Ep. 69 Building an Industry Leading Crypto Publication with Jon Rice (Blockworks)

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Fundamental Value Podcast hosted by Joshua Frank, co founder and CEO of the Tie on Fundamental Value. We speak with leading analysts, traditional finance and digital asset firms, and investigate how leading minds in the cryptocurrency space research, analyze and quantify the value of digital assets. Quick disclaimer. This podcast was recorded and is being made available solely for informational purposes.

Speaker B: Today I am not excited to be joined by John Rice, editor in Chief at Blockworks Group. I'm just contractually obligated to be here, unfortunately. So, John, it sucks to have you on.

Speaker A: Yeah. And, um, I'm sorry that you have to do this. Obviously, that's, uh, it's. It sucks for you. But I would if you might just like to, you know, kind of do a shout out to your, uh, listeners. Um, all of them in order. So, Steve, Mike, thanks a lot. Appreciate you both being here.

Speaker B: John, obviously, very excited to have you on. John is a very good friend, has been for a while, and is, uh, one of the, you know, has the. Some of the most strongly held opinions in crypto, uh, and he's not afraid to share them, which is always a pleasure. So, John, let's get right into it. Why don't you, uh, you know, you're old, so there was a background before crypto. So maybe start there and walk into how you fell, uh, down the rabbit hole.

Speaker A: Yeah, old is. Old is. I'm actually, I think, pretty much one of the oldest people in crypto at this point.

Speaker B: Um, well, if you're over 30, you're in like, the top 10%, right? Is that how it works?

Speaker A: But, you know, the great thing about crypto is you get to work with lots of really young people who kind of, you know, just remind you how freaking old you are all the time. Thanks for doing that, guys. Appreciate. And, uh, you know, and then you find yourself, like, on slack going, what is clutch? Is this a thing? And they're all just like, dude, seriously.

Speaker B: Well, if it makes you. If it makes you feel even older. I have to look up adjectives and stuff now for my own team.

Speaker A: So, yeah, yeah, I've got them. They're actually start. They started sending me urban dictionary definitions when you're like, thanks, guys. So, yeah, so, yeah, but I'm old. I, uh, was, uh, I worked in advertising and marketing for about 15 years back in London. I was creative director for ad agency. Um, did the same thing in Boston when I moved over to the US 23 years ago. Um, crypto. I had owned a local media company. Uh, before this. I Started out my career as a journalist, a music journalist, actually, which was kind uh, of my dream job when I was growing up. If it wasn't Formula one racer or astronaut, it was music journalist. The, um, other two were a little harder to get. Um, and, uh, so, yeah, I kind of went from, um, a local media company, which I had this great mentor who said, why are you wasting your time on some little local media company when you should be doing something a bit more global or exciting or something like that? Um, crypto was. I was actually living in Missouri at the time, uh, and the people who kind of introduced me to crypto were a couple of, like, high school kids who, who, who invited me over to their kid brother's graduation, um, in this, uh, kind of prefabricated home that they owned, um, with a yard full of broken down Mercedes Benzes. This is true.

Speaker B: Which is when you knew immediately you should take their financial advice and buy crypto.

Speaker A: Naturally, these people are clearly, you know, killing it. And so at this, at this event, some random dude says, I hear you work with computers. I'm like, well, um, a little bit. And he said, what do you think of cryptocurrency? I'm like, fucking know. It's. What is that? And, uh, it turns out I had heard about bitcoin a little earlier in my life, but I kind of ignored it. Like, like all sensible people had. Um, and so there I am in this weird, you know, basically trailer home in, in Missouri, talking crypto with this guy, and I went off and started educating myself and, and then, and things went from there. I just thought it was compelling and interesting and obviously.

Speaker B: So the moral of the story is that, you know, when you get invited to trailer homes in Missouri, um, you know, you should, you should take whatever financial advice is given to you.

Speaker A: It is exactly that. And specifically that if you have just moved to Missouri and they've just started airing a show called Ozark on Netflix and your property happens to include a lake, and then you get into crypto, people are going to start assuming some certain things about you, and those things are not necessarily true. I'm not saying they're all false, but most of them are not true. So that's the good news.

Speaker B: All right, so you obviously discovered crypto, uh, and then I know you met Han, who's your co. Founder of Crypto Briefing, and started crypto for briefing. So I would love to, uh, you know, learn a little bit more about that journey. Uh, you know, you know, maybe speak a little bit to Crypto Briefing to Those who aren't familiar. I think a lot of us that have been in the space for a long time are very familiar. Uh, but really, why you just started. Just decided to, uh, you know, start a crypto publication. And what was kind of the need or gap that you saw missing in the market?

Speaker A: Yeah, it was. There was no journey, like, so here I am in this, you know, this trailer home. I get home, and the guy emails me, uh, an essay by Ben Yu. And, um, I read the essay. It was. It was a long read. It was probably an hour and a half read or something. And at the end of it, I was like, right, this. This is amazing. I need to do something with this. This is. This is compelling and intriguing. And there were some things that really stuck out from that essay that I kind of still remember today. And so I went off and started reading a couple of publications online and joined a couple of telegram groups. Um, and in one of these telegram groups, I met Har. We got talking. It, uh, was clear that we shared some, you know, kind of philosophy, philosophical, uh, ideals around what crypto stood for. And, uh, so, you know, we kind of branched off from this main conversation and started taking this conversation a little further. And I suggested that we start a media company. He says, why a media company? He'd also been in media, um, actually before this, too, and he knew how hard this is. And he said, so why do this? And I said, well, you know, the research. You'll bring in a lot of, uh, intellectual prowess to the research process. Um, I'm good at building, I think, media companies. Uh, so we decided we would do this. And then we didn't talk for about a week. And in that week, I built Crypto Briefing. Uh, the website commissioned a bunch of reporters. Um, and then I kind of came back to him and said, right, it's done. Let's do. Let's do this. And Han's like, what's done? And I'm like, crypto Briefing. What's Crypto briefing? That's what we call it. And poor Han, of course, is, uh, sitting there like, well, shit, now I guess I got to do something. So he went out and kind of, uh, raised some money, some seed money for us to operate with, and then he led the research initiative. And essentially what we did with Crypto Briefing was we were trying really hard to bring, uh, some sense and thoughtfulness to the ICO craze. Um, we identified very quickly that there was very poor information out there, but also a lot of opportunity for good information. So, you know, we tried to ascertain whether some of these projects were good, bad, indifferent, scams, whatever it may be.

Speaker B: And this was at a time, by the way, and we were joking about this, you know, uh, in consensus, when there were all these ICO review websites that were getting paid by the tokens for the reviews.

Speaker A: Right, exactly. Yeah. And we were completely the opposite. We took nothing from any of these people. We were not paid for play. And, uh, we were very clear about what we were doing. If the research team really liked a project, they might invest in it. And we would say in big letters, we are investing in this project. This is why. And that was kind of an interesting approach, I think, for crypto at the time. Um, I don't think you could do that today. You know, it's, it's a different market, different environment. People are a bit more sophisticated.

Speaker B: Well, because nothing's investable, right? Is that what you're investing?

Speaker A: Anyway, thank you, Gary Gensler. Jackass. So, yeah, accredited investor laws. They're awesome. Cheers, guys.

Speaker B: So, so, you know, crypto briefing was obviously, you know, it was a few years of your life and after that, uh, you know, crypto briefing still, still around and still exists. Right. Um, but you, you made the switch to Cointelegraph where you became editor in chief, and now you're at Blockworks where you're editor in chief. But maybe, you know, would love to hear a little bit about your experience at, at Cointelegraph, which, you know, at the time I, I think was the, the most trafficked, uh, crypto media company, uh, in the space. Right. This was a couple of years ago, really. Speaking about that experience, why you decided to, to make the switch. Um, you know, maybe a little bit high level.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, I mean, originally Jay Cassano brought me in to, uh, develop and launch the long format magazine for Cointelegraph. Um, and, and that was really interesting. The more thoughtful explorations of the people, the processes, the process projects in, in cryptocurrency was a really interesting idea. Um, and then when Jay went off to be CEO, he asked me to step up into the editor in chief role. And that was just disastrous. I mean, that was just. Editor in chief of Cointelegraph is probably the worst job in the entire known universe. Um, and it's not because, I mean, look, it's not because Cointelegraph is inherently bad. It's simply that you are, you have three eight hour swing shifts and then the weekend you have, you are literally publishing 24, 7 and you have to have an incredible level of trust in the people who are publishing under you. You know, the people who are the editors. And some of them are incredibly talented, incredibly good people who, uh, occasionally make a mistake. And one of the worst days of my professional life was when I went to bed at 10:00 one night, um, double checked that everything was on track, Woke up at 4, as I usually did, to double check again that things were looking good. And the Australian shift hadn't fucked anything up too badly. And they had and had fucked it up completely. They hadn't fucked the pooch in a way that I don't think any other crypto media company has ever done before or since. They basically said there was a bitcoin double spend which basically annihilates the entire value proposition of bitcoin. Uh, it says that Satoshi Nakamoto had no idea what he was doing. And uh, this whole thing is going to fall around your ears. And sure enough, it kind of triggered what looked like a massive crumbling in the price of bitcoin. So I woke up to that and Andreas Antonopoulos, uh, saying boycott Cointelegraph and all this kind of stuff. And me kind of thinking to myself, well, I would say the same thing, but as editor in chief, that would have been rude. Um, so, you know, and Cointelegraph, I mean, look that it does, it has some really, really high quality, exemplary people, especially on the edit, the editing side, some really quality people in editorial and a company structure that, despite Jay's and my best efforts, is simply an absolute disaster. It's basically just a, uh, it's not a real company. It's a collection of self interested entities who, who, who just collaborate a little bit in making something happen. But, uh, you know, it's, it was impossible to kind of really impose my vision on what I, what I wanted to do in this space with Cointelegraph, the, the bigger picture. So, so I got the, out of there.

Speaker B: And you went into retirement temporarily. And you know, we, we talked about it. You got bored very quick. It took like two weeks. And you know, it didn't seem when we were chatting, right, that there was anything that you'd be excited enough to do. And then I remember you talking to me about Jason and Mike. This was even before this was kind of on the table and the role. And you were super impressed with Blockworks. You love the team, you love what they were building. And I remember getting the call one day, you're like, josh, should I do this? Is this what I want to do? And you went for it and you're loving it. So would love to kind of hear why you decided to take to after, you know, being in misery for five years as editor in chief of Crypto Publications, you decided to subject yourself to more in the middle of a bear market.

Speaker A: No, you're right. I was, I was bored silly. Uh, and my wife, uh, she got to the point where she's like, for crying out loud, please do something, Stop trailing around after me with those sad puppy eyes. I mean, it's driving her nuts. Um, and, uh, and you know, frankly, I'm probably, even though I am old, thank you again for pointing that out. Um, I'm still probably a little too young to retire. So, um, Yeah, I mean, what they're building here is incredible, and I'll go into that in a second. But philosophically, there was still this sense that I really hadn't achieved what I wanted to achieve in this space. I do believe in what Crypto stands for. I believe in lots of the ideals. And although over time I've become a bit more skeptical about some of the people in the space, which I think is obviously fairly natural given what we've seen. Um, I still believe that the technology itself has a lot of potential. So, you know, people often ask me what my philosophy is. I tell them it's that I'm a pragmatic decentralist. Um, I tend to feel that the economic constructs of the 20th century, communism, capitalism, have, uh, failed us to some degree. We're in late stage capitalism where there is extreme centralization in, uh, in small, in small pockets, massive amounts of wealth, massive amounts of power in people like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. And I think that these people control algorithms and algorithms control our lives and our exposure to media and exposure to information. And I would like to see some sense that uh, of agency return to people. And I think that decentralized media and decentralized projects offer some opportunity to, uh, to reclaim some of that agency. So I still think it's important, but by the. And I'm not talking about libertarianism here. I'm not talking about people, you know, suddenly saying, oh, I don't want to pay taxes, I want everything to be completely decentralized. I think that's. And it's not going to work and it's stupid. I think what we really want is just a, a small return back to an America that I was a, you know, more familiar with in the 2000s. And ah, maybe some people were more familiar with in the 70s or 80s where you know, people really did have agency and opportunity. Um, and then the other kind of half of this is the skeptical advocacy. You know, I believe that somebody needs to tell the story of why crypto has potential, but they need to tell it with the, with the right lens. And it's not the kind of skeptics lens that you. You find with Stephen Deal or Molly White or David Gerard, you know, some of the more prominent crypto skeptics or. Um, it's really that you have to acknowledge that technology is neutral. The power is in the hands of the people who use it. And some of the people who use crypto are assholes and they're crooks and they're scammers and they're fucking horrible in every single way, and they deserve to be branded with hot irons. Um, but some people are trying really hard to do good things, and their story deserves to be told, too. So that's why I came back, I guess, at least into media. But in terms of why, what works?

Speaker B: Yeah, and so. And so I think that transitions well into my next question, which is how do you think about the Blockworks brand or positioning? Right. Uh, a few years ago, Blockworks was an events company, right. And, you know, put on some dinners and then did some podcasts, then put on events. And now all of a sudden, Blockworks is a. Is top five. And I'm sure the number is higher than that most trafficked media site in crypto. Right. And that number is growing. Right. Maybe it's three or four or whatever the number is. Right. And so how do you kind of view the Blockworks brand kind of globally and the different things that Blockworks does? Because, you know, the media part of it is just a piece of that. Um, and how is that different from its peers?

Speaker A: I think the, uh, Blockworks, uh, we haven't articulated this as a company, but, uh, when I was looking into joining Blockworks, what I saw was that their content was deep, that it was thoughtful, that, um, you know, when, if you listen to a Blockworks podcast, it's not just some headliner, uh, spouting off the same shit that you heard last week when that headliner was on another show. You know, it's people who are actually close to the technology who are the builders, the inventors, the entrepreneurs, and they're going deep on what it is that motivates them, what they're building, why they think it's important. If you go to the events, you know, we don't have the kind of consensus level, William Shatner turning up, um, and by the way, I fucking love William Shatner. Interviewed him myself, one of the nicest guys I've ever talked to. Um, but it's not that big headliner thing, you know, for the events at, ah, Permissionless and ah, a Digital Asset Summit. If you kind of look at the funnel of those events, it's stuff you want to, you want to go to. It's something you want to learn about. It's not just to say, okay, well, I heard this guy speak. He's a big brand name. It's, I learned something from this. So all the way through their development as a company, I think they've done something that they, again, they didn't articulate this, but I think I can. They've optimized for knowledge. If you read Blockworks, if you listen to a Blockworks podcast, if you go to a Blockworks event, if you read a piece of Blockworks research, you should gain some knowledge that you didn't have before. And I think that that philosophy is really exciting because we're still in the educational phase of crypto. We are not a mature industry in as much as, you know, globally. Everybody knows what we stand for or what we're building or how to use it or how to engage with it in any way. So Blockworks is kind of, even though it's not educational content, the way building Alexandria, uh, CoinMarketCap, for example, might be considered educational content, even though it's not the Cryptopedia. Everything you read here, everything you hear here, everything you hear here, everything you

Speaker B: hear,

Speaker A: everything that you get from Blockworks should instill some new knowledge or convey some new knowledge to you. That's what I think the Blockworks brand stands for. And that's what I'm trying to, uh, maintain and even improve on with the editorial brand.

Speaker B: And so let's speak about the, uh, editorial perspective. So how do you view Blockworks versus its peers? I mean, I think it would be safe to say kind of the group that people think of as the more serious crypto Publications consist of CoinDesk, Blockworks, the Block Decrypt, and maybe, uh, a couple of others that are kind of in that, with Blockworks, obviously in that group. So how do you think about the differentiation of Blockworks versus its peers? Uh, and where do you kind of see Blockworks being? I know we had this conversation a couple weeks ago, you know, three years from now, you know, when you look at what the future looks like.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I think as an editor in chief, you're constantly, you're always on a sliding Scale, right. You're between, for example, speed and accuracy. You're between, uh, you know, deep knowledge, which gets few views, and superficial knowledge, which can get a lot of views. So you're kind of thinking about traffic in terms of, you know, when we do a defi story, for example, when Bessie Liu, who's recently moved into the defi beat at Block Works, when she writes a story, we know, damn straight we're going to get a few hundred people who engage with that story. That is not a lot of people. And you wonder, why do we put the. Why do we put the effort into producing a story of that level of depth, um, with. With the attention that Bessie pays to it, with the time it takes to craft a narrative around something like that. Well, is because the real crypto natives, there's not that many of them, really. They're really deep. People are really deep in defi. There's not many, but those are the people who tomorrow are going to be, you know, saying, this is the. This is the publication I go to. For my information. They're going to be influencing people in the future, and we want those people to be reading and getting value from Block Works today. So. So everything's their sliding scale. Um, I like to think of blockworks as, um, optimized for knowledge, as I mentioned, um, but also optimized for accuracy. And that means sometimes you have to compromise a little bit on speed. We're not the fastest one out there. But then again, I think to myself, well, do I really want to, uh, compete with Coindesk on this? Because I don't think Coindesk is as fast as they think they are. Kevin Reynolds has done an incredible job at CoinDesk of putting together a speed team, of making sure that news goes out fast on CoinDesk. But often it's a headline, a bullet, and this is the developing story, and that doesn't fit my promise of the brand. If we're optimized for knowledge and all you get is an expanded tweet, I feel we've broken the promise to the reader, but that's a promise that Coindesk can afford to occasionally break because Coindesk has such great content across the board. In other areas, they have, I think, about 62 people or something on their masthead. That's a lot of people, even after layoffs. Um, and, you know, I can't compete with the breadth of content that they're currently publishing. So I kind of keep looking at it as, where do I want to focus Blockworks energies and our Very talented editorial department, um, which now consists of 16 people. And a lot of that is, as I say, kind of on the sliding scale. Occasionally, I want to get some traffic. Of course I do. You know, there is no. No harm in reporting on the updates to the Ripple SEC case, and any editor who, uh, worth their salt knows that's going to get a few views. But sometimes I just feel it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that we don't get traffic on this story because it's important, and the people who care about it will read it and learn something from it, and they will tell their friends, hey, you know, I got this with Blockblocks. So, yeah, at the end of the day, I guess it's, uh. Where do we sit next to some of the other companies. Um, well, CoinDesk is. CoinDesk is. Is. Is big. And they. They get everything. They cover everything. And that's. That's fantastic. Um, at some point in the next three years, there will be CoinDesk and the Block. That's my, uh. And, sorry, when I say the block, I mean block works. There will be CoinDesk. There will be block works. Block will be gone. That's. That's what's happening. And the block is. Is out. I'm just thinking about it because, um, trying to figure out how to say this nicely. Um, there are some really great people at the block who don't deserve what their leadership has passed on to them. And quite frankly, that organization was doing a very good job in many ways. I had a lot of respect for some of the things they were doing, especially after Mike Dudas left, um, because basically had zero respect for him whatsoever. Um, and I just like to go on record as saying he's an, um. It's kind of like, you know. You know, when you fly on, like, a really bad airline, you just want to make that experience known to the wider world. Mike Dudas is an asshole, so, um, hope he's watching. If so. Hey, Mike. Um, so after. After that, you did say you wanted me to be a friend.

Speaker B: I'm not saying anything. I'm not commenting. This is your. This is the John Rice Show. I'm just in the audience.

Speaker A: So. So. So the block, unfortunately, I just don't think there's any recovering. I don't think there's Recovering from what McAffrey did to them and from some of the other things that are, uh, I think, widely known within the industry about how that company operates right now. Uh, those things will become more clear as time goes on, uh, people will, will learn about what's going on there. And I think that they, I think it's on its last legs. But again, no, no disrespect to the very, very fine people who've been journalists and editors. There, I think is a failure of leadership. Coindesk, on the other hand, is going to do great. Even when it gets sold. Um, I think it will, it will continue to do good work. Um, it's, it, it, it is the standard by which other crypto media companies are measured and, and it's earned that over 10 years of existence. Um, I, I have my issues with it sometimes they have their issues with me. We're competitors. Um, but I have to respect what they've done. Um, do you want m. Me to talk about Decrypt? Is it worth it?

Speaker B: No, this is more of a, I wasn't asking you to go one by one. This is more of a generic how you think of differentiation. But I'm enjoying you going one by one and giving, uh, your opinion.

Speaker A: Well, okay, so on that. Optimized for knowledge, right? That was, that was my works kind of. So, you know, the block had optimized for speed at one point. They were, they had all these kind of Bloomberg editors who were pushing content out very, very quickly. Decrypt, to my mind, is optimized for traffic, right? That's, it's not the same as Clickbait. Clickbait is not, is not optimizing for traffic. Clickbait is kind of bait and switch. It's telling people they're going to see one thing and give them another. I, um, don't think Decrypt does that, but they are optimized for traffic, which is why they have 15 stories with Trump NFT in the headline. Um, there are lots of us in the industry who aren't very Interested in Trump NFTs, but decrypt is because it generates a lot of traffic and traffic is what they apparently are optimizing for right now. Um, maybe that will change in the future, maybe it won't. Uh, but yeah, I mean, uh, you do, you work out your niche within an industry, you work out your position and you try and build on that and widen your customer base. So, so as we get bigger, as Blockworks gets bigger, we will absorb more, you know, Web3 reporting, we will absorb more markets reporting. And both of those things are competencies of Decrypt and Coindesk respectively. So I think we'll probably compete on a more broad, broad based level.

Speaker B: And so, you know, two of. Excuse Me, Blockwork's major competitors are on the block, uh, and are up for sale. On the other hand, you know, Blockworks just raised capital for the first time ever. Right. And congrats to you and the team there, obviously. Um, why do you think that where others have failed, Blockworks has managed to find success and actually grow in this market when few have. Yeah.

Speaker A: So I would. I kind of challenge the implication that CoinDesk, for example, has failed. I don't think they have. I think they've been.

Speaker B: Sure, sure, that's a fair point. That's a fair point.

Speaker A: But I mean, the block has failed. But again, I think that's very much a leadership issue. I think it's, uh, an issue of. Well, it's an issue of credibility. Now, how can you reclaim that credibility after what happened with Sam Bankman Fried and the undisclosed loans, which, you know, we will see if more comes out about those. My, my suggestion is that it might. Um, I think, I think the reason that this has succeeded is because the, the guys, Mike Ippolito and Jason Yanowitz, are two incredibly impressive young men. And I'm not just saying that because, uh, at the end of this, I'll probably send them the link. Um, they really are, I mean, they, they did something quite incredible. They, they started with a revenue producing model, Right. They started with events, then they went to another revenue producing model, podcasts. Then they went to another revenue producing model, research. And then they kind of layered on top of that a media company. And that means that they did the hardest, longest, um, kind of the thing that takes the longest, last. Well, I mean, not that they don't have other big plans. We do have big plans for other products, but they waited. Now, that was the fundamental mistake I made with crypto briefing. We started with something that's hard and expensive, and then we tried to monetize it. And what these guys did was the exact opposite. Monetize relatively inexpensive or profitable type of, uh, revenue streams very, very quickly, then layer on top of the media company. Um, and I think that's been huge, but I think there's also that they've run the business in an incredibly sustainable way. We have an industry that does this. We know about the bull and bear cycles in crypto, and they've kind of ignored them. What they've done instead is built a more sustainable model.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: We hire very, very slowly, and then we don't fire during the bear market. You know, that's, that's kind of the Block works philosophy of how we grow the business. And although I've only been there for, you know, seven, seven or eight months, um, it took me a little while to, to learn just how they wanted to hire. Very, very, very carefully, exemplary people, the best people we can get. And then that way we don't have to, you know, kind of lay off 20 people, 30 people, 40 people, 30% every time there's a bull market, uh, a bear market. Sorry. So I think that that means that you retain the best people. I think it means that you have, ah, a model that people admire more. It's not so cyclical. They can value it more easily and then that attracts investment. And of course, the fact that they bootstrap this as well, that I think helps enormously too. They didn't, uh, take outside investment until just last week, so.

Speaker B: And so I think you've hit on this a little bit. But what do you think crypto journalism has gotten wrong so far? Uh, and I know that's a very broad question, right, Because I'm sure there are a lot of different things. Right. I know you mentioned speed being an issue and clickbait being another issue, but what do you think the biggest gap in content in the market is today? And where is kind of the biggest opportunity? Right. If you think about, look, you mentioned blockworks. Can't compete at the scale that CoinDesk can compete at today. Right. In terms of all the different areas of coverage. But where do you think you can compete? Where do you think you can optimize?

Speaker A: So if we, if we think about this, look, I, I'm not a mind reader. I don't know why Barry Silbert bought CoinDesk and turned it, and, you know, turned it into what it is today. But if I had to guess, I would say that Barry, uh, bought that company so that he could legitimize the industry with the idea that in so doing, all his personal investments and DCG's investments would rise in tandem with the, with the rise of legitimacy of the industry. And that would be a very, very, very smart move. I don't know if I'm right. I've never had that conversation about.

Speaker B: He also, by the way, which to his credit, bought it for half a million dollars. And, you know, regardless of what they sell for, it's going to be at least a 3 or 400x return, you know, from. Obviously he's put a lot of capital into it to get to there. Right. But based off the initial investment.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean, even if you ran that thing at a loss for those entire 10 years, so what? Yeah, I think, uh, I think it was a fantastic investment. Um, and what, what happened there in terms of how they grew that company? Yeah, just very, very impressive in many ways. Um, but in terms of what, what is still wrong with crypto journalism? I think we've got a couple of things. First off, we tend to be a little bit too celebratory. Um, we tend, we have as an industry a somewhat broken relationship with PR agencies. For example, you know, in mainstream tech, I think, you know, PR agencies and outlets work together a little bit towards a common goal. The common goal is connecting the, uh, PR agencies, clients, companies with the, uh, editorial's customers, which are readers. And what we're really trying to do is craft a story between their company and these readers that is accurate and fair, uh, placed within the context of the industry at large. And instead in crypto, because it speed runs everything, because we're so fast, it tends to be shit. We've got an embargo. And then the media company says, ah,

Speaker B: let me write that.

Speaker A: And then they put it out there and it's just gone.

Speaker B: Done.

Speaker A: Uh, and that's just a broken model. That doesn't, that doesn't work. It doesn't, doesn't work to the benefit of the reader. And I'm not m. Saying that obviously all of our news is from PR agencies, but it's just one example of how it's broken. And I'm trying to repair that a little bit, um, at Blockworks by saying to, uh, agencies and those people who have interesting, thoughtful pitches about companies that are doing cool stuff, give us lots of time, stop trying to make us compete against Coindesk and the block and decrypt for every story. Tell us that you have something interesting so that we can go and talk to this company, find out if their tech is interesting, find out if it's a fit for our readers, and craft a story that again, places that within the wider context of what's going on in the industry. So there's one way we're trying to do it, but then there's lots of other stuff. This celebratory thing where we just kind of clap every stupid meme coin. Oh, that I can't be doing with it. It's, it's exhausting and tiring and, you know, and then the legal threats that you occasionally get from some of these bigger companies when you, you know, when you publish a story they don't like, and the, you know, pandering to the community, there's been too much of that. All of that stuff, it's, it, it's, it's exhausting. Um, and, and you just, I think,

Speaker B: I think you're missing another one which is, and I think you'll agree, celebrating meaningless partnerships.

Speaker A: There was a, there was a point in time where for some reason Chainlink had the most incredible PR machine.

Speaker B: Oh, I remember that when they partner with Google, that was the kind of apex of that.

Speaker A: Yeah, it was, it was. And, and, and it was like we,

Speaker B: and that was probably 2019. I think that was probably 2019.

Speaker A: It might even have been 18. Sure. But yeah, and they would pump out all these partnership announcements, which for some reason at the time everybody wanted to write about. And uh, we got tired of doing it and said we wouldn't do it anymore. Um, so, yeah, these kind of partnership announcements, these fundraising announcements, a lot of these things don't really mean anything to the reader. They're really kind of marketing for the company. And again, just a bit of a hallmark of crypto journalism up until fairly recently. But, but now when you look around, I mean, if you look at some of the journalism that is being done, um, and, and some of the kind of, uh, the people who've gone off and done their own substacks, um, or something like Laura Shin's Unchained podcast, you know, you've, you've got independent creators and journalists doing wonderful stuff. You've got, I mean, like I say, I mean a huge portion of CoinDesk stuff is worth reading. Um, you know, not, not the bits that have unverified rumor in the headline. I'm sorry I had to mention that. But, but you know, the, the real hard work of journalism is, is corroborating sources, is not running on one anonymous source. It's not allowing people to co opt your publication from, for the, uh, marketing purposes. And some of those things have just happened repeatedly within the crypto industry. I'm not going to fix every single one of those every single time for every single story. But I'm trying really hard, uh, to make a difference and elevate the conversation along with other editors in chief, I think, who are trying to do the same thing.

Speaker B: So the most exciting and hottest topic these days, uh, and something you've actually spoken about, and I give you full credit on this for years, is AI. Right. And so the question that I have is really how you think about AI's role in media, uh, as a publication and using it as a tool or not using it as a tool, like what role does it actually play in kind of how you guys you know, how you think about creating context. I know this thing we've been speaking about. I mean I give John full credit since, you know, at least four or five years.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's uh, I feel as if I don't have anything smart to say anymore. I think four or five years ago this is like playing poker, right? If you play poker and then, and you're good at it and then all of a sudden everybody else learns to play poker and they study it really carefully and become better at you than poker, uh, then you're a shit poker player now.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: And I kind of feel like I have the same thing. It's like four or five years ago I thought there was a massive opportunity for Bloomberg terminal style news created by artificial intelligence using natural language processing. Um, back when we were GPT1 maybe or even GP. No, maybe it was GPT2, but, but I thought there was a lot of opportunity for snippet based kind of news. But now obviously it's evolved to the point where you know, uh, GPT can write whole articles, Bard can write whole articles. In, in terms of how we integrate that into the journalistic workflow, right now we don't use that as a tool. Uh, maybe the writers use it occasionally for research but certainly nothing that we produce is in any way AI generated. I am not using that as a tool in our journalism because it is simply not up to it yet. Um, interestingly one of our competitors is uh, Decrypt is using uh, a kind of AI generated snippet in the left hand side of its desktop website and it aggregates news from across the industry, rewrites it into a paragraph and then kind of adds a link to the original source. Um, which would be a fascinating lawsuit quite frankly. Um, which I don't want to bring because it occasionally sends us a visitor. But um, yeah, I think it's really interesting that obviously there's going to be a ton of revolution in the media space as a result of AI, but I don't have a strategy for it yet which makes me feel kind of again old past it, um, maybe just not thinking clearly enough. Um, but it's something that we're talking about, um, something we're going to address at some point in the evolution of blockworks. Because every media company is going to use some kind of AI generated content at some point. Um, it's just where it fits within your, you know. Right now if we're optimized for knowledge, it doesn't, it doesn't fit. Uh, if we were optimized for speed. I could absolutely see us doing AI, uh, generated snippets right now, but we're not so.

Speaker B: So moving away from journalism in the editorial side. Let's talk mainstream adoption. So crypto has clearly not gone fully mainstream yet. And obviously you can argue as to what that means or what that doesn't mean. But why do you think we are there? Or, uh, why do you think that crypto hasn't been as adopted as people a few years ago might have thought that it would be? And how do we get there? What does that look like? What does it mean to have mainstream adoption of digital assets?

Speaker A: I think there's a couple of things. First off, the nature of the technology hasn't been abstracted away from the user, uh, to the point where the user is happy with the safety of Krypton. But the more underlying issue, I guess, is that it just hasn't solved a problem that people care enough about. Within crypto, we love to talk about our ideals, we love to talk about decentralization, we love to talk about, uh, data privacy, financial privacy, whatever it may be. But truth is, the majority of the population doesn't give a shit. All they want is for it to work. And we have not created a system that just works. So there's that for a start. Uh, we're an unfriendly community. I mean, within the community, I think we're very friendly. We have some really great communities within crypto. The artistic community is one of the best I've ever seen. I love just watching those guys support each other in their artistic endeavors. And I think we have lots of community, but, uh, to the outside world, we're just talking in circles. There's actually an op ed, uh, today, um, on blockworks about this very subject. You know, we are our words, our descriptions of technology. I mean, they make no sense to the average person. So we haven't been good at being inclusive.

Speaker B: I think you could remove to the average person out of that statement.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's very fair.

Speaker B: Um, I mean, I agree with you completely, right? I mean, I think all of these words like tradfi to refer to anything in finances and in crypto, right? Like, I mean, somebody said they didn't like defi. They wanted. I don't know, I heard a different version of DeFi the other day. I mean, it's like every day there's a new acronym, there's a new this, there's a new that. I mean, hearing people speak about technology, right? And it's funny because I now find myself Going down the rabbit hole and using a lot of those same things when I speak about very specific and niche topics. Right. And I think it's, you know, I think one of the interesting things is, I don't know if you, I'm sure you saw, given your seat, but this Nike NFT launch where they're not mentioning anything specifically about NFTs, there's no mention whatsoever. It's all about digital collectibles on, you know, through Nike. I believe it's on Polygon, though I could be wrong. They don't even make a big, you know, deal about what chain it's on or how to, you know, or anything about crypto itself. But the fact of the matter is they're offering a product that people want and it just happens to be crypto, Right? And I think that's, that's really important because when you interact with the Internet, right, You're, you're not, you know, when I go to, you know, blockworks.com now, they just got the dot com. It's not no longer just.co. when I go to blockworks.com now, right. I'm not thinking about the fact that it's built on HTTPs and it's on the Internet and all these things and how the Internet works. I just know I'm going to the website and I get the information that I want. And I think that layer has been, you know, that layer needs to be abstracted away.

Speaker A: Yeah, couldn't agree more. I mean, this is why Reddit was successful in, uh, you know, kind of getting, uh, those avatars out there to hundreds of thousands of people. Uh, the term NFT has been, you know, what the fuck does it mean anyway? Non fungible. I mean, seriously, non fungible token, who is going to understand how many people in the population know what fungible means? You know, never mind what non fungible means. It's like, this is, this is a ridiculous term. It doesn't make any. It doesn't include people, and people keep trying really hard.

Speaker B: Did you see the Merriam Webster dictionary added. Was that you who tweeted that, that they added irregardless to the dictionary?

Speaker A: Yeah, it was me. And, well, I was retweeting somebody else, but. But, yeah, irregardless. And they're like, oh, shut up, don't start. You lost me at this point. But, uh, yeah, it's unfriendly language. We've got that going for us. That's great. We have, uh, you know, we also, of course, have stupid scams and awful people who get massive mainstream media coverage. But it really comes down to two things. Solve a problem that people care about and then make it accessible. And accessible also means free. Right, we, yeah, I'll go into that because I'm sure you have a question about my, uh, I actually, I don't

Speaker B: have a question lined up but you're welcome to go into it. But I do, I do have follow ups. But if you want to go into it now. If not I'll go to the follow ups.

Speaker A: No, I mean it's. Look, my belief is that um, and I thought this was fantastic. NPR on the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web did uh, an article in which they quoted Tim Berners Lee as saying the single innovation that led to the Internet was making it free. And what we're doing is more and more layer one blockchains, more and more which, which kind of abstract that cost away just a little bit and then incrementally decrease it. So you know, it's not ethereum with its 20, 30, $400 fees, whatever it may be. It's not, you know, whatever came next with, with its $10 fees. It's not Solana with its 10 cent fees. It's now it's Aptos and then it's swe and all of these, all of these blockchains are like incrementally decreasing the amount it costs to interact with the chain. So fucking what? Who cares if it's not free? People aren't going to use it. That's a fact. That's just life. If you are used to the idea that information delivery should be free, which we are because we have the Internet, then you are not going to suddenly decide this is enough of a game for me to pay for it. And I use the example of gamers here because I know everyone talks about how gaming is going to be the big mass adoption event and all I can think about is the reason the gamers hate NFTs is because they don't want to pay for them. They don't want to have some kind of recurring payment within their game that occurs without their knowledge or their permission. It just happens automatically when they mint an achievement, they clear a level or something like that. Now they get their badge and their badge costs them a couple of cents. That couple of cents is absolutely meaningless in practical terms. But to them it's like this was free. Why am I doing this? So the abstraction layer is not just the ease of use, it's also the cost of use. And for some reason we as uh, an industry just haven't recognized, I think that that is an important part of the equation. Stop trying to monetize this FAT protocol kind of, uh, thesis which dictates that value is going to accrual in a kind of revenue generating sense to those layer ones. Well, why can't it just be in as much as maybe they charge their developers some fee for, but even then the developers just pass the cost on to the users. I'm just waiting for a revolution rather than evolution in terms of what happens next in the abstraction of crypto.

Speaker B: So Speaking of the fat protocol thesis, um, you know you spoke about Reddit NFTs and working. Right. But Reddit NFTs, Reddit has its own wallet just for Reddit. It's not, you know, it's not just an Ethereum or polygon or. I think it's a polygon. It's not just a polygon wallet, it's a Reddit specific wallet. How do you get the user from that Reddit wallet to interact with crypto more broadly? Do you need to. Right. Does that user need to interact with other things? Right. Is it about the fact that the user knows that they're interacting with crypto or the fact that they are merely interacting with crypto? Even if they're interacting with crypto through 50 different wallets and applications depending on what they are, is that enough? And how does that accrue value to the layer 1? And does it accrue value to layer 1? Right, so that is the, that is the epitome of the FAT protocol thesis. Right. Does the value accrue at the L1 level or does that value occur at the application level in a situation like we've seen with routed NFTs? I mean, that's a very big question.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that is very fair. So the financialization of crypto is such a preoccupation in our industry. So I think what we've been very preoccupied with as an industry is the financial financialization of crypto. Uh, and the idea that you have to have an equivalent in, in fiat when you're transacting between wallets or between users or whatever. It may be that there is some kind of off ramp to fiat, uh, in, in everything involved in crypto. And I don't believe that's necessarily the case. Right. If, if you want to exchange your avatar and Reddit with some other user and I haven't used the project, so I, I don't know if this is how it works, but if you, uh, I'm assuming That you could, your, your avatar has some unique property or something and if you do want to exchange it, well, why does it have to have a monetary value? Why can't it just be, you want to share it with somebody else, they want to share it with you, but you still want to keep the individual properties that make it special. But that's what we've done. We financialize the whole industry to the point where everything has to have that. So obviously the biggest use case for crypto, at least in its early stages, is financial, right? And I think that's why defi will always exist on Ethereum, because Defi users don't really care if it costs 10 bucks or 20 bucks or 400 bucks when they're exchanging massive amounts of money, hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands of dollars, it doesn't matter as much, um, as. But I think that, you know, if we, if we can stop that sense that uh, everything has to like a wallet is actually a terrible idea, a terrible term, um, for a gamer, right? I don't want this in my wallet. I want it just literally portable. I want, it's more like a hard drive. You know, I want my stuff to be portable across game platforms or into the sequel to this game, but I don't necessarily want to have to trade it for money or for another object. I just want my, my special stuff, my digital collectible to be portable. And that, that's something that I don't think we achieve in crypto very well at the moment.

Speaker B: And so, and so if we have a world in which, you know, a blockchain doesn't matter what blockchain it is, right? And maybe it is many blockchains, right, Start to actually have these use cases, these applications where millions of NFTs are being minted in them and games are using them and things like that, right? And, and stablecoins are being issued on them and there's all these things, but those layers are abstracted away from the user. Do you think that means that value should accrue to the token, the underlying token at the layer one level?

Speaker A: So yeah, I mean, uh, again, if you're talking about a token, then probably yes, some value should accrue to that token, no doubt about it. Um, but if you look at those layer ones as infrastructure and then you kind of again going to compare this to the Internet because it just, it just makes more sense. You know. Cisco is an infrastructure provider for Internet backbone, right? Um, what Nortel Networks was, was a provider of, of you know, backbone services to the Internet. That went bust in 1999 or 2000 or whatever it was, it was very um, ah, somewhere around that era, you know, Oracle, Lucent Technologies, I mean some of these just big infrastructure type companies, couple of them survive, most of them fail. And that's kind of where I see um, you know, anybody who's trying to do general use blockchains, they're going to have to compete with the first mover, Ethereum, those that do it cheaper, those that do it better, those that do it faster. But at the same time I think that yes, if you have a token and then you have something built on top of that, where the uh, the, the application developer has to pay some kind of entry fee to use that underlying blockchain, then yeah, there will always be some value accrual at the layer one uh, kind of level. But it's got to get divided, it's got to be like, like the Internet people start building websites on top of that infrastructure and those websites are where lots of the value accrue. Um, and in fact at the end of the day obviously they, the uh, the FAT app really has been the successful model on the Internet. You know, Facebook and uh, social media companies and Amazon and E commerce companies, all of those things are really applications on top of an infrastructure and that's where the value has ended up accruing because that's where the user interacts. So there's always going to be some value for Cisco, there's always going to be some value for Oracle or what have you. But the main value I think is to the people who develop the apps.

Speaker B: And so I think we've already, we've already hit on this. If you have anything else to add, add or if not we can skip you know the question that this podcast is based off, it's called fundamental value is really how do you define or think about fundamentals for crypto? And I think we kind of hit on that. But if there's anything else you want to add, definitely go for it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it's uh, at the moment we're still not at that point. You know we can't fundamentally value a lot of things in crypto because we don't know where they sit and what their user acquisition strategy is and ah, whether they're going to have users at all. And tons of them are promises, not products and some of them are uh, iterating on an existing uh, premise as I said, like SWE or aptos, just basically making things a bit quicker, a bit cheaper and the build a better Mousetrap model I don't think really has. It doesn't have longevity. Right now what I want to see is revolution. I want to see people actually using these freaking things and that they designed for purpose. And that instead of saying to, you know, I mean, Sweet keeps telling everybody we are optimized for gamers because we're cheap. And I'm like, then you're not optimized for gamers because gamers want free. You're literally not fit for purpose. So I think we've got to like establish is, is, is this product actually going to have users now? Even if it's a very small number of users, even if it's a very, you know, even if it's a very specialized niche application, are they going to have any fucking users? They have no users, they have no future. So if I were fundamentally kind of evaluating projects at the moment, first thing I'm going to say is, do you have a product, not just a promise? And secondly, do you have a user acquisition strategy? Are you solving for network effects, if that's where you're going to? And um, for Christ's sake, please stop looking at market capitalization. It's the stupidest metric because you know all these projects with multi billion dollar market caps with liquidity that, I mean it'll be dried up in 10 seconds flat if everyone decided to sell. And you're just like, I mean there's just, there's no liquidity into which to sell really. Um, and I mean the use of market makers for across crypto, like without those guys, we got nothing at this point. You know, it's like just the entire market capitalization and perception of the crypto industry would collapse without good market makers right now. So.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, so, so my, my couple final quick kind of questions are, what do you think is the most exciting emerging area in crypto that you see?

Speaker A: I think the biggest need, I don't know if it's the most exciting because people have been talking about it for a long time, but the biggest need is probably in social media and human interaction. Um, you know, we're watching the collapse of Twitter in real time into, you know, Elon Musk's personal alt. Right, yeah, mouthpiece. And I'm just like, this is just, um, we can't as a species, surely we can't just keep accepting this.

Speaker B: So speaking of Twitter, what you're at, where can you people find you? That's one of my follow up questions.

Speaker A: Oh, it's at John Rice Crypto, um, on J O N R I C E Crypto. That's C R Y P T A John Rice crypto on Twitter. Twitter. I hate Twitter. I hate everything about it. I don't want to be on Twitter. It sucks. It is, but you can't leave.

Speaker B: It draws you in. It's.

Speaker A: Well, you have to. If you're a journalist in crypto, you have to. You've got to be on Twitter. But, uh, like I'm gonna be John R. Dot Bluesky or whatever it is. Social. John R. I think something like that.

Speaker B: John R. Truth Social. Is that, is that where people can find it?

Speaker A: I can totally see that, yeah. Um, but, but no, I, I just, I mean Twitter's falling apart and there is a clear and present, present need for a decentralized alternative where algorithms are not controlled by one person and where they can't elevate themselves so that they're pinned to the top of your feed. We need that. So it may not be the most exciting thing to say, but it is probably the most pressing. Um, and you know, I can see gaming as a huge opportunity for our industry if we treat it the right way, if we say, okay, we're not going to try and extract more value from you, the user, so that you can come use our technology. But if we say we're solving a problem for you, right, you don't have portability of data between certain platforms or games. I think they might be interested in that. I think gamers would enjoy that. Um, and then I guess the other thing is, uh, if you take away the term nft, NFT ubiquity is really the value proposal. It's not scarcity. Scarcity is, is literally just the first use case by artists who are often the most revolutionary technologists creating scarce art. Uh, is, is one tiny use for NFTs when NFTs become ubiquitous, which they will at some point. When you want data portability for your digital identity, that's when I think NFTs come into their own as well. So, yeah, I guess those are some of the cases I think are interesting. If you want to ask me about financial financialization cases, I'm uh, completely lost because it's all math and, and bell curves and knows what they are. I can't do it.

Speaker B: So my, my final question. You've given us a lot of takes, but, but which of your takes is the most controversial right now?

Speaker A: Ethereum is not fit for purpose. Bitcoin is not fit for purpose. Actually, Bitcoin might be fit for purpose. You know, if you, if you're really talking about. Well, it depends which purpose you, you want to. Of the many purposes that people advance as narratives. If you, if you consider it a store of value, it's probably, it probably serves its purpose. If you consider, however, that Ethereum is, is supposed to be the ground, the ground level, smart contract platform for crypto, it's not fit for it anymore. You know, and all these L2s, they're literally just. There was a, there was a great, uh, op ed published quite recently on Blockworks where somebody said, um, L2s are a bug masquerading as a feature. And it's true. What they're trying to do is scale something that doesn't scale very well. And then they're talking about data privacy on Ethereum and ZKS and all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, okay, so it doesn't do that very well and it doesn't do speed very well. And governance is really tough on Ethereum because of its decentralized nature. So Ethereum's purpose at this point, I think fantastic for the finance, for decentralized finance. I can absolutely see Ethereum being fit for that purpose. But for all the other things we're trying to squeeze onto it, it's old tech. I mean, Ethereum was what, nine years old? Something like that. The initial premise behind ethereum is that 8 or 9 years old in 2015.

Speaker B: Yeah, or 20.

Speaker A: And we have come so far in terms of technology from there and yet we still insist as an industry and squeezing everything onto Ethereum, well, it's not going to keep working. And although I love Ethereum, I love the idea behind it. I love the community mostly, apart from some of the Maxis who are just nuts, but of course nearly as nuts as some of the other L1 Maxis. Um, it's just not fit for every purpose. It's a general purpose blockchain that is particularly good for, if you don't mind a little bit overweight and if you don't mind a little bit of a pain.

Speaker B: And so finally, first, uh, of all, thank you, that was amazing. I enjoyed it. And we, we definitely have to do this more often, but where can we know our readers or listeners can find you on. On Twitter? So all three of my listeners can, can follow you. Uh, but where can they learn more about, about Blockworks or find you elsewhere?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean blockworks.comm. uh, just go readers on Blockworks. You don't need to read me. I'm boring as shit. I'm old as you, as you Noted. So, uh, you don't need any more of John Rice, but, but do go visit blockworks.com check out the research in particular. Um, the, the guys in research are doing crazy. It's like really, really impressive stuff. They're the guys who uncovered this whole thing that Arbitrum was trying to do with their billion dollar, hey, give us all our. Give us some money. And then. And you're supposed to vote for it. But they said, well, we thought it would be voted in, so we started spending it. Well, that was the Blockworks research guys who figured that out. Uh, the jump wormhole, uh, stuff that was block works research. So keep, keep an eye on those guys. I think they're super smart and I just hope they stay together as a team. Um, and then of course, you know, you can, you can find our blog, uh, uh, podcasts, um, on blog works.com was blockworks.com. but as you say, we, we did get the dot com, um, and come to Permissionless because, uh, Permissionless is, uh, supposed to be great. I haven't been to it yet because I've only been here for a few months, but, um, apparently it was, it

Speaker B: was, honestly speaking, it was one of, if not the best conference that, that the TIE attended last year, so I can attest to that.

Speaker A: Cool. Yeah, well, everyone says, I mean, everyone had a great time from block work, so I don't know what other people thought, but it was, it was it.

Speaker B: I think your point on hiding, you know, the, you know, signal from noise, I think there was a lot of signal there. The unfortunate. The, the only really unfortunate thing about Permissionless last year is that Tara was one of the big sponsors and they had brought sweatshirts for everyone. And this was about a day or two after Tara collapsed or maybe a week, and they were going to give them all out. And then somebody from Terra came and picked up all the sweatshirts, which is really unfortunate because I really wanted a Terra sweatshirt a week after its collapse. I was looking forward to it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've heard that like, FTX branded stuff is going on ebay for tons of money.

Speaker B: I have a really cool blockfi bucket hat if anybody wants to bid on it. You can DM me.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, I got a whole bunch of Binance swag. They haven't gone yet, but I'm keeping hold of it in case they do.

Speaker B: I have other crypto companies on my bookshelf that I'm looking at that I am sure. Sure are. We'll. We'll be following that lead.

Speaker A: So be. Before you know it.

Speaker B: All right, well, with that, John, thank you so much. This was great. Until next time. Thanks, everyone.

Speaker A: Um, take it easy.