Karate in the Metaverse: Phil @ Orchard Street Capital

Today we talk to Phil from Orchard Street Capital to discuss his favorite projects. Topics discussed include digital identity, $KARATE, $ROOT, and more!

https://orchardstreet.capital/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheHuangWay
Karate Combat: https://www.karate.com/
FutureVerse: https://www.therootnetwork.com/

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
05:57 Researching Projects
13:16 FutureVerse
23:43 Altered State Machine
28:39 Digital Identity
37:22 Karate Combat
52:22 Closing Thoughts

RCC Twitter: https://twitter.com/redcandleclub
Host: https://twitter.com/crypto_sieve

Intro/Outro Music Credit: kazmaattack@gmail.com

DISCLAIMER: This is not investment advice and the hosts may or may not hold assets mentioned on the show. Please do your own research and assess your risk tolerance before making any investments in these assets.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/redcandleclub
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@redcandleclub

Dan Kazenoff: @DanKazenoff
Lawrence: @crypto_sieve

DISCLAIMER: This is not financial, tax, or legal advice. Hosts and guests may hold some of the assets discussed on the show.

Transcript

Phil: 0:00

But it's happening either way, which is cool to see. People don't need to get it. And, you know, the UX and UI has improved enough where it doesn't matter if people get it. Like, this stuff will be running in the background and it will still achieve the same goals. I think of, like, democratizing access and, you know, flattening finding the world a little bit

Lawrence: 0:33

Here we have Phil and Phil, how about you oh, just before we start this is not investment advice. Nothing we say is investment advice. Please do your own research and some of the people in the show may or may not hold some of the assets that are discussed. Okay, now that that's out of the way Phil would you like to give a quick intro or how your crypto origin story?

Phil: 0:56

Yeah, yeah, no, I've been so I got into crypto around like 2016 like everyone else, just with Bitcoin and then going down the whole rabbit hole I think that whole cycle introduced a lot of. Interesting things that continued to develop over the years and created a lot of FOMO and, you know, just an explosion of of interest across, you know, across the board from all kinds of places. So, I, you know, was watching it, dabbling in it, and, you know, it was just fascinating and I just wanted to learn, you know, more and more about it, so I just dove. You know, further and further, just reading everything, doing research, talking to people until, you know, I became kind of like obsessed with, with different things, but yeah, my background, I was in real estate real estate investing for a long time, and then, yeah, since 2016, 17 and investing in crypto worked at a startup you know, for a year and a half, two years with some of my best friends and then, yeah, now I'm investing in crypto and real estate full time.

Lawrence: 2:13

Nice. So you is that when it's like 2017 was a cycle you really got involved, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I, that's kind of when I jumped in also. That was a, I miss those days sometimes. That was a pretty crazy cycle. It was,

Phil: 2:29

it was, you had like a handful of things to track and you could count them on one hand. You know, it was like, there was like Bitcoin, there was Ripple, there was Ethereum not too many things beyond that. There were some, you know, crazy projects, most of which don't exist anymore now, but, you know, you had all the other. Nascent things like Zcash and, you know, Monero and all those. But it was interesting. I mean, it really was, I feel like that time was like a Cambrian explosion of of different ideas and, and, and different things that started to be built. You know, kind of on top of everything else. So I think it was like the perfect time to really get your feet wet and get into it get rugged a few times and gain some good experience.

Lawrence: 3:21

Yeah, I keep saying that we need to have like an episode where we just talk about like how the worst rugs that we faced because it's everyone's got those stories. I I, I got I had stuff on Cryptopia. I don't know if you were ever on Cryptopia. I remember Cryptopia. Yeah, yeah, that place was like. Like what Mexi is now is kind of what Cryptopia was. It was just like where you find all the shit coins. They were all on

Phil: 3:47

Cryptopia. It was the only place he could find certain shit coins. Right.

Lawrence: 3:51

Yup. Yeah. And I left a lot on there too, and then it went down. So I basically just, you know, I got totally. Rocked, but it wasn't, you know, yeah, it was, but it was, you know, it was like, I feel like everyone's got those stories and you just kind of have to take, you have to learn the lessons. And

Phil: 4:09

if you haven't sent money to and from, you know, these, these sketchy dodgy exchanges where you don't know if, if your money's going to be there or not, then. You know, have you really been living in in crypto?

Lawrence: 4:23

Yeah, it's true.

Phil: 4:25

So praying it goes through and hits your, your own

Lawrence: 4:28

wall. Yeah, yeah. I definitely still do the send like 5 worth and wait to see if it gets there. And then I send the rest. It's still pretty scary. Yeah. Like, there's just like nothing. You have to just wait until they send you an email or something to see if it cuts there.

Phil: 4:45

Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm sure everybody's had fun stuck on some bankrupt exchange or, you know, those exchanges that go out of business, they get shut down. Like, if you've been in crypto long enough and you don't have 1 of those stories, then, you know, I don't believe that you've been. Working in crypto.

Lawrence: 5:04

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how is so today you said you're also running a you have a crypto fund invest, you invest in crypto these days. Is that through like a company that you have or

Phil: 5:16

yeah, I have a vehicle with few friends and you know, basically it overlaps a little with the same people I invest with in real estate. Mainly. You know, kind of friends, family, people I've met online you know, never met in person, but a random mix. So it's a, it's an interesting milieu of of folks that I do different deals with and investments with.

Lawrence: 5:42

Nice. How how do you get in on these conversations? Like, if you find a project you want to get in on and it's not public yet, like, how do you, how do you get, how do you get on the table there? How do you get to the table there? That's,

Phil: 5:57

that's like what I love about this space is so many times I would just find something that I think is interesting. Either on Twitter or doing research and I reach out directly to the team or to, or to the people you know, either via Twitter or on telegram or discord and, and, you know, join the, join the group chats, try and pick the team's brain, ask questions, things like that. And everybody is for the most part. Very open and willing to answer questions, talk about their projects and, and, you know, the things that they're trying to solve and, you know, what their needs are. And, you know, fortunately, if they're. If, you know, they're looking to raise money or, or something like that, and I can help them with it or invest in it. You know, then we have a good match and you already have, you know, sort of a background just from kind of discussing the project for a long time with them. So it makes it a lot easier. But like, the more deals that you do, I think the more deal flow that you get just. The other people that you co invest with, the other funds you co invest with people are always sharing ideas sharing different theses different narratives yeah. So I think it just kind of builds the more investments that you make and the more you know, interesting teams and the more help that you give, it kind of comes around, you know. And, and it all works. You know, in, in your favor, when, especially if you're trying to contribute, you know, some value to, to different teams and things like that.

Lawrence: 7:43

Sure. So you, you spend a lot of time on Twitter then?

Phil: 7:47

I would say most of it's on like Discord and, and Telegram on, you know Twitter is, is I do a lot of like research and, and finding, you know, Different projects, and also I like to read what other people are thinking and what their ideas are and compare them to, you know, kind of the way that I'm looking at different, different topics.

Lawrence: 8:14

Gotcha. Yeah, I, I tend to like Discord. Telegram is, it's good for small chats, but then when they get too big, it gets Kind of unruly. Right?

Phil: 8:26

Well, you just lose kind of if you're not following it, like in real time, right? You're just going to miss everything and have like 1000 messages. That's I do like discord better because you can organize the, you know, the, the discord servers much better. Telegram is more like stream of consciousness conversational style, like, you know, where it's hard to kind of get a summary of the discussions and things like that. But they serve their purposes for different things. You know, telegram is probably, you know, good for, for DMing with people and stuff like that.

Lawrence: 9:06

Yeah, I would agree. It's one of the things I love about crypto is, people are just very open like you could dm pro founders of projects and they just they'll answer back It's not like you have to do this whole like email thing with like they have behind an email and get to you two days Later or something. I don't you know, it's it's just like very open. It's very flat. Yeah, it

Phil: 9:26

is There's no hierarchy. I You know, there's no people that are For the most part, you know, sometimes there are, but there's really no people that are like, Hey, let me see your credentials. Let me see that you've gone to, you know, some Ivy league school or something like that before I talk to you about, you know, what, what I'm doing. It's it's mostly people who are, they respond if you have intelligent questions to ask them and. You're not just sitting there throwing shit at the wall and being like, Oh, when price go up and, you know, when, when token, when, when this, like, as long as you're, you're really coming up with thoughtful things and. You know, important pain points or, or different areas and solutions, then everybody that I've found is, is willing to kind of have a conversation and talk to you about, you know, exactly what they're trying to do. Sure,

Lawrence: 10:26

so I guess what is the, what's the project that you're most excited about right now? What's what's kind of like, if. I know you have, you know, many projects you're into, but if you could, you know, you know, talk about it,

Phil: 10:40

there's a few I think to me, I think the apps, the games and the, and the projects that capture the mind share from, you know, non crypto users and just. The regular people, those are the most exciting things for me because it just means that crypto is no longer like this niche, like over here, it's become just a part of society and you know, the Bitcoin UTF and stuff like that is sort of, you're on the right path, but to me. I'm not going to feel like we're really mainstream until there's like a million users on an app, you know, that's built on crypto rails. And, you know, in that respects, it's like gaming sports, you know, the metaverse something in that arena and, you know, some of my favorite projects are, you know, like, you know, like karate combat love exactly what they're doing. And, you know, I spent a lot of time working with those guys. You know, there's a parallel and what they're building with, you know, the whole prime ecosystem and just the card game is. One of the best games that is existing right now if you just try playing it, you're, it's very easy for me to see like this gaining an incredibly large following just of regular people that have no knowledge of crypto. And then, you know, in the metaverse, there's, there's a whole future verse, which I've spent, you know, so many hours. Just digging in, researching every facet of it, and, you know, kind of what they're building is one of the more, one of the most ambitious things I've ever seen, and it at first glance seems insane, but then it's like all the parts that they're working on and the way they fit together make complete sense. And I mean, now they're officially partnered with like ready player one and these like different movie studios and stuff like that. So it's like, they are going to make ready player one happen. And that's like insane to me. It's going to be amazing.

Lawrence: 13:09

So, so could you go into a little more of what exactly it is they're doing? Is it, metaverse project?

Phil: 13:15

Yeah. Yeah. So they're, they're basically building the infrastructure for their vision of an open metaverse. Which is You know, not one that's a world that's, like, created and run by, like, Disney, or Apple, or anyone, for that matter. You know, where a lot of these big companies are trying to do their own version of a metaverse, it's exactly like, you know, their vision of it is exactly like the Apple App Store. It's like they want to have This big world that they still control and they can kick you out of if they don't like you. So their whole vision is really just building the tooling and infrastructure to have an open metaverse that anyone and everyone can participate in. You know, and, and. They have, you know, a few different tokens to accomplish the goal, but it's also they, they rolled up into Futuverse, like 11 or 12 separate companies over the past year you know, and they raised a ton of money at, I think, you know, north of like a billion dollar valuation. Last year, so they're well on their way and they have the right partners. You know, they're partnered with movie studios. They're partnered with some of the big names in music. They're partnered with, you know, some of the best VCs. So it's been really cool to kind of watch them, them work through this and unveil it, you know, a little piece at a time. But if you've been following them, you can. Tell where, where it's all leading and how it's all kind of coming together and being shown piece by piece right now.

Lawrence: 15:05

Very nice. Yeah. I, I remember I found like an AI project called ASTO a few months ago or like maybe six months ago and it had just pumped insanely. So I, I avoided it because I, you know, it's kind of, there's like, there was an air gap under it, the price. But yeah, like I went into the discord just to learn more about it. And then I saw there was also like the root network, right? Which is in there too. And I'm like, okay, what is going on? And I kind of just like avoided it because it just seemed kind of weird to me how there was many projects in one discord. And, but ASTO was also involved with, with Futureverse, right?

Phil: 15:41

Yeah. Yeah. So ASTO is the token basically for. Project, which is now part of Futurist, but it was called Altered State Machine. And, you know, I don't know if you know the, the, the book and the show Altered, Altered Carbon. But that's kind of where they got the name from. It was the one where you know, you can kind of upload your consciousness into a memory card. And basically, your body is, is In effect, a skin and they call them skins. So you could like, shed your body and and, you know, just put your consciousness and and another body and kind of live forever. Pretty much. So that's kind of where they got the name name from. It's a great show. It was a show on Netflix for like, a few seasons to,

Lawrence: 16:32

I think I watched the pilot season. I watched the pilot season. I'll be and then didn't watch more, which. I like the pilot episode. I just, I don't watch TV shows, but I, I did like the pilot. Yeah, it's really good

Phil: 16:45

idea. But they are very into, they were into AI like going back, you know, four years ago. So even before like, I was blowing up over the last like year or two they were working on it and basically they wanted. You know, they, they released this NFT collection where you could own your own AI agent or AI brain which was really cool the way that they went about that and the way that they were envisioning, like being able to have your own. Kind of unique NFT AI that can learn and do certain things, you know, be able to take that and utilize it for, you know, different applications. And they've started to build out some of these applications, like. Yeah, you know, on a level they had like a world cup type soccer game where your, your team is, is basically just running around based on the way you train them. And, you know, you're kind of, the brains can be learning from, you know, the different inputs and stuff that you give them, but it's, it's like all of these seemingly. Simple games and things like that are leading to just more complex use cases and they've had this overarching, like, map of, of where they're going with all this, but everyone that, like, from the outside. Was sort of just seeing pieces of it here and there and it was really hard to actually put the whole thing together and Realize like, you know what they were trying to achieve and like what their goals were until you know They they came out and laid it out for everyone you know with with the whole roll up of 12 companies and and the future verse white paper and then You know just I think it's just a month ago. They announced The partnership with Ready Player One and you know what they're building with the writer and producers of, you know, that movie. And I think they are building, it's, it's like, you know, life imitates art, that sort of thing. Damn.

Lawrence: 19:14

That sounds pretty neat. I, I definitely am a believer that the metaverse is coming for sure. It's, it's only a matter of time. You know, we, we got the Apple vision,

Phil: 19:23

you know, one of the quotes I saw from, I think it was like that guy, Dan Farah, who is the. Producer of Ready Player One, he was like, I didn't think that we could even ever, like, make the world that, you know, Ready Player One had been You know, showing people on screen for, you know, another decade or two. And after he met, you know, the future verse founders and everything, he was like, I didn't realize like we were so much closer and that like we could be able to do it like now.

Lawrence: 20:06

Wow. So how so when they build this world, right, how are they, how are people getting into it? Are they using like a VR headset or. Is it right now? Is it just like a desktop application or

Phil: 20:18

no? So right now there, there isn't really anything that's been released except for kind of these ancillary projects that are kind of around, you know, sitting on the edges of the future verse. You know, like they have a boxing game called the next legends where it'll be, you know, you get to pick your fighter who's an NFT, you know, you can outfit them have different utilities and different clothing. And I think you can also teach them how to fight and also utilize the, the AI brain in those they have a racing game. With cars that you can customize and things like that. So I think it's like very much from the ground up. They're trying to build ground swell of community among different Categories of shared interests like video games car video games car enthusiasts You know fighting game, you know people that love, you know boxing stuff like that They have the soccer game people that like You know, doing these little football games with these kind of animated characters but the common thread amongst them is that they're all utilizing the infrastructure and the tools that they're building. So these are like the use cases for it, and it's very much so just refine. I think it's like using these games and refining the tools and making it better and then. You know, then scaling it as, as, you know, as wide and as deep as, as they can go. So like root is, you know, the L one and they're going to make it that you can basically utilize it with a variety of different tokens. And you can use any of those tokens to pay gas on the network with, like, you know, Ripple you can pay in Root, you can pay in Asto, you can pay in Silo. Those are, those are kind of all the different network tokens in, in the futureverse.

Lawrence: 22:28

Oh, wow. That's cool. So it's like, it's kind of like almost a gaming ecosystem, right? It's kind of what it sounds like. Yeah,

Phil: 22:36

I think they're using games. To effectively demonstrate the actual infrastructure that is built and already built and using it kind of as test cases, I think, to make it a better experience and, and smooth everything out and, and, you know, fix all the bugs and, and stuff like that. And then I think you're going to see the more kind of hardcore applications. That and more complex things that are built on top of that, you know, so like these, these simple games and stuff like that, I think they're mainly tools just to run through the bugs, do trial runs, just get, it's, it's like the the practice, the run through. Before they're going to launch something, you know, as comprehensive as, as a whole world, like the Oasis or something.

Lawrence: 23:41

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's really neat. I, yeah, definitely going to follow these guys because I think that they're, they're doing some interesting stuff and. Altered state machine 2 is a really cool project. So I'm interested to see how they integrate the altered state machine. And they're

Phil: 23:58

doing it in such a practical and just well thought out way, you know, when you understand what they're trying to build and then you're looking at each step. Yeah. There's a lot of people that have been following it for a while and are like, Oh, it's taking so long. Why is like the, the developments going so slow and blah, blah, blah. Without realizing like these guys are trying to build the most ambitious thing probably like ever done in, you know, definitely in the world of like crypto, but like in the world of just like digital, this, this is like a gargantuan task. Yeah. And, you know, you can see it in the way that they've been releasing things, that they're more interested in the way that the tools are working, rather than like, oh, this game is successful, or this game is like, you know, gonna pick up a million users, no, it's like, oh, it's We wanted to make sure this little, like, thing that we patented to choose your character, like, randomly, by the way that you move your mouse, works. Yeah. It's, it's crazy, and, and, like, they've been doing this stuff, and they have patents for, for different parts of their infrastructure, that they are, You know, clearly lining up for a much bigger kind of use case.

Lawrence: 25:36

Yeah, for sure. It's I, I mean, it's always the thing with tech is like everyone wants the developers to go faster and to ship faster and you know, this, this metaverse thing, I think is one of the most difficult things in crypto that people are building because it's not, you're not just building gaming infrastructure, you're building an infrastructure for people to own things that they create in the games and, or they might earn in the games. And that you need to create an entire 01 also based on that. I mean, that's. Yeah, I mean, that's so much effort and you know, I it's not gonna happen immediately. It's gonna take a long time Yeah,

Phil: 26:14

like but I think like if you ever played video games and things like that Or if you've ever been a gamer a lot of these things That they're on their way to doing are things that people have, you know, commonly dreamt about it, like being able to take assets that you have in one game and use them in another. You know, like if you play Fortnite and you have a skin that you earned or that you bought, that you love. And you want to wear it for your character in another game, like, Hey, why can't we, you know, either make that an NFT or something and move it over and do that beyond the bounds of like one single game manufacturer or one, you know, game platform, like, you know, it wasn't until the last few years where you could even play games. Like, if you were on a PS6 versus, or a PS5 versus a Xbox, you know, and now you can finally like mix it up with desktop and, and like Xbox and PS5s, but, but for the longest time, it was like, oh, you're playing on the PC. Okay. You can only play against other people playing on the PC. So. It's, it's happening. And I think, you know, what they're doing is just accelerating everything into their vision of the world, which is where everything can be open and you can own digital assets across different worlds and across different games and across different platforms and bring them with you and, and things like that.

Lawrence: 27:56

Yeah, for sure. I think it also fits very well with like. The societal shift of everything just becoming digitized, you know, I mean, that's been going on for decades now. I mean, people, people spend more time in their machines and I don't think that's going to stop happening. It's only going to continue, right? And so I think. I mean, I think that this is a really interesting idea, like, you know, people are going to spend a significant portion of their lives and it can expand even beyond games and, you know, just beyond like hanging out in a digital world with friends that you, you know, all over the world and you guys. You can't, you can't meet up in real life, so you just meet up in a game and exactly, and it creates a more

Phil: 28:39

social, like, crossing, you know, all kinds of like, boundaries into into social, like, in socializing and also in real life, like, I think some of the biggest applications will be like, decentralized identity and being able to abstract. You know, your identity from, you know, things like your email address, your date of birth, you know, your I. D. photo it's, you know, you, you think about all, all the data that we've given up to Amazon and Instagram and Facebook, right? How amazing would it be if you could go and buy something online without You know, them knowing your complete purchase history, you know, your date of birth, your demographic, like everything, and it's like, Hey, maybe one day you can have your avatar or your character go and buy stuff for you beyond that. And you cryptographically signing for something that's basically says, yes, this person's like legit and, you know, is real and it's not like a terrorist or criminal or something like that. Like it's. It's freedom and it's more like, you know, freedom from kind of a surveillance state and, and things like that and, and being able to, you know, freely transact and, you know, spend and, and buy things and do whatever you want without fear of, you know, kind of the, the big conglomerates like knowing every single little thing about you.

Lawrence: 30:22

Sure. Yeah, I mean, it definitely, I mean, I think the digital identity thing, we got to get away from passwords, man. I mean, the password is so I still feel like security. That's kind of like living in the fax machine days, you know, this is so, I mean, this is like an early, this is like a tech bubble, you know, late nineties thing, and we're still doing it now. You know, we still haven't like. Evolved to the next phase of security,

Phil: 30:49

it's like generate a 20 character password, utilizing numbers and symbols and everything. And then by the time you think about it, you're like, shit, I'm not going to be able to remember this. I guess I have to use 1 of these password apps. Okay. Well, what are you going to use to open the password app? Another fucking password.

Lawrence: 31:08

Yeah, and it's, and it's one that controls all your passwords. So God forbid someone finds out about your master password. Now they have control of everything. Yeah, so it doesn't work. It's just, it's like a fundamentally not going to work. You know, like, yeah, you know, you, it's just silly. You can't write them down. They have to be complicated. Yeah.

Phil: 31:32

And there's still like one central point of failure.

Lawrence: 31:35

Yeah, there's still one master key that if someone gets, it's like over. So me personally, I do the password management. I have one really long, complicated password that I act that I remember that isn't written down anywhere. Like, you know, there's risks to that too. Like, what happens if something happens to me, you know, like, forget it,

Phil: 31:52

or, you know. What if you hit your head? Like, what if you fell off a bike? Yeah.

Lawrence: 31:56

Yeah. And, you know, you have memory issues and you can't remember it. Like, it's gone now, right? And It's just gone. No one can Yeah, so it's, it's kind of, it doesn't make sense, really. It's kind of stupid.

Phil: 32:07

Like what if, what if that happened and you wanted to like leave all of your assets, your digital assets and everything to like your family or to someone else. And it's like, you forgot your 64 character.

Lawrence: 32:20

Yeah. Yeah. I think about that all the time is I, is Like, okay, I have my seed phrase, I have, you know, I have my keys and all my cryptos on there and stuff. But like, if I, you know, knock on wood, had a heart attack or something What happens to it, right? There's no, there's no, it's all gone, right? It's, they can't open it. That's the design of it. It's, and then people freaked out when ledger did that recover thing. Right. And they said, Oh my God, how could they do this? Like, yeah, it's pretty scary, but I could see what they're trying to do. They're trying to fix this problem.

Phil: 32:58

And it is a problem. It's a problem in that 99 percent of people. Would rather sacrifice like this decentralized ethos of be your own bank and blah, blah, blah, to something where they don't bear ultimate responsibility. Yeah. It's like 99 percent of people have a problem. With being ultimately responsible for, you know, their own stuff, because, like, like you said, like, something happens or you forget, like, people screw up all the time. Yeah, you know, they want to have a backup. They want to have someone that's like, okay, it's fine. Don't worry about it. Instead of, you know, the guy that threw out a billion dollars Bitcoin or something and now it's like gone forever.

Lawrence: 33:49

Yeah, man, I think about those people all the time. Like when the Bitcoin price goes up, I'm like, that's just a lifetime of pain that they signed up for because it's just going to keep going up and they're going to. It's gonna be like in 10 years, 20 years, it's gonna be like a hundred billion dollars, $200 billion. Like it's, they're just gonna keep publishing these reports and shaming these people, and it's just hilarious. so funny.

Phil: 34:14

This Bitcoin pizza would've made you the richest person in the world.

Lawrence: 34:18

Yeah. 40 years ago. Yeah. You, it's like you know, a, a $50 billion pizza or whatever, like, it's coming. It's gonna happen. It just makes great headlines.

Phil: 34:29

That, that's like not that bad. Like if you spent it, you know, at the time and it was worth this. I mean, I, I feel bad for the guy that forgot his password and like this shit is

Lawrence: 34:38

just gone. Yeah, I do too. I mean, there's stories of some of them, like they threw them away and they're trying to like petition the city to let them go to the landfills and find it. Yeah, I'm like, man, there was a

Phil: 34:51

guy in England, I think he, he had like a hedge fund or someone that was willing to fund like combing through the entire landfill or something like that to find his hard drive that, you know, he, he said it had like, you know, hundreds of millions on it. Jeez. There's, there's definitely better systems and I think, you know, account abstraction is probably the biggest step, like, one of the biggest steps forward you know, in this respect. Sure. But again, like, I think ultimately people don't want to have too much responsibility. Yeah. Or the final responsibility.

Lawrence: 35:29

Yep. Yeah. And that's fine. I mean, I have friends who, you know, they're like, Oh, I'm out. The ETF is out. Like, should I just buy the ETF? And I'm like, Hey, man, you know what, if you haven't been bothered enough to do the research to like buy your own Bitcoin, buy your own wallet, you're probably not going to, and you're going to miss out on this. Run up, so it's just by the ETF, like, yeah,

Phil: 35:50

you know, just by the ETF in your, in your 401k and you know, you don't have to think about it like onboarding friends and family to crypto, like in 2018 and 19 was. The biggest pain point and like pain in the ass ever, you know I, I gave out ledgers in 2018 and 2017 to people and that like, they were like, what the hell am I going to do with this? Yeah, sure. Yeah. It's easier just to be like, okay, just go to Coinbase, open up an account. I'll send you some stuff. And like, you know, that's, that's it. You know, you don't have to remember any of this stuff. But like. Yeah, you're not getting the full power of it. Yeah, exactly. So, like, people lost the whole Cypherpunk, like, like, ideals and, you know, what crypto originally was meant for. But it's happening either way, which is cool to see. People don't need to get it. And, you know, the UX and UI has improved enough where it doesn't matter if people get it. Like, this stuff will be running in the background and it will still achieve the same goals. I think of, like, democratizing access and, you know, flattening finding the world a little bit which, you know, I don't know about you, but I think a lot of us got into crypto because we were idealistic and shared, you know, a lot of these. Values that that we saw in crypto, no,

Lawrence: 37:22

100%. Let's see what I want to talk briefly about karate because I guess another thing that you've been, you've been talking a lot about. So, I, I'm, I haven't done too much research into it, honestly, and that's that's I probably should have, but could you briefly go over like, what karate is and how come you're so excited about it?

Phil: 37:42

Yeah, so it's a karate, you know, it's an MMA league you know, focused on, on striking it's like almost six years old right now, and, you know, the, the entry into web three. Like, it literally wasn't possible to do this when, when the league was started. It was, you know, two of my best friends started it in 2018. And, you know, I helped them to build it in the first, like, two years. And like, we couldn't do this. And we, you know, I thought about a token and stuff like this, even asked Pat. In 2018 about making a karate token, but like we, you just couldn't do it. Like the concepts weren't there, the infrastructure wasn't there to do it. But now, you know, we can. And so it launched last year and it really is just the ability to align incentives with a token is such an incredibly powerful tool that no other professional sports league is able to do. You would never have an NFL, an NBA or any of these sports leagues that are even able to try to do this because it has to be like owned by people like us or like crypto natives and stuff like that, who are willing to basically give up ownership of the whole league. And that's pretty much what, what we all did with like, so the karate equity was. Basically, you know, sold to an offshore foundation came in foundation and that's, you know, the foundation that issued the karate token and now the karate token governs the entire league. And so the holders of the karate token, you know, there's a governance process, you know, can they can change rule sets. They already have changed different rules. They can vote on things and, you know, it made up only gaming, which I think is, is one of the coolest things where you can bet on different fighters in every fight and earn more karate. And it's called up only gaming because you can't lose your tokens. So even if you get it wrong, you just don't win any tokens. You retain your original amount that you bet. So this is powerful because one, the, you know, the primary reason why people stop, you know, betting on sports or something like that is because they just lose all their money and there's the risk of ruin, which sucks. And we don't want that to happen to anyone. The second thing is, you know, betting on sports is. You know, creates the highest form of engagement between, like, fans and the sports. You know, that they watch just like if they're able to put, you know, money on their favorite team or a player, you know, or doesn't even have to be their favorite team. It could be some random random team. All of a sudden. That's the most interesting thing that they're watching. So this, this is something that, like, all the younger demographics, they are just incredibly infatuated with, like. Yeah. You know, being able to wage on outcomes of different sports and events and things like that. So up only gaming hits all those kind of spots for them, but it also at the same time is a way to reward active and engaged users and basically through the inflation of the winnings. You're kind of punishing the passive people. So there's no free rides. It's like, you know, a lot of problems in DAOs and with other projects is that you get these large token holders. Who, they buy, you know, a whole bunch of tokens, and then they don't want to participate because they're lazy. So they're not the ones in the forums, they're not the ones discussing, they're not the ones debating. They're just like, oh, did number go up? I look at it, you know, like, once a month. They're, they're not the active participants, right? But they're going to reap the benefits because they hold the token. Right? So it's like they get the free ride from all the other people doing the work. The karate token with up only gaming just completely flips that on its head. Cause if you're not participating and you're not watching the events and you're not betting on fighters, then guess what your holdings are slowly being inflated, you know, away.

Lawrence: 42:22

Sure. That makes a lot

Phil: 42:23

of sense. It's a incredibly powerful tool. It aligns incentives you know, the fighters participate, like, you know, they get a portion of the winnings from the prize pool, you know, all of the fans that, you know, they're basically voting. And and voting with you know, it's like put your money where your mouth is, you know, they're like, they have certain favorite fighters. Well, let's see, like, you know, put your karate on him. And it allows for a lot of things that are going to be in the future be able to. Like, be built on top of it. Like, the whole ecosystem of things that you will be able to do with Karate. So it's, it's cool. It's like the first of its kind. I think this is the future of, you know, just Web 3 and sports and, and kind of unlocking the potential and the flexibility that being able to have a token. Does, you know, without it just being kind of this bolt on shit that most, a lot of these like traditional web two outfits and companies are trying to do you know, a lot of people have these fan tokens and things like that, which really amount to just jack shit. And it's like, this is sort of just another way to fleece our fan base and, you know, extract money from them. And I think fans are smart. They know that they've been getting exploited, you know, and you can only squeeze the juice out of, you know, real sports fans for so long. You know, it's like, you look at professional sports, the whole landscape, it's like tickets for games are like double, tripling in prices, you know. The valuations from, from TV rights and media rights mean that all these teams are worth like billions of dollars. And what, what are the fans getting? They're getting more expensive seats. I can't go to these games anymore. They're too expensive. They're priced out. Like all the food there costs, you know, you an arm and a leg just to go to a basketball or football, like a professional basketball, professional football game is going to cost you like 500 bucks. It's crazy. It's like you have to pay for the pleasure of being a fan of professional sports, which. You know, we want to totally change that. And, you know, that's what we're doing with with karate and the karate token.

Lawrence: 44:49

Very cool. No, I, that makes a lot of sense. It's like an actual league. I didn't realize that it was a league and the way you described it as like NFL, you know, like, if any NFL was a token, like that, that makes a lot of sense. But you're right that it would basically. Like the people who own the NFL or would not benefit right because then it's goes to the people instead of them I'll think about

Phil: 45:10

think about the just the incentives right the incentives of the honors in the NFL and You know any other sports league is basically just to generate revenue and keep as much of it as possible so they're directly at odds with the players who are basically their employees. You know, in the NFL, the players, it kind of sucks. They don't have guaranteed contracts, right? So it's like, that's why you have guys willing to sit out a whole season if they can't get, you know, guaranteed money. Because they know if they bust their knee open and can never come back, they're screwed. And so if they don't secure You know, their lifetime like value with, you know, 1 contract, then they could be like completely up shits Creek. And so the incentives are not aligned and they're actually at odds with each other. And same thing with their own fans, right? It's like, and the teams are just trying to extract value. You know, again, from the players and the fans so you're changing this whole dynamic in web three, which you were never, you're never able to do in traditional sports and align the incentives, like, as the karate token grows in value, as the network value increases, everybody benefits. Because the fighters, they're getting tokens, you know, they're getting a portion of the prize pools, just automatically, like 10 percent going to them, you know, all the fans who hold the token and use it to vote on different things are, you know, benefiting when the value of it's going up. So it's, it's, you're creating, you're able to create a win win situation. Where every other form of sports is kind of this antagonistic relationship between, you know, the customer fan base, the players, the participants, and the owners. And again, like UFC, right? UFC's biggest thing is the fighters. They get paid like shit in comparison to the value of the league and, and what the owners of the league make, you know, and. They have no avenue other than to just leave and go fight for another league, right? But there is no other UFC. It's like the second best is, is like, you know, peanut sized compared to the UFC. It's like, you know, you're, you're foregoing, you know, a lot of fame and fortune if you go somewhere else. But at the same time, you know, you're not getting paid exactly what you're worth. You know, in the UFC, unless, you know, you're negotiating, like, a one time payout or something like that, I mean, that's why they lost their heavyweight champion, like, left for the, for the PFL because of the PFL, what'd they do? They gave him an allowance and said, hey, you could fight other fights. If you want to do a boxing fight, like a mega boxing fight, crossover boxing fight, we'll let you do that. And you, and you can, you know, do like a Conor McGregor type of man and, and make, you know, 50 million bucks off of it. The UFC was like, no, you're not allowed to do that if you're under contract with us, like, you're not going to be able to just like go fight in, in some like crossover thing and take, you know, 50 percent of the pay per view or whatever.

Lawrence: 48:36

Yeah, that's, that's a little whack.

Phil: 48:38

Yeah, I mean, that's just, that's how it is. And, and think about in the UFC also, like they instituted uniforms where, where a lot of these guys were getting paid by sponsors to wear, you know, different sponsored outfits and stuff like that. And then the UFC banned it and they made it it was like Reebok sponsored it. So then everybody just wears like Reebok. So it's like all the value is just going to the people that own the UFC. At the top and none of the value that was, was going to the people who were creating it, which were mainly the fighters, like none of the early, early days fighters and UFC, like, you know, once their careers were done, it's not like they really got anything out of it other than, you know, whatever they were paid for their fights.

Lawrence: 49:24

Sure. I do have to ask though if no one loses money by betting, right. What, what, what's stopping me from just betting on both sides and ensuring I always, you know, make money. No, you

Phil: 49:36

can't in that in the app. You can only bet on one. Oh, okay. All right like Yeah, but there are, there are odds like, and you're able to see like what percentage of the money is on each is on each fighter, you know, it'll be like, Oh, this fighter has like 65 percent of, you know, the prize pools on him. And this one has 35. And you know, if you're betting on the underdog, you know, you get paid out, obviously a greater portion of

Lawrence: 50:02

it. So like, can you watch the fight through the app as well? Like when they happened? Yeah.

Phil: 50:07

Yeah. Oh, nice. So, I mean, you gotta download the app, you know. I'll send you some money. Yeah, for sure. It's, it's very smooth. It's, you know, we're adding new features to it every day. Like you can actually do the governance like through the app. I don't know if I could show you, but it's, it's super smooth. Like here was a proposal, which we call them kick, like karate improvement. Thanks. And this one was about rolling over. Rewards, so there was like two no contests in the last fight and so those prize pulls didn't get paid out because there were no contest. And people were like, this is stupid. We should just like roll that whole prize pool over to the next one. So someone made the proposal and then two days later it was up for vote and it passed by like 96 percent of people. Oh, neat. Yeah. I mean, all the, all the stats are crazy. Like the stickiness of the users using the app and participating in up only gaming is. Like, the growth is, is crazy. I think for the last two events, it's been over like a hundred percent growth, like between each event.

Lawrence: 51:26

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know MMA is, is a big deal in the U. S. at least like, yeah. Like a lot of my friends watch UFC more than, more than most other sports, honestly, besides football, maybe, but. Yeah, but it's

Phil: 51:41

like now you can participate in it and and you can also benefit from it like imagine that being a fan of something and and like being able to kind of make money along with the growth of the league. Like, that's that's pretty fucking awesome. Like, that's amazing. If like, everyone could share in it. Like, that's that's what we want. That's what everybody wants. Like, so, you know, that's that's the goal. And I think, please. We're well on the way to to having that happen. And it's, it's like everything else to in, in progress experiment. But I think, you know, things are looking great so far.

Lawrence: 52:22

Nice. Excellent. All right. So coming up on time here and I just before we go is there anything that like, like you want people to know, like follow you or a website or anything like that, where people can know more about you and your projects?

Phil: 52:37

Yeah, I mean, I'm just on Twitter at, at Huang Wei which is my last name. And yeah, I mean, I kind of post on there, you know, every week or so, but mainly I'm on just like Discord and Telegram or, or, you know, you can email me or something like that, but I'm always looking at new projects. I love. Seeing just the way things fit together and, and especially kind of cornerstones of different DeFi Legos. Like that's, that's the other thing, you know, we didn't touch on, but like that I'm pretty like fanatical about and obsessed with are just these Lego pieces that whole ecosystems can be built on top of. And, you know, a lot of evolution from food farms during, you know, defy summer into down and seeing like full fledged, real financial applications that are, are being, you know, assembled is just incredible. And I think, you know, again, crypto is a way to reduce friction between people and like being able to democratize access to capital markets and liquidity. And, yeah, I think that's the most powerful thing and, you know, having people around the world 24 7 being able to participate in, you know, pretty liquid markets is, is. Incredible and is just the beginning of, of the potential of what we're going to see. And I think, you know, every day in the space is just exciting and, and, and the, the breadth of it, like, and the variety of it has become so large. You know, nowadays it just seems like I'm drinking from a fire hose all the time. Like there's like, you know, you've got projects to look at, you know, everybody in, in RCC has like different projects they're looking at and just, you know, going through our chat sometimes it's like, wow, holy crap. Like, like they're in another world on Avalanche or, you know, Trader Joe and these guys in Solana and that whole ecosystem. So it's like cool to be able to see, but at the same time, it's like a little stressful in that there's no way anybody can kind of cover everything and like, you know, understand everything. But I think, you know, that's just the excitement and the amount of builders in the space. You know, that that leads to this and it is like this ever expanding universe, you know, we had like the big bang and now everything's just expanding outward and exponential rate. And it's just like us trying to grasp and understand what we can. And to me, like, my priority is just trying to understand what's going to be like the cornerstone building blocks of different ecosystems. Because like, you know, those are going to be the most important to just invest in and be out on, on, at an early stage, you know, because everything that's built on top. Perfect, you know, I don't have to worry about that if if I'm invested in things that are, you know, at the bottom of the

Lawrence: 56:01

stack. Yeah, 100%. Oh, man, that was beautiful. That's a great, great note to end it on. And yeah, Phil, thank you for coming on, man. This has been great. And I need you to stay on the call for another minute. So let me just I'm going to

Phil: 56:15

end it and then, yeah, great to chat with you. Thanks for having me.