And private equity, it’s great, and I was making a lot of money. But I’d much rather just make less money doing something that I really enjoy doing and changing the world and making an impact and having ownership than just being an Excel monkey or just writing memos or evaluating companies behind my desk. Obviously that’s not to shoot down that space.

1:15:19 Obviously a lot of people are still in that space and are making a ton of money. But for me personally, I’m a lot more adventurous. I like to take risk. I’m young and I recognize that this is the time to do that. And so for me it was like a very calculated risk and thankfully it kind of played out over the last couple of years.

1:15:37 Brian Rose: Yeah. It doesn’t warm the soul. A lot of those roles kind of in banking. I felt the same way as a trader and as a broker in this banking machine it was an incredible way to make money even especially as a young man. But it ultimately was kind of soul destroying because I didn’t feel creative and I didn’t and feel like I was adding anything.

1:15:58 I would justify myself, I was adding value, and I was adding some value, but I was a phone monkey, you were an Excel monkey, and ultimately I’m glad I left and I wouldn’t go back, even though there would have been more money there. But there’s always a trade-off, it’s like there’s always a trade-off, there’s no easy money, and when you get that money, you pay for it in something else.

1:16:21 Jon Mui: A lot of people lose out on their health. And that’s not great, right? Obviously, if you have a ton of money, but you can’t use it, that’s useless.

1:16:30 That’s why I care a lot more about my physical and mental health now, to make sure that I’m really enjoying what I’m doing. That’s what’s important to me. I cannot just, it’s really soul sucking in the corporate, especially finance world, where, yes, we make a lot of money, but you’re just staying in the office till very late every single day. You don’t really have a life. You don’t have a family, you don’t really have relationships.

1:16:54 It’s just not the best environment long-term for me. Obviously, maybe other people find it good, but for me, it just didn’t really make sense.

1:17:02 Brian Rose: Yeah, well good for you for getting out. I think a lot of people are excited about what you’re talking about with Moongate. If people accrue enough Moongate token, will they be allowed early access to the copy trading?

1:17:15 That’s my question.

1:17:16 Jon Mui: Yeah, I mean, that’s not something that we have thought about, but we can definitely do that, I think.

1:17:21 Brian Rose: Okay, alright, because otherwise we’re really tempting people here and they’re like, okay, how can I get in on this?

1:17:27 Jon Mui: Yeah, I think that’s a great, great idea and we should do that.

1:17:30 Brian Rose: Yeah, like a certain amount.

1:17:31 Like a threshold.

1:17:32 Jon Mui: Yeah, a threshold on your wallet.

1:17:33 Brian Rose: Like if you’ve got, you know, I don’t know, 10 grand of Moongate or something, then you can apply a relief of this program. Just a thought.

1:17:40 Jon Mui: That’s a great idea.

1:17:41 We’ll implement that.

1:17:42 Brian Rose: Right, because it sounds like you’re building something really special, really unique, and also it’s not gonna be offered to the public any time soon, and maybe it can’t be, because like you said, if it gets too big, you might have people copying your copy and like you said, if the whales see that you’re being copied, it’s gonna influence their behavior. So keeping this kind of relatively tight is attractive for users.

1:18:03 Jon Mui: I think it’ll be very tight actually, initially.

1:18:05 Maybe even just like when we do our closed beta, maybe like 50 people or less. Because we have, I mean, each of these individuals have a ton of capital that wanna deploy in. But you’re right, as we open up to the next kind of group of people, we should definitely do that.

1:18:23 Brian Rose: Yeah, another way, just an idea. John, how can people learn more about what you’re doing, follow you, is it kind of Twitter, Discord, all these good things?

1:18:33 What’s the best way for them to get involved with the Moongate ecosystem? And again, with the idea also benefiting from a lot of these products.

1:18:40 Jon Mui: Yeah, so I mean, number one, hopefully a lot of listeners, if they’re interested in crypto, I would encourage you to actually go to a lot of these crypto events. I mean, obviously token 2049 is a really big one. I would say like the other biggest one, which are also using our tech is called EAF Denver.

1:18:55 It’s probably the biggest one in the US. So do go check that out when that does happen. That’s actually the best way for you to see our product in action and actually experience Moongate firsthand to see, hey, this is actually really seamless and this is actually a lot better than the status quo. Of course, you can also kind of follow us on Twitter, our Moongate Twitter account is just at Moongate. We also have a Twitter for our CoinPilot project.

1:19:25 It’s at tricoinpilot. And so you can find all the relevant information about those two products on Twitter.

1:19:33 Brian Rose: Excellent, okay. Discord or you stay off that?

1:19:36 Jon Mui: We have a Telegram group chat for both products and you can find the links in Telegram.

1:19:42 We feel like most retail users, I would say like not a lot of Don’t Use Telegram, but even less of Don’t Use Discord, so that’s why we have Telegram. I think Discord’s old news, maybe.

1:19:55 Brian Rose: All right, I went in on CoinPilot, so I would love to get in on that. And I’ll also be able to be your great case study as well. And look, I’m just pumped.

1:20:05 A pump we sat down. We’ve been a fan of your vision since you came on and pitched to us. And again, I think it was the two million users and the real world engagement and the partnership with all these brands. You know, I mean, Token and Binance, these people don’t partner with, you know, goofballs, they partner with people that deliver. And that’s a profitable business and now you’re gonna take it to the next level.

1:20:25 It’s a perfect narrative. I agree, the Moongate Token is trading, I believe, way too cheap, not financial advice based on everything you have. And it sounds really cool what you’re building. So John, thanks and also thanks for contributing to this ecosystem. It’s super important.

1:20:39 And I know like years, just a few years from now, we’ll look back and laugh at kind of where the markets were now compared to where we’re going. So yeah, I really appreciate this. And we’re there all the way with you, 100%.

1:20:52 Jon Mui: Thank you so much for the support. And I’m really glad to be here and just share about our vision and all the updates with kind of the Libman Reel listeners.

1:21:01 Brian Rose: Fantastic, man. All right, good. We’ll do this again soon with an update, all right?

1:21:04 Jon Mui: Yeah, thank you so much.

1:21:05 Brian Rose: Thank you so much.

1:21:06 Thank you. Appreciate it. Get a Web3 TV, we will see you next time.