113. Behind The Scenes Insights from our Week in Melbourne

These events allow you to connect back with these individuals and have conversations that you wouldn't necessarily hear online.

We lost our voices. We were talking so much. You literally had a circle of people around you at all times, mate. It was incredible. I'm like, thank God I'm not that guy. I actually just like duck off for two minutes. I thought I could, but then someone comes. I was like, oh, are you burgs? I'm like, nah, and just leg it.

I was eating lunch in the toilet.

Eating lunch in the toilets, mate.

Welcome back to the Ben and Bergs Podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift, alongside me as Bergs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift, Australia's leading crypto portfolio insights company, providing professional analysis and portfolio strategies for crypto investors like you. We are a unique blend of the established and the self made and we're here to break down crypto business and personal growth. But we're not just here to talk crap. We're giving you the insights you need to make better investments, build successful businesses and level up your life. And today we are talking about our conversations that we have had over the last couple of weeks behind the scenes insights to speaking to with some of the leading crypto industry experts and leaders in the space. We were invited to a lot of events and side meetings and conversations over the last couple of weeks here in Melbourne, including the Australian Blockchain Blockchain Awards where all the industry leaders were there, all the major exchanges, the CEOs, founders of some of the biggest projects, the Australian Crypto Conference, there was after parties, there was meetups, there was a lot that went on and one of the, I guess, benefits of being in Collective Shift and the brand we've been able to build and the trust that we have and the relationships we've been able to build in this space. I mean, I've been in crypto now for seven years. I know a lot of the sort of leading people in the space is that these events allow you to connect back with these individuals and have conversations that you wouldn't necessarily hear online. Right? These, a lot of these people, the CEOs, founders of the exchanges, you know, don't necessarily go on podcasts and talk about the wins and losses of their businesses.

Right?

And they don't give these little, you know, bits of value publicly, you know, and obviously we won't name names, but we're able to take that information and share it with our community podcast, our members. And it really just gives us a good Pulse check, I guess, on the. On the space. So. Because I feel as though, you know, I'm still recovering from last week. It was a cracking week. But goodness, we had some conversations, mate.

I'm still recovering too. A week with you. There's no mucking around, mate. You got me doing like super, super sets of like, 45 reps per set and then like 10,000 sets, mate. It's ridiculous, mate.

Just training for the pod.

The training for the pod, mate. How good. This is what we do for your listeners.

You haven't seen listeners. Head over to Ben and Berg's Twitter. Just go to Twitter and search Ben and Bergs and there's a video just. It was a bit of a thirst trap, to be honest, of burbs and I getting after it. On, on, on the. What are the arm curls?

The dumbbell curls, mate, it's classic. I go there, I'm ready to do deadlifts. You're like, nah, we're doing arms and only arms. It's arm day. It's always arm day. Classic. Absolutely classic. So this episode, folks, massive week in Melbourne. Talk to absolutely everyone. And it's very different when you're there in person because you're not talking through the screen, you're not talking about business, you're not putting on your brave face, you're like, hey, this is what's really happening. You're having a drink, you're talking to them as a human, you're understanding what's going on, their lives, what's going on in their businesses. And this is. These are the main themes that Ben and I saw through our eyes and what we experienced. And we're bringing them to you now.

Yeah, bang on. So, number one was, I felt there's a real lack of crypto apps. And we talk about crypto apps. These might be like games or interfaces, where the consumer or us, the retail investor, gets value somewhere outside of just an exchange or a wallet. There was only one real retail app I saw there at the conference. Compared to last year, there was a huge Metaverse presence, VR gaming, NFTs. It was pretty big. Like, Alluvium had a massive booth last year. And this year, none of that. It was predominantly exchanges, it was predominantly wallets, it was smsf, it was tax, it was mining. That was really the core crux of who was there. Burgs. Real lack of crypto apps, I felt.

And if you think about this, like, even some of the exchanges didn't have a presence there, which is really interesting. But all of those companies that Were there are recession proof companies, right? Like you're always gonna need your tax done, you're always gonna need to buy some crypto. You're gonna need some help with research and analysis. What we were missing were the real community aspect. If you think back to 2021, everyone was in discords. People were all about the meetups, the events, the merch, the ownership, building communities, changing the world. None of that was really present. The people, the people were there that represented those things. But there was no booth presence. And that's really a sign of the market and where things are at. People aren't interested in those things as, as investments because there's not a lot of money there. They won't make a lot of money. And to actually go to a conference is expensive. You have to buy the booth, you have to get the printing done, you have to fly your people in, you have to man it over the weekend, you have to pay your employees. And I don't think the ROI is there for those community people.

Yeah, and I think last year like there was nowhere near as many as retail investors as there were this year. And it's a big cost for these projects to, to come up in front up and you know, I think it's just a, I guess a indication of where the market's at. But then also there's still I think a lack of real like quality projects in the space that have real user adoption and real like in solving a real problem. So I think that's an opportunity that a lot of people are fighting for. But you know, interesting to see where that goes over the next four months. The next one was just some, a lot of conversations I had with exchanges, you know, people pretty high up in a number of exchanges. What they're really seeing is that there is still not a huge increase of new users coming in in terms of new user activation but sorry, new user attraction. But there is a lot of older accounts being warmed up again. So a lot of the inflows coming into crypto right now from speaking with a lot of these exchanges are coming from investors that are already in the space, which is pretty much bang on with our analysis bergs of what we're seeing on Chain and the sentiment around it's not really pulling in new interest just yet. Yes, maybe a little bit of an increase, but it's more around people that have been in crypto or have been thinking about it for a long time. They're the ones that are getting in right now.

And we learned a beautiful term from our podcast With Anthony Sasano Time based capitulation, where a certain period of time needs to go past for people to forget the pain, everything that happened for them to come back into the space. Right. It's very hard to attract new people into crypto because people don't care about it unless the number goes up. There's a big candle, there's fomo. It's hard for them to engage with the tech, learn about it with everything they've got going on in their lives. But people that have been there before, we're coming to that time based capitulation and say, hey, you know, you've been this space, you've been through pain, now is the time to get everything right so you can ameliorate that pain and actually get to the good times. And this is what exchanges are telling us and we're seeing it on chain as well.

Yeah, yeah, bang on number four. Just legislation was a huge theme, you know, the afsl, the, the paper that came out in the last couple of months around the, you know, incoming legal side of what's going to be coming into Australia. Real focus on the governance of exchanges. The AFSL as I mentioned, really a big focus on trying to protect consumers. The token mapping and classification, you know, is a lot of conversations. I still think we're probably what a year, year or more. I think one of the lawyers said bergs from this.

Oh, a lot more. So I went to a couple of these talks and the general theme is, you know, the, the government has released papers, they did the token backing paper and the paper around exchanges and authorized deposit taking institutes. So and the, the criteria is quite low. I don't know the exact number I think is 500 to 1500 per person. They have to have certain reserves that will need to be licensed. They're taking it very seriously. So crypto exchanges can be unregulated. At the moment they're trying to regulate that and protect consumers. This is really interesting as well because at the moment none of those exchanges are insured because crypto insurance is so expensive. Once they become regulated, insurers will step into the space and you'll be able to actually have your funds, custody and insured, which is really, really interesting. A big takeaway as well from the question time was token mapping isn't really a focus of the government. They've released the paper and token mapping is, you know, classification of tokens, whether they're securities or not, whether they're classified as commodities. That is taken a backseat to getting exchanges up to date and making sure, they're properly regulated. There'll be a transition period of 12 months for them. That is what they're doing first and that is going to take a few years to actually do. Government is quite slow in this and then they're going to focus on the.

Token mapping, which I think is overall really positive. There was a panel that I was on over the weekend talking about like, you know, why self custody and storage is really important and moving a crypto to a ledger. But the reality is for most people it's too scary and people are just like, oh, too worried about doing it. So a lot of people still hold their crypto on exchanges and no matter how much we preach, the reality is a lot of people will still hold their crypto on the exchange because they don't want to set up a ledger. So we really need to ensure that these custodians are well regulated and we don't see another FTX or Celsius happen again because that's really going to impact the industry. So I think it's overall net positive. I just hope it doesn't become.

I guess in a way that stifles innovation and new projects being able to build and you know, even we, we've had to go through a lot of that. You know, we spend a lot of money on lawyers to ensure that we're sort of playing within the boundaries, but it's, it's inherently gray and it's very difficult to navigate it.

I think regulating on ramps is a good thing, but you don't want it to be too constraining. You want to have similar legislation to what other on ramps have similar oversight and making sure they don't have to have too many capital reserves or it's too onerous or the.

You know, the compliance costs way too much money where exchanges don't become profitable. So yes, we're moving towards our oversight, which is great, but just don't make it too much. So we'll see how that shakes out as well. Keeping in mind there isn't up to a 12 month transition period for that to happen.

And I think we probably expect a lot of mergers and acquisitions to happen over the next two or three years. You know, maybe some of these small exchanges coming together, maybe some of the bigger exchanges buying them. I mean, we're seeing Coinbase have a bigger effort coming to Australia. I saw two or three other brand new exchanges at the AUSSCrypticon I never heard of. I'm like, amazing. Just what we need, more exchanges. So, you know, I think that's going to be a big, a big killer next, next couple of years.

That's a key point because the barriers to entry are relatively low. Like, you do need capital, you need the expertise, but you don't need licensing. Right. And licensing can be quite onerous. So once that comes in, you will see a consolidation. And you see this as markets mature, where they go from lots of competitors to then perhaps, you know, an oligopoly, duopoly, monopoly, and then that gets broken up again, you know, to more of a decentralized kind of model. But I think that you don't need, it's like we talked about, how many layer ones do you need? How many exchanges do you really need? How are they going to be able to compete when those margins get squeezed and, and everyone's obeying the same rules?

Yeah, yeah, spot on. Number four, just the energy in the, in the convention was amazing. It was really.

I don't know what you call it, motivating. It was great to see everyone back again and excited about last year. You know, it was just a much different time in the market. And I think even going back a couple of months ago, if we had it, I think it would have been pretty difficult. But you know, the, the recent move upwards in the price. It was great to see all of our members, old members, new community members, portfolios are back. The reality is, you know, as things are green again, people become interested. And it was just great to see a lot of old faces. And, you know, I think that real in person, learning, a lot of people need that. Real is hands on. There's a lot of trust there. You can see someone, you can, you know, talk to them face to face. And I think that's one of the best things that's happened in the industry, is that convention has brought that to the space.

You know what, Ben? Everyone we talked to was happy. Like everyone was happy to see each other, to be in a space to talk about crypto. No one was like, I'm down a million dollars, my business is F'd. This is happening, that's happening. Everyone was incredibly optimistic and happy to be there. The only complaint I heard was, I'm tired. And that was probably for me most of the time. Right. But everyone was on. Everyone talk to everyone. It was easy. Everyone talked my ear off. I thought I'd, you know, I'm the guy in the back, no one's going to talk to me. Everyone came up. The booth was just pumping the entire time. Everything we did really resonated with people and it was just so positive and.

I think it's a breath of fresh air. And this was another insight I took that there's really, you know, a lack of independent quality information. Like, that was really the feedback that we got that was just like, wow. Like, you know, it's so nice to have people that are just shilling their project, shilling their course, shilling a new investment and just talking from an independent nature. And that's what we really try. Like, we always just try and deliver a lot of value and, you know, we've still got a lot of work to do in terms of doing more of that and we want to keep growing it. But it was just. There was no one else there. Like usburgs, like there was a couple others that you look at, you're like, oh my goodness. Like, God, you know, selling, selling the dream, selling the, you know, the, the lifestyle, the free money. What's it, you know, the 300% AP wise and all this nonsense.

It's like, it was crazy. And what it really highlighted to me was I didn't know how this weekend was going to go, but we've got, you know, us two, Matnik and Leon at the booth. You're all doing talks. And what we came in with really resonated with everyone else. After our talks, everyone came and talked to us. You know, I was even the way we talked about our product, how our products delivered, how we pitch our product, how we show the app and the website and how that works, how we've labeled things, how easy is. Everyone's like, I need that. That's the Gucci shit. Like, you know, it was unbelievable because we're really tackling their problems and our talks. So here are the titles of our talks. How to fix your portfolio and profit from this bull market Research like a pro. Lessons and tools for the bull market. Crypto investors, watch out for these trends in 2024. When I went to these talks, I didn't know how it was going to go. I. I rocked up two minutes late. I couldn't get in. So these Talks, there was three to 400 seats and probably about 100 to 150 people standing at the back. And I was standing at the back going, holy crap. And it was our team just delivering everything, all this alpha for free. How to think about things, how to fix things. Ben, your talk was absolutely incredible. You get up on stage and I'm like, I don't know. Look, this could go one or two ways. And you absolutely dominated. We had our members sitting in and I was Watching their faces. And they were so proud to see you up there and talk through the things you've talked through with them one on one. At the end of it, you gave away the free strategy document. We'll link it in the show notes. Don't want your email or anything. Just get it done and solve your life. Literally 300 phones go up and scan that QR code. It was unbelievable. And then the amount of people. The booth had lines of people and you know like when you're talking to someone, there's someone else comes around and then like there's a line of another person, another person, another person. Like, shit, like, I'm not going to get a break. I need some water. We lost all, we lost our voices. We were talking so much. And the amount of strategy calls that we've had booked, all of this kind of adds up and shows that, you know, what we've been talking about with our community is exactly what people need. They want to talk to someone. Things they're doing are difficult. It was just, it was an incredible, incredible experience and it just added a.

Real life dynamic to it. Like it's not just someone on Twitter or someone on LinkedIn you follow. It's like it was real life people that you could talk to, you know. So yeah, it was, it was amazing. I was so buzzed after the after weekend. It was unbelievable.

It was great. And I've met some guys I've been interacting with on Twitter for like a year. They're just there a non. They come up like, oh bergs, I'm this guy. Like, give him a massive hug. You know, it's just like you get that real sense of, you know, mateship and shared experience of like going through this market, commenting on things. It's just, it was really incredible. Even the old members that were members years ago that have left, they've come up now going, holy crap, your business has changed so much in the last year. I'm signing back up as a member. Yeah, it was just incredible. And I think we're highlighting this because not because it's us, but because there was nothing like this at the conference. Like the, the amount of members we actually brought in, the amount of people that were collectorship members or have our newsletter or whatever it may be. We were like the biggest kind of community presence there. That was really eye opening for me.

There was an army of collective shift people. It was awesome. Members or not, it was just like we, we sent an army and they, and they showed up in force. It was, it was amazing. It was such a cool feeling, especially up on stage. Like I've never spoken in front of so many people. Was. It was, yeah, it was amazing. It was so much fun.

And we had the full gamut of people From I'm a DJ and I had $10 million and I'm struggling with this problem to I'm just getting in to I've wanted to get in, but I haven't for two years. And from those talks and the experiences that we shared and our own experiences, they felt comfortable enough to come up and talk to us about those things. And they knew they weren't going to get sold or pitched to or anything like that. It was literally just a conversation with humans building crypto citizens.

And I think that if there's one thing to take away, there's just so much belief in this space where we're going. Whether it's sailor calling six million dollar Bitcoin or you got NAP bank, that bank ready, talk about custody releasing, you.

Know, their coins as well. It was paper had a booth, you.

Know, you know, this is, this is all really awesome stuff and we're starting to really see this industry mature and come into a limelight where like it is spoken about. And once these ETFs be are going to be approved and the bitcoin halving next year, like you can just really see how this space is really going to take off for the next 12, 18 months.

We had, we spoke to people from KPMG. They were just attendees in the audience and he came up and talked to me and they wanted to know more about the space, how they can involve with their customers, where they engage. Spoke to a guy who's trying to kick off NFTs through coffee. He's a coffee roaster and he's got this idea of play to earn and unlocks. It was just like really, really incredible. The different amount of people that just come up to you and they want your opinion on things. And mate, one big thing for me, I was expecting a lot more Metaverse and there was zero Metaverse present. There was some weird VR thing in the corner where you stand in a square that no one knew how to use and no one was actually doing. But that was huge at the previous conference and now that kind of consumer VR Metaverse side just wasn't there at all, wasn't there?

I saw someone on LinkedIn speaking about how there's a lot more at the south by Southwest. So I'm wondering if there was just less budgets this year and these, you know, there's Companies have just selected their conferences a little bit more. But yeah, it's interesting. I think just, you know, a lot of these old coins have been battered and bruised with their funding.

Yeah. And it's interesting. It's more moving towards like Oz Crypticon, like a trade show. And then you've got things like the blockies, which are kind of the awards for people that work in there. And then all the events around the space out at Oshi, out at Upside down, the after parties.

Yeah, it was, it was just incredible to see so much activity and everyone was just so welcoming. There's no, none of. No, you can't come here because like Ben and I, we're the weird Web three guys, right? We tell people how it is. We don't have our corporate hat on. If something's. We'll call out the and we'll tell them. But everyone just welcomed us with open arms. It was incredible.

Yeah, that's what I love about this, this space. You know, the worst you're going to get is Twitter. Right? But those people don't come to conferences because they're just in their bedroom whinging and complaining, right?

Yeah.

People that, these events, it's, it's really cool. And it was just like. Yeah, it was just fascinating, I think, like from a personal perspective to see how we've been able to grow the last two or three years compared to last year to this year. Like, it was just non stop, like people stopping us in the, in the line to get food and you know, I was eating lunch in the toilets, like just everywhere.

People eating lunch in the toilets, mate.

Just like, oh, you're from collective shift. Well, you want to talk about that portfolio and like, you know, follow on Twitter or like it, you know, and.

You literally had a circle of people around you at all times, mate. You just. It was incredible. I'm like, thank God I'm not that guy. I could actually just like duck off for two minutes. I thought I could. But then someone comes, I was like, oh, are you burgs? I'm like, nah, and just leg it.

No, like, wrong burgs.

But man, seriously, this, just seeing the human side of it, people working in the space where, what they're up to, they don't talk about publicly. Like, there is some really interesting stuff coming out that we can't talk about that a lot of the companies told us and I'm like, holy crap. You know, they're keeping it under wraps. We can't announce anything. They'll be announcing things soon. But just to see the activity.

The presence, the conviction, and the real human side behind it makes me more bullish than ever, man.

Yeah man, me too. Great way to finish. Thank you everyone once again for tuning into the Bennett Burke's podcast. We'd love coming to you each and every week.

If you like this episode and you have someone else that you think would like it, would love for you to share it with them. Bennett Burke's podcast is a great way to learn about crypto in an easy way. You can just plug it in your ear, walk around, going to the gym, at the supermarket, whatever. It's the way we grow the podcast. It will always be free and we love coming to each and every week. So thank you for sharing it, thank you for listening in and Bergs will see you on the next episode.

See you man. Thanks champions.