EP 27: Convo with Lux’s Josh Wolfe and Our Best/Worst Crypto Debate with Slow Venture’s Sam Lessin

Welcome to the 27th episode of Cartoon Avatars. I'm your host, Logan Bartlett. What you're going to hear on this episode is the long anticipated crypto debate between Sam Lesson and Zach Weinberg. I'm not sure if this is the best episode we've ever recorded because it's pure entertainment throughout them kind of yelling at each other, or the worst episode because we only really cover one use case and, and one point over and over again. So I'll leave that to you to decide which one it is. But it's definitely, definitely entertaining. I, I should preface, I did not do the best job as a moderator. I'm reminded of a little bit of the, the first Biden Trump debate where the moderator kind of was out of the picture and Biden and Trump just yelled at each other. That's kind of the equivalent of what we got here. So if we're, if we're going to do another version of this, I, I will certainly need to be more proactive in it, but preemptive apologies for that. And then what you're about to hear before that is a conversation I had on, on Thursday with Josh Wolf from Lux. Josh is a wonderful thinker, A, has been a mentor to me throughout all this. And so we sort of talk about the state of the market and what they're doing with Lux. So excited for you to hear that.

Now.

Josh, thanks for, thanks for coming on.

Good to see you, man. It's like you're, like, you're like true pro at this. This is super impressive.

You know, I, I've, I've, I've been at it now for 27 episodes. I think what people are going to hear on the back half of this episode is a conversation as we were just talking about between Sam Lesson and Zach Weinberg, which is, depending on your definition, either the best or the worst conversation we've recorded to date. And so this is going to be like the veggies of the, of the dinner, right? You're going to go potatoes.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I, I, I, I agree.

And disagree with both of them. So it's going to be good.

Yeah. And so we'll, we'll be the, the nutrients and then there'll be the empty calories of arguing at each other at the end. But how are things in, how are things in your world? I guess we, we probably spoke. It's probably been, I don't know, two months or something, three months since we spoke. I think it was the end of April, beginning of May maybe. So what's Going on in the. In the world of Josh Wolf and Lux right now, all is.

All is reasonably well. I mean, we've, you know, had this period for two years where it probably sounded like a Cassandra. And we had a series of quarterly letters that came out. The first one was basically saying, as an admonishment both to our LPs and to our portfolio companies, capitalize on the current capital markets. This will not last. Raise as much money as you can. Then the next admonishment was, husband that cash and don't invest in growth. Because that is really the only thing that's been rewarded for the past 10 years. Whether you had, you know, negative gross margin growth or whatever is just growth, growth, growth. And I think that we're, you know, facing recessionary headwinds and probably going to hit very hard. And investing in growth would be sort of a fool's errands, like spitting against the wind. So what can you do with that money instead? You can use it to consolidate your sectors, buy up your competitors, buy up their talent, buy up channels to market, buy products, and buy the time that you're going to need so that you get a market that reemerges, that cares about whatever it is you're doing.

So do you guys.

Do you publish every quarter? How long have you been doing that, like your updates? And what was the impetus for it?

We've been doing our quarterly letters, you know, for, I don't know, 15 years or something to. I mean, at least a dozen years. Writing, for me is both catharsis and a way to get thoughts out, but it helps to sort of set the guidepost for what we as a firm are position and posture. So some of it is poetic, some of it is prose, but it's a way for us to, you know, think in narratives and guide our behavior and then look back at the stuff that we thought was going to happen and, you know, did it. And then, like right now, amidst a lot of uncertainty, people are pining for playbooks. You know, what do we do? What does this most closely resemble? And everybody's got their analogies from the past, from lived experience, and from whatever history books they've read. You know, I've said this before, but if you were 37 years old and it's been 15 years since the last real downturn, at least in a credit Crisis. You were 22 at that point. Fifteen years ago, graduating college, you've never really seen an equity downturn. You know, people said, oh, March 2020, there was this big equity downturn nonsense that was a record fiscal and monetary stimulus. But you know we were born is a firm coming out of the dot com crisis. And so I remember both being a retail investor speculating in Pacific Century Cyberwarse and all these companies that don't even exist anymore that were up 5x6x and then they were down 80% and then from that 80% point, right they went from 100 to 20, they went down another 80%.

Right.

And so they were down 90% and that was painful but it was a, it was a valuable lesson in what happens when people stop believing or start believing something new. Back then it was going from eyeballs, you know, to suddenly path to profitability and cash is king. And I think the same thing will happen now. You will go through these stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I actually think that that will be reflected in the structured terms which you have not seen in companies that you will begin to see. So that means that you will go from firms that raise money at crazy prices or will seem like crazy prices to doing extensions and then extensions turning into some structured positive preferences for people. So you know they get some warrants, some kickers, some liquidation preferences, particularly in the growth rounds. Then you will see people saying you know what? We're not paying money and investing in these companies and letting these free riders stick around. So then you're going to get something that people haven't seen a really long time which is pay to plays. And those will start out plain vanilla, then they'll go 2 to 1, then they'll go 20 to 1. Meaning that if you're not participating, your preferred is getting crushed down, you know, to 5% of what it was into common stock. Then you'll see down rounds and then you'll see full on recaps. And in this current moment my view is we're probably Q3 March 2000, you know, to like September 2000. That's what the thing that I viscerally feel this is like. And what happened from that point was you had two years of range bound markets where markets didn't really go anywhere. They sort of came in and out. Then you had the next five years which was basically the rise of long short hedge funds and the heroes therein. You had people that were great stock pickers, people that knew how to value businesses, read accounting statements, read financial statements, K's and Q's, break down balance sheets and income statements, cash flow statements and understand and reconcile them with what people are representing. And not many of these community adjusted Ebitda and these nonsense Measures. In fact, there was a tweet two weeks ago or something, and I thought it was a joke, but it went viral and it's like, what is EBITDA and why does it matter? And I was like, man, there's no better punctuating, you know, moment of absurdity of, you know, people going to relearn these basic lessons.

So I tweeted, I tweeted something to that effect. I think, I think I did. What is free cash flow? And then I decide it started to get viral. And sometimes these jokes, they, they get out of the escape velocity of people that know I'm kidding and then they start to touch, like people that want to dunk, people that want to dunk on VCs. And then it gets out of that orbit. And I realized I deleted it because I started to feel like one, it was starting to escape that orbit. And two, my. As many as my LPs probably understand the joke of some of that stuff. It didn't. It felt like a little tone deaf even joking about it right now. But I guess my question to you in all of this is like. Or I guess not in all of this. But one of the things, having lived through that point in the cycle, I guess I have two questions. Like, if I were a founder and there's all this money sitting on the sidelines right now, right? Like, how do you think that plays itself out? Because I think people, maybe people know this, maybe they don't, but like, there were a ton of LPs or GPs that ended up giving, trying to give money back to their limited partners.

Right.

And I guess I sort of view that as two motivations. One is that the altruistic one is, hey, we can't pragmatically invest this money.

Right.

The more cynical one is, hey, we're ready to restart the carry clock on. We've invested in these funds and this was kind of shitty marks and this fund's awash at this point, and so we're ready to start over because that we're going to call that whole fund a wash. And so let's, let's find a path to getting to the next fund so we can more quickly get into the carry. Do you think we start to see people try to give back some of these big funds? Be it, you know, the, the billions of dollars of crypto money that's been raised or the 5, 6, 7, $8 billion funds that keep coming out there?

Yeah, I mean, some of it isn't even public yet, but I know for a fact that There are some funds that have raised multibillion dollars and they intend to give back between 30 and 50% of it to LPs.

Is that right?

Okay.

Yeah.

So.

So you will see that. And it'll be, and it'll be some, it will be from some prominent names. So, yeah.

And do you think, do you think how much of that is like, hey, we can't pragmatically invest this versus, hey, we're ready to restart the fun clock cycle versus any other machinations that you think exist?

In the case that I'm thinking of, I think it's much more of a pragmatic rational of, like, this is what we think is rational to deploy. And I think that they think that, you know, they'll, their pace will slow, valuations will come down. They will. The interesting thing in this, into your question of, like, what do you do as a founder? Firms will be investing slower. You'll have less FOMO and the speed with which everybody was going. So that sort of slows down. You will have some LPs that actually slow down. And I've talked about this before about like, this LP indigestion that's going to lead to the slowing of the champagne falling down the pyramid that goes, trickles all the way down to founders. But funds will have to increase their reserves because there is greater risk than ever of syndication risk. We are looking through, and I'll share our playbook publicly because, you know, some of these, maybe people can replicate, but I feel that Lux is relatively experienced in being able to deploy these. But we are looking through not just to the quality of the company and the management and like their own balance sheet, but we're looking through the cap table to see, you know, where is there going to be dead weight. And if you go back to what I was saying before about denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and the presence of terms, you know, I can tell you, like, if we have a great peer that's in the cap table, like, we're not going to do anything punitive, but if it's a group that we don't know, like, we're not carrying free riders. And so we're going to put structure in there that if we're taking the risk, you know, and you don't have the means to continue to invest, these people are going to be washed out.

And so which is, which is kind.

Of the situation of pay to play, hey, you have to participate in this round. There's going to be structured terms. We're going to support the business going forward. And help it get to the next milestone. But if you don't, you're going to get crammed down, right?

Is that a fair characteristic?

And being crammed down is converted at a certain ratio of your preferred stock to your common stock. And because there is, you know, normally everything is parapassu and everything is great. You know, you go public, you get acquired, everything gets converted, you know, submitted as, as converted basis if you are.

Which, which just to, just to say with that. So the shares end up acting, they get converted all to common and they all act effectively. If you were the Series A or the Series D, wherever you got involved, the share count basically is going to be equivalent from a voting and structure standpoint, right?

And so in layman's terms, let's say that a company raised, and I'm just, you know, doing huge numbers here, but like $500 million, you know, there might be $500 million of preferences and if the company gets sold for $600 million, then the 500 million goes to the preferred investors. And so it's not on a, on a pro rata basis and of the incremental $100 million, depending if it's participating preferred, that might not go on a, on a basis to common, but again to the participant to the preferred on the percentage of the company that they own. So when everything is rosy, structure doesn't matter. And when things, you know, it's something we wrote about in our last quarterly letter, but when, when things start to get tough and there's distrust between different people with different incentives and different stakes and companies, it starts, you know, to become more zero sum. So in this environment, you know, the other piece of the range bound markets, you know, from 2000 to 2002. And remember by the way, for people who have only known that markets sort of come back and you got this fed put and btfd, you know, buy the fucking dip that has worked for people, right? And then, yeah, and then people have to remember that from March 2000 it took, with dividends reinvested in the NASDAQ 17 years to get back to those levels. It wasn't like, oh, this is coming back in two or three, four years. So you had an entire generation that was basically burned by this. Which is why you have, you know, some of us older folk that were basically like, yeah, this isn't going to end well.

Right?

And the next generation, 15, 17 years from now will be thinking the exact same thing. They will remember crypto and what happened. They remember the meme stocks and what happened they remember, you know, tech, high flying tech and what happened. And you'll have a younger generation where you need that ambitious naivete that doesn't have any memory and it doesn't matter if you read about it. You have to viscerally feel lost. You have to know what that feels like. So in this environment, our playbook at Lux is three strategies. We've got what we call the bubble, the anti bubble and consolidation. And the bubble is not like the old bumper sticker going back to the dot com. Please God, give me another bubble. Let me hope that you know, asset prices will be crazily euphoric, inflected and irrational exuberance. It is actually invest in new cos. So to your point of like what does a founder want to look for with 30 months of cash? Give them 30 months of cash structure around where two and a half years. They do not have to worry about the volatility and the vicissitude of the market. They do not have to worry about geopolitics and Ukraine and food crisis. They don't have to worry about the resurgence of Trump and domestic politics in 2024 election. They can just focus on eliminating technology risk and product risk and ultimately market risk. But we've eliminated the financing risk for two and a half years. Okay, so that is bubble. Anti bubble is what we historically have done as special situations. And I'll give you an example of this. So it's like visceral but great company, great company, great balance sheet, great prospects. Probably have to rationalize their cost structure, spend a little bit less, maybe lay off some people make sure that they got the money to survive, but they got a cap table that's totally impaired. And that cap table is like dead funds last crisis. My partner, co founder Peter Hebert, he led an investment a company called luxterra. I'm gonna get the numbers roughly right. It was the last mile fiber optic cable company they were selling into data centers. There was a question where we were taking main market risk. If we were to invest in this company with Facebook and Amazon and Microsoft going into all the different cloud constructs that they had, buy this, buy the product they had raised, I want to say $100 million. And what's interesting, and you will see the same thing now, they raised it From August Capital 7. Rosen, do you know those guys?

Most people, I mean, you didn't know?

I know them from history.

History, right. Because they are in history's dustbin.

And these were great guys.

Dave Marquette, first Microsoft investor, Andy Rapoport, incredible board Member, great at governance.

Right?

Something that a lot of younger investors aren't. You had seven. Rosen. Ben Rosen, the original investor in Compact Computer gave me great advice when we were starting Lux, but these guys are out of business. Okay. Us and NEA came in. Oh, and the other groups that were in there were dag, I think and Advanced equities which were the, the boiler room, you know, Dial for Dollars, dentists and you know, which are today's SPVs with these like random people that are eager to get into FOMO companies. So we came in from that 2:20 post at a 10 million pre. We refreshed management, they were ready to go, we capitalized the business, sold it to Cisco for 660 million. A few years later there's going to be a select few examples of that where you got a great company with great technology, it needs fresh capital and the prior investors are basically going to get burned out because they are either old, can't get an extension, can't raise an annex fund, didn't invest in the succession of their junior partners and you know, it's just a natural ecosystem, right, that'll lead it.

I've lived through one of those before. I inherited a board C when I was at battery and it's a, setting up that structure. It's so interesting how many perverse incentives get come to play where hey, you're a fund that's in a position of strength to some extent. The founder oftentimes is somewhere between neutral and proactive in making this happen, right? Because they're like, hey, I would rather have one throat to choke on my board or two throats to choke and have them have more ownership and then I will get refreshed effectively to some level, right, that gets me close to what the last round valuation is and therefore I can hire more easily. And then you have these older dead weight funds that are kicking and screaming to avoid this from happening, right. And they're trying to raise this, these SPVs to participate in the pay to play because you can't say, hey, we're going to fuck you to the, to the weaker investor. But if they don't have money, they can effectively get screwed over.

No, right.

The litigation is going to go flying. I mean I would be, you know, you will, you will see law firm consolidation in this wave, but you'll also see a ton of litigation and you know, for some it'll be actually a profitable strategy. The, the last piece of this. So you got the bubble, 30 months of cash, you know, give them protection, the anti Bubble take advantage of great companies but are basically later stage coming in at earlier prices than you've ever seen. And then you got consolidation. And consolidation for us is twofold. It's the existing companies we have with a billion dollars or more on their balance sheet. I mean that's an insane amount of money, right? You take, yeah, totally Andrew on the defense side, you know, billion dollars plus of cash. They've done their third acquisition. They are going to consolidate lots of companies in the defense and they will keep getting bigger in the companies that they acquire. So organic growth plus acquisitions. But they've got a killer war chest. Balance sheet icon Eikon, one of our biotech companies, 620 million of cash right now they'll raise another billion dollars. You got 800 publicly traded biotech companies, half of them with less than two years of cash, 150 of them trading a negative enterprise value meaning below their cash Leadership team there unique time, unique technology, unique team, going to go and pick up all the assets and you know, get them for cents on the dollar. So we are also looking at other companies that we may not be invested in that have killer balance sheets and killer teams that are going to do consolidation in the sector because they are the ones that will compound all set up for that environment where two years from now, two and a half years from now, you're going to have the celebrated resurgence of these long short stock pickers. That's what happened in 2002-2007. I think it's going to happen again. You'll see headlines in the Journal, the ft, the New York Times talking about this guy or girl just made 30, 50, 70% in the month. Why? Because they were short a lot of these companies, you know, and while you got some of the big growth guys who have been, you know, great partners to some of our companies and have been the heroes for the past decade. They're down 4050, 65, 80% and it's hard to recover even from modified high watermarks in some of those cases. So bubble anti bubble solidation.

That's an interesting framework by which to think about all this. Is there a point in time? Are you thinking like when you're making new investments or as you're talking to founders. Founders, is it that 30 month period out? Obviously no one has a, has a crystal ball to actually think about this stuff. But do you have any point in time from the recollection of having gone through this the last go round in 2000 where it was really similar to this, any point in Time that you feel like, hey, you can at least feel somewhat certain that there will be funding available for you if Mr. Or Mrs. CEO when you're out there, and at least there'll be a sense of normalcy, you might not like it, right? It could be down rounds and all that. Because right now, at least at the growth stage where I spend most of my time, it feels like most stuff is frozen, right? And a lot of people are saying, oh yeah, we're ready to invest. But you just look, you go through the axios pro rata, like funded deal announcements thing and it's really not happening. And I think there's two functions there. One is that a lot of people aren't raising right because they have the amount of money on the balance sheet to go do it. And then two, I don't know how many participants really know what price is even worth in this market, right, when you have these high water marks and prior rounds and funky cap tables and all that stuff. And then three, I think a lot of firms have kind of taken off these couple months and are just waiting for the market to settle down a little bit when more people go back out and start fundraising again. And so if you're a founder, as you advise founders, is there any point in time that you're saying, hey, here's far enough in the future that, you know, at least we'll reach somewhat of a sense of normalcy in the venture.

The 30 months for us, the two and a half years is, is a function of. It's definitely not in the next year. Like you need to have way more than a year balance sheet. And generally because I think everything times PI in life, you know, if somebody tells you it's going to be $2,000,000 to do something, it's going to be, you know, 6.6. If somebody tells you it's going to 6.4. If somebody tells you it's going to be three months, it's going to be 10. You know, so just everything times PI. So roughly, you know, could be three and a half years, but the more cash you have, the better. Now I actually you're going to talk to Sam, you know, and I think he wrote a piece a week or two ago talking about cash runways and the virtues of that. So you can dig in with, with him on that. But yeah, I just think that, you know, between two and three years of cash will let you get through this period where again, some people are frozen. They're frozen because they're looking at who is the incremental Investor and it was cleared in this contract that I had before of the minnows and the megas, the many large number of small sub $100 million funds and the few very large and crossover in SoftBank, GCGA, Andreessen, others that you know, were able to do these late stage rounds and be price ticker setters. Price setters, top tickers, that's, that's frozen. And so there needs to be new pools of capital formed and there will be. Right. People will be going out there and saying the secular trend, the digital transformation of healthcare, the resurgence of Revanchis, Russian China, demand for new defense, people will form new pools of capital and have a good thesis and they will be able to say of course these trends are real and prices are lower. And so over the next year or two you will have new pools and new players that form. People will leave firms, they'll come together, they'll form new firms. I mean that's the natural evolution in any ecosystem. And, and, and that will be when you will have fresh, you know, un, untainted new money that can look at, around and, and a true sort of, you know, if this is a seed or series A, a Series A or a series B two and a half years from now and be a good partner. And by the way, at a reasonable price, not at, you know, going from like, like I'm leading a company Right now, $55 million Series A, we're doing 20 of it. It'll be that 55 million will last two and a half years. But when we come out for the next uptick, I'm not expecting like a 10x uptick. Right. It might be a 2x and so.

$55 million Series A, that's, that's quite a, that's quite a big round. I assume it's a pretty special unique company that this is.

It'll be publicly announced I think by September. But this is the result of a 12 year quest to find digital olfaction. And I found it.

Wow.

Well, I'm excited to hear that.

Damn for smell.

Well Sam, thanks for volunteering. You're. Yeah. And scheduling this on fairly short notice, so I guess people know Zach at this point, but maybe give a quick primer on yourself. If you had a dating app bio, what would it say?

You know, I haven't had one because my wife and I have started dating halfway through college, so I've never done that whole thing. But no, I mean like professionally GP Slow ventures kind of got that thing going. You know, we've you know, we think we've done well before that. Was VP Product at Facebook. Reported to Mark, ran a bunch of product engineering and design teams there, including profiles and privacy. Started a company before that called Drop IO. I'm actually very proud. I'm one of the founders of Digital Dumbo. So we were like the second company to move into Dumbo. Turns out I probably should have just bought real estate rather than starting a company. There's. And started my career. If you go all the way back at Bain & Co. For two years where I did a lot of private equity diligence buyout stuff which was entertaining for almost exactly two years, but not a day longer.

Did Mark Zuckerberg manage. Did he manage the product teams directly?

So there's been many iterations in the history of Facebook's. You know, how they organize teams. Right. But in my era there was a set of product groups that all rolled directly into him. Yeah. Wow. Jay Z had a line about buying.

In Dumbo in the Story of oj.

Yeah. Yeah.

That was you.

You and Jay Z. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's. I, I feel that line deeply. 68 J Street. You know, it was a different era back then and totally. I mean that it was wild.

So when were you at, when were you founding a company? When did you sell to Facebook? How long were you at Facebook?

Yeah, so I, I started, I, I, we took approximately. Because it's actually been so long. I'm so old now that I don't exactly. I'm getting dates wrong slightly. But started a company in 2007 and that was kind of before kids started companies. So we raised money from RRE Ventures. Like we kind of are off doing our own thing. I think Y Combinator had just started. It's kind of a weird thing to have a startup in those era. We started literally a file sharing platform. It was just when S3 and AWS were coming out and we had a point where actually an important Amazon customer. I was, I was on the original AWS customer advisory board. Wow. It was like me and a bunch of CTOs. That was fascinating. I had no idea what I was talking about. But so we started that. I sold the company. We sold the company to Facebook in 2010. It was one of those things where it was pretty clear that we were doing well. We had millions of users. But it was clearly becoming an also ran. And Mark just made a very compelling pitch. He said, look, what you're doing is honestly not important. Right. Like it's going to happen come work on profiles at Facebook, which is something I cared a lot about and I thought was really important, and identity at Facebook. So kind of ended up doing an Aqua Hire thing of that era and then was there through the IPO through late 2014, doing, you know, first profiles. And I took on actually doing a big privacy rewrite and trying to simplify the privacy of model for Facebook a bunch. I think we got a lot of good stuff done, but clearly not everything.

And you guys don't know. I mean, you're both New York kids, right? You're both starting companies in 07 in New York.

Right.

Zach, were you in New York or were you in Philadelphia at the time?

We were in Philly and then New York when we started the sales team. And it's really funny to hear and meet somebody who also started a company, like, when it wasn't cool, because I was. I was the same thing. I was in. I was at Wharton. I was in business school. And everyone's like, you're not going to take the Blackstone interview? You know, whatever it was that people were doing at the time. But we were so New York. I'm assuming everything you did was West Coast.

No, no. I mean, we probably should have overlapped. I mean, you know, we were very focused in the New York ecosystem. You know, I like, back in that era, if you remember, like, Birchbox was, like, started in our office. Muck Rack, which has actually become incredibly successful, was started in our office. You know, I gave Venmo their first money and helped them get off the ground. So there's probably a lot of overlap. We're probably like half a degree disconnected somewhere.

Yeah, maybe I'm just like a weird introvert.

But it was a good era. I mean, that was a really exciting time in New York. And it was also kind of fun because New York was so clearly not the cool place to do tech stuff. Right. You know, which I actually liked. It made the community super small. Everyone knew everyone. It was fun.

You know who else was doing tech stuff right around that same time in New York?

Who?

Chris Dixon.

Yep. 100%. I remember Chris Dixon from that era. I was not close with him, but, you know, for sure. New one.

Yeah.

Because there was that small little community after ebay bought the his first company that was working on, like, there's a building on 6th Avenue and, like, 21st street or something.

Yeah, it's like the app next to the skies. There was like, if you were like, blip tv. I literally was talking to Mike Hudak this morning, who ended up Coming and working for me at Facebook for a while. And you know, it was, it was a great era. There's a lot of great people have gone on to do great stuff.

Yeah. The App Nexus, the App Nexus team in particular with Brian o'. Kelly, I mean, we used to spend hours in Brian's office learning ad tech.

Yeah, well, Brian, I mean, Brian pitched us on actually using the original, you know, App Nexus wasn't an ad tech thing, it was a. It was a cloud computing thing. Right. And that was, you know, he was pitching us on using that instead of aws.

Logan, this is the tech equivalent of Jewish geography.

Yeah, I was going to say I need to keep you guys away from that part of it. Like, you know, which camps you went to or something.

I. Yeah, let's get back to which.

Rabbi Bar Mitzvah do you say?

Yeah, Rabbi Block. It was Rabbi often.

Yeah. Are you guys are really losing the.

Listeners at this point? No.

Interesting. I mean, do you guys have. By the way, speaking of New York, I was, I was here, but I was in finance at the time. Is there any ecosystem that you guys have been to that sort of had that similar feel? Because people will be like, oh, you know, Toronto, I heard this last week, Toronto is like New York in 08 09. Or Miami is like New York in 0809 or something. Have you guys actually been to an ecosystem recently that had that similar kind of going to break out? You sort of knew it was coming, but you weren't exactly sure where it.

Was going to come from.

Is there any city that has that or any ecosystem?

I was going to say, honestly, it's like, I think what's happened is it's gone virtual.

Yeah, I agree. It's everywhere. It's. It's the era. That era was, you know, you had the Silicon Valley group, right, which was felt very corporate and professional. Whatever. You had a bunch of New York kids running around. And it was also just like the era of the Internet, right? Like, I think, you know, if you think about it, back in that era, it was like, wow, like you just got PHP and MYSQL and things that allow. You just built AWS is just coming out. All of a sudden you could do shit, right? And like there was a very interesting moment where it was all possible, but it also wasn't like hyper serious yet. Like there was a lot of just silly things going on. I think the problem now is it's big business. And to your point, Zach, I think the other big part is like there's no, enter. I mean, it's everywhere, right? So maybe there's some discord server I'm not invited to. But I don't. I don't think it's in any specific.

I mean, I found myself in a weird way. I don't know, Sam, if you guys even care about this, it's slow, but I would listen to a pitch, we would do some homework, do some diligence, and I didn't know where actually. I had no idea where the company was based. I didn't even ask.

Yeah, it's not really relevant anymore, but there wasn't me. Like, I remember, you know, again, we'll stop the New York memory lane trip. But it's like, you know, I remember, like, you know, there's stuff like this, the New York Tech meetup. It's like Bri Pettis would like, I have MakerBot number one. And I was like, here's a credit card and how do I invest? Right? And like, that was kind of like, there was just like, crazy. You know, there was. What was it? NYC Resistor. And like, all this weird stuff going on. It was super fun.

It was so early. We didn't know what was going to happen.

Yeah, exactly.

There it is. He's getting the digs in early. So did you move cross country for Facebook? Is that what brought you out to.

I did, yeah. So, yes, exactly. Basically, Facebook was part of my company. You know, the heart of Facebook at that time and now is Silicon Valley. If you wanted to actually be doing anything super impactful in that era, you were going to be in, you know, 1601 and then Menlo Park. Yeah, makes sense.

And so. So you were there through the I.P.O. and then what? Take us through Slow's journey. Like, how did that come to be?

Yeah, Slow was interesting. So basically, you know, I. Slow had initially been just a few friends who basically were all doing angel checks, pooled some money, were kind of like, messing around, kind of investing. So there's like three. There were three early slow funds that I think together were about $14 million. Right. Like, and this is again, like, talk about being early rather than being good. This is like in the era before kids were running a lot of checkbooks largely, and certainly before there was all these micro VCs. Right. So we were doing these, like, super early angel checks. You know, I would seed Venmo and I'd say, hey, let's also put some slow money in. Like, it was very kind of a collective of really just some early Facebook folks who pooled some capital When I left Facebook, Kevin Collaren, who had actually been, he was Employee 7 at Facebook and then had been at General Catalyst was like, hey, let's make slow a real thing, right? And so we went out and raised our first actual fund that was 65 million dollars. And we've done a few hundred fifty plus million dollar funds now our most recent vehicles, it's about 350 million bucks across a growth carve out for later stuff. But our bread and butter is doing super early seats from zero. So we seeded everything from, you know, in sometimes starting out small checks, right. They've gotten bigger over time, but you know, everything from Allbirds to Roman Health. Who were the first investors in? We were super early in airtable or super early in, I don't know, like postmates. We were super early in like a lot of stuff over the last ten years or so. And then obviously, you know, I think, you know, we can get into this now or later. We also got very active as a fund in crypto in like the 2016, 17 era. I had personally started investing in crypto and been super excited about things like I bought a bunch of bitcoin like everyone else. Well, not like everyone else, like some people back in like the 2013 era. 2012, 2013. And then was a seed investor in Ripple, kind of a bunch of other like Ledger X. A bunch of early stuff messing around and then we kind of got more institutional about it. And again I think some of the most exciting stuff we've done. We were Series 0 seed investors in Solana which has been a massive win for us. We were super early in Algorand, we're super early in, you know, company. One of my favorites is Clayton, which really the only American investors in which I'm really psyched about as well as a bunch of other stuff. So.

So what gets you excited about before Zach goes, what are the use cases? What gets you excited about. About like crypto in general? Like what is there areas that. I know some of those names, I don't know others, but like is it, is it the different protocols? Is it the application? Is it defi, is it nft? Is it all the above? Like how walk us through like what your core beliefs are about crypto.

I mean I said that I'm like a first principles guy more than anything else and I got excited about this idea. You know, when we were talking about what the Internet was early on, I always talked about like the superpowers that it gave. Right. You think about. I was like, imagine the Internet is really Just a new bundle of superpowers. You wake up one day and all of a sudden you can talk to everyone on earth instantly for free, right? What does that do to society? What does that do to the world? A lot of. I think that the fallout and the complexity we have, it's easier to say, this isn't about technology. This is just about new human superpowers being unleashed and what it does to our ways of interacting. Obviously, at Facebook, I spent a huge amount of time on identity, which I think is a really interesting abstract problem area. Reputation, identity. How do you deal with those things in these new superpower contexts? For me, crypto is really just honestly, when you get down to the basics, it is just the idea that for the first time, you're basically layering in memory in a distributed, trusted way into the Internet. Like, the Internet was born in a lot of ways, I would argue, broken. And a lot of the problems we have around spam and trust, there's some very good parts about how the Internet was started and some very bad parts. And to me, the crypto is just adding a new layer in. We were like, oh, shit. Like, we can also have distributed memory. And there, there are, you know, again, we'll some sure get into this. There's. The question is, what the hell do you use distributed memory for? Who the fuck cares, right? Like, and we can get into the use cases from that perspective.

And what is distributed memory even, I guess, to you? What does that mean before we get.

Into the use cases? Like, well, look, I mean, right now, the way memory works, right? Well, let's. Let's take a human context and then a technology context, the way human pretend there's no writing, there are no books, there's no nothing. We're just a network of humans that, you know, have inputs and outputs and memory on board, right? What is memory? How does it really work, right? You have a bunch of nodes running around interacting with each other, and they're recording their version of a thing, right? And then if you want to know what is truth or what is it, how do you do that? Well, you'd pull. You'd say, like, do I have a memory of it firsthand, right? Do I have some sort of onboard recollection? If you don't know, you're gonna like, ping the nodes you trust, right? There's gonna be lots of nodes. They might have lots of different viewpoints on different things, but you ping the nodes you trust. And like, there's a whole game to why do you trust people? And retribution and all this type of stuff that bundles around, but that's like a very distributed model where there is no single truth on anything. There's only perspectives and then incentives and then ways to pull that together. Now if you think about writing, right, And a lot of technology over the last several hundred years, there's been this pattern of like effectively centralizing truth or centralizing trust in a lot of ways. And I think if you think about, you know, what a database is, right, it basically is everyone saying like, you know, the Facebook database or whatever, you know, in the abstract sense, it's basically everyone kind of writing to a single store and saying, this is the truth. We're all gonna, we're all gonna agree that this is reality. The problem is, is that as we all know, those are owned, right, by people, by organizations, by context, like they're, they're. It's a very different model than what we're historically used to in a lot of ways. And so, you know, crypto, it is different than this kind of every single. There's 7 billion people, there's 7 billion different memory stores floating around like pre writing, the human way of existing, right? But it at least gets us back to some level of saying, okay, like there's a form of ledger, there's a form of memory that can exist where we're going to use a smart combination of math and economics to say that no, there's no one who can just go in and change, change, change reality as they see fit, right? And I think that's like a super interesting abstract organizational, technological principle. So that's, you know, what got me excited. Like, wow. Like take start with Bitcoin. Like, wow, that's super cool. Like I. There is no central database, you know, that's. No one's going to print more Bitcoin. That's a really interesting alternative piece of technology. It's a really interesting alternative organizing principle, you know, And I think when you get into smart contracting and blah, blah, blah, and everything's built on top and you know, we can, we can go there. It's like, you know, none of it's. There's nothing that you can do with crypto or really any of this stuff that you couldn't in theory do if you could pull it off with some sort of single centralized trusted node. His problem is you're just never going to actually get that in human society.

There were a lot of things in there. Now I'm like, my brain is like, slow, the creeks are turning and I need some oil. I should have had A drink or something. Before this I got the Bitcoin thing I always thought was very interesting, right. Because the reason the trustless piece works in Bitcoin is because the data that you trust is inherent to the chain itself, 100%.

It's self contained. Right. It's a, it's a closed loop. 100%.

Right. How do you think about like trust and what is trust and what is the data on the chain when the source of that information obviously isn't coming from the chain itself. Right. Really? It's like it's a ledger of someone else's data basically.

Yeah, yeah. I think this is like, this is if there's one problem in crypto that is the biggest problem, right, that that requires the most thought. It's the interface between external data sources and like the internal self consistent system, right? It's the Oracle problem. It's like how do you get a digital system to mirror a physical system? By the way, same problem with the Internet, broadly, right. It's not like this isn't unique to crypto. This is like, you think about like a lot of problems with the Internet. The problem is the Internet's an incredibly good machine from a self referential standpoint, but the second you have to sync it out somewhere or it has to represent truth rather than entertainment, for instance, it's really hard, right? And so those interfaces are the key, the key components. I mean, and to me, like there's nothing inherent in crypto that solves Oracle problems, right? You need. That's true, right? Like there's basically two approaches. One is you have economic systems, right, that enforce some sort of version of. It has to mirror reality with some smart economics or people are going to like be basically liable for big losses. Right? And I think a lot of the systems you see around, like staking and you know, prediction markets and things like that, like try to mess around with that. The other is, guess what, you're still trusting institutions, you're still trusting people somewhere in the chain, right? And crypto will never, crypto cannot as a self consistent internal system solve that, right? That has to be solved by other technology and candidly like by other human institutions. No question.

Yeah. So if we go and we say like, the reason it's interesting is because it's decentralized and trusted in the sense that no third party really controls it. But then we go and say, well that's true, except for the fact that anytime we bring on off chain data on chain, technically we're now trusting the Oracle, right? Whomever entered it, whether it was, I think in the mortgage example, it was Kathy in the clerk's office or something. Yeah, sorry, sorry to Kathy or anyone else. So when that kind of real world impacts the data comes in and impacts the chain itself, like, don't you lose the story, don't you lose the value?

I don't think so. I just think, I think that's too black and white. Right? Like, the idea that technology fully solves any human problem I think is like candidly, like an overstatement of technology's abilities. Right. Like technology layers and new tools and new ways of trading or interacting. But in the end of the day it's, it does, you know, it sort of turtles all the way down. It does always hit back to humans, humans and institutions and how we coordinate, how we act. So let me, let me, let me just kind of dive in those. Because I'm not really answering your question. Look, here's the way I look at it. There's a bunch of things that the Internet in theory should enable that we fucked up. Right. In terms of actually getting there, from my perspective and getting the lav. The value of what it means to be able to speak to everyone on earth instantly for free. Right. I think what crypto does is it creates opportunities where we can actually go out and like, not necessarily fix a lot of those things, but take second shots at them is almost the way I would look at it. Right. So, you know, again, the ones I call out, like you talked about the mortgage thing, I actually think on chain real estate is an awesome space to be exploring on chain hard assets. It's actually something we've been spending a lot of time on as well. Like we've run a Montana Landao where we literally are buying real world assets and tokenizing them. We have really cool stuff coming with Timber ip. Like we're really into this theme. But let me be clear about what I mean when we're doing this and what the point is. The way this actually works is we say, okay, cool, we're going to do capital formation in crypto, effectively saying, hey, people can contribute USDC and fund an SDAO is what we're calling them. It's like a pocket of cash to go do a thing. We're saying that crypto can provide really interesting liquidity opportunities for people on chain and we can get into why that matters in a second. But you know, what's underneath an llc, right? With accredited investors. Right. We're not trying to blow, you know, we're not working around the law. We're not trying to do anything different. We're basically saying, like, there's a structure for this. You know, crypto doesn't change the underlying structure. You know, there's been reaps forever.

So before we get to the actual use case, just so I understand it, so basically you've got an LLC, which is like normal corporate protections, which makes sense 100%. People send you money to own a piece of that llc, they happen to send it to you in usdc, but in theory they could have sent whatever it is they wanted 100% and then you've got ownership of that LLC. You have an operating agreement for the LLC, there's a manager for the LLC, blah, blah, blah.

Yep.

Okay, so it's an LLC, it's an LLC.

It's. It's like the most boring thing in the world. Right. Here's the thing. On top of it, we say, hey, after a year hold period, you, accredited investors effectively get tokens, which are bearer tokens. They say if you own this Token, there are 499 maximum possible issue tokens. We say, guess what? You own that pro rata percentage of the llc.

Right.

This makes liquidity easier. Right. If you want to actually do this in the real world with a traditional LLC or candidly, a good old fashioned reit, totally doable. Right. The problem is, is that it's pretty illiquid. It's pretty hard to trade. Just like startup equity is like you're.

Going to let LLC owners in or I guess like individual owners of your LLC sell and trade their stake in the open market by selling their token.

Well, they can trade it to other accredited. Yeah, they can trade it to other accredited investors. Which, by the way, is like what you can legally do. Right.

So how does that work in terms.

Of what, like practically, how does it work?

So I have a token. I have a token and I like, I have, I have the key, I have the security key. Maybe I keep it in a lockbox or I store it. Where do I store the key?

Were you talking about like your key to your wallet? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's wherever the hell you want. Right.

So I store it in a wallet. I stored in my own wallet, basically. Sure, Okay. I stored it in Metamask or what, Coinbase or whatever. Basically, whatever you want.

That's the beauty. It doesn't matter.

And then Logan wants to buy it from me.

Yep.

And so how does that work?

So if you. The easiest way, right. Is Logan, which. And there's a bunch of companies that are starting to work on this. So we're front running, this being a major thing, but it's certainly happening because these public boxes are all public. Logan put up a thing and say, hey, I would love a share of this llc, right? Here's my bid, right? And you can be like, oh shit, I want to hit that bid, right? Like, I'll sell it. I'll sell Logan my LLC here, right? And all of a sudden you could do it on crypto rails, right?

Let's stop there for a second. Logan wants to buy the token. Why?

Because it is a financial asset that it can appreciate. Because he can. Because in the case of something like Timberland, it can be income producing, right?

So he wants to buy it because he thinks this company is worth something. Does he have access to the financials?

He can. He cannot. I mean, that's again, like, that's completely up to how you want to manage.

Assuming he's a sophisticated investor and this is Logan we're talking about, so clearly that's not true. But assuming he was a sophisticated investor and he wanted to buy one of these governance or whatever ownership tokens, he's going to want to know something about the company, right? He should know, like your assets and your acum and what you own. So how does he get that? How does he get that?

The cool part is some of that stuff actually can be public and on chain, right? So for instance, take a timber dao, right?

You mean, you mean like just a database or an Excel file that you share?

Let me explain to you exactly what I mean, which is like take like a version of a timber. Like there's a timber dow, right? So we stand up one of these standard old LLCs, we wrap a dow on top, right? And we say, hey, good news, it's Timberland. Every year is going to produce income. And the way the income resolves, right, is the LLC takes it in, turns it into USD, sends it to all the token holders, right? Does it for 10 years, does it for 20 years. That income flow, right, is public. That's cool, right? And like queryable. And you could do that at scale. So that's one version. But I think, Zach, the thing I'd say more broadly is like this question of like, what information access you have or don't. It's like there's no different than the world of startups, right?

I'm struggling with what is the difference here between this and what you can do with a startup or with a reit.

Friction and liquid and therefore liquidity, right? There's the thing that you get out of something like a crypto ecosystem. Like, by the way, let me step back for a second because I'm sure it'll be Zach's next point. In theory, you could absolutely do all of this if the federal government stood up a server everyone trusted and said, hey, guess what? You can register all your LLC shares here, right, in some way, shape or form. And if you want to trade LLC shares for not just the 2,000 publicly listed companies or whatever, but for literally any company, right, with some basic requirements around it, totally could do it. It'll never fucking happen, right? And since that will never happen, right, for a whole bunch of reasons, we can get into this idea that you can have a platform which is like, look, the transaction costs on flipping around, you know, long tail assets and long tail equities, right, in any sort of, like, papered way with DocuSign and lawyers and any sort of traditional shares. It's a complete nightmare. It's too expensive, right, to even make it worthwhile. With what crypto, what you get is the ability to say, look, we'll drop transaction costs of actually doing all this stuff to zero. We have bearer tokens, right, which represent real equity and real cash flows and real, you know, real underlying ownership, as well as some governance stuff we could get into. That's super cool.

Okay, I just want to make sure I walk this through. So I am aware of your token because you've posted your private financial information to the public blockchain about how this works and the amount of money you're making. So you've basically given up a bunch of your corporate secrets to the public.

No, not this exact. Just to back up for a second, and I don't mean to cut you off. I just want to make sure we're on the same page. You can also, the example I give you about income flowing through the chain I think is actually a pretty cool and easy one. You can build a track record, blah, blah, blah. That's kind of a side. I don't know.

But you can also. You can also fake it, too, but that's a whole different story.

You can fake anything. Like, you know, that's why they're.

Well, no, you can't fake, like, audited financial statements because that's what an auditor is supposed to do. But you definitely can change. You can fake, like, income on a blockchain because it's not audited, but let's assume for a second that doesn't exist.

Whether or not given what's happening right now at Ernst and Young, whether or not. It can fake audit statements. Another question. But the basic point of, sure, let's.

Just throw out the auditing industry, you know, because, like, well, but let's.

Let's be clear that everything comes down to trust, right? And my point is there's no such thing.

No, no, no, no. It doesn't come down to trust. It comes down to legal protections and rights in the court system. When you don't send me the money or you faked your financial statements, I get to sue you. I also get to do, like, a whole bunch of homework on you.

To be clear, Zach, there's zero difference between what I'm proposing and we're talking about. The only thing that crypto adds, which is the key component, is dropping transaction costs to zero. Your point about audit financials? Like, look, of all the assets and companies in the world, right? You know, the percentage that afford and do fully audited financials to the, like, standards of, you know, nasdaq, Right. Into some of these registered, you know, tiny. Right. Like, actually, most assets in the world are not publicly listed. Right. That stuff doesn't exist for them. Doesn't mean they don't trade. That. Doesn't mean they're not valuable to have access to. Right?

Well, yeah. Like, if I want to go buy. I agree with you. Like, if I want to go buy a share of a private LLC that owns some real estate, you know, obviously it's not like a listed asset.

Nope.

And I've got to go do my homework, because I want to make sure.

Deal with it. Exactly. And that's what.

There's a lot of things I want to make sure when I'm buying a share, I want to make sure that it exists, that it's real. I want to make sure.

Which, by the way, blockchain solves for you instantly.

That's not true. Because you can put anything on the blockchain and not have it registered in the real world. I need to make sure the actual LLC exists, that it's governed.

Oh, yeah. You need to make sure that the connection between the token you're buying and the underlying LLC is sound. Absolutely.

Right. So I need a lawyer. And to. To do that and to check it, I need to make. I need to make sure that the income stream history is real and not faked. Right. So I have to do, like, auditing work on the financials themselves.

Yep.

I should maybe. Let me. Let me take the word. I. I have to. And I replace with I should. I need to make sure that the token that I'm Actually buying is real and owned by the person who is selling it to me and hasn't been hacked and listed.

Again, I would say marginally much easier with crypto than any other system. Not perfect, but way easier.

Not if you make a mistake and you buy a stolen token and you know, sure.

Again, that's, that's life though, right?

Well, it's not life actually. Right, because like lawyers take off. No, because if you go to buy stock in an LLC and the lawyer representing the group who's selling it to you actually like faked it, like guess who shows up? The police, the courts. I mean, there's a reason we have these protections in place.

I think your perspective or how, how these transactions are generally done and the number of layers between people is like very overstated. Right.

I still want to go back to the basics. I buy, I buy the coin. Let's assume we've done all this work and we believe that this coin is tied to the LLC and that the LLC is real and it's run by real people.

Yep.

Just like a normal llc. I'll give you all that which makes sense. And I buy the coin. What legal document do I sign?

You don't need to sign. Well, actually let me really clear because the way our structure works, there's. There's two steps to this. To take possession, to buy it. Right. To take possession of it. There's no illegal contract you need to buy. Just as you know, if I sold you this Apple Watch, there's no legal contract. I give you the Apple Watch, you give me cash. Right. There's nothing you have to sign for that. Now if you want to get access to the downstream income from the llc. Right. Like the way we're going to go do a dividend, if you want to vote in governance, you actually need to go through KYC ML with the underlying group again. Right. So it's not like we're saying you in the end of the day, you do have to re register with the LLC before like you know you're going to get a dividend stream off of it or whatever, but you could hold it and not register if you wanted to.

Why would I want to own the coin without the future income stream?

Again, it can appreciate you can't take receipt of the income stream. Right. Because we can't touch things like KYC and mostly anti money laundering issues. Right. So there's.

Well also like I actually have to share.

Doesn't necessarily appreciate it in terms of the income streams, do it. It doesn't mean that you Couldn't trade it again, things like that.

So I can speculate on it, but I can't actually get any of.

It's a loaded word given this month especially. Right. Like you can.

Sorry, I can. I can trade this coin of which I have no legal right to the underlying income stream.

Legal right again, you have to.

But you just tell. You just told me that I don't. Until I go and do all of the KYC and sunshine.

It's just like a bearer certificate. Right. Like it's like having cool bond.

What we're saying is that the token owns this thing. Let me ask one, one maybe simpler question then. So you guys get some income from a real estate property you own. Mary pays you rent. Sure. She sends you the rent in US.

Dollars because she goes into the normal llc.

Because she's a normal person and she sends you that money into your Chase bank account in US Dollars.

Well, to be Miami, the LLC is. Jacob Chase bank account.

Yeah, yeah, sorry, you being the llc. That's what I mean. To the LLC bank account. And then you now have to change that from a dollar to a US dc and then I have to. Okay. What happens when you don't send me the money?

Who is you in this case?

The LLC that I've of the coin I own. But I don't have any legal documents signed.

It would be the same thing as if you're a shareholder of a company and the company decides to not honor its agreements. You just sue the llc.

But I don't have a legal agreement with you. You just told me. I didn't say anything.

The token holders do. The registered token holders absolutely do. Right. No, no, no.

So wait, hold on. So I buy the token.

Yep. And along with the right to register with the llc. If you choose. Right.

And then. And then I sign all the legal documents that show and I actually own a piece of this llc.

Correct.

So where did we just save on transaction costs?

Well, you saved the transaction costs because the actual sending back and forth of like I'm trading you this watch for some usdc. Right. Is seamless. The posting to an exchange to actually.

But that sending of. But sorry.

Figure out like you don't send. Right now, Zach, if you.

When you buy. When you buy a share. Let me be clear. When you buy a share of the llc, you're not sending me a physical box of the LLC in the mail. Right. Like it's a ledger that the attorney for the LLC keeps. Of which I have a legal document that says I own a piece of it so where are the transaction costs that you're getting?

The way that, the way, the way that this works, it's. They're bearer shares, their bearer tokens, which is the key. Whoever has the shares, those are the unit owners.

Right.

That cuts out a huge amount of.

According to what document?

According to the formation of the LLC and the agreement sign when you set it up.

And what happens when the LLC doesn't send the money?

The people who own the LLC sue it. Right.

So I basically, I'm so, like, lost. Like, I ultimately, for me to have a claim. Let's just go through the actual bankruptcy process here. Like, for me to have a claim on the income that you were supposed to pay me when I bought this coin. Right. I agree. I can buy a coin over the Internet. Take me four seconds now.

Yeah. And it's way more efficient than any possible way you can buy a share of an LLC right now.

Well, that's part of what I'm not 100% sure is true, nor is that necessarily like an important problem, but like.

It actually is a very important problem. It actually argues one of the most important problems that we face today is.

Look, when I buy something new.

Liquidity in login assets.

It's not about liquidity. Right. It's about protections and. Right.

About liquidity. Let me know.

So, like, the reason, the reason it takes a little bit of time for me to go and purchase a piece of an LLC is there is a LLC operating agreement. Right. That I need to do diligence on and read to make sure that whatever it is I'm buying is legit. I have to look at the financials and then there's an equity purchase agreement. And in the LLC documents, it can be like a profits interest or whatever. But there's an llc, Doc. There's a purchase agreement, is a legal document that I signed. Yeah.

And that's the thing that with our structure for this one example, there are five more we're going to get into. I hope this is an example where that is the. That is the piece, the purchase agreement, the market making, the transfer that crypto has leverage on. That's massively valuable.

But when I buy your coin, do I sign a purchase agreement?

You don't need to.

So you're telling me. And I just want to make sure I get this. I can buy. I can buy your.

You need a purchase agreement to buy this iPhone. This, this I. This watch for.

But you're not telling me that that watch is going to deliver $1,000 a month.

Doesn't matter because you're an accredited investor, right?

And investor has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you cannot send me the money that actually really matter.

Because here's the thing, you know, let me, instead of just being, let me just try to explain this to you because I think it's very important to understand. It seems like we're missing each other. There are lots of things in the world. Most things in the world are transacted out purchase agreements. Do you agree with that?

When you take physical possession of the thing and that is all you care about, that statement.

Do you agree in most of that transacted without a purchase agreement, Most physical.

Objects that aren't about a future promise.

Physical. I'm saying things. Most transactions by most people are conduct. There's no purchase agreement when I go to dinner. Is there a purchase agreement when I go buy dinner from someone because you ate the food. Well, well, that could be argued. They're not.

If you show, if you show up at, at like, you know, Del Posto, which is closed now, and you're like, hey, you know, you owe me 17 future dinners. Getting a contract. You and Del Post really clear.

You're. You're conflating things, which I'm conflating the.

Difference between a one time transaction and a promise of future cash flows.

I'm sorry, that's not. There's no promise of future cash flows for owning a piece of an llc, by the way. That's another thing you're conflating. You buy an asset, you buy anything you buy.

I buy this thing without a promise of future distributions.

100%. You know how many, how many equities, even in the public market do you get future distributions from just out of interest? Almost none, right? It's a promise of maybe someday some profit. That's actually how most equity markets work, right? So this conflation where you're saying, oh no, it's different because you promised me a cash flow, that's bullshit. When I invest in startups that I do all day long, maybe someday I get paid back on the equity value. Am I buying it? Because I think there might. So it doesn't. So the thing you got to step back and understand here, right? The beauty of the crypto system for doing something like this, right? Bearer tokens, which are pretty damn hard to fit. You do have to do your diligence. They're real. 100%. You do have to do a bunch of diligence on what you're investing in, right? A hundred percent. But it is Literally just like buying in any other form an asset or anything you can buy where by the way, this idea that. Oh, there has to be.

So Sam, you're telling me. You're telling me. So I'm going to do. I got to do all the transaction cost of homework, not the like actual.

Transaction things in the world.

Right. I got to do. Exactly. I got to do the diligence on the company. I got to do diligence on your financial statements. I got a diligence on the llc. I got to read the operating agreement.

I buy. I invest in tons of companies with none of that diligence. But I. If you choose to. You have that option. Yes.

Yeah. I mean if I'm going to buy an established LLC and trade it and do all like, I might as well probably check to make sure.

But again, it depends on how you value your time and how you value the trust of the people who otherwise hold it. I mean, the reality is I buy. I mean talk about equities. It's like. Do you think people, most people buying a stock go and do all that homework? Absolutely.

No, because they're registered with the LLC and they have to file financial statements and there's like layers of regulation that force them to do realization. That's actually, by the way, that's your whole.

Let's be clear, what those layers of regulation do is make those securities relatively set, setting aside 70% sell offs and where the markets actually trade these things for retail investors very safe. They also make them very low growth. Right. They make. And they make that available to a tiny sliver of the assets in the world.

Sorry, you're telling me. No, let me, let me just unpack. You're telling me, you're telling me that the, the SEC rules make them low growth which has like, I don't know, rules make.

Are so. Are onerous in a way that protect retail investors at the cost of making it almost inaccessible for almost every company to access. Right.

Being a public company is hard. I agree with that. Because the bar.

Public companies today then they've almost been in all of human history. Human history strong in the last 50 years. That's why. Right. You end up with a world, by the way. Well, those assets are massively overvalued because they're the only liquid things people have access to.

Right. I just want to go back to. I want to go back.

There's an illiquidity discount cost to everything else. Right.

So I just want to go back to the, to the coin transaction because like I don't want to conflate public equities with private all and all this stuff because I feel like we're in. I feel like we're in crypto solves this land and I want to go back.

Well, hold on. Wait one.

I. Just one specific question. Okay.

Yeah.

Assume I do all my homework or like an idiot, and I just want to buy this coin because Samsung is cool, right? Like, I buy the. I buy the. I buy this bearer coin, which I really want to unpack here for a second. And I've already. I've already incurred all my, like, homework transaction fees. I buy this bear coin just by.

An Android phone or an iPhone. You do some homework.

Yeah. So you've told me, Zach, this bearer coin is an owner of this LLC and has rights to the future distributions of it. That's what you've told me. Now, I've purchased this coin via a wallet that I own. Okay.

Coin comes to me by the wallet. But you. Custody in the wallet. Yeah.

I sent you usdc. You gave me custody. Totally understand. That makes sense. Okay, now you don't send me the money.

Who's you?

You the llc. You have always been the llc. This time, like, so you send me. You said. You told me you would send me the money. You said.

To be clear, there's a distribution. Let's be really specific. What you mean there is a distribution coming from the LLC to the owners of the llc?

Correct. And you just like, don't do it.

Does it in. No one does it. Send it to. Some. Some.

Like, how about this? How about this? You get in a fight with me about crypto on a stupid cartoon podcast and you decide, Zach is kind of a shitty person. I don't like him that much. And now I'm going to distribute the rental income I received. Everybody but Zach.

Yeah.

Because that guy, I don't really like him.

You just sue me in normal courts.

Okay, so now I take you to court and I. I want to go through this. I go to court. I hire an attorney. The attorney.

I want to clarify one thing which is important. It's not impossible, but it's a hell of a lot harder, right, with crypto than with other systems to say, fuck that Zach guy. It's potentially easier to say it's literally.

Not true because you control the bank account and you can do whatever you'd like.

No, no, no, no. That's wrong. Let me explain why is like the bank. The money flows from a traditional bank account into usdc, into the dao. Okay, I could say and that is actually how distributions go out.

No, I get like. Stop right there for one second.

Yeah.

You put the money from the LLC bank account into the Dow, right?

This is my point, actually. This is why I was asking you a very specific question, which is, is your problem that I sent it to no one, or I just send it to everyone but Zach?

Look, whoever controls the bank account can do whatever they want, because that's actually the like.

Again, I just want to be really clear. That is in the most abstract sense, true, but when you get into crypto, it actually, you get actual additional guardrails for free, which is that it is way hard. It is easy for the Ellis person who owns the bank account and say, fuck all the LLC members. Right? Like, I'm not going to, like, put my USDC inside to anyone. I agree with you. And then, by the way, all of the owners of the LLC go and see the shit out of the person who's administering it and doing that, right? Normal court system. No advantage there. But, like, whatever the scenario you pointed out is, somehow I'm mad just at Zach, right? But not at all the other, like, LLC members, so I somehow just target him. That's actually reasonably hard to do, not impossible, but maybe I have to fork something. I have to go do a Celsius weird shit where I.

Let me just start with, like, you know, angry, vindictive, clever people are angry, vindictive, clever people. And this is how people get screwed up.

Hinges. None of that.

Right, exactly. And so you decide not to somehow. Because there's like, probably 30 ways now to do it. Because you could do it at the bank account level and you can do it at the Dow level to not send me the money. And then I go and I have to sue you. I agree with that. And I hire an attorney, and the attorney says, this is. This is really interesting. Can you send me the purchase agreement that you signed for your shares in the.

Don't eat it because you have a bearer token. It's going to. And that'll stand up in what?

Okay, I have a bear. What does it even mean?

It hasn't been tried yet. You're going to need to bring it through the courts. I agree with you at some point, but there's a lot of things that work like that where the reality is.

The why don't I. What am I showing the attorney?

That I own your transaction on chain and your access to the wallet. So I'm walking the idea that you're pushing that for some reason, courts will, like, completely Disregard that. Look, you might be right. There's going to have to be case law developed about it. I think it's extremely unlikely. Right. And that's a system. I think that again, like if that's your key pressure point is courts will never look at digital systems and understand digital bearer rights and transactions and who sold things. I think that's a pretty weak argument.

That's not my argument. This is my actual argument, which is we've walked through kind of like basically you have to do all the same homework, all the same diligence, all the same, all the same checks. Also, by the way, also by the way, we now have two layers of places where you can screw me over because we have the Mega Cat and.

The Dow can get into that. I think it's a lot less. And I. But, but you can. We can argue. I think that's a minor.

Yeah, take it all the way back to the beginning, which is you said cheaper transaction costs.

Totally.

How in the world is this going to be cheaper transaction cost?

Bearer token. You have a bearer token for an llc? I want to invest in. Right. I want to invest in it. Not because I've read every single line of every moment, by the way. I bet money as a professional VC and a lot of people on the table, no one reads every line. Right? So the idea that there's this perfect diligence in the physical world that goes away is bullshit. But I want to invest in it. I want to invest in it. A bunch of people I trust are invested in and I've heard a lot of great things. I saw some cool analysis of it. I want to invest in it. The idea that I can basically broadcasting. I'd like to buy it. Right? Every person that's a holder can get a message and say, oh, I'm interested in selling, hit a bid and transact in seconds versus going through a bunch of lawyers and paperwork, not to mention to figure out who the hell even owns the thing in the first place and who to talk to. Like I literally do this. I'm sure you have too go try to sell private shares of a startup. Let's make this really easy. It's a complete pain in the ass.

You know why? Because the company prevents me from doing it. Because they have legal documents.

Zach, that's completely wrong. Right? It's not because the company. But I have plenty of agreements and I invest in plenty of companies that are free and clear to transact. The problem is, is that there's nowhere. There's no server in the world. Right? Where this stuff is all registered and easy to message around. Crypto creates the opportunity to create that. And that's a massive deal if you don't.

But that's just not true. Like, it's just simply not. No, it's not. Because the reason this stuff exists is because if you want to buy my token in a company or my equity ownership in a company, you want to have financials of that.

Zach, again, you're.

I'm sorry, it's bullshit to want to understand the underlying financials of the thing I'm buying.

That's. Zach, it's bullshit. That. That's your argument, right? It's bullshit because that's like being like, I just. I would challenge you. It's such an abstract. It's such an abstract argument because it's.

Basically saying like, it's the opposite of an abstract argument. It's a specific argument that, like, if I want to buy something, I need to see, I need to know what it is.

Your model of the world that you're putting out as, as like such gospel is that somehow like every company in the world has perfectly audited financials that everyone accesses before they buy things. And that's complete bullshit, right? Like, that's actually not. That's how almost no companies in the world function.

No, I'm not suggesting they have to be perfect.

The public markets are a tiny section of the asset base of the world. Tiny segment.

My suggestion is that even private companies, startups, ones I've run, I've run multiple private companies. I've. I own shares in private companies.

Do you financials every year for every startup you're invested in?

Of course not. No, but if I'm going to.

Do you even have financials every year for every company you invested in from Xero?

I have legal rights to them.

No, I invest in companies all the time that have no financials because they just got started.

No, totally, of course. But you're not talking about. Sorry. Because if I'm going to purchase something at any point, I want to understand the thing I'm purchasing.

Yeah, to some degree. There's a spectrum.

Right, right. So what? I thought so. But you're suggesting that you're putting up real estate Coin, right? And real estate coin is in some public loader somewhere.

We'll call it a, A, let's call it a specific reit coin as an example.

Okay, so like for me to purchase this recoin and to know what it is, I still want to understand the same things, whether it's a coin or not understand something. Right, right.

What that is is going to be very dependent on who you are as an investor, what your thesis is. Right. Who else is involved. Like this idea that. Oh my God, like there's not perfectly audited financials up to the standards of like a public company and therefore it's bullshit is crazy.

Okay, let me, let me walk through and then we can move on from this one. Because it's so crazy, we can keep going.

I just, I think that, I think you're really standing up a straw man here.

It's not a straw man. It's actually the opposite again of a straw man, which is very specific use case of like how this works and why it's better.

I'm giving you a very specific version. Crypto gives you advantage in which is we have.

Okay, so we have. Let's just create two different entities and do the exact same thing.

Sure.

There's two LLCs. One is a normal LLC that owns like a shopping mall in Wyoming, and the other is a normal LLC that owns a shopping mall in Wyoming. Except it's like run as this Dow thing. Right.

It has a Dow wrapper on it.

Sure, it has a Dow wrapper on it. Okay. So they own the underlying assets. It's still a legal entity. It's an llc. It owns the underlying income. There's an operating agreement that that LLC has that governs the agreement, the actual operations, and like, who's supposed to own what?

Sure.

There are owners of this llc.

Yep.

And each one of those owners signs a legal document that says, I own a piece of this thing. I have a. Either profits, interest, or actual things.

Start on day one. When we incept these things, that's basically how they get set up. Correct?

Right. Okay. So there's like legal rights, legal ownership for people sort of done the same thing. Okay. And now what we say is we have this problem we're trying to solve theoretically, which is we want to be able to like freely trade the ownership in this.

The trading these units to be way lower. Right. Because it'll make them more valuable. Right. Because liquidity is valuable.

Okay, well, they don't.

Liquidity, benefit and illiquidity discount. That's how the world works. Because if I can trade something, it makes it more valuable for me to own it.

Okay. But it doesn't change the underlying cash flow from the thing. So this idea that it makes it more valuable, there's a whole separate speculative question.

That is to be clear, there could be zero cash flow. It could be this thing just.

Well, let's just do. Let's just do the thing like normally humans like to buy something because they're going to get future cash flow.

In theory. Except for the fact again, the public. The public markets. We'd argue there's almost no actual dividends to issue that. Right.

Sure. But you believe that this company's equity is going.

It's only your model of like, oh, this is why you buy a thing a little bit rich. Right. People believe in appreciation. Cash flows is part of that potentially.

Okay. They believe.

Certain things that they think will be more valuable tomorrow than they are today, whether or not comes out of cash flow.

And the reason. Yeah, let me just. We don't. Let's not conflate cash flow with dividends for a second. I think that's what you're getting hung up on is the idea of distributions versus cash so much.

Also lose money every year that have negative cash flow that are. Maybe they're worth less today than they were six months ago, but.

Sure. But like the reason people own pieces of anything real estate or the more.

In the future they'll be worth more than they're worth today.

And the reason they think they're going to be worth more than they're worth today is because eventually they make money. And eventually, eventually that money making machine can pay me as a shareholder.

That is in some form. Yes, I agree.

Right. That is the literally equities by definition. Okay, so we now have these two things and you say for some reason we want people to be able to freely trade ownership.

What do you mean for some reason? It's for a very specific reason which is that liquid things are more valuable than illiquid things. That's just how it is. And there's a very good reason for that. Right. Which is like if tomorrow I need some money, I have a liquid thing.

Sam, I would tell you that the private markets of technology companies in the last one year would tell you that that is not actually true.

When you have highly liquidating at a weird anomaly. We can get into why there's nothing to do with this. I think it'd be. Zach, are you liquidity valuable? Is liquidity valuable?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Is liquidity ever not valuable? When is the option to sell something ever not a bad thing?

Why don't startup founders want people trading their stock all the time?

You know, the reality is this is changing a lot right now. The answer is they don't want it because they basically want to be able to sell more stock to people like VCs to raise money for the company rather than just people picking up secondary shares is one reason. Two is when you have a tightly controlled cap table, it's nice to not have a thousand weird understanders. Not for the reason of, by the way, a legal reason, which is if you end up with too many shareholders, you have to go public. So the fact that private companies don't want freely traded things in like the tech world, whatever, completely fucking irrelevant. The point is liquidity is valuable. If you drop transaction costs, make it easier to trade a token, which is a bearer token, by the way.

This is how, I'm sorry, but we're still, we're still not doing this because I, I just want it because there's so many, there's so many statements you're making.

Do you ever get called by a company? No.

I know what a bear bond is. I'm not a, I understand what a bear thing is. There's a reason we got rid of them because people were killing each other to own them.

Why? Why did we get rid of them? Why do you think we got rid of them?

It's absolutely insane that somebody can murder me and take my bear bond and have my money. That's why we got rid of them. That's a crazy thing, man.

There's two reasons bear tokens went away, right? And I think they're, they're important to understand because they were bringing them back right in, in a sense, right? One reason absolutely is from a security standpoint, right? By the way banks talk about regulatory capture, are bears certificates good for banks? No, banks don't want bearer certificates. Banks want to custody this shit for you so they can make profit off of it, right? So there's a whole regulatory capture story to why they went away. And two is you don't want to lose the fucking certificates. I would argue this is a place where crypto has real leverage, right? Which is, yes, some idiot's going to lose their private key, right? And that's bad. And like systems should evolve to like help them with that or whatever. And you can't save people from their.

Opponents, help them with that or, or whatever, where they lose their token to the equity.

I am.

Well, I am that or whatever.

There's plenty of people there. Let's be really clear. There are plenty of companies that work on the custody problem for people who are unable and unwilling to self custody, right?

The option is everybody, by the way, no one's going to self custody. They're like, you know, interest. I just want to finish the story. Sorry, I self Custody.

Hell, a lot.

I mean, I know you're crazy, man. Like that's crazy to do that.

What? Really?

Yes. Because if you get, if you get hacked or corrupted in any way and.

You'Re like, yeah, sure, then it's, I think on the spectrum of risks. I'll give you an example. I, I both self custody bitcoin and I have bitcoin with third parties. You know what I've been doing the last day? I've been calling third parties and saying, are you solvent? Are you going to sweep my bitcoin? Where are we on this?

Right, well, let's not get into the.

I know this is important.

That's self custody of it. That's self custody of Tim. That's self custody of a digital asset, which is a totally different thing than self custody of a physical asset, which.

Is not going to the same fucking. I don't know. Why do you think that's a different thing? Explain to me why having a digital bearer bond, right, effectively we use that example or digital self custody is any different than me holding this watch.

Okay, because when you, we, we got rid of physical bearer bonds in the world, right?

Capture reasons as insecurity.

No, no, we got physical bearer bonds because is the single dumbest way to hold money. Money. Because having physical possession of something and.

Making, showing that that's even if you know what, you know why having physical custody is bad? It does historically make it harder to trade. If I have a physical stock certificate, I'm like, hey, I want to sell that to Logan and Logan's halfway across. Well, it's really fucking hard to organize that sale.

You know what else is like really annoying? You know what else, Sam, is really annoying? When you have a physical thing, Sam. What about a hurricane or a fire or a, or someone robbing you or like, I don't know, the electrical grid goes down and you can't open your seat. That's.

Even if self custody was a bad idea. Was. Yes, there's some security issues, right?

Some security issues.

You can't have a market. But that's the beauty again of crypto, which I think you have to understand.

Which is digital recreated bearer bonds is what you're trying to sell me.

Valuable. That's hugely valuable in a world where, by the way, those bear bonds have a new property.

You have literally turned back time to 1840 where I had to physically own the thing and show possession of it to get my money back. We got rid of this stuff in like the last 150 years, but we.

Got rid of it for pre technological reasons now that I can rid of it. No, no, no, no, Zach. The. The pro. The fact that I can now self custody something, right. Own it, hold it and when. Logan, by the way, you have your.

Two lose it, have it stolen habit.

Scammed like you have your LLC units. No one who the fuck owns them. I want to put a bid in. I have no idea to talk to. I have no idea how to organize a trade or beautiful new system. I can self custody. Shit. They're all on the chain. They're matched ones.

Sorry.

Cause I wanted to get through this second that's. I can't. I mean as long as you believe that liquidity is valuable, which maybe you don't, it sounds like then that is massively more better system.

I think liquidity has value in the right places at the right times for the right things with the right protections.

Explain to me one scenario where clarity, where you take two assets, you say I'd rather have the liquid one versus the exact same liquid one. Explain. As an investor, give me one example where that would ever be true.

Well, for me to have this illiquid, this liquidity, do I have to own a coin that can be stolen from me and then I lose possession of it?

Asking specific question you're not answering. Which is.

Well, I'm not answering it because in isolation it makes no sense because I have trades man.

Zach, when would you ever as an investor choose the liquid version over the exact copy that was liquid?

Because I'll give you. Okay, besides the fact that this is like, you know, do you. This thing that is because you don't have. I mean, I do have an answer. And I'll give it. I'll give me one second. Okay, first of all, I would prefer to have liquidity on most things. As long as on everything. No, as long as that liquidity doesn't put the underlying asset at risk. Yeah.

Which I would argue that our structure has no risk. This creates no risk to the underlying structure for that.

Okay, okay, so let's talk about this in. In. In. In its real form. So you've created bearer tokens, which we. Means we have like the 1840s version of owning something and now superpowers of.

The modern technological age, which fixes a lot of problems.

So here's what happens right in this bear token thing. You've got, I don't know, let's call it like a hundred owners of this bearer token. Five of them get hacked.

Sure.

Not a hundred. Five of them get hacked right now, they lose their money. Right. Because they can't like physically show that they own this thing. And now that liquidity that I really wanted because it was cool and I could trade it, all of a sudden everyone's going, well wait a minute, I can get hacked and lose all my money.

This is the argument you're going to rely upon? I'm just pushing you. Your argument that you're going to rely on crypto not being valuable and bear token valuable is because people might get hacked. That's like your summation.

No, I'm gonna go through like 40 reasons why it's not valuable, but I'm gonna start with the first one, which is that if somebody steals it and I have no recourse, I've now traded liquidity for massive risk that all of my money is going to be stolen. And this is not. Sorry. So just to be clear. Sorry. It's not just, it's not just the five people whose money got stolen.

Okay.

Right. Because now everybody who's potentially going to invest in this, including the other holders, go, wait a minute. It. In order for me to get liquidity on this thing that I want to own, I've now got this like risk over here that actually happened to black people.

That's the risk you're worried about?

That's one risk.

I'm just trying to explain, I'm trying to go through examples. I don't understand it.

Well, okay. The first risk that we can talk about here is the fact that like if I have to bear this, hence your bearer token to be really.

You don't have to. If you want, you can custody with someone. You can custody with a thousand people you can have insurance on. You can do all the traditional stuff you already do if. And you can pay for it, by the way. You're just saying it's an option to self custody.

It sure, I can give it to a third party who now I have to go through all the transfers you.

Do with your equities and exactly what you do in your cash.

Right.

And everything else in your life.

Totally. Yeah.

You're not forced to sell custody things. It's an option and a valuable.

I understand it. And my point is what we're going to end up with at the end of this is in exactly the same centralized system we have today.

No, no, I disagree your completely.

You just said you're going to centralize the custody. You literally just said you're going to.

Centralize the custody people have. And by the way, I'm not even focused on this issue because Again, we go back to the point. The point is long tail liquidity for the majority of human assets which not exist now because they're impossible to trade.

I want to go back to this because I have it in my head and I keep getting distracted with some of these other weird detours. Okay, so then we go back to this retail thing. Logan, we can probably cut to this.

Maybe this is the problem. You guys didn't control the edit, but keep going.

Oh, we're not going to, we're not going to screw you over or anything like that. It's just more. We went on detours and it's like.

A little wait till Liron gets his hands on.

I promise, I promise I do that. No, no, no. So we have, we're going to go back to the, to the, to the LLCs. We have these two LLCs. One has a bearer token, one does not have.

One has a be token. Easy to query, easy to bid against, easy to transact. And one thing.

Got that. So if I want to buy into one of these LLCs.

Yeah, right, right.

Because I. The reason I want to buy into an LLC that owns some underlying asset is because I think it's interesting to own that underlying asset. Right.

Well, you think it'll be worth more than the, The LLC will be with more in the future than it is today. Yeah.

Okay, so how do I find out about that underlying asset?

Okay, so this goes back to. This is your other argument. Your other argument, just to derive one is like, oh my God, self custody. Scary. If you want to. Your second argument is there's not enough due diligence. Right. I can't look at some financials.

No, I'm not saying there's not enough. I'm not saying there's not. I'm just asking how I do it. How do I.

What you want the way I do it. As a private market investor, you call people who are involved, you look at what you can. You ask for. You can ask the dao for, for statements or some sort of information. You can go look at the property. There's absolutely no difference. Right. Between either of these routes. Right?

Yeah, I agree. Same thing, right? Like I, I agree with you actually.

Like.

So, yeah, first I have to find out about it.

Sure. Which is again, going to be a lot easier in a digital space than not. But not massively the point.

Well, also, I mean like this also. You can also create a website too and like market it. So like being on a chain doesn't actually make discoverability any better.

No markets and no liquidity and no one. I mean, this is why for a whole bunch of reasons, we keep going.

Well, the reason most groups don't do this is because they don't want random shareholders. But that's a different story. Like the re. So I, I put some information, I'm the company now. I put some information about my llc.

Or they might not and the third party might do it. But sure, there's some information that you make. You want to invest.

Right. Which is like the first step to having someone get interested is I have to like share a bunch of intel about the business. Like literally what it does, what it owns, how much money is whatever owns something about this business. So there's a discoverability. I'm just like going through like how do we actually create liquidity here?

This is not a problem. Crypto, really dramatically. I will, I mean, I think I can come up with arguments. I don't think it really matters. I agree with you on that.

Somehow I've got to discover it. Okay, sure. Then I want to know.

I want to transact. That's where crypto has leverage.

Well, I'm not there yet. So like now I want to understand, okay, these are the financials that you've sent me or I've looked at or whatever.

It's such a red herring.

Right?

You do some research, you want to buy a thing. Okay, can we agree with that?

Yeah, I'd like to buy it.

Okay.

Okay, great. And now, now I call my. Which by the way, just to be very clear, is the exact same thing all the way up and down the stack.

A hundred percent agree. So no difference. I mean, I'll make arguments some other. With some other. But for the sake of this debate, no difference in discoverability and diligence.

Right. So we're, we're like 98% of the way to the finish line we found out about.

That's the finish it. That's the thing. You're not 90% way the fish. I just want know you want to invest in like you're there.

No, I'm going to walk you through how I do it in the real world and then we can talk about how we do it. And because I've done this so I, I, I've, I've found something that's interesting because someone told me about it or they had a website or whatever, by the way.

Probably didn't have access to their full financials.

No, but I got access to some information. Right, like some information.

Nothing to do with audited financials that we were Starting with nothing. None of that stuff has been scoped.

That's, that's solved by the fact that there's an llc, which I, I fair. So there's an LLC that like underlying has the governance structure. Here I go, I do my homework, I call, I talk to the CEO. This is something that's actually interesting. Okay. I'm like a normal rational investor who wants to understand what I'm buying. And then I say towards the end, by the way of the timeline here, because I've done most of the work.

Maybe towards the end. Keep going.

I would like to buy this thing. Or really I want to buy a share of this thing. Okay, in a, in a non crypto world, let's just describe what happens. My attorney requests an equity purchase agreement from the company.

Well, maybe, maybe they're not sure. Maybe this company doesn't want to sell you shares. Maybe you need to buy from second you want. You're buying from some other person. Maybe the CEO says, you know what, we don't need more capital. We're not going to actually take money into this llc.

But at the end of the day, we're still in a situation where there is a seller of a thing I want to buy that we. How I got to that thing is the exact same. We've already agreed that.

You're trying to simplify it by saying you're buying from the company when actually when I don't care who I'm buying markets. You're buying from a holder.

Okay, fine, I'm buying from a holder. I'm happy.

You are. Okay, you don't know who the holders are.

Well, that's because the holders haven't marketed it because they're not allowed to. But this is, I'm just saying at the end of the day you're allowed.

To say you're a holder of something. Well, there's a rule that says you can't say you're a folder of a thing.

Yeah, no, I mean it's. I mean you can see what I own. The point is, at the end of the day, I'm buying something from a person that I found. I found this human.

No, you're pinging a market and saying I'd like to buy a thing. This is what I'm going to offer. Who's will to sell to me. Big difference.

I mean you just created what is like essentially a website that matches buyers and sellers. There's nothing to do with crypto.

That's exactly my point. This is my point from the beginning. Fed of the Fed server. Could you have some magical meta website right on top of some magical meta server that had all the LLC shares and the owners and their email addresses so that whenever you wanted to make a buy, you could hit a button and say I bid this on these shares in theory. Sure, sure. Never going to happen. Okay, so allowed this from the ground up, which is super cool.

No it doesn't. No it doesn't. Because the person still problem because the person still has to take their shares and turn them into coins and put them on the website.

No, no, no, no.

Yes it does. How are you going to buy startup shares and I have it listed.

Let me, let me be really clear. If your point is that there's a lot of LLCs in the world and this is a new structure and there has to be a translation 100% agree.

That's not what. That's not my point. My point is at the end of.

The day I have an agreement where it was a legally binding normal world agreement which gives you bearer tokens. And not a new concept bearer shares. Just it isn't a new technological platform which has some really fucking cool properties which drops transaction fees and increases liquidity. What's your problem? It actually creates wealth for everyone.

I mean it doesn't do either of those things, but at the end of.

The day it does liquidity again. Unless we're going to go back to this whole thing where you're going to make an argument that liquidity isn't value valuable. Are we back there?

No, my point is that I can do the exact same thing once I die.

Okay. At the same. At the same transaction cost. No way.

Okay.

Can do exactly the same thing. I go on deal irrational for more.

It's not higher transaction cost. The what I was going to get through is the equity. Equity transfer agreements like 2000.

I'm literally selling private market shares of a company as we speak. I can tell you the transaction costs are astronomical.

But then you're getting screwed by the.

Attorneys because you gotta find the right buyers and sellers. It's a fucking mess. So like the idea that you would argue that creating more liquidity with be the bearer tokens, which could be custody if you're scared about someone hitting you with a wrench, right. And like that doesn't create wealth and prosperity and is is absurd. Now you can make the argument that you don't need crypto for that that you could do with Fed Server. That can be a different debate. It's never going to happen, as you well know. No, well, you Can.

I mean, you can do it. You don't need Fed Server, you can do.

What do you need? You need. You either need Fed Server or you need Goldman Sachs to stand up a private LLC market exchange, which they could do. The problem with that, right, is one getting.

You could literally go to Carta, which Carta has Carta X. Carta's trying to do this.

Have you ever tried to transact that way? I mean, the reality is that's kind of the point is that it's way too fragmented. It's uninteroperable. You, in theory.

No, no, no, no, no.

The reason, sorry, that's just not right to some bank or Carta or someone to say we're going to sit on this exchange and extract transaction fees on it. Or you can do it using really cool technology in an open way.

The technology is not. The technology is not the problem. The reason Carta is hard to transact on is because companies don't want to list their shares on it.

Well, that's. Again, this is why Card is not the right model, because Carta charges an absolute fortune to companies. A lot of people are leaving Carter for this reason with respect and love for them. And they're designed for technology companies. Right? Where I.

They're designed for startups. Yeah.

Transacted are very, very simple. They don't want to have to list. Right. And go public with too many shareholders. They generally want to be tightly held. Right. For a whole bunch of reasons we can get into that are separate. Right. And they, when they want to go out to your earlier point, they want to sell the shares because they need to raise capital for their operations. They don't want a bunch of secondary shares floating around. My point that I. That's very different than most of actually the asset base of the world.

I guess the point I've made poorly over an hour is that in order for you to acquire shares in something, to legally own the right to a piece of an llc, you need to sign a document that says that you own those shares shares. You need a legally binding piece of paper that says you need you own those shares.

And my argument to you, just to be clear, is yes and no, right? My argument to you is yes and that, yeah, when we start SDOs, everyone starts out with those normal agreements, all exactly as you described. Right. Part of the agreements is the existence of bearer tokens which represent that ownership. Does that need to be legally challenged in court someday by someone or repeatedly to establish it as case law and relied upon upon? Sure. That's Actually how innovation happens. Right. You need to actually create test cases and go through it. If you're arguing you don't think that that'll happen or that that will be invalidated. I think that's just insane. Right? I mean find out, won't we?

Yeah, I mean I, I think the idea that.

But I think the thing I'd like to acknowledge maybe, maybe if I can get to acknowledge it is that a world like. Let's just start with principles. Liquidity good. Do we agree with that?

No. No, I don't. I don't. It's not always true.

It's smart guy. Guy. You're a smart guy. How can you possibly not believe that if you had two things that creating more liquidity for more things is bad? It's literally because more valuable.

Because this idea that like liquidity good in isolation is a reality is not true. There are trade.

Hundreds of years of economics say you're completely.

There aren't.

Sam.

Dude, you're trying to. Sorry, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

You're.

You're, you're about to argue hundreds of years of economics and you're trying to go as take us back to 1840 where you need custody of the physical.

Thinking about to improve. 18. They had certain things right. In 1840. Right. As like I'd say Bitcoin is a really interesting. There's a whole era of free banking in history which had a lot of problems. Right. But some of the benefits of it. You get to come back with bitcoin and I think that's awesome.

Well, the reason free banking fell apart is because everybody lost their money all the time. The reason.

But again, like that's because it was really hard to know about the credit worthiness of the bank that was issuing notes, which is because they weren't banks.

They were, they were. They were made up banks were banks.

That were issuing notes. That's how that era was worked. Damn.

Can you, can you answer one specific question of if there's a Carta that isn't charging astronomical. Let's say Carta exactly. Takes the exact same thing we're talking about and does it for your.

Your Dow lowers their fees. Yeah. Their fees are zero and they're always going to be zero and they're guaranteed to be zero.

How are you going to get a company? Sam, It's. It can't be free because you need a company to do the work.

They can charge a penny per transaction. The point is that's not how regular card capture works. Whoever owns Fed Server of the liquidity of everything that's not listed in the nyse. I promise you this has nothing to do with.

This has nothing to do with Fed server.

The point is it is because the argument is that is why you need a decentralized protocol for doing this stuff and not centralized Fed server or centralized.

Carter, you don't need centralized decentralized anything platforms.

I can promise you how rent you need. I've seen this banking you don't.

That's how work need any of these things to buy? No. If I want to go buy share.

You're right. We can spend the thousands of dollars on lawyers. I mean I literally. Here's the funny thing. I sold some. Here's a funny specific example. I sold some shares of Ripple which I was a seed investor in the company right the other day. You know what the fee was literally for just signing the paperwork to move those shares. Take a yes.

I don't. I have no idea if one signature.

That was on a standard form. How much do you think they charge just. Just for the signature?

100 bucks. I have no idea.

3,000 bucks. 3,000 bucks. You know why? Because they can be right? Because I don't fucking. Because in the big picture but that's a fucking high transaction fee and that keeps a lot of transactions out of the game, right? So again I just go back to the whole thing like you know look.

There is no way there is theme.

I would put in front of you just to scope out for it. We can keep going but I just scope out for a second because I got to put my kids to bed is like look, the idea that crypto right Enables some magical end to end use case that's perfect. That has no human intervention and no human institutions. That is like whatever. The only way that's even possibly you could think about that is some sort of self contained crypto world we live in of 3D avatars. I think that stuff's all bullshit to very very far off. What I would say is this. There's a bunch of problems that the Internet screwed up and almost got there but didn't. One is long tail liquidity. I can, I can know about a lot more apps I can Google a lot more things I can't buy buy them. Two would be like identity like when we worked on at Facebook. You know again identity is one of those problems where like could you have a centralized identity server so we know who to trust and his real reputation.

Let's leave the identity out. This is a whole whole separate.

But I want to make the disappoint. Because I think it's important, Zach, for you, for you to hear and think about, which is like, you know, you can poke holes all you want in like a specific layer and is it specifically better for this? That is not the point. The point is, is that crypto creates an open framework and ecosystem which allows effectively enhancing the Internet, which there's a lot of things the Internet missed. Right. And I think it's extremely exciting and there's an extremely valuable future to it, but it largely is things which, yeah, yeah, of course you could in theory have a centralized server, everyone trust it. It's just not going to happen. Or, and it doesn't, and there's no chance, there's no chance that anyone will win an argument with you or is even rational that says, oh, there's some magical, that crypto in some ways delivers no reliance on any human institutions. That's crap. Right, right. That doesn't mean it's not valuable.

But you said, because I, I, I, I want to talk about the liquidity thing because I, I, I still think this idea of like, I believe you're.

Saying liquidity isn't fundamentally valuable because it's.

Not, you don't get liquidity without some trade off. Right. It's not liquidity in isolation. Sure.

It, well, it actually in some cases is.

No, but it's not because there's clearly trade offs and I just want to talk about the trade offs.

Companies want to go public. If you don't think liquidity is valuable. What? Why do you think companies go public?

No, I agree that at a certain point in your life is valuable because.

You'Re massively better off with a liquid currency. Right. That you can use for all sorts of things as well as that makes your people richer.

Sam, if that, if that were true, if that were true in isolation, if it were just better to have liquidity, then every company in the world would be trying to go public all the time.

There's a reason a bunch of other problems like if the, and if the answer is is does the public markets work the way they worked way back in the day? I agree with you. Problem is that's not how they work.

Sam. The reason, the reason it's hard to go public in many cases is because people were going public with scams and stealing people's money. Just fact. Right. Like that is why. Yes, it is. That's why we have rules. It is.

You think sarbanes, Oxley is 100% because of scams?

It's not Just Sarbanes Oxley. There's layers of.

This is the, this is the burden of being public. This is the cost of liquidity. The cost of liquidity is like Charman's Oxley. There's a reason there are fewer public companies than ever before.

But I just. This is my point. As you're. As you said, I'll use your words, there is a cost to liquidity now in. Because there's always a cost to liquidity directly.

Your words, not my words.

You just said it like two seconds.

Ago as a public company, is what I said. I didn't say there's a cost of liquidity. I'm trying to fix that fact.

Okay, right.

I'm trying to fix the fact that there shouldn't be such a high cost of liquidity.

The reason. Let's just start with the reasons. Right? Like, the reason there is costs associated with being public is because people were going public with vehicles that didn't exist and fake income and fake companies. They were screwing people over. So let's just leave that aside for a second.

Well, again, I don't fully take that, but I agree that happened. And again, that's why, again, like, what I look at when the LLC investing, it's just for accredited investors. It's. People say, like, I don't want the protections. I'd rather have liquidity. I'd rather have access to a whole other set of assets. Assets. And I'm illegally allowed to legally exempt myself from those.

This is my point of, like, liquidity and isolation is not exactly always good because there are trade offs.

No, no. Liquidity. This is the thing I think you're saying backwards. Liquidity and isolation is good. Liquidity in the context of how you generate liquidity in 2022, America has a lot of trade offs to it.

Yeah, I. Exactly. No, I, I agree with that.

My point is, like, what you're saying, you're actually saying the exact opposite of what you're saying. Saying liquidity in isolation is good, but that's.

It's a fake thing. It's like saying unicorns are great.

I mean, we're trying to start from philosophical terms. Do you agree the liquidity in isolation is good?

Yes, but that's not real. That's not a real thing.

Great. So, like, that's actually a big breakthrough.

Because we started because there's trade off. Like, there's trade offs, there's trade offs. There is a cost, there are trade offs.

So those trade offs don't have to be so dramatic. Like, this is the Point. This is the opportunity, dude. The opportunity is, is that right now the trade offs between liquidity, right. And all the shit that you have to do to have liquidity are insane. And we're trying to fix those.

Here's, here's, here's the two trade offs. I just wanted, I just wanted to like take us back for a second. Okay. Because we said we think liquidity is better. There are trade offs, which is great.

I'm glad we had that breakthrough.

There are trade offs in liquidity. There's trade offs. There are trade offs in being a public market, liquid company.

Now let's talk about it. And that's right. Now the trade you have to make.

Cool.

Now we talk about private market, right?

Here's the private. Here's the two. There's the two private market. I'm sure there's more. Here's the two private market crypto liquidity trades. You've decided that we need, because we're asking for liquidity to be able to trade these coins around. Right. The first trade, I need liquid.

I want liquidity in the vast majority of human unlisted assets. Crypto tends to be, has an incredible framework coupling messaging, custody and a lot of other key principles that with bearer tokens make that super doable. That's awesome.

Cool. Let's just talk about the cost. No, because I just want to talk about the cost of it.

Why, why, why is that not awesome?

If you'd let me tell you why it's not awesome. I'll take two seconds and I'm sure there's, I'm sure there's more, but you know, here's, here's two. One, which we already talked about.

If anybody is your scary wrench attack. Is that the reason?

It's not a wrench attack, but like if anybody loses their bearer token in any way, shape or form, their money is gone.

Yeah. Just as if you lose 100 bucks on the street, it's gone.

Correct, Correct. Right. Which is why we don't like use cash for private transactions.

If you're worried about that, you put it in a bank. If you're not worried about it, you keep it in your wallet and you might lose it. That's. That's freedom, baby.

Okay, cool. So, so, so one cost. What, Sam? One.

That's not a cost. That's. That's just keep going. Because it's a choice. You can choose to pay for more custody.

Right.

Which lowers your chance. You trust a third party, lowers your chance of losing your a hundred dollar bill. Right. But There's a cost to it. You can choose to bear that cost if you want.

Right.

Sure.

So one cost of crypto liquidity of Long Tail assets is that you have.

To pay a bank to custody for you. If you're scared of things. Yes, but that's not an incremental cost.

Or if you lose your password, you lose your admin, you lose your whatever.

That's not an incremental cost. Like that's exactly the system we use in this. So you're saying is crypto. The option of being better and in the absolute worst case is exactly as bad on custody as we exist in today.

So we've. Right. We've stuck that. We've.

We've. We've said is that. That's the. It's. If you. It's just. Just much better or equal. Not worse. Equal, better or. Or equal. And, and, and you get to choose. How is choice not a problem?

I guess what I'm saying is like in. Because the risk of owning and holding the bearer token is losing it and losing my money.

You can choose to take that risk or not.

Right. So now I have to own it with the custody. So I've already put this third party in which creates.

You don't have to. You can choose to. If that is a concern. You're worried.

I'm a normal human being. I don't want to hold $100,000 under my bed sheets, man. Like that is it. Okay.

And that's the first of the transaction. I bet there's a price at which you would choose that.

And I. And I should know. I used. I shouldn't use the security one because it's always like. It's like it's too weird. The second fee. Second.

It's very 2012 to use a $3 rent attack argument against crypto. So keep going.

It's really more like 2022 given how much money was stolen this year.

That's.

I'm not.

I'm not. Again. It's. It's. It's dimitimus in the grand scheme. Keep going.

It's only like a few billion dollars.

Yeah, exactly that. Trust me.

Increasing frequency. Increasing frequency all the time because it can't be reversed. And so it's really incentivized to hack stuff.

Keep going. Keep going. This is a weak argument. Keep going. You got better ones.

That's. Yeah. Losing billions of dollars sounds great.

I don't like you. Give me a better argument.

Okay. Now you said, hey, here's the other price of liquidity. And I'm sure there's like five others if we actually dug into the detail.

Is the price of liquidity to be clear is that I can choose to pay no custody fees or if I want I can have a competitive custody solution. That you think is there's a cost of liquidity.

No, I, I think there's a cost to liquidity of the fact that doesn't make any sense that, that there is a barrier. Just hold on for a second. There's a cost cost to liquidity of having to take physical custody of an asset.

You don't have to. That's you have the option to.

I, I understand man. You said the same thing 17 times.

I just think you can't say something that you can choose is a hard cost. It's a thing you can choose to do.

Okay. Does that cost 99 of normal investment?

There's you. It's not a cost of liquidity. It's. You can choose to layer just as I can buy insurance. Okay, all right. Let me make a cost cost. Insurance is not a cost of. You know of.

Let me then, then I'll, I'll, I'll say it in a cost.

There's no cost to custody in to liquidity. Let's keep going.

So, so now we'll go to users. Okay. I'm the user that, that wants to self custody my asset.

Sure, if you want.

Okay. Just on that person for one second.

No cost, no cost to liquidity. Keep going.

Well the cost is that I take a risk that I lose it.

Okay. We can already you could choose that. That cost is price as the price of insurance and how you feel about it. So there's a process you could choose to incur. Right.

I, I choose. There is the risk that I take for self custody of some digital token.

That promises future value. As you see that risk personally.

Sure, sure. I think most people would think that's pretty high.

Second I, I don't think that's accurate at all. But keep going going. The most people argument is like pretty weak. So keep going.

Well I guess if we described a scenario where you owned $100,000 and if you lost your private keys you lose your a hundred thousand dollars. The number of people who would choose to do this because we're talking about accredited investors by the way, to your original point, this is not right.

It's none. That's completely false.

I mean I've no, I don't think it's none. I don't think anything is binary. I think it's a very small percentage of People would be like, I'll stick it under my bed. And I'm cool with that again.

So the piece is marginal competitive insurance industry based on, on people's preferences of how they want to custom. Right, let's move on because I think it's a really weak point. Keep going.

I know you think it's a weak point, but I think for a normal investor they're going, okay, it's a cost.

It'S a cost to. It's a cost. I don't think it's a cost of liquidity, so keep going.

Well, it's a. You describe the benefit as being liquidity, so I'm saying the cost of self custody is the risk of losing it.

Okay. Or just, just to talk custody.

Guys, let me just like work this through for one second.

There is a move on because I don't think it's a strong argument. What's your number two?

It's impossible to even finish it because you keep repeating this whole like liquidity is good thing like a religious guy.

It is. And even you said it was a good. In a vacuum.

In a. Yeah, in a vacuum. Which is not where we live in normal human times. So going back to this, there is a risk to self custody of this thing if I lose it. And, and, and let me, and I can pay for insurance if I so choose. Which is a cost.

Yeah.

Okay, now we've got, now we've got this second issue which is like, all right, now I'm going to introduce this third party custody who also bears a bunch of risk in case they lose it.

I can buy insurance in lots of ways. I can say, look, I'm going to self custody but I'm going to pay some insurance broker in case I lose my key like this again. I think you're. We keep going, keep going. No, I think argument's going to be this is all going to recentralize because you're going to have like custodians of all of it. Is that going to be your argument?

No, I'm just going to go through the trade offs and there's more. Although by the time I finish going through the trade offs, I'm going to be 85 years old and hanging myself from the rooftop here in the second one. Right there is now, yes, in this specific use case there is a new middleman. It could be a bank, it could be a coinbase, it could be whatever.

Who.

Custody's my 1980s bear bond or whatever coin. Right. So there's a fee that they'll charge me to custody it. There's a risk it could be a.

Competitive market because it's an open protocol, which means I can easily move it if I don't like how they're charging, Correct?

Sure, sure. Yes. It'll be a competitive market to custody.

Competition to zero among custody solutions for custody for me. Because since it's a protocol and not a centrally hosted server, I can just move it if I see a better deal. Correct?

Well, I'm not sure when I'm holding custody of something worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that the cheapest option. I probably want the safest option, whatever it is.

The basic point is. The basic point is that it's a competitive market that will you price to near zero.

Right. And if anything happens, we all know we always lose everything because it can't be reversed. Now, now then. Which we've seen happen multiple times.

Now.

Now we say. Now we said when I. Because we're talking about reducing transaction costs for liquidity purposes. Right.

So.

So now we say when I buy this token, second issue, I don't have to sign anything. Right? I can just buy the token.

Well, you're signing it digitally. I'd say you're signing, you're making, you're signing a transaction in a digital space. You're not signing with your, your DocuSign, which by the way, is also a digital space. We can argue about that versus a wet signature, versus a note, whatever. Like, yes, you're signing a digital thing rather than a traditional paper contract with or without a note.

I'm not signing. I'm not signing a contract. Okay. And then we're at that time. Right. And then we're saying that if I don't get paid or I sue somebody, and then we're saying in order for me to have certainty that my lawsuit will hold water in a US Court system because I haven't signed anything. Thing. We have to go again.

You digitally sign something, which I, I think if we keep going.

Well, I didn't sign. I didn't sign what a normal document looks like, which is a equity purchase.

Agreement, or you sign something digitally, which we could argue is actually way more secure, but keep going.

It's not about security. I'm just talking about what, what document. What document I have. Okay. And now what you're saying is it's.

A barrel token, just as you know, again, we can trade these things. Things. And there's no purchase agreement because most human assets don't have purchase agreements.

Right, But I'm not, it's not that I'm not buying a watch.

The most human assets don't have purchase agreements.

So again, because those purchases are final.

Actually, this is finality, a great crypto principle. That's exactly the point, Sam.

The difference between a final purchase of buying a watch is that I have physical possession of the watch. The difference between buying and.

You have a digital. Digital. That's. Again, you're.

No, no, no, you're wrong. But this is. This is this. I'm sorry.

It's irreversible. That's been your whole argument about why it's so scary. It's exactly like bucks.

You know what part of it is irreversible? The digital representation of it is irreversible.

It's a just as this. If I sold you a bearer certificate in 1800. Right. It's the exact same thing. It's exactly the same thing.

Yeah, I agree with you.

That's part of why it's crazy because.

I agree that it is the same as in the 1800s when I sold you a fare bond. And that idea that you're.

That because it was old, we have new technology and new tools. We don't find ideas in history and re update them with new technology. That's awesome. And so we're in disagreement. If your view is because it was old and we stopped doing it, it must have been bad. And we should never look at that as an example. I think it's pretty weak. But fine.

I mean, we can agree to disagree about the. The utility of physical bare possession.

We're not actually disagreeing. What I'm. What I think you're missing.

You think it's good, I think it's bad.

There were cool properties of that system which when updated with modern Internet technology, communication platforms, et cetera, gives them all the benefits. Right. Of tradability, things like that, that those things lacked, which is why they went away. But actually some of the benefits those things had back in the day. And that's sweet. That's mixing what was awesome at history with new things which make them viable again. It's great. So like.

And it's like, fine, I will give you that. If you think bearer bonds are cool, this system is gonna be amazing for you.

Upfeeded bearer up technology.

We can go with the branding there. But now you. The thing that I noticed. I've been trying to get this for 45 minutes, but I hit some bottom impossible. You said that it's unsettled case law.

Yep.

Okay. I just want to talk about that for one second. Okay. I bought this digital Representation. I know I own it because I know it's a bear token in the world.

Yeah.

Now I don't have a signed legal agreement because. Oh, just wait, just wait, just wait, just wait. Just mute yourself for like two seconds. Okay. Like I don't have a legal agreement because we said we are. It's a bear token and we don't want transaction historical precedent.

With a lot of historical precedent. But keep going because we just talked about how they're so old from the 1800s. So keep going.

Okay, are we as. I don't want to go down this path of like are we saying baron law applies to crypto bar?

I'm not a link lawyer. I'm not a lawyer, but when this does come to court, I think that'll probably come into play.

Okay, maybe that might be true.

But I'm just saying it's not without precedent. I think this idea there's not, you know, is, I think is wrong.

Okay.

I mean I just, I want to, I want to pitch you your bull case. Right. Which is I now have this like bear token thing, right. Which I can trade freely because I can prove that I own it. And we're not going to talk about the losing it thing and the custody thing and the insurance fees and all the other stuff that comes along with that customer kind of minor part.

Bullshit issues. Yep.

Right. Just losing your money, which is minor. And then, and then. Okay, you don't pay me because LLC are private companies and they don't have all the rules.

Everyone sues each other.

Everyone sues each other all the time. And by the way, private LLC especially. Just pause for a second. Especially long tail assets. Right. These are long tail assets run by non on big companies that have reputations to uphold. It's usually like individuals could be a lawyer, it could be a doctor, could be a person you met on the street. Right, whatever. There's inherent risk in this which is part of why you have LLC protections in the first place. If I want to sue this because remember I don't want to sign this legal document because oh, three thousand dollar legal bill. So I don't want to pay that three thousand dollar legal bill. That is a scary three thousand dollars bill.

Transfer for the transfer. But keep going, going, right?

I don't.

You said I don't want to pay.

There's 3,000 transfer fees which then crushes the market and the liquidity which is the value. So keep going.

I understand. Use you self said self accredited credited investors and qualified purchasers are scared of $3,000 legal fees, which is a whole different.

Just means the market's much smaller and less liquid and less efficient. Right. I mean, it's hard to argue. Again, just wait. Principle.

Just wait.

Much liquidity. We've.

We've already limited to qualified purchasers and accredited investors.

100% because I don't to want to touch non accredited investors. It's not worth it.

That I agree with. And. And I don't want to pay the legal fee. Transaction cost. Well.

And I want efficient market of coaching and I want efficient transactions. Yeah.

Hurts liquidity. Yep. You want to pay this fee. But now when I sue to get the money that you told me you owe me.

Sure. Which will eventually happen in some weird form. I agree. Agree.

Okay. We have now agreed that there is no legal setup in the current world. Because I don't. Just wait. Just wait.

Just.

Just wait. Just let me finish it. Okay. Because you've said, yeah, I don't want to pay this transaction fee. For a second. You said, I don't want to pay a transaction fee because what that transaction fee is paying for, what it is paying for, is a legal document that I signed. Sign. And the company signs and. Just wait, Sam. Just wait. Just wait. Okay. The reason I normally sign a document that says I am purchasing this thing and the company is selling me this thing is so that I have a legal agreement.

Third party. But keep going.

Doesn't matter. Some LLC is signing it.

Yes, Keep going. Okay. Do you think that people who buy and sell things from each other with legal paper don't sue each other all the time? Time.

No, I agree they sue each other, which is where I'm going with this. The reason I signed this document with the LLC and myself is so that I know that I can go and sue in the course.

You don't need the paper. You don't. You can sue in the course without it. Look, do you remember when we first learning.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Sam, I'm not done.

I'm not done. I want to talk about.

It's like talking to my four year old.

Like.

Sam, listen, it's mutual.

I am going to.

I am.

My 5 year olds. The same thing. Listen, Zach, do you remember when we were starting companies in New York, I don't know if you had this experience, but do you remember people wouldn't let you do digital signatures? Do you remember that? Remember you had to actually send around wet paper with couriers because people would docusign. Absolutely not. Like, oh, that's not legally binding because that's a digital signature. It's not a physical wet signature. You remember that era, Sam.

We never talked about removing the together.

Ask you a simple question. Do you remember that error?

Of course I remember the error.

Of course you do. So what is the. Do you think that. Does that mean that DocuSign didn't happen? Are you not happy that transactions are easier to do now because of Docusign?

Sam, you're suggesting we remove the contract.

No, I'm not actually. I'm suggesting the contract is embedded in the bearer token, which is an old issue. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't speak to exactly how bearer token bearer bonds translate into the idea of a bearer asset set, which denotes something. Right. And the idea that that is somehow completely invalid. Look, I agree that eventually the course need to try lots of things and et cetera, but like we've just like described with digital signatures. What's the big deal? It's the exact same fucking thing.

It's not the same thing because it's not actually a signed contract and also because it doesn't involve like an actual contract. And then separately we're.

I just, again, at least. Can you at least give me. Can you at least give me me that. There was an era not too long ago where digital signatures, non wet signatures were scary and not to be done because they weren't legally binding and case law got updated and people got comfortable with them.

But there's no.

Can you at least give me that?

Yeah, of course, because.

Great.

Yeah. So then why is it.

But why is your argument, your big argument is that, oh, because there isn't settled case law in this already. It can never happen or shouldn't be done?

No, I'm not suggesting that it can never happen. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be done. What I'm saying is we've now created a way of purchasing tokens so that I can get liquidity in this company because I want to save on some incredibly.

Which is incredibly valuable and creates prosperity. Yep. Keep going.

Creates theft and bear. Okay, anyway, like, because I want to purchase. I want to purchase a equity ownership in an LLC so that I can make money in the future.

I want to basically be able to invest in things that aren't listed on the nasdaq. Yes.

Yeah, I want to buy into like an illiquid company that has some asset.

The point is not illiquid anymore, which makes it way more valuable.

I want to work on. I want to buy into a private company, sorry, that has more valuable.

With liquidity.

Okay. I want to buy into a private company for future cash flow.

I want to be for appreciation, which might be cash flow, might be something else. We don't know what it is, just as is with any other private company today. But I agree that I like cash flow.

I would like to invest in a company that at some point in time.

Just stop. Can you say you want to invest in a company, full stop. There's no qualification needed.

No, I mean the qualifications are in the details or what matter in life. Like what does the company do? And do I actually own it again? But like, I'm not Sam. We're not, we're not back to it because like, I have an inability to actually even get to the, to this. Hold on. J. Oh my God.

Take us home.

Take us home.

We gotta get there, Zach, in order.

Okay. I want to save my $3,000 legal bill. I want right.

Thing where you transaction fees don't matter. Keep going.

I, I, I want to save money on the transaction costs as you said. Right. Because we want like it, we want.

To say more liquid market.

We want instant liquidity because those pesky legal documents that get in the way of the instant liquidity, we take effort.

It's hard to find the right buyer and seller. We want to fix those problems.

Yes. So that pesky legal document that gets in the way of unlimited equity buyers.

And sellers and actually moving the assets in a trusted way and all that stuff.

Legal document.

Blow away the friction. Blow away the friction.

Okay. The legal document doesn't get in the way of finding buyers and sellers. That's a different problem.

You're to trying, trying to focus in to make a point. I'm trying to make a point that there's a whole layer of transaction fees. The 3,000 bucks is part of it. It's not the only part that crypto improves. Everything else is the same. I don't see the big deal.

And this is a classic crypto. No, it's a classic crypto argument of you never let the person get to the actual use case because once you do that, it's not so good. Hold on.

Just so awesome. I've been very clear with the use cases, Zach. I'll let you have the last word because it's your show and the whole nine yards, but I really would push you you and I'm happy to do this some other time in some other venue. We can do this over in writing, which I think is a lot clearer than doing it on our podcast in an argument. But like, I really have not heard from you A compelling argument. You've agreed with me that liquidity is a valuable. You've agreed me with me that we're. I think that we're not going to get a Fed server to do it or that if we ever did, rents would be extracted from it.

That's not what I said.

I think the protocols and custody fees. Right. The protocol, Things like protocols versus APIs allow for a more competitive market and custody fees to be lower. And I think, think, unless I'm missing something, I have not heard a compelling reason why accredited investors shouldn't have lower.

Just so you know, there is no custody fee for holding my LLC shares. There's no fee to do that.

Is. Are you kidding? Lawyers. You're paying.

No, you pay the lawyers for the transaction cost, but it's different than actually the.

Anyone implicitly to that. Well, keep going. Keep going. I. I certainly pay lawyers because it is.

No, you pay the lawyers to.

Because. Not on an AUM basis, but I pay lawyers and accountants a lot of money to quote, unquote, custody things.

No, you pay the lawyer for the transaction. There's a separate entity that does the custody. It's like a few hundred bucks a year. You pay the accountants to do your taxes and make sure you don't go to jail. These are different things. Most people don't actually understand this in crypto. They all serve a different purpose. My point is we have tried, We've gone through this whole thing to say we're going to try and create liquidity and lower fees in long tail private assets for accredited investors. These are probably assets that have like tens or not hundreds of thousands of dollars in terms of enterprise value.

The majority of the U.S. economy.

Yeah, like it's a real estate and it's a doctor's.

I want to be clear. The. The public equities market, where there's liquidity is a small minority of the US Economy.

Yeah, I agree. That private businesses trying to unlock the.

Liquidity of the majority of the economy.

Economy.

Yes, I agree. We are trying to allow people to speculate on the ownership of their local bodega.

It's such a dirty word. Invest. Why can't you just say invest?

We'd like them to invest in their local bodega.

We would like the majority of people who are accredited investors, at least. Majority of dollars, I should say. Right. To have access to the larger part of the illiquid economy for.

Sam, Sam, okay, for one second, just please, just please.

Well, I feel the same way, man. You know, I'm just as frustrated Written here. Like, I just don't understand why this is so difficult.

Primarily because I can't actually finish a thought without you going on a diatribe. That's why it's so difficult. There's nothing to do with the actual ideas. It's more of your personality in general approach. Clearly.

It's clearly my demeanor.

No, I, that's right, actually. Okay.

Yep.

What we're saying is we would like accredited investors to be able to invest in private companies which just, just, just, like, more efficiently. How you actually convince somebody to marry you and have kids is beyond me. Like, you just like.

Yeah, like, we just, like, drop the pretense entirely.

I just like, it is impossible to finish a thought with you without having you interrupt for whatever belief system.

I'm trying to clarify the points.

You can't even not interrupt me commenting on you interrupting. Interrupting. You literally can't. I'm saying you interrupt me and then you interrupt the point that I'm making about you interrupting.

I really, I'm actually really late to kid bedtime. So I'll let you finish your, like, statement, and then we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll pick this up some other time.

Sam. Whose fault is that? Who's, Whose fault is that?

I think this is great, guys. I, I, I, I thoroughly.

I apologize for the wife. Like, the, the. I shouldn't have said that because I'm just so frustrated that I literally can't finish a sentence.

But when you put this out, please edit that part in because I think it's an story. Keep going.

I really, I truly don't care. You probably own it.

Just own that. You're in pure ad hominem land.

Yeah, I, I don't know if anyone will get through it because you probably interrupted that statement too. Let's, let's talk about. We would like qualified investors, which is a subset of the market. We already said this. We have to kyc them. We have to figure out who they are. We have to know everything. There's costs associated with that.

Yep.

It is complicated. I agree. We want them to be able to purchase private assets. We want them to be able to buy stock in llc. I just want to be clear for one second. They can do this today. It's not easy. It's not easy. There's transaction costs.

Not easy.

There's, there's transaction costs.

There's risk, liquidity.

There's risk.

Limits liquidity. Limits liquidity. Can you give me limits liquidity?

Yes. It limits liquidity. Liquidity, Sam. It limits Liquidity.

Great.

You get.

And value.

Give me that. Because of limquity. Is value there or they're less valuable?

No, it limits liquidity.

Wow. Okay.

It limits liquidity.

Liquidity is abstractly a good. We already. We did establish that.

In isolation without taking contacts and anything else. Yeah, it limits liquidity.

Okay.

Maybe we can publish just this part because I only got interrupted seven times instead of 7,000. That we would like them to be able to more easily than they can today purchase access to private LLCs. And those LLCs. Those LLCs represent some underlying business, real estate, dollar store, whatever.

And can we also acknowledge the majority of the US Economy?

Yeah, yeah. There's lots and lots of private businesses. Totally agree. Doctor's offices, stores, restaurants.

It's like 80%. 70 to 80% of the underlying equity value in the United States is not in public companies.

I don't know the actual number, but I know it's a big number. I agree. There's a large number now today, current world, non crypto world, regular human world. Okay. There are no reasons besides friction. What you think is friction? What do you think is friction? For me to be able to purchase an interesting. In a private company? I can buy a piece of my bodega. I can buy a piece of some lawyer's office. I can be right. I can do all of those things. Now, obviously I have to find it.

Yeah.

The company or LLC has to share a bunch of information about.

Your words is not mine, but we can all go with it. So keep going.

Okay. Normally a regular investor would like to understand something about the thing they're going to take.

Please move on. Please move on because we've already talked about how different investors have different thresholds and you agree that you don't need audited financials for everything.

I'm not talking about. There's some information. There's some information.

I really have to go.

There's some.

There's some information that I would like to know about this company. This has nothing to do with the blockchain. Nothing to do with the blockchain. Right. So I've got to find. I've got to find the company listed somewhere. You. You know, they have to share some information.

Someone has to share some. I have an opinion. I have to want to buy it. Can we just say I have to want to buy it?

No, because that's not how the world works, man.

This is so irrelevant to the conversation because I agree that blockchain doesn't change it. So I'm just asking you to acknowledge that they don't have to share shit. Some they just have to have an opinion. They want to buy something.

Sure.

It's just, you're not giving me anything else here.

What I'm trying to get to is that there is friction in the whole process that the blockchain piece of it touches the very last piece and it introduces risk. And it introduces risk. And this. And if you, and if you, if you would let me get through this, I will actually make the point, which is I have to first of all be a qualified purchaser. I have to find this business. Nothing but blockchain credit investor. Sorry, you're right, it's a lower threshold. I need to find the business. There's friction in that. There's friction in. Yeah, I have to understand what the business is, learn about it.

Again, we're back to this. Please move on.

I have to talk to the company.

Ideally, again, I don't have to talk to me. Why are we back on this? I haven't asked you to move on. That is like not true. And you keep, we keep acknowledging the different investors and then you bring it back to this as though it's like, has to happen.

Generally speaking, Sam, people would like to know about the thing they're giving money to keep going.

I, I don't think you're giving, it's, it's impossible.

But like, people would like to know about the thing that they want to invest in. They would like to do a little bit of homework on it. I'm just talking about all the frictions. I'm talking about all the frictions that exist. Okay.

Crypto solved one key part of the friction. Not all at the end.

At the end. I, I, I agree.

Again, it's not, it's not necessarily the end. And when you solve one piece of friction, you actually can cause a cascade to solve other frictions. But we don't have to argue about that, right, Right now, okay?

I go through this whole process of homework. I make a decision where we are, where you want me to be, that I would like to purchase this thing. Okay? Now, even though I've just done like a whole bunch of work to make to get here, right, to figure out what this is and all homework, whatever. I now want to make a purchase. And so we're at the last stage of this transaction, which is the purchase itself.

Yeah, this is about the purchase itself. I give you that.

We're at the last point in a long process, the purchase itself, self. Then we say that pesky legal document and think that yourself, this is just let me finish the sentence.

Finish it.

And then I want a chance to expand. Can you. Can we make a deal on that? I'll let you finish, but then you have to let me expand because I feel like you're taking pieces and framing them as like it's just the legal document. It's not just the legal.

Tim.

So please fit that. Give me an opportunity.

Let me tell you one thing.

You can. You have edit control, so you can edit however you want later, right?

Zach most certainly does not have edit.

I don't.

I assure you, I have edit control. And Zach, make the point. Sam, make the counterpoint. Zach, say one last thing.

Let's.

I. I want to do a part two, hopefully. I don't know if you guys are gonna want to be around each other after this, but I have thoroughly enjoyed this. I've already tweeted out images of you guys mad at each other.

This has been awesome for me.

And I'm sure you know, this is amazing content. Can we bring it home?

Yeah, I would like to. And Sam, please.

I. Literally, my kids are gonna sleep for 15 minutes.

We're two hours in, and we're one example in. I don't know how this has happened.

Possible. We can do the other some other time. I'm all for it because I got more. I got more.

Let me tell you, you will get. Trust me, If, if, if there's anything we've learned in the last 90 minutes, you will have a chance to talk. Okay, let me. Let me get to. To the end of this. Okay? I promise. At. At the end of my homework, at the end of this process, I don't want to pay the legal fee because I agree with you. I agree with you. There is friction in that process. Okay. And what I mean, we now have this bear token that doesn't have a $3,000 ish. Let's call it. I mean, I've done equity purchase agreements for what, it's like three grand? Is that about right?

I'm just thinking that's not the actual. To be clear, that's not the equity purchase agreement. That's just the sign the fee for a single signature as part of the overall transaction. The actual fees are much higher, but keep going. Okay.

You pay a lawyer at the end of this process. Usually lawyer who represents you has your interest in mind. And there's a company attorney who has their interest in mind. You sign a document. Usually. Usually at the end of this, you sign a legally binding contract that's covered by US Case law, blah, blah, Blah. That shows. That shows that I own the equity interest in this llc, that the company has agreed to sell it to me. There are a bunch of representations and warranties in this document about the company saying the things they've told me are true. That blah, blah. Like there's a bunch of stuff. Just let me finish. There's a bunch of stuff in this legal document. There's a bunch of stuff in this legal document. I can show you a copy. I'm sure you've seen a thousand that says I now am taking possession of the ownership in this LLC and that document is legally binding. Finding it allows me as a purchaser of this to sue the LLC and potentially, you know, the individual who represented that this was okay. That is how this transaction works today and it's how it's worked for a long time. We definitely have switched from paper to digital signatures. Thank God. It was really annoying to do the FedExing. I totally agree with you.

Has he built for that?

It's not really legal precedent so much as like there was. The attorneys had to agree that this was like an acceptable signature.

Well, no, no. There literally had to be lawsuits about it and it had to be decided as law of digital signatures are receptible.

Sure. But there was still a document. There was still a document. And now what we're saying is at the end of this fairly long process, you can disagree with me. That's long. But at the end of this fairly long process that requires a whole bunch of manual steps and work that introduces friction. Because I actually want to understand what this company does and that it's real. The person selling me this stuff owns what they own and like, is the who they say they are, are leaving the crypto thing aside for a second. Then I make a transaction at the end. And yes, there is a fee associated with that transaction. I totally agree with you. It is a little annoying. It's lawyers charging fees. I agree with you. I really, I mean, I'm literally. I have one in my inbox right now. I'm going to sign it. It took me maybe three hours now. Just this, this legal part of it, not the diligence. Diligence took a lot longer. What we're saying is that last, last piece that we want to be able to like freely transact back and forth and not have to do this legal document over over and over and over again. Even though a normal, regular, thoughtful investor should want to do all the steps up front anyway, no matter what. It's nothing to do with crypto. Right? Like they would like to under. Ah, just wait. They would like to understand what this business is and how it works and doesn't have to be audited financials. It could even just be like an exception sell screen. There's some stuff they want to do before they make a purchase of this private company that isn't regulated and doesn't have all the SEC rules and like all the other stuff because it's a private business and the US allows us to do this. So you probably want to understand it at the end of this process. What we're saying is that I want to be able to do this like instant transaction liquidity, right? Be able to like move my potential, my share, my digital version of my share in this company around and I want to be able to sell it and speculate on it or trade it. Trade it. I mean it's the worst word, the negative word, speculate.

Now I think, I think SBF uses price discovery. I think that's what you want to do.

Well, fine, that's a fair statement. Although you can do price discovery in like a normal auction anyway. However, the transaction fee is annoying. So in order for me to add this like final piece of liquidity, the whole end of this giant transaction, at least the ones I can think of off top of my head. And I haven't like gone crazy yet. One is obviously this custody issue and then the insurance that I have to pay on top of it because of the custody issue because it can be, because it can be stolen and lost. I agree it's rare ish. And like yes, I probably can self custody it. If I was like, you know, crazy and then I would, normal person would probably want to, probably want to use a bank or some third party. I'd probably want to insure. There's a whole bunch of fees associated with the fact that it can be stolen. Because the illustration, the the risk of a bear asset is like pretty big. So there's insurance. It probably comes all the way back to the legal fee I just paid anyway. And, and what we're saying is it's unsettled. This is my, this is the part I've been trying to say for 45 minutes. And it's unsettled case law about whether I actually own anything. It is unsettled case law about whether I even own this thing. Because we have to go and like work it through the court system and the courts have to look at some digital token transaction and somebody's got a sue and then there's going to be a whole Bunch of rules about what is a digital transaction, what is it and we do we want to do this entire thing and I'm going to take on the risk that I actually might not even own it.

Okay, are you done? Because it's been like a ten minute closing statement.

That's, that's the bull case. More liquidity in price private companies. Because all the other steps have nothing to do with the blockchain.

Look, I really, I really have to go. But I would like, I mean that was, that was a long closing statement. I would like to kind of just insane. Can we scope out for a second? I think we're on the same page after a lot of back and forth that A liquidity is fundamentally valuable and B the vast majority of wealth in the US and assets in the US are held in highly liquid form norms. Right. That's an opportunity. I think I am with you. From prior things you've said that in theory, the idea that you have a Fed server or somehow Carta has an API and subsumes the whole world into one place. That if that weren't going to end up being a disaster long term for a whole bunch of reasons which I will not rehash.

Right.

That it is not necessary to have crypto to do this. But I'll tell you that protocols are way better for it. I agree with you that if you want to make an investment, the diligence, deciding what you want to invest in your strategy is important. It might not be with the company. It might idea that it has to be some of the company. I think you add a lot of things in to try to make a stronger point which aren't true. We'll set those aside. The thing that I believe very strongly and crypto is an incredible candidate platform for. Right. Is what is a very high transaction fee of saying I actually want to buy something. Right. I want to buy something from a bunch of holders. I don't know who they are. I don't know who holds what or what their interests are. The price discovery component, it's not just about the $3,000 transaction fee. Although that is enormous annoying. It's actually very high transaction fees. It's the broker fees you currently pay. It's all the middlemen you're actually having to pay in the middle. When all I want to do is buy some shares from Logan or sell some shares to you. Right?

What middleman?

Oh, you really asked. I, I, I'm asking what middleman?

I'm asking what.

There's a lot of setters. I Mean, I could name six middlemen I use right now for selling private. Private stock.

You mean like a broke or to list it right? To be able to like fire. Fire.

Zach, please. Please. Zach. I really do have to go to bed, so I'd like to finish and let me have my space because I gave you yours. When. When you get down to the end. When you get down to the end.

Look, I gotta do it to you. I just want to like let you see what it's like. But I'm not going to.

Zach, your two big arguments is one, the $3 wrench attack argument, which is that self custody is scary. People won't want to do it and there's fees associated with custody. Fine, I give you that. Having people the option to ensure things things and custody things. There's no reason to not like we'll do that. I think the fact that the fundamentally is not based on the profile is very powerful and interesting and will create efficient markets for that stuff. Your second argument is something along the lines of. I mean, how do you even put it? It's like this isn't that big a deal, I guess, right. And I'm just like. I just think that that's just really myopic. Right? In the end of the day, the ability to create a market for private stock right In. In these companies and create liquidity is going to be. Can be a massive engine of prosperity.

Right.

You know, we have tons of business in our portfolio that are solely based on the fact that businesses are illiquid things like team shares, like. Etc. There's a huge. And so I'm very excited about that opportunity. Crypto is not a panacea. It does not solve everything. You and I agree on that. Like human institutions matter. But you know, I just, I think that you're arguing agreements on those fronts are weak. And then the last thing I'll just add is like this whole settled case law thing you kept coming back to. Again, we talked about digital signatures and the evolution there. Case law changes. It is a risk. There's a risk, right, that for some reason some court rejects something and these transactions are invalidated and it's a mess. I totally agree with you, but I think it's extremely slim. And I think part of progress is being willing to push the envelope on what these things are with good foundational grounding. But again, if no one were ever. If you never did anything in business because there isn't quote unquote settled case law on it, right. Then like nothing would happen and we'd still be signing wet signatures. Right. And sending them along via couriers on bikes in New York. Right. And we wouldn't even be able to use DocuSign. And if you don't believe that, that's annoying and meaningful difference, like, I don't know what to tell you. So that's kind of my piece.

Thank you guys for doing this and bearing through. So that'll do it for the 27th episode of Cartoon Avatars. If you, if you made, made it this far. Thank you for sticking with us as we, as we got through the episode. Also, thanks to Josh Wolf for coming on Sam and Zach for being nothing if not entertaining. I guess a little bit of a programming note as well. We had mentioned that we were going.

To do, I guess when I got.

Going, we said we were going to do four months or, sorry, four weeks and then see where we were. And then I said we would do 12 weeks and see where we were. And that was where this kind of new framework evolved where, where it was just me and ultimately me and Zach and, and then I committed to do 26 episodes. So I guess we've officially crossed that Rubicon. We're now at 27. So I, I, I think I, we're going to keep going. Uh, I'm not sure exactly to what end. Uh, I think we'll probably commit to do another 26, kind of take it to 52 and then sort of see where we are. But thank you to everyone that has listened along the way, supported all the kind words, are super appreciated, and look forward to seeing everyone again next week for the 28th episode and hopefully at a minimum through episode 52.

So thanks everyone for listening.

Sam.