Note: Transcript fully created by automated AI
[00:00:00] Jesse: Hi everyone. I’m Jesse Lin
[00:00:02] Angela: And I’m Angela Lin. Welcome back to another episode of, but where are you really? From today? We have a very special guest. My husband Ramon. Welcome.
[00:00:13] Ramon: thank you. It’s an honor to be finally invited.
[00:00:16] Angela: Yeah. Okay. You hear that little jab at us? That is, uh, Ramon has wanted to be on the show for quite some time and we’ve just tried to figure out kind of like where it made sense.
[00:00:27] Angela: and now that we are in Asia and we’re like the most kind of like out of normal environments, it kind of felt like this could be a good time, especially to ask like the, oh, we’re really from question when it’s like max identity, crisis potential. Um, so we’ll be talking about a lot of things today, but we definitely think Ramon has an interesting kind of.
[00:00:51] Angela: Backstory and lots of different cultural influences throughout where he’s lived. So I wanna give you the opportunity to first answer how you would answer, but where are you really from?
[00:01:06] Ramon: Yeah. I always get that question, especially in the us, no matter how long I’m in the us, I’m always gonna get asked that question.
[00:01:13] Ramon: Um, I always say that I’m I’m from Europe then if. Think that it’s gonna be a longer relationship. Maybe I go deeper and say, okay, I’m from Spain. And then, oh everyone. I, I love Spain. I’ve been to Barcelona and it’s like, of course, but I’m from Madrid. Um, so, um, that’s usually how I answer it, but how I feel is totally different.
[00:01:37] Ramon: I mean, there are lot of things I love about Spain and Europe that feel like home to me, there are also a lot of things that. Feel not right. Uh, like for example, I always tell this to Angela, but in, in Europe it’s a great place to live great quality of life, but there is no distraction. There is no growth.
[00:01:55] Ramon: There is no entrepreneurship. So it’s really hard to change the status school. The companies that are the biggest in Europe are the companies that were the biggest in Europe, 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. And the people that have the money in Europe are mostly the people that have the money in Europe 100 years ago.
[00:02:09] Ramon: So, so there is no. well in the us, for example, there’s a lot more opportunity, even if the quality of life I think is a lot lower and Asia is SIM is more similar to Europe than to the us. And I love Asia and I love Japan, for example, for many different reasons. So I would answer that. I feel. I feel like I’m a citizen of the world.
[00:02:30] Ramon: I love traveling. I’ve been to 50 countries. I can’t feel at home pretty much anywhere. And home is where my friends or where my, where my wife is. That’s basically, I don’t care so much geographically where I am. Great
[00:02:45] Jesse: answer. So basically your advice is to work in us and then retire in Asia or Europe.
[00:02:50] Jesse: yeah, exactly.
[00:02:52] Ramon: Yeah. Spain is free. The healthcare pretty much. Do you
[00:02:56] Angela: ever, I know you do, but I’m gonna ask you anybody. Do you ever get annoyed when people, because your, your default answer is like Europe and Spain, but then. Do you often kind of get like poked fun at when you are back in Spain where it’s like, I mean, to us who are not Spanish, when we hear you speak even English, but also Spanish it’s like, I mean, yeah, you’re from Spain, but oftentimes when we go back to.
[00:03:26] Angela: Spain. And you’re talking to just like, I don’t know, waiters in a restaurant or whatever. They kind of make fun of you of like, oh, are you really from Madrid? Because I don’t know. How does when, when was the first time that happened to you and how did you feel when that happened?
[00:03:41] Ramon: Yeah, first happened to me, like, I don’t know, five or six years ago because I spent the first 20 years of my life in Spain and then I’ve been in the us for 10, 11 years.
[00:03:49] Ramon: The first time it happened was probably five or six years ago. And some of my. Made fun of the way I pronounce them. Kind of like a, an American, it only happens for a week or so if I’m back in Spain and then I, I lose the, the small accent I pick up, but I mean, it makes me realize that I notice Spanish anymore, but I realize this before, even this thing with the, with the accent.
[00:04:13] Ramon: And how do you sound a bit different? It’s mostly when you go back to a place that we spent, you have spent a lot of time, you realize. how much you have changed more than how much the place has changed. And whenever I go back to Spain, it’s like most of the things remain the same, but it’s like, this is not the me of my childhood that had a lot of fun and this friends.
[00:04:35] Ramon: So the environment is totally different. So it’s like Spain for this current, for my current situation in my life, this, this period, it doesn’t feel like home. Hmm.
[00:04:48] Jesse: What’s it like to experience that like in the middle of your, well, not the middle, but like when you’re an adult, because kind of like, we didn’t really have a choice coming here.
[00:04:57] Jesse: So we were already born here, but you’re having this kind of like transitional dispossession of your origin in, in your mid twenties. What, what was that kind of like going through that?
[00:05:10] Ramon: It was liberating. I think it allowed me to fully grow into my, and even change my personality. And is it still funny enough?
[00:05:17] Ramon: I think it’s still slightly different when I’m in Spain or I speak Spanish. And when I, when I speak English, when you post yourself to the edge of your comfort zone, it’s when good things happen. So I learn a lot, but being by myself for many years, traveling a lot, you know, starting to work in a different, in a different country.
[00:05:34] Ramon: I never fully work in Spain and an internship, but that’s it. I mean, I knew it was pretty messed up the job situation there. So they didn’t even try all positives. I mean, there is a bit. having your roots taken out? Uh, definitely a small part of me feels like, oh, these people that stay in their hometown for their whole life, they get something that I’m never gonna get, but is, is a good trade.
[00:06:00] Ramon: In my opinion.
[00:06:01] Angela: Do you ever feel American?
[00:06:04] Ramon: No. and I’m never gonna feel American. Yeah. I mean, it depends if you feel because in New York or in San Francisco, there are a lot of people that are from everywhere. I feel like any other normal citizen there. Yes. But do I feel American? No, I, I can, I can feel like I, and I, I hope this is the future of where countries, some societies going in the future that is just, you just belong to a city that is where you care about.
[00:06:31] Ramon: And you care about local politics and you don’t care about, about the, the blur of the, of borders, where the borders are and so on. So it’s that you just care about your local. Government and then the rest, I don’t care. So if I’m in a city that I really like, I will care about being from there. Yeah. That’s
[00:06:46] Jesse: literally, we just had this conversation last week over recording, like July 4th.
[00:06:52] Jesse: And I was like, I, this was my position. Not exactly the city, but I was like, when I tell people where I’m from abroad, I’m like I live in New York. I don’t tell them like, I’m American kind of like what you were saying that you’re like, I’m European, but you don’t tell people that you’re Spanish and I feel much more.
[00:07:09] Jesse: Community connection to where I live locally than I do. Like this nebulous idea of what it means to be American
sidebar.
[00:07:19] Ramon: in the end, the bigger the country is just the more power for a few people. So that’s why a lot of people like to create the vision, even with Brexit or with all European countries.
[00:07:28] Ramon: Because when you divide, then there is, there is a, a vacuum for more power in, in the need, two new places. So it’s like, it creates. New leadership in both places. So there’s always gonna be demand from politicians to create the vision. And then, so there is more power for them.
[00:07:44] Jesse: All right. Well, thank you for that.
[00:07:46] Jesse: Very interesting introduction to yourself. I think we were going to pivot and kind of focus the rest of the episode on what your occupation is and what you’ve largely been working in over the past couple of years. If I understand correct. Which is cryptocurrency. So do you want to tell our listeners what exactly you do it in relation to cryptocurrency?
[00:08:06] Ramon: Sure. Yeah, for the last 10 years I’ve been mostly in tech. That’s why I came to the us and then I had my own startups in the gaming space. And then I worked for Silicon valley for a few companies like Google and other since Seattle. But then in the last few years, I could only think about crypto basically.
[00:08:22] Ramon: And then since the pandemic has started. Yeah. Uh, I created a company in GTO, a startup to help people kinda invest in, in defi together. And defy is kind decent alternative to decentralized finance where people can really take control of their funds because, uh, yeah, we have seen recently, for example, with the can Canadian think how, if you have money in a bank, you know, those numbers that appear on the screen can be taken.
[00:08:50] Ramon: Whenever they want to, this doesn’t happen in crypto. If the users are always in control of their fans. So that’s one angle. That was really interesting for me. Another angle that was really interesting for me is the, the developer developer position. For example, when you build on top of Facebook, when you build on top of apple, when you build on top of Amazon, this company is basically control what is their revenue split?
[00:09:12] Ramon: And they can push you away from the apple store if they don’t like what you’re. So you are building on a world garden. And I was working for sing that it was like back in the day, the, the top gaming Facebook of creating farm and send it, send the cards to your neighbor and things like that. Um, and then overnight Facebook changed the advertising algorithm and Canada drop singer’s revenue by 20, 30% and then sing half slowly going nowhere for the, for the last few.
[00:09:40] Ramon: So those things cannot happen on Ethereum. For example, nobody control the network, you know what, you’re building it and you’re building on a ly neutral platform. So that’s really important as a developer.
[00:09:51] Angela: It’s good. Bring people a taste of probably a lot of terms you’ve never heard of, which is kind of where we’re gonna go with the rest of the episode of like, kind of breaking down a lot more of it.
[00:10:01] Angela: So. Hey listeners, wondering how you can support us. The biggest way is by increasing our visibility by following us on Instagram at where are you from pod on TikTok at, but where are you really from subscribing to our YouTube channel under, but where are you really from podcast rating and reviewing us on apple podcasts and telling your friends the more people we can get to listen to the show, the more we can continue spotlighting different perspectives and stories.
[00:10:27] Angela: And if you feel so inclined, we’re also accepting donations@buymeacoffee.com slash where are you from? Thanks. Y’all
[00:10:36] Jesse: we we’ll explain more. yeah. So I think first off, I think it would be if you’re able to give us like a rundown of what crypto is. And I like to ask people to explain things to me in very simple terms, because I very frequently, I don’t know if you use Reddit, but my, one of my favorite sub Reddits is.
[00:10:55] Jesse: Ask ask, like, I’m, uh, explain like I’m five and it’s really, I, I, I’ve learned so many things from going on that. So if you could like explain to our listeners as if they’re five years old, what crypto is, I think I would help everyone understand generally
[00:11:12] Ramon: that’s a total order. yeah. Crypto I’ll try. I’ll try.
[00:11:16] Ramon: My best crypto is really confusing and very complicated because it’s many different things at once. Uh, And we can go over the different things that crypto is. One of them is crypto is money and we can go into why that’s it. But crypto’s a new form of money. Also. Crypto is a new asset class that people call digital gold.
[00:11:38] Ramon: So it can be like a replacement of gold. Then crypto as well is a payment network that you can compare to, to swift or what the banks used to change money to another, or the wires to send wires. So crypto’s also. And then KTA is also this new platform that you can build applications on top. So you can compare that to, to the internet that well, but another layer of the internet that was missing.
[00:12:00] Ramon: And you could never before in the internet, same value, uh, from, from one person to another. And also you could only, you could not store information on the user side until now all the information that you have on the internet, for example, belongs to, to other people. So you don’t have digital property rights without crypto, because if you own your profile on Facebook, it’s on Facebook database.
[00:12:25] Ramon: Your profile on Twitter is on Twitter database. Your store on Amazon belongs to them. So until now you didn’t have, you couldn’t really own anything on the internet. I think
[00:12:36] Jesse: maybe talking about the first part of it at its usage as money. I think a lot of people have a have trouble myself, including included understanding what drives the value of cryptocurrency.
[00:12:49] Jesse: Because I think generally, like my understanding is money is underpinned by assets and, uh, with cryptocurrency, I’m not sure exactly how that works because it isn’t or is it so maybe help us understand, like what drives the value of it?
[00:13:07] Ramon: Yeah, that’s a great topic. Um, but it goes back to was currency and was money.
[00:13:12] Ramon: You know, originally in the end money is just a way to change favors between people. It’s like, okay, I have a goat, I have milk. And then you have tomatoes. We, we want to change tomatoes for, for milk. And then we do it at the same time. So, um, and you use money as a way to kinda store this favor so you can use them later.
[00:13:32] Ramon: So you don’t need to want my milk at the same time. I want your, your tomato. and, and also to measure things okay. If we have this token or currency that we, we can say that, okay, tomato is worth. Eh, five tokens and then one liter of milk is worth 10, 10 of that unit. And at the beginning, people use like shells or things that were scarce in nature.
[00:13:57] Ramon: And then slowly went to precious methods. You know, the Roman empire used the scenarios that originally was the nominated, mostly using gold. But then as the empire started to scramble, then did where, where they were ING it with more silver. And then slowly, you know, the army wanted to, didn’t want to fight anymore because they, they were getting less and less.
[00:14:17] Ramon: And then they is one of the reasons that the Roman and the Oman empire crashed. Um, and then even the inspires empire later, the goal was from America was like a big thing. And then slowly that, that was kind of diluted. So, uh, there is an in string value that has been given. The tokens that we use as currency.
[00:14:38] Ramon: And they were basically previous methods, but for the last 200 or 300 years, most of the countries have been used Fiat money. That is basically paper. And originally they were tied back to, to the previous methods because it, and it, it was a nice innovation because you didn’t need to, to carry. This heavy metal.
[00:14:59] Ramon: It’s like, oh, I’m gonna carry these angles of gold and then give it to you. Then I need to store it in a safe place. So it’s like, basically the banks gave you an IU. That’s saying, oh, I have the goal. And it’s like, this paper proves that you have it. So you can use it to exchange and buy something else.
[00:15:13] Ramon: But since 1970, and I recommend everyone to watch this video from Nixon, um, that is like the end of bread. Good. He said that temporarily, he was gonna suspend, suspend the convertibility between gold and the, the us. Because of the Vietnam war and all that. So he suspended it on that time. He has not been restored also at some points in, in the last century or so the us confiscated goal because the politicians always want to spend more and release itself, or citizens is like, oh, you want us to.
[00:15:44] Ramon: to spend less tighten and have a crisis, and everyone is gonna go through a hard time. Or do you want us to spend more? You get a lot more staff and it’s like, so of course, politicians always choose the short term, eh, no pain, but long-term pain that, that becomes later. So right now the us door, for example, is not back by anything.
[00:16:03] Ramon: It’s just back by supply and demand and in a way also by the us army, because the us army is in the end. What gives value. If you think about it to, to the us dollar. Um, crypto Bitcoin is, for example, is backed by, by supply and demand. And also by, by the minors that secure the network that this is, this is complicated, but they basically transform energy into security by doing this math puzzles that they need to solve, to decide who is gonna put like the next block onto the chain, but we don’t need to go into those, those details.
[00:16:40] Ramon: So I will stop there because it’s quite a.
[00:16:42] Jesse: Interesting. Can I ask a follow-up question? I don’t know if that’s of course. Um, so you said like money originally is, was on the gold standard, right? The bank would give you an IOU for the goal, for the money in the crypto network minors guarantee that you will get the crypto, like it exists for you to receive, but who guarantees the transmissibility of the crypto into something tangible?
[00:17:07] Jesse: Right? Cuz there’s nothing underpinning that.
[00:17:10] Ramon: Yeah. I mean, Bitcoin, for something tangible, uh, there are different answers. One of them is okay, you can change it using Forex, like the same way you change dollar for euros. And there are like exchanges where you can do that. Or you can change it first, $2 and then to euros.
[00:17:25] Ramon: Um, but there are also. Pay this because Bitcoin, for example, is the currency and it’s also a payment network. So as a payment network, you can also buy stuff directly. For example, a strike is a company that is built on top of the Bitcoin payment network. And what they do is like you can go to a Shopify store and you can pay $5 and then automatically gets converted to Bitcoin.
[00:17:47] Ramon: Then this Bitcoin gets sent to the other place and then it gets converted back to the. To the fee at currency of the receiving merchant. And then it gets sent to their, to their, to their account. And, um, and it’s using using Bitcoin as a payment network. So I, I expect more and more things to be built on top of crypto payment networks, mostly Bitcoin, Ethereum, maybe so and others that are advance, but there are, there’s gonna be this infrastructure layer that, that is used to transfer money and the minors, what they do.
[00:18:20] Ramon: Basically, uh, okay. I’m gonna try to explain it. One problem with money from the beginning was how to, how to ensure that if, uh, you know, I, I, I work for a living and they tell me, okay, you earn 100 tokens Ram on of whatever currency. Okay. This is my 100 tokens. There was a problem saying, okay, I’m gonna buy five tokens and I’m gonna send them to Angela.
[00:18:41] Ramon: And then I’m gonna send you 100 tokens. And then it’s like, you need to know that I send. First 500 tokens to one because I run out already of my tokens. So this is called, this is called like the double spend problem that I cannot spend the same money on two different things. And that’s why we have what they’re called the ledgers.
[00:18:58] Ramon: That is basically what banks have. That is like one center, 100 pot where they put all the transactions from everyone. And then they say, okay, Ramona spend five. So now it has 95. Ramon is trying to spend 100, it doesn’t have 100, basically what the minors do. Construct this ledge, but without having that centralized party, it’s already cool because it’s a lot more, uh, robust because you have all these notes.
[00:19:21] Ramon: It’s kind like a, like a big hive and they all work together to Canada put like the net transaction. For example, I send, uh, this $5 to Angela in big, then all the Bitcoin miners are gonna kinda try to find the, the answer to this Rigo. That is gonna be like a, a. And then the one that finds it first is gonna be able to put that I paid $5 to Angela on the chain and all the other ones are gonna agree to it because, okay, it’s the, it is the one that satisfies that, that math pass.
[00:19:55] Ramon: And then it’s kind, it cannot be broken because every, every block can include all the previous blocks of the chain. So that’s why it’s called the blockchain. Uh, you have in the Bitcoin or Ethereum, you have all the transactions that happen totally in the open. You can say, see where every single unit of Bitcoin Ethereum went since, since they started.
[00:20:14] Ramon: So it’s, it’s pretty cool. Pretty powerful. You cannot see what JP Morgan or city or these people are doing with the money. And also, as you look into it every year, they are fine, like billions of dollars because they loan their money to territories and stuff. Because, but because they are friends with powerful people, they’re able to do it, but oh, God forbid, if this grandma wants to use Bitcoin to pay for this, it’s like, oh no, no, that’s bad.
[00:20:37] Ramon: Or like solve other. Oh, we see a lot of problems with the server adopting beacon for financial St. Hmm.
[00:20:45] Jesse: Okay. Um, you mentioned that, uh, this is like one of the key innovations, one of the key things that actually enables an individual to like own their data on the internet. Is there like another, do you feel like there’s another need driving this?
[00:21:01] Jesse: Like, why do you think that this innovation has come about at this particular point in time?
[00:21:07] Ramon: Hey, one of them is the creator economies first. I mean, I think they, and Angela knows about this business. A lot of. Industry, you know, it’s like artists, they give like 80% of their future revenue to, to the music labels, which is, which is insane.
[00:21:21] Ramon: You know? And one of the things that crypto, uh, will allow, especially NFTs and tokens will allow creators to directly control their audiences directly monetize from them and get most of the revenue, get most of the value and remove all the middlemen. And there is of course a creator. Boom. It has. From a, for a while, you know, web to turn everyone into a publisher where everyone could create their own blog or now more recently their own podcast or their own video, their own YouTube channel.
[00:21:51] Ramon: Now the next step is removing actually those centralized points. That kinda, because for example, right now, For you just still depend on apple for revenue or ads or YouTube. If you put to you, you depend on that. Um, but, and they get like 70, 60% or depending on how many views, how many clicks you have. But once you have crypto, you will be able to get basically all of it and be in control of your audience.
[00:22:21] Ramon: And Shopify is another example. Eh, they’re already moving in that direction, uh, slowly. So it could help a lot giving most of the money to people that are creating actual value.
[00:22:32] Angela: Let’s take a step back. So you said web two, let’s just define some basic terms for people. So what do you mean by web two? And then I’m sure a lot of people have started to hear web three.
[00:22:42] Angela: So what does that mean?
[00:22:44] Ramon: Yeah. Going back web one was like the original web where you have all these ugly gifts on the internet and it was just links and it’s like every. Mostly black with the best internet moving around. Yeah, but it was super simple in a way it was a, was a lot more, uh, free and open because everyone could create a website and upload it.
[00:23:06] Ramon: Then later with what two is, where companies are starting to store their data in their servers. and then is when the users started to lose control and you started becoming the product that is, for example, Facebook, Twitter, and all this, where users are creating a lot of value. For example, for Facebook, the first 1000 users of Facebook in, in Watson university, was it in Harvard, in Harvard, created a lot of value for their network, but they got nothing.
[00:23:30] Ramon: They got to, uh, uh, so that’s what two. And then what three basically makes every user of these platforms of these applications, an owner of the. So the same way, web two, turn everyone into a publisher. It gave everyone a voice through podcast blog. Um, then everyone in web three kind of becomes an owner or an investor by using producting web three.
[00:23:52] Ramon: You get tokens that are kinda like equity equivalent. So you get to own what you’re using. And it just gives you as a user, a lot more incentive to support the, the applications that you’re already using, because you have a stake.
[00:24:10] Angela: so web two is essentially the internet as we currently know it. Yeah. And web three is like all the stuff that’s being built on top of the various blockchain crypto platforms.
[00:24:22] Angela: Exactly. And sorry, maybe this is a stupid and derailing question, but like one question I always had in my mind that we’ve never talked about is like, if web three, if all these like crypto future platforms and applications are supposed to be kind of like independent. Web two, as it currently stands, you have to access these things through the internet, right?
[00:24:46] Angela: Like through your Chrome browser or whatever, you still have to connect all these things to that. So like, in what way is it really independent from web two? Or like, how do you know that it’s not gonna be able to be like snatched away by Google or whoever’s like, you know, on the bottom of the, the browser.
[00:25:06] Ramon: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question. And it’s important to say that the web one or the original internet infrastructure, that one is totally open and nobody owns it. That’s why, I mean, there are a couple, there’s only one centralized entity that kind controls who has domain names. And when you buy a domain, you need to go to that entity, but everything else is fully open and nobody else it the same with email and everyone can create their, their email client and you can access it through outlook or through, but they are all.
[00:25:35] Ramon: Neutral in a way. The thing in web two is like these companies control. So web two is built on top, on top of the internet and the IPT C IP stack. And this one is proprietary. The web two layer web three is kinda circumventing the web two and then going there back to the original and building on top. So it’s not used in any of that.
[00:25:56] Ramon: The cool thing then is like que three applications then may use que two on top to provide convenience, but it’s much better to have like an open, free layer and then add the staff on top for convenience, for example, grandmas who probably never use a active wallet and then to deal with private keys and all this complicated stuff, because they can lose money.
[00:26:17] Ramon: So probably you want to add something like a traditional bank built on top of with three. So. Every you get all the benefits of with three, but then you can have the convenience that that person has signed. One that is managing their money and watching that citizen and lose it by, by mistake. Because if it’s happening a lot of crypto, then everyone says, oh, nobody will lose crypto because any mistake and, and it’s true, but it’s really early.
[00:26:40] Ramon: It’s the same way. Uh, in the early days of the internet, it was really difficult to, to use the internet, but that doesn’t mean it, it doesn’t have any.
[00:26:49] Jesse: I’m gonna move on to the next thing that you mentioned that crypto is, which is an asset class. And I’m gonna bury this question right in the middle. Cause it’s the money question.
[00:26:57] Jesse: So like how, how should our listeners be thinking about cryptocurrency as like a financial vehicle? Cause you mentioned it’s money, it’s an asset class. So is it like more so like if you, if. are all set on your money stuff and you wanna get it on crypto. Should you think about it as like short term savings, long term investment, some like mix of the two?
[00:27:19] Jesse: Like how, how should someone be thinking about, um, entering the crypto
[00:27:23] Ramon: space? Yeah. Great question. This is way to think about it is like a replacement of go and I know people, our ages, like don’t know anything about go what’s. That is a rock. Uh, but basically goal has been used in history. Because it was difficult for governments to, to assist it and take it away from you.
[00:27:42] Ramon: I mean, you could hide it. I mean, still not so easy to hide, but you could hide it and then cross the border and you were fine. Crypto takes that a step further because you just, you can even just remember your private key, your brain and you can cross borders and no government can assist your assets. So in the times that we are living that, you know, on one side, you can see.
[00:28:03] Ramon: All the debasement that all the currencies in the war are suffering because of all the irresponsible government money printing and the central bankers that are supporting all that. And on the other side, you have all the geopolitical and stability with wars and potential for some major events happening there is, uh, currency that doesn’t depend on any specific government is really appealing.
[00:28:30] Ramon: Um, I always tell people to. To think about it long term, you, because short term become, go up the downside way doesn’t matter. Um, but long term, as a replacement to goal, you know, and traditional portfolio allocators used to say, okay, just put 5% of your money to goal in gold. And then, eh, you can use that and then slowly build confidence and slowly increased your, your allocation, but having something in, in Bitcoin and Ethereum seems sensible given.
[00:29:00] Ramon: The times that we are living and as always, this is not financial advice. This is just, uh, what I do personally. I think some
[00:29:07] Jesse: things that would be interesting to hear from you, we’ve talked a lot about some of the positive things that cryptocurrency enables, but do you have a picture of what are some of like the negative consequences that crypto all of those different functions of crypto?
[00:29:21] Jesse: Might surface.
[00:29:23] Ramon: Yep. Yeah. There, there are ones, there are some that are false. There are some that are true sample the false ones. Some of them that have been coopted by politician is like, oh, it’s bad for the environment. Well, they’re to clarify, it’s like the T industry, the dryers use more, a lot more energy than, than crypto.
[00:29:39] Ramon: And also the traditional banking system use a lot of more energy banking too. Yeah. And that’s kept the current state that for example, a theory is switching to a. Much less energy intensive. And the other false narrative is like, oh, it’s used by criminals. It’s used by PDO files. It’s used by all these people, the same thing they said about the internet.
[00:29:57] Ramon: And if you actually look at the numbers and there is a lot of reports out there, it’s like 0.0 half percent is, is used by criminals. Um, you know, again, you go, you can look at. CT, uh, JP Morgan chase bank of America and see the sanctions just in the last year. See how big is that compared to the amount that was used in crypto by mono launder?
[00:30:21] Ramon: So those are false narratives that are negatives of crypto that in, in reality, aren’t there are some growing pains in crypto. For example, one of them I mentioned before that is how likely. And easily it is to lose your money because there is no nobody to call. When something goes wrong, somebody steals your credit card, you can call the bank and they will give you a new one in crypto.
[00:30:44] Ramon: You send your money to the wrong account. That luck is gone forever. So that’s something that, of course, to scale it under rich, 1 billion billion people that kind of. Um, but this problem are being worked on. And as I said before, you know, we’re gonna build services on top that offers convenience for people that want and need it on top of this open infrastructure.
[00:31:07] Ramon: Another one is user experience. It’s really difficult right now to, to get into crypto. Even first, you need to go to coin, then you need to. Create your account and you need to send some money, then you need to transfer that money because actually Coinbase and all this has changes. They’re actually not crypto yet.
[00:31:24] Ramon: They are actually a web to company that actually hold the crypto for you. Most people are actually, I think that’s crypto, but not Coinbase is kinda at the edge. That is a gate that lets you go into crypto. Then there are like these crypto wallets that you can have on your phone or on your computer, on your browser.
[00:31:39] Ramon: That once you have it, it’s I recommend people to try because it’s really magical. You know, you. You can just switch one asset to another, with a click and then without going through the bank or you can, you can get a loan in one minute, just yes. Instantaneously. And it’s, it’s really powerful. So yeah, those are the things that I could say.
[00:32:02] Ramon: And of course there’s also another negative that is discovers because for every new technology, there is a period of adoption. I mean, it’s the same with the gold rush. This, when there is a lot of growth, there is a lot of kind of bubble like behavior. Cause a lot of people try to capitalize on that growth.
[00:32:19] Ramon: And they’re usually not the best people because they’re just trying to take advantage of you. So for example, NFTs are a real thing, but 99% of the NFD projects are scams trying to get you to part with your money. So there are a lot of these kind of characters and stuff because you regulation. Not help at all the industry, because the industry actually wants some sensible regulation to let the good projects and the price that are actually doing things right.
[00:32:48] Ramon: Have like a framework to, to safeguard the users. But actually there is no regulation at all. So it’s a free for all. And it’s Harding a lot, the projects that are trying to do the things the right way. And then it’s starting users because they don’t know who to trust and what to.
[00:33:03] Jesse: Yeah. I can’t imagine any Congressman person actually real, like understanding enough about crypto to make any kind of oversight effort.
[00:33:11] Ramon: yeah, there are a few right now at our time, but it’s definitely the minority and most of them. Yeah. I mean, there is also a lot of interest. Yeah. And, and the banking industry is one of the few industries that has not been disrupted, uh, data and healthcare. And you have to ask yourself, why is that?
[00:33:30] Ramon: Crypto’s basically going. So
[00:33:34] Jesse: one of the, kind of, one of the things I wanted to follow up on was you kind of, you mentioned that it’s like not super easy for people to get into it right now. So that is one of the questions that I kind of have on my mind, because there is this, there is this barrier to accessibility, which means that for persons like you, you can figure it out quite easily for Angela and.
[00:33:55] Jesse: We probably could figure it out. We do like a lot digging and asking a few questions, but I think for the majority of people it’s quite out of their reach because they don’t understand it. Right. And so, like, they’re not gonna have the confidence to enter this, uh, space, I think when it’s the most valuable for them to enter.
[00:34:13] Jesse: So like, what are your, what are your thoughts on that? And like, how will people. Be become educated enough about crypto, that they feel comfortable putting actual money into
[00:34:23] Ramon: that. Yeah. Is web of, of adoption. I mean, I think some people in general will never enter crypto through the money angle because they actually don’t even pay attention to their finances.
[00:34:35] Ramon: So it’s not something that they will do naturally. For example, NFTs have brought like 50 million to, to crypto that weren’t there. And they have kinda go mastering a little bit in the culture, even if a lot of people hate them, they have done well attracting lot of people into crypto the same way. I think consumer applications are gonna be like the, the thing that brings people to crypto and then it could be transparent for the user will not know that.
[00:35:03] Ramon: It’s built on Ethereum or Bitcoin behind it, the user will just know, oh, I do this, I get to own this part of the application. I can maybe vote on it and have a say on what the application does in the future. And I’m getting rewarded for, for being in this application. There is one consumer application right now called stepping that is like people work out and by working out, they get crypto and it got, I think it’s dozens of millions of users already.
[00:35:29] Ramon: Uh, it’s doing quite well. It just started two or three months. So that can be a, a good starting point for crypto. They can work out. It’s kinda like extra these applications, but they’re also earning this currency that then they can, they can use another obvious niche is gaming because in gaming, people are used to in game currencies and in tokens, you know, in world of work, people used to make a living, getting their goal and selling the source and all kind and all that.
[00:35:52] Ramon: Eh, but again, you know, if. if you play wall of Wildcraft, then the sword belonged to blizzard and then you couldn’t sell it outside of there and they take huge. So, but here you can take the sort way from you and then use it in another game or sell it to San Juan or transfer it. So a lot of the game economies will be built on top of crypto as well.
[00:36:13] Ramon: And that will be another entry point. Yeah,
[00:36:15] Jesse: that’s definitely one of the use cases I read on like, uh, I read this game website called polygon.com and they had an article about it. It was very interest. Um, I guess really the, the, the meat of the question is, do you think that consumers will care enough to understand the value exchange fully because you, what you described makes sense, but there are like multiple steps to that that technically exist in all value.
[00:36:38] Jesse: Like the whole, like read the end user license agreement. Like nobody. Most people are not cognizant enough of like everything that’s operating in the space to understand like fully the value extreme that’s happening when they use the internet or Facebook or Google or whatever. So knowing that, do you think the majority of people will be able to kind of like make that leap for that understanding?
[00:37:01] Jesse: Or are you saying it’s not necessary? Just like most people don’t really care about the value exchange right now, it
[00:37:06] Ramon: will. Both. And hopefully, because if you compare like the adoption of the internet and the adoption of crypto is actually going faster, uh, cryptocurrencies. And if it continues this space in three years, it will reach 1 billion users.
[00:37:19] Ramon: If there is enough value provided for users, they will go through the pain. Even if that pain is higher, the same way, when a stocks are going like crazy, the.com bubble, you hear your, your taxi driver talking, giving you a stock. It will be the same. And this is bubble behavior that happened with the two lips.
[00:37:34] Ramon: It will happen. And the cool thing. Well, the cool thing, there are of bad things out bubble, but the cool thing is like, they bring a lot more people into the space, then everything crashes, but it crashes to a higher point than before because then bunch of people stay and keep building. And then until the nest that, and it has happened with tech stocks and I, it has happened with them.
[00:37:52] Ramon: I mean, but not everyone needs to understand right now. our website works. You know, when you enter the URL in your browser, there are a lot of things that happen. Nobody needs to understand that anymore. Um, and it’s gonna be the same thing with crypto. You’re gonna have like a really simple app and maybe instead of, you know, your banker, uh, retirement account that automatically put 60 14 into bones that.
[00:38:13] Ramon: Scan dying, you know, automatically you can say, okay, 5% into Bitcoin and there will be enough people will know about or Ethereum or whatever, or this, or maybe even be like savings accounts that are crypto based. That gives you like 10%. I also tell this to quite a bit 30 years ago, are parents living at really different world because the, they inter rate, you put your money in your bank account, you get 15% right now you get 0.02%.
[00:38:38] Ramon: Well, a bit more now that the February rate, but nothing. Uh, but right now in crypto, there’s actually free interest rates. So you can put, you can lend your money and get six, seven, 10% in different crypto protocols. So this is a huge value add, and you need to go through the pain to get there because it’s still early.
[00:38:56] Ramon: The technology is too painful. There are hacks that are scams, but there is out of alpha and value there. Yeah,
[00:39:03] Angela: my, my like POV on this and we’ve talked about this a lot is. the, the mass adoption. I don’t think it’s gonna happen for a long time. And it is gonna be by like an unknowing audience. It’s kind of like, Ramones laid out all these like positive benefits of using crypto of like, you know, you actually own your own thing.
[00:39:23] Angela: And like there’s no middle man, and it’s essentially, you’re cutting all these fees out and blah, blah, blah. And those are all things people want, but it’s like too difficult, I think, to understand kind of how it’s happening right now and like how to get into those platforms. But when it gets to a point, like you said, when, like the user interface is so simple and like, Um, intuitive for people to get into.
[00:39:46] Angela: It’s almost like masked, like a web two thing right now. Like a Venmo, for example, like nobody knows what the fuck Venmo’s doing, but you’re like, oh, I get to like send money to my friends instantaneously. I don’t give a shit, like, let me download this and like send you $5. It’s gonna be like that. Or like, no one knows it’s built on crypto.
[00:40:03] Angela: It just like is already using that technology and giving you the benefit. And then they get to market whoever’s, you know, in the future, being able to make these really user friendly things are gonna be able to market the things that already exist today on like other Janer, crypto things. But like no one mass audience knows about it yet.
[00:40:24] Angela: So then those people are gonna probably be like dominant players in, in the beginning, because it’s just gonna be like, you’re capturing all these people that like don’t know how to get into it right now. That like wanna benefit from those things and don’t need to know how it works. Just like as long as they like get to benefit from the, the technology.
[00:40:41] Angela: It’s fine. So Venmo for me is like kind of the easiest, like comparison is just like, that thing popped up outta nowhere. Right. Everyone was just like, oh, it’s like money, money in an app. And like, uh, like, doesn’t matter what bank you are. Cuz I actually remember no one in gen Z remembers this, but like I actually remember pre Venmo.
[00:41:00] Angela: When it was like, how am I supposed to like pay you back? When I go to lunch and stuff, it was like I had to even cash. Or like, you just hope that like, you’re both chased or you’re both think of America and you can like both actually do that thing. And I remember when Venmo first came out, I was like, oh my God, this is magic.
[00:41:14] Angela: I like don’t care what your bank is. And it’s like, I don’t have to. Worry about bringing cash and stuff. It’s gonna be like that where there’s gonna be so many different use cases for it, where it’s just like, oh, this magical thing here that like makes my life easier. And like, I don’t know how it works really.
[00:41:29] Angela: And I don’t care as long as it works and people trust
[00:41:31] Jesse: it. Yeah. Well, I think that’s a really great transition into future state questions in the fortune cookie. Shall we. Okay. Awesome. Um, so listeners, we’re gonna move on over to the fortune cookie section of the podcast, because we always like to end on a sweet treat and Ramon for you.
[00:41:50] Jesse: We, we are asking you to, uh, because we very often like to pull out crystal balls and forecast the future. So we’d like you to give us what your top three predictions on. Um, the long term use of crypto are that aren’t commonly seen today. Um,
[00:42:07] Ramon: that’s hard. Um, I mean, one that I’m pretty confident right now.
[00:42:12] Ramon: The whole crypto market cap is one and a half trillion. I think by 2030 it will be 10 trillion. So it would be six, six times larger, at least another one is that some. Countries will hold crypto in their bank reserves the same way right now, they hold, they hold gold. And then the third one, probably that there will be a massive consumer application in the next three or four years that uses crypto.
[00:42:44] Ramon: And it may be, it may be Twitter. We’ll see what Elon, um, think, but they’re definitely taking it into that direction or making it decentralized, making. More, um, by the users and social persistent. Um, and one, one thought that I want to finish with is that 500 years ago, you know, the, the power of printing books was taken away from the church and the state.
[00:43:08] Ramon: And at the beginning, nobody thought that was a good idea, but then it was obvious that letting everyone publish things was a good idea for freedom of a speech and money is also in a way, freedom of a speech, freedom to T if you don’t have freedom to transact, you don’t have anything. So I think this idea.
[00:43:24] Ramon: That money only governments and the politician in terms will be able to print it whenever they want, uh, is, is gonna be an idea that hopefully 5,100 years from now it’s gonna be look like Barbara. So the money should be dependent from the state.
[00:43:39] Angela: Okay. Well, listeners, I think we covered so many topics today.
[00:43:45] Angela: Hopefully you learn something. Um, and there’s probably more question. That popped up in your head from listening to this. So if you have questions for Ramon, let’s see if he has any time to answer those. After this, we’ll let you plug if anything you want, but, um, if you have questions for Ramon, you can email at tell us where you’re from@gmail.com.
[00:44:08] Angela: We’ll pass him along and see if he has time to answer you. Um, but hopefully you learned a lot already. And if you have other thoughts on crypto, if you have delved into this space and you know, a lot or. Um, have strong opinions about something. You can also write us in with those thoughts. Um, and maybe we’ll do a follow up.
[00:44:28] Angela: We’ll see. Um, but Ramon, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Thank you. And. . Is there anything you want to plug ?
[00:44:39] Ramon: I mean, you can find me on Twitter. You can add the, the link below. Um, and then I I’ve been building this platform that is called Babylon finance, and we basically help people invest in crypto, um, through investment clubs.
[00:44:53] Ramon: So you can pull money with your friends and or with people that are Def experts. So you can just, uh, trust them. And they. I allocate the money to, to a place to give you a consistent return. And we, we have all these different investment clubs to cater to different drinks, profile and different investment time horizon.
[00:45:14] Ramon: So, if you’re interested, you can take a look at baby of finance.
[00:45:18] Jesse: All right. So as always, we will have a fresh new episode for all of you guys next week.