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The soft skill you’re missing to make it in crypto / web3 with Rahim Mahtab
152 Plays2 years ago
Rahim is the founder of the #1 community in the Middle East, ArtsDAO, he has advised countless founders and projects and collected a lot of NFTs across many verticals.
He is a true cornerstone of this, loved and respected by all who know him. Discover how he got here, what his favorite projects are, how he approaches collecting and life.
- Partnership with Wasabi Protocol - #NFA #DYOR
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Transcript
Introduction to Raheem and ArsDAO
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Polymath Experience.
00:00:03
Speaker
I'm your host, Polymath.
00:00:04
Speaker
And today I'm introducing you to someone who I kind of consider like a guardian angel of the space.
00:00:12
Speaker
You can always expect a meaningful and well thought out contribution for him from him.
00:00:19
Speaker
His empathy and his kindness and his open-mindedness have no limit.
00:00:23
Speaker
And he's known amongst, among other things as the co-founder of ArsDAO, which is arguably the number one community in the Middle East.
00:00:32
Speaker
And I knew instantly upon meeting him, that we'd be friends for a long time because he basically embodies everything I value in people.
00:00:41
Speaker
I've been looking so forward to this conversation.
00:00:44
Speaker
I'm so happy that this day is finally here.
00:00:49
Speaker
Raheem, welcome to the show.
00:00:50
Speaker
Well, thank you for having me.
00:00:51
Speaker
This is probably the most humbling intro I've ever had.
00:00:55
Speaker
So I really, really appreciate it.
00:00:57
Speaker
I think those words were very grand and majestic.
00:00:59
Speaker
So I'm privileged to be here and thank you for having me.
00:01:04
Speaker
The Polymath Experience The Polymath Experience
00:01:16
Speaker
That's my pleasure.
00:01:17
Speaker
And they're also true.
00:01:19
Speaker
You were very highly recommended.
00:01:21
Speaker
I knew you and then you came recommended by 10.8, our friend in common, who I appreciate a ton as well.
00:01:30
Speaker
Man, you've been busy these past few days.
00:01:32
Speaker
How was London?
00:01:34
Speaker
How was FBS?
00:01:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:36
Speaker
It's been absolutely crazy.
Insights from Web3 Events
00:01:38
Speaker
I feel like it's kind of nice to see even in the most bearish times of the Web3 space that you see all these Web3 events really pop up all around the world.
00:01:49
Speaker
So I traveled to London for Zable London, which was an NFT-focused conference, but it was more on the builder side.
00:01:57
Speaker
And I think it's quite important to kind of go to these, contrary to what a lot of people believe in this space.
00:02:03
Speaker
They look at it from a very corporate point of view.
00:02:06
Speaker
But I think at the end of the day, you have to realize the tokenomics, the business structures behind any project, whether it's like your art blocks or whether it's like your PFP projects, whatever, there's like a business behind it.
00:02:18
Speaker
And just like learning the ins and outs and what we sees are talking about or what are the gaps with like security when it comes from a top level holistic approach.
00:02:26
Speaker
I think it's kind of nice to surround yourself with people who are very well versed in the field way before a lot of people came into the NFTs like myself.
00:02:35
Speaker
So I love going to these events because I find myself in rooms with people who are pretty well known way before the NFT space popped up.
00:02:44
Speaker
And I think there's a lot of knowledge to absorb on that end.
00:02:48
Speaker
And then jumping to future blocks, I'm at FBS, has been absolutely crazy.
00:02:53
Speaker
So that conference happens every year in Dubai compared to last year.
00:02:58
Speaker
It's almost like...
00:03:00
Speaker
6 to 7x bigger than it was last year, which is absolutely bizarre if you think about it in theory, because last year things were a lot better.
00:03:09
Speaker
But I myself, living in Dubai, where I know Web3 is doing really well, the regulation is kind of very pro-ed, I was shocked when I went at the event.
Growth of the FBS Conference and NFT Space Realizations
00:03:20
Speaker
the amount of protocol and chains and people building gaming protocols and metaverses, people creating.
00:03:27
Speaker
I was absolutely shocked to see such a big turnout all the way from the exhibitor end to seeing so many people involved at the end.
00:03:36
Speaker
It was like, I was blown away.
00:03:39
Speaker
So that has been really nice meeting some people from around the world.
00:03:42
Speaker
I met a bunch of people from Australia, from New Zealand.
00:03:46
Speaker
I met the team from Horizon Labs, from Animoca.
00:03:48
Speaker
They were all here.
00:03:49
Speaker
So it's been,
00:03:50
Speaker
It's been quite amazing, quite hectic at the same time, but I absolutely love it.
00:03:56
Speaker
It's really cool.
00:03:57
Speaker
It's the first time where, in a sense, this bear market doesn't feel like a bear market because there are still a lot of people building who don't even mention it.
00:04:08
Speaker
They're building as if the market was open.
00:04:11
Speaker
normal.
00:04:12
Speaker
And that's what it looked like on your, in your, in your videos.
00:04:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:14
Speaker
I think it's, you know, it's like a cliche thing.
00:04:16
Speaker
Everyone keeps saying that this is the best time to build, but it is true.
00:04:20
Speaker
Like, because if you're able to, to plant the foundations right now, then when you have,
00:04:27
Speaker
institutions or projects and brands all the way from fashion to music to cinema to anything that will be going to looking into this space.
00:04:35
Speaker
They will want to reach out to people who have a good fundamental knowledge in this area.
00:04:40
Speaker
It's funny because I had a very big realization in the last two days, which is something that I never really thought about, that I realized that
00:04:48
Speaker
All of us in the NFT space are kind of a lot more rarer of a commodity than all of us realize in the crypto world.
00:04:57
Speaker
Because I went to this conference and I met so many people.
00:05:00
Speaker
I basically got three discussions where I'm going to be meeting these people because they want me to join them in a consultancy capacity or like an advisory capacity.
00:05:11
Speaker
And this just happened like in a day.
NFT Market Dynamics Compared to Crypto
00:05:13
Speaker
and i was like whoa and the realization the realization i had was that a lot of these crypto folks are still not familiar with the whole nft space at all but they realize the value of it because they realize the value of web3 and ownership and decentralization and i was like whoa this is like quite like an untapped market because like you obviously have everyone talking about mass adoption in web3 so they're talking about
00:05:38
Speaker
the general public, but we are not talking about the people in the crypto space, which is 98% of what the whole Web3 space is.
00:05:48
Speaker
Oh man, that's so interesting.
00:05:50
Speaker
I don't know.
00:05:51
Speaker
It felt as if it naturally had, you were in crypto until you noticed what NFTs were, but I didn't realize exactly.
00:06:00
Speaker
What do you think the size is or like the proportion between people in crypto and people in NFTs?
00:06:07
Speaker
I would say like the NFT space has like, if you're talking about Ethereum, for example, there are like 8,000 to 10,000 wallets that are trading on NFTs, which is nothing, which is literally a drop in the ocean.
00:06:21
Speaker
Just to give you an example, in April, when PayPay launched,
00:06:25
Speaker
PayPay had about 120,000 holders in a matter of like four to five weeks.
00:06:31
Speaker
So just like look at the scale of that, right?
00:06:33
Speaker
And like we've had maybe, okay, maybe back in April, we had like max 20,000 wallets trading.
00:06:38
Speaker
And that's the entire NFT space.
00:06:41
Speaker
And I'm talking about PayPay, one coin, which had like around like 110,000 to 120,000 holders in a matter of like five to six weeks and stuff.
00:06:48
Speaker
So...
00:06:48
Speaker
That just shows you that and you still see when all this ETF noise that's happening in the space that you have such volatility in the market that there is influx and our flux of money happening, which you don't see anymore in the NFT space, even with big news.
00:07:06
Speaker
Even if there's an acquisition of a gaming studio or something cool being announced.
00:07:11
Speaker
you don't see things pumping.
00:07:12
Speaker
We didn't see a crazy, ridiculous pump when the Pudgy Penguin toys were announced, which you would have seen in 2021 or 2022.
00:07:22
Speaker
We didn't see that.
00:07:23
Speaker
But you're still seeing that, oh, you had that fake ETF news that was all over Twitter a couple of days ago, and the charts went up.
00:07:33
Speaker
So you don't see that in the NFT space, which just kind of shows that how much influx of money there is in crypto compared to NFTs.
00:07:39
Speaker
I had a real bull market moment.
00:07:41
Speaker
I think it was today.
00:07:42
Speaker
Because the Artifact team hasn't really communicated a lot directly to the community.
00:07:49
Speaker
They've had a very corporate type of communication these past few months.
00:07:54
Speaker
And I saw that Zaptio had done a space yesterday with Leap that...
00:08:00
Speaker
inspired a lot of people and I went to look at the chart instantly expecting like a 20% or 30% increase because that's what would have happened if we'd been in a bull market.
00:08:10
Speaker
Nothing.
00:08:10
Speaker
Zero.
00:08:11
Speaker
Nada.
00:08:11
Speaker
We're not there yet.
00:08:12
Speaker
I think it's interesting but like I would and maybe this is like a level of hopium in it but I think in some ways I feel like a lot of the market has stabilized.
Market Predictions and Project Stability
00:08:21
Speaker
And I think that's great to see.
00:08:23
Speaker
We've seen, for example, clones being between the range of 1.1 to 1.25 for a couple of weeks now.
00:08:30
Speaker
You've seen Bored Apes being around that 24 ETH for a while.
00:08:33
Speaker
So if anything, I think for... I've been seeing this for a while, which kind of sucks for the people who are going to get the brunt of it.
00:08:40
Speaker
But...
00:08:41
Speaker
A lot of these collectibles have to essentially have a big influx of change in holders of the right people getting in for the right value they provide.
00:08:50
Speaker
So if Artifact is being seen as a sneaker project long-term or like a parallel fashion project, that at some point, all these holders who got in it for the wrong reasons, sadly, especially if they bought it at peak levels, have to unfortunately exit this position on the basis of
00:09:09
Speaker
actual people who are into sneakers and the fashion line come in and that's when you'll have people like holding it like really really well and being like okay I'm in it for the long term I know what this project is building there's way less downside like I think there's way less downside now on a lot of the projects on the on especially on clones and doodles side like I feel like there are like one
00:09:30
Speaker
1 to 1.2 ETH range.
00:09:32
Speaker
Of course, I'm saying this relatively and it's funny we say that because we are all a bit privileged in the crypto space, but I think there's less downside.
00:09:40
Speaker
Even if they drop by 50%, it's only half an ETH in retrospect.
00:09:44
Speaker
It's not as much as having lost 97% of all-time high what we've already experienced from
00:09:51
Speaker
your moon birds to to to a lot of other cool cats and a lot of these other projects so i think it's a pretty decent time to start or at least be on the onset of placing your bets on who are the teams that you're looking at you know
00:10:04
Speaker
I do agree that there's less downside.
Raheem's Top Bets for the Next Bull Run
00:10:06
Speaker
There's not too much downside in ETH, but I can't yet guarantee that there is not more downside, like more significant downside in USD values.
00:10:16
Speaker
I could really still see like a significant drop before we start to get back on track.
00:10:23
Speaker
What's your top three?
00:10:24
Speaker
What are the projects that you're eyeing at the moment that you think those are my bets for the next bull run?
00:10:29
Speaker
Some of my biggest bets for the next Bulldog is art.
00:10:33
Speaker
Art in general, I think, is the only space where if you were like really being honest with ourselves, the only place where NFTs has solved a significant problem has been on the art front.
00:10:44
Speaker
So art is like a lot of art blocks collections.
00:10:46
Speaker
A lot of artists are definitely some people I've like really been collecting or placing my bets on.
00:10:53
Speaker
But if you are speaking on the project end, to me, no, anything.
00:10:57
Speaker
Well, I would just say on... Maybe I'll give in both categories, right?
00:11:03
Speaker
I think that would kind of help.
00:11:04
Speaker
So on the project side, I would say for me, any project that is building outside the Web3 bubble is where I think I'm going to place my bets.
00:11:14
Speaker
And by that, I know a lot of people already have plans to, but I've not seen or I have like a level of confusion, which hopefully will clear over time.
00:11:22
Speaker
But my top bet is...
00:11:25
Speaker
I definitely am a big believer on the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
00:11:30
Speaker
I just think that if there is one project that has made noise outside for better or for worse, outside the space, it has been that.
00:11:37
Speaker
If you tell people about NFTs, they know what Bored Apes are, but they wouldn't know a lot of other projects.
00:11:43
Speaker
They wouldn't know what an Azuki is or something.
00:11:45
Speaker
So I feel like there's an element of noise that Bored Apes, because of all the...
00:11:49
Speaker
celebrity stuff or all this other stuff that had gained so i think that's my bet my other biggest bet even from a portfolio allocation point of view is paji penguins i think uh it's a no-brainer to me i think just because like they're building like a bigger ecosystem outside the space they're going out at like a very nice mass market way they've kind of hitting all like verticals from like a mini
00:12:13
Speaker
online gaming side of things because people love playing Club Penguin back in the day.
00:12:17
Speaker
You have the Toys element, they're going down with some food stuff with their cookies and everything.
00:12:23
Speaker
So I think that's definitely a very strong bet of mine because with my ape, I obviously just have one ape, but with my Paji assets, I have a lot of Paji ecosystem assets.
00:12:33
Speaker
So that's probably my biggest allocation in my portfolio.
00:12:37
Speaker
So these are my top two.
00:12:38
Speaker
My top three, I have a bunch of
00:12:41
Speaker
projects that I feel like are competing in there, I would say Onivores, Chimpers, Clonex, and Doodles are the four projects that I'm like, okay, like these would be the place where I place my bet and see what happens.
00:12:54
Speaker
Because I feel like all these projects are building something that's beyond just the hype Web3 space.
00:12:59
Speaker
And I think that's the holy grail of where this space needs to go.
00:13:03
Speaker
And I think on the art front, I think there's going to be definitely a bunch of generative art projects that are going to do well.
00:13:09
Speaker
Some of the curated art blocks collections, I think, are definitely grails to look at.
00:13:14
Speaker
And then you have artists like Siobhan, photographers like Ty Lakey, Kat Simard, obviously artists like DK Motion.
00:13:23
Speaker
Of course.
00:13:24
Speaker
And I think one of the biggest artists right now is Rafiq Anadol with the acquisition of his artwork at MoMA.
00:13:31
Speaker
I think those catalysts are going to play a huge role.
00:13:33
Speaker
So those are some of my interests on the art front.
00:13:37
Speaker
You just taught me that it's Oniforce and not OneForce.
00:13:40
Speaker
I've been calling it OneForce in my head for a long time.
00:13:43
Speaker
Hey there, it's me again.
00:13:46
Speaker
If you're enjoying the content, you're going to enjoy this because you're going to have the ability to support us.
00:13:51
Speaker
I want to tell you about...
00:13:52
Speaker
our partner Wasabi Protocol.
00:13:54
Speaker
It's an option-based protocol that allows people to make bets on certain NFT collections.
00:14:02
Speaker
But that's not all, because what is right now NFTs could be anything in the future that is tokenized.
00:14:08
Speaker
They are on the brink of powering one of the most important layers of the future financial markets.
00:14:15
Speaker
I'll give you a couple examples of how you can use it right now.
00:14:18
Speaker
Imagine you have an NFT that's gained a lot of value because there's been a speculative hike and you want to keep that NFT because it's dear to you, but you also want to capture some of its value.
00:14:30
Speaker
After it's increased a lot, you could bet that the price will decrease by staking a little bit of capital and capture some of that value on the way down, which means that you get both
00:14:46
Speaker
of those aspects that are important to you.
00:14:49
Speaker
You get money, but you also get to participate.
00:14:53
Speaker
And the second one is, if you're convinced that a collection is going to go up, you can bet on that by risking some capital and not the price of the whole asset if you don't have it.
00:15:05
Speaker
Go check it out.
00:15:06
Speaker
The links are in the description.
00:15:08
Speaker
wasabi.xyz slash r slash the polymath experience.
00:15:12
Speaker
Thank you so much for checking them out.
00:15:14
Speaker
And thank you so much for using that referral link.
00:15:17
Speaker
If you do always do your research, only use tools and amounts that you're comfortable with.
00:15:23
Speaker
Remember that all financial investments carry risk and back to the episode now.
00:15:29
Speaker
I really need to start.
00:15:31
Speaker
I suck.
00:15:31
Speaker
I had Brian Brinkman as a previous guest and we had a great conversation and it's, I feel like I should have a lot more of these because you guys have a great eye for art and not only a great eye, because it's not enough to have a great eye.
00:15:46
Speaker
You also have to really understand yourself and collect for the artist and for the art and not for the expectation that it's going to do well, which is something that I'm still struggling with a little bit.
00:15:58
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that.
00:16:01
Speaker
I think there's no doubt about that.
00:16:02
Speaker
And I feel like this is what this space kind of had to flush out.
00:16:06
Speaker
A lot of people who got in it because there was a lot of attention.
00:16:11
Speaker
And I think it's completely okay.
00:16:12
Speaker
I know a lot of people demonize it.
00:16:14
Speaker
I don't think if people were there to buy...
00:16:16
Speaker
these people's art for whatever reason.
00:16:18
Speaker
I think there's nothing wrong with it.
00:16:19
Speaker
I always say that you either buy art or you collect art.
00:16:22
Speaker
And those are my words, my definitions.
00:16:24
Speaker
I'm not saying these are the official ones.
00:16:26
Speaker
But what do I mean by that is when I'm buying art, and this is usually me buying it on like a very surface level.
00:16:33
Speaker
So I'll see a particular color palette or like a concept or maybe I had a conversation with the artist.
00:16:38
Speaker
So these are pieces like I'll be like, you know what, I just want to own them.
00:16:41
Speaker
They resonate with me or they remind me of a moment in my life.
00:16:44
Speaker
I'm not going to dig up history and be like, oh, what was your last sale and things like that.
00:16:49
Speaker
And these art pieces I buy just because I'm able to and I enjoy it.
00:16:53
Speaker
So I think that category for me is different.
00:16:56
Speaker
I think there was a huge group of people that were in this category in 2021, 2022.
00:17:01
Speaker
I see nothing wrong with it.
00:17:03
Speaker
At the end of the day, if there's a market for people to buy art, there's no argument there.
00:17:08
Speaker
Then I believe there's the collecting side of it.
00:17:10
Speaker
That's where you're looking at it.
00:17:12
Speaker
Okay, I'm collecting this art.
00:17:13
Speaker
I love it.
00:17:14
Speaker
I'm maybe going to hold it.
00:17:15
Speaker
Maybe like five years, 10 years later, I'm going to sell it or auction it off maybe for my personal benefit or maybe to actually highlight the artist in some way and kind of accelerate their journey.
00:17:26
Speaker
And this is where I feel like knowing the history of why they're creating and what their story is and what their narrative is.
00:17:33
Speaker
That's where it kind of plays a role, at least for me when I'm buying art.
00:17:38
Speaker
I like this distinction.
00:17:39
Speaker
Let's backtrack a little bit because you were telling me about your background before.
Raheem's Journey into Web3
00:17:44
Speaker
And I like from molecular biology to design to filmmaking, like it's such a
00:17:50
Speaker
weird and atypical journey.
00:17:53
Speaker
And it feels almost perfect for getting someone into the space because it attracts like misfits.
00:17:59
Speaker
It attracts people who couldn't really find a nice way, a nice place for them in the previous paradigm.
00:18:07
Speaker
What was your hook into WebTree?
00:18:09
Speaker
What was that moment where you, how did you discover it and what made you stay?
00:18:15
Speaker
I have a very good friend of mine from high school.
00:18:18
Speaker
His name is Ridwan.
00:18:20
Speaker
So he and I went to school together.
00:18:21
Speaker
We had a band together.
00:18:23
Speaker
We were in science classes together.
00:18:25
Speaker
We've traveled a bit.
00:18:26
Speaker
And he was the one who reached out to me, showing me a picture of the moon cat and being like, if stuff like this can sell for $3,000, why don't you look into this space?
00:18:35
Speaker
And I'm pretty sure if there was anyone else who sent me that, I probably would have not looked.
00:18:41
Speaker
But that friend of mine, he's probably one of the smartest people I've ever met.
00:18:44
Speaker
He's been part of multiple startups at a very young age.
00:18:47
Speaker
And every time he worked there and he left there, those startups ended up being acquired by bigger companies or they ended up completely skyrocketing.
00:18:55
Speaker
So he's one of those people that I look up to in life a lot.
00:18:59
Speaker
And the moment he told me, I was like, okay, let me look into it.
00:19:04
Speaker
So this was, I think, around January of 2021.
00:19:08
Speaker
And then I was snooping around and I was observing.
00:19:11
Speaker
I had a lot of photography elements because I used to be a fashion photographer before.
00:19:16
Speaker
But I was still confused about what the whole model release is going to be around, about the rights, whether they are with the model or with me.
00:19:24
Speaker
So I was like, you know what, I'm not going to put out my photography content.
00:19:27
Speaker
I ended up putting some of my digital art content.
00:19:29
Speaker
out right around the time when the people sale happened i think a week or two after it and like suddenly like you know like people were interested in my art and that was probably like i can't even explain i think it was one of the most beautiful feelings i've ever had in my entire life and i say this because when i used to be a freelance photographer people would always tell me uh that must be so amazing to to work for yourself and have your own schedule and things like that which it absolutely was i've always enjoyed
00:19:56
Speaker
working by myself because I have like certain ethos and certain time management things and just like the way I like to work which I'm able to control because it's just me there however there was an element at the end of the day I was still working for clients so I still had to meet deadlines or be like hey it doesn't matter if it's your best friend's wedding we need this project done by like xyz date so of course like I could pick and choose my projects but I was still tied to certain clients and stuff however when I ended up selling my art
00:20:26
Speaker
That was like the peak of that because I was like, I created this art.
00:20:29
Speaker
So this art piece I had, it was called Garden of Eden, but it was done almost in space.
00:20:35
Speaker
So there was like almost like a tree in the middle of the space and there was like this ocean and there was like this astronaut rowing into and going to that tree in a boat and stuff.
00:20:45
Speaker
So I was like, it's so wild that I just created this piece out of my imagination.
00:20:49
Speaker
It's like the most abstract thing ever.
00:20:52
Speaker
And there's someone around the world who's like, you know what, I'm going to pay a couple of hundred or like, I think a thousand, a thousand, $500 for it, which was like, okay, this is wild.
00:21:01
Speaker
So I think that really got me hooked because I was like, that is the day I really felt what being independent really, really means.
00:21:09
Speaker
I would be like, that was my biggest hook to be in this world.
00:21:12
Speaker
I love this.
00:21:12
Speaker
It's really inspiring.
00:21:16
Speaker
And we have that in common that we believe.
00:21:18
Speaker
that Web3 is before anything, a human connector and, and to have it illustrated in such a way is, is amazing.
00:21:25
Speaker
One other thing that you said that I love and what that I think means says a lot about your character.
00:21:32
Speaker
You, you were telling me that music is another person in your life and I can take it as face value.
00:21:38
Speaker
And that's, and that's awesome.
00:21:39
Speaker
And you were telling me about the styles you love and it's so,
00:21:43
Speaker
diverse and interesting like you are.
00:21:45
Speaker
But I also think that it shows a certain sensitivity that I think is important to succeed in this space, whether it's for collecting or for buying things.
00:21:59
Speaker
It's good to not just act on your brain and on your analytical thinking.
00:22:05
Speaker
I think it's important to access that other part of you that you have to
00:22:10
Speaker
And I was wondering if, because sensitivity is not something that's very easy to nurture in our society and especially in men.
00:22:20
Speaker
And I was wondering, is this something that you actively have cultivated about you?
00:22:25
Speaker
Is it something that at some point you try to maybe rid yourself of to fit in more in society?
00:22:32
Speaker
What's been your relationship to that sensitivity?
00:22:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:35
Speaker
Beautiful question.
00:22:36
Speaker
Wow.
00:22:38
Speaker
I think this is the first time ever someone I think has gone the closest to understanding when I say that music is a person to me, what it really means.
00:22:47
Speaker
And I think you're the first person to like really understand the depth of it.
00:22:51
Speaker
So I really, really appreciate that understanding and observation and this question.
00:22:57
Speaker
So I feel like I've always had this in me to a certain degree.
00:23:01
Speaker
I've always kind of
00:23:03
Speaker
identified myself as a very empathetic person.
00:23:07
Speaker
I would also say that I have been very fortunate enough to be surrounded by friends and family from a very young age that helped me cultivate it.
00:23:16
Speaker
And especially when it comes to being a man, like, you know, you have society always telling you the other way around.
00:23:22
Speaker
But I think growing up, I had like two of my closest friends were these two girls.
00:23:28
Speaker
And I think there was like a lot of, a lot of my understanding of what
00:23:32
Speaker
of what emotion is or what expression like really means or what it is to be human actually came from them empowering it for me and never asking me or expecting me to be something else.
00:23:46
Speaker
Whereas I had like a lot of guy friends who kind of would do that.
00:23:49
Speaker
So I think those two people kind of played like a very big part in my life helping me to cultivate it.
00:23:55
Speaker
So I feel like in some ways it was always there, but like I had people to cultivate it.
00:24:00
Speaker
And of course, there are times where it's obviously not easy.
00:24:03
Speaker
People obviously love to put other people in boxes.
00:24:07
Speaker
So it has its own challenges.
00:24:10
Speaker
But I'm one of those people that I believe in being authentic to yourself.
00:24:15
Speaker
And I am very true to who I am.
00:24:19
Speaker
If people resonate with who I am,
00:24:22
Speaker
I would be, would be like the closest of friends and stuff.
00:24:25
Speaker
And if you don't, it's, it's completely fine.
00:24:27
Speaker
We are not cut from the same thread and that's okay.
00:24:31
Speaker
You can be, or you can associate with yourselves, whoever you want to do with it.
00:24:37
Speaker
So, but if we don't, why we don't, why no hard feelings and I wouldn't want to waste my time with them.
00:24:42
Speaker
I don't expect them to waste their time.
00:24:45
Speaker
We don't have to sit and convince ourselves.
00:24:47
Speaker
I, yeah, I just feel like I'm, I'm kind of pretty authentic to it when it comes to that.
00:24:52
Speaker
What's really mind-boggling about you is that your authenticity, even though you mostly communicate via text format, seems to transcend the digital.
The Importance of Authenticity and Empathy Online
00:25:04
Speaker
Because I've seen you have...
00:25:06
Speaker
takes have opinions that voiced by someone else would have created a form of backlash or a form of, I don't know what you're talking about because it doesn't fit into their view of the world.
00:25:20
Speaker
But somehow the way you portray yourself on the internet and the way you express yourself seems to transcend the format and people see the authenticity and it digs them in
00:25:34
Speaker
It allows for them to dig into being a more authentic person and how they've respond, which is, I don't know, there's a story, there's a case there that we need to dig deeper in.
00:25:46
Speaker
No, that's very nicely said.
00:25:48
Speaker
I really, really appreciate it.
00:25:50
Speaker
I believe that there was this awakening I had like a couple of years ago.
00:25:54
Speaker
That let's say if you and I, we have an opposite view on like something that's very crucial, okay?
00:26:00
Speaker
On like an humanitarian front, let's say it's very crucial and I'm completely against on something that you said.
00:26:06
Speaker
The issue becomes if I shun you out or if I remove you from my life or like, you know, I'm very aggressive to your take, I feel like it...
00:26:14
Speaker
it doesn't fix anything.
00:26:15
Speaker
It doesn't add any value because I can sit and talk with my friends and we can vibe with on a humanitarian issue and be like, oh my God, I totally agree with you.
00:26:25
Speaker
We so get it.
00:26:26
Speaker
But that's not fixing anything.
00:26:27
Speaker
That's not adding anything because we two are already on the same page.
00:26:31
Speaker
The actual conversation...
00:26:33
Speaker
I would want to have with would be with someone like you because we need to fix that gap.
00:26:37
Speaker
We need to realize that am I misunderstanding this or you are misunderstanding this or where is it coming from or why is that nuance even there to begin with?
00:26:45
Speaker
So I have this tendency to like really sometimes even actually...
00:26:50
Speaker
try to be conscious of it and be like, okay, if there are people who don't agree with this or who don't see this, why is that?
00:26:58
Speaker
And how can we find a middle ground to kind of have an effective communication so that even if this person feels like
00:27:05
Speaker
They don't want to publicly on the internet admit that they were wrong or right or whatever, that they actually go away from the conversation and go on Google and search what I said or the conversation that we had.
00:27:16
Speaker
And I feel like that's very important because I was having this discussion with a friend of mine last night.
00:27:21
Speaker
I think one of my biggest learnings through life as I've grown older is the concept of...
00:27:27
Speaker
I feel like the entire world tells you that everything is black and white, which is like the most like ridiculous statement I've come to realize that people put you, you're either part of the red pill movement or the blue pill movement.
00:27:39
Speaker
You are either one thing or the other.
00:27:41
Speaker
And I think like more often than not, that's not the case because there is like, we are like complex beings with so much cultural differences and ideas and ideologies.
00:27:51
Speaker
And I think it's completely bizarre to kind of put people in boxes.
00:27:55
Speaker
Like,
00:27:55
Speaker
Growing up, one of the things you would always hear that you are either left brain or you're either right brain.
00:28:01
Speaker
Either you're analytical and logical and nerdy and geeky or you're this creative, free-spirited person and stuff.
00:28:09
Speaker
And I feel like I was one of those people who were kind of a mix of two.
00:28:12
Speaker
And I was like, wait a second.
00:28:14
Speaker
I love maths.
00:28:15
Speaker
I love science.
00:28:16
Speaker
I'm very geeky.
00:28:17
Speaker
At the same time, I love music.
00:28:19
Speaker
I love dance.
00:28:20
Speaker
I love cinema.
00:28:21
Speaker
Why is it that I'm being forced to...
00:28:24
Speaker
be in a particular box.
00:28:26
Speaker
And I think I tend to think that a lot whenever I'm trying to converse that I'm like, if I'm just going to get the same people who I know are going to agree with me, there's no point in having this conversation.
00:28:35
Speaker
Like we can sit and be in that echo chamber.
00:28:38
Speaker
And what is it that really doing?
00:28:39
Speaker
But I think transcending into people who don't see the world in the same way are the people that we need to reach out to.
00:28:45
Speaker
Even if you agree or disagree, that doesn't matter.
00:28:48
Speaker
But I think it should ignite a thought for them to be like, you know, huh, I never thought about that, you know?
00:28:53
Speaker
I do.
00:28:54
Speaker
It's beautifully put.
00:28:55
Speaker
And it's the only way for growth.
00:28:57
Speaker
And what I think people fail to realize is that there's no such thing as status quo or as stagnation or we're in constant equilibrium in between and we're going back and forth.
00:29:12
Speaker
And if you're not learning, you're de-learning.
00:29:15
Speaker
If you're not growing, you're de-learning.
00:29:19
Speaker
reducing.
00:29:20
Speaker
That's what's happening.
00:29:21
Speaker
That's why it's really important that what you're saying be shared because we need to learn to have those conversations.
00:29:30
Speaker
And what I found, I used to have a huge ego.
00:29:33
Speaker
I was really, really insecure when I was younger and I developed a huge ego that was fed by my intellect.
00:29:41
Speaker
And I had strong, I was smart and also, I
00:29:46
Speaker
like on the emotion side, like I understood people and I, and so I could spin things that would make people see how I saw fit.
00:29:54
Speaker
But when you're doing that, you're closing a very important door that allows you to learn from the people that are, that are around you because, but when you're being open-minded, like you are and being somewhat permeable to outside feedback,
00:30:12
Speaker
you're in constant growth because you have your own data set made of your own experiences and it's being fed constantly with the data sets of other people and with their own lessons.
00:30:23
Speaker
And it allows you to have a much faster and much more efficient feedback loop.
00:30:27
Speaker
And when someone who's being closed off is only going to grow one X, you're going to grow a hundred X when you're, when you're keeping that open.
00:30:35
Speaker
And yeah,
00:30:37
Speaker
We need more people like you and like myself on the internet to have those conversations without judgment, without evangelism and trying to like push an agenda and push a certain way of thinking and allowing that you may say something and it's planting a seed.
00:30:52
Speaker
It doesn't matter if the tree doesn't grow instantly.
00:30:56
Speaker
It can take time and it will.
00:30:58
Speaker
No, I absolutely agree.
00:31:00
Speaker
And this is also, this is where, just going back to what I was saying earlier, I don't think the burden is on people trying to only force themselves to be open-minded, but it's people on the other end as well.
00:31:13
Speaker
It's cultivating that environment that we let people who are not open-minded to be like, you know, how can we get this person to be open-minded?
00:31:21
Speaker
One of my favorite books I've ever read, which I believe that
00:31:24
Speaker
every single person on this planet should read is how to win friends and influence people.
00:31:28
Speaker
And it talks about, it's such a beautiful book.
00:31:31
Speaker
I read it like every couple of years and I understand it on like a deeper level.
00:31:36
Speaker
And they have this whole bit that people essentially at the end of the day identify themselves with their thoughts, with their beliefs.
00:31:42
Speaker
That's what human beings are.
00:31:44
Speaker
And the moment if I come in the room and I...
00:31:48
Speaker
disagree with your thought i'm not disagreeing with your thought i'm disagreeing with you as a person and and going to the laws of biology self-preservation kicks in you have a fight or flight response so it's almost like a biological psychological conversion need for you to to fight against and be like no you are wrong and i have to stand my ground as a self-preservation uh tactic all the way from a from a mental level to a biological level and i think it's like the moment you you realize that
00:32:18
Speaker
That at the end of the day, the people are, whatever beliefs they have, whatever thoughts they have is a lot more nuanced.
00:32:25
Speaker
There's a reason for that.
00:32:26
Speaker
There's an environment for that.
00:32:28
Speaker
And I think you have to kind of like break it down of how can we like really fix or work around it to get this other person to
00:32:35
Speaker
to listen and have an open mind or why is it that they have a closed mind because that's not how human evolution actually works from a biological point of view we are wired to which is what survival of the fittest is is that we are we are wired to to be able to adapt to have the ability to adapt some people do and some people do in certain
00:32:56
Speaker
microorganisms do and some don't but we have this innate thing in ourselves to adapt to our environment and if there's anything that's inhibiting us why is that where is it coming from and how can we we we change the power dynamic over there i think the issue is that love is not a big enough component of our socialization because when you are loved within
00:33:21
Speaker
your home or within your social circles when you're a child, you develop it from the inside.
Legacy and Art in the Digital Age
00:33:28
Speaker
And so if I have deep self-love and you tell me that this or that belief that I have is not actually accurate and that you tell it with love too, that you're not telling me, oh, you're an asshole because what you're saying is not true, then there's no problem.
00:33:43
Speaker
I'll listen to you.
00:33:44
Speaker
I remember having this conversation with someone who I was quite close to in the business field.
00:33:49
Speaker
And I came out of, she was a mentor to me.
00:33:52
Speaker
And I came out of it, out of one conversation we had feeling like really not very good because she was so like tough.
00:34:00
Speaker
So, and I told her like, hey, I didn't feel so good after that meeting.
00:34:04
Speaker
And she said, yeah, but we don't have time to make you feel good.
00:34:09
Speaker
Or I don't remember exactly the words she used because it's business.
00:34:13
Speaker
And I think that's what's wrong.
00:34:15
Speaker
It's that because we are in this, oh, this is Twitter.
00:34:19
Speaker
So this is the accepted behavior.
00:34:21
Speaker
It's cynical and it's business.
00:34:24
Speaker
And so for business, we're after efficiency and productivity.
00:34:28
Speaker
Whereas
00:34:29
Speaker
actually all of that is just human connection.
00:34:33
Speaker
And so whether you're in a work format or whether you're talking or playing a game or doing whatever, you need to act from a place of open-mindedness and from a place of love and of understanding that people are going to be like whatever they are and it's not against you and you shouldn't be against them and you should just live and confront and have those opposing views and with kindness.
00:34:58
Speaker
Beautifully put.
00:34:58
Speaker
I absolutely, absolutely agree.
00:35:01
Speaker
I'm excited for this one.
00:35:02
Speaker
When we were preparing this conversation a few weeks ago, you talked about the three deaths, that concept being a reason, one of the reasons for people to put touches of their existence on the internet.
00:35:18
Speaker
Can you, can you like enlighten me?
00:35:20
Speaker
I'm just going to sit back and relax because I love this part.
00:35:23
Speaker
Amazing.
00:35:24
Speaker
So many years ago, this was I think in high school or college, I had this thing.
00:35:28
Speaker
So I used to have a band with the same gentleman I mentioned earlier with one.
00:35:33
Speaker
And we ended up putting our song on YouTube.
00:35:36
Speaker
We had like a heavy metal band.
00:35:37
Speaker
We ended up putting it.
00:35:38
Speaker
It has like maybe 2,000, 3,000 views.
00:35:41
Speaker
But like I love going back to it every couple of months and just looking at who are the people listening.
00:35:46
Speaker
And I love doing that because you have like the most...
00:35:50
Speaker
obscure countries that pop up that like you wouldn't hear about like European continents and like you know like South African continents and you're like whoa like I didn't even know this country existed but there is a person out there from that particular city who decided to like listen to this song for like two minutes and like 35 seconds and you're like
00:36:08
Speaker
There's something beautiful in that, that you don't even know if this person speaks your language or who they are, how old they are, but there's a connection.
00:36:16
Speaker
And I used to love that.
00:36:17
Speaker
And I used to, after that happened, I would always tell people to put a piece of their specialty art on the Internet.
00:36:24
Speaker
just so that it could immortalize them as a human being, because art is an expression and it should be immortalized.
00:36:30
Speaker
And it's funny because then the whole blockchain thing came and then everyone's like, huh, we should have like provenance.
00:36:37
Speaker
And I was like, that makes total sense.
00:36:39
Speaker
I've been talking about this for the last like 10 years since I was in high school.
00:36:42
Speaker
And then I came across this
00:36:44
Speaker
concept which I heard it in a podcast or in a YouTube video I'm not quite sure but it was essentially talking about how there are in Mexican culture you die three times in your life and the first death is the moment you lose the will to live and this could be because of like a particular trauma or
00:37:02
Speaker
or any major incidents that happen in your life.
00:37:05
Speaker
The second death was your actual physical death, when your heart stops beating and your brain stops functioning, when you're clinically declared dead.
00:37:13
Speaker
The third one is when the last person who's ever known you
00:37:18
Speaker
would ever say your name.
00:37:20
Speaker
So for most people, until and unless you are a famous celebrity or any famous person, the last person to ever know your name would be probably your grandkids, your great-grandkids, maybe a generation or two.
00:37:33
Speaker
But after that, very likely people wouldn't know who you were
00:37:37
Speaker
how tall you were, how did you sound, like there's like no, there's no proof of you left on planet Earth that you ever existed.
00:37:45
Speaker
And I love, like when I came across that, I was like, I want to prolong the third death of mine.
00:37:51
Speaker
And I'm just like fascinated by the idea.
00:37:53
Speaker
It doesn't come from a place of like ego or like fame or something, but I just find
00:37:58
Speaker
Like I look at it from like a science point of view, right?
00:38:01
Speaker
Like your galaxy is like millions of years old.
00:38:04
Speaker
You have like millions of galaxies out there in this grand universe.
00:38:07
Speaker
Out of that, we are in this Milky Way.
00:38:09
Speaker
We are on this planet Earth.
00:38:11
Speaker
Out of like, you know, 7.2 billion people, you're this one grain of sand.
00:38:16
Speaker
And I just feel like there's some beauty in it because in the midst of so much chaos of Big Bang Theory or whatever it is, that things move around for you to exist.
00:38:26
Speaker
And I just find it bizarre that that thing just stops existing.
00:38:30
Speaker
So I kind of just became obsessed with this idea of prolonging my death.
00:38:35
Speaker
And I think it's an interesting concept if you are an existential person.
00:38:40
Speaker
like me, I think there's some beauty in it.
00:38:43
Speaker
I actually had an art piece I made, it was called Sowing Seeds.
00:38:48
Speaker
And it's essentially, it's a skeleton in a forest and there are flowers growing underneath, like through the skeleton.
00:38:55
Speaker
So they're coming out through the rib cage.
00:38:58
Speaker
And they're glowing and they're like beautiful blue, red color flowers.
00:39:01
Speaker
And the piece is called sowing seeds.
00:39:03
Speaker
And it's around the idea of like sowing, like, you know, everyone talks about doing right by people, about with your family and your friends and your spouses.
00:39:11
Speaker
But like, no one talks about like leaving a piece of you behind that actually adds to the world.
00:39:17
Speaker
That you leave an impact, even if it's just one person that like, you know, it actually has like your existence had a meaningful impact.
00:39:24
Speaker
impact on the grand scheme of things and it was around the idea that even after you die you you sow a seed that sprouts into like a beautiful flower or like this glowing flower that kind of leads some sort of beauty on on planet earth i love this because when when you were talking even even after we briefly talked about it last time i still had that third death as a um
00:39:51
Speaker
ego perspective of you want to prolong that because it will make you feel good and valued that people will still be talking about you.
00:39:59
Speaker
And then as you were talking, it made me realize that if you're a beautiful person, if you've worked hard to become a good person and to be able to
00:40:14
Speaker
share it and to plant those seeds like you're beautifully describing, then it makes even more sense, even on an evolutionary perspective, for you to plant those seeds.
00:40:24
Speaker
And what better soil to plant them on than on the blockchain?
00:40:30
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:40:30
Speaker
I absolutely, absolutely agree.
00:40:32
Speaker
I've been going down the Balaji rabbit hole recently and the network state.
00:40:37
Speaker
And in the book, he's talking about, I don't remember exactly how he describes it, but blockchain is a basically tool for history because any event that happens on the blockchain is going to be there as long as there is electricity in the world.
00:40:56
Speaker
It allows all of us to have meaningful impact and for it to be
00:41:00
Speaker
and for it to be recorded for eternity.
00:41:03
Speaker
And I loved what you were saying also in our conversation because it touches back on that point that yes, there is blockchain as an objective source of history, but we still need basically the UI to interpret it.
00:41:16
Speaker
And you were talking about interesting, like...
00:41:19
Speaker
events that happened around some projects.
00:41:21
Speaker
And I wanted to see if you'd indulge me in recovering some of those and what that inspires you at the moment.
00:41:30
Speaker
You were talking about that, you know, the fact that Doodles, for example, bought their IP from a holder and that Artifact chose something different.
00:41:39
Speaker
And I think that in the current that we're living in,
00:41:43
Speaker
There are events that will be talked about in history classes in 20, 50, 100, 200 years.
00:41:51
Speaker
What from our perspective can you kind of project these events will be that we'll still be talking about then?
00:42:00
Speaker
Great question.
00:42:00
Speaker
I absolutely love this.
00:42:01
Speaker
I think this is a very interesting insight I had when I was in London.
00:42:06
Speaker
So I was attending William Mapin, who's like the anti-cyclone artist from Artblocks, his talk at one of the gallery exhibits he had for his new collection that's actually on auction right now.
00:42:19
Speaker
So he and like a couple of other people were on that panel.
00:42:23
Speaker
And there was something that was like very, like I never thought about it, but
00:42:26
Speaker
it seems so obvious when the moment the moment she said it and she was talking about that in 2021 everyone was talking about how artists like this is great and like auction houses and galleries are like this evil corporations that are just like eating money in the middle and it's the artists who need to be independent and provide value and this and that and stuff and i think over time a we realized that
00:42:49
Speaker
There's a lot more art galleries and auction houses do then just take that chunk of money and stuff.
00:42:55
Speaker
The other thing that she said, which absolutely resonated with me is it's such a bummer.
00:42:59
Speaker
I don't remember her name, but she was like that art galleries are, are, are very important in this whole blockchain ecosystems because they are the only ones who are actually, actually recording stuff.
00:43:11
Speaker
the history of what's actually happening in the space and kind of putting it all together and kind of exhibiting it and providing like what does that history like really mean and i was like whoa that's a very beautiful way to put it because you need you need these these institutions to contextualize all of this because like everything exists on on the blockchain everyone's individually owning that data it's transparent but you need facilitators in the middle to kind of
00:43:38
Speaker
contextualize all that independent information otherwise that information doesn't mean anything um and that's how basically basically what like a lot of innovation in science is you have your facts but you take those facts and you take one fact when you mix it with the other and then you come up with different theories and then those theories are what like the rest of the world is dependent on and i was like that's a very beautiful way um uh to put it and stuff like
00:44:04
Speaker
Like, you know, like the recent acquisition of Rafiq Anadol's piece by Museum of Modern Art is a very great example why you need these moments, because not only are they recording and establishing a huge step forward in us moving into this digital realm, but it's also legitimizing it for other institutions itself.
00:44:24
Speaker
and galleries.
00:44:25
Speaker
And I think this information is kind of very tricky and hard to find.
00:44:31
Speaker
Going back to just like what you were talking about of how Doodles had like a different approach to acquiring their IP and Artifact had a different approach and BoardAPL Club is actually doing it differently.
00:44:44
Speaker
We need institutions in the middle, whether it's media houses, whether it's journalism or
00:44:49
Speaker
or whatever creatively this can be organized in.
00:44:53
Speaker
But these people and these companies are valuable because they push a collective narrative rather than an individual narrative.
00:45:01
Speaker
And a collective narrative has, in some ways, a lot more weightage than singular people.
00:45:07
Speaker
Yes, you can have...
00:45:08
Speaker
Drake talking about his music and you can have Taylor Swift talking about her music, but music as a concept is a way bigger ideology.
00:45:15
Speaker
It goes from crazy, like a couple of centuries where people started making sounds in their civilizations with utensils all the way to classical music to what electronic music is today.
00:45:31
Speaker
And I feel like that history needs to be recorded and formulated by certain institutions who recognize, who put definitions.
00:45:39
Speaker
And it's such a thin ice to walk on because this is also the moment things get messy because then we are starting to put definitions or what...
00:45:49
Speaker
History really is.
00:45:51
Speaker
In the normal world, we've had like you go to the West and the West talks about the history of the world in a different way.
00:45:56
Speaker
You go to the East in a different way.
00:45:58
Speaker
But now you have an element of the blockchain that kind of proves history with an element of factual information.
00:46:05
Speaker
But you still need people to funnel that information that can be contextualized in a way more readable format than looking at blockchain transactions and being like,
00:46:15
Speaker
325th block matches with this person's wallet.
00:46:18
Speaker
And yeah, it's just like you need a lot more people in the middle to contextualize it on a UI and UX basis.
00:46:25
Speaker
I wonder if it would be possible to create a sort of historical layer to the blockchain.
00:46:31
Speaker
You know, when you add up subjective perspective, the more you add them on, the closer you get to objectivity.
00:46:39
Speaker
And that's what the wisdom of the crowd is.
00:46:42
Speaker
If you have a bowl of beans and you ask a thousand people how many beans they think are in that bowl,
00:46:51
Speaker
you're likely to get close, like by averaging their perspectives, you're likely to get closer to the truth.
00:46:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really, really cool concept.
00:47:00
Speaker
And it's something that I've started to use in my project management experience
00:47:06
Speaker
Because if I have an idea of a concept and I push it towards people and I take in all of their feedback on it and make it evolve, I know that that concept is going to be a lot stronger and a lot more likely to find its ground in the market that is disconnected from my own subjective perspective.
Dubai's Role in Web3 and Cultural Openness
00:47:28
Speaker
And I think that by combining the information that's on the blockchain, by having...
00:47:36
Speaker
hundreds or thousands of people giving their view on an event or on a series of events, and then probably using an AI layer to transform all of those subjective components, I think you could end up with a thread with a timeline that could be very interesting and less biased than having someone tell a story.
00:48:01
Speaker
This is, whoa, this is, you've just blew my mind.
00:48:03
Speaker
I actually, whilst you were telling me this, I actually popped up my phone and I wrote the line that you just said of the more subjective opinions we have, the more we get closer to objective reality.
00:48:16
Speaker
Whoa, this is probably like one of the most profound things I've heard in a very long time because it makes sense on every level from all the way from science to psychological to cultural to humanitarian and everything.
00:48:28
Speaker
I think, yeah, I think you're definitely on to something because, yeah, because like bias is a huge issue and you usually see this in a lot.
00:48:39
Speaker
Like I always talk about like Dubai, for example, is a city that's like so different to the rest of the world.
00:48:44
Speaker
And it's biggest, if there was one reason why I say it's different to every place in the world, it's just because it's a 30 to 40 year old city and majority of the city didn't exist because of that.
00:48:54
Speaker
And just because of that reason,
00:48:56
Speaker
The nuances of what culture, what history, what type of people that are here or what racism actually would mean over here or what certain practices would mean or what culture really is so different over here to the rest of the world or how...
00:49:15
Speaker
in the rest of the world because every world has had a history with a particular civilization of a particular religion or a particular race or something.
00:49:25
Speaker
But Dubai is one place because it's such an early city.
00:49:29
Speaker
It does not have any history.
00:49:31
Speaker
So we don't have any overarching civilization or any particular parameter kind of dictates the culture of civilization.
00:49:40
Speaker
this space yes it's in it's in the middle east you have islam as like a very big uh cultural and religious component to it but like being in dubai and traveling to all different parts of the world i've come to realize that
00:49:54
Speaker
Dubai is a lot more open to other cultures than we actually see in the West.
00:50:00
Speaker
And I'm not saying this as a positive or negative, but I'm trying to break it down why that is.
00:50:05
Speaker
Because in other countries, and I understand too why that is, removing the right and wrong element from it is because in Dubai, you don't need to have these conversations of trying to educate people that, oh,
00:50:19
Speaker
all skin colors are same or all people from different religions are same you don't need to have these conversations because if you were being born and raised in this country you were already exposed to that at the age of four when I was like in school in kindergarten I had people who were Arabs I had people who were like Americans I had like
00:50:39
Speaker
I had white friends.
00:50:40
Speaker
I had black friends.
00:50:41
Speaker
I had people who were from China.
00:50:43
Speaker
So you had people from all around the world where we celebrated every single culture, whether it was Christmas, whether it was Ramadan, whether it was St.
00:50:52
Speaker
Patrick's Day, whatever it was, that was such a normal...
00:50:55
Speaker
Even Dubai, like the Burj Khalifa, you'll see that they celebrate everything.
00:50:59
Speaker
They'll wish everyone Eid Mubarak on the Muslim holiday.
00:51:02
Speaker
They'll wish Merry Christmas.
00:51:03
Speaker
They'll wish Independence Day to different countries around the world.
00:51:07
Speaker
And I think it's so interesting to see that, just coming back to what you were saying, because I went down a crazy rabbit hole, is having that different...
00:51:18
Speaker
different subjective opinions lead you to get closer to the objective truths.
00:51:24
Speaker
Beautifully put.
00:51:25
Speaker
I absolutely love it.
00:51:27
Speaker
I'm glad you do.
00:51:27
Speaker
Man, Dubai is such an interesting subject of conversation because you don't get any neutral perspectives on it.
00:51:36
Speaker
No one has a neutral opinion on Dubai.
00:51:39
Speaker
People love it or they hate it and what it represents.
00:51:42
Speaker
Every single person who lives in Dubai that I know
00:51:46
Speaker
loves it, has nothing but praise for it, loves living there, loves what it does.
00:51:51
Speaker
A lot of people who are outside of it don't.
00:51:54
Speaker
And I...
00:51:57
Speaker
It's so tricky because there are things happening in Dubai, around Dubai, that don't really fit with my personal values.
00:52:05
Speaker
And there are other things that I find so appealing and attractive because there's a population of people that every single person who talks highly of Dubai is someone who I highly respect.
00:52:20
Speaker
And so it's hard to find the...
00:52:23
Speaker
Because it's shaping up to become a very important place for Web3.
00:52:27
Speaker
How do you view that unfolding?
00:52:30
Speaker
It's very fascinating because just to your previous point, I follow this gentleman on YouTube called Anti-Profit.
00:52:39
Speaker
I don't know if you've ever seen his content, but he's a super interesting guy.
00:52:43
Speaker
Anti-Profit, I would advocate to check him out.
00:52:47
Speaker
He is, I think, he's probably one of the smartest individuals I've ever come across in a very, very long time.
00:52:53
Speaker
And his whole idea is that his goal of his entire YouTube channel is not for people
00:52:58
Speaker
you to change your mind or be part of the red pill or the blue pill movement, nothing like that.
00:53:03
Speaker
He's like, I want you, there's a beautiful video, he explains it.
00:53:06
Speaker
And even in the video, the way he explained it, it's so eloquent, where he talks about that, I want you to either have a realization that your views are wrong,
00:53:14
Speaker
Or I want you to double down on what your views are so that when you're trying to convince other people instead of just screaming at them, you can actually come and tell them why you believe in that from an acceptance point of view.
00:53:27
Speaker
And I love that.
00:53:27
Speaker
And he's pretty interesting because he's also...
00:53:30
Speaker
someone who likes to be anonymous and he wears this beautiful white mask while doing all of his videos.
00:53:36
Speaker
So he's like, I just want, I don't want the fame around it.
00:53:38
Speaker
But so I find that fascinating, obviously, because in Web3, a lot of people like to be anonymous.
00:53:44
Speaker
But just coming down to the Web3 side of things, I definitely think like there's so much scope on
00:53:50
Speaker
for web3 in rest of the world not just in dubai uh especially outside the the the north american continent and i say this because like you look at like all the big tech companies from apple to to tesla to like google or any of these big tech giants and they all came from the west and one of the reasons was that
00:54:16
Speaker
For a lot of decades earlier, they started getting onto the path of educating themselves and building better cities and building better education systems that all funneled to having a bunch of really smart people build really smart things.
00:54:31
Speaker
I guess we leave on to how...
00:54:33
Speaker
They did it in some ways.
00:54:35
Speaker
But one of the reasons that a lot of other countries in the West, in the East, weren't able to do that because they were still recouping up from colonization and regimes and a lot of other issues that have existed with the world history.
00:54:50
Speaker
And it's only now that a lot of countries in the world...
00:54:53
Speaker
have become stable, have become independent or have had enough resources from other countries and themselves all the way from agriculture to money to tourism, where a lot of countries have the ability to build things now.
00:55:07
Speaker
However, they have been behind...
00:55:09
Speaker
North America just because they were late to the game for a lot of the internet-related things.
00:55:15
Speaker
But with Web3, you have all of a sudden that because this whole technology is so new and people who are building Web3, essentially crypto people are scattered all around the world, that all of a sudden, this is not centered around that, okay, these companies or these brands or the next big chain or next big product can only come out of
00:55:35
Speaker
the US or Canada or any of the West-centric countries that it's all come down to merit because history and when it comes to art history everyone talks it from the lens of Europe when it comes to tech history everyone talks it from the lens of North America but these things don't have to necessarily be so centric around a particular bias and going back to what you were talking about earlier
00:55:57
Speaker
that I think with Web3, you can have people from the Middle East, from Asia, building things.
00:56:03
Speaker
And Dubai, kind of in the last 10 years, having born and raised here, I've kind of observed they kind of
00:56:09
Speaker
focused a lot on two things in the last 10 years a lot is A, tourism, and B, has been tech.
00:56:18
Speaker
And with them realizing the potential of what Web3 and decentralization and transparency can do, they've been doubling down on it a lot.
00:56:29
Speaker
And I would say there's an element of religion and culture also in it.
00:56:33
Speaker
And I'm basing this off of no fact, but I'm just saying this as an observation because
00:56:38
Speaker
The Islamic culture is very much about is when I used to work as a freelance photographer, some of my favorite clients used to be Emirati people who are like local to Dubai.
00:56:50
Speaker
And the reason I love working with them is because a lot of their work culture comes from their religion.
00:56:55
Speaker
And in religion, they believe that, let's say, if you worked for a project of mine and I owe you money,
00:57:03
Speaker
if I keep this money with me, it's forbidden money.
00:57:06
Speaker
It's like, it's wrong for me to keep this and I'm going to be punished for it.
00:57:10
Speaker
And I have to give you this money as soon as I can.
00:57:12
Speaker
Otherwise, it's wrong for me to keep it.
00:57:14
Speaker
So I would have clients, I would have all these other clients from the rest of the world who would make me chase for money for weeks and months.
00:57:20
Speaker
And whereas when I worked with people from this region, I would finish my project today and they would literally pay me the next day.
00:57:28
Speaker
So I think there's this whole...
00:57:30
Speaker
ideology in its essence about transparency and honesty that comes that is there in the culture that kind of and this is a this is something that's coming to me as I'm speaking to you that I wonder this plays a big role in it because there's a lot and like blockchain is obviously about the same two things that I wonder one of the reasons it's being adapted so much in this space is because there are some ethos of honesty and transparency and giving
00:57:58
Speaker
power to the individual people more uh because of the religious and cultural belief of of this region and stuff whoa this is a quite an interesting realization i had while speaking to you it ties beautifully into what i was thinking as well of dubai whether you like it or not is physically very well positioned to play the role that it's trying to play right now because it's in the center of everything like it's
00:58:27
Speaker
it would be hard to imagine a place that would be better connected to Europe, the US, Asia, and Africa.
00:58:34
Speaker
Like it's, it's, it's right there.
00:58:37
Speaker
And also because of its diversity, it means that, I don't know, I I'm imagining a sort of shape that starts from the ground and kind of like powers up into the network.
00:58:53
Speaker
And so it, it feels like a perfect place for, for,
00:58:57
Speaker
the type of endeavors, initiatives that we're having in Web3 to be born and to thrive in.
00:59:04
Speaker
No, I absolutely agree.
00:59:06
Speaker
I just realized that why did I start the whole anti-profit thing?
00:59:09
Speaker
And I don't even know where did I end it.
00:59:11
Speaker
But essentially, in one of the bits he was talking about that, in some ways, you kind of have to pick and choose your pros and cons, regardless of where you decide to live in this world.
00:59:21
Speaker
Unfortunately, there is no perfect place where you can get everything, what everyone wants,
00:59:25
Speaker
And he was essentially talking that, oh, whether you live in Bali, whether you live in Dubai, Singapore, New York, there are some things that you have to give up to get certain things and stuff.
00:59:35
Speaker
And I think if you look at it from like a holistic approach, but you're literally making like a pros and cons list.
00:59:42
Speaker
And I'm in no way saying that any country or any city is perfect or can be.
00:59:47
Speaker
But then when you're putting down your parameters and you're like, okay, crime rates and things that you would assume, things that are at the top of the barrel when it comes to survival of humanity.
01:00:00
Speaker
And then you're looking at crime rates and sustainability and just basic fundamental things that you think security and things that you think are important to human survival that you look at, you're like, huh,
01:00:15
Speaker
I can see why I could find myself living in Dubai.
01:00:19
Speaker
And I think that's very fascinating to see how that with Web3, Saudi Arabia is also kind of absolutely focusing on AI and Web3 a lot as well.
01:00:29
Speaker
They got people like Neymar and Ronaldo are playing for a sports club over there.
01:00:34
Speaker
So it's been an interesting shift in the entire world dynamic of what the future is going to be like.
01:00:40
Speaker
And it's an interesting time to be witnessing all of that, I guess.
01:00:44
Speaker
And you're making me realize that, yes, there are things around the UAE right now that are very obvious that you might not resonate with.
01:00:54
Speaker
But in the rest of the world, those things exist and have existed for longer.
01:01:00
Speaker
And we don't even question it because time doesn't really exist.
01:01:06
Speaker
And if you're going to try to look at things from a moral perspective or from a value perspective,
01:01:13
Speaker
like Europe was the birth of slavery.
01:01:16
Speaker
So no one should want to live in, in, in, in Europe.
01:01:21
Speaker
And then the U S was, well, a second place of slavery and a place of absolute carnage when it comes to war crimes.
01:01:30
Speaker
And, and so it's, it's a little bit hypocritical to look at other places and say, yeah, they're not doing it right.
01:01:36
Speaker
Because I don't think there's a single civilization that's actually done it right until, I mean, it's,
01:01:42
Speaker
It's like a self-preservation thing, right?
01:01:44
Speaker
Everyone wants to believe where they are or where they're choosing to live is the right place.
01:01:51
Speaker
So it's easier to be like, that's a wrong decision, that's a wrong decision, and that's fine.
01:01:55
Speaker
For me, at the end of the day, I think there's nothing, and I say this because...
01:02:00
Speaker
My parents are from India and I know how the country works.
01:02:04
Speaker
I go there like once a year.
01:02:05
Speaker
I know what the country struggles with, the potential of it, but the crime rates, the poverty or like the struggles that people have.
01:02:13
Speaker
When I go there, I realize that what problems and struggles really fundamentally are.
01:02:19
Speaker
Like I have like some of the craziest stories, even in my family that once you hear, you're like, there is no way this is not out of a movie and stuff.
01:02:27
Speaker
So for me, I think the top thing that I feel like no one can convince me otherwise is the safety
Safety and Social Dynamics in Dubai
01:02:34
Speaker
aspect of it.
01:02:34
Speaker
I think safety to me comes above every single thing.
01:02:40
Speaker
And I just can't imagine myself living in a place where that's not my priority to the point I think I've become way too privileged with the idea of what safety really means.
01:02:51
Speaker
I was speaking to a friend of mine in the US and
01:02:55
Speaker
we were talking and her connection was bad because we were on, on Google meets.
01:02:58
Speaker
And I was like, why don't you get closer to the router?
01:03:00
Speaker
And she was like, no, I have to keep an eye out on my daughter.
01:03:04
Speaker
Cause she's playing outside.
01:03:05
Speaker
And I was like, but she's playing outside.
01:03:07
Speaker
She's in your house.
01:03:08
Speaker
And then she was like, no, but I still have to keep an eye just to make sure that she's safe.
01:03:13
Speaker
And I was like, whoa, like, like it didn't even occur to me that I was like,
01:03:17
Speaker
what's the big deal like you know you can let her play she's pretty grown up to not to know that she can't just like cross the road or something but that wasn't her concern her concern was the safety of her kid being watched by someone or or whatever and i was like whoa because it's something that like like like it just like doesn't happen over here at all and i which is why i'm never exposed to it so when she told me i literally had goosebumps and i was like i was like i can't imagine and of course i again say this from a place of
01:03:46
Speaker
what privilege means to me or where I am.
01:03:48
Speaker
I'm not married.
01:03:49
Speaker
I don't have kids and everything.
01:03:50
Speaker
But I'm just like, I just can't imagine ever being in a place where I have to constantly worry about my spouse or my kids, whether they're going to school or college or...
01:04:01
Speaker
I just can't like that life sounds like absolutely like full of anxiety to me that I'm like, Oh, I don't know what's going to happen in the school or if there's going to be like some crazy shit happening there or something happens when they're coming back.
01:04:12
Speaker
Like that idea to me sounds so scary.
01:04:15
Speaker
And that's why I love living in the city.
01:04:18
Speaker
I love traveling all the way up all around.
01:04:21
Speaker
I love London as a city of like culture and like the amount of history and art they have.
01:04:26
Speaker
But like when it comes to like ease and safety and security, like I think Dubai is Dubai for me.
01:04:33
Speaker
Man, I really need to come and visit.
01:04:34
Speaker
One thing we have in common is that we're both disproportionately driven by empathy.
01:04:40
Speaker
What for you is the case for
01:04:43
Speaker
empathy in the world we live in, especially in business.
01:04:47
Speaker
And do you also think that maybe it at least in part comes from a slight place of privilege because we feel like we can be empathetic?
01:04:57
Speaker
It's a very interesting thought.
01:04:59
Speaker
I've never thought about that.
01:05:01
Speaker
Whether it comes from a place of privilege, because in some ways, there's a part of me that believes that empathy is like way more deep rooted in empathy.
01:05:12
Speaker
in just how our biology works.
01:05:15
Speaker
When we're talking about it from a textbook biology point of view, that when a mother gives birth to an offspring, that there's this connection that she feels the need to protect it.
01:05:28
Speaker
And I think that protection comes from a place of empathy.
01:05:31
Speaker
that you know how much this person means to you or if this this little offspring is hurt that i'm going to feel that pain so there is a huge element of it that comes from our biological need and i would say a lot of times
01:05:45
Speaker
And I would say to a degree that I think we are all born with it and we have it.
01:05:50
Speaker
And I think a lot of the way the world works kind of suppresses it to the point you think you're not empathetic or it's a skill some people have, don't have, whereas you've always had it.
01:06:01
Speaker
But it's been suppressed so much at such an early age that you don't realize that it exists.
01:06:08
Speaker
But I think especially in the corporate and the Web3 world or any business world,
01:06:14
Speaker
I've come to realize, and this has been one of my biggest learnings in the last two years being in this space, has helped me immensely, immensely to the point like I've never even thought about that.
01:06:24
Speaker
Because when people would talk about empathy, I would talk about it from a more personal point of view about friends and family and relationships and philanthropy and things like that.
01:06:33
Speaker
But it's only when I started building a company in this space because...
01:06:38
Speaker
I don't have a business background.
01:06:39
Speaker
I don't have like, I'm not like as familiar with a lot of things with, with the finance world, with the accounting world that other people do.
01:06:48
Speaker
I used to be an analyst years, years ago, a science analyst.
01:06:52
Speaker
And then I became a creative person.
01:06:54
Speaker
So I was into photography, filmmaking.
01:06:56
Speaker
So I, I, I used to work solo.
01:06:58
Speaker
I had like a small business, but it was me.
01:06:59
Speaker
And like, I used to hire some people around, but like, I never had like a full flinch business.
01:07:03
Speaker
So a lot of things of what running a business is or what,
01:07:07
Speaker
client acquisition or sales or taking care of your employees or what all that really means is.
01:07:13
Speaker
However, over the course of period, I've realized that I've had a lot of people who would ask me, even it has been in my company and sometimes in the people I've spoken to,
01:07:23
Speaker
where they would have like a like an opinion about my way of of being in the professional world and be like it's absolutely crazy that you are so good at business development or or managing uh the customer expectations or or things like that and they would be like it's crazy because this is something that shows that you have a lot of experience and i find it absolutely wild because i'm like i actually don't have any experience to me all of this comes from a place of like empathy of what
01:07:51
Speaker
If someone is buying something or if someone is investing their time or effort, what would they want or how would they feel as a consumer or a customer or a community member if I were there in that space?
01:08:02
Speaker
And I find it absolutely crazy that there were so many moments where people would be like, oh, you really know your stuff or you're really smart with this.
01:08:13
Speaker
And I would have a moment of imposter syndrome at its peak because I'll be like,
01:08:17
Speaker
what are you talking about?
01:08:19
Speaker
Like, like I know I've optically it might be different, but I know in my head that a lot of things that you might think I know a lot about, I actually don't.
01:08:28
Speaker
There would be times and I'm not kidding you where one of my other co-founders from, from Artstar, he's run like a couple of businesses and there were times where he would just drop these,
01:08:39
Speaker
abbreviations of like things that i would have to google what they are because i was like too embarrassed to even ask i would never tell him that but he would also be the same person who would be like that's so crazy that you you came up with this idea or you're thinking it from that point of view because i didn't even think of it and i'll be like
01:08:54
Speaker
This is fascinating.
01:08:55
Speaker
I don't know how is this happening.
01:08:57
Speaker
But yeah, I think empathy plays like a way bigger role in almost all facets of your life.
01:09:03
Speaker
And it's something that I hugely believe in cultivating it with your family, with your friends, with your kids, because I think it has immense, immense value.
01:09:12
Speaker
And that's what it means to be human, I guess.
01:09:15
Speaker
What do you think is the major blockage in people that's preventing them from accessing that part of their being?
01:09:23
Speaker
I would say there's an element of not being okay with being vulnerable.
01:09:29
Speaker
I would say it comes to that because I feel like it's just considered an element of weakness.
Empathy as a Business Strength
01:09:36
Speaker
It's associated with that, that if you let your gods down, people are not going to respect it.
01:09:41
Speaker
Women are not going to find you attractive or things like that.
01:09:44
Speaker
And I feel like there's just this notion that sensitivity and emotion and empathy are regarded as not traits that you would...
01:09:52
Speaker
that like in especially in your early years that people would tell you are considered to be the traits that you would expect from a top level CEO or like a successful person and stuff because one of the things that you you hear from you would expect if you were going to to speak to Steve Jobs or Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos is
01:10:12
Speaker
punctuality and like hard work and showing up and and like you know like your your textbook things of just like hard work and capitalism and things like that i would say that that i feel like people regard empathy as a place of weakness but i think it's completely untrue i agree with you i agree with you and on top of that we're we're very highly driven by data and analysis in our like frontal lobe our frontal cortex and
01:10:40
Speaker
And when you receive information, you're tempted to instantly observe it from that place, from an analytical perspective.
01:10:51
Speaker
And what happens when you jump to analysis too quickly is that this thing, this idea, this concept that you're looking at
01:11:00
Speaker
stays at the conscious level and doesn't access the subconscious level.
01:11:05
Speaker
And for me, the subconscious is where intuition lives, is where empathy lives, is where all of that lives.
01:11:12
Speaker
And so if...
01:11:14
Speaker
you learn to kind of balance yourself to not always be in a, in a place of go, go, go.
01:11:19
Speaker
And in a proactive, like, I need to figure this out.
01:11:22
Speaker
And if you like, you know, sit back and relax for a second and let the entirety of your being be exposed to this, then that's where the deeper, more nuanced, more subtle parts of your, of your being can, can shine.
01:11:36
Speaker
I think.
01:11:38
Speaker
Beautifully put, I completely agree.
01:11:40
Speaker
I guess it's just being taking a moment and just being present before trying to analyze and psychoanalyze and figure out how I can solve this or make this better or fix this or do the opposite.
01:11:51
Speaker
It's just taking a moment and absorbing it, I guess.
01:11:54
Speaker
Beautifully put.
01:11:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:55
Speaker
And it touches back on what we're saying on like, how do you act online?
01:12:00
Speaker
If you see Rahim say something that you don't agree with,
01:12:05
Speaker
The response you're going to give him, if you instantly jump to your keyboard, like, ah, what you're saying is not true.
01:12:12
Speaker
And if you just contemplate it for five seconds, 15, 30, two completely different perspectives.
01:12:21
Speaker
Anyways, we went a lot farther than I imagined we would go.
01:12:25
Speaker
One of the things that we talked about that kind of struck me is I almost had started to see CC0 as something that didn't have anything to do with business.
Complexities of IP and CC0 in NFTs
01:12:37
Speaker
That was something that was more about art.
01:12:40
Speaker
And for me, until we talked, Moonbirds had made a mistake in making their project CC0.
01:12:48
Speaker
But you seem to disagree because when you talked about IP, you saw it as a very sound, it seems, way to go about it and to approach it.
01:12:59
Speaker
And I'm very intrigued to learn more.
01:13:01
Speaker
So I think, and this just goes back to like a statement I made earlier.
01:13:05
Speaker
I think it's...
01:13:06
Speaker
It's again not CC0 or not CC0.
01:13:09
Speaker
Those aren't the only two conversations we should be having.
01:13:13
Speaker
And this is why I would say there's an element of it.
01:13:15
Speaker
I agree with it.
01:13:16
Speaker
And there's an element of I don't agree with it, especially when we are talking, let's say, with moon words as an example.
01:13:22
Speaker
And the reason I say that is I was just in a space earlier.
01:13:25
Speaker
They were talking about Yuga Labs acquiring CryptoPunks and they were like some, there was a particular gentleman and he was like, I've read the fine print and it says that Yuga Labs owns the creative copyrights to CryptoPunks and they've given licensing rights to hit holders.
01:13:40
Speaker
And I saw a bunch of people putting thumbs down on the Twitter space.
01:13:44
Speaker
And I immediately suppressed, I want to speak in this space and talk about this.
01:13:49
Speaker
And I was like, I'm kind of confused.
01:13:51
Speaker
Why are people thumbs downing with this bit?
01:13:55
Speaker
Because the only solution around this is actually CC0.
01:13:59
Speaker
Do you want CryptoPunks to be CC0?
01:14:02
Speaker
They're like, no.
01:14:03
Speaker
But I was like, this is where people are misunderstanding what giving licensing rights means and what CC0 is.
01:14:09
Speaker
Is that if CryptoPunks or Doodles or Artifact or whatever project wanted to give
01:14:14
Speaker
complete creative rights to individual holders.
01:14:17
Speaker
Every time things get sold, you would need to do an IRL paperwork to kind of prove the whole data.
01:14:24
Speaker
Like a blockchain transaction history is not enough, especially when a lot of these wallets don't even have KYC.
01:14:29
Speaker
So if I sold my Clonex to you,
01:14:32
Speaker
now the rights are going from myself to you we need a whole ecosystem to to sign off of these rights to being with you which is just like a very big hassle it needs to have like a regulatory body involved like it's a whole occupant like a complicated process and the only way to mitigate that is a company being like you know what you anyone who owns it has their we are giving them the rights to it and and that's about it and the other way would be cc0 is that
01:15:00
Speaker
It's completely public domain.
01:15:01
Speaker
Anyone can do anything with it.
01:15:03
Speaker
So I feel like it's, again, it's positive and negative.
01:15:08
Speaker
I love CC0 as a concept.
01:15:10
Speaker
I love it with the meme cards by 6529.
01:15:13
Speaker
All of them are CC0.
01:15:14
Speaker
I love it as in theory.
01:15:16
Speaker
I think with Moonbirds, the issue is there are certain optics that people had or expected...
01:15:22
Speaker
by them creating their artwork in a certain particular way because everyone thought like a PFP project is around IP because you're creating this character it has traits and it has eyes and mouth and whatever so I feel like that's where the gap really came about I personally never got into Moonbirds
01:15:41
Speaker
I thought the whole CC0 model is great, but it is great in theory.
01:15:46
Speaker
But I think it was a terrible move for them to make because they were like, their team came in spaces after it.
01:15:53
Speaker
And they were like, we were surprised by the community's reaction towards CC0, which I was like,
01:15:58
Speaker
What are you talking about?
01:16:00
Speaker
I was like, I'm not even as close to being as smart as some of the people in the team were who've built businesses and companies in the traditional world way before I started doing anything in this space.
01:16:11
Speaker
And so I put them on a pedestal.
01:16:13
Speaker
I value and respect them.
01:16:15
Speaker
And how are you people telling me that you thought this was a very weird reaction that you didn't expect when 80% of the Twitter...
01:16:23
Speaker
worse is or are always talking about IP rights IP rights IP rights every Twitter space every post so I was like that was kind of like an out of touch mechanism but yeah like it's it's a different thesis it's a different story the whole idea of CC0 is freedom it's it's public domain it's like everyone should have have access to to being able to play it there are certain and and don't quote me on this could I be I think I'm right but I could be wrong
01:16:50
Speaker
But like some of the more classical musics, the reason by Mozart or Beethoven, the reason you hear them in like toys and things like that, that like the reason you would hear it in toys and stuff is because if I'm not mistaken, at some point they became public domain.
01:17:06
Speaker
So when things become public domain, they serve a different purpose.
01:17:10
Speaker
Then they become part of like culture.
01:17:11
Speaker
Like tell me what other classical pieces of music from...
01:17:16
Speaker
early century would have been known by younger kids anymore.
01:17:19
Speaker
Like people would not be able to name musicians from the 60s, 70s.
01:17:22
Speaker
I don't think I can.
01:17:24
Speaker
Maybe other than like a musician or two, I don't think I will be.
01:17:28
Speaker
So I think like CC0 serves a way bigger purpose that is against
01:17:33
Speaker
the idea of capitalism and making money and this and that.
01:17:37
Speaker
And if that is your goal, which is completely fine, like, you know, like I'm not going to lie, a lot of us people in the NFT space, we are, we are holding these, these projects and NFTs as assets.
01:17:47
Speaker
We see them as money driving vehicles in some way or the other.
01:17:51
Speaker
But if you're looking at it from a capitalist point of view, I can see why CC0 would be a problem, but you have to understand what it like really, really represents, you know?
01:18:00
Speaker
It's interesting because CC0 could both be a way that a brand become eternal, but it's also hard to make it be so because it, it,
01:18:14
Speaker
it wouldn't make financial sense for the people that started except in this, like the motherfucker and Satoshi thing of I create this, I'm making money buying it.
01:18:28
Speaker
You guys are vibing.
01:18:29
Speaker
Now it's yours and you can do whatever you want with it.
01:18:32
Speaker
And which like motherfuckers could very well be one of those NFT brands that we still talk about in 20, 25 years because there's something...
01:18:42
Speaker
like very pure, even though it's kind of a weird word to use about them, but still.
01:18:48
Speaker
And when you were talking, it made me realize that with the rise and the current success of Pudgy Penguins, there's been a change in how we view the success when it comes to IP and Web3.
01:19:04
Speaker
Because initially it was the Yuga-led movement of your AP, your IP, and so you can do whatever you want with it.
01:19:12
Speaker
And that was the successful approach.
01:19:14
Speaker
And now we've gone back to, hey, your IP is actually, we're going to use the IP and you're going to benefit from it that way.
01:19:23
Speaker
I wonder what's going to stick.
01:19:24
Speaker
Maybe probably both.
01:19:26
Speaker
I think, yeah, I think that's a good, it's literally like the last statement that you said, right?
01:19:31
Speaker
I think that it's important to have that thinking that we don't know what's going to stick.
01:19:36
Speaker
It's easy for you to be like, okay, oh, because you guys model work, this is going to be
01:19:41
Speaker
perfect or doodles or this and that and stuff but in if you're being 100% honest it's just like too too early yes maybe some things have a bigger probability but I still think we should we should experiment and I think as much as I'm not a big fan of moonbirds I never was but I'm glad they experimented and I think it sucks because it comes at the expense of other people losing this and that but like on a zoomed out perspective I think um
01:20:06
Speaker
people should experiment and like a great example of CC0 as a concept again this is not like a subject I'm very familiar with but to my knowledge I don't think there is I don't think Santa Claus as a concept originates from pure religion I think it's a it's a mixture of like mythic culture and like
01:20:25
Speaker
like just like a story around it.
01:20:27
Speaker
I don't think it's actually from Christianity as a whole, but it's a CC zero concept if you think about it, which is why like, you know, like every person, every kid on planet earth can decide to want to be visited by Santa Claus and get presents.
01:20:40
Speaker
And it's such a big part of Christmas.
01:20:42
Speaker
And it's, it's a culture that's been like such a huge aspect that has been affected when they say Coca-Cola is the one that changed its colors to red and white and used to be multicolored before.
01:20:52
Speaker
And then you have like such a different cultural impact
01:20:55
Speaker
today that you actually have people like dressing up at Santa's at parties and giving gifts that you think that, oh, it's a character and it's a CZ zero character.
01:21:04
Speaker
And that's why no one's coming out and being like, hey guys, you can't use this character anymore and stuff.
01:21:10
Speaker
So I feel like, yeah, it's, it's an interesting conversation to have.
01:21:13
Speaker
I think time has to play a very significant role for, for CZ zero characters.
01:21:18
Speaker
to mean and matter at any point but uh it's it's it's fascinating to to see how how that works you know it is all right we've come to that point where i'm going to ask you rapid fire questions and you can just answer fast or not so fast however you want to go about it if you could only buy one nft to hold for the rest of your life what would it be a crypto punk if you could only hold one crypto for the rest of your life what would it be ethereum
01:21:45
Speaker
Man, I need to find everyone answers.
01:21:48
Speaker
It's CryptoPunks or Fidenza and yeah, ETH, which are all very sound.
01:21:54
Speaker
I would do the same.
01:21:55
Speaker
What's been your best trade with NFTs?
01:21:57
Speaker
How much did you clear in one trade?
01:21:59
Speaker
would say in nfts would be pudgy penguins in terms of volume because i minted like 10 penguins and then i bought like five six the night after when they dropped to 0.01 uh i think that was my that is a very significant profit that i made in a very short amount of time because
01:22:18
Speaker
Of course, I bought my boat ape at half an each, so I know it went like, I made like a lot of it, but I only had it one and I made in chunks.
01:22:25
Speaker
But Pudgy Penguins was like my quickest and smallest, like the smallest investment with the most amount of volume profit wise.
01:22:33
Speaker
Nice.
01:22:34
Speaker
What are your top three favorite people that you vibe with the most in this space at the moment?
01:22:38
Speaker
Ooh, this is a tricky one and stuff.
01:22:42
Speaker
I think some of my favorite people in this space would be, Zeneca is a very good friend of mine.
01:22:49
Speaker
Every once in a while we catch up in IRL.
01:22:53
Speaker
So he's a very interesting person that I vibe with.
01:22:57
Speaker
Wow, this is quite tricky.
01:23:00
Speaker
I love, I don't know this person on a very personal level, but I absolutely love this person's handle called Susan NFTs.
01:23:08
Speaker
And essentially, this person talks a lot about art, a lot of like, this is the only person I think who makes threads and content about art.
01:23:16
Speaker
We've never connected on a personal level.
01:23:19
Speaker
So I definitely think they would make the list.
01:23:22
Speaker
I believe in, finally, I would pick, I have a friend in Dubai who I vibe with a lot.
01:23:31
Speaker
His name is Luca.
01:23:33
Speaker
He's not as active in the Twitter space, but I feel like he's part of that big odd stuff.
01:23:38
Speaker
WhatsApp chat, like there's not a day where he and I are not exchanging things or he's not saying something in it or we're not talking on a personal level.
01:23:45
Speaker
So I would say he's like one of my favorite people somewhere out there.
01:23:48
Speaker
But yeah, like I would say some of them.
01:23:50
Speaker
Wow, this was quite difficult.
01:23:54
Speaker
I'm glad you came out on top.
01:23:56
Speaker
What's something about you people online don't know?
01:23:59
Speaker
I have a very goofy side to me.
01:24:01
Speaker
And when I say that is I do, one of the things I do in my free time is I am an improv theater actor.
Raheem's Playful Side and Public Perception
01:24:08
Speaker
So I'm doing like the most silliest things.
01:24:11
Speaker
I have like shows every Wednesday.
01:24:12
Speaker
I had one last night as well.
01:24:14
Speaker
And improv theater is amazing.
01:24:15
Speaker
one minute you're a 90 year old man and like sometimes you are a talking ostrich or whatever or like you know you're like a hairstylist or whatever and I there's like a very goofy side to it because obviously improv is improv is that in some ways it's exactly who I am as a person of
01:24:33
Speaker
Because improv relies on the idea of being present, being in the moment and just being for what this moment is.
01:24:38
Speaker
Letting go of who you are, what your beliefs are, what do you think right or wrong is and just being present.
01:24:44
Speaker
So I think that there's a whole goofy and silly side of me that I have that I feel like a lot of people don't know.
01:24:51
Speaker
I have gotten a comment or two where...
01:24:53
Speaker
certain people until they met me they thought that i was a very serious person because of my content or the way i speak and stuff so they were quite shocked that like you know i was like such a different person so i would say that i don't think a lot of people know how uh goofy i am because i do like at the improv theater we do cartoon voices so i do voices i do like different accents and stuff which is as goofy as it gets oh that's so cool when i'm in dubai i'm coming with you to uh to improv class
01:25:21
Speaker
Dude, the type of improv that happens over here at the theater where I perform is rare around the world, not just here, because it's based on this person's format called Keith Johnston.
01:25:35
Speaker
And he basically mixes a lot of elements of actual theater.
01:25:39
Speaker
Right.
01:25:40
Speaker
with a lot of like competition ideologies that he actually got inspired from wrestling in the early 70s or 80s and stuff.
01:25:49
Speaker
So like the type of format we do, it has a lot of costumes.
01:25:52
Speaker
It has a lot of props, which is very unconventional for improv theaters because usually improv theaters don't have costumes and gear too, because we have like full sets and like couches and like beds and like a whole prop set, which is something you don't see in improv theater and stuff.
01:26:07
Speaker
So it's actually a pretty fun place to be at.
01:26:10
Speaker
What's something about you people think they know that's not true?
01:26:13
Speaker
I think sometimes I come off as a lot more knowledgeable than I really am.
01:26:21
Speaker
And this is not just me being like, you're just trying to be humble and stuff and everything.
01:26:26
Speaker
And I'm not going to lie.
01:26:28
Speaker
I do think I have a lot of information than a lot of people just because of the time and effort I put into this space.
01:26:34
Speaker
But I know because people look at me
01:26:36
Speaker
sometimes at face value because of the conversation.
01:26:39
Speaker
So they're obviously judging me from just like a very small brief period in time.
01:26:43
Speaker
So I think a lot of times people think that I have a lot more information than they think.
01:26:51
Speaker
So I would say that I think, yeah, I think maybe like if I have like a way with words or things like that, that I can come off a bit more knowledgeable than I might be.
01:27:01
Speaker
Well, I can't believe it's taken us an hour and a half and we're only just getting to the actual Web3 stuff.
01:27:11
Speaker
So if you need to, like, if you have a hard stop later or if you're getting tired, you let me know.
01:27:18
Speaker
I can't believe it's been an hour and a half.
01:27:20
Speaker
I've heard about Art Dao
Evolution of Dubai's NFT Community
01:27:22
Speaker
for a long time, like long before I met you.
01:27:26
Speaker
I think Kool Kong is his name, right?
01:27:28
Speaker
Kool?
01:27:29
Speaker
Kool Kong.
01:27:29
Speaker
Yeah, Kool Kong.
01:27:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think he and I had a few interactions and that's how I came to know about it.
01:27:39
Speaker
How did it start?
01:27:40
Speaker
Like, what was the origin story for it?
01:27:42
Speaker
How did you find yourself in that position for it to happen?
01:27:46
Speaker
Oh, the origin story is actually very nice.
01:27:49
Speaker
It's a very unique story, actually.
01:27:52
Speaker
So in August of 2021, I was buying an artwork from this girl named Laura from Latvia.
01:28:01
Speaker
And I was basically bidding on a piece of hers on foundation.
01:28:05
Speaker
I believe at that point, she was called NFT Cargo.
01:28:08
Speaker
I think now her handle is CarTist, like Car and Artist.
01:28:12
Speaker
And I got into essentially a bidding war with this gentleman.
01:28:16
Speaker
You know her?
01:28:16
Speaker
Yeah, I was following her way back.
01:28:19
Speaker
Yeah.
01:28:20
Speaker
So I essentially got into a bidding war with like a particular gentleman on it.
01:28:25
Speaker
And then I ended up after like four or five bids, I ended up winning the piece.
01:28:28
Speaker
And this person texted me and were like, congratulations on winning the piece.
01:28:33
Speaker
He was like, oh, you're in Dubai.
01:28:34
Speaker
We should we should meet up.
01:28:36
Speaker
And I was super stoked to hear that because in August of 2021, I didn't know anyone in real life in Dubai who was into NFTs.
01:28:43
Speaker
Everyone was still from the West.
01:28:45
Speaker
So I was like, yeah, let's do it.
01:28:46
Speaker
Oh, my God.
01:28:46
Speaker
I'm super excited.
01:28:48
Speaker
So the very next day, we ended up meeting at a coffee shop.
01:28:52
Speaker
And it was this gentleman named Anas, who was at that point, he was working as a crypto lawyer at checkout.com.
01:29:02
Speaker
And he had a podcast in the crypto space.
01:29:05
Speaker
He was in crypto for a couple of years, but he was just dipping his toes into NFTs.
Perspectives on Web3 Decentralization
01:29:10
Speaker
And at that point, I had gotten a bunch of NFTs from, I remember, Kukats and
01:29:15
Speaker
I don't know if Pudge Penguins were launched, but I remember having Cool Cats, Wicked Craniums, Bored Apes, and things like that.
01:29:20
Speaker
And then we just got to talking.
01:29:22
Speaker
He ended up getting some NFTs.
01:29:25
Speaker
And then a couple of days later, we started coming across people who were holding...
01:29:32
Speaker
20 punks or like 10, 40 or things like that.
01:29:35
Speaker
We met like a couple of people who were doing like small meetups in the NFT space at like an artist in Dubai, Crystal Beshara, who we ended up doing the art style collection with that we were like, you know, like let's do meetups.
01:29:47
Speaker
And we did the first month and there were like 10 people.
01:29:49
Speaker
And then the next month it was 30 and then it was 100 and then it was like 120.
01:29:54
Speaker
Like it was like exponentially growing.
01:29:56
Speaker
And yeah, we just kind of like realized that some of the biggest
01:30:00
Speaker
NFT collectors from the art space to even the PFP space at that point were actually living out of Dubai.
01:30:07
Speaker
So we just kind of like started bringing people together.
01:30:10
Speaker
That's so cool.
01:30:12
Speaker
It's always crazy to me how like just a small encounter, a small event can lead to something so huge.
01:30:19
Speaker
And
01:30:21
Speaker
That's why you also should not just be thinking with your brain because like this makes no sense.
01:30:27
Speaker
It makes no rational sense.
01:30:28
Speaker
I completely agree.
01:30:31
Speaker
a continuity of just encounters and discoveries and something that no rational brained person could ever imagine.
01:30:41
Speaker
Yeah, I will not go into detail on this because I want us to focus on the Web3N, but ages ago, and I never finished it, but like in my early years of college, I actually started...
01:30:54
Speaker
writing a book on this exact bit about how you have these small tipping points in life that have such big impacts and things seem arbitrary and everyone's trying to decide what their life or the future is going to be.
01:31:08
Speaker
But it's so funny that the most random things can change the biggest things in your life and stuff.
01:31:13
Speaker
So I resonate with that idea.
01:31:15
Speaker
Anyways, coming back to the Web3 stuff.
01:31:18
Speaker
I think that one thing that people struggle with, especially because they come from a place of they heard someone telling them that Web3 is where they can get like huge opportunities where they can make a lot of money.
01:31:31
Speaker
And then they...
01:31:32
Speaker
get into the space, nothing happens and some people get frustrated or they kind of get this sense of entitlement of, hey, this is decentralized, I should have my place and my spot.
01:31:42
Speaker
But that's not how it works.
01:31:44
Speaker
That's not how humans work.
01:31:45
Speaker
That's not how business works.
01:31:46
Speaker
What can you say to someone's
01:31:49
Speaker
who's just getting in to help them prime themselves for such opportunities to happen to them.
01:31:56
Speaker
As cliche as it's going to sound, sit, observe, and show up.
01:32:02
Speaker
There's a lot more merit to it than people realize because A, this goes back to an earlier bit that I was talking about.
01:32:09
Speaker
That again, it's not centralization and decentralization.
01:32:12
Speaker
They are not the only two conversations we should be having.
01:32:14
Speaker
There are certain issues with decentralization that we don't know how we are going to combat.
01:32:18
Speaker
There are certain positives about centralization also.
01:32:21
Speaker
How are these pieces coming together?
01:32:23
Speaker
How are there certain projects that are actually, majority of the projects are actually a blend together?
01:32:28
Speaker
of both how does that whole thing work and especially so i think in general there's a lot more nuance to almost everything in life just don't look at things from a face value but that sounds like a bit more generic advice but the reason i think it's more it's more apt in this space is the other element is that everything is so new in this space that the rules are changing like every two three weeks
01:32:51
Speaker
So when you already have a scenario where there are no definitions, there are no laws where you can be like, okay, this is a strategy that works.
01:33:00
Speaker
This doesn't work.
01:33:02
Speaker
Where you cannot use textbook data that we use in a lot of other facets of life to be like, okay, this is a good investment or this is a project that I'm going to hold.
01:33:10
Speaker
When you don't have those rules set yet, because time needs to play a role for those rules to formulate, to
01:33:17
Speaker
have a thesis proven whether they work or not you have to realize that you have to be super open-minded and just realize that the space is is very new because a fundamental concept for people to always remember is that whenever there's something new comes there are two ways to look at it right your your one is you are early in it and you have you have pros of being early in it
01:33:42
Speaker
grow a business, build a company, make a lot of money.
01:33:45
Speaker
However, that comes with challenges of not knowing what the rules are, how this is going to work, what the regulation is going to work, what are the problems that are going to happen with this because there's no history and data.
01:33:55
Speaker
And then you have the other scenario where you wait, you sit back and observe, and then you build when there is enough data.
01:34:01
Speaker
Now what happens is you have not been early.
01:34:04
Speaker
So you probably missed out on that
01:34:06
Speaker
short amount of time, maximum growth sort of a concept.
01:34:10
Speaker
However, the pros are that you've learned from people's mistakes.
01:34:13
Speaker
You've understood what the rules and regulations that are coming into spaces in the space are, how can you build around it, how you can mitigate a lot more risk averse things that other people didn't who came in early.
01:34:27
Speaker
And that happens with anything, dot com bubble, social media, web three.
01:34:30
Speaker
So I feel like
01:34:31
Speaker
I feel like, yeah, just like showing up and observing is, has a lot more value in this space than any other areas of technology.
01:34:40
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:34:41
Speaker
And I guess, I guess the last thing you do is provide value.
01:34:46
Speaker
Once you've, once you've observed and once you've noticed something, figure out how you can provide value.
01:34:54
Speaker
And that's how, that's how opportunities are.
01:34:56
Speaker
Because
01:34:57
Speaker
There's still this thing of people having entitlement and having expectations of, hey, I bought this NFT and so you should deliver for me.
01:35:05
Speaker
Whereas it should be, hey, I bought this NFT.
01:35:08
Speaker
I have an opportunity to deliver for someone and to find my place and to contribute.
01:35:14
Speaker
Beautiful.
01:35:15
Speaker
Agreed.
01:35:16
Speaker
Why do you think we need decentralization?
01:35:18
Speaker
Oh, I love this conversation.
01:35:20
Speaker
This can be a podcast on its own.
01:35:23
Speaker
Decentralization to me is fixing a fundamental problem of people in power pulling the threads on every single thing.
01:35:37
Speaker
And the reason decentralization matters to some people more than the other is that if you are someone who's benefited a lot from centralization, and this is usually your top 1% of the top 1%, people who kind of are the ones who are
01:35:54
Speaker
running countries or companies or making the wealth they will always obviously be against decentralization because they benefit from centralization to me there is so much contextualization to the human experience to who you are what your what your beliefs are
01:36:13
Speaker
and how you need support and how you need to be helped to become a better version of yourselves.
01:36:22
Speaker
I think decentralization is all about bringing power to the masses and trying to find a better way to provide value to single individual lives rather than trying to replicate a copy-paste formula across the board for efficiency reasons or for capitalistic reasons and hoping...
01:36:43
Speaker
this works or this doesn't work.
01:36:44
Speaker
And yeah, and I think like, especially countries, when we're talking on a financial level, when we're talking about in countries that have gone through catastrophes where they ended up getting burned by centralization, you take Venezuela, you take Lebanon, you take Turkey, that it's absolutely crazy that if I am a single parent, let's say, who's working 15 hours of a job,
01:37:11
Speaker
Why am I struggling to make ends meet and provide for my family because of geopolitical decisions that has been made by my country?
01:37:18
Speaker
And I think that's a bizarre concept that why is it how much food I have on my plate is going to be dictated by how the governors of my country are working with other governors of another country.
01:37:30
Speaker
That logic just doesn't sit with me.
01:37:33
Speaker
And if you see...
01:37:35
Speaker
If you see the idea of decentralization and break it down in a more somewhere in between centralization and decentralization is something that we've been fighting for for a very long time in a lot of places where we are saying that we want more power given to the people.
01:37:48
Speaker
And a great example I use is when the Black Lives movement was happening in America.
01:37:54
Speaker
one of the protests, one of the fundamental pillars of the protest was that defund the police.
01:38:01
Speaker
And what does that mean?
01:38:02
Speaker
They were saying, if you break it down, what they were saying is that the police have too much power, that a centralized authority has way more, too much power over everyone else.
01:38:12
Speaker
And we need to kind of redistribute it or fix this ecosystem.
01:38:16
Speaker
So it's something that we've been fighting for in wars and like,
01:38:19
Speaker
protests and a lot of cultural things you're seeing this happening in in corporations where people are like no we actually want to have a stake in the company you see startups giving a stake to you in the company what are they trying to do that instead of what they want is instead of you just working there as an employee of you getting paid that you should start thinking of this company as a bigger picture and be like because i hold stake in this company
01:38:44
Speaker
How can I provide value to the space as not just with my job, but to the whole business?
01:38:52
Speaker
And I think it's a concept that we've been talking in different words and different linguistics across the board to fix the world.
01:38:59
Speaker
And I think that's why we need decentralization.
01:39:03
Speaker
I think we need to provide a lot more equality and power.
01:39:07
Speaker
and diversity and different perspectives.
01:39:10
Speaker
And it goes back to a beautiful statement that you made that in order to get closer to the objective reality, we need a lot of subjective opinions.
01:39:18
Speaker
And these subjective opinions comes from understanding why diversity is important, why equality is important, why we need to have people fighting for the people rather than a bunch of people on top, assuming that they are providing to the people is what the people want.
01:39:33
Speaker
And what you're describing is such a huge paradigm shift.
01:39:38
Speaker
We as a civilization and as the result of previous civilizations have built habits that have been passed on through time and through generations.
01:39:50
Speaker
The future you're describing requires us to change those habits.
01:39:56
Speaker
So how do you think two years, five years, 10 years, 50...
01:40:00
Speaker
In order to achieve that level of decentralization and of ownership by individuals of the ecosystem and chains of value creation that they're a part of.
01:40:10
Speaker
This is actually, in my opinion, I think this is actually a way more complicated of a question than a lot of people realize because...
01:40:19
Speaker
We talk about centralization, decentralization from a financial point of view or decision making, but it goes way, way beyond that right from the moment you are a kid.
01:40:29
Speaker
And I think this is where it gets tricky of we don't know whether in some capacities, as much as I'm an advocate of it,
01:40:38
Speaker
We also don't know, at least in the interim period, what will be the cons of it and how are we going to deal with that?
01:40:44
Speaker
Are humans wired?
01:40:45
Speaker
Is there an evolutionary aspect to it that certain people actually in the current time period are actually not suited for this?
01:40:53
Speaker
Because...
01:40:54
Speaker
even right from when you are a kid when you are a kid when you fight with the neighbor's kid what do you do?
01:41:00
Speaker
you go to your parents you go to a centralized authority to help you solve a problem you go to school when you are failing an exam or not doing good or struggling with it what do you do?
01:41:10
Speaker
you go to a teacher when you are flying to your vacation holiday to Bali with your family and suddenly all your flights are cancelled what do you do?
01:41:20
Speaker
you call the airlines the centralized authority to help you figure out a solution
01:41:24
Speaker
So I know we put centralization in this evil bucket and make it sound it's all like evil and it has no value to it.
01:41:32
Speaker
Well, that's completely wrong.
01:41:34
Speaker
Centralization has made our lives a lot more easier than people talk about it in the space.
01:41:41
Speaker
And I feel like because we are so wired to accept centralization from a young age,
01:41:50
Speaker
I, to be honest, I'm not really sure how do we have the shift that it can be that like for the first 20 years of your life, you are an advocate and you are a practitioner of centralization that all of a sudden you're going to flip 360 and be like, oh, decentralization is what I want to move in.
01:42:07
Speaker
So it's something, it's a question that I always ask myself as well, that what do I think would be
01:42:14
Speaker
the the things that need to play out what are the steps we need to take but it's one of those things that i'm i'm i'm going to say that i don't want to be that person who thinks they have the solution uh just because i don't think i don't think a lot of people would either and i don't want to give out like a false thesis or just like answer this just for the heck of it but i honestly think that because this is such a new
01:42:37
Speaker
paradigm and the way of thinking that I just don't think a lot of us can even comprehend.
01:42:43
Speaker
In science, we talk about there are things we don't know and there are things we don't know we don't know.
01:42:47
Speaker
And this is one of those things.
01:42:49
Speaker
But I think one of the ways I see us moving forward on a more broader scale, on a mass adoption scale would be move to a Web 2.5 model first and then move to a Web 3 model.
01:43:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's how I would answer this, I guess.
01:43:05
Speaker
I know this doesn't give you what you wanted, but... No, it's such a refreshing... I'd hate ending up with bullshit answers on this podcast.
01:43:15
Speaker
And this was a tough question.
01:43:17
Speaker
And it is a question that I genuinely believe not a lot of people on this planet have a very good answer for or very good...
01:43:27
Speaker
We all have, like we were saying before, we all have our subjective perspective and we all have our own ways in which we are going to push towards this unique goal of decentralization.
01:43:38
Speaker
And it is only by adding more people to the equation that believe that we need it and that are willing to get in the arena to build it, that we will eventually achieve this.
01:43:51
Speaker
And it will require all of these
01:43:54
Speaker
to solve that complex equation to actually... No, 100%.
01:43:58
Speaker
Thank you for that perfect, imperfect answer.
01:44:02
Speaker
We've been talking about civilizations, and I don't know if you'll remember exactly what you meant.
01:44:06
Speaker
I didn't.
01:44:07
Speaker
But you were saying that Paji penguins fits the definition of civilization.
01:44:12
Speaker
And I was really intrigued for you to remind me what you meant if you remember it.
Pudgy Penguins and NFT Cultural Phenomenon
01:44:19
Speaker
I have zero idea of what I would have said, but I'm assuming the bit I spoke about is I remember hearing Luca, who's the owner of Paji Penguins, say something very interesting, which I was like, huh, there's actually some truth to it.
01:44:37
Speaker
But he was like, there has always been a generation that has been obsessed with the idea of penguins in some form or the other.
01:44:45
Speaker
as a character and I was like, whoa, I never thought about that and then he named all the way from Club Penguin then he talked about Frozen and a bunch of other movies that are not coming to my mind yet but he was essentially talking about three different generations how they were all exposed to this fun, happy, wholesome, pudgy character and that's why he believes that other than the business model I'm trying to build or the people that I'm working with or the direction we are going
01:45:14
Speaker
that contrary to what a lot of the space talks about that it's not much about the art and i do think to a certain degree it is true for a lot of these pfp projects that i think puffy penguins is one project that there is there is a lot more honesty with their ip that people would be like art is objective at the subjective at the end of the day but i think like it would be things like puffy penguins and stuff like it's it's hard for someone to to argue that these don't look cute
01:45:40
Speaker
uh maybe you can you can you can yeah you can have this back and forth with like uh with like board apes or whatever they look ugly they are this or whatever and stuff but i think with pajit penguins you'll have a vast majority of people they'd be like oh these these look like good characters like if these were people they would be good people
01:46:00
Speaker
I like this.
01:46:00
Speaker
Yeah, it does have a lot of catalysts working for it.
01:46:05
Speaker
I'm so priced out right now and I'm really sad about it.
01:46:09
Speaker
I hoped for a minute a few months ago that I could get in and now it's going to be too late for now.
01:46:15
Speaker
yeah i think even even the the of course no financial advice to anyone who's this thing but i think uh even from an upside point of view i think an investment point of view i think little pudgies is a great investment into the ecosystem uh at least with the start just because especially if you're looking at it from a financial point of view also for a
01:46:37
Speaker
Lil Paji to go 2x, it's going to be a lot faster than the Paji Penguin going to 2x and stuff.
01:46:43
Speaker
And it's for the same reason I hold a lot more Lil Paji than I hold.
01:46:47
Speaker
I actually just have one Paji, but I have a bunch of other Lil Paji and stuff because A, it helps me with liquidity.
01:46:53
Speaker
B, I just think there's a lot more upside with secondary collections with projects than their primary ones if the tokenomics, for lack of a better word, are right.
01:47:03
Speaker
Yeah, you're probably right.
01:47:04
Speaker
I think it's ego for me wanting to be, I want to prime.
01:47:08
Speaker
I agree.
01:47:08
Speaker
I mean, I think if I didn't have a Pudgy Penguin, I would probably be like, I would rather have one of the Pudgy Penguin than just, so I completely get that.
01:47:17
Speaker
And it sucks, but we have this tribalism in this space.
01:47:20
Speaker
People will not talk about it, but it's there.
01:47:23
Speaker
And having a board ape is different to having a mutant ape.
01:47:26
Speaker
Yes, we are part of the same club.
01:47:27
Speaker
You get the same accesses, but it's just different.
01:47:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:47:30
Speaker
It is.
01:47:31
Speaker
And especially because we're early.
01:47:33
Speaker
And so you want to show that you're early.
01:47:35
Speaker
You don't want to be second.
01:47:36
Speaker
And so you want to have the main guy.
01:47:40
Speaker
Have you followed the flooring capital protocol?
01:47:43
Speaker
I have.
01:47:44
Speaker
That's really interesting when it comes to liquidity.
01:47:47
Speaker
It's very interesting.
01:47:48
Speaker
I've been thinking about it a lot and it just comes down to experimentation and just seeing how the space works because from a liquidity standpoint, there's a lot of value in it.
01:47:58
Speaker
I think fractionalization has been a thing that a lot of platforms have tried before.
01:48:02
Speaker
It just didn't
01:48:04
Speaker
work or the timing wasn't right.
01:48:05
Speaker
Maybe this is the time where liquidity is the biggest question that everyone's talking about, that it may be a good time for fractionalization to really pick up, especially if the person behind it is somehow able to get these tokens listed on exchanges of your MU tokens in the MU Bored Ape tokens or MU Pudgy Penguins or MU Hazuki tokens at a lot of these exchanges and
01:48:30
Speaker
Somehow if you end up getting the DeFi community involved in it, because the DeFi community is big.
01:48:34
Speaker
I trade a lot of meme coins and like the amount of volume and money that floats around over there is like ridiculous compared to what happens in the NFT space.
01:48:44
Speaker
So I think from a liquidity standpoint of view, very interesting proposition.
01:48:48
Speaker
But I just had my concerns with it from a zoomed out perspective of what does IP mean then?
01:48:54
Speaker
And what is the value of IP?
01:48:56
Speaker
And what happens when if we end up locking 300, let's say, let's take a ridiculous number.
01:49:02
Speaker
What happens is there are 2000 board apes in that protocol.
01:49:05
Speaker
So now there are 2000 board apes that are completely gone from the collection unless someone redeems it.
01:49:10
Speaker
Is this good for the IP?
01:49:12
Speaker
Is it then no one owns those, right?
01:49:14
Speaker
Then no one's building a
01:49:15
Speaker
the board in Hungary or board vodka or whatever and stuff and everything.
01:49:19
Speaker
And then it just questions then where does the whole, the community model lies.
01:49:23
Speaker
And so it's something I guess we're going to find out and figure it out.
01:49:26
Speaker
But yeah, it's, it's, it's fascinating.
01:49:29
Speaker
It's like one of the, one of the other things that I've always not liked that it's possible, but it's kind of,
01:49:35
Speaker
it's kind of contradictory for me to say because I believe in decentralization is I, I hate the fact that people have the ability to burn NFTs.
01:49:44
Speaker
Like I hate that someone is able to burn a crypto punk or a burn a board ape and things like that.
01:49:49
Speaker
Like,
01:49:50
Speaker
It just seems like there's something bigger than this and you're removing that from the collection.
01:49:57
Speaker
And this is what my concern with this floating protocol is.
01:50:00
Speaker
I actually DMed the guy behind it, hoping to hear his point of view regarding it literally an hour before I got onto this podcast.
01:50:08
Speaker
And I was like, if there is because how the protocol works is the moment you put like a particular NFT in it, you get a million tokens off of it.
01:50:16
Speaker
What happens if I burn 10 tokens from that million?
01:50:19
Speaker
That means there will be at least one board ape that will forever stay in that protocol.
01:50:24
Speaker
Because the protocol works if there are essentially 15 board apes and there are 15 million coins for it and stuff.
01:50:30
Speaker
So obviously, not everyone's going to liquidate it at the same time.
01:50:33
Speaker
So it's the same argument of how...
01:50:35
Speaker
liquidity works across the protocol and stuff across any protocol but i was like that means if there's anyone who ever burns even one token that there will always be one board ape that will forever be in that protocol even if the the the program such shuts down or the protocol shuts down it's not operational can we get it out like what is how does it work so i've asked him that question but he hasn't responded uh so i'm curious to hear what happens on that end
01:51:01
Speaker
Have you looked at the contract?
01:51:03
Speaker
Are you sure they're not able to... There's not like a backdoor so that they can mint a few extra tokens?
01:51:11
Speaker
This is where I'm not as technical to be able to audit contracts.
01:51:16
Speaker
There are... So the thing is they've tried to...
01:51:19
Speaker
do this in a right way where they're trying to get enough credibility because they have a couple of companies and agencies that have kind of audited the contract.
01:51:27
Speaker
So you can see who's audited it, how much they've paid for it.
01:51:30
Speaker
So they've kind of been transparent, which is something you don't see in this space a lot.
01:51:34
Speaker
The other thing which makes it seem like this is a lot more legit is the person behind it.
01:51:40
Speaker
is the one who's put all the liquidity in it initially.
01:51:42
Speaker
So he's put like 111 board apes in it.
01:51:47
Speaker
There are 111 board apes in it.
01:51:49
Speaker
I'm assuming 99% of them are his at the moment.
NFT Liquidity and Ownership Challenges
01:51:53
Speaker
There are like 1,000 Azuki Elementals.
01:51:56
Speaker
There are 200 Paji Penguins.
01:51:58
Speaker
So the man has a lot of stake in it and stuff.
01:52:00
Speaker
So I would like to assume there's no backdoor.
01:52:03
Speaker
If he responds to you, can you try to tell him to come on the podcast?
01:52:07
Speaker
Oh, I would love to.
01:52:07
Speaker
That'd be crazy.
01:52:10
Speaker
Yeah, when you were talking about hating the idea of burning an NFT, it made me think, holy shit, that would be such a great marketing move to like burn a board ape.
01:52:20
Speaker
Because a lot of people would hate it.
01:52:23
Speaker
It's funny you say that because it has happened a couple of times in this space.
01:52:26
Speaker
If I'm not mistaken, Machi has burned NFT.
01:52:29
Speaker
There are some people have burned mutants for sure.
01:52:32
Speaker
I think there's a particular board ape that has been burned as well.
01:52:35
Speaker
Yes, 100%.
01:52:36
Speaker
There's a board ape or two that has been burned.
01:52:38
Speaker
There was this project.
01:52:40
Speaker
It had a very gimmicky thing to it.
01:52:43
Speaker
I think it was called You're Going to Die or something like that.
01:52:45
Speaker
It had a very stupid... Yeah, We're Going to Die.
01:52:48
Speaker
we are going to die i think they burned a mutant or a board ape as a marketing start and everything so there are people who've done it it's i just hate it i just find it like it's literally like the opposite of what this community means and yeah that's one one that's one concept and this just goes back to the again the thing i was saying right like there are things we don't know there are things we don't know we don't know and every time i hear something like that like it just like sucks for these things to to not exist on the blockchain right like someone is like you know what
01:53:14
Speaker
this board doesn't exist anymore and you're like no but this is a character it's important like you know how could we do this so i love that you care about this on on such a deep level it's something it's something we need when we were talking about collecting and and like to an extent trading the you mentioned the misconception that exists around what it means to be early because there are
01:53:40
Speaker
levels to being early.
01:53:41
Speaker
There's being early on the scope of a month and then there's being early on the scope of a century.
01:53:48
Speaker
Can you elaborate on that and maybe on how it affects the way you navigate those markets?
01:53:53
Speaker
Just in case I say anything over here that's going to sound like financial advice, I'm not giving financial advice.
01:53:59
Speaker
This is just my personal thesis.
01:54:01
Speaker
But lately, I've been talking to a lot of people with this idea that I think there's a level of degenerate behavior that you need from people in anything for anything to ever become.
01:54:13
Speaker
accepted or for it to grab attention and stuff because almost anything that's revolutionary when it comes out sounds absolutely bonkers and doesn't make sense but you need a couple of dreamers for a lack of better word or gamblers or whatever you want to call them to believe in that
01:54:30
Speaker
and bring the attention for us to be like, okay, maybe there's something there.
01:54:34
Speaker
And then you have a bunch of people getting in it for the degenerate reasons.
01:54:38
Speaker
And then there are corporations and companies, they're like, maybe there is something that we can build something outward because that's how the internet worked.
01:54:46
Speaker
It sounded like a weird thing that we're going to live in this digital world and this information world.
01:54:51
Speaker
is going to be free wait i thought like you had to buy books or get like a library a membership and now you're saying you want to provide information for free that makes no sense and then i always take this concept of bitcoin like imagine going in like 2010 or something and telling people that hey
01:55:10
Speaker
I want you to buy this coin.
01:55:11
Speaker
Oh, perfect.
01:55:12
Speaker
Amazing.
01:55:13
Speaker
Who is this by?
01:55:14
Speaker
Oh, I'm not sure.
01:55:15
Speaker
Is this person or a group of people or entity named Satoshi and we don't know who he is or who she is or where they are from or what's their story.
01:55:24
Speaker
So it sounds like such a wait.
01:55:25
Speaker
You're telling me to buy something that you don't, that's a fake internet money, fake digital money.
01:55:29
Speaker
And we don't even know what the source is.
01:55:31
Speaker
You're saying that are 21 million, but yeah.
01:55:34
Speaker
None of us know enough about contracts or things for us to believe it.
01:55:38
Speaker
But people believed in it and there are certain people gambled in it and it became a thing.
01:55:42
Speaker
And that's what happened with CryptoPunks in 2017.
01:55:45
Speaker
That people bought it just for the heck of it and they claimed it for free.
01:55:49
Speaker
CryptoPunks were free at one point in time and there were ERC20 tokens actually before that.
01:55:57
Speaker
I just feel like in some level, people have to realize that there are sometimes these opportunities that come, whether it's in the stock market with things like Uber or like, you know, like Mark Cuban talks about how he completely missed the boat on Uber and Kevin Hart talks about it, how he thought it was like, literally he jokes about it and he was like, no, I'm not investing in this murder will because he was like, people are just going to like kidnap and like kill people and do like some shady stuff in it.
01:56:23
Speaker
That I was just like that at some level,
01:56:26
Speaker
high reward comes with high risk.
01:56:29
Speaker
And you kind of have to gauge.
01:56:30
Speaker
You have to kind of gauge where you are currently in life, what your financial standing is, how much are you willing to risk, what are your liabilities, and kind of look into that because if you're looking to
01:56:42
Speaker
to make a significant amount of wealth, whether it's through stock market, whether it's through crypto, whether it's through anything significant, that you have to somehow almost see it as a gambling degenerative thing where you think that this is absolutely going to zero, that you should enter it with the idea of that.
01:57:04
Speaker
So I think when you're looking for that ridiculous...
01:57:08
Speaker
20, 50, 100 Xs, whether it's from Nvidia or Apple stock or Bitcoin or CryptoPunks that you have to realize that in order to get those 50, 100 Xs, you need to be like super, super early.
01:57:20
Speaker
But that comes with maximum amount of risk.
01:57:23
Speaker
But if you're looking for a less risk averse investment thesis, where you're looking, okay, you know what?
01:57:29
Speaker
I'm happy with the 2X or a CX, which is what a lot of the traditional stock market
01:57:34
Speaker
is for certain people who are daily traders they exit positions in like not even two x's and like 10 and 15 and 20 and stuff so i think it just comes to that then when you're looking at like on a big time frame on a big uh models where enough like a decade has passed but you want that time and history of that particular asset or investment that you have to get into it with the idea of okay
01:57:58
Speaker
you're looking at 10 20 30 100 200 profit but like don't expect crazy returns and stuff don't put your life savings in it and expect it to go like 10x because it's not gonna happen man there's still so much education to be done because you have people that are investing super early in something that could be an interesting idea but they don't do any due diligence they don't
01:58:23
Speaker
like they have no idea about the track record of the people that are behind
Investor Education and Emotional Aspects of NFTs
01:58:27
Speaker
it.
01:58:27
Speaker
They don't do any bankroll management because they find something that triggers them emotionally.
01:58:32
Speaker
And so they put literally the house on it.
01:58:35
Speaker
And, and they're still, I think that's one of the major obstacles that's between us and effective decentralization because banks, whether you like it or not still helped you manage your own risk.
01:58:50
Speaker
Right.
01:58:52
Speaker
They helped you, hey, are you sure that this is a good investment for you or if it doesn't make it onto that UI?
01:58:59
Speaker
But now because the access is virtually free and open, then you have people that are like doing crazy, crazy stuff all based on emotions and not with the understanding of what could actually happen and is most likely to happen.
01:59:17
Speaker
Yeah, no, I completely agree.
01:59:19
Speaker
And I think this again is we don't know the impacts of complete decentralization, right?
01:59:24
Speaker
We don't know how much of gamblers will people become or not become.
01:59:30
Speaker
We just don't know.
01:59:31
Speaker
Or we don't know if there needs to be an evolutionary thing that needs to happen that maybe this generation...
01:59:37
Speaker
or even the next couple of generations are just not wired for centralization that if it became a thing we're going to eat each other alive and maybe that the the the civilization will go down and then it'll come back up we don't know and and that's the the tricky part of this whole whole concept and idea is it's nuts it's nuts this will be my last question it has been intense already
02:00:00
Speaker
You were talking about the fact that buying NFTs equals collecting culture.
02:00:06
Speaker
And that is the result of an evolution in culture.
02:00:10
Speaker
It started in geographic and went through stages and now has reached the digital realm.
02:00:19
Speaker
You were saying that collecting...
02:00:22
Speaker
culture trumps any types of other types of investing and trading.
02:00:25
Speaker
And what exactly does this all mean?
02:00:28
Speaker
And how do you, how did you get there?
02:00:31
Speaker
And what is the definition of culture in that, in that sense?
02:00:34
Speaker
So I'm just going to reiterate what you said that this is for me that I think collecting culture is my favorite form of investment just because it has like a bigger emotional connection to it.
02:00:45
Speaker
That's why I regard it as like a bigger, more valuable investment over other assets.
02:00:52
Speaker
And the reason I say that is it goes down...
02:00:55
Speaker
straight up like down to how humans operate we all have a sense we all need a sense of belonging we all want to be a part of of something that's how we work on a biological level from like um we like to be in a herd of sheep we like to be a flock of birds because we feel safe we feel secure that's how we are wired even from a psychological point of view um meslow's hierarchy of needs talks about that we have like an innate desire
02:01:24
Speaker
to have a sense of self and self-esteem that based on who we are and how we see ourselves.
02:01:29
Speaker
So I feel like the reason I say I see this as collecting culture is because we're all trying to financialize
02:01:39
Speaker
something that is kind of bringing us together in in an emotional way that oh all of us are are are uh let's say like all of us have beards for example so you have like a community around beards a bunch of people or like you know like what are the struggles you have what is the interest or uh what you know like what what products you use so i feel like there's so we do that in like everyday life you know people have like
02:02:05
Speaker
um hair routines people have they like to buy sneakers that like look alike or or they like to buy clothes that are low i like to wear tight fitted jeans or i like to be wear baggy jeans and i feel like that's because it it represents an aspect of who you are as a person it also represents of how you want the world to perceive you and that's what i see nfts as uh um
02:02:29
Speaker
as an element of culture because these nfts look like something you buy a particular pfp because it represents something you know uh it stands by something but it's also about how you want the world to to perceive it if that is the identity that you wish to to choose or those are the nfts that you identify yourself with even if it's not your identity but you hold it in your
02:02:52
Speaker
wallet and you're like oh this person is is collecting art or he's been holding art or she's been holding art for so long or they like a 3d glasses crypto punk or they like a mohawk board ape and why is it that they resonate with it oh this person actually owns uh this person is a male and he owns a female crypto punk as well and you ask them why do they do that and they're like oh i want to gift it to my daughter when she grows up uh one day
02:03:17
Speaker
So I feel like there's this whole emotional connection that is being built that is native to the digital world.
02:03:24
Speaker
Because a lot of the groups that came in history were based on, just going back to what I was saying, a herd of sheep is based on the way you biologically look.
02:03:34
Speaker
So you can control it.
02:03:35
Speaker
And that's how a lot of groups and communities existed in the past.
02:03:40
Speaker
When women and men were separated, they did so because there were some commonalities they found with each other.
02:03:45
Speaker
People made groups with their skin colors, their ethnicity and things like that because that's what they were born with and everything.
02:03:54
Speaker
But now in the digital world, you have all these traits and parameters that are just like your genders, that are just like your ethnicities, that are just like your skin color or whatever, but they're native to this digital space where, oh, it's not about skin color.
02:04:09
Speaker
It's about, oh, are you a Murakami drip or are you alien DNA and stuff?
02:04:14
Speaker
And I think I find that super fascinating because rather than trying to replicate the same model from the physical world, which we've struggled with, which we've had issues with, with sexism and, and, and racism and all these things that we are changing the, the, the whole narrative and bringing traits and parameters, but actually,
02:04:33
Speaker
that trump all those ideologies.
02:04:35
Speaker
And I wonder, I wonder if we will see, and this is a bizarre conversation to have, but I wonder if 10 years later, where people's complete identities are based on their PFPs and people go through tribalism of you didn't get offered a job because you were a board ape holder.
02:04:52
Speaker
They just don't like board apes or they just are anti CC zero.
02:04:56
Speaker
So they don't,
02:04:57
Speaker
like to associate themselves with moon birds i wonder if this would happen i wonder if it's our our human need to kind of like always engage in tribalism so it's it's fascinating and i feel like that's what i see culture that's native to the digital space rather than just trying to replicate from those physical space and we are collecting it we are owning it we are owning digital sneakers we are owning uh art we are owning digital identities and i think
02:05:23
Speaker
It's a lot more interesting to me as an asset class than just a bunch of ERC20 tokens.
02:05:30
Speaker
I do that only for the money, but I'm collecting culture because it's fun.
02:05:35
Speaker
It brings us together.
02:05:36
Speaker
In two weeks, I'm going in... Actually, 10 days, I'm flying to Hong Kong for a Bo Day festival.
02:05:42
Speaker
I have these groups already of 50 people where we all are already connecting with each other.
02:05:47
Speaker
We're going to have breakfast and lunches and dinners.
02:05:50
Speaker
We're going to give each other our stickers and our badges.
02:05:52
Speaker
And like, like we are literally just connected on, on groups on Twitter, just because we have the same board ape.
02:05:58
Speaker
I don't know who they are.
02:05:59
Speaker
I don't know if they're 15 or 35 or like, you know, what gender do they belong to?
02:06:03
Speaker
Or do they identify as anything?
02:06:05
Speaker
Like I know nothing about them, but we are just like, you're a board ape holder.
02:06:08
Speaker
I'm a board ape holder.
02:06:10
Speaker
We are vibing.
02:06:10
Speaker
Yeah.
02:06:11
Speaker
I love this.
02:06:13
Speaker
These are the types of conversations that give me hope and that remind me of, yes, there's something there.
02:06:20
Speaker
This is human glue.
02:06:23
Speaker
I first got in in 2017.
02:06:24
Speaker
And so it was all about ERC-20s and ICOs.
02:06:29
Speaker
In 2021, NFTs came back on top because I remember like I bought CryptoKitties in 2017 and I remember people were talking about CryptoPunks and they were minting them.
02:06:40
Speaker
I can't believe I faded them.
02:06:41
Speaker
And when they came back on my radar, I thought, wow, this is the thing that makes us come together and stick together and you're articulating it in a way that I love.
02:06:55
Speaker
Man, thank you so much for being here.
02:06:57
Speaker
If you've listened to this incredible conversation, the two hour and 15 long conversation, then congratulations.
02:07:06
Speaker
You should definitely check out Rahim.
02:07:08
Speaker
He's honestly one of the best people to follow on social media because he's
02:07:12
Speaker
He's always just so kind and wholesome and positive and also critical, but in the good sense, in the sense that makes us grow and makes us move forward as a group.
02:07:25
Speaker
So check him out.
02:07:27
Speaker
If you like this, don't forget to like, to follow, to recommend this to a friend of yours.
02:07:33
Speaker
And don't forget to join our Discord because that's where a lot of cool stuff are happening.
02:07:38
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening.
02:07:39
Speaker
Raheem, thank you so much for doing this.
02:07:41
Speaker
You're most welcome.
02:07:42
Speaker
Thank you for having me.
02:07:43
Speaker
My absolute pleasure.