PoolTogether Community Podcast #13 - Kris Kay

This is the PoolTogether Community Podcast. PoolTogether is the world's number one no-loss prize savings account. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit.

You are listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. I am Hot Mike, AKA Tim. AKA the singing songster. And we are here today with the legendary DeFi Donut himself, Chris K. Chris, thanks for making time for us at PoolTogether.

Anytime, anytime for PoolTogether, man. You know that.

That's right. You're fam. You are fam.

Exactly.

So we've got, we got a lot to cover today and I'm excited to get to chat questions as well. But I wanted to start off with some heavy stuff just about you being from Bulgaria. You're in the United States, you had to learn the language, you got thrown in the deep end. And how has this shaped who you are, what your vision is for like what your work is, the content that you make, why you're in crypto? So how could you just tell us your story?

Yeah, yeah. No, I love this, by the way. You—I'm looking at the questions, and you—you definitely like follow me close on Twitter and social media. So I love it. Yeah. So a lot of people don't know, and I don't expect them to know that I'm not actually born in the States, right? I was born in the small country in Eastern Europe called Bulgaria, pretty close to Ukraine, actually. Fun fact. And Around the age, I think I was like 6 when my family, we moved over to the States. Um, and we've been here ever since. That was like the year 2000. So I've been here like almost 22 years. And, um, yeah, when I moved here, I, none of us really, I think my mom was the only one that knew English, um, just because she studied it in school. But yeah, I did not know English. I started first grade here and I remember first, second, third, I think 3rd grade is when I got out of ESL, which is English as a Second Language program, which like they pull you out of class and you're basically like trying to learn ABCs and how to read and stuff. So yeah, I definitely like started, I mean, all immigrants really start with a disadvantage in that sense, but I remember walking out of, um, like ESL on my last day and like, I, she told me that my reading level was like 2 grades above, which I was like, Okay, that's cool. Well, like thinking back, that's pretty impressive. Um, yeah, I don't know how, if that affect, how that affects like my content, if it does in any way, but I guess, you know, I just wanna, if anything, if it, if it affects anything, it's just, it helps me, um, craft content that's easy to understand by everybody, even if you're, you know, struggling, uh, to understand English. Right. I just want to, um, cast a really wide net and make sure everybody can kind of understand. So yeah, that's, that's kind of my story. If you have any specific questions other than that regarding it, I'd be glad to elaborate.

Yeah. So how, when you posted about that, how did that, how did that hit on Twitter? I think you got some like lovers, but you also got some haters too, right?

I would say it was mostly love. I, I don't know if there was any hate. Maybe, maybe one person. I think the way I posted it, I don't remember the exact post, but I was kind of like reflecting, right? It was just like one night I was just on Twitter, I'm like laying in bed and I was thinking of like how far I've come. And, you know, I try not to do that just because I remember like when we came to the States, right? You know, we were by no means well off, right? Lower, lower middle class, just living in an apartment and not knowing English. So we, like my family, did not come here with any type of advantage. So like this past year for me has been like super crazy, like financially and just everything. And I think the way I posted on Twitter, you know, if you don't know me at all, if you don't know my content, it may have come off like, actually, I don't even know if, if it, how it can come off as like braggadocious or anything. I just basically said, something along the lines of, you know, English was my second language. Now I'm in the highest tax bracket. Right. And some, some person, maybe it was like 1 or 2 people took that some type of weird way. Like, oh, and I unfollowed you. I was like, all right, that's cool. But it was mostly love though. It was mostly love. And yeah, I guess if you really don't know like my, somebody's journey or story, it's like easy to judge or write things off. But I mean, Personally, I can never be jealous at somebody's come up. I think that's super weird if you're ever offended by somebody's, um, like just, you know, success. So yeah, I think it hit on Twitter pretty well cuz, you know, a lot of people were messaging me saying like, wow, like that was, that's inspiring. Like that's, um, I really, I like you more now, stuff like that. So that was cool. But yeah, didn't really get much hate on that.

So I just realized, Chris, that we're doing this an hour earlier now than UTC.

Really?

So we'll just keep going.

Is it, is it because the, the time switch?

Daylight savings time. Yeah. We're, we're both on Eastern time zone, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So sorry everybody. Oh my gosh. I, oh, sorry. Okay. TR. Okay. I'm here now. I'm—

We're here now.

Yeah. All right, cool. Tarek, thanks for being flexible for us ignorant Americans or whatever, or for me, the ignorant. Yeah. But I got to give credit. Smart Investor wrote these questions and I just assume with Twitter, these are, there's haters and generally like, yeah, you, I mean, there's this whole, it's like the dichotomy of like, you pulled yourself up, like you struggled and you fought and you fought and you were reflecting and being thankful Or the, you know, what the graciousness of the universe or whatever. And also like that you struggled and it was really hard and you, but there's also like, I guess the other side of things is like, hey, it shouldn't be that hard. Or the system shouldn't, like, there's also that kind of other side of the coin. Or I think I would see that, I would expect that kind of pushback from people. Yeah. So I, that was probably that one hater in Twitter.

Yeah, I don't, I would love to hear a hater's point of view because I really don't get it. And it's not like just, it's one thing to like be financially successful, right? But also I'm self-employed, right? And I took a big-ass leap like 4 years ago, quitting my job right out of college. So I got out of college, Yeah. Got a computer science degree, which was the hardest thing in my life because I suck at school. But I got that, jumped into a programming job right after I graduated. And, you know, exactly one year of working there, I quit. No plan B. I just knew, you know, you know, I don't want to do this. This is not like, this is not me. So I went the self-employed route and the first 3 years I basically made nothing. Like, it's hard, man. It's hard. I experimented with a lot of things, but Like that on its own is probably a bigger accomplishment. Like, oh yeah, I didn't know English. I was disadvantaged at that. Fine. But like being self-employed is super, super difficult. And like, that's also something I was reflecting on. Like in 2019, I posted this on Twitter a while back. I posted my tax return and my net income was like $12,000 in 2019. So 2 years later or 2, About two years later to come this far, this quick. Like yeah, I'm gonna you know, I'm gonna be proud of myself. I'm gonna pat myself on the back. Like if you're offended by that, like cool. That's that's your problem. So you know that's how I look at it. I would love to get another point of view of how that's like you know any anything less than inspiring. I don't know.

Yeah, no no, it totally it totally is. I I just think back would be. You know, I mean, there are many pushbacks and I'm not pushing back on you. I just, you know, there is—

Oh yeah, no, no.

You know, people who grew up in like, you know, just like with the system and like how, you know, like the healthcare system can like put people in medical debt or the university system, like there's predatory lending in the university system that you cannot get out of and things like that. But that's not, I mean, dude, in 2 years, man, Like, could you just give me that portfolio of like in 2 years, what are the things that really made it for you?

Yeah. Well, so it's actually, I quit mid-2017, summer of 2017. So what's that? '18, '19, '20, '21. So about 4 years until things started taking off. When I quit, right? Like I said, I had no plan B. I was passionate. I've always like in college and in high school, I've always been entrepreneurial, just trying to resell things. I had like a social media marketing business in college 'cause I was just trying to make money doing whatever. So all kinds of things. But I think I eventually landed on content shortly, maybe like 2 years after I quit and I realized I had a good way of teaching and educating. So that kind of collided with my interest with crypto at the perfect time around like DeFi summer in 2020. And that was like the, I knew that would happen one day 'cause like my skillset for creating easy to understand content was there. I just didn't have the passion was missing, right? The subject matter. And that was crypto in summer 2020. So Yeah, everything was, you know, I, I don't know. You asked what my portfolio was. I don't know if you meant literally or—

Just what were the big wins, you know, like what? Yeah. Yeah.

The biggest win honestly was, so in 2017, like that whole run, I was, I was dollar cost averaging into BNB, which is Binance Coin. We all know that now, right? It was like, In the $3 to $5 range back then. I think now it's like $400. I don't know what it is, but I had accumulated that because that was like an exchange that just came out months, like months after the 2017 summer. And it was growing super fast and I was convinced that, you know, Binance was going to be a big player in the game, which I guess I was right. But What happened then is everything went up, then everything went down, right? I never sold my BNB. And then when it went up mid-2019, for whatever reason, I converted all of that, my whole crypto portfolio into ETH, right? And it was ETH price at the time was $150. So that was probably the single best move I made. And I held, I've been holding it ever since, right? And obviously accumulating more. But even when I was like, quote, like broke, when I was going like the self-employed route and trying to figure everything out, I never sold my ETH. I never sold it. I had a stack of ETH even though, you know, it went all the way down to like $90 or $89 at some point. I never sold it, never cared to sell it even though I could have, you know, used the money obviously, but holding onto that and buying it when I did was the single thing I did right. And yeah, that kind of got the snowball rolling on a lot of things when the bull market picked up like late 2020. So yeah.

So you said that you aren't good at school or you struggled in school, like especially with a computer science degree. You said that, right?

Um, yeah, it's not that I'm like terrible at school. It's just like, I remember in, in college, um, I was after maybe like year 2 or 3, basically the last 2 years, I was like, all right, I want at least one semester where I get all A's. Like, that's, I've never done that in my life. And I'm gonna, you know, do whatever it takes to get all A's. 'Cause I see like people around me getting all A's who are not like crazy smart or anything. Right. I'm like, damn, um, you know, this, this can't be too hard if I put my mind to it. And I tried for 2 years to get at least 1 semester all A's and I couldn't do it. So that kind of made me realize like, yeah, I'm not good at school, right? There's people that are really good at school, but that doesn't really mean anything. But, you know, sometimes it does. And I'm just not good at school, you know, whatever that means. Um, maybe it's the format, whatever it is. I'm just not like some, somebody that, can just excel in that environment. So that, that's what I meant. Like, I'm not saying like I get all Fs, but I'm just not, that's not my, like my strong suit.

But what's interesting is that you are such a good teacher. I went through your DeFi Wealth or your DeFi Bible and, and, and it's, you make things so crystal clear, very easy to listen to, very nice graphics, visuals. You know, you're doing all this video stuff that's very helpful. To the normie like me entering the space, like you held my hand through that. So it's just so interesting that, so I'm going to say school was wrong, Chris, because you, the way that you're able to just make something so impossible for even my most techie friends so digestible. It's interesting that teaching has become, or like this content producing specifically for onboarding people to crypto has become your passion.

Yeah, no, I think the two are related, by the way. Um, I think because in, in a school environment, I'm like, man, why do you guys make this so hard to learn? Like the way teachers approach things, uh, most teachers, it's just, I think that's why I'm like, all right, I want my content to be visual, simple, move at a slow pace and make sure everybody can understand, make sure people like me can understand it. Right. So I think that's why maybe my content is, is, um, is as easy as, you know, you say it is to understand.

But content, as we, as we both know, is a fickle beast that is never satisfied. It is a black hole. You, you can never put out too much content. And, uh, that, and even when your best jam is posted, then something, some world event happens or somebody gets rugged or something, and then No one sees it and then you feel weird reposting it. How do you handle that as far as like the demands of content go? And you know, you gotta keep up and you gotta keep pushing, but you also like are fine if, I'm assuming if you don't do that, you know? So how do you balance your passion and the demand of content and what you're gonna do moving forward?

Yeah, it's honestly in crypto, Content is the hardest thing to do just because everything moves so fast. Everything's updating. You know, now that Aave just released V3, I'm gonna have to update a lot of parts of my course just based on that. You know, a lot of other crypto creators don't follow that path, but I don't wanna make things that are just, you know, talking about what I think the trendiest coin is gonna do and why it's a cool project, right? I try to talk about things like what is DeFi, the Ethereum merge, which I'm making a long video as we speak on that. Decentraland, like 101 stuff, stuff that is going to be around. And it's proven like my Decentraland video that I made like 13 months ago, 14, whatever it was, you know, it got— it didn't get many views at first, but 8 months later, When the Facebook thing happened, changing their name to Meta, it got like 100,000 views in a month. So that's what I mean by things that are not really here today, gone tomorrow. And I think that's the biggest, will be the biggest downfall for many crypto creators because their catalog doesn't auto-compound, right? So if they stop making content for a little while, their views will drastically, drastically drop. And that's kind of, it's hard. It's super, super difficult, which I know you wanna, you wanted to talk about my recent rant on social media about crypto content producers. But yeah, basically like how that came about was, you know, it's something that's been building up for a while, but, and it's, you know, some people found it controversial or whatever, for whatever reason. I'm not really sure. But essentially the crappy content gets way more views, right? The price predictions, mostly the clickbait stuff, all that gets way more views than, you know, the things that should be getting views. But I'm not, I'm not just talking about myself, right? There, there's, there's more like other solid crypto content creators that just don't get any love. Compared to, you know, somebody who'll make a, the next 10 meme coins that are gonna make you rich. Literally that would be the title and it'll get like 200,000 views. So my rant was like, it's, you know that, I don't know if you've ever seen Batman, but there's a super solid quote in there that goes, you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain. Basically in crypto, you either die a good content producer or you live long enough to see yourself create clickbait. That, that's what it really comes down to. And I, I got to a point where I was like, all right, do I need to switch like my strategy? And, and this didn't last long, but I was like, 'cause everybody, you know, is making all these clickbait and predictable videos and stuff like that. And there's people are just eating that up, right? And I was like, do I need— am I doing something wrong? And I came across this video on Instagram, which is— which became the subject of my rant. And it was some guy who I really never heard of before. And he— I guess it's like a platform for financial literacy and it's more than one guy. But basically he was going over Ethereum 2.0 in like a 30-second Instagram reel. And he was saying, yeah, Ethereum 2.0 set to happen this summer. It's finally gonna fix the fees of Ethereum. It's, you know, bullish or whatever. And people in the comments are like, wow, finally I'm loading up, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, that's 100% wrong. Like, that's like the, the merge happening this summer has nothing to do with fees, right? And he, their platform had a million followers, right? And I was like, this is the kind of, this is the kind of content that, you know, gets, gets picked up, right? People want to hear, it's not even people want to hear, it's like effortless engagement farming. That's what everybody, well, most people are, you know, flocking to. So that, it's crazy that like that probably got so many, so many views. And some people got offended because they're fans of that platform and they thought I was like coming for that guy specifically when all I said was it was an effortless video that was 100% wrong. I don't know, did you see that rant?

Yeah, I did. I did. I saw the main photo that you posted, the dude on there. And I wanna do my Bane impression. Ooh, Batman. But I don't think Bane actually says that. But so are you gonna become a villain? Is that what you're saying? Like you're headed there?

Yeah.

Or you're tempted, you, the dark side is beckoning you?

No. Yeah. For, for like a quick minute, like after, like I said, that video was just something that triggered a rant that has been building up for like months and months. Right. And I was just like, you know, after seeing that, like somebody that made a completely wrong take on the Ethereum merge or Ethereum 2.0, You know, and people are eating that up. I was like, what am I? I texted somebody that you know another person who's successful, and I was like, just for advice. I was like, am I doing something wrong? Like as far as like content, and he kind of kind of talked me down. He was like, nah, bro, like. He basically told me, you know, reassured me that I'm playing the long game, which most people aren't. And yeah, he was, he was, he basically made me realize like all the people that, you know, I'm, I'm frustrated with as far as like not specifically, but just like in the crypto content world, they won't be, they won't be around. In five years, and you know that's kind of true. I thought about it, and on YouTube in like 2013 to 2017, the kings of YouTube were people who were faking pranks, right? Getting crazy reactions by paying actors. And I know the YouTubers I remember always would like complain out of frustration. Like these are the people that you know are killing it right now, but none of them are really around today. Like The crazy, wildly successful pranksters of that dominated YouTube are just not around. So I think that, you know, same thing's gonna happen. So, you know, after I realized that, yeah, I'm just, I'm just gonna keep doing me, keep building, you know, a good catalog of solid content. And I know eventually in the long run it will be a good choice instead of, you know, falling victim to that. Oh, let me just make clickbait and get these views up real quick.

Okay, so you turning full-time VC is not in the cards in the near future. That's what I see for you.

Yeah, I don't think so.

Okay, so why don't we talk ETH 2.0? Because I actually just, on my commute today, I was listening to the ETH Denver panel on kind of ETH 2.0 and the misnomers, misconceptions about it. It was very informative, but, but what, what are your thoughts on ETH 2.0?

Yeah, so I'm like 70% done with, like I said, a 35-minute video I'm making on the topic, mostly focusing on the merge that's happening this summer. So first of all, ETH 2.0 is kind of like a misnomer, meaning that the Ethereum Foundation is trying to move away from that name just because it comes off as like a single upgrade that's going to fix Every problem, right? When in reality it's a roadmap of like 3 major milestones. And I would say that roadmap is about 70% complete. And right now we are approaching the, I think, most important part of the roadmap. And in my opinion, could be the most significant upgrade in all of crypto just because it's such an important upgrade to Ethereum, which is the heart You know, of all of this where hundreds of billions of dollars are, you know, locked in there, trillion dollar of economic activity per year. So it, it's a big deal. Essentially what's happening this summer with this whole merge is the Ethereum train is moving from one, the current proof of work railroads to the proof of stake railroad. So it's merging. onto a new chain. And yeah, that just, you know, I explain it way better in my video just because there's like visualizations and all that stuff. But essentially no more mining, right? Which has so many, so many benefits to the Ethereum ecosystem. But you, the current like network of Ethereum is basically held up by miners who You know, buy expensive graphics cards or set up big-ass rigs and, you know, start trading electricity for ETH, right? And what they're doing, what their hardware is doing is basically just securing the network. But the problem is miners are economically forced to sell their earned ETH, whether that's through, you know, the issuance rewards or the actual gas revenue that the blockchain generates, they're forced to sell that to pay for electricity costs and obviously recoup their hardware costs. So the amount of sell pressure that creates on the whole, you know, ETH cryptocurrency is immense. So proof of stake, right? Just, just the switch alone is lowering issuance as far as like new ETH coming into the ecosystem by 90%. 90%. And on top of that, when you add the burn, which every transaction we know a good chunk of ETH is burned from existence. Yeah, like ETH will start shrinking in supply very, very soon. So supply will only start getting shorter. I mean, not shorter is not the right word. Supply will start deflating, right? We'll go deflationary soon. Which I think at the current rate it'll be like -2%, negative 2% per year, which is better than Bitcoin, obviously better than the dollar and probably a whole bunch of other, most of the market. Yeah, there, there's a lot of things to the merge, but I think the most important part is that the security guards of the network, which, you know, right now are the miners and after the merge they'll be the stakers. will now have skin in the game, right? That, I think that's the most important part because in my video, the way I put it is if you're a miner right now, all you need to do is like buy a graphics card and start earning ETH and selling it for money, right? Start dumping it. Basically, you're a security guard. Miners are security guards who are protecting a bank vault but don't have any of their own money in there, right? As far, but stakers, They're protecting that vault and they have their own money in there and they know if a fire breaks out, they're going to try to put out that fire and, you know, risk, quote unquote, risk their life to put out that fire because their funds are in there as well. So I think everybody's more aligned in the proof of stake model. And not to mention it's like way more eco-friendly, right? So yeah, that's basically the merge in a nutshell.

I like that. I like that a lot. I have a friend in Germany that I'm trying to, he's a streamer, And I'm trying to— you're getting props in the chat, by the way, for the clarity of communicating that. Nice job, Chris.

Appreciate that.

But I have a friend in Germany who's like, I'm trying to get him into ice poker because he's a streamer and I'm trying, and I think he'd be great, but he won't do it because he's upset with crypto and not for the environmental reasons. He's just mad because they drove the prices of GPUs up. So he's just like, I'm not supporting that. They make my computers more expensive.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now Nvidia is loving, loving the whole crypto mining model, but it's like Ethereum has created, helped create, obviously Bitcoin as well, but a huge, huge GPU market. And I understand in the video I mentioned gamers probably hate us for a reason. I mean, specifically the miners, right? So yeah, prices have been going crazy, but it's going to be super interesting to see what happens in a couple of months and

What do you think? Well, now that's a perfect transition for Ice Poker. How are you feeling about the state of Decentral Games, Ice Poker behemoth that has become? You got me into it. You did this to me, but it's been so fun to play. I mean, it's really been fun to play. It's been cool to build a guild and it's really cool to see governance happen, community happen. product iteration to where they're, I guess they're gonna shut down the casino part of things and just switch fully onto play-to-earn, seeing ads in the casinos now or in the ICE poker rooms. So thanks for that, man. I mean, you're riding high on all this stuff, aren't you?

Yeah. And I think honestly, you just said it in your explanation there. You said it, it's fun to play. I think that's, Why Ice Poker is good. And a friend of mine told me the same thing. He was like, man, the other day I hadn't played with my wearables for like so long, but I just decided to hop on and play some poker. And he was like, dude, it's fun. And you can't say that for like almost any other play-to-earn, right? Most play-to-earn just seem like a grind or just, you know, people that are not just genuinely having fun, but so many millions of people play poker. Like on apps on their phone or online without, you know, without any type of gambling involved, which, which is ice poker. So now that you can just make money while playing and, you know, build a guild on top of that and kind of work your way up, I think that's, it's a super cool model. And I mean, I think it's shown, right? The growth in the last 4 or 5 months that it's been around, like the first 4 months it's been around. has been crazy, right? The treasury's like booming. All the NFT drops get sold out within minutes, sometimes seconds. Yeah, it's been, it's been crazy to watch. And I remember this, this past, last summer when, you know, we were kind of, this was kind of being talked about and I was responsible for making like the first video on it before it even like basically came out. I was like, all right, this is interesting. But like, I had no clue it was gonna get like this big. I was like, 'cause I mean, play-to-earn back then, like 2021, it was like Axie Infinity was basically all we knew as far as play-to-earn. So I was super curious. And I remember on the very first drop, it took, I think, an hour to sell out. I had 2 wallets. I bought 2 wearables, like when the drop went down. And then I stepped away from my laptop thinking like, okay, cool, it's about to get sold out. I came back in an hour or something. And the cooldown period was like, I think it was an hour maybe then, right? So I couldn't even buy more wearables. But when I came back after an hour had passed, I was like, oh, it's still not sold out. So, you know, I bought 2 more and right now obviously thinking back, I'm like, damn, I should have just kept buying. But it's crazy that now like 58 seconds and it, you know, a set sells out. And keep in mind the first drop there was only 500 wearables. Now every drop is 1,250. So it's, yeah, it just, it, it's awesome to see.

And we've got mobile coming up now, mobile Ice Poker, which that's, yeah. I'm excited to see how that changes the game. Assigned seating's coming out. I'm seeing pro poker players now that are involved. Chris Moneymaker, I was trash talking him on Twitter. I was like, I was like, bro, don't even talk to me. You work World Series of Poker, doesn't have challenges. Talk to me when they institute challenges. We'll see how you, you're trying to get those 2 straights. Come on, man. So that's fun. And then I also saw Landon Tice and Daniel Negreanu. were complaining that all these crypto poker shillers, 'cause there's all this crypto poker and they were saying play to earn. And honestly, I just stopped doing research after Ice Poker. Like that was it, I've arrived. But apparently there's these other, I don't know if it's like casino stuff or whatever, but I don't know what do you think the future is? What are you excited about with the future for Ice Poker?

Yeah, by the way, the Chris Moneymaker thing, joining Ice Poker and making a guild. That's so crazy. 'Cause I remember like, you know, watching, watching it when I was in college and I had my poker phase. That's super, super, uh, cool to see. Um, but as far as, uh, would you ask, uh, what I think about Ice Poker moving forward?

Yeah. Yeah. I was naming like the mobile stuff, but, but like, you know, they, they started trying to do some comedy stuff in there. They started, you know, there's all these different angles that I'm seeing from the team 'cause they're just shipping, they're just building and shipping. It's really impressive.

Yeah, yeah, no, they're, they're super impressive on like how fast and consistent they're just putting new stuff out. Yeah, as far as like the future, I'm super excited to see how mobile poker, just the experience, like that's what I'm curious about. I'm not even, I don't care about like the NFTs or the money side. I just want to see like, will it actually be easy to play and fun to play and all that stuff? So. I'm, I'll just be here waiting for that to come out. But yeah, long term, I mean, so far so good, right? It's pretty hard to like predict what's gonna happen 1 to 2 to 5 years out in crypto. Yeah. So I guess we'll see. As I said, I was on a friend's private podcast yesterday and we were talking about Ice Poker and essentially I told him it all comes down to the ice Token, like everything revolves around orbits around the price of the ice token. So I know the team knows that, and that's why they're they make updates that most people don't really understand. Like why are you guys prioritizing this or this? But essentially, the goal is to keep the price of ice stable. So that's really the big that's where all the effort is going and will go. So as long as that's You know, the burn-to-earn ratio is, is on point, which it always has been since inception. I think, I think we're good.

Yeah. I mean, I, I would love to see in maybe, you know, just like tournaments and World Series of Poker and those, those sorts of things happening. I'm really excited with this assigned seating because I think up until this point it's been, it's been okay. But it's just like, as soon as we have these more guarantees that there's not chip dumpers or things like that, those kind of problematic exploit— exploits. exploits that are always gonna happen. I'm really, I'm just pumped to see that and see really what I want is my buddies to be on this stuff too. Yeah. It's really, so it's really hard. I'm trying to like split wearables with them to try to like get them a little taste of it and whatever. But it's been fun to like meet up with, and Chris, we need to meet up. I would love to play a little poker with you at the tables. Yeah, me too. Give you some trash talking. But also I hear that you need a poker guild manager, it seems like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Also just to talk about like just DG in general.

Yeah.

The pivot that they made was amazing, right? From, you know, the gambling to ice poker. And obviously some people, like we had a conversation in another chat here, you know, some people still think it's considered gambling. I personally don't. And the legal team of DG, definitely don't. So yeah, man, advertising, seeing advertising in there, the partnerships they're making, I think DG is positioned, and don't get it twisted, I think the value prop of all this accrues to the DG token holders, right? I wouldn't say ICE is an investment, like the token itself. NFTs are cool, But, but I think at the end of the day, the DG coin is where all the value is accruing. What was, I just lost my train of thought. I was gonna say something.

That's okay. Edit, editing, power of editing. Take all the time you need.

No, no. Yeah, no, I, I was just saying how like DG is positioned so well to thrive because everybody, all eyeballs are on the metaverse and everybody's trying to come in. We saw Samsung, Coca-Cola, Atari, you know, countless brands, you know, come into Decentraland specifically. And when they come in, right, they need a partner, they need land, and they need somebody to, you know, quickly build something for them, whether that's a, you know, marketing Easter egg hunt like Samsung did, or, you know, whatever it is. Deegee is the biggest land owner in all of Decentraland, right? And on top of that, they have like a, They have a machine, they have a system, builders. So we can, you know, we're set up to do like anything basically. And if I was a brand and I jump into Decentraland for research, I see the most, you know, the heart of Decentraland, the most activity is happening in DG Venues. So that's probably who I'm gonna try to get in contact with. So I think aside from Ice Poker, there's gonna be so many other opportunities that DG can use and leverage to kind of grow the ecosystem.

Yeah. And it's cool to think about how PoolTogether can help that ecosystem grow or accentuate it. And so, you know, DG has been very adamant about people staking their tokens, like actually holding, staking them. And it's been awesome to see like the mechanics that they've put in place to encourage that to happen. with premium features and all that. So it's cool. I'm excited to see how we can get PoolTogether involved with Ice Poker. I know that there are PoolTogether, there's a bunch of poolers that do it anyway, but that'd be cool to see a little bit more of a formal partnership. And yes, you did post that you have like half your wearables are unassigned right now, which is just, you know, a horrible sin. And so we gotta fix that. I

don't know how

we're

gonna fix that. No, I didn't.

That, that wasn't you? Oh no, I'm gonna edit this out. This is somebody else?

Yeah, yeah, definitely not me.

Okay, so all your wearables are, are all, are accounted for. You got a guild going and you're running it yourself. Well, it's none of my business, but I do want that alpha. What's— give me—

yeah, yeah.

Okay. All right, you're straight. Sorry, man.

You're good.

Okay, next question. This is very important. What is your workout regimen?

Oh man. Pretty inconsistent lately. Basically, I was doing good. I usually work out like frequently, but September 1st last year, when I got back to the States and I was like buckling down to make my course, right? I spent the whole month of September basically just grinding away at, you know, the DeFi course that most of you guys know. And I was like in rare form. I was waking up at like 6:00 AM, going to the gym, coming back, working on my course till like 1:00 AM or 2:00 and just repeating that. But then after the course dropped, I was burnt out, man. Like this was, I think, second week of October, course finally out and October, November, December, January, the next like 4 months, I didn't touch a gym. I was just, on top of that, right? I was like super busy, but Yeah. Yeah. I was, uh, I'm not really consistent lately. I started to get back into it though, but yeah, I mean, summer's coming. We got, uh, the Permissionless conference in Palm Beach. So, you know, I gotta, I got tickets to, to that conference, but now I gotta get tickets to, you know, the gun show, my biceps.

So. That's my hometown, baby. West Palm Beach.

Wait, for real?

Yeah. That's where I'm from. Yeah, I know. And I'm like, I, I want to go to, I want to go to Permissionless. I need to like put together a presentation or whatever so I don't have to pay the the conference fee, but that's cheap of me. I should just go. But yeah, any other conferences you're going to this year? Where can people see the DeFi Donut, Chris K? Yeah. Get like some sweet merch or, you know, you got some giveaways or something, right?

Yeah, yeah, we'll see. But for now, Permissionless is the only thing I have planned. I know there's a bunch happening. There's so many happening, honestly. But honestly, this is gonna be my first crypto conference that I go to. So we'll, we'll see how it goes. Maybe I don't like it. Yeah, for, for now it's just permissionless. If, if I'm going somewhere else, I'm sure I'll, I'll let people know on Twitter or Instagram.

Sweet. Okay. We'll, we'll, we'll follow you along and, and stalk you on, on the, at these conferences. Yeah, there, ETH Denver was no joke. That was, and I was just like, oh my gosh, like these people party. Like that's, it's just like, parties. But the other thing is like, I had to wait in line for so long. I mean, I'm sure you won't have to because you get the red carpet. You should get the red carpet, Chris. But just meeting people and standing around for like 2 hours and talking to them is just really, it was really awesome. I talked to 2 developers who were just giving me every way that I could possibly be exploited and rugged, which I felt so safe and secure after that conference or after waiting in line.

Yeah, that's, that's why I'm going. Like, I wanna just, you know, meet people that I've kind of quote unquote met online, like you yourself and everybody in here. I just wanna, you know, actually meet people in person. But yeah, I'm not really going there for the parties even though, I mean, West Palm Beach, you know, yeah, we already know that it's gonna, it's gonna be interesting. But yeah, ETH Denver, man, I don't see myself going there. I don't like the cold. I hate the cold.

It was cold. I got there in a literal blizzard. It was horrible.

Yeah. No, can't do it.

Yeah. Okay. So now comes the time where you tell us if you, you know, up to you what you want to share. What are you excited about in 2022? What are the projects that are coming across your radar that you're really pumped about? That, you know, what's the next Ice Poker?

Good question. So what I've been keeping my, my eyes on is honestly, I'm most excited about the Ethereum merge. I know that's not an exciting topic for most people, but I just think, you know, align— realigning the whole ecosystem with people that have skin in the game and just everything else in between is super important. Obviously it's very bullish for the ETH token in my opinion. So, you know, I'm excited for that, specifically liquid staking. I think that's gonna be huge. And I've been talking about this for a while, for some time now to, in like class and stuff. But the fact that I can stake my ETH right on like Rocket Pool or Lido Finance and get, you know, a receipt token called staked ETH or rETH, and then put that to work in DeFi, like borrow against that on Aave or provide liquidity. for like staked ETH and ETH pair on Curve and get more rewards. I think that's a huge, huge category. And, you know, I've said this before, but I think it will be probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest category in DeFi very soon.

I need to look up like in this ETH Denver thing and maybe you can explain it to me graciously, but the nodes and spinning up a node and we need diversity of nodes. We don't want all the nodes being on, you know, one platform or whatever. But that's the new— I mean, that's the— you stake ETH and then you can also have nodes, right? As far as like ways to—

Yeah, there's, there's options. And I cover all this in my video. That's why I'm super excited to get it out because I answer these questions on a daily basis and I don't mind it. But, you know, now there's just a place where I can just send people even though it's a long-ass video. But yeah, there's, there's options. You can stake on Let's say Coinbase, right? You open the app, stake. That's exchange staking.

But I'm talking like having like a Raspberry Pi, you know, with like running. Yeah, that kind of thing. You're getting to it. I'm sorry I interrupted you. And this is going to be on YouTube, on your DeFi Wealth Bible, I'm sure, right? You're putting this everywhere. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I got 'em. At the end of the day, all the ETH staked, right, is going to be, a physical validator, right? But, you know, which takes 32 ETH and a pretty regular computer, right? Nothing crazy like a crypto mining rig that we currently have to use right now. But because DeFi is so composable and, you know, the nature of the blockchain, we have options now. We have, we can layer things on top of that, like how Coinbase is able to offer, you know, stake 0.1 ETH if you want, right? We'll take care of the rest and they'll charge a 10% fee. Or something like that. Rocket Pool is super cool because you can stake, you can have a full node, right, yourself where you set it up at home, except you only need 16 ETH instead of 32. And the way that works is they basically match the other half of the ETH that you need with liquid stakers. So people coming in swapping their ETH for rETH, right? And that kind of gets matched with your validator. Now you have 32. And you keep 100% of your rewards plus some of the rewards for the people that latched onto your validator with whatever ETH they swapped. So it's a really cool bonus and a really cool model. Plus Rocket Pool is like, I think one of, it's the best liquid staking option just because it's decentralized like that. Whether we're on Lido Finance, the physical validators are handpicked and not everybody can become a validator. A validator on Lido Finance.

Yeah, one of the names I heard was like Nimbus, and I know I actually connected with the Stratis people who made this app. It's like a, it was like one of the first web browsing dApp apps in like 2020 that I was using, and they have Nimbus. So yeah, I need to watch your videos. I need to like research this stuff. 16 ETH is cheap, but not, I mean, it's not, but yes, that's compared to 32. Yeah, I'm thinking about how many wearables that is, but I should be thinking About staking DG. I get it. Hey, Chris, so we're going to wrap up here, but I want to know, how can the PoolTogether community help you? How can we amplify your non-spammy, shilly educational gold nuggets that you're dropping to the Twitterverse, to our friends and family? Like, what do you think the biggest help could be to the people listening? listening to this podcast and in the Discord?

Yeah, I think, I think, um, most people are helping. I mean, not most, uh, definitely far from most, but, um, just by, I'm not, I'm not really sure, you know, how, how people can help, but, um,

how can we support you? Yeah. Like what, what's your, Just,

yeah, I mean, I've already, I'm already, I'm already seeing it happen, right? If, you know, somebody on Twitter has a crypto, like, how can I want to dive into crypto rabbit hole? Where should I look? And I'll see people are always tagging me like, hey, check out Chris K's YouTube and this and that. So I think that is like the best form, right? Just word of mouth, right? Recommending my content to, to friends, family, and even strangers. I'm not asking anybody to go out and actively do that, but I see it happening and I think that's the most positive way to kind of Spread the word for sure.

How do you, how do you generate your content? Like how do you pick the topics that you want to talk about and make the videos for?

Yeah. So my YouTube channel basically started out as a literal diary of all the moments that made, you know, my mind explode in DeFi. So I didn't really, I never have like a shortage of things to talk about, right? If something impresses me, like makes, raises my eyebrows, I'm gonna make a video about it probably. So that along with like just things that people, like questions people are always asking me, I think that's a very good topic to make a video about because, you know, I myself can only answer, you know, instead of answering a question 1,000 times, a video can answer it a million times for me, right? So Just, just new releases like Aave V3 that just came out today, like an hour ago. I'm— I think I definitely need to make a video on that. Yeah, just content. There's no shortage of content ideas, to be honest.

And you're, and you're getting this stuff from Twitter. You got secret groups, you got a secret podcast that you're on.

Yeah. I mean, most, most of the things come from Twitter, honestly. You know, I try to— I literally only follow crypto people, whether it's builders or DAO contributors, influencers, whatever. So as soon as I go on Twitter and I spend like 15 minutes scrolling, you know, I'm kind of up to date on what's happening today. So that's where most of my quote unquote alpha comes from. So yeah, Twitter is definitely a good way. Also listening to like maybe a Bankless podcast or It comes from everywhere, honestly. I'm just immersed in this space 24/7. So it just, ideas and content just drop outta the sky at this point.

I love how I ask you like, what are you excited about? And, you know, some people give me projects, like NFT projects they're excited about, or, you know, meme coins, or—

Oh yeah.

You know, or like when I talk to builders, devs, they give me like, oh, this is really exciting, the structure and the platform. And protocol, you know, but, but you gave me ETH, you gave me ETH 2.0, which we're not calling it ETH 2.0, it's just ETH. It's the next thing with ETH. Yeah, that's right. Right. So I'm, I would love to know, are there other chains other than ETH that catch your eye? So we're talking Terra, like what, what are some other things? Or do you just really, if it's, if it's not ETH, it's not for you?

No, no, I definitely play around on other chains. But as far as like if someone were to, were, if I had like the ultimatum or scenario where I leave all of my net worth on, I had to choose one blockchain where I leave all of my net worth and don't touch it for the next 10 years, right? I'm not choosing anything besides ETH. And that's, you know, that alone I think is kind of where most of the ETH community comes from because they know that decentralization matters. They know, you know, the network not going down every month matters. And as far as like long-term longevity, you know, the entire mission of crypto, right? ETH embodies that. But I realize that, you know, there's other chains which are cool and helpful to the space. I've honestly, I think Polygon is a chain that I've used, you know, whether you want to call it a sidechain or whatever, I probably use that the most as far as how many transactions I have. Also layer Ethereum layer 2s, I think I will probably start using heavily soon. Like Aave just launched on Arbitrum and Optimism. But I mean, Avalanche is cool, Fantom is cool. I really haven't played at all with Solana or Luna just because they're non-EVM chains and I'm lazy. But yeah, even the definition EVM, right? Avalanche is an EVM-based chain, I think. Fantom is EVM. Polygon, EVM stands for Ethereum Virtual Machine. So I think that kind of tells me a lot. So yeah, Ethereum is definitely the most important in my book, but yeah, I've played on Fantom, Avalanche. Polygon. It's not like I'm some maxi who stays away from every other chain, but like when it comes down to it, yeah, Ethereum is the most important chain in crypto.

For sure. Yeah. I just like to, you know, for those clicks and listens, I like to hype things up and exaggerate them. So Chris, any Twitter follows, any suggested People or, or, or accounts to follow that will point us in the right direction as far as what we should be researching and following?

Yeah, man, I'm sure I have so much, but I also have like, I follow like 550 people. So individually off the top of my head right now, I'm not really sure. Okay. Chris K is a good one. I don't know if you guys have heard of that one.

Chris K. That's right. The only follow. And then I'm just re— you'll just share all the cool stuff that you're learning from your account.

Basically. Yeah. I'm, yeah, I'm like a funnel, right? Yeah. I'm a funnel and all the cool things that I see from people I follow, I basically, you know, um, it gets to my page or my content somehow.

Love it, dude. Well, Chris, thanks so much for being here, for giving us your time. Sorry to everyone for doing the whole like time change thing. It's the Eastern time zone is king. I'm so sorry, UTC. I'll get on that. Chris, anything else we need to talk about that we didn't cover that you would love for the PoolTogether community to hear?

I think, I think we covered a good amount, man. That was a, that was a nice range there. We went from me not knowing English to like the Ethereum merge. So I think that, that was a wide net.

Thanks for listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit, and we'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. So visit the PoolTogether Discord and let us know.