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CRYPTO 101
Ep. 687 Reunion with Aaron Malone/Pizza Mind: A Journey Through Science and Crypto
00:54:02
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the Crypto 101 podcast presented by Gemini, your bridge to the future of money.
- [00:15]
B
All right everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Crypto 101 podcast. I'm your co host, Bryce, as always, joined by my good buddy across the country, Brendan Veeman. Brendan, how are you doing?
- [00:27]
C
I'm doing good, Bryce. Are you getting deja vu right now? Getting a little bit of a blast from the past?
- [00:33]
B
I'm getting a little deja vu indeed. We've got a familiar face, a good friend, and my former co host as well, Mr. Aaron, the Pizza Mind. Well done. Malone. Astronaut, doctor, philanthropist, billionaire, Satoshi's son, UFC fighting champion, and a professional male and female model. Pizza mine. How are you doing?
- [00:57]
D
Oh man, almost none of that is true, but I am doing really good. It feels so good to be home. I've missed you guys so much. Since I was last sitting in the co host copilot spot, I've been all over the world. I have much to report and let's try and condense as much as we can into this short window.
- [01:21]
B
Yeah, no, we're super pumped. Catch us up just a little bit on what you've been up to since you've departed the podcast.
- [01:30]
D
So I departed I believe sometime September, October 2023 and since then I've been to Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Brazil, Panama, and I'm currently sitting in Patagonia, Argentina right now at a pop up state called Edge City. And this is a gathering, yes, it is a gathering of about 300 people from web 3, from science, from finance, from all kinds of different backgrounds that all want to get together and figure out how to change the world. And they basically created this AI governed sort of community where everyone can have co working and co living situations and group together. And there's a lot of really high level people here, lots of them for Web3, people that work with the Ethereum foundation, etc. Etc. So it's been really interesting. It's only like day three so far and we found a lot of commonality and I'm very excited to learn a lot about AI. I'm hoping to learn about vibe coding and there's a lot of interest in the cross section between science and Web three. And that's primarily where I've been focusing my efforts and attention lately because I feel like a lot of the financial problems we had have been solved. Bitcoin has created sound money. There's been a million pretenders already and nothing's dethroned. And at this point bitcoin has been solidified not just by Web3, but also by financial institutions and even world governments. At this point, it's not going away. There is a clear first place prize winner now. What else can Web3 solve? And when I stumbled into a room in December 2022 in Miami, there were about 15 people there talking about something called DSI. And I said, that sounds interesting. What is that? And it was a small group of people that were going to later form Molecule and Vitadao and a couple other interesting things. And they basically thought, you know, science is really closely guarded by either major research institutions or universities, and they're all competing to invent the next big thing with not a lot of collaboration going on. But there is something called the open source science movement that's taking place over a few universes in Europe, is kind of a pilot saying, you know what, if we were to work together and share our data, maybe we could make advancements a lot faster. And that's where blockchain and decentralized storage comes in. That's where decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, are able to be formed, where people all over the world with common interests and common expertise can now start collaborating and working together instead of being beholden to an institution that guards everything with an NDA and encryption and all this stuff and just keeps it all to themselves. So that is kind of the birth idea of desai. And we'll just keep that as the first rim of the rabbit hole for now.
- [04:58]
A
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- [07:26]
B
So you finally got your wish. You got to travel around the world. You got to see almost every city you've ever wanted to and it's just cool to think back to the early days of starting everything together and your little apartment and all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, man, who knew if we were ever going to make it out of San Diego? But lo and behold, it sounds like you've pretty much seen every city that you've wanted to. So really proud of you for spreading your wings and flying and taking a big yet another big risk. I mean pretty much your whole life is just one big walking, talking risk taker. And so you've you've taken another one. You've really found some traction with unbound science. But I want to continue to paint the picture. We'll go down one level of the rabbit hole. Who are the bad guys in science right now?
- [08:12]
D
Who?
- [08:12]
B
You know, you're building DCI projects because you want to, you know, just in the same way that central bankers and you know, all these corrupt bankers, you know, were dethroned by Bitcoin and then Big Tech was kind of dethroned by Ethereum. I would imagine it's like Big Pharma, but it's probably a lot deeper. So I want to hear kind of who's about to be dethroned by Pizza Mind.
- [08:35]
D
Yeah. So let's talk about the good, the bad and the ugly.
- [08:38]
B
Okay.
- [08:38]
D
The good are the people that go into science because they want to change the world for the better. Most of the scientists I've talked to are not profit driven, they're impact driven. And they want to see life for everybody improve. And they work their asses off to try and find discoveries for diseases or new ways to have clean energy, or ways to improve the mineral content of food, or ways to create bacteria that eats up oil spills, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And they go out into the world and they usually start with going to university, they get their education and then they start a research fellowship or something like that. And that's where it starts to go bad. Because these universities are beholden to the people that make donations to their endowment fund. And these very rich billionaires have a lot of misaligned incentives for progress because they own patents, they own stock in all these companies that are enormous and currently control things. And if something is innovated outside the box of what's allowed, it could be highly disruptive to the people that have all the money. So there is a hierarchy in this kind of culture where you've got these research, these researchers that are working their asses off, they're not getting a lot of money. And in many ways it's very similar to being an up and coming musician where it's an extremely top heavy industry where there's very few people compared to everyone involved that are actually famous and wealthy. And if you say the wrong thing, or you step on the wrong person's toes, or you take money out of this person's pocket, like your career is over, that's it. And if you want to go and you know, work on something really disruptive, like zero point energy devices or hydrogen modules for electric vehicles, or something like that, not only could your career be over, you may get a knock on the door threatening your life if you're lucky. Some people are not so lucky, didn't get a warning and were simply just eliminated. And this isn't just happening, you know, 50, 60 years ago, around the Cold War or the turn of the century, when J.P. morgan burned down Tesla's lab. This is happening now. It was just a couple years ago even, that there was a researcher named Amy Eskridge who was working on experiments in gravity. And there's a very famous podcast that is still on YouTube right now where she was talking about potentially being threatened for her research. And sure enough, she died mysteriously, just like so many other scientists just a few months later. She's young. She's like in her late 20s, early 30s. So, yeah, so there's a lot of.
- [11:31]
B
Gatekeepers in medicine still.
- [11:33]
D
There's a lot of gatekeepers. And those are the bad ones. The ugly ones, I would say, you know, is like big oil and even world governments. You know, for example, the United States still has something called the Innovation Secrecy act or the Invention Secrecy act that was passed In, I believe, 1951, 52. And this allowed the US government to take anything that came through the Patent Office that it wanted to, if they could use it for military purposes. This act has been invoked over 6,000 times to steal work from scientists. That's the ugly truth right there. The reason we don't have free energy and flying cars and pure abundance and are still basically enslaved by artificial scarcity. It's all a rigged game, just like the financial markets. But it doesn't have to be because of decentralized technologies. Now we can make a place where these scientists can publish their work, can use zero knowledge proofs to maintain their anonymity, can get funding for their work through donations without it being seized or going through banks, thanks to cryptocurrency. And these are all the building blocks and philosophies behind what we're building at Unbound Science.
- [12:54]
C
You know, this reminds me of. I don't know if you've seen this. This is a little bit off topic, but have you guys heard of Julian Brown? He is an individual in America and he's made this thing called plastine where he's found a way to recycle plastic and turn it into, I think, diesel. Like a diesel, like fuel. And it's been tested and it works. And he's gone viral lately, and immediately, that's kind of where my brain goes, is like something like that that's super innovative, probably borderline dangerous. Right, because of what you were talking about. Something like that could maybe be published on Blockchain. So that way, hey, you know, God forbid, if something were to happen, at least we have the concepts of it and the practice of it. But it's a super cool thing. I think, you know, Pete, I think you would actually really enjoy learning about him, and maybe that's someone you could even reach out to. But, yeah, fascinating stuff.
- [13:47]
B
Yeah, it's a threatening. It sounds like it's a threatening to Big Oil for sure.
- [13:51]
D
That's exactly right. And the only reason that we don't have many thorium and fission reactors and zero point energy devices and little hydrogen modules that powers our neighborhood is because of big oil.
- [14:04]
B
We might have them in Area 51, or we might have them in the government.
- [14:09]
D
The technology absolutely exists, and it's starting to filter out into the public now. We're about to see version two of clean energy. Version one was the solar panels on your roof, the big giant wind turbines everywhere in the desert. But those come with their own problems. When they stop working, how do they get recycled and how do they get decommissioned? And it just creates a bunch more waste and a bunch more problems. Version two, you're going to have little miniature reactors, maybe the size of a shipping container, maybe even smaller, that works off of either thorium or fission. Or even now, Amazon's coming out with little miniature nuclear reactors to power data centers. Wow. Hydrogen. I even saw something that works off of water and gravity. And it's like this tube that you bury two thirds of the way down in your front yard, but it's enough to power your house. So all these things are now starting to come out in innovation zones and being displayed at CES every year. And I think also one of the problems is when scientists come up with an amazing invention. They're not very good businessmen, and they're even worse at marketing because they're so passionate about what they do. They don't really want to put the sizzle on the stake because their job is to be the stake. And that really holds a lot of people back. One of the things that I saw that was amazing at CES last year was this little box that would. That you would put a plant inside a plant. There's a plant, and the AI would look at the plant and determine what kind of species of plant it was and how much optimal sunlight and water needed. And you could put multiple plants in there, and it would adjust per plant to give it its Optimal growth and this thing improved like the growth rate of like 30 or 40%. Something really, really amazing. They partnered with Samsung to become part of the Samsung smart home automation system. So now you can look at your Samsung Things app like you would your air conditioner or the heating in your house or the locks or anything. And you can also monitor how your plants are growing. And I thought this is the way forward. Partner with the existing companies that have global distribution and the political sway. If you're really focused on major impact, those companies are going to help get your ideas spread across the world faster than you ever could as one individual startup. So while I'm all about maximum disruption, I also want to be realistic. We're not going to be able to get rid of world governments and large corporations no matter what we do. But if we can create competition and better products that will sell as a whole, life is still going to get better for everyone.
- [17:00]
C
I have a bit of a regulatory question for you Aaron. Because when it comes to blockchain tech, there's all these amazing use cases that we could have and a lot of the time it feels like some sort of regulatory hurdle gets in the way. I think with tokenization and real world assets and that whole pool, we've seen it, right? People have said, oh well, it can fractionalize all these different industries like art and real estate. But then in the US you tend to see that blocked and there's this amazing use case and then you can go in the defi and you can see it there and you can go in the privacy and you can see it there and there's all these different kind of one off verticals. Do you fear at all that like the US could look at this or like not just the us like any country or every country could look at this and say we're going to put a pause on it for now and maybe we'll revisit it or they'll regulate it. Because that's immediately where my brain went is like, obviously there's this beautiful example of like art and real estate and tokenization and this looks the same. It's like, no, it's undoubtedly something that can be powerful and good and transformative, but in a sense that almost makes me more worried that it could be regulated.
- [18:12]
D
You're absolutely correct and in my opinion that will happen, which is why we did not incorporate in the U.S. we want to stay out of the radar for as long as possible. But from a philosophical perspective, I really had to deal with this. Say, what do you do first? Off. Why should one or two people get to say what the quality of life is for everybody else? Power is a two way street. It takes one person to say, I have control over your life and the other person to say, yes, you do. And we've done that far too long. And as far as the legal system goes, why should we pay attention to a patent system from a government that will literally steal any idea it wants, suppress any idea it wants, and follow the law when it wants to and doesn't want to? With income tax being against the Constitution and all the things the judges are trying to do now, with letting murderers out of prison after just a few days, why would I obey a system like that, that wants society to crumble? This is my own silent war. In return for all that, what we want is to take the blueprints, the instruction manuals, the how to videos, to create these disruptive technologies and package them together in a nice little LEGO kit and spread them around the way movies were spread around on BitTorrent. We want to pirate this stuff so it's not just being produced in one little lab somewhere, but thousands of people simultaneously are building it all over the world to the point that it can't be stopped and it can't be suppressed. And the people who run these companies and own these governments have to acknowledge, okay, this is reality. Now we might as well mass produce it ourselves and just simply move on from oil, move on from rare earth, mineral mining, etc. Etc. And what do I mean by that? Well, if you have enough energy, you can burn garbage down to the atomic level. We're currently able to do it down to the plasma level. But if you burn something to the atomic level, you can now take those atoms and reorganize them to become anything else. And essentially you have a replicator like in Star Trek. It just takes an amazing amount of energy to do. But I talked to scientists and it can theoretically be done. Now we just need that massive amount of energy to do that. When you can rearrange the molecules into anything, you've really removed artificial scarcity. We don't have to have all these wars for resources anymore. And when you have infinite amounts of resources, you can't really have war in the first place, because no one's going to sign up for the military to go to war, because we don't really have a whole lot of hatred for one another anymore. The only reason that wars happen is for resources and energy. But if you take those two things and you make them completely abundant now, you essentially have world peace. At least theoretically, it's possible. There's a massive amount of disruption that can come out of this over the next several decades. And it is really a long tail play that's going to take that long. Because it's not as simple as building another perp dex and copying some code and making something that people are used to and already know how to use. This is all brand new stuff that's never been done before.
- [21:31]
B
And so it seems like kind of tying this into the project you're working on now. It seems like you want to go out and find these scientists and these thinkers and bring them onto your platform and have them. I'm trying to work my head around everything. Tell us a little bit about, you know, how unbound science is going to fix this, you know, societal, you know, cultural issue.
- [21:57]
D
I think it's going to take a long time to be taken seriously, to be very honest. I think, you know, it's going to take us 10 years. Like it took Bitcoin 10 years to be looked at seriously. You know, first they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win. We're going to have that. But we're not even at the last stage, we're still being kind of stared at.
- [22:15]
B
Like the ignore phase.
- [22:18]
D
Yeah, pretty much. We have not raised from any investors or venture capitalists for the last three years. And I've had to bootstrap it myself, which has been extremely difficult. But I feel like the universe has called on me to do this mission, otherwise I never would have done because it has been an enormous headache. I had a beautiful job sitting here at the podcast and being a crypto educator, which I love doing. And to go down this path of nothing but suffering, there really has to be some kind of higher payoff for it. And I think there will be. Otherwise, you know, I would have quit a long time ago.
- [22:57]
C
Yeah.
- [22:57]
B
And it's not like you're ever. You're not motivated by money, I'll tell you that. Like, it's not like a profit thing that you're. You're going off. You're really philosophically motivated here.
- [23:06]
D
Yeah. And when you have a mission rather than a job, it's for life and there's no quit. And for that matter, even here at Edge City, I volunteered to do free crypto education because I still feel like that's part of the mission is freeing people from slavery.
- [23:24]
B
I hope you're telling people to avoid perp dexes.
- [23:27]
D
Absolutely. And I'm telling you actually got someone to subscribe to the Crypto 101 podcast yesterday.
- [23:31]
B
All right, there we go. Doing the loads work.
- [23:35]
D
Yes. So everyone, you are still in the right place. Bingo. Yeah. I think there's a lot of other amazing things happening in Desci as well. Like I'm kind of the only person who's focused on science in the realms of like clean energy and air, water and soil technology, pollution, waste management and quantum tech are the four areas of science that we're supporting in unbound science for now. But there's a lot of other things that are happening in biotech and longevity that are really interesting. Also things that can make people healthier, things that go completely against the philosophy of big Pharma, things that say no, your body's not a chemical system, it's an electrical system and we can have it be self correcting if we work on the proper frequencies. And there's people that use in light and sound and vibration to heal illness or prevent illness from even happening. And I've been part of a lot of these experiments. I usually will get sick anytime I travel. I haven't been sick for over a year now.
- [24:42]
B
Just don't have a one year old baby. And if you have a one year old baby, you're gonna get sick all the time.
- [24:46]
D
Like me, I, my brother has had three of them over the past, you know, couple years. We've got one that's even not even one years old yet. I hang out with them all the time. I'm not getting sick anymore, man. So there's really something to what you.
- [25:03]
B
Used to be kind of sickly.
- [25:04]
D
I remember I did, I would always get colds every time the weather would change. Anytime I went to a new country, you know, whatever new germs would get me, I'd get knocked out for a few days. And it's been well over a year while I've been to almost 10 countries hanging out with my little nephews that are in preschool all the time and sick every other week. So there's really something to this science. It's not just people trying to push their own ideas to make money. These fringe scientists are actually onto something.
- [25:34]
B
So are you at Unbound Science trying to fund all of these researchers? Are you trying to give them a platform to publish their research? Are you giving them a community to share their research? Give us like that, that insight?
- [25:49]
D
Yes, all the above. So the way it works for a scientist is you come on the platform and you sign up and you eventually, you basically have an interface that looks like Google Drive and we have an instruction List of all the materials that we want you to make to be able to market whatever your invention is. So make an intro video, make an explainer video, film some videos of you building this thing. We need blueprints, we need instruction manuals. We want your research notes. And we guide them step by step of how to take this big mess on their desk and compile it into a package that we can actually work with. Then we say, okay, here's these donation pools. Science community, anyone can donate to them in usdc. And we also have a nonprofit foundation set up to take philanthropic donations because most of science research is supported not by profit, but through scientific donation. So we've got that avenue set up as well. Now the scientists can go to the community and publish these videos. The community interface looks just like YouTube, except it's all fringe science tech stuff. And you can go to the community and say, hey, I need another 50 grand to pay a mechanical engineer to make a case for this thing. Or I need 100 grand to get these materials to take this to the next level. Will you fund me? And then the community gets to use the Unite tokens and vote on what they want brought into the world. So that's the way that works. And then we have third party marketplaces that specialize in matching new inventions with existing tech giants like Samsung and LG and ge, et cetera. So they can then package all of their stuff, send it to the marketplace and earn residual income, potentially millions a year, and then they can continue to focus on doing their science.
- [27:39]
B
And what are, what are the assurances? I suppose, like that their stuff won't be ripped off, right? Because like you, you know, the U.S. patent office, you go, and if you file a patent with them, nobody could kind of take it. And if they do, the government might take it or whatever. And, but if they, if they do, you could have grounds for like a lawsuit. And so I, if a scientist wants to go and say, hey, I've got all this, you know, private research, I don't want anybody to know about it. But, but I do want help with the funding. How do we kind of thread that needle?
- [28:08]
D
They have the right and the ability to do that. However, I think it's not optimal. For instance, if someone in the US steals their research or their ideas or whatever, and they've got a patent in the U.S. yes, they can take them to court, but that doesn't apply anywhere else. If someone from Panama steals it, or El Salvador or Bangladesh, I guess, kind of stealing from there. Yeah.
- [28:32]
C
Is it?
- [28:33]
D
Exactly. So the whole global patent system doesn't exist. It's basically like every single jurisdiction you'd have to file a patent and then protect it. It's a huge headache. And it's basically impossible for anyone who's an individual scientist. I mean, Disney can't even prevent Mickey Mouse and Disney Merch from being stolen globally. So what chance does an individual science have, scientists have? Instead I say, why don't you open source your stuff, let people iterate on it, let people take it. But the what you're releasing is maybe like the free version, maybe like the scaled down version. And if someone wants the corporate or the municipal size version of, you know, your energy reactor or whatever, then they can get a license from you or you. I mean these things may need like software built so you can have software licenses with different seats or different, you know, wattage cutoffs or whatever it is. And people can pay that way or they can also you can say if you want to use this as individual, you're allowed to, but as a government or a corporation, you need to buy a license for it as well as a consulting contract so you don't blow up the, you know, your city. Make sure you're doing it right. And also an emergency engineering contract where something's broken, the scientists will actually fly out the next day to go fix it themselves. And those alone can bring in multiple million dollars a year. Now you don't need to worry so much about sales, you just cover the support, which is the model that Red Hat uses. Red Hat is probably the largest open source Linux software provider and enterprise version that people use. It's the same thing as all these other free versions. But what you're paying for is the support that comes with it and the expertise behind it.
- [30:23]
B
Fascinating. And I think a lot of people like you mentioned, Molecule Invitedao. Could you kind of compare and contrast what you're working on with these two? I would say they're maybe the largest names in DCI right now. And maybe there's a few others that you could kind of shed light on too.
- [30:38]
D
Yeah, there's Bio Protocol which is enormous. Amino Chain raised money from a 16Z. So a lot of these people are working on the research side of things. There's Research Hub as well that Brian Armstrong funded. CZ has some things in the works as well. But a lot of the things are focused on research and being like libraries for research. Yes, no Error is a really popular tool for checking flaws in research. So the AI goes through and make sure the math is all correct and things. And that's pretty awesome. But what we're focused on is not research so much as post research. We're looking for things that are product ready and we're focused on inventors that are getting their hands dirty as opposed to researchers that just want to publish a paper and hope somebody else actually does the work later. And I think that's been a very false finish line for scientists for decades now, where instead of actually bringing something into the world and getting their hands dirty, they're content to just sit in their ivory tower, comfortable in their air conditioner and write ideas and theories and then they pay thousands of dollars to some journal to publish it where no one really in the world reads that stuff other than maybe other scientists. And it has by design the most minimal impact possible. So we're moving that finish line and saying no. You actually need to put on your running shoes and get out into the workshop and build something. Get your hands dirty, get your goggles on, get your lab coat on and get it dirty. And when you've actually got something that works that can change someone's life when you hand them this device, that's the finish line. I love it.
- [32:29]
A
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- [33:12]
B
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- [33:14]
C
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- [33:19]
D
But I'd like to offer one other perk.
- [33:21]
C
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- [33:29]
D
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- [33:37]
E
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- [34:41]
B
And if we go back to some of the IP stuff I remember, I mean God, this must have been. Yeah, right when you, you know, maybe in 2023, you were like one of the first people who told me about story protocol, about IP NFTs, all this kind of stuff. Are you still using Story Protocol to help for some of the IP or how do you guys handle that? Are there any NFTs involved?
- [35:03]
D
Molecule invented something called an IP NFT and we're using that type of technology in our stack. Unfortunately, Story Protocol had no interest in IP for science or making any kind of tools for desci. They were solely focused on art and music. And recently their co founder, as soon as his tokens vested, just left and decided that he was more interested in AI now. So unfortunately it looks like Story Protocol is just going to be another one of those dead coins. Unless you dodge the bullet. Yeah, totally. I mean, unless the existing team decides to evolve it. I think what they built has a lot of potential use in the world, but so many things that have come out in this last cycle are just wastes of time and resources where the user and the investor is the product and they're just trying to mass extract from their community instead of delivering value to their community. And we're seeing all these things, all these tokens launch with five $10 billion valuations and a tiny float of like 3,5% of supply. And anyone holding these tokens is going to get absolutely annihilated. The most money to be made in this cycle is actually when it's over, just shorting these things into the ground over the next three years. Is huge supply unlocks delivery like a guaranteed 90% drop down or more.
- [36:36]
C
Isn't it fascinating seeing how many coins have come into existence? And you're right, like launching with these multi billion dollar valuations. Because all three of us, I'm pretty sure all three of us were around in like 2017, 2018. That was never the case. I mean it was, you know, quite the opposite. Not only was there like a few hundred, a few thousand cryptos back then, you know, now there's what over, I think 22, 23 million on coin market cap, but nothing was launching with that kind of multibillion dollar valuation. And so I mean it really is wild looking back on it, you know, not even a decade later and seeing how much things have changed. And in a way, I don't know, I mean there's, there's pros and cons. I want to get your guys thoughts on this. But there's pros and cons. I know back then you had a lot of projects that would launch and then they would just go to zero and things would happen. And we all remember the, the kind of ICO bubble that we went through. And today I think that a lot of these, these projects that are being backed and that do launch at a billion dollar valuation or something greater than that, I think that they have a little bit more longevity because they have investors tied to them. So they're a little bit more sticky. But I don't know, there's trade offs on both ends. Have you guys noticed that?
- [37:53]
D
Yeah. It's been really strange to me that both retail and institutional investors have intentionally gone towards putting their money in scams and memes and things that aren't meant to, to deliver long term value because they will return short term profits, especially for these insider investors, that they're getting the best deal. So we see so many projects, you know, with this huge list we used to talk about, you know, follow the whales and follow the smart money, but they're getting deals that we're not.
- [38:23]
C
Yeah.
- [38:24]
D
And they're able to cash out at the right time because they know that these things are not going to stay around. Even if they look cool. That's the hook and that's where they get you. And so many of these things just aren't going to survive because they're not meant to. The founders are going to leave, the investors are going to leave and someone's going to be left holding the bag. Whether it's tokens or even companies that are now going public and selling off their equity and Just saying, okay, cool, we're done. We're going to move on to the next thing. That's not what business is supposed to be about. It's supposed to be about building a legacy. It's supposed to. Supposed to be about providing a service to your society, like what we've built here at Divergent Financial and Crypto 101 podcasts.
- [39:08]
B
Yeah, totally. I'm just. Yeah, I'm super interested in what you guys are building and how have you kind of, like, built up a team around this? Have you kind of sourced people from all over the world? Are you, you know, in your hometown? I don't even know if you have a hometown. Like, are you just kind of. What do they call it? A nomad. Right.
- [39:29]
D
And.
- [39:29]
B
And with remote work. And I'm just curious about what that looks like.
- [39:34]
D
Yeah, I'm not full nomadic yet. I was going to be, but my dad called in a favor. I told him a long time ago that when he got to a certain age, I was going to take care of him for the rest of his life. And he decided last year he was finally going to move out of California and come out to Texas. So I've got him to look after, and we've got a little place just around the corner for my brother. So I'm very happy that one of my big goals when I got into crypto was to retire my dad, and we finally got to do that, and now he just gets to play grandpa every day. So that's been amazing, and I don't want to miss out on the final years that I have left with him. So I would say I'm at least at home, you know, probably 60, 70% of the time. And the rest of the time, I'm just wherever the wind blows me and wherever the wind blows me, I seem to be gifted these chance meetings by the universe. You know, lots of breadcrumbs and synchronicities have really kept me going through some of the dark times and the broke days and setbacks, because I meet these people just by chance, and they fall in love with the mission of Unbound Science and say, great, how can I help? I say, I need this, I need that. And I found two other co founders that were able to help me get the actual companies registered. I found developers, I found artists and community members, and tons of scientists, many of which are in Web3 because they fell out of love with science because of all these roadblocks. And now this is like a second chance for them. So they're waiting in the Wings for this thing to launch. It's been about three years of researching and building and then rebuilding, then rebuilding again, trying to find the right tech stack and now we're finally almost ready to have the alpha launched, which we're going to do this November at DevConnect.
- [41:22]
B
Nice.
- [41:23]
C
I love it.
- [41:24]
B
Yeah, that was kind of. My next question was taking a look at the roadmap. What does it look like November you're going to be launching and then what are the next steps that you're wanting to take and put out there after that?
- [41:37]
D
We really want to start building out other tools and features for scientists to use. We want to build a collaboration whiteboard platform where scientists can work together from all over the world to solve problems, whether it's math equations or research or blueprints or putting several blueprints together and building on top of each other. We want to enable that and have a way to fractionalize and share the IP and royalties that come out of that. We want to build a lot of AI translation tools, which is a big problem. So, you know, we'll go from Chinese to English or just from very high level like university professor type language to ELA 5. We want to have AI peer review. We want to have actual like human peer reviews that are sorted into kind of like a seven person jury where they're going to then try and reinvent whatever these blueprints are telling them and confirm if it works or not. We want to have a game show module that decides how the donation pools get distributed and we want to have that game show live at CES every year. Wow. So there's a lot that's being planned and then we need to add token mining for user interactions to pay people out, kind of similar to the way DYDX distributed their tokens. So we got 40% of the Unite supply that is being distributed there. And then we have several other, what I'm calling auxiliary tools and platforms that are not related to science at all. In fact, we have our very first Degen trading tool called Freaking Fun that is coming out and that's freaking with a PH as a homage to the old 90s phone hacking systems. And this will allow some Degen gambling in ways we've never seen before in this space. And we're going to be extracting fees from dumb money and giving it to smart scientists as a way to continue to help fund these donation pools. So we'll have several of these coming out, including an app. Think of Fantasy football meets Perks Trading. Wow. Where you can Go head to head against another trader. Or you can join a league and earn points, wager eth, and you set your lineups for long six coins, short six coins for a week and see what happens. So we've got a lot of fun things coming out to help fund more scientists through DeFi, through the DeGen ecosystem here and take advantage of where crypto's at today.
- [44:18]
C
Well, hey, man, all that stuff's hot right now, so I don't think it's too bad of an idea you're playing a little bit.
- [44:23]
D
I'm doing anything but launching a mean coin.
- [44:28]
C
Well, you know, Pete's, we appreciate you, man. I mean, a lot of people who have been around for a while, I mean, you all know, you know, Pete's was sitting in our shoes just a little bit ago. And now you're building your, your own project, you're going around the world, you're talking to people, you know, building a team, you're doing all this stuff. What kind of advice do you have for people who are watching and they want to build their own crypto project as well?
- [44:53]
D
I think Vibe coding is one of the things that is going to be the most impactful thing in the world because it lowers the barrier from someone who's had to go to school for your four to eight years to learn how to be a senior developer that is in, you know, they're extremely rare, but now with things like Lovable, with things like Claude and many other tools, you can create a simple website or a simple app simply just by typing in human language. I want an app that does this, this, this, and this. And you can talk to it just like you were talking to a developer across the table and explaining what you want built. And instead of months or years, it's literally done in minutes. And these tools are getting better and better right now. Maybe it can be, you know, anywhere from like 90 to 95% perfect. Maybe there's some things that don't quite work and you need to hire someone to come in and, you know, fix the bugs or correct this issue. But there's a lot of competition between Google and OpenAI and Microsoft and other companies to make better and better AI dev tools. So I think that's going to be a lot of fun.
- [46:05]
B
It seems like there's now, like, with all these vibe coding tools, meaning, like, you know, these AI coding tools where you don't have to have programming experience, there's now a premium on vision and a premium on ability to communicate your vision, because in the past, it's like the people who really made all the money or whatever they were, you know, a lot of the people who had vision, but they could program it.
- [46:27]
D
Right.
- [46:27]
B
And so they, you know, you know, perfect example. Jack Dorsey, right? Like, he was, you know, this, you know, big idea guy and then he invented Twitter. But he took years and years and years to code up this platform. And now I think, like, at the end of the day, there's going to be sort of like the revenues or the profits for these software engineers are going to fall over time. And the people who have the really high quality communication skills that can tell the AI what it wants with really precise prompting, those are sort of going to be the people that are the CEOs and the chairman of the future.
- [47:03]
D
Yeah. And that's kind of where I'm trying to position myself at the moment. I've got an entity called Obsanity Labs and We're basically building Web3 applications that start niches that don't exist in Web3, or building very fringe things. But we're looking for real world applications that are beyond just tokenized real estate. So we're building things next in decentralized history and decentralized justice. Things that really we need. And the way I'm looking at it is, okay, what are the tools we need if society is really going to collapse and if things continue to get worse and we continue to lose more and more faith in our institutions and governments, where do we turn? Well, Bitcoin was there when the banks needed to get bailout. So we need other things as well, from voting systems to I mean, even just smart city tools to run public utilities. And that's kind of what I'm doing here at Edge City is trying to figure out more smart city and AI stuff and find out what's being built. And even just as simple as attaching a laser scanner to city vehicles that can then map when they're driving over potholes and create a map of all the potholes in the city. We start auto scheduling things to get built. That's a very simple but an amazing tool that we should have at this point. We've got the technology, we just need to build little things like this.
- [48:35]
B
I love it. I love it. There's so many, so many areas of opportunity and extremely large green pastures. And I like that kind of analogy was how bitcoin was there when Bitcoin bailed out the banks, or bitcoin bailed out the citizens when the government basically said, okay, we're going to put the banks we're going to nationalize the banks. We're going to put them on our balance sheet. We're going to have the US Citizen taxpayers bail out the banks. And Bitcoin was there to say, hey, here's an alternative. And with everything that you're building, it's like, hey, look at all the crazy things that we're finding out about COVID right? All the horrible atrocities that, you know, the governments hid from us and enacted upon us. And, like, we could go down that whole rabbit hole. And Aaron, I remember, you know, back in, I think it was January of 2020, and you had January of 2020. And I remember just watching this Bitlord video where he was in China and he was like, filming around. I was like, this is crazy. And China was completely empty. He goes, this is insane. Like, there's not a single soul. I think this virus is going to be really bad. Then you went to the store and you stocked up an entire freezer full of pizza. And I was like, you're insane. You're crazy. You're like, bro, the world's going to shut down. There's going to be the first lockdown. And this was like three or four months before the lockdown happened. And you were spot on. And. And so, like, you know, you kind of having this sort of doomsday prepper mentality back then. It was very prescient. And then you were like, look, in February, you were like, this is a China virus. Like, this was released from the Wuhan lab. I was like, what are you talking about? And then years later, it becomes canon, it becomes mainstream that this is actually factual and here's how it all worked out. And so, you know, I think we're really all, you know, while we walk away from this conversation thinking, man, that was way over our heads. He's, you know, this guy, he's got a lot going on. But you're really on the vanguard of a lot of this stuff. And, you know, I think we're all indebted in a sense to you for kind of like going out and building this humanitarian technology. Even if it's 20 years early, at least, you know, somebody else will be able to pick it up and build what you started.
- [50:49]
D
If I'm not criminally late, I am criminally early, unfortunately. But I appreciate the sentiment. You know, being here in Argentina has been very interesting as well. Like, I want to hold up some money here, the camera. These are Argentinian pesos. This is 200 pesos. Here's 1,000. And here's, you know, 10,000 pesos. You know, this is maybe, I don't know how many I have here, but this is maybe like 50 or $60 worth. I was talking to a local and he was telling me, within our lifetimes, all of us, the peso was pegged to the dollar one to one. Now a thousand is probably less than a dollar.
- [51:33]
B
Right.
- [51:34]
D
That's the devaluation that people are having over here. I just came from Japan, where there's vending machines everywhere, and the yen has been stable for like 30 years pretty much. They don't even have vending machines over here because they wouldn't be able to have the software to update it with how much their currency is changing all the time. Wow. And as I was trading in my 100 bills, they're looking at every last little thing and crinkle and wrinkle. And if there's like a tiny little tear or something, like, they won't accept it because their money is just so bad over here. Like this little wrinkled corner, like if this was given to them, they just wouldn't take this as a dollar. It's great.
- [52:14]
B
It's crazy. There's just the level of devaluation that's going on in America. We think, oh, man, this is really bad. But it's so much worse in all these other countries. And there's no concept of saving over there. They're like, save this, this paper, save this. Why am I going to save this? I'm going to make it and spend it the same day, because if I save it tomorrow, it's going to be worth a quarter of that.
- [52:34]
D
That's exactly right. And when we came here, they said, don't change all your money in for dollars because there's like a parliamentary election, like a midterms over here happening in a couple of weeks. And they said the currency could change as much as 30% depending on how that election goes. Wow. And we think that's crazy. We're suffering in the US no doubt about it. But it could be worse. And witnessing this with my own eyes is just mind blowing. Yeah.
- [53:02]
C
We get upset about a 3% change in inflation over the course of a year, and they're like, hey, there's an election, it might change 30%. Crazy.
- [53:10]
B
Yeah, it's totally crazy. Well, pizza mind, while we still have you, I just want to check in on your diet. Are you still living off of pizza and keto, Hot Pockets and chicken tenders and the like? It's a meatloaf in there.
- [53:23]
D
I. I can't eat as much pizza as I used to anymore. Unfortunately, I've got the acid reflux starting to catch up as well as my weight as well. I think I've added two shirt sizes since I moved to Texas. Even though I've tried to work out more and eat better. There's just something in the food in the US And I think, you know what Robert Kennedy is trying to do. He's got a lot of work ahead of him. And it's just. It's not just, you know, pharma and drugs, but it's, you know, bleaches and chemicals that are in our bread, that are even in our vegetables. So as we try to eat healthy in the U.S. like, we're still creating more problems for ourselves versus every time I leave and I go to Japan or I go to South America, I eat the same stuff. I eat pizza, I eat hamburgers or French fries. I drink Coke and I lose weight and my skin clears up and I sleep better and I don't have heartburn. Why is this happening when I'm essentially eating the same thing? It's. The ingredients are completely different. And that more than anything, drives me to stay out of the US as much as possible. Like, I miss Woodstock's pizza and I miss In N Out so bad. But I just went to a random little bar here in San Martin de los Andes and I had one of the best burgers and fries I've ever had in my entire life. Just sort of random place here and love it.
- [54:44]
B
I heard, I heard we might be buying more Argentinian beef. I just saw a news report, and then all the American farmers are kind of going nuclear saying this is, you know, going to ravage the, the farming class. But I don't know, it's going to be interesting to see what happens with the American food supply.
- [55:02]
D
Well, maybe they should stop injecting all these drugs and vaccines into the animals. Yeah. Stop pumping them full of steroids. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't know about all that stuff. I'm not an expert in, in this. And really I'm. I'm just a guy who's in the middle who sees an opportunity. And as I talk to experts and I listen to them all the time, and it is very, very difficult to know what the truth is. But that's what science is all about. Finding out the true nature of our reality and then figuring out what is our true nature inside that reality. What are we supposed to be doing here? And these are questions we should be asking over and over and over again and never accepting a conclusion and never saying, oh, we're just going to trust the science. You know, this is settled science. That's bullshit. Everything should constantly be questioned because we're figuring out new things and new methods and coming up with new instruments all the time. And these truths and facts that we hold should be continuously tested and retested and modified when they're found to no longer be correct. That's the whole point of science, is to keep proving things wrong and evolving. We're not supposed to ever stop.
- [56:11]
B
Yeah, change is the only constant.
- [56:15]
D
Yeah, it's supposed to be as uncomfortable as that can be. We're not here to be comfortable. We're here to grow. We're here to learn skills. We're here to improve things and improve ourselves as much as possible. I think that's what we're supposed to be doing at the moment. I mean, I would prefer to not do any of that stuff. I prefer to simply be lazy and eat pizza and watch anime and still be in my little apartment at the beach and just living a very good, simple life. But that was not chosen for me. I got a much more difficult path to walk, but I'm going to do it to hopefully make the other paths for people a lot easier in the future. And that's what we're supposed to do as men. We're supposed to be trailblazers. We're supposed to be providers and protectors, just like the people that walk the Oregon Trail, built the railroads. So now the people that came after them can have an easier life. I think that's the point of our existence. I'm following it. You guys are all following it. You know, bringing in top notch financial and technical education for everybody. So I couldn't be more proud of the two of you and everyone else here at the team. So thank you for continuing everything that, you know, your Bryce and Kevin and I started way back in the day. And that little tiny 10 by 10 foot bedroom in Mission beach. What a long way we've come.
- [57:37]
B
What a long way we've come. And I don't think it's a coincidence that there's like a little light halo around your head right now in the background.
- [57:44]
A
You're.
- [57:45]
B
You're truly an angel. You're truly an angel. And we really appreciate your time and all your efforts, man. And hey, we'll have you back on soon and keep us updated.
- [57:56]
D
I can't wait. Thanks so much, everyone. Please follow us on Twitter at Unbound Science for all the next updates. If you want to learn more. It's all in the medium blog medium.comboundscience and yeah, you can definitely join our community on Telegram as well. So thanks so much everyone for listening and always supporting me. Means the world couldn't do it without you.
- [58:20]
B
Awesome. All those links will be in the show notes. Click down below. Check it out and come back next week. Same time, same place. We're gonna have some more great guests for you everybody. Take care.
- [58:43]
E
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