How to get Rich by mastering crypto investing (without getting lucky) - Dragonfly Managing Partner

How to get rich with crypto investing without getting lucky this is something that I think all Junior investors have to eventually learn is that it's very difficult to understand businesses because what you're doing in Venture is you're finding great people and you're helping them succeed and the only reason why you'll win is that these people and their teams and their products become successful hasib kesi managing partner At dragonfly a global crypto focused investment fund and the co-host of the chopping block a podcast where industry insiders chop it up about the latest in crypto what is

dragon fight we're a a global Venture fund we backf Founders in the very early stages and now I think we've kind of entered into that Echelon at least if you're in crypto you've heard of drver how did you get so fascinated by the crypto work proving to myself that I can do this Venture Investing is you have a very slow feedback because when you invest in a Founder it takes years you to figure out what you're right or what you're wrong if you imagine that compared to a poker game so you instantly see oh made

a mistake you said I quit poker I gave away some of my money why when I quit poker was a very chaotic per of time me and a buddy of mine were mentoring uh this young guy and he ended up cheating a bunch of people I didn't didn't know He was cheating and I defended him people ended up learning that I was protecting this guy and that ended up being a big blow to my reputation and this changed my whole life so I'm going to ask you what are the sets of principles that you have

developed throughout your years in crypto that could help anyone watching this podcast who want to make it in crypto if you want to make it in crypto number one thing is I would Say 75% of you that watch this channel frequently do not subscribe if you like this show and think it provides value to you in your Krypton investing Journey can you please please please do me a favor and subscribe to this channel hit the like button and leave a comment below it helps this channel more than you can imagine the bigger the channel the

bigger the guests and the better the conversation thank you this conversation is supported by Jupiter the most used decentralized trading platform on Solana and the largest Dao in the world three a scalable layer one blockchain that's fast secure and affordable built by previous Facebook developers and that delivers the benefits of web 3 with the ease of web 2 and Mentor an etherum layer 2 that build two products I particularly like fbtc which enables you to borrow and lend Bitcoin in Defi and me eth or meth one of the largest eth Liquid staking protocols that buy

way just launch its token called cook we're talking about the how much San Francisco loves ecstatic dance right yes which I discovered in valy a couple of weeks ago basically short me and I was like this is cool I like it true that's true yeah I I like you you just go walk through Golden Gate Park and you're just going to see random ecstatic dance groups just out there jam into some you know reg Just like some weird music that you are like what is going on here it's oh exatic dance anytime people are moving

in a public face in a weird way just my usual answer is oh it's ecstatic dance they're kind of like on the floor doing some yeah exactly exactly either that or it's like one of those um one of those churches where people have um you know what it's called when they get like uh they they get exercised there's like there's a demon inside of them they Start doing weird dance moves I don't remember what those are called my experience with that is more yeah like kind of kind of breath work yoga kind of these festivals

and then you have this part where you have a that is almost playing it's not techno music but it's very close to it right and people Just Vibe I mean they're not on the floor they're kind of like more B behave but they just Vibe a lot without alcohol drugs nothing and it's 10 a. and I was like interesting yeah haven't seen this part definitely way to look at the festival in that way right yeah I mean California sort of has the the polls where on one side you know people go they're super healthy they

go to bed very early there's not much of a drinking culture in California compared to New York or in in Europe uh at the same time then you've got you know hardcore psychedelics and you you know the the very deep end of uh of of drug Culture that's also a big thing here so you've got you've got both sides you got the yin and the Yang and oftentimes it's the same people who will do like the 10-day fast and go on the vision quests out in the desert and then the next day they'll like take

pee and you know so like you can you can do both uh you know both ends of the spectrum have you ever experienced with uh that I would prefer not to speak s enough yeah I you know got got LPS to to uh keep happy I just remember that Elon Musk moment that like was a a big issue for him and I'm like okay you know I've learned I've learned I've learned a couple lessons from observing others I mean there's also the the Steve Jobs kind of way of looking at things why where he's saying

he was actually I think going as far as saying I would never hire someone who never tried LSD or you know ask or because they're just Not the kind of people I want to work with extreme you think that's true I mean there's probably out of all the people at Apple yeah worked with him there's probably some who probably didn't take anything think kind of logically but right maybe like underneath or maybe at some point people knew that so they're kind of like inventing like what kind of trip can I invent yeah I mean I

feel like that's one of those things that sounds true When you say it but then when you actually get in front of people and you start you know like I like I know several people who have never taken psychedelics and they're the kinds of people you would think would have like they grew up in California they've been around you know the kind of hippie drug culture for a lot of their lives and they're just like I don't want to do it um or you go to Asia and there's very very different attitude about drugs and

Like there's certain drugs that are considered to be like yeah cool you know I don't know like uh totally fine to do that one and then these ones are like weird drugs that will just break your mind and turn you into a zombie and um so I don't know I've kind of learned that so much of the perception around drugs and psychedelics are so culturally constructed that I think it it surprises me less these days when I when I meet somebody who just has zero desire to Experience any of that maybe you also say something

about the kind of like not only per perception about drugs but Perceptions in general right how much we can be wrong just with our kind of stereotypes or perceptions or thinking on this person because they behave that way or they look that way yeah therefore they must be doing that right right which is extremely important I think the more you kind of mature the more you hopefully learn to be less To have less of these preconceived ideas yeah which is hard right definitely I mean initially the preconceived idea was that if you have experiences with

drugs that you must be you know a washed up you know just like kind of lunatic who has no ability to keep a job and a lot of you know Elon Musk is a good example Steve Jobs another good example all these Tech entrepreneurs and and very successful Founders showing us that like actually no I like smoke pot regularly And I run a multi-billion dollar company yeah um that I think has has broken a lot of that social perception in America but I think it's still the case in most places I mean you you know

you live in Singapore I spend a lot of time in Singapore Singapore has some of the most Draconian attitudes towards drugs of almost any country on earth right it's it's crazy given the amount of just general almost libertarianism I think you could say about Singapore and that They're mostly very free market very Pro capitalist uh and yet they they still take this very strong view that marijuana in any amount is just absolutely corrupting to society despite the fact that you know you would think that okay well look at California California and you know all basically

all the West Coast and most of the big cities in the US at this point have basically legalized recreational drugs you know marijuana and then some Psychedelics even in certain places you just fed to Thailand which is an hour away from Singapore right exactly exactly and and they know of course that people do this I believe in that the law is that even if you're Singaporean even if you go outside of Singapore and you take drugs that is illegal even if you're not Singapore and actually even me who lives there if I go to Thailand

and I come back and I consume I don't know smok the joint There and they kind of like catch me exp Jo in in Singapore take drug outside of Singapore you take drugs outside of Singapore and they learn you did drugs outside of Singapore even if you're no longer High yeah I mean they test and they find something which they do at the airport from what I heard uh yes that's crazy yeah so that's like you say something like that and you're just like okay you really can just separate these things in your mind um

and these these Kind of social changes they happen very very unevenly around the world so that that that's has always been something of a surprise dear wind shift happens family this is the educational bit of the day and this message is probably the single most important thing you should take away from today's podcast if you're serious about your crypto investing Journey please take some time to learn how to self- custody your assets to make Sure that nobody can take your coins away ever if you don't learn how to be your own bank it is very

likely that one day you will lose your hard earned crypto the safest way to hold your crypto is in a cold storage that we also called Hardware wallet Hardware wallets are not complicated and they give you peace of mind I personally use a hardware wallet called treasure it is open source very easy to use and the first Hardware wallet creat ever as we Like to say it in crypto not your keys not your coin you can order your treasure wallet in the description down below and now back to today's episode there's another field where preconceived

ideas are not good investing especially when you invest in Founders right listen especially to I mean most of the big investors if you listen to what Naval says separating or chath right yeah separating you kind of like all your ser Types and just being able to make a decision on someone or investing in someone is much harder than it kind of should be yeah feels like yes and no the reality this is something that I think all Junior investors have to eventually learn is that it's very difficult to understand businesses it's very difficult to understand

technology it's something that your brain um has to learn and train on and study the history of Technology study the history of Businesses in order to build the right mental Frameworks and deal able to predict where something is going to go but understanding people is actually very very very deeply ingrained into your brain right like most of your neural circuitry is oriented around understanding other human beings and the sense that you have of like oh this guy is kind of grifty you you you can never explain all the little signals you're picking up on That

give you this sense that this person is not trustworthy but you know when you're a junior VC very often what you sense is that oh well I don't really know very much I'm not very well calibrated I don't have a lot of experience this guy has all these credentials he's saying all these big things he's got all these Partnerships his his deck looks very impressive so I should probably I should probably invest I probably don't know what I'm talking About um and the more experience you get as a VC the more you actually learn to

just trust your instincts right you're actually very well calibrated you have more experience with judging and sizing up human beings and almost anything else in your life and so being able to just it's it's almost the opposite it's almost like can you look past the social credentialing the social proof like all the other stuff that a Founder is trying to feed you and just see with sort of The original seeing that you have of what kind of a person is this and how do I think they're going to operate under stress under uncertainty under a

moral dilemma how do I think they're going to act and usually you're right it's like really striking how good your instincts are I was thinking about that this morning I you're waking up gut feelings right I mean I think women are even better at that they have like even better intuitions right because kind of Their role in the world and like the males were kind of kind of predatory Etc right so they need to like oh what is this guy in for yeah so probably even better than us males right but I was thinking about

this morning I was thinking the last couple of years how many times did I know from the beginning in my guts whether for relationship or for hiring someone or anything right yeah that it was the wrong thing but I still went for it I waited too long Right right so both of the times you're right it's true absolutely yeah you just know it's like the gut feeling is the thing right that's right and you've get the little argument in your brain of oh you know but this guy but this thing happened to him and he's

this kind of person and that's why it's okay and maybe I'm you know misperceiving this and uh so much of so much of you see um it's a people business at the end of the day and understanding people And so if you look at Social Psychology there's um uh you know you're familiar with this concept of replication crisis yeah which is that a lot of academic papers in in social psychology and behavioral psychology and behavioral economics have all turned out to be [ __ ] right like most of the major concept of the field things

like priming things like you know all all these like really wonderful ideas that seem like they should be true Turn out to be completely false and no don't replicate any way almost every major experiment in social psychology has turned out to be [ __ ] um but there's actually there's one very very robust finding probably the single most robust finding in social psychology and is known as stereotype accuracy which is a thing it's almost um it's almost risque to even acknowledge the fact that it's true but basically you know when you have this sense that

For example um you know very aggressive men uh tend to be untrustworthy right this is a stereotype like it it's a it's a broad-based thing that doesn't apply to any particular person um and it turns out that actually human beings are very well attuned to correctly detecting these kinds of stereotypes and there's some stereotypes people have that are incorrect right so they might have stereotypes about certain races or about you know certain Things about you know whatever some group of people who are uh in a certain part of town or something like that that turned

out to be incorrect because they were created by without direct experience of those people um but when you do have direct experience of people like for example people actually are very well attuned to what are the common differences between men and women right like for example you were just saying you know women are better at attuning You know what is a dangerous guy or what is somebody who's not necessarily trustworthy because they hat you because it's just a much more important skill when you're physically vulnerable um and we human beings we know this we learned

this our brains are these statistical machines that are constantly taking in information one of the largest effects anywhere in social science is this stereotype accuracy and now again this something that culturally The world tries to program out of you this idea that well stereotypes are are bad it sounds bad right like when we think stereotypes we think of negative stereotypes they're also positive stereotypes right they're stereotypes in every direction they're neutral stereotypes like Asian people like rice uh that's a that's a neutral stereotype it's not good bad it's just it's it's a stereotype uh turns

out to be correct it is true that Asian people are more Likely to like rice than white people um and so again like as a VC um one thing I often see in junior VC is that they really fight against their own perceptions because they think like oh you know this is you do I have evidence for this this is kept shallow like you know why am I saying this and the more experience you get as a BC the more you realize of look this guy seems really aggressive you should probably just assume that he's

Going to be that war you know like that seems like a good like you nail The Landing in the perception that you have the simpler the better simplify everything exactly so you are a VC who tries to follow his Instinct try to when I can who are you who am I um you might narrow down that question uh so well I'm I'm H kesi I'm managing partner at a fun called driv fly we're a global crypto investment firm managed a few billion dollars uh I've been before I was in a VC I've been a VC

now for how long has been little over six years um before that I was an entrepreneur then before that I was a software engineer and then before that I was a professional Brer player so I have had multiple careers now um and uh crypto probably the in some ways the weirdest thing I've done M but also in many ways the most rewarding thing I've done and the one that I think is most attuned with A a good way to live one's life uh if that makes sense I think this is I've been reflecting on a

lot lately is that you if you look at all the different kinds of people who find their way to crypto u a lot of people in crypto they're just day trading you know they're trying to make money punting on coins um some people work at hedge funds I know you've talked to some folks who who who work on that side some people are Building startups building projects uh and then some people like myself are are vet capitalists we we back fs and I've realized that the one thing about VC within crypto crypto can often feel

very zero some often feel very PVP AB so it can feel like um you know there's a cynicism that sometimes sets in or even a nihilism into a lot of people who've been doing this for a long time because it feels like every couple years there's A false start there's a new narrative there's this new sense that okay we have to monetize this thing that we're doing before it's too late and there's this um it's it's a very almost destructive mentality about what it is that you're meant to be doing here in this industry and

the thing about Venture that I didn't realize at first but I've now realized is very psychologically salutary is that Venture is quintessentially positive some because What you're doing in Venture is you're finding great people and you're helping them succeed and every single day the only thing the only reason why you win is that these people and their teams and their products become successful and if they don't you lose the end Nothing Else Matters and Venture it's it's a team sport and so many things in crypto are actually not team sports like so many things in

Venture are single player G or In crypto sorry and so many things in crypto are single player games and uh Venture is this beautiful way of transforming work can otherwise be a single player game into a multiplayer game and in some ways I think that's the most um psychologically healthy way to approach uh an industry like this that I think is going to be so disruptive and so important uh doing it as a team doing it helping other people every day uh it's actually just really good for You you said you had multiple carers right

before that's right you wrote my superpower is is unstructured learning when there's no course or textbook for something you're in the realm of unstructured learning can you explain yeah so when I was in school um my school history is kind of a mess because I you know became a professional po player when I was young I dropped out of school at uh 18 uh and then travel around the world playing playing High Six poker games when I was a young man and so my formal schooling is kind of a mess um I think I'm I'm

pretty good at what I call structured learning which is okay you know learn chemistry and there's a textbook there's flashcards there's you know all these different things that you know what there is to do you know what the path is you know what the steps are it's just a question of it's kind of a big marshmallow test you know in that you just have to sit there Do the work and don't eat the marshmallow and I can do that you know I'm I'm pretty good at that but there are a lot of people who can

do that it's actually very very you know clearly a widespread skill that most people their whole life their first 18 years of life it's just a series of marshmallow tests you know and you're trying to become better and better and better at erasing your own desires and just doing the thing that you're supposed to be doing That's structured learning and there's many techniques to get better at it at the margin um but the reality is that most of the world doesn't really care about your structured learning right you go through University you get you know

you get a job straight out of school and what you realize very quickly is that no matter what you study everything you studing in school is basically worthless right the main thing that matters is that school is this kind of obstacle Course that if you pass it you prove that you're worth training for a real job M and almost always the real job doesn't have a textbook doesn't have flash cards there's no way you can sit and do study hall and like you know get ready and teach yourself the test and then pass the test

on on the coming Monday uh in most real jobs especially the ones that drive the most value there's no textbook there's no there's no course that's going to teach you how To do this you just have to figure it out groping in the darkness and learning as you go into a field that nobody else really understands uh enough better enough to teach you or if they do it's not worth their time to teach you right and so this is this is what I call unstructured learning and this is the thing that I think I learned

at a very young age because when I when I came up as a poker player poker education if you look today poker now is a much more Mature game than it was at the time that I started playing I started playing in like 2006 and in 2006 there were some books that were written about poker but they were all pretty bad and you know if you wanted to together uh how to be a world class poker player you could find bits and pieces and like blog posts and forums and some videos and stuff like that

but most of it was it just wasn't there in a format that could be easily consumed and So you had to learn it yourself you had to grab bits and pieces you had to experiment you had to take risks you had to you had to go and and um you know spend your own money and fail and learn and keep iterating and this is also what crypto was like you know six seven years ago there's still parts of crypto that are like that but most parts of crypto now you know there's mukes there's all these

courses there's so many books uh you know when I first came into crypto There were basically two books there was andonopoulos is mastering Bitcoin absolutely and then there was um the Princeton book uh it was like cryptocurrencies there was a Princeton textbook that was written by um actually Steven gfet and Ed Felton who are now the co-founders of arbitrum they they wrote this the first you know textbook on on bitcoin at that time there was maybe a single paragraph about ethereum in that book uh but ethereum had not Even launched at the time that book

was written and so there was almost nothing there was almost no real easy way to learn this stuff it's like you just had to go in the field bang your head against the wall talk to people who were at the Vanguard and force yourself to learn this material immerse yourself into it and create your own curriculum and iterate this kind of learning is almost always the most valuable learning in the world it's what gets most Rewarded the people who can actually do this are the ones who are most highly compensated uh and it's the thing

that school just does not teach you how to do that's unst structure learning where do you think this fire in the belly comes from to just go for these fields that are just not sorted out yet by other people uh where is it come from um I I think I am if you if you look at these spaces from a distance I think the thing they Have in common is that they're both very chaotic and very creative at least at the time they were yeah uh and there're places where it's not about subjecting yourself to

an IQ test right in some way you know if you want to go become a you know a Quant on Wall Street okay that's just this a gigantic IQ test and whoever rides to the top gets get gets to make a bunch of money uh that's not how poker was back in the day that's also not how crypto is crypto is not an IQ test Crypto is this gigantic um your know New Frontier that is is waiting to get colonized and settled and on some level It's a combination of yes you need fluid intelligence but

you also just need risk appetite you need creativity you need to be able to integrate a lot of different things happening at the same time uh and that just captivates me it's so much fun to to learn something totally new and to compete on a Level Playing Field Absolutely that's what I want to say right the common kind of denominator between people I talk to and even if I think about myself was always you go to school you're like okay I can have the best grade here but I'm never going to be different from anyone

else yeah whereas if I go for example investing is a great one right I can bet on something and I might be completely wrong but if I'm right I can kind of stand out that's right like show the others but I was Right right that's right yeah I mean when dragonfly first started yeah we were we were no best nobody had any idea who we were um you know when when dragonfly actually our first our fund one uh we invested into other funds as well as investing into direct deals and so at that time I

remember when I when I when I did my first deal at dragonfly my first deal at dragonfly was uh matter Labs which is the company behind Z sync the the rollup we did their their seat Rout and that was like I can't remember it was like 30 million valuation or something and um I remember the founder he you know he had no idea who I was and you know he he just read a couple of my tweets or my blog post or something and and oh that guy oh yeah yeah I know that guy uh

he was like oh you know I don't know why I'm going to bring in dragonflies like this random funer FS uh you know I don't know what value they bring but I like this guy I think he's Smart uh that was that was how we got our started in crypto and we went from that to now becoming one of the most recognizable funds in large part because like in crypto there's no royalty you know there's no like you know if you want to build a venture fund like a regular Venture fund a generalist Venture fund

you want to do SAS investing or invest in AI companies and you got no brand nobody knows who you are you have no connections you have no You know you're not you're not anointed by the gigantic platforms or the great tech companies you know you weren't a former founder bu you billion dollar exit uh in crypto you can just do it yeah if you are if you're hungry enough and you'll do the [ __ ] work and you'll make people believe in uh that you are going to go to Bath for them yeah you can

make it a crypto and people really recognize their hustle in this industry right that's right they see I Mean also probably because so many people are in it for the wrong reasons right so I think it's kind of like still easy even today to see who is here for the right reason who is here for or not for the wrong reasons and uh who just like grinding even when no one gives a [ __ ] in bare markets right that's right and you see this across the board in crypto is that it's not it's not

just the investors it's also the founders every bull market there's a new trunch Of very famous very accomplished web 2 Founders who try to come into crypto raise a ton of money and completely no planned you know they end up few data building nothing useful and it's almost always the weirdos and the crazy people who actually build the really important stuff in crypto how much of a weirdo do you think you are me I think I'm pretty weird I I I I have my own flavor of weird and I can package it up pretty well

to make it you know like digestible To a broad base of people but I I say I'm pretty weird so you're weirdo who did really well in poker right early early on you told me you made a lot of money but you also told me I learned with all this money that I don't need much M what do you mean my death yeah I started playing poker professionally when I was uh basically 17 is when I was more or less playing full-time and 17 is a young enough age that you still have a lot of

ideas about what money is going To do for you you know you you see a lot of movies you see people celebrities see people on TV and you have this imagination oh thing that separating me from them is the money and if I have the money then like oh you know the the women and the lifestyle and the Glamour and all that stuff will just come and uh I I was young enough at that time to very quickly realize that all that is complete [ __ ] just not true at all how did you realize

that I just knew so Many poker players I knew so many people who were young and had money and we just [ __ ] miserable what does what does having money in poker mean having money I mean a lot of people I mean it's you know crypto money obviously can can go many yours of magnitude more than poker money uh but you know you have you have folks in their early 20s who are worth several million dollars and you know they're they get the lambo they got the nice car they got the you know the

what The alligator skin belt and all this other stuff and I realize that yeah nobody cares have you ever been through that like a phase where you just go [ __ ] it I'm gon to buy Lambo or whatever never bought Lambo thank god um obviously not not a not a not an appreciating asset in general but uh what's the most stupid things you've done with money early on oh uh I bought like four watches that I never wore um they weren't that expensive they're They're not like uh again like I I was always kind

of cheap U I think I hearded that from my dad but um but I I was around like I lived with uh a couple dudes who were very very um just you know someu was spending just about anything right because they sort of had this idea that if I spend a buch of money I'm gonna get more attention from women or people going to respect me more or whatever it is and it was just so obvious that the is this is not doing This is not doing anything this is just like if you don't actually

enjoy the things that you're getting from the money if you just think you're buying status symbols uh it's just it's just so empty unless you have everything else about it that makes that actually you know instills it with meeting and um that that was very clear to me from from the early days I think poker is naturally kind of not as psychologically healthy of a of a career It was on very high volatility so a lot of ups and downs a lot of emotional wear and tear of the hours are really rough right very often

you're playing poker into very late at night you're sleeping weird hours you're you're not allied with normal people as crypto to me it is it can be similar to crypto I me the other thing is that you people eat very poorly because you know they're around casinos they're around degenerates all day just gambling right So like crypto just a little bit like crypto but I think crypto has more of an intersection with the normal World Poker really has none all right there is no um you know there's no BL working wayto or sorry into into

poker um and so I think this this makes it a very psychologically unhealthy place um for for for young men to be aild a fine meaning and build an identity uh and it's just proportionately men which is also similar to crypto um so I I think In some way I learned a lot of lessons from seeing that culture and seeing on those a failure modes within that culture within poker which translate almost one to one into crypto um but the but the biggest thing that you see over and over again and you see this in

crypto as well is that yeah the money doesn't make people happy and it's it's in some way it's it's such an old you know it's like a Shakespeare uh Trope of yeah money Doesn't make you happy like the thing that make you happy is other people it's connection it's human beings it's family it's friends it's it's the experiences that you f your life with it's not money and is it not easier to say that when you have money so I think what money I mean money solves your doesn't solve all your problems but it solves

your money problem right exactly exactly the reality is that it is a big thing and DEP way you live and the level of you Know material circumstances from which you're coming at it the reality is that if you are basically middle class and first world country which to be clear is a very small percent of the world population most people in the world live in China or India you know like that's more than half the world population in just you know a very small circle around there and for them an American middle- class existence is

Out Of Reach so point very much taken that for the majority of Human beings on Earth the amount of money that we're talking about is very much a solution to their problems but you don't need a million dollars to get there you need more like $50,000 a year to get there right and all the all the research that we have seen about money and happiness shows us that Beyond just sort of basic level of you know material wealth yeah it falls off logarithmically yeah I mean some say 100K 200k but like basically you need 50k

or 100k to spend Less time on Instagram proba yeah probably I I think that's right and I um you know when I when I quit poker I basically started over um and you know I gave away a lot of my money and worked my way from the ground app went back to school went into the tech industry got my first job in Silicon Valley as a software engineer and you know I was making basically when I when I first moved to the Bay Area I was making about you a little bit over 100k and compared

To what before that uh in in in um when I was a PO player I probably the best year I had I made over a million dollars and um now early 20s early 20s yeah and uh I was I think I was 20 when when when I made that much money and I was um like I mean the other thing is that of course you know 100K in the Bay Area is very different than you know a million dollars in Texas and in Al 10 years earlier um and So the the thing is though I

I don't think my happiness changed very much between those two periods of time um obviously you know I you I was taking Uber uh what was it called Uber pool uh where you know you go around you doing ride shars you're saing money on food but for the most part you know my my my needs are me just as much between 100K and a million dollars is's really not that much of a a difference in my lifestyle and the Happiness probably more linked to learning new things right hey I'm learning these new things this exciting

there's a new thing I'm excited about and have new goals working and struggling towards my goals yeah therefore I'm happy that's it that always always and and it's it's it's a combination one it's the it's the sense of personal progress and growth that I think is a a Big Driver of meeting for people absolutely but the second thing Is also the people around you so your friends your family your connections your relationships uh and those things I think again there's something that it's very easy to lose sight of when you're Nar focused on the idea

that money is the thing that you're supposed to be optimizing for you said I quit bker yeah I gave away some of my money why um So when I when I quit poker um it was actually it was it was a very chaotic period of time so there was a uh a student of mine so let me let me rewind a little bit so when I was a poker player I was I was very well respected sort of one of these senior Elders in the poker community and me and a buddy of mine were mentoring

uh this young guy um named gerro and he ended up cheating a bunch of people and I defended him and basically you know I didn't didn't know He was cheating I didn't participate in any the cheating but uh I I tried to protect him because he was very young and I was worried that his career was going to be ruined um and up people end up learning that I was protecting this guy and that ended up being a big blow to my reputation in the poker world um and this was around the time that I

was personally getting more and more disillusioned with poker and I felt like um poker was not what I wanted to do With my life it was not who I wanted to be um you know I knew a lot of people who came into poker they grew up around gambling their their dream was to be a poker player for me poker was kind of random it was something that I fell into end up becoming very good at and uh it was it was a game it was a fun game to to to optimize and to compete

on but I knew that you know if if I'm 50 years old I'm looking back on my life and all I've done is play cards and take other People's money that I was going to be very disappointed in what I've done with myself over the course of My Life um and so I knew at some point that I I had to walk away from the game and I decided when I did quit that um the the reality is that you know when when you live with a cushion underneath you of you know I've made this

money I have all these savings you I don't I don't Spend a lot so there's really you know like I I had this I had this vision of myself imagining you know I'm in an office somewhere unjamming a stapler and you know I I've made all this money as a PO player I'm never going to get anywhere close to making that amount of money ever again because of course like you know when whenever you going to find anything as lucrative you know playing cars at that level um and just the sense of like wow the

Second chapter of my life just doesn't matter you know compared to the first chapter and I nothing scared me more than that idea understand that and so I decided that the only way that I could force myself to have to reinvent myself would be to basically let go of the money that I'd saved and give myself no like no um no cushion right so I I I left myself at $10,000 which I thought was enough to just make sure that you know I don't I don't die and I have you Know at least some level

of uh of ability to to invest in myself and I started from scratch went back to school um did you know found ways to make money and then came out to silon Valley and started my second career as a as a tech person what did you do with the money um so I I donated part of it and I gave part of it to my parents to um to allow them to to go toward their retirement so that they could uh stop working so it was a Very I mean for me at that time it

was a very chaotic time in my life because I just I it didn't know I wanted to go into Tech yet that that was a very distressor process there were many different things that I thought I might end up doing um and of course I was terrified that you know I was already uh you know by the time I went back to school I was the oldest person in my undergrad classes right I I'd skipped a few years I before actually I went to College two years early uh because you know I sort of I

skipped a grade I was just a smart kid growing up um and then I went and became a poker player wasted my wasted all my educational Capital uh and came back as just okay now I'm just like a 23y old dude with no skills uh no you know dog [ __ ] resume uh I was a gambler and you know I was studying English and philosophy in school which are both completely non-technical non- employable you know Majors how much do you think this is due to I can relate but be more because of crypto right

yeah when you make kind of too much money too fast yeah you feel like an imposter on one side and on the other side if you're kind of if you made it too early because all our life we think I need to make that much and then I'm done right but and that's the ultimate goal but when you get there you're like life is empty what do I do Next I don't even have a drive I'm [ __ ] like it's kind of this complete like mind [ __ ] right I had the same a

few years ago then I got wrecked so help me right for you help me but like I was I was like if I sell now I'm done so why would I sell right it was more that than agreed I I I like to think maybe not but I was like I'm done I'm I'm done before 30 what like what do what do I do next do I travel for the next 40 years on my Life but who am going to travel with they're all working doesn't make sense my idea of the I made it is

actually completely wrong right right so I can kind of like relate to that um and maybe it wasn't imposter syndrome I don't know right which I also like had massiv during Co and I was like I don't deserve all this blah blah blah have you ever felt like an imposter all the time I think the U the reality if if you don't feel imposter syndrome you're just Not thinking or like you do you don't have enough self-reflection to be able to understand how insane it is to be in a situation like that how do how

do you deal with it no I deal with it um like there's no way I a through which is that you just you feel like an imposter and you do it anyway like I think that that that's always the answer is that um you you get you get through it by having no choice but to get through it and so you know if you become a you Know like when I when I first became a an investor had so much imposter syndrome because I'm like you know I've never built anything like I never created a

great startup like I'm I'm not a great investor how why the hell are these people asking me is my project good enough to get this money yeah I have no idea and if you make the money you're like I just put some money but I'm not hustling all day long like they deserve it right exactly exactly and so It is is very um like the weird thing is that when when you are an investor and this is something again that I think a lot of Junior engine or Junior investors have to eventually learn being an

investor gives you magic powers in that you know a Founder can be uh at a company where it's very obvious they're doing something wrong right like let's say they're they just have terrible marketing or you know this Product idea is just stupid and like everybody knows it except the CEO for some reason the CEO doesn't see it they don't see how stupid the idea is and everybody in that company can tell the CEO why are we doing this we should not do this he oh no whatever and that you know their their co-founders can tell

them what we shouldn't do this this is [ __ ] and oh whatever and you as an investor can tell the founder you should not do this is a bad idea and all of a Sudden they'll see like Oh They'll have this like for some reason you as the investor are outside the game and they feel like you have some special vantage point that you can see something that they can't see it's also because you're voting with your Capital right and you're with your money so it's especially if they need the money they far but

even I'm saying this is true even if they're not fundraising from you like for some reason investors no matter How Junior you are there is a there is a magic power that you can do because you're outside of the structure of this company um and it's something that it took a while to realize how powerful that was but the more the the more I lean into it the more I realize it just happens over and over and over again is that so much of your your power as an investor is just saying what you see

right it's like right there in front of you it's like really obvious what's Happening can you just say it can you just say it to the person in front of you I see this and nobody else around that person especially when they're very powerful you know they run a big exchange or a big lir one or a big you know whatever and there's like something that seems really obvious you'd be like man surely this person already knows this right like you know I remember having this conversation with um uh with with with polygon right and

uh I mean You know we're vestors and polygons they know I love them but uh you know there was a time when they had like you know the six different products you know it's like polygon this polygon that polygon zero polygon miden polygon and I remember having this conversation with the founds of like guys there's there's too many of these like Market thinks this is stupid and you need to you need to simplify the part offering so that there's a clear Story and for some reason like they just landed in a really big way that

I'm like there's no way I'm the only person who told you this but so many times so many times so much that it's it cannot be a coincidence so many times I just realize that I'm the only person who can tell them this in a way that lands I mean founder denial you are I mean I think we all been there I Le I've been there too right you listen to people who are very close to you Especially who were involved in the business with you because hey I have the vision Etc and you're in

complete denial right and Founders have this kind of gravitational Distortion field yeah that The Closer you are to them the more you feel like oh they must be right I must not understand something and great Founders have that effect on people which is one of the reasons also why they value the insights of uh investors who sit outside of that field right it's Like okay you are not subject to my Distortion Force what do you think you know uh so that that's something that I think you know you're in on one hand that can feel

like imposter syndrome on the other hand that can also be a superpower nice way to look at it yeah you so you donated your money after quitting poker and you told me you were pretty big in effective altruism would you say that's kind of like the beginning of your effective altruism Journey it was yes uh I I sort of became more and more into it after I quit poker and uh learn more about this field so those are really the early days of effective altruism like 2012 2013 when it was just a burining movement and

nowm it was cool like everything is in definitely before it was cool it became cool after FTX ft well not after during FTX yeah during FTX is Reign effective altruism became cool in a way that I I was kind of uncomfortable because aism As an idea is pretty weird right it's a very out there it's not normal like New York Times kind of Affliction uh but with the rise of SPF and his immense you know popularity as this kind of selfless Saint who spends almost no money and donates everything to Valaria bednets it it sort

of became this weird um like pot cultur kind of version of itself that all of a sudden EA became cool and that was that was very strange to me and it was very short list now it's not cool at All I have to ask you what car do you drive uh I drive um uh uh uh what is it called uh Toyota what's the uh I think cam cam I drive because no I'm asking that because of SBF obviously know so I don't drive uh so I I uh yeah I mean it's not like a

it's a nice camera now okay it's nice it's a nice Lambo it's not a Lambo but it's also not a you know it's not a like a beat up 2002 record or whatever whatever SDF supposedly drove which is a Good sign it's a good sign that's right that's right um I read the pin tweet of a fellow poker player the other day Dan ban okay yeah he says people are more concerned with looking like a good person than being a good person how many fellow effective altruist are in it for the wrong reasons I would

say at this Point probably very very few because effective altruism has kind of round tripped Sentiment and now that effect of altruism is uncool and now you will get ragone on Twitter and dragged across the like raged across the coals as I have experienced many a time since the collapse of FTX um it's it's it's an EA bar market right there and I think this is in a way very healthy now EA because when EA is cool and it's sexy and you win points for saying that you're an EA then you suspect the motives of

the people who are saying that okay you Claim you're an EA they sort of wins you brownie points you look like a great person now if you say you're EA people suspect you they think that you are you know this cold heartless person that maybe you endorse the the kind of you know crazy fraud that was taking place at FTX or then intrinsically your Moes are suspect especially if they're in crypto and in EA in crypto and in EA right he's a double air so if you say your EA now you're actually losing Points yeah

from saying your EA which to me um I think that's that's good yeah because it it asks of you do you really have conviction of these ideas do you really believe this even if it doesn't win you any points in the Public Square like every bare Market in any industry or field right exactly it's actually very healthy so there are many people I know who have defected from the a have said look I no longer affiliate with this movement I think the leaders are Corrupt I think that the you know the the failures of SPF

reveal a deeper stink at the heart of EA and I and I respect that perspective uh but for me I'm like no I I think in the same way that when you look at crypto and you say okay did s SPF change your view of crypto no SF I doesn't do with crypto SF was a centralized business that stole a bunch of money what the [ __ ] does that have to do with crypto crypto is about self- custody it's about self Sovereignty it's about programmable money it's about you know getting an escape from the

state in a way crypto is exactly what FTX was not about yeah which is about trusting third parties right that is is an endorsement of the core values of crypto yeah and so you could look at FTX and say no no no no my conviction crypto did not change one iota because of what happened at FTX and to me the same thing is true about EA EA does not like EA has nothing to do with Like a bunch of crazy guys taking drugs in the Bahamas and stealing much people's money that is not what EA

does no San reading of EA would tell you yes that's a good way to orient your life and Orient your Affairs to maximize the amount of good in the world how do you deal when because it's completely right right and I remember a bunch of people saying actually just after FTX this is actually endorsing Decentralization Etc but most people who are not paying close attention or and or and go completely [ __ ] right which is most people right most retail people they'll tell you [ __ ] you or right you you're crazy right yeah

so you might say yeah but it's good if they I'm crazy because it means we're a bare Market blah blah blah but like the actual truth is if people think you're crazy yeah it's going to make your job in EA or let's say crypto because as I've beeper To crypto because we're here today for crypto yeah much harder right harder yeah much harder and so what you're pointing to is the difference between philosophy and politics politic Al it really matters who did what in each Camp right if you know when we look at the uh

the uh the the wouldbe Assassin of of Donald Trump and you the coming days as people try to go through his phone and understand like what's the motivation of this guy and There's a big question is he Republican or is a Democrat and it really matters because whatever side he's on really changes the veilance of this story of what you who who is the blame for all the rhetoric that led to somebody trying to shoot a you know former president of the United States and now that question is a political question because whatever the answer

is like philosophically it doesn't matter he's a crazy guy either way right what Does it matter which a crazy guy thought this or crazy guy thought that no normal person is trying to assassinate presidents so in the same way you know the question of you know does EA look bad does crypto look bad because of s SPF politically of course it does of course it the whole Space got set back significantly the movement of EA got set back significantly by the actions of this person but crypto at its core is a philosophy it's a question

of how should Money and value be oriented relative to you know the free uh you know the the the sort of the free movement of capital among individuals or should be controlled by the state that's a philosophical question in the same way the effect of altruism asks what is the most optimal way to do good in the world that is a philosophical question and the answer does not hinge on what did one guy in the Bahamas do with his business you're talking about the physical side Of crypto right M why or how did you get

so fascinated by the crypto world I you know I I didn't come into crypto because of libertarian convictions or you know sovereign individual type uh uh beliefs I came into crypto in large part because I thought it was just so interesting m i I'm somebody who you know to be quite honest I don't know that crypto is going to be good for the World on that I think it's actually very possible that crypto will be bad for the world why because I think it is naturally destabilizing for countries to lose control over their monetary policy

and to fail to be able to control the inflows and outflows of capital in a um deterministic way I think it's very likely that crypto is going to introduce more chaos into the world and I think it's also likely that crypto is going to result in um you know more is there more Hacking um you know especially with the rise of AI I think we may see very scary intersection between the rise of autonomous agents and all sorts of money that is uncensorable and Unstoppable there's there's there's something obviously that should make you uncomfortable when

you think about what happens in that intersection so it's not obvious to me that when we look back in 20 years that we will say wow the world is a lot better now that crypto exists But I also think that crypto is inevitable so you know one can ask the question was social media good for the world or bad for the world um I don't know I I personally think it's pretty good for the world but many people disagree with it um but I think the one thing you can disagree on is that it's inable

that's so interesting I was talking with mm deor the other day and we're talking about uh is greed and speculation good Or bad right and at the end of the day she had the same way of thinking which is I mean she loves it some people hate it but it doesn't matter it just is yeah if something is the market decides right it's going to this direction either you jump on the the train either you just miss out right and therefore it just is yeah and that's it right yeah and so if you think that

crypto is inevitable which I think we All do right uh then you just jump on the train right yeah well it's an easier thing to say today it's a it was a much harder thing to say in 2017 2018 to say that crypto is inevitable uh and so I think that's also why uh the the veillance of that statement like it sort carried a lot more weight to say that at that time back when crypto was still very tiny everything seemed very speculative a lot of these ideas like prediction Mark you Know today we're seeing

poly Market being quoted in in CNBC in the media and retweeted by Donald Trump and back in 2018 you know we were talking about auger which was trading you know hundreds of dollars on you know stupid little stupid little bats and we had this idea like no no prediction markets are going to be big and you know it's it's it's kind of now to really contextualize how weird it was to really believe that these things are going to Change the world um you know it at that time that was before Libra that was before people

started talking about cbdcs that was before stable coins became you know hundred plus billion dollars in circulation that time was there all these things were so tiny compared to where they are today you know now you have Central Bankers talking about as crypto inevitable but was it that weird if you really looked into it like I remember I mean you Talked about the first books first few books for me I got into crypto in 2018 thanks to antonopulos the internet of money talking about ethereum and the sa damos the big con standard just reading these

two books I was like it makes so much sense yeah obviously most people were like it doesn't make any sense but did you read the books did you spend 30 40 hours trying to understand that stuff yeah are you critical about most of the World that is basically not working if you look at it right almost nothing works this makes so much sense so I kind of feel like if you it's like any it's like any field like if you look into it you spend the time except if it's too crazy right it's kind of

becomes kind of like a second nature and yeah it makes sense crypto the thing about crypto is that it's intrinsically subversive and most Technologies if you Think about it in history uh primarily strengthens State and this is part of the reason why crypto makes so many people uncomfortable is because it's a technology you know it's it's a big part of the reason why people try to separate blockchain from crypto they say oh blockchain is General technology that's really great crypto I don't know you know we'll see how it goes um the crypto side of of

all of this is intrinsically About changing the balance of power between individuals and governments if money were already free if money were already programmable you wouldn't need crypto crypto is a solution to a problem that was created by governments M right you don't need to distribute you create a distributed system you don't need to do all this fancy stuff if you know for example the Fed was like well here this money you can just do whatever you want to it you can program it you can custody It with private Keys you can uh control it

from anywhere in the world and uh we're going to make the monetary policy completely algorithmic and transparent if they did that nobody would ever need crypto crypto exists as a response to a constraint introduced by government M and uh I think the it's it's almost like in the same way um YouTube and streaming if TV had been open so that anybody could you know add a new channel and allow anybody to watch it from anywhere Um you know YouTube allows you to basically if you think about relative to TV it's like okay you can jump

into programming you remember like DVR where you could like okay record everything you rewind and watch us different times that had already turned TV into not being on demand or sorry into being on demand um but the main on TV is that there's only so many channels yeah and not everybody can broadcast out of those Channels u in the same way crypto I think is is uh it's intrinsically about a fight yeah and this fight is something that most people think that technology is supposed to lose they think people are supposed to lose they think

that uh the the the only way that Technologies are supposed to get subsumed into society is when they are tamed by governments and the the crypto Conviction is that no no no no the entire point of crypto is that it doesn't get tamed that's what's so weird about it and so challenging about it uh unlike almost every other technology in the last 50 years think about the internet you think about AI these are all technologies that strengthen the state they give the state more Powers than the individual has there are subtle ways in which okay

now you can stream anything You can you know send messages to anybody at any time about stuff you know you can't censor the Airways anymore but the relative to the powers that now gives the government if you think about the Snowden Revelations and just the raw amount of data that's now getting ingested and just the just the scale of government surveillance and government power comes from having control over the Internet um it's the only technology we've really seen in the last 50 years That is for people and not for States yeah yeah what YouTube did

to kind of TV user generated content yeah is what crypto is doing for money user generated money right exactly exactly we were introduced by a common friend called Jon Choy shout out to my boy Jon yes man who was also on this podcast to discuss his principles on how to get rich without getting lucky based on Naval thread but if it is crypto thread and it went viral actually I was Like I should do a podcast with Jason about that oh yeah people loved it we had like a near 100,000 views on YouTube Just in

two weeks very nice so I'm going to ask you what are the sets of principles that you have developed through throughout your years in crypto that could help anyone watching this podcast who want to make it in crypto if you want to make it in crypto so number one thing is I would Say get more Technical and everybody's at a different level of technical but the reality is that is about technology and if you don't understand the technology you are not going to be able to have a robust mental model of where it's going and

so study technology study the history of Technology learn a little bit of coding you don't need to become a great solity developer or whatever but learn enough That you at least have an intuition about how programs work and how computers work and why things that are hard are hard and why things that are easy are easy if you have no real purchase of over technology at a deep level it's very difficult to correctly predict where things are going to go and so much of crypto is about being able to see around the corner and be

able to tell when you're being bullshitted and when something is really possible and When something is real no so that's thing number one at the margin almost always the answer is get more technical so it mean someone who he's not technical he's [ __ ] no or can somebody who's not technical needs to get marginally more Technical and every little piece is going to help you for the most part uh now just because you're you know some amazing software architect doesn't mean all of a sudden you're going to get super rich in crypto but it

Does mean that whatever other skills you bring to the table almost always having a deeper technical understanding alongside whatever other skill is is going to make you significantly better so that's thing number one uh thing number two is start writing and talking in public crypto Lally is that yeah and so many people think to themselves well I have nothing to say you know I have no new ideas I I don't Know enough to even start talking and so I should wait until I learn enough until I have some Cloud until I have some something useful

and something original to say and then I'll start writing or podcasting or blogging or whatever the hell it is it's your modality and this is such a huge mistake such a huge mistake and I see it all the time when I started writing about crypto I started writing about crypto basically almost immediately after I started getting Excited about it and if you go back to my early blog post and you can still find that they're on medium they're so embarrassing they're so dumb they're just like the essentially paring other stupid stuff I've read about oh

blockchain will change the world it'll change how we um interact with governments and Supply chains and blah blah blah it's like all this like philosophical just fluff and um I remember you got you know people liked It because that's that was the vibe of the time you know people blockchain pilling each other um but there wasn't very much substance there it wasn't a very you know it was kind of a dumb piece but the reality is that uh wherever it is that you are in your learning trajectory there might not be you know thousands or

tens of thousands of people who are um who who have who are an audience for that level of learning but There's always this people who are right behind you who are five days of less learning than you are and you can teach the person behind you what you just learned right so your audience might be small at the beginning like my audience was small at the beginning not that many people cared or what oh my God this guy likes blockchains well yeah everybody in the space likes blockchains but it's sort of like uh yes many

people have written that blog post before but Anybody who wants to read about that today will read for me you said most people don't care which is actually a is a good argument for starting right because when you start and you it's almost look lame right if you look back in time oh man what the [ __ ] was this podcast with my laptop and I didn't this intro that I was just reading and what the [ __ ] right yeah but no one looks at it or almost no one so and for a long

Time you might think it's a bad thing right because no one cares but actually it's a good thing because you're getting better yeah and no one is there to criticize right that's right so that's why you should start today because no one cares anyway right and they're not not going to car me for a while so yeah yeah and you know different people function differently like it doesn't have to be blogging it doesn't have podcast but like find your thing and add Value give value to other people even if it's value to just a very

small number of people who are the people who are as dumb as you were yesterday you can teach that per there's plenty of people who are who are sitting right there where you just were um and that I think is the easiest way to start the flywheel uh you know building a name for yourself building connections building notoriety and getting deeper and deeper into this you know internet based society that is Crypto yeah add value 1% every day and at the end of the year is going to be much more than 365 per. absolutely absolutely

what's the most counterintuitive principle to a new crypto investor that is a well-known fact for seasoned investor counterintuitive there's so many things that when you arrive you're like oh yeah I think I know right and then you probably get screwed couple of times and then you you learn with time H Obviously um so I'd say I me I alluded to it earlier the fact that generally speaking almost everything important in crypto has been built by crypto Natives and it's very easy to get impressed by credentials and you know these great Harvard graduates and these people

who came from Google who are starting a new thing and it's basically never happened that these people end up building the Next important thing in crypto pretty much never it's always crypto weirdos who into building the you know uh whether it's ethereum whether it's Unis swap whether it's you know hien Lair uh you know all these things it's it's always like these kind of weird people who are way too online and spend way too much time in crypto those are the people who end up building the most important things so the next logical question is

I want to start doing some stuff in crypto How do I become a crypto native do I need to be weird or if I'm not a mega nerd do I even have a chance because it's very intimidating is like a bunch of weirdos right who are just arguing all day on Twitter yes correct like so how do I become a Crypton native because there's a lot of people who are now more and more interest to work for crypto company not even starting something but they say what do I do right like where do I Even

start yeah I mean you can start with this podcast right here you go but I would say number one is figure out what's your superpower if you if you come in thinking okay well I need to totally refashion myself into a crypto shaped person so I need to you know become more of like vitalic I need to learn how Serge proofs works or something it's like no no that is absolutely not what you should be doing what you should do Is find the thing that you are you are really good at and sharpen that into

a very very fine point and then figure out how can I take this skill that I have and find the one person in crypto who most needs this and do it for them you know so do not think about you know how can I become the head of strategy for you know igl or whatever right that that that's just the wrong way to be thinking oh this guy is so crazy on Twitter how do I get his job uh that guy's so cool I Want to be like him do not think that way what you

should think about instead is what are you good at and where is the place that you can immediately add the most value and then go do everything that you can to prove to the people who are sitting there that you can already do that job this is a very entrepreneurial approach right it's the same as starting a company absolutely if you want to start a company what are you good at yeah and that is Potentially a problem to other people hopefully right that's right and you're gonna be so good at it because you're passionate about

it and you're good at it right instead of like trying to build the next Uber when you don't give a [ __ ] and that's exactly don't try to start someone else's compa yeah in the same way don't try to build someone else's career you got to build your career yeah and your career is oriented around your skills and your weaknesses yeah Absolutely so you started to write years ago right and then you built an audience I did you tweeted when I started building my Twitter audience I thought more followers meant more influence but I

soon realized many high follower accounts are just engagement farmers and Hyper posters with little real influence interestingly the real movers and shakers often don't have that many followers that confused me for a while this is actually a common phenomenon Known as buron paradox or the Tales come apart two things that are initially correlated followers and influence they correlate at extremes can you explain yeah so this is something that I think most people notice intuitively they they just see this for themselves that very often these accounts that have millions of followers and tons and tons of

Engagement um they can tell that they're good Entertainers they have the ability to pump out content that a lot of people are going to read and see and and follow but they don't actually control anything and when they when they want something to happen it doesn't happen you know so like this account that has five million followers uh they're like great now you know I've been I've been posting news stories or Snippets or whatever and now I want this mem coin to pump and they post the mem coin thing and and nobody Cares uh and

you see how very often there's these accounts that have not that many followers and when they post something thing just the world just you know just shifts around them you can see like wow this person is powerful this like the most important people I listening to this person and they when they want something to happen in the real world it happens and um you know my my partner uh at dragonfly bow he's somebody who's very very lowkey on like You won't find him on Twitter he's not on Twitter he doesn't have a big social media

presence and something that he very intentionally cultivates is he he does want to be in the Limelight and yet he's a very powerful person and you you see this enough times uh and you start to realize like huh okay so in the in the in the very beginning of your journey right you can tell that as I gain more influence I gain more followers as I gameer influence I game More followers but then as you start climbing up that curve all of a sudden these things start diverging and there are people who have got all

these followers and no power no influence no ability to make things happen and it these people who are incredibly powerful and if you know you know but it's not legible on social media it's very similar to money actually yes the wealth people are the quietest the most quiet right that's Right that's right the people who talk loud usually not exactly EXA it's it's the difference between rich and wealthy yeah right wealth tends to speak very quietly whereas rich people tend to be loud um and I think what what it teaches you well two things I

think follow from this one is that uh you can't infer too much about somebody's influence from their social media following I think many people kind of they be lionize that the people with big followings I think It's amazing to have this many followers because I'm sure you have so much power and so much influence you to have that many followers and it's it's it's it's really not true like I know a lot of these people who have really big followers and follower accounts and um there are a lot of things I can do that they

can't and there are a lot of things that they think they can do and they can't so this is often a root Awakening for many of these people until they Eventually learn what are the limits of their power and their influence over the people who follow them um and second the second thing that it teaches you is that very often uh when you get to these upper reaches right when you start having enough followers you realize that gaining more followers actually has no impact on your influence and this is kind of a weird lesson because

it does shift after a certain point right like when you have You know 200 followers and you go from 200 to 2,000 followers okay that really feels like a big a big Quantum change in how many people are engaging with your content and listening to you and how much reach your your stuff has uh but when you go from you know 50,000 to 100,000 it it really doesn't change that much the amount of people who you able to actually influence and uh this lesson teaches you that if you want to move past this point which

I think is very Much the point where I am at you know if I gain more followers on social media I don't think it's going to have very much impact on my ability to actually do things in the world to actually do the things I care about um and so you learn okay I should stop investing in this vanity metric that isn't actually resulting in the thing I care about then invest in Founders instead well a lot of things right I I having Founders think that you are fantastic is one way to increase your influence

um being useful behind the scenes and helping solve problems for folks in the industry it's another way to increase your influence um there are a lot of ways but at the end of day you know most influenced and this is another thing that I think people don't fully understand they they sort of have the cynical take that the way that you become crypto famous the way that you Build a followers the way that you um have a bunch of relationships in the industry that matter is by you know talking yourself up beating your chest surrounding

yourself name dropping people uh you know getting into pre-sales and then exiting really quickly and this kind of stuff and that's that's not the way that you do it the way that you do it is by adding value you add value to everybody you meet to every interaction you have to Every project that you work with and that is what builds your reputation and to your followers B much harder it is hard it's much harder to add value right yeah and most people are takers they're not givers right correct which is why most people don't

end up getting there yeah what is drag and fly so we're a a global Venture fund we've got a presence in Asia as well as a presence in the US we back Founders from the very early stages things like um you know early Investors in avalanche NE protocol June analytics monad Athena Mega eth uh biit almost everything under the sun in crypto we've done it at one stage or another and we're known for being one of the most technical uh VCS in the space uh as well as being kind of one of the earliest and

highest conviction investors in crypto defi layer 1es layer 2os exchanges uh so that's us in a nutshell I'd say we've grown a lot over the last five Years right when we started we were a ragtag crew nobody knew who we were and now I think we've we've kind of entered into that Echelon that at least if you're in crypto you've heard of dragon F why did you start dragon fly so actually I I didn't start dragon fly myself I joined basically like first year dragonly so I came on board very early um but dragonfly at

that time you know just it was it was again like a no-name f nobody really heard of it Nobody knew what it was about um and I knew that I was sort of coming in early enough of a phase that I could really morph dragonfly to be this kind of fun that I wanted it to be and um I you I really did not know that I wanted to be an investor it kind of like poker it was this thing I sort of fell into and I realized that so much for me about investing is

and I think this was also true of poker is proving to myself that I could do This like Venture investing is uh it's unlike anything else I've ever done it's very uh very longtime Horizons you have a very slow feedback loop because when you invest in a Founder at you know a seed stage startup it takes years you to figure out where you're right or where you're wrong right if you imagine that compared to a poker G Pock game it takes you know less than a Minute to figure out oh you know okay I call

this guy and it turned out I thought he was bluffing he's not bluffing so you instantly see ah made a mistake um or when you're trading right trading instant feedback immediately you know was my trade good or was my trade bad uh Venture it takes years and very often it's not until the end of six or seven years until you know was I really really right or was I kind of right because you're going from even you know Okay this thing had a seed round they had a great series A V and then isend up

collapsing at CD and you know it's a block we we had many many examples years ago exactly exactly we we've been fortunate you know we never invested in FTX no blockfi no Luna no Celsius or Genesis or any of these you know kind of crazy blowups but um it's a general phenomenon of crypto is that you can't you the the reward signal that you get is very very delayed which means that You really have to um you have to really you requires a lot of judgment relative to a lot of other things like trading or

or poker even how good does it feel when you're really really right it feels amazing uh but it also like when you when you are really right like in in trading or in in poker when you're really right you get this incredible Rush the moment you say okay I think you're bluffing and I call you down and you turn your cards over and I take the Whole plot down it's just such a so much endorphins rush into your body in this moment of feeling like aha I I beat you yeah and in measure um like

if you're right you're right very very slowly right like there's no moment like you're right you know and he's like you're right and they're like oh every year they raise another round a little bit higher it's like oh metrics still going up to the right oh that's good it's like oh there's a drama you call it you fix It okay things are good again and it's there's no there's no like endorphin rush that you get in you know it's like watching a child grow up uh there's no like yo we did it I can't believe

we raised a child uh it's just like yeah you just every single day you show up you support and you watch it grow into something really amazing and then eventually you exit maybe when you exit and you you know the money hits your bank account from the car check maybe That's the moment but even then it's kind of like like like finally yeah long for me it's like you sort of you know you sort of know that that's yeah like that's not like a like oh my God I can't believe this money showed up you

like there really is no uh big bang moment in Venture which I think again is part of what makes Venture more healthy than a lot of these other modalities of investing how does it feel to be really wrong that is really tough that is Really tough what's your example an example for you really WR I think probably the biggest uh I mean there's so many examples of bad passes I had I mean almost always when when when you go wrong and Venture it's not making a bad investment is a a bad pass always always always

a bad pass because Ventures power law distributed and in a power law the only that matters is what you pass on doesn't matter all the deals you did that ended up not making it doesn't Matter at all uh so I remember actually uh the the memo I wrote on the salana seed round the four Cent round where I passed on salana uh four cents four cents yeah four zero 04 that's how much solo was worth at that time um but actually that I mean that that pass was fine actually I think the um the pass

that pains me the most is the Unis swap series a pass that was probably the the one that most weighed on me psychologically and the one that I Think I I've learned the most uh as as as an investor what did you learn so Unis swop at that time this was before def5 summer really took off and before we saw what liquidity mining would eventually become and when unisoft was raising their series A a uh Hayden approached us and he knew a driv and fly at that time we were still relatively young as a firm

but we had built a reputation for Ourselves in defi investing in particular because we were early investors in you know makerd one inch uh Uma compound so we we we were early players in Defi and so Hayden came to us gave us pitch and we you know we really tore apart all the data about Unis swap at that time and we saw you know if you look at the biggest pools was all the pools the LP's even unprofitable since Inception uh if you look at the the two biggest pools of that time I think they

Were like hex and then uh it was a synthetic USD to to USD or eth to eth which was an incentivized pool and we were like okay well this is not organic volume this is inorganic volume uh we thought that well you know your pricing here is never going to be as good as a centralized a clob or even an RFQ system uh and we had all these smart takes and all these all this data that we pulled to convince ourselves that you swap was just you know it wasn't good enough on The longevity of

the data and like everything that we said about un at that time was very smart and it was all correct and it didn't matter none of the points that we made mattered right we even we even claimed that we think Unis swap is going to get for it if it gets too big which it did and it didn't matter none of these things mattered and the thing that we failed to see was just how [ __ ] big this core idea was of having a completely mechanized system For anybody to be able to list and

trade anything that was the big idea that we failed to capture and you know Unis swap from that point you know depends on when you exited but the height it was like a 200x investment G and that was a that was the one I remember the day the Unis swap token floated M was the most like kind of um really honestly one of one of the most challenging introspective days of my career as an investor was just thinking how did we get that so Wrong what's the most painful the 200x missed or being wrong maybe

for on an ego side no absolutely if the misses 100% the misses the miss the money Miss I mean the the only other thing that that does have that same kind of pay is when you don't own enough of the thing you believe you know so uh as like a often says is as a venture investor you're always you're never happy because either uh you you you see all the things you passed on That did amazing and the things you did do that did do amazing you never own enough so there's always a sense of

like I could have I my gosh this thing that we won we were talking about doing more we didn't do more we didn't fight that hard to get more allocation and it's it's one or two deals that drive your entire portfolio m is it not a really great lesson for investing in general to say you're never going to be happy because either you'll Sell too early yeah either you'll sell too late if it goes to zero right yeah e like it's okay or it's actually normal to not feel happy or to not be comfortable and

it's probably a good sign yeah because if you're too happy you probably in trouble right yeah like so I to be honest you know as a as a veter capitalist I'm actually a lot more okay with the market timing around exits you're never going to get perfect when It comes to exiting your positions and you should not try to be because if you're trying to be perfect then you're going to have too narrow margin of error and that's going to result in you basically saying like oh I don't you know if you're if you're trying

to have a certain level of confidence of this is the top then you just have a a problem that you're going to hold way to long because you're going okay if you miss the top then you're going to be very Inclined just sit there and wait and wait and wait and wait until you feel like the real top has come in right so generally what I tell our team is that our goal is not to try to tie on the top our goal is to be within 40% of the top yeah if we were within

40 50% of the top we nailed it amazing wonderful time to exit um but if you are exactly on the top you barely survived you know like you got incredibly lucky and you almost miss the entire cycle because much more Likely the mistake is not selling too early the more much more likely the mistake is riding this thing all the way through the entire boom bus cycle and that tends to be the much bigger mistake that's an amazing Point actually and on on the crypto side it reapplies on the meat of the returns that probably

made between be market and previous alltime High maybe times two Max right but like if you manage to get out I hear 30 % right but like 40 50 30% it's amazing and it's very counterintuitive because people think I should catch the bottom which is impossible and I should write it to the top which is impossible exactly it's a Fool's errand one of the hard things in crypto if you're a public person can be too manage how you are perceived by the people around you one day you're a cool hipster the next day you a

rockstar and the day after you're a scammer yeah can you go Through your own story of becoming a rockar in 2021 and being seen as a scammer in 2022 by the same people who were seeing you as a star just a year before that um wait who song is scammer 22 I don't know we talked about that the other day he said it's really hard to go to the like you can really be seen as a yes yes yes I think that uh I don't know that anybody saw us or me as a scammer in

22 but I think the um maybe some people in didn't know you that well yeah I think the collasso FTX kind of gave that feel to the entire industry is is okay um I think I think you know my affiliation with effective altruism has also earned me a lot of that program after the collapse of FTX yeah in that in 21 being a crypto EA venture capitalist was the coolest thing in the universe and at the end of 22 it's the cringiest thing in the universe and something that you know you're not getting invited to

parties anymore People don't want to affiliate with you um and that uh going through that boom bus cycle of not just how other people are treating you but almost like in the way that you think you should be seeing yourself is very challenging if you derive too much of your sense of selfworth from how other people see you now look as if youc it really matters how other people see you because that's your [ __ ] business your business is how people see you what they say about You what they what they think it's like

to work with you and to have you on their side so it when you're VC it really really does matter um but the answer to my mind is always the same it's always the same answer which is be more transparent say what you really think and add value and almost all matter what the question is the answer is one of these three things so that has been what I've internalized is that you know as a VC You know sentiment against VCS in crypto has really gone up and down a lot over the last five years

right now I think VCS are much more villainized than they were in the 21 2020 cycle um and so there a lot of people who just think I'm an [ __ ] because VC and you know that's also fine um you there are times that I've pissed off other communities I pissed off the salon people I pissed off the cardano people I pissed off you almost anything that's big enough and Pocon knut you know anything that's big enough in reified at some point I've s something to make them angry and if you're not doing that

I'm like you're not you're not Ming if you haven't actually poked The Hornet sest every once in a while but um I I think to be honest uh crypto also has a very short memory and it's part of the beauty of this absolutely yeah people could be super [ __ ] mad at you and like I remember I I I had time that the Ethereum community was super mad at me now people think I'm an ethereum maximalist and I remember I wrote a blog post about evm and how the evm sucks and it went super

viral everybody in the evm ecosystem was just pissed at what I was saying and they were like how how dare you you know how could you be saying this you're just pumping your own bags and as investor you all right look uh is this fight the fight that I care about no if not delete it move on and go go uh Move forward and go back to being transparent saying what you think and adding value what's your biggest creation for the next 12 months I think mro is driving for the next 12 months uh I

think there's just be a lot of kind of fed watching uh the slow March of crypto adoption is kind of inevitable to my mind but I think it's also kind of slow I don't think it's going to happen in these big chunky ways that it did in the Last few years uh a lot of the villains that existed in crypto you know these these these big shadowy organizations that we wanted to take us seriously like Black Rock uh we sort of forget what it was like in 2019 to you know to try to get Black

Rock to pay attention to what we were doing and now black rock is on TV talking about Bitcoin like they owned it uh it's it's crazy the amount of progress that we've made over the last five years and people don't fully Internalize that it doesn't surprise me that things are going to be you know not as explosive over the next two to three years now that being said crypto's crypto you know when we enter into a cycle uh all these things th get thrown out the window you never know where things are going to go

and that may be instigated by risk appetite and and interest rates coming down I don't know but uh my base case is that I think crypto is going to do well but uh it's Going to be a lot less crazy than the 21 cycle thank you so much for doing that man that was a great conversation that my pleasure go