Democratizing Assets Through the Blockchain with Lars Seier Christensen of Concordium

The whole thing, organization of assets is a massive use case and real estate is just one of many examples. Right. And that will of course open up investment opportunities to a broader public that they haven't had for a very long time.

Welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to take your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larsen. If you haven't yet, get a copy of our book for free at our website, nextlevelincome.com. that's www.nextlevelincome.com. just click on the book link and I'll even send you a copy if you put your address in. On today's show, we have Lars Cyr Christiansen. Lars is the chairman of Concordium foundation with a particular focus on blockchain investments and over 30 years of experience across the banking and financial sector. He served as the co CEO and he was the founder of Saxo bank for more than 20 years in which time the bank grew from 1500 employees across 150 locations. So serving customers in 170 countries. I learned about Saxo bank through the cycling world where they were a sponsor of one of the best and many years the best team in the world. Lars is also the founder and sole owner of Seer Capital, a private equity and venture capital firm which specializes in investments in angel seed and a round stage companies. And the firm invests in art and fashion, financial services, food and beverages, sports and entertainment. So social media and technology industries. Lars certainly is a bit of a renaissance man. Lars, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, I'm excited to have you on today. I don't know if you knew this, but we're just going to talk about cycling today and okay, in the 90s.

Big interest. So, you know, happy with that. I'm speaking far too much about blockchain and id.

There you go. Well, no, in all seriousness, you know, I'd love to, love for you to share a little bit about your background, obviously in kind of the traditional banking world to start a Saxo bank before we dive a little bit more into Concordium. But yeah, I'd love for you to also share kind of the relationship with Saxo bank and professional cycling as well.

Yeah, I mean I was in London for a few years learning sort of my baby steps and in tradfi, particularly in foreign exchange, derivatives, stock, stuff like that. And I wasn't always super impressed with what I saw. So together with my, my partner we said why don't we chart ourselves and we, we found it back in 92, something that was to become Saxo bank over the years, which was very early Internet adapter. We're one of the first, really one of the very first online trading platforms in the world. And, and we, I spent 20 years of my life with that, with that business until I finally sold my, my last years in 18. And since, since 18, I haven't actually had anything to, to do with X Bank other than if I want to trade a little foreign exchange in the traditional world. It's an excellent platform. So I still use it now when, when I could choose thing, you know. And you're right about cycling. You know, I remember back in 2000, 2008, we were becoming, we were becoming quite international in Sex bank, you know, because our client group was sort of quite specialized so we had to identify that across the world. My partner back then and I were discussing how do we, I mean, how do we get our name known in like 150 countries without just being absolutely drowned in expenditure. And we came up with sponsorships and we looked more into that and, and it turned out, which I actually still believe that pro has value for money in terms of eyeballs per dollar was in cycling sponsorships. You know, for a number of reasons. It's a big sport, it has an international following. The team actually takes your name, which is a great thing. So you hear the name again and again and again during France stage. So we spent about eight years with what was obviously called Team Saxo bank and it was a great fun. At one point during years we were probably the best team in the world, Top three team and won everything over those years. The Tour, the world, all of the, all of the classics, I think so I have a big collection of T shirts from those days. It was a lot of fun. But it also worked in terms of marketing, which it was for us and Saxo bank, even though it's a fairly small bank, you know, even if I walk into office in Japan or Australia, you know, people heard about Saxon bank through this sponsorship, right? So it's a bit of an icebreaker when you, when you're far away from home that people actually can associate your, your brand to something.

No, it's wonderful. And I, I remember, I forget it might have been Bjarne Reese himself who was talking about the value of a dollar of sponsorship in cycling. I think a lot of Americans and, you know, we're based here in the United States, don't realize that cycling is the second biggest sport in the world and it's it's even bigger than a sport. Right. In places like Denmark and, you know, Europe there, it's much more cycling friendly than the United States.

Yeah, we have Maybe in Denmark, 10% of the population actually doing it as a, as a sport, as a hobby. But on top of that, you know, if you're going around Copenhagen, a heck of a lot of people are using their bikes, getting to and from work, you know, because the infrastructure is built for it. You got special bike rows everywhere. So it's a, it's a very broad sport with a lot of health benefits. And, and it's also, I would say, like a gadget thing, you know. Yeah. You know, about cycling, how people. The right bike and the right gear and stuff. Like, you know, it's something that people can really get into. So I like the sport. It was a lot of fun to be involved in. And, and it actually also worked in terms of getting pretty much worldwide recognition of our brand at the time. You know, then of course, it comes to people know your name, but then you got to explain to them what you do. But, but, but at the end of the day, I, I think it is a very efficient mechanism if you, if you have, you know, a worldwide audience that you want to, you want to hammer in the idea of your brand. It's good value for money compared to almost anything else I can think of.

No, no, it's. It's fantastic. And again, I'm an engineer by education. I'm a little bit of a nerd, a little bit of a geek. I love the technical aspect and I think, you know, you see a lot of that, you know, one of the, one of the big reasons we're interested in having you on, Lars, is that, you know, you come from, you know, more of a traditional banking background. A lot of the, you know, pioneers in cryptocurrency and defi. You have kind of this almost aversion the traditional banking system. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that kind of how going from traditional banking to, in my mind, what is going to be ubiquitous in terms of transactions in the future. Why blockchain? Why cryptocurrency in your mind?

Well, I guess it has something to do with my Internet background. We were very, as I said, very early practical uses of the Internet. And I followed the. A few years before we actually started trading on it, which was extremely early days in Internet times. You know, when we launched our first platform, I think there was less than 50 million users worldwide. You know, so, so we were pretty early there in 97, 98. And it worked out well for us. So of course the thing works out well. You keep looking for the next thing. And so I've always tried to keep an eye on emerging technologies and something that could. Relevance, of course, to the bank when I was still there. I stopped that in 2018, as I mentioned. But, but. And I had some friends that aware of Bitcoin, just like I had some friends making me aware of the Internet before it was mainstream in any way. So I actually followed that space for more than a Kate. And originally I thought mostly as, you know, maybe something I could have been. Could be traded on Saxo Bank's platform one day. That was my initial interest. But then I got more and more into the whole blockchain technology, the applications, the things that it can do and change, which to me is very transformative. A little bit like quite a lot, actually. Like, the Internet was back in the mid-90s where nobody heard of it. It was used. It. It was very difficult to interact with. It's pretty nerdy and very, very many people extremely skeptical. And we kind of said, well, you know, let's give it a shot. At least we could be. It could be a broader interest and turn out to be right in that case. So I just hope we're right. Right in this case as well.

Yeah, I feel like really, you know, the Internet, you know, came along and, you know, a lot of people, there was an aversion, as you said, to a lot of people. I mean, I remember even I was required to have a computer first. First engineering class in college to have a computer. We had, we had the first collegiate Internet system or Ethernet system, high speed Ethernet in the United States at Virginia Tech. And I was like, I don't want to do stuff by email, you know. And then after a year or so, you know, you're like, oh, okay, this, this makes a lot of sense. It becomes ubiquitous now. We're seeing.

I mean, I can't remember, I can't count the number of conversations I had back in those days with sort of senior figures in financing, you know, wasting your money with this. People always want to speak to a dealer when they make an important trade. And maybe you're right, but maybe not right. And today I would say 99, 9 something of old foreign exchange rates are done online. And obviously it makes an awful lot more sense than sitting with two phones and two ears and one trying to quote people right. But things always get more obvious over time than they are immediately when you get presented to them. And I think that's what we need to do in blockchain. We need to get some real use cases out there that provide real tangible value to people where they don't even have to think much about what they're using, but it just gives them some value. And for me, that'll be the real breakthrough of blockchain is when people get value out of it without really knowing that they use it or how it works. Because most people couldn't explain to you how the Internet works. Right. And it's not needed. We're still sitting here having this conversation. Many people are without the slightest idea of what the Internet actually does or how it works. Right, exactly. Yeah.

Like electricity. Like I, I conceptually understand how it works, but I have a really hard time explaining it.

I'm not that old. I'm not that old. I can remember that, but thanks a lot.

There you go. Yeah, that was not what I was going after. But you know, it is, it is wild how we have these extremely, you know, complex systems that we just take for granted that we've, we've seen our entire lives.

The first, the first cars when we came out, you know, you had to have a man walking 10 meters in front of you, a little red flag saying, car coming, car, you know, so, you know, development, and I think it's fun to be part of, of it in early stages so you can, if you're lucky enough to identify them early on. And I actually see an awful lot of builds between the early Internet and what we see in the early blockchain. And, and I think it's actually to some extent a value to have lived through that the hard way because it's kind of somewhat predictable what's going to happen here because these processes are similar. Right?

Yeah, yeah. We have the S curve in technology and I think a lot of people that are listening, they, they conceptually say, okay, like I kind of hear about these things, I understand these things. We still have fairly low adoption, like single digit adoption when it comes to cryptocurrencies. Maybe, Lars, you could talk a little bit about, you know, cryptocurrency, blockchain, defi. And where does Concordium fit into the spectrum, into the landscape?

I'm very focused on the blockchain aspect more so than the crypto aspect. Right. I mean, the crypto aspect is a historic function of a blockchain because you need to find a way to incentivize people to do the things you want in a, in a blockchain, like consensus layer, etcetera. And, and how do you reward people for that when the current system, you know, can't support microtransactions, can't, can't support a quick, quick and immediate transactions. So people invented these, at least for later blockchains. I guess in Bitcoin, the coin itself is the idea, but in, in most later blockchains, the coin is more of an accessory to, to incent people to do what you want them to do in terms of keeping the blockchain safe. Right. And I think that that has been a little bit harmful to the industry in many ways, because at least a lot of the coverage, the media coverage, the general population's perception of this has been, oh, this is wild speculation in this, in these cryptocurrencies, and maybe they're being used for untoward things and all this. So I think in many ways it's a little bit of a hindrance for people to get the idea about what this really is about, you know, which is that we're saying sitting here with a technology that can make data much more secure, can anchor ownership of various assets in a much more secure way, can facilitate exchange of these assets. Here I'm not talking about crypto, but anything else you can anchor on a blockchain. So it's pro and con. On the other hand, of course, if Bitcoin hadn't received the sort of broad press that it did, that has also helped. But at the end of the day, I'm more. More interested, more interested in the blockchain than the crypto aspects. For me, the crypto is like a necessity to make it work. If you imagine the day that, you know, the US Dollar was as efficient as a cryptocurrency, you know, could see a number of, I could see a number of people that, a number of projects that might switch to that, you know, and then in a way, you know, you can see usdc, usdt, that while people are officially saying that they, that they don't really trust the, the fiat system, in effect, they rush into something that's directly linked to it very quickly when they don't want to be in a speculative position. Right. So, yeah, I, I think it's interesting and, and, but it also causes a lot of trouble and it causes a lot of people to get engaged in wild speculation. Something you don't understand is easy if you have a bull market, but causes severe pain when you have a, have a bear market. Right, yeah.

No, and I think I've heard some of your comments on this. One of the challenges with Some of these adoptions is the links to the tokens with some of these systems and the variability with respect to the token, the volatility. How does Concordium address that and how do you feel that we can, you know, improve that to enhance the adoption in some of these areas?

You know, we also have a token. Of course we do, because we have the same needs to, to accommodate the very things we want done. Our consensus layer, our finality layer, people being able to exchange certain assets against payments. So I'm not dissing it completely. I'm just a little bit aware of the fact that it actually probably doesn't help adoption in a sense, because, because if people just saw a new technology and this was blockchain and they understood all the things it could do and didn't associate it with some of the crazy stuff that has been happening there over the years, maybe the blockchain adoption would actually come faster. But it's difficult to say because it also has attention, as I said, through Bitcoin. So I'm not saying you need the token for sure for the foreseeable future for a number of reasons, but what does excite me is really what you can do with the blockchain. You know, all the use cases that, all the processes that you can make more efficient, all the added security you can give to people in a, in a world where data often is insecure or dependent on single points of failure and used through various social media platforms, etc. You know, so I would like more of the focus on that because I think that's what, what's the exciting part, you know.

No, I agree. And if you look at, you know, you mentioned, you know, trading, you know, we used to pay $100 for a trade and then, you know, when I, when I started, you know, trading, that number went down to like $10 a trade. And now it's, you know, it's almost, you know, it's almost inconsequential, you know, when we want to buy and sell, you know, stock or piece of, piece of stock at this point. Right.

Funnily enough, it's inconsequential in the, in the tradfi markets that this space is very arrogant towards, but it's certainly not really insignificant in the crypto space just yet. They have, they have commission levels. That is what we would have 10 years ago in the tradfi space. So I also think, you know, these, these, these two spaces have to come together. Right?

Right.

There's a lot, there's a lot tradfi could Benefit. Benefit from in blockchain. And there's a lot of innovation happening in Defi. There's a lot of much, much more secure processes on blockchain. But at the same time, you know, the guys sitting at Goldman and JP Morgan and in the tradfi, they're not stupid, you know, and at the end of the day, they also have something to contribute to a future economy where this will slowly but surely begin to integrate more and more, and then we will hopefully have a service all the way around, because we both have people that understand this new space, this new opportunity and how to develop that. But you also need people that understand real complex things about the financial markets, which, you know, you don't meet a lot of people. I don't meet a lot of people with a foot in both camps like myself. You know, either they're like tradfi guys that moved over for a quick buck in the last couple of years, or they are crypto guys that generally don't understand finance and what, what actually makes that work. Right. So over the time, we have to, we have to bring these things together. And I guess that's sort of one of the contributions we're trying to make with Concordium by, by sort of trying to play by the same rule book in many ways, but benefit from the, from the new take on technology.

No, I think it's a, It's a super exciting time. You know, our main business is commercial real estate. And I look at the. I'd call them inefficiencies in the market. If you look at the cost to trade a piece of real estate, and you say, well, wait a minute. If we could, for instance, we were buying a piece of property in the city that we live in here in North Carolina, and we're going through this process, and during that process, our attorney passed away. So the whole process was stuck in limbo for, for, for two years. It took us to get through this process and go through everything, get everything kind of freed up and the paperwork done and had to go through the system. Whereas you say, wait a minute, if this was done on the blockchain, you know, how, how efficient could this be? There wouldn't be any question. We could go and trace it and figure that out. You know, I'd love to hear your thoughts on, you know, that application, Lars, and any others that you feel, you know, the blockchain can address, you know, very efficiently.

And I think one thing is efficiency, no question, and absolute certainty who owns what. For example, you know, the registration of such a Property could be on a blockchain. There would be no question whether it was you or the next guy that owned it. Right. And you could transfer easily if you wish to, and then there would be no question that you had transferred it and now it belonged to the other guy. Right. But what I also think is interesting in a space like that is that typically if you deal in real estate, you gotta have, you know, some substantial assets to move around, right. You know, by building it costs a bit of money, right. And the possibility of fragmenting these investments across perhaps tens of thousands of tokens. So a person that might be able to go in and buy a couple of stocks on Robinhood or E trade now also can buy a small stake in a property that he believes. And this goes for a lot of tokenization of assets that it will. And that's why I think the banks will really get very interested in the long run because it will open, open so many more investment opportunities also for people that have been sort of kept outside of the more elitist areas of investment. That could also be an expensive Picasso or it could be a classic car. You know, you think this Ferrari from 1956 is going to go up from 10 million bucks to 20 million bucks? Well, doesn't really. It's not pretty academical if you don't have 10 million bucks, right?

But yeah, it's one unit at that.

Point in this space you could buy, you could buy, you know, $100 worth of that Picasso or $100 worth of that building, a hundred dollars worth of that Ferrari classic, you know, and on top of that, you would have an immediate price discovery, right. Which is also lacking in these areas. I mean, what is a building worth? You know, it's worth something to the seller and you probably think it's worth a lot less, right. And then can spend a lot of time arguing that. Now, if you, if you had a trading market of many, you would have a very accurate, very accurate pricing, which is also a problem in many illiquid big asset type things. You have very poor price discovery, right? And for sure you might know in your neighborhood, okay, that property is worth around $8 million, right? But if you need to buy a property in the Rio de Janeiro, you know, you're going to into trouble because there's somebody there that knows an awful lot more about what the value of that property is. But again, if you had a tokenization of that, we would all have a fair, you know, well, it's probably worth around the 7.3 million that a lot of People exchange thing it at or so I think the whole thing organization of assets is a massive use case and real estate is just one of many examples. Right. And that will of course open up investment opportunities to a broader, a broader public that they haven't had for a very long time. Just like we did with, with some, some assets back in, in the 90s with the Internet. Right. Because before that trading foreign exchange was very elitist. You know, if you didn't have a million bucks in your account, you're just not those two phones that got picked up when the US trade figures come out. Right. And because you know, you had to prioritize the biggest customers on a trading desk. And you know, again, that was a democratization of an asset class. And here I see the opportunity for an incredible, incredible democratization also of IP rights. You know, you have a design, you have a pharma product license fee stream, you know, some things you can tokenize and actually open up to a broader investment public. And that I think will get the bank's attention if nothing else, right?

Oh, absolutely, yeah, because they're looking for customers, especially these larger investment banks and those sorts of things. Today's show is sponsored by Money Insights and their investment optimizer strategy. In my book, I share how I use this same strategy starting over a decade ago to invest my money in two places at one time. This strategy has been used by the wealthiest for generations for estate planning, minimizing taxes, preserving wealth and increasing stability for their investments. Now you can do the same thing. In addition, you can build a plan to build an emergency fund, pay for college, fund a business plan for retirement, and ultimately optimize your total financial picture. To find out more information, check us out at the banking link@nextlevelincome.com so, Concordium, how's it different, Lars, and how is it different? What are some of the competitive advantages that you'd like to share?

I'll say it's different in two ways. One is very easy to understand, the other one is a bit more, you know, you can have this view, you can have that view. But remember I, I, I entered this space back in the day when Bitcoin was trading well below a box at least and probably earlier because it took me a year or so to really get out of my own skepticism, but at least got to buy a few hundred. So it was pretty early days. Knew some of the Ethereum guys before they launched and I was quite enthusiastic, quite the ambassador for this space and tried to get into Saxophone bank but was fighting with my own legal and compliance. And maybe they were right, maybe I was wrong at the time because subsequently I also got some concerns around the space, certainly the widespread sort of appeal of anonymity, which, you know, if you're sitting in a bank, that's like lasting, you can accept, right. That's like rule number one. You got to know your customer, you got to know that, that, that who. What the identity is. Right. So that always sort of didn't resonate well with me because I think while I was sort of doing this in my free time, I was the CEO of a, of a retail investment bank for sophisticated investors where we were inundated with regulation and new laws and new aspects every time we came out with a product. Right. So for me, that is, that was and is certainly a serious hurdle to adoption. Right. So that needs to be addressed. We have done that by introducing at the foundation an ID requirement that in order to open an account you have to go through an ID process which is, you know, SEM identical to some of the stuff you've been through with a biometric and identity document. Right. So there's no bots on our platform. There's no, no people that are not who they have been identified to be. Right. Doesn't mean that we're displaying left, right and center. It's a private. But you have the opportunity to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that I am. In fact, last in case you and I wanted to do a piece of business and we wanted to identify these of each other. If you're both from Concordium, we could identify with as high a degree of certainty as in any other aspect. It's the equivalent of meeting up, showing each other identity papers, etc. Right. So that's like the easy to understand bit. And that's right at the entry point. It's not an afterthought because there's a lot of ID solutions out there because a lot of people are getting around to understanding that that's necessary. So it's not a layer two or a layer three solution. It's a layer one and I believe it is a layer one responsibility to ID people. Then of course, a lot of other issues, you know, lack of availability, not very great tech in many cases, you know, high, high fees for doing transactions, you know, so there's a whole sort of t of things that also work towards restricting or, or hampering adoption. So basically with Concordium, we try to build a blockchain that's suitable for a big corporate that want to move into the space A permissionless blockchain. I want to underline, you know, you got hyperledger and that type of thing for on a permission base that these guys typically use. But if they want to be on a commission less blockchain then believe that's where they want to go in the long run because that's where the big markets are. Just like you know, in the beginning a lot of people were doing Internet style things or limited Internet. In the end we're all on the same Internet. So that's what's going to happen here as well. So, so we try to. First of all to a very wise man that was one of the co founders of, of Ethereum and, and we discussed this aspect and he said well start science. You know, you really need good science people that truly understand cryptography. And I thought that was, that was sound advice. I mean the crypto in cryptocurrency, cryptography, right. When you see a hat, it's very often poor cryptography. So I actually the first thing I did was identify where can I find some really great cryptography and got some of those guys on board before we built a single line of code, you know. So we have today relationships with several of the world's leading universities in cryptography and had those guys in on the project right from, right from the outset in terms of defining what to use the, the architecture, etc. Then I, I started to engage some, some people that could actually build the stuff. You know, take all this sort of ivory tower cryptography down in the mud so we could use it for something, right. And that has been done a little bit like I learned to do it in saxophone, you know, corporate process, you know, you actually need architecture, you need documentation, you need to do formal verification of mission critical pieces of your software, stuff like that. It's a little boring, you know, like five guys in the garage doing it in an afternoon and make a billion dollars building tech like we did it in Saxo bank, right. And lastly added sort of a few gray hairs apart from my own people that have real background in corporate business and understand how these guys think, right? What boxes do they need to tick in terms of actually trying to enter into a project on a blockchain. And of course we have some younger crypto sharp people because we need that as well. But I really believe in building a rock solid scalable product that is built on good science and an understanding of what that takes at a, you know, an S P500 company is actually going to use a distributed blockchain, right? And that doesn't mean that your average NFT platform or a game or they're very welcome, you know, but, but it's built to a standard that it can also work for, like a big corporate. Right. And I think that should just make you more comfortable building whatever application you want on it. Right.

No, I love that. I've listened to some of your comments about how this could be applicable in a metaverse or a game if you wanted to trans act in that space or like you were just talking about in a large commercial real estate transaction, you know, having something that can be ubiquitous like this is, is great. And then, you know, if you're listening today and you want to dive a little bit deeper, you have a great white paper that we'll have a link to in the show notes as well that goes through, you know, kind of the different layers within with respect to this.

But on your note of the metaverse, you know. Yeah, I'm actually, I'm a great. That we will spend more time in various virtual environments. Right. Because it makes a lot of sense. I mean, you could argue we're already in that kind of virtual.

I was going to say, if you want to argue, we're already doing it right now.

Yeah, we're doing it just in an old school way. Right. Yeah, but I, and I mean, there's a lot of talk about versus not so much substance behind it yet. But there will be. And I also believe firmly that sufficiently many years down the line we will, we will experience extremely lifelike experiences in these cases. And hence because it will give added color and add added value to your life, people use it a lot. Right. But there's one problem. There's one, at least one problem. There's probably many. But at least one problem in a metaverse is that if I met you on the street, now that we had this conversation, you claim to be Chris. You know, there'd be a fairly high probability that you were Chris because otherwise you have to be looked remarkably like you that happened to have an interest in presenting himself as Chris to me. Right. Yeah. Now, and we probably would need to show each other passports because we know each other's voices, we know each other's faces, so probably go with that. Right. In a metaverse, of course, where we would be meeting in the same way and maybe we wanted to discuss making an interview or doing a real estate transaction, but you would look like, you know, a dragon and I would look like a spider man. Right. Because that's the avatar we chose. Right. All of a sudden I'm not as.

You know, I was a dragon in the metaverse.

All of a sudden, I can't be so sure that that dragon is actually Chris. And you can't be so sure that Spider man is lost. Right. And, and that's why I think, you know, having the ability to prove that, irrespective of how you appear in a. In a virtual environment is just one very nice to have application. Right. And I think will be also absolutely necessitated when, when we really get to this. And I think you'll use it in the same way as you use maybe your id. And sometimes in real life, right, if you go into a bar, you go into a bar and order a beer, you know, you don't go around asking everybody at the bar for their passport before you dare drink your beer. Right. But if you start talking to one of them and you start saying, you know, let's do this piece of business or let's make a bet on something or whatever, you might want to know who that person is. I think that's the same for metaverses. Many functions in there. It won't matter. You're dancing around in your avatar to a virtual rock concert. Be my guest. Right? But if you start talking business or you want to engage in a social relation or something, all of a sudden, you might want to know that. That the person that you are facing there is in fact the person that he or she claims to be. Right.

I think that's a wonderful way to put it. And I think again, like you said, as we, as we progress in this space, doing a lot of things that people are already, you know, doing out there in these different technological landscapes, this is something that has to be foundational for it to move forward. Lars, you touched on a few different things, and if I. If I recall correctly, your first business was a restaurant, is that right?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. A pretty, pretty unusual career, but. Yeah, but, yeah, and I love restaurants, but. That's right, when I finished my education, went to Spain, made a bar for the first four or five years of my life, and. And after that I went to London and entered into financial markets. So I have a lifelong interest in the restaurant business and also today circle own a couple of restaurants again, but more as a side project than. Than the main project. Right, yeah.

Well, I would love to hear from your diverse background businesses, everything from, like you were saying, restaurants now to the blockchain. What do you think are going to be the outperforming assets over the next five years that we should Kind of keep our eyes open for, in your.

Mind, in the blockchain space or in.

General, I mean we could talk about collectibles, we could talk about blockchain, we could talk about traditional assets.

It's difficult, you know, because I've been in, in the business of not, thankfully not always having to predict it myself with analysts. I paid tons of money to come with predictions and, and I know these predictions are wrong as often as they're right now. That's why government shouldn't pick the winner of which industry to support and you know, you should let the market figure that out.

There we go.

That said, you know, I, I personally think that this space on a macro level there's a lot of crap. In the micro level you have to be very careful how you express that macro feeling. Right. But in the macro level I think that blockchain is a real game changer and has real potential. Just like you could say in the late 90s, this Internet thing, we don't know exactly who's going to win in that space. There's a lot of people are very optimistic, not knowing what they're doing and then just putting a dot com behind their name because then the share price quadruples. Right. Which was literally what happened in the late 90s. Right. But if I should look at it from a macro point of view, I think this space is very interested. That's obviously also why I spent my energy and actually also make most of my investments in there. So if I thought, you know, something totally different would be much more interesting than I would probably be there instead. But I have to warn that I'm frequently wrong. So just because I think this is an interesting space, that's no, no guarantee at all. But, but I too, of course Concordium is my main project, but I also invest in a whole range of other use cases, crypto related bonds, etc to get a little bit more widespread exposure to this space. So I do believe from a macro point of view this is, this is probably the most interesting industrial sector right now. That, that, that would be my, my focus. But that's, I do, you know, so.

I always put your money where your mouth is on that. So that's, that always says I put.

It in a few other places too. But, but you know, I have my restaurants because I enjoy that. I think it's great. I have a couple of sports clubs that I'm engaged in. I think that's great. I can still get, you know, excited about some coming up with a great idea and it could be anything really. But I really try to discipline myself to focusing on mainly doing it in the blockchain space because I think that the one thing is you have a great idea, but if you don't have the, the wind in your back from the macro environment, you know, you're might be great, but, but the results might not be so great. So here. And it's hard to find because there's a lot of opportunities out there, but I do believe that general wind is in the back of real, real blockchain use cases where there actually is a utility where it does provide an improvement to a given process or a given sector or given activity that we maybe already know. So, so I'm, I'm quite excited about the space in general. I'm a remain a big believer and whether the bitcoin goes up and down for, for a few months doesn't really interest me. You know, I, I have a longer.

Perspective on it as, as do we here. And Lars, this has been a wonderful conversation. You've provided a lot of interesting thoughts, you know, on all different aspects of, of where we are today as well as where we're going in the future. I certainly can't wait to take being a little, little bit Danish here with my heritage. Can't wait to take my, my family to Denmark at some point and hopefully swing by one of your award winning restaurants. We want to thank you. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

No, I said please do. We would like to Copenhagen. Yeah.

But thank you so much for sharing your time with the audience today here at Next Level Income show and hope you enjoy the rest of your I think evening over there.

Yeah, it's about 536 now. So thank you very much and thank you for having me on the show.

Absolutely. Thank you. Hey Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to gift you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.