Fight the FUD: The myths & misunderstandings of crypto | AMA with Edward DeLeon

Foreign, Anyone, regardless of your place of birth, has equal rights to participate in these markets and has equal opportunity. The people that are using cryptocurrency the most are the people that have the least voice because most of them are in developing nations. When these people send money back home, they end up getting ripped off. So we're talking about robbing some of the poorest people in the world. If that doesn't piss you off, then, well, we're probably not going to be friends. We design our systems properly. You can have tremendous wealth, in fact wealthier than anyone today, and at the same time wipe out poverty. The only question now is who's going to participate and at what level.

So what's up everyone? It's Giovanni. Welcome to another Cointelegraph ama. Today I have the pleasure to be joined by Edward Deon, crypto economist, early bitcoin investor and the CEO and founder of Anata IO and a mission driven blockchain technology company. How are you doing, Edward?

Doing great. Thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure. So today we are going to talk about fud, so common misconceptions around cryptocurrency. And I know that you, Edward, have a lot of experience addressing those issues. So before we start, I would like to remind our audience that this is an interactive show. So please write your questions in the chat. And if you have any questions regarding fad, regarding misconceptions towards crypto that you want to address, we're going to ask Eduard to address them. So let's get into it, Ed. So first of all, nice to meet you. And so I know that you have a lot of experience in addressing common misconceptions around crypto and the so called fud. So would you like to explain what is your usual approach in addressing crypto related fud?

Well, I've been dealing with this problem for a long time now, close to a decade. I've been kind of stuck in rooms answering questions around people's concerns or misconceptions around cryptocurrency. And so I'm a bit of a seasoned vet on this topic. And what you'll discover is that people who've been in the industry long enough, they start to develop a thick skin about this because what you really realize is that this is a very powerful idea and crypto is not going away. And when something is that robust and that immutable, it tends to have some value in the market. Now, most people's misconceptions about crypto stem from them viewing crypto from the old World, right? They look at crypto and say, how do I make more money? And what they don't realize is that crypto is a new form of money and you shouldn't be entering into it thinking that how do I make more US dollars? It would be a bit like inventing a light bulb and saying, wow, this light bulb was so amazing, I could use oil burning. Lance more. You're trying to look at new technology from the perspective of the old. That's one of the biggest mistakes I see people make. And I also think that FUD is perfectly natural around something as exotic and weird as cryptocurrency. This idea that you could have non national digital money on an unstoppable network that no one owns. It's a bit weird, right? It's a bit exotic. And unless you've taken the time to really learn about it, it's only natural to fear it or not understand it. I was one of those people in the early days, but thankfully I figured out how to explain this stuff in a way where people will understand it. And I built my career on that. Most of my early career was going into rooms with investors and explaining to them why this technology was so important and why it was going to change the world. The nature of what we were talking about back then was a little bit different than what people talk about today. Mostly back then it was about banking the unbanked and creating sound money, which I still think is the core of the industry. But that's of course shifted over the years. Now people are more concerned with whether or not Bitcoin in particular is a green technology. And I would argue that it is for a number of reasons. Specifically because it moves us away from the petrodollar, which is probably the least economically or ecologically friendly thing on the planet, is the fact that we have a global reserve currency pegged to the burning of fossil fuels. And what cryptocurrency allows us to do is get away from that and start to use technologies or currency that isn't pegged to the burning of fossil fuels, but perhaps is backed by something else. So, you know, dealing with FUD has been a big part of my career. It's probably the most important part of my career because I do it internally for my own company, but also externally for my strategic partners, for future investors, for anyone, really. That's just what I do for my community. So if anyone has any questions what specific types of FUD they'd like me to address, I'm more than happy to do so, because that's basically what I do full time.

Yeah, for sure. And I believe that the mission that you have, it's also very similar to the one that cointelegraph is bringing forward, which is informing, telling people what cryptocurrency really are and basically, basically bringing knowledge, educating people about crypto so that they don't fall victim to some misconceptions or unmotivated sort of beliefs around this technology. Of course we know that cryptocurrency, since it's very relatively new technology, relatively new asset, there are certainly risks involved in it. But those risks need to be, I would say, carefully addressed and not overblown as a many people tend to do. So for sure, we have different types of fad, so different types of misconceptions that I would also like to hear from the audience. What is the misconception that you are more worried about? And Ed is going to address it. So please write your questions in the chat. But first, I would say that one of the biggest misconceptions is actually the one that you already mentioned. I mean, one of them. Yeah. One of the main problems that people are worried about is the problem related to the environment. So it's something that came up last year. One year ago, this problem exploded in the media. The mainstream media started addressing it, especially after Elon Musk stopped accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment for his Tesla car. So there was a lot of discussion going on about this issue. And for sure there is some problems to be addressed in terms of environment and crypto, but there is also a lot of misconceptions. So please, Ed, can you explain us?

Well, I think if you take the time to actually read the reports on where the energy for proof of work mining on the Bitcoin network and on the Ethereum network are mostly coming from. It was mostly coming from electricity that was being wasted. Most people don't realize this is that for most of the lifespan of bitcoin, in particular, most of the mining was happening in China. And in China, in a lot of places they don't have an electrical grid. That is to say, is they build a power plant out in the middle of nowhere and with the under the auspices that someday they'll build a grid and they'll attach it to the rest of the country, but during that time they're producing more electricity than they could use. And so they were literally dumping the electricity into the ground. And what would happen is young entrepreneurs would go out to these places and say, wow, you're wasting all this electricity. Why don't you instead invest it in the network? And I think that's a really important concept that people forget is that they look at how much energy is used in proof of work mining and say, wow, that's going to waste. Which is a bit of a misconception because it's actually being invested. When you invest electricity into a network, it makes it more secure, therefore more valuable. And your reward for that is in the form of cryptocurrency, specifically bitcoin, which becomes more valuable. So it's a bit weird. It's a bit like, you know, someone buying a house and saying, wow, this house is doing really well. And it's, and now I could sell it for more money later on and someone else coming around and saying, hey, that's a waste. Is it a waste or was it a smart investment? And I think it's a, it's ultimately a smart investment. Now we could argue about, you know, whether or not it increases our footprint as a civilization, but the truth is over 60% of the electricity that was invest invested in bitcoin for most of its lifetime was being wasted already. It was just being dumped into the ground. And then if you look at what percentage is coming from renewables, it's actually really reassuring. The number moves around from year to year. But it was upwards as of like over 50% of the electricity that was being invested that wasn't coming from sources that were being wasted was coming from renewables such as solar and wind. So I think that's, that makes bitcoin in particular really amazing technology and really green, especially when you factor in the fact that it moves us away from the petrodollar. In truth, anything that moves us away from the petrodollar would be ecologically friendly. And so bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole are helping us transition from old technologies and old currencies, which are fossil fuels and the US dollar into new technologies, which is cryptocurrency and new currencies that are backed not by the burning of fossil fuels, but are backed oftentimes by information based services and information based goods, which is another topic. This is one of the classic things I see, and I even see experts in the industry say this is that bitcoin has no intrinsic value. I saw the CEO of FTX recently said it pretty audaciously that he thinks that bitcoin is just a box that you put money into and then you get more money out later. And I think that is a wild misconception because it is an open, permissionless, borderless transaction network that has a currency that is on a set inflation model that cannot change. It's literally an economics wet dream. For most of history we, we would dream of having a currency that was on a set, a set inflation model and Bitcoin gives us that. To turn around and say that that has no intrinsic value is wildly ignorant. And it just suggests that these people weren't part of the industry in the beginning. Because that's all we talked about in the early days when Bitcoin was first bursting on the scene. We were like, wow, sound money on a set inflation model. Cross border transactions open and permissionless. Because it means people from anywhere in the world, regardless of their place of birth, whether they have a birth certificate, a driver's license, or any of the things that most of us in the west take for granted, they can still access and use these systems. That is a tremendous boon to humanity. And to say that that has no intrinsic value is wildly insular. I mean, I think that's just what happens. It's very common when people from privileged backgrounds don't understand how important it is to give people access to basic financial tools. It is a life changing technology. So the other things that are worth addressing is that most crypto does not use proof of work mining.

Right?

We're talking about one crypto Bitcoin uses a lot of proof of work mining and is very energy intensive. And that's on purpose, right? That is a feature, not a bug. Because the more electricity you invest in a network, the harder it is to attack it. And therefore this really robust network that exists, that could do cross border transactions has intrinsic value as reflected by its market cap. So I think focusing on Bitcoin too much is a mistake. But it's important to know that even if we only had Bitcoin, it would still be better than the fiat technology that we've been using for most of our lives.

Yeah, you made a few good points. And actually I would say that one important point that you for sure made is that basically, yeah, you spend a lot of electricity to maintain a Bitcoin network. But everything is, should be taken proportionally to the, the good that you are obtaining from those, from that energy consumption. So it all comes down on whether you think that the Bitcoin network is valuable to justify that amount of energy consumption.

Well, it doesn't have to be valuable to us, it's clearly valuable to other people. Right. And that's, and that's important enough. Right. The market has already spoken. It is worth Hundreds of billions of dollars, right? Close to over a trillion at some point. So that is an investment. Right. So the electricity is not being wasted. It's creating a tremendous amount of value. And I would also like to point out one of the other misconceptions. I think we're probably going to get to this. We talk about like crypto bros and all that stuff, right? Most cryptocurrency users are black and brown people by a wide margin living in developing nations. So I think it's really important when we talk about this stuff, we have to talk about it from their perspective too. Right. Is it being wasted if it's saving lives? I have personally helped save lives in Venezuela during periods of hyperinflation by sending Bitcoin to my friends there who then use it to buy food, have that food shipped to a neighboring nation and then go cross border, grab that food and bring it back. It's literally life saving for them. More recently, I've used cryptocurrency, specifically Ethereum, to save people in Ukraine. Right. And Ethereum also uses a lot of electricity. Right. So the banking system in Ukraine shut down. My friends needed to get out. They needed money to get out. So I sent them cryptocurrency, which they used to escape into Poland. Do you think they think it's using too much electricity or was it just the right amount to save their lives? It's all relative. It's very easy to sit in a fully developed nation with a stable banking system and a bank account that has never been shut down or seized and say that, well, I don't really see the point in crypto. And I think it uses too much electricity if it's saving your lives or if it's saving 20% of your paycheck, which is what most people lose when they try to send money from a developed nation into developing nations. Would it. Is it too much electricity for that person too? Right. So I think it's really important for people to break out of their own narrow perspective and try to look at a more broad scope and saying, how is this serving humanity? It's giving, it's allowing us to bank the unbanked. Any amount of electricity is coherent at that point. Right. People say it uses as much electricity as a nation state. And I say that's exactly right because it's a new form of a nation state. The modern definition of a nation state is a group of people that use the same money. So if we're all using Bitcoin, welcome to the bitcoin nation. And in that nation, we have as many users as a major nation state, a market cap that is similar to the GDP of a major nation state, and is moving hundreds of billions of dollars in value around a month. So it's coherent that it would take that much electricity to be secure and to function. And I think people who say it uses too much electricity, most of the people I've seen who claim that are not crypto insiders. They're crypto outsiders. Right. And there are people that are looking for reasons to attack the industry because they have a financial benefit to themselves for doing so. It's people from banking or people from politics. Right. And I think it's really important to know that politicians take 10 times as much money, sometimes 20 times as much money from the banking lobby as they do from the crypto lobby. So, of course, their opinions are going to be colored by that. And so anytime you see a politician come out and have an opinion about cryptocurrency, it really is important to take a step back and ask them who's funding their campaigns. Right. Who finances the dnc? When Elizabeth Warren comes out and has negative things to say about cryptocurrency, she's not doing so because she actually has that opinion. She's doing so because her financiers have that opinion, and she's voicing that. And I think it's really important for us as market participants to recognize the difference between actual factual reality and a shaped narrative. And so I think that's part of what our job is. And I think cointelegraph does a great job at doing that.

Yeah, and you made a good point that recently we saw happening very, very difficult situations for people, like in Ukraine, where people are really cut off from the traditional financial system and they really need the cryptocurrency to survive in those situations. That's very true. And in those situation, crypto becomes extremely useful. So now we have some questions from the audience. Especially I want to address one question from Cristina Corner, who is asking, which arguments would you use with those crypto skeptics who do not want to educate themselves and just keep saying crypto is bad to make them change their mind?

Well, first off, it's a really important concept. Advice that is not asked for is not advice. So if there are people in your life who are saying, like, I don't really believe in this stuff, I don't want anything to do with it. You should not be rushing headlong into that and trying to force them to change their minds. Instead, you should feel sorry for them, we're talking about the top performing asset class in the world for the past decade. It's a bit like someone saying, I don't believe in the Chicago Bulls when they're on a, you know, six championship run. Right? It's the most winningest asset class in the world for the past decade. Anyone who thinks it's bad or disagrees with it is simply missing the boat. It's a bit like saying, I don't believe in personal computing or the Internet or mobile phones. It doesn't matter what they believe. This stuff is going to continue to grow. It's going to continue to prosper. We're going to continue to innovate. People who, who have misgivings about it, you should feel sorry for them because they're technologically backwards and they're not paying attention. This is one of the most important and powerful industries on the planet in terms of the amount of good it could do. It's created more millennial millionaires than any business sector ever, period. So if people have misgivings about that, if they don't like it, well, honestly, I just laugh at them at this stage of my life. I mean, forget what it's done for me personally. It's made me tremendously wealthy and I will never have to worry about money again. So that's like the root of my confidence. But the truth is I've seen it transform entire communities and I've seen it save lives. So I could get defensive about crypto in that if someone is outright attacking it from a position of power, say a politician or a major banking institution, I get defensive because they're attacking a life saving technology. I personally use that to save lives and I know for a fact it's saving far more lives than I have even seen myself. So when people come out against it, I could get defensive. But if it's people in my personal life or someone I see online and they have a bad thing to say about crypto, I tend to just make fun of them because the truth is they're sitting outside of the top performing asset class in the world. If you had $1 to invest and you invested it in any stock, any bond, any derivative, any real estate, or most likely a crypto, a major blue chip crypto like Bitcoin or Ethereum, and then you waited 10 years and then you said, which one was going to give me the most spending power? Without a doubt, 100% sure Bitcoin or Ethereum outperformed anything else you chose. And it does so almost every year. So for someone to say that, like, I don't believe in it, or I have a problem with that, that's their problem, really. Right. This is like saying you have a problem with the most winningest team in sports. Right. It's not important what people think about it necessarily. What is important is what it could do. And what it does is it transforms lives. Well, I'm not, Christina, I want to say, like, I'm not trying to be evangelical to people who don't want to hear it. Like, if you're hearing resistance from people, like, I don't trust it or I don't want it, you should not try to force through that. Right. Unless someone actively comes to you and asks for advice and says, hey, I don't know about this crypto thing. What is it? Right. If that's what you're saying, then there's a lot I could say. I could say that everything that I just said, it's the top performing asset class in the world. It's transforming lives. It creates sound money. The idea that you have a global transaction ledger that no one owns that is completely auditable and completely trustless is immensely powerful. Now, what I'm saying is a lot of times you have crypto naysayers, and they are not interested in being onboarded. And those people you should onboard, and those are the people I laugh at. Those are the people. I legitimately feel sorry for them because they're going to miss out, and they have missed out. I have dozens of people who I've known who, in 2013-2016, who I was onboarding actively, and a lot of them laughed at me. They laughed me out of rooms and said, like, this will never work. You're crazy. I've even had people have interventions and try to stop me from being actively participating in crypto. And now I'm wealthier than all of them, more successful than all of them, and I finance an entire community of ideas. So, you know, they missed out on that. And make no mistake, people who are crypto naysayers today are going to miss out on what happens next Epoch, and they're going to miss out on what happens to Epoch after that. So every four years, cryptocurrency goes through a major surge. And people who miss out on those surges, I mean, I legitimately feel sorry for them. Right. They're missing out on the best investment you can make in the market. And it's not just lifesaving, but also transformative. Maybe you don't need to have your life saved, but would you like to have more spending power. Would you like to make smart investments that benefit you and your family and your community? I certainly do. And so if people are resistant to that, you know, why wrestle with it? Just let them have it. And, you know, like I said, I genuinely feel sorry for them.

Yeah. I mean, I would say that probably people that are still skeptical today, they. They might change their mind in the future when the success of cryptocurrency will be evident to them and that they will realize they probably they didn't make as much money as they could, but probably crypto will benefit them anyway in the future, too.

I should also say that most of the crypto naysayers are the result of a big gap in our generation. Right. The last generation and the current generation aren't simply a generation apart, but they're an entire age apart. That is to say, the boomers were born in the atomic age. Millennials and after are born in the information age. And that's not simply hyperbolic to say that they were born in a different age. And we're literally going to have to wait for an entire generation of people to die off before the information age can really bear fruit. I think it's really important to recognize that you shouldn't be trying to change people's positions anyway. I don't try to change people's minds. What I try to do is help people who come to me with questions and people who actively come to me seeking help. Those are the only people I really work with. Right. So, but it's really important to be also be sensitive to the fact that the people who aren't getting crypto may never get crypto. And it's not because of any fault of their own. It's simply they were born in a different generation, and they have a different perspective about the way the world is and a different perspective about what's possible and what's not possible. And oftentimes you have to wait for people to die before. Before civilization can move on from those old ideas. And I think cryptocurrency, as well as it's done, will do much better as the boomers, power or stranglehold over our politics and over our economy starts to wane, and you start to see children of the information age start to come to the forefront.

Yeah, the generation problem is definitely a big issue. So I would like to remind our audience that if you are liking what you're listening, there is a partnership between Cointelegraph and Anata, the company at this, the CEO of which this Partnership is aimed at fighting FUD in the crypto space. So you should check out the website anata.cointelegraph.com and there you will find a number of videos. Each one will address a specific type of fud. And I'm sure that if you have any concern around cryptocurrency, any misconception that you want to address, you just go to the website and you'll find the video where AD is going to address that specific misconception. So just to give you an example, we can run one of those videos addressed to the so called crypto's shady figures. So if Andy wants to run it.

There are no shadowy figures on a cryptocurrency network. Everyone is transparent, everyone is visible. I may not know who they are personally, but that's not a prerequisite of being able to participate safely in a cryptocurrency environment. I know the rules of the game, and if anyone tries to break the rules of the system, then the system is designed to reject that player. So cryptocurrency networks are trustless in that I don't need to know who everyone in the system is in order to trust what's going on in the system. What about the shadowy figures behind central banking? What about the shadowy figures who control the flow and monetary policy of the United States? What about the shadowy figures who finance campaigns and who finance wars? Right. What about the shadowy figures who control most of the wealth in the world? I think it's an unfair characterization to look at an open source, transparent, permissionless system and suggest that somehow, because somewhere, some participants are unknown, that somehow this makes it wrong or illegal or illicit. If you have something bad to say about an industry that is disintermediating another industry that happens to be paying for your, for your campaigns, obviously that is going to color your opinion and we should take everything you say with a grain of salt. And I would just invite you to keep your hands off cryptocurrency while it's in its infancy. Let it grow and become what it needs to become so that it could service humanity in a meaningful way. And that any effort to get in the way of cryptocurrency is essentially saying you want to stop all the good it could do. And I think that is a dangerous proposition and not something that the cryptocurrency industry is going to allow anyway. We're not going to lay down and simply let you dictate the flow of innovation. We're going to fight you tooth and nail. And I think on a Long enough timeline, we're going to win. Cool.

So that was one an example of the videos that you can find on our website, anata.cointelera.com so go check it out. Now I have another question for you, Ed. So it's around the state of leadership in the crypto industry. What do you feel about the current state of leadership in the crypto industry and in the crypto community?

Well, I think there's been a shift over the past two years. Specifically in the early days, all the crypto leaders we're talking about were banking beyond banks, creating sound money, protecting everyday people from hyperinflation and from runaway central banking. And I still think that is the core of the industry. I just think that that part of the industry has gotten less vocal. And what we now have is a completely other segment of the industry that is wielding an offsize portion of at least the voice of cryptocurrency. I mentioned it earlier, one of the things I found this main was the CEO ftx, who seems like an intelligent person and it seems like his heart's in the right place, but he didn't seem to understand the intrinsic value of Bitcoin, which is disconcerting to me. And it's something that I've encountered often, is that we have leaders in the crypto industry, people who are running big projects, who raise hundreds of billions, if not billions of dollars, who don't understand the basic fundamentals of crypto. In my world, we understood the intrinsic value of Bitcoin as a part of our, like, first session. It was like crypto 101. A borderless transaction network has tremendous value, you know. So now to see that there's leaders in the space who, maybe it's just because the old guard is, are the ones backing most of these projects. It's legacy financial money. But they seem more like the old world, right? They seem more concerned with just driving shareholder profit. And the talks about banking young banked or creating sound money have sort of died down. But I think what will go through a resurgence, I think as the market shakes up or as the market matures, we'll start to realize that we need to start focusing on true cryptocurrency, things that are truly decentralized and powered by decentralized autonomous organizations. But right now, most of what we're seeing are information age versions of what we already have. Right? We're looking at centralized exchanges for cryptocurrency that still require you to pass through kyc, AML compliance. FTX is one of them. For Example, and I think that's problematic. I think what we're. What we're doing is building shinier, faster versions of the totalitarian world that we. We came from, when instead we could be building these open format world where anyone from anywhere in the world can participate on your platform and still have equal footing. And that's not something that is entirely possible on a centralized exchange. Most people don't have access to the documentation required to pass through KYC AML compliance. There's only about 1.7 billion households that can. The rest of the world cannot. So I think it's really important that we get in the fight. People who have my perspective, and there are many, I'm not alone in this, we need to get in the fight and recognize that cryptocurrency can be a tremendous force for good, but it could also be a tremendous force for bad. It's just like any other tool. It could be used to harm us or it could be used to hurt us. And most of my life's work is going to be around focusing on finding ways to help us.

Right.

Finding ways to uplift us or specifically to help solve poverty, which is the thing I'm most focused on.

So I see that there are a lot of questions coming from the audience.

So I mentioned that the tattoo stuff, it's actually the Eye of Providence. It's not the Lucifer, it's the one you see on my hand. It's specifically because I have a knack for. Noted for predicting the future. That's how I made most of my money. I was accurately predicting the future between 2013 up to the present. So, you know, most people would argue that I have the Eye of Providence. And, yeah, I don't have a relationship with the World Economic Forum, except that I don't like them. Right. I've been asked to speak there multiple occasions, but. And I've talked to some people who do go there and speak, but for me, that would be a bit like going into the belly of the beast. Right. These are people who. I'm trying to disrupt their entire livelihoods. So, you know, I don't really have a relationship with them other than it's combative, perhaps. Okay.

And so talking about other participants in the industry. So we, we know that another misconception around the participants of the crypto industry is that it's dominated by a type of people called the crypto, bro. So it's sort of specific culture dominated by white men, white privileged men that are using crypto. So this is something that turns off a Lot of people. What would you say to them?

Well, I would just say that those are the people that have the loudest voice in the market because of their position of privilege. Right. If you're already kind of doing okay and then you get involved in cryptocurrency, you can make a lot of money really fast. And as a result, a lot of people from that niche did make a lot of money really fast and they have an offsized portion of control of at least the, the larger voice in the market than others. So, you know, I get why people feel that way. And it's no different than say gaming culture, which cryptocurrency is an offshoot of or most. Most of the early Internet was mostly like a male dominated space. And cryptocurrency certainly has suffered from that from the early, early part of its, you know, inception. But that's changing. And the truth is most cryptocurrency users live in developing nations. Most of them are in India of all places. And those are black and brown people who are not crypto pros, who are not Chads, and who are not born to a privileged background. And they just don't have a voice in the market because they're mostly focused on using it as a life saving technology. Right? They're not going around touting the latest shitcoin that they've created and want to sell to you. Instead they're focused on using it, which I think is another important differentiator. A lot of times I meet people in the cryptocurrency industry, people who are going to, who are pretending to be experts who don't actually use the stuff, which I always found amazing. Right. I know people who lead entire projects who barely ever use cryptocurrency. They perhaps bought some like they bought Bitcoin or Ethereum, and then it just sits somewhere for a long period of time. Versus I consider myself a crypto power user. I interact with everything that cryptocurrency will allow us to use. So you know, I, I operated defi, I buy, I work with NFTs all the time and I use it to pay for goods and services. I think that's the biggest use case is I actually use it to finance my life. So one of the big misconceptions about cryptocurrency being mostly just white Anglo Saxon Protestant crypto bros. It's a mistake. And what you really need to recognize is that those are just the people who have the loudest voice, at least in the western world. And if you look out to the Wider market though, you'll see that most cryptocurrency users are black and brown people and they're using it as a life saving technology and they're not really even focused on onboarding you to anything. They're just happy that it exists.

Yeah, that's a fair point. So I would like to remind our audience that, to write questions, anything that you come that comes to your mind regarding common misconceptions related to crypto, please write your question and we're going to ask the expert here to address it. So while you, while you think about questions, I have another one for you, Ed, which is related to probably one of the most, the biggest fear that people have when they put, when they put, before they put money into crypto, which is volatility. So many people think crypto is too volatile. Is volatility so bad for you?

No. I mean, volatility is an opportunity, right? If you had no volatility, it would mean that market had no opportunity. That is to say is, it would just be running sideways. And I think this idea of stable currencies is a mistake. There is no such thing as stability in the natural world. Everything is eroding. Entropy affects everything. The US dollar is worth less today than it was yesterday. And that statement has been true every day of your life. There is no such thing as stability. Now the question is, can you navigate the volatility? And I think that's the real, real important thing, is to start to track the market in such a way where, if you have the wherewithal, the time and the capacity, capacity to understand that there are macro trends that happen by design. The macro trends that happen in cryptocurrency are by design, they're not an accident. And if you understand that, then you could ride the volatility in such a way where it benefits you. So I mean, for me, volatility is great. If I see a market that's going up and down and up and down, I see opportunity. But does that mean that everyone should operate in that market? No. In a lot of ways it's similar to the ocean. The ocean is a dangerous place and it's really volatile, right? And there's big waves crashing. It goes up and it goes down. That does not mean that you should just swim out into it haphazardly. It means you need to treat it with respect. And the same way a sailor who was sailing out into the Ocean during the 1400s, you know, you had a very high risk of losing everything, but you also had a lot of opportunity it's very similar to that. So there's a tremendous amount of opportunity in crypto volatility, but it is not for everyone. And you should not participate if you are not prepared to lose everything.

Right.

And if you're not also willing to give it the amount of respect it deserves. If you, if you try to dabble in the cryptocurrency markets and you try to time things and you try to be like an active trader and try to actively manage your money, you're going to be in trouble. Right. I've seen that fail most people. And so I'm from like hyper sophisticated people who have the time and energy to do it. However, even if you're not very sophisticated, there is a tremendous amount of opportunity in all this, as long as you could take a long enough perspective. You know, the thing that most people do and is very reliable is they simply dollar cost average their way into a major blue trip crypto like Bitcoin or Ethereum. And they take a long perspective in that they don't worry about these day to day or month to month fluctuations and instead they're thinking, is my cryptocurrency worth more four or five years from now than it is today? As long as that is true, then I'm fine. The problem with that, of course, is many people can't afford to just lock their money up for four to five years. So if there's, if you're talking about money that you need access to like tomorrow, then you shouldn't have it in the market anyway. But if you can afford to take a long perspective and make small investments over a long period of time, you'll usually find that that reaps the greatest benefit.

Yeah. And I mean, I think that even in crypto there are so many different levels of volatility and risk. You can take the safest crypto, which is as you said, blue chip, Bitcoin or Ethereum, and you have a certain amount of risk and then you take like some, some small coins, some small cap coins in defi. And that's a totally different level of risk. So it all depends on what level.

The question about what to say to people when, when they say BTC is not tangible, you say that that's a feature, not a bug. Money has always been an abstraction. We've tried to give it some kind of, you know, physical component, like a US dollar has a physical piece of paper or gold, but really money is an abstraction. It's something in the human mind. Right. Value is something that we determine as a Society. Society or as a collective. So once people say that, you know, bitcoin's not tangible, the network itself is. Is tangible. Right? There are physical components to it, There are physical nodes, and that's what gives it tangibility. But the fact that it's not tangible as a feature, it means it's easily to transport. I could send it anywhere in the world as easily as I send an email, right? That's a bit like saying, like, my email is intangible. Does that mean it's not valuable? Does that mean it's not useful? Right. It has. Email has a tremendous amount of utility, but it's. It doesn't have a physical component. So Bitcoin is much in the same way, it allows us to transfer value anywhere in the world at any time as easily as we send an email. And that's an extremely potent tool. So, yeah, if people are worried about it not having tangibility, and I understand that perspective, I hear it all the time, usually from older market participants, and that they want a physical component, I would just say that they're thinking backwards, right? It's a bit like looking at a car and saying, where's the horse? Right. It doesn't really make sense. The whole point is that it didn't need a horse. And the whole point about Bitcoin is that it doesn't require a physical component. So that's what makes it valuable, that's what makes it durable, that makes it easy to transport, makes it extremely fungible. Right? How do you divide a US dollar down to one. One millionth of itself? Right. With Bitcoin, you could do that, no problem. So I would just tell them that it's a feature, not a bug.

And so another question I have for you is for people wanting to get into crypto to make money, what do you say to them?

Well, that's a problematic perspective, right? I think if you. If you are entering the crypto market specifically, and only to make money, and not just money, but make the old kind of money, it's a bit like saying, I saved so much time on my automobile that I could afford to have more horses. It's like, no, you need to move on from the old technology and into the new technology. And I get that that right now that's difficult for most people, right? Navigating cryptocurrencies, payment systems alone is not something the average user is comfortable with. And that's something that mostly only power users can do. But if your only goal is to make money, then prepare to be burned. And it's been my experience that if you look at the market from that perspective, that it will get in the way of what's truly valuable. If you could get involved in crypto, it's okay to make money. But if you could get involved in crypto for more meaningful reasons, for something around purpose. Mine is specifically around banking, the own bank, and helping to solve poverty, because it's an issue that's near and dear to my heart. I grew up very poor and my mother was literally a slave at one point in her life. So knowing that there are people out there that still live like that, there are people that are still trapped in indentured servitude or living at $2 or less a day, that gets me up in the morning. And so that's why I got involved in crypto. And that made all the difference because I stopped caring about market volatility. I don't care if Bitcoin's price goes up or down. It's still valuable because it still allows me to help people all over the world. And because of that, I was more willing to hold during rough periods. Right. I was buying Bitcoin when it was crashing. It went from 1400 all the way down to like $300 at one point. And I bought it the whole way down because I didn't care about how much money I made. I cared about how important the technology was and how many people it was going to help. So I don't know what your perspective is or what good you want to do in the world, but if you focus on that instead, chances are you'll have a lot more success. And if you can focus on crypto as a tool and not simply as this money making machine, I think you'll have much more success as well. If you start to actually use it in your day to day life and you start to think about all the good it could do and focus on that instead, you'll have a much better time and you won't feel the pain of the market fluctuations as much as right. I don't care if Bitcoin's a dollar or $100,000, it's still useful. And that's true of every cryptocurrency that that has some of the same properties. If it's open, borderless, permissionless, and I could do transactions to anyone in the world without them having to pass through kyc, AML compliance. That's useful to me. And so, so that's what gets me up in the morning. And that's why what I've always tried to focus on in cryptocurrency.

Cool. And so let's talk a bit more about what you are dealing with lately. So you have been involved in a lot of projects. Can you give us maybe some exclusive scoop about something that you, you haven't talked about about so far?

Yeah, you know, I have a couple cool ones. I think the one that most people like is I'm working with the Indonesian government to do one of the largest carbon credit programs in the world. Right. We talked about cryptocurrency being bad for, for the environment. Imagine a world in which the global reserve currency which would be, could be a cryptocurrency that was backed by carbon credits, which is to say, in order for the new units of account to be created, you have to capture carbon. So it's the exact opposite of the petrodollar. And I think that's what makes it perfect. This idea that we could have currencies, a way of expressing value that is important to us. I don't agree with burning fossil fuels as being what backs our global reserve currency. I think that's bad for the environment. I think that's why we're in the position we're in right now. But if we could invert that and make the global reserve currency something that is backed by carbon sequestration, then I think we're onto something really interesting. And so I put a fair amount of energy into carbon credits and tokenizing carbon credits to make a fungible currency that could be used anywhere in the world. And so I'm working with the Indonesian government to do exactly that. And that's a really exciting project that I've been working on for a number of years that I'm expecting to bear fruit sometime in the next 12 to 24 months. Another one I have is I've been talking to people in central banking for a number of years, trying to onboard them to this idea of creating open permissionless systems. And I have a few European nations that are on the hook for that. And so hopefully within the next 12 to 24 months that will emerge as well. And we'll see not what I would call a central bank digital currency, but a central bank that is willing to use open permissionless systems as part of its business model so that it can onboard users from anywhere in the world. And that's something that I think more and more developed nations are going to be into because they realize there's a tremendous opportunity here. And it's not just about us individually making money, but it's us as A civilization creating more efficiency, which creates more value for everyone. And I think more and more, as the cryptocurrency industry matures, it's getting a lot easier for me to close deals like that. So I have a number of deals like that that are coming through. And I also have some cool stuff. Like I'm working with the former owner of Death Row Records to launch an NFT platform. That's another really cool one. You know, NFTs are not my specialty, but I do have people come to me often asking, like, you know, how do we deploy them, how do we make use of them? So I'm seeing a lot of really cool stuff come around that. One of the ones we're working on right now is something called NF Ticketing, where we could kind of go after Ticketmaster and you could have big events that sell tickets and the tickets themselves are an nft. I think that's really, really cool. And it could, like, crack down on scalping or people selling fake tickets. So, yeah, that's the kind of stuff I'm working on these days.

Okay, so it seems that you have been dealing with very different sort of projects. Can you maybe tell us what are the attributes, the three attributes that you look at before you actually take on a specific project? How do you choose them?

Yeah, I mean, almost always it's about people, right? And, you know, we could talk about technology, we could talk about market opportunity, and those are great. But really it's about people. When you deal with a project, when you take on a strategic partner or a new client, you have to work with these people. And so, you know, they have to have the right temperament and they have to have the right approach in order for things to work. So that's one of the first things I look for. But more importantly, I look for alignment. It's a lot easier to get things done if everyone's rowing in the same direction. And so I asked, you know, why do you want to be in crypto? Why do you want to watch a crypto platform? And unless there's some kind of social good that's going to come out of it, unless they're trying to help people, people with their system, then I usually won't work with them. But thankfully, you know, at this point in my career, the only people that do come to me are people that are looking to do good. For example, one of the NFT platforms I'm launching is specifically focused on helping black and brown creators. That's called N Light. You guys will want to keep an eye out for that one soon. So N Light is going to be an NFT platform that is used to finance black and brown creators so they could create, you know, all the things that the world consumes. Right. But black and brown creativity is a potent force in humanity. And I think helping to service that by giving them access to capital so that we could see more movies, more comic books, more artwork from that community is really potent. So, you know, that's about alignment though, right? Because they're showing up saying, I want to help my community, I want to help people that I know or people that I've seen suffer. And I think this technology could do that. Those are the kind of people I like to work with. And so that's the most important thing I look for, is alignment. But then of course, you have to make sure that it's viable. Right. You might want to help people, but if your project isn't self sustaining, if it isn't going to make enough money to perpetuate itself into the future, then it's not a good idea either. Thankfully, crypto is a pretty straightforward way of monetizing a platform, so it usually opens up a lot of opportunities to make things profitable that wouldn't otherwise be profitable. So, you know, alignment, viability, and of course, market size.

Right.

Like, you know, who are you helping? If you're helping just the people around you, that's fine. But maybe there's not a reason for us to be working together on that. But if you're talking about helping the entire world, like the carbon credits program is going to help every person alive if that success, if that's successful, that if any carbon credit program became the global, de facto global reserve currency, I mean, we would all benefit from that. So that's the kind of projects I get excited about because it could help a lot of people at scale. So. But the most important one, the one I always look for is alignment. As long as they're good people trying to do good in the world, then chances are we're going to get along just fine and it'll be great to work with them.

Awesome. So I think that we have time for addressing one more. One last question from the audience. I see one here. If the volatility is done, so it's finished, then should we understand all the opportunities seized? So, yeah, what it's all about.

Yeah. Well, look, let's look at traditional markets, right? If you look at traditional asset classes like real estate or precious metals, they get into equilibrium with each other, right? When, when real estate goes down, one of the other classic asset classes go up and vice versa. Right. And so that there is some macro volatility in all markets. Right. There is no. I've never seen a market that is completely stable or perfect, but theoretically, if you had one, then there's no opportunity. So as volatility drops down, opportunity drops down as well. You're absolutely right. But that doesn't mean that there won't be something else to move on to. Right. What will most likely happen is we'll start to have markets, perhaps Bitcoin or the other major cryptocurrencies at some point in our lifetime. Not anytime soon, but at some point in our lifetime might become relatively stable compared to where they are now. And at that point, if you're looking for tremendous opportunity, if you're looking for ways to make, like, offside gains, you would have to look elsewhere. But I. I don't foresee that happening anytime soon. I think we're about two to three market cycles, which is like 10 to 12 years away from seeing anything plateau. Right. So I think we're in for a lot of rides. I think one of the tricks, though, one of the things I would implore all of you to do is find ways to make money when the market goes up and find ways to make money when the market goes down. So you're okay either way. Right. Make sure that you're hedging against volatility. If, like, you put 100% of your money into one asset, you're going to be completely subject to the volatility. But if you were perhaps using defi tools to create yield and then also investing that yield into the market, well, then the volatility matters a lot less. Right. Because you're using essentially found money. And that's one of my favorite strategies is whatever money I make, I will park into something that's boring, that puts out a certain amount of yield every day. And I take that yield and that's what I use to play in the market. Because if I lose all of that, it doesn't matter, right? It's my money makes me money, which I then put into the market to make me more money. And I've used that strategy for a number of years now, and it's been very successful for me, for my company and for everyone around me. So, yeah, I think volatility is not a bad thing. We shouldn't run away from it, but we should treat it with respect. And you're right. If volatility dies down, then you have to look elsewhere. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Yeah. Let's hope that volatility sticks around for a while. So I want to just ask you if you. If ad you want to give some final remarks to our audience before we wrap things up.

No. You know, hopefully I've given people a sense for, you know, what I think is important in the market, which I think is ultimately doing good with these tools. Cryptocurrency is a tool. It's just like a hammer. You could use it to build a house, or you could use it to hurt people. And all I'm suggesting is that we look out into the market and we start putting our money, our wherewithal, our time and energy into things that are actually focused on helping people. And I believe most cryptocurrencies, at least most of the ones that have had some success, are capable of doing that. The ultimate question is, when will you guys. You know, what ones will you guys support? And I think each of you will probably support different ones, right? Like, I think bitcoin is great. I think Ethereum is great, but you guys might have a different opinion. All I ask is that you focus on projects that are trying to create outcomes in the world that you want to see happen, and then what will most likely happen is we'll live in a better world as a result.

Awesome. So that's.

Stargate's on the way. So Stargate's under testing right now. It's been a pain in the butt to upgrade our network to be Stargate compatible, but it is looking good. We're getting there a few bugs in the testing environment before we launch. We have to make sure it's perfect, because if it launches and it's not perfect, it'll break everything. So it is looking good, though, so hopefully soon.

Yeah. And also I want to remind our audience to check out the website anata.cointelegraph.com where you can find a lot of answers to all the concerns that you might have about misconceptions around crypto and bitcoin. Ed is gonna be there with his videos and addressing each one of those concerns. So thanks a lot to everyone listening to this ama. I'm Giovanni, your host, but that was Edward De Leon, and yeah, see you next time.

Hello, everyone. Thanks, Giovanni. Thanks, guys. Have a good sa.