Brian Casel: [00:00:00] Hey, it's Open Threads. It's my podcast. I'm Brian Casel. Welcome. Today I'm talking to my buddy, Ian Landsman. If there's anyone who can help explain what's been happening in the space of web3, cryptocurrency, NFTs, and everything in between where it came from, where it's going, how to think about all this.

It's Ian. He's deep in it, as you can see from his Twitter feed. So yeah, we had a good chat about all things crypto and all things web3. Let's get right into it. Ian Landsman. What's up, buddy?

Ian Landsman: Hey, how you doing?

Brian Casel: Doing good. Yeah. Great to connect with you again. And, [00:01:00] uh, my goal with you anytime we're on a podcast together is to get as close to like a podcast about nothing where we're just rambling about random shit.

Ian Landsman: Perfect theme. Yep.

Brian Casel: Yep. But I've known you for a while now, but, you know, one thing that I notice from you on Twitter specifically is how you kind of latch on to some topics, some like subject matter area, and then you just go like deep down the rabbit hole for like months on end.

And for at least the past year, what I've seen a lot of your feed is. NFTs and web three and crypto. I thought this would be a good opportunity for you to school me a little bit on what's happening in this space. And I know it's actually kind of crazy right now, this episode would, I don't know, it'll probably air about a month from now.

So I'm sure most of what we talked about is going to be like completely out of date by then.

Ian Landsman: In some regards, it's not. Yeah.

Brian Casel: But anyway, today is May 10th, 2022 for the record.

Ian Landsman: Everything's crashing [00:02:00] today and yesterday stocks, crypto, whatever. Yeah. Almost everything's crashed.

Brian Casel: I'm kind of curious, like for you, where did it begin?

Where did, did like the interest in. Crypto or web three or any of that stuff kind of start.

Ian Landsman: Um, yeah, so I, I never had any interest in crypto. I missed out on everything. People were telling me like buy Bitcoin 10 years ago. I was like, stupid. I don't get it. I didn't look into it. Like all that stuff. So totally missed the whole crypto vote.

I do think from a positioning aspect to be businessy on it a little bit, like I didn't get the position back then. And I still don't really get the positioning on like pure crypto, like crypto, the people who want to change the current financial system and make everything crypto, like to me. A little much.

Yeah. Like, whatever. Like, I don't know. Like, I'm not that interested in that aspect of it. Maybe that'll become true, but that was what everybody obviously was saying 10 years ago. That doesn't really resonate with me that strongly. And so [00:03:00] I just kind of ignored it.

Brian Casel: I think, you know, actually like, cause I feel like I missed the early boat too.

Cause we're in the tech industry and we didn't know about Bitcoin earlier than most people knew about it. But like you, I was like, that just sounds stupid. And mostly because of that positioning, it was like, well, I don't know, this is not going to last very long. And then, right. Yeah. If only I bought like one Bitcoin back in the day,

Ian Landsman: we've all gone through our accounts, right?

Like, did I make that Coinbase account eight years ago? No, I didn't. Well, actually I did make the account, but I didn't buy anything. Why didn't I buy anything?

Brian Casel: Yeah. I didn't really get in until like the first. I would say like mainstream wave, which was what, like 2017, 2018, there was like a popped up. Yeah.

I put a bunch in and then I kept a bunch in since then, not too much, but anyway, I hear, I want to hear more about how,

Ian Landsman: I mean, I wasn't even in that, even then I was like, oh, like whatever, like it's obviously it's going up and down. I had like a tiny amount, just like literally like a thousand dollars and a couple of things.

And like, I'd occasionally watch it go up and down, you [00:04:00] know. Quadruple and then fall and whatever, and didn't really follow up very closely.

Brian Casel: Like just coins, just like hearing about coins and

Ian Landsman: right. Just like that was random things. And like literally just a few hundred dollars and stuff like that. Like nothing wasn't even thinking about it.

And then the first thing that piqued my interest, like, so like you start here a little bit about Ethereum and how, and like contracts and basically the ability to do more with it than just be a replacement for the financial system. So that's like kind of back of my head, but I still didn't really do too much with it.

Because the theory I'm like has all these expenses and it's slow and all this stuff. So again, it's like not really interesting to me. It's like, okay, like can do 10 transactions as you know, second vine. Like that, to me, it doesn't feel like it's going to revolutionize anything, which is obviously that's how everything starts.

I probably should have looked more into it even then, but like I didn't, and then I found out about Solana, which its main thing was that it's like high throughput, essentially no transaction fees. So then that like clicked with me. I [00:05:00] was like, well, if you could do like 10, 000 transactions a second and there's no transaction fees and like they can store this data and you've got this public ledger and like.

It's not solely about, like, they don't position it so much about replacing the financial system. Although there is definitely a large part of it. That's about that too. So that really piqued my interest. I was like, okay, like this, I get.

Brian Casel: I'm realizing like early on in this podcast, I should probably do the statement where like, this is not financial advice.

We don't, we don't know what the hell we're talking about here. Like, you know, but yeah, like Solana, uh, for me, Solana was the first one that's like beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, which were like the two basically mainstream tokens. I guess they still are, but then Solana was the first one where personally I ventured a little bit past those two and it was like, Oh, that actually solves like the problem with a theorem is like, it's more efficient, right?

Ian Landsman: Right. Yeah. It's a more like sort of climate wise. It's vastly more efficient and yeah, speed wise. I mean, like just a [00:06:00] reference, I think visa does something like 30, 000 transactions a second, and it's capable of 50 or 60, 000 and like. Whatever, obviously the theoretically Solana can do similar numbers, whether ultimately it does that or not right now, it doesn't do that quite yet.

And there's other chains now too, that are usually more modern systems of verification and stuff that allow much higher throughput.

Brian Casel: I guess it still comes back to the question of like, why does any of that even matter? What's the whole point of even buying this stuff? To me, I still feel like very much of like a layman, not even all that interested in crypto and web three, but I do feel like it's important enough for me to try to keep an ear to it a little bit and put a small percentage of, of everything that we have into it.

And that's what I do.

Ian Landsman: Right. Just as like a sort of hedge in case it's huge.

Brian Casel: Yeah, exactly. In case this is like even before the beginning, at least we were here, you know, I dabble in like hearing about it and [00:07:00] tuning into some podcasts and stuff, but I'm not following it every day. Like, when did you start to get like really more into it?

Ian Landsman: Yeah, so this was, like, last spring, summer, so I still, like, financially wise missed the, like, huge move in these things because, like, Solana was, like, a dollar before that, and, like, then it was, like, probably 20 to 40 in that range when I was first getting interested. So, definitely I'm super late to it all, but, you know, late, relative, obviously, if it becomes a huge thing, it's super early, if it becomes nothing, I'm super late, so who knows.

But, um, I'm still not really that invested in it financially, like in terms of actual Solana coins or Ethereum coins. Or any of that, because ultimately kind of in the late summer last year is when NFT started taking off and more of that aspect of things. And that's the part that actually really drew me, because that to me is the like, from a technologist perspective, from a software developer perspective, like [00:08:00] that is where it connects to our world.

And I can see the value in digital ownership and things like that. So that's where it kind of like bridged over to me. And I was like, Oh. Oh, yeah, of course. Like, I totally get this. Like, this is amazing. Like, I love this.

Brian Casel: This is what I want to get into with you. I'm still learning and I'm still trying to figure out what I think about all that.

I do think that there seems to be opportunity in what people are calling Web3 and like tokenization and To me, there are like glimpses of potential possibilities of what this stuff could mean, like in terms of like smart contracts and how something can like grow in value. Like, I like to think back to like an artist, especially like a musician, but I guess this can go for any kind of where the original creator can be paid as their art continues to be bought and sold over, over time, which is like fundamentally not possible with like.

Physical paintings, right? Right, right. That seems interesting. And then I wonder how that can, [00:09:00] like, adapt into other use cases.

Ian Landsman: Yeah, well, I sort of see it. I mean, the 3 main areas I'm interested in, and there's lots of other. Edge cases and people have all kinds of things they're attempting to do. Right. But the three main ones are, I guess you have like, what is the most visible aspect is like the art, right?

And you have the one side that loves it. You have others, many people who make fun of it, right? You have monkeys and dragons and whatever, right? Like digital art and you have people who's like the very mainstream, but he's making still pretty weird. Are Elon Musk naked and whatever, all kinds of stuff that he does.

So I don't even know about this. Oh, Beeple's like probably the most famous. No, I know Beeple. Right, right, yeah, he's done it. He does one every day. Okay. Anyway, so there's a pure art aspect of like artists doing one off art. There's artists doing collections, like Bored Apes and things like that, that people have probably heard of.

Um, and yeah, so what you're referencing there is in the When you resell this art, the royalty, a percentage of the sale goes just automatically to, [00:10:00] and there's some details around that, whatever, but ultimately a percentage of that goes to the artist. So that's not just like when the artist is dead, maybe it becomes worth something or like whatever, or they're forced to keep creating stuff because.

That's the only way to live. Like you could create a couple of things that are huge hits and. Make a lot of money, you know, ongoing because people are reselling it and things like that. So that's just interesting in the art perspective. I think it's interesting in the like art, like with, I mean, just look around, like everybody's faces in their phone all the time.

So like, or they're on the computer screen or whatever. So this is where humans experience art, right? Like they're not experiencing it in the physical world as much. They're experiencing it in the digital world. And so it makes sense to me that there's this concept of ownership.

Brian Casel: Yeah, it still seems like a little bit too abstract to me.

The thing where I feel like a disconnect with the artwork and like NFT and, and like the stuff that we're seeing all over Twitter, I guess I sort of [00:11:00] understand like the idea of like with like bored apes and what was the other early one?

Ian Landsman: Oh, uh, crypto punks.

Brian Casel: Yeah. Crypto punks. Like the whole value that people are buying into is like, Oh, it's the first of these, and this is going to be bigger later, but the reason why this is.

High value is because it's one of the first ever, right? Whatever, like a Babe Ruth rookie card, like you're getting in super early. Then it sort of like kept going and you still see new projects and some of them are like creative and funny and innovative and weird, but I hear a lot of people, maybe you're going to disagree with me on, there's a lot of folks who just have money to throw around and they're, they're investing in, in stuff like NFTs.

And they talk about it like they're super into the artwork. And to me, it's like, come on, dude, you're not into the artwork. Yeah. I mean, if they were, like, they would be investing in real art too. Like, that's the parallel that you can, yes, people store wealth in, in like physical [00:12:00] paintings and, right? Like, that's the part of it that seems like a little bit like, This feels like a bubble and a trend that's gonna fade away at some point.

Ian Landsman: Yeah. I mean, it def 100 percent could, for sure. I think, to me, the aspect is, are they into the art? There's a whole range of people who I think are absolutely super into the art, to people who are just completely lying every time they say anything and are just trying to, like, pump their bags, which would be the phrase you would use in these scenarios.

But there's, you know, there's NFTs that look exactly like a painted work of art. Like, if I printed it out and brought it to you on a canvas, you'd say, Oh, like, you painted that. There's obviously monkeys and there's whatever, like, there's a whole gamut, right? So, I don't know, though, that those same people would buy physical art.

Like, to me, it's, again, like, I feel like this is where our experience is, and people are excited by the idea of their art being where they live their life, and that they don't actually live their life. In, you know, a lot of people are younger too, right? So, like, if you're 25, like, you don't have a [00:13:00] McMansion in the suburbs where you have your art collection.

And if you're in some little apartment and this is your world, then this is where you want to experience these things. And so, and

Brian Casel: I guess, like, the parallel of, like, hanging a painting on your wall is sort of like, Making an NFT, your Twitter avatar, that's, that's where you can show it. Right. Yeah.

Ian Landsman: Right.

And it's even more so, right. Because like, how many people are ever going to see this piece of art on my wall? Like very few, like versus how many people are going to see my Twitter avatar or even with physical art, like people who go out and buy physical art. And then they give it to a museum, like expensive, famous physical art, right?

Like, cause nobody's going to see it in their house. Like, so that goes to the museum. So people can experience it and all those things. So you don't have to have that here because I can share it with you. I'm not even in control of who it's shared with, which is, I think a whole interesting aspect, which is where like anybody can take something I own and share it, and actually that is encouraged because that actually builds awareness [00:14:00] of it.

And so. That's a very different sort of thing to think about when the whole world has been built so long. I'm like, how do we restrict you? No, you can't share a picture of this van go right here because like somebody owns the rights to whatever, and like blah, blah, blah. And we're going to have lawyers sue you and stop you.

And having a little bit different mindset about that of like, yes, it's, I can own something, but it can also be available to others to experience.

Brian Casel: Like in a minute, I want to get into. How we get into like our world of like software development and changing up business models with web three and things like that.

Ian Landsman: Those are some of the other things. Yeah.

Brian Casel: But before we get there, I, I'm just kind of curious about like your, cause again, like you're tweeting about this stuff. You seem to be much more in it than, than I am. I feel like completely like all the FOMO, like completely left out. Like I'm missing whatever's happening over there.

I don't know if I, if that's a good or bad thing, what does it look like for you, like day to day in terms of like. What are you following? Who are you following for information? What kinds of things are you [00:15:00] buying or selling? Like, where's your activity going?

Ian Landsman: So, I mean, I've been all over with it, just early days, like in the popular projects, like had a mutant ape, which is the board ape alternative and like the Solana sort of equivalence of the popular collections and things.

And some of them, I have ones I'm holding on to just like filed away and maybe they're going to go to zero and maybe they're. It's going to be worth a lot of money, who knows. But I am getting more interested in the like next phase of it. So like one of the things, probably the collection or project I'm most involved in is this one where it's a NFT based horse racing game.

And so like this is sort of getting into like the interesting things you can do. Oh and like gaming is another interesting element. Yeah, it's gaming and it's like But it's a whole economy. So it's like, you can own a track, you can own a horse, you can breed the horse, which all sounds crazy. I totally agree.

But it's no different than like, I play [00:16:00] PlayStation five and I played world war two battle game. And my kid buys all these like skins for their gun or their or whatever.

Brian Casel: My daughter's like, she's super into Roblox now she's eight years old.

Ian Landsman: So is my daughter who's nine, tons of Roblox. I mean, the amount of times I've put money into Roblox is

Brian Casel: exactly, you know, and she customizes her avatar and stuff like that.

And like, and she wants to get new equipment for her avatar and all this different stuff. And it's like, I wonder about like how normal or how her mind as she gets older. Having grown up in this like Roblox world, how is this kind of technology going to like her generation? This is what always blows my mind.

And I can't even fully get my head around it is like the way that we think about opportunities to build new tools and software. I mean, her generation, our kids generation are coming up in a time where all this stuff was just normal when they got here to earth, how they grew up, you know, like, [00:17:00] I mean, how that changes your mind and how you see potential opportunities and what things are is just going to be unreal.

Ian Landsman: Yeah. And I mean, just even taking it out of NFT world, like, and I know like gamers actually are kind of scared of NFTs, like kind of traditional gamers, and they're not necessarily totally embracing it yet. But I mean, like we have this warship game, go into the super details, but it's world of warships, this game, and you can have ships in it and they fight.

So the ships are not always available. Like it's, it's digital. They couldn't make every ship available, but they choose not to make every ship available. Right? So a ship is available for a period of time, then it's never available again. So if you have one of these ships, Like you spent money essentially to acquire it one way or another to like buy tokens or to improve your other ships, make them good enough to earn enough of the in game currency that, you know, it's kind of all like what's already going on, but it's just in the game.

So it's not traded wider than that. Like that ship, let's just say example is like incredibly valuable. Like there would be people who would absolutely pay you money. Like you spent money to acquire the ship. [00:18:00] There are definitely people who would pay you money to acquire that ship from you. Like maybe you're done playing the game or whatever, or maybe you spent the time to earn the ship and you just want to sell it.

So like all these things, like, I mean, the amount of money I've put into these games is substantial. I'm like, huh. And then the kid never plays the game again at some point. And you're like, wow, like if I could just sell all the game assets in there. Even at a loss, like that seems like useful

Brian Casel: When we take our old Nintendo or second Genesis and go sell it to like GameStop, you know, wherever we're going to get rid of our old stuff.

Now they have more value.

Ian Landsman: The old games actually, you could sell the game back, right? Like now that you download the game digitally and all the purchases are in app, that money just goes away. It just goes to the software developer. It doesn't go anywhere else. You can't recoup any of it. So, you know, there's a lot of solutions to all these things.

It's going to come up again at two, when we talk about like kind of tokens and. More in our world, but like, I think there are existing world solutions to a lot of these problems that don't involve crypto at all, like these game companies could have a way to a [00:19:00] marketplace in them, right? Like you could have a marketplace and have USD transactions and like, it's a little tricky because the.

Underlying like visas of the world aren't really set up for like microtransactions. And so it does get a little tricky. And like, if I want to have a bunch of 50 cent transactions, that gets kind of weird, but you know, Apple's managed it by bundling them up. Like when you do your million, 25 cent Apple microtransactions, right.

They just bill you like at the end of the week or whatever there, you hit some thresholds and they bill you. So there are like other solutions to parts of it that are possible. And I think the same is true of like. When you get to the investment aspects or like what Jordan's doing, your other podcast co hosts with tokens and his business.

And like, you know, I don't know if we want to transition to that. Let's get into that.

Brian Casel: All right. So Jordan and I have been talking about this on the podcast. He's very much getting into it with rally. And there, I guess there are other software startups going in this direction. All right. So my, [00:20:00] again, like super layman understanding of this is. Basically, if a software startup is going to become like web three enabled or whatever, like associated with, with web three, it means that they're at some point going to offer a token.

Like from their brand potentially, and users of their tool, like the more they use it, or the more they help grow the tool and its user base, they gain ownership of this token. And I guess externally, the token could be bought and sold just like any other token, a Bitcoin or Ethereum or Solana. And that's the idea is it's almost like the only parallel I can think of is like a publicly traded company.

Right? Like I use the apple computer, but I could also own apple stock. But I guess the idea with this is that you're, it's more intertwined where, like, the more you use it, the more. Stock you gain in this equity that you gain, right. Which in turn [00:21:00] like raises the value of that coin.

Ian Landsman: Right. So I think there's this example of like, you know, the way it works now is you go and get investment.

From rich people, like you're literally limited to people who make more than 200, 000 a year or 300, 000 a year. We can invest in private companies essentially as like an angel or things like that, or VC. And so you get a handful of those, you raise some money, then you start your software business. Your customers have nothing to do with any of it.

Your first customers get nothing out of it other than being the first customers, which is Great. If they like your product, that's fine. But we all know that the first customers are actually super important. Like they're giving you the most important feedback. They're taking the biggest risk because you're probably going to go out of business is the reality.

So like they're taking the risk, putting their time and effort to participating in your software product at very early stages, and they're not, you know, compensated for any of this. They can't even buy shares in your company because you are not a [00:22:00] publicly traded company. Like, yes, with Apple, I could buy shares.

But I can't buy shares in your early startup. It's literally impossible. Right. And it's like against the law, like you can't even offer this. It's not offerable. So. I think that's where it's interesting is because with the coins, you do have this, at least potential. I think there's not a lot of places that have realized the potential yet.

It's still super early, but the potential idea of like both raising money for more people, and then also by rewarding early customers in tokens. So that they're rewarded for their early participation.

Brian Casel: Yeah. It's like a user activation play marketing play on the user side. And then on the. Company side is like financing, right?

Ian Landsman: It could be financing initially for the company and how it's all structured, but that's a possibility. And then also I don't think Jordan's really set up that way. Like he's got more traditional financing, but it's more on his, about the rewards for the early users. If you're early, if you give us [00:23:00] that time effort, obviously you're going to be more.

Engaged in marketing and sharing it, like, and we all know that's again, super important early on those early customers go out and tell their friends and talk about it on Twitter and tell their business colleagues. Like. If they have essentially feels like an ownership stake or some financial upside, certainly then.

They're going to be more inclined to talk about it.

Brian Casel: So I guess to play a little bit of like devil's advocate again, I, I still find myself in this, like I'm intrigued by the idea I'm interested in learning about it, but I don't know what I think about it yet. It still feels too abstract. So just on what we're saying here about it's a way to grow engagement.

And growth with early users, but what about the product itself, right? Like what about getting back to basics of like, you have to solve a problem that people actually care about. How does, uh, tokenization even help solve that [00:24:00] problem or make it easier or, you know, like aside from just like giving users.

Equity or giving them more of a stake in the early parts of a company by using the product. Is there anything else like functionally that a token could, could potentially do?

Ian Landsman: Well, some, yeah, there is like, and so like in the horse racing game, I'm involved in the token. Is going to be like how you buy and sell things in the game.

There's two tokens actually, and one of them is the transactional token. So it allows things like super low cost transactions, like there's no three percent stripe involved there. Now all the in game transactions are basically free, even though there's real money moving back and forth between them. So like that would be like one example of like in the application, there's some benefits.

So Yeah. Oh, I don't think it necessarily always has to, to me, like the, it's still interesting, Justin, like, is this a way to do equity that's [00:25:00] better, which is where kind of what I was saying before, like they could just change the laws and make it so I can just issue stock to all my early customers. Like that could be a thing, right?

Like, it's not a thing. I can't actually do that, but it could be a thing if we changed the laws to make it a thing, and then that would be a thing. And I think that would be, it's not a path for everybody, just like this web three stuff wouldn't be a path for everybody, but it might be a path. For certain kinds of businesses to raise money.

And so I get another example is like, I think, I don't know if you saw this on Twitter, kind of. Messaged, um, Patio 11 on this and he didn't reply, but it's like Stripe. Like to me, Stripe is like the perfect example. Like I was super early on Stripe. I was so happy with Stripe. We were coming from like authorized.

net. It was a total disaster. Stripe was so much better. The API, it's all great. I put tons of effort into Stripe. I mean, I personally involved in this Laravel ecosystem with a lot of software developers. I have personally exposed thousands of software developers to Stripe. [00:26:00] I don't get anything from Stripe, right?

I literally couldn't participate in Stripe if I wanted to. They are a private company still, even after 12 years or whatever it's been. I can't even buy stock in this thing. I'm pushing to everybody all the time, much less like way back in the day, have any way to invest in it or participate in it at all.

Even though I've made the millions of dollars minimum, like minimum, I've made the millions of dollars. But, you know, I get to use the product. I like the product and that's great. And you know, certain products are so good, right. That they cause that reaction. I didn't need financial motivation to push it, which is great, but at the same time, like there is even just this idea of fairness on some level of like, I've made you millions of dollars.

And it feels like there should be some way to have some element within some early adopter benefits, something right. So I do think that there is like, these things are kind of out there and I feel like that's where like a couple of years ago, like crowdfunding. And even now you still seeing people talking about that.

It's like, [00:27:00] it's in the air that people want to have a way to do these things.

Brian Casel: Yeah, it still seems like, to me, the connection that I can still most easily make is a way to fund and a way to reward early users. But I guess what I'm, what I'm also sort of like waiting for in this space is like the example or a couple of examples where it's like, oh, that really clicked.

And that was a success story for that software startup who really made it work. Cause I feel like anytime I listen to anyone talking about the possibilities of web three, it's. Only about possibilities and ideas, you know, it's not super concrete.

Ian Landsman: Well, I say the thing with this is it's kind of interesting because you have a lot of people who aren't software people in this space and now you have more software people.

Right. But like this, literally all this stuff was sort of not even a thing until like last, like literally last year. So like, obviously it feels like crypto has been around forever and. Why is there not the big success story yet, but [00:28:00] really this stuff we're talking about is extremely new. And I mean, we all know how long it takes to make software, right?

Like a lot of the like real teams with real people doing real businesses, using these things, like they're just coming online. Like rally is just getting its first customers, right? Like this horse racing game, which is built by a bunch of EA devs who ran Madden NFL, like real software development team, not like some randos We're like, we're going to build a game.

And like, they've never built anything. These are professional game developers, a big team of them building a real thing. Yeah. But. That takes a year to build a real game. So like this was only started being possible last year. So you're not going to see it until end of this year, next year. And that's why I think we'll know, like if we get to like two or three years from now and there's still no examples of like, Oh yeah, here's an example of where this worked.

Then I think, yeah, it just, it didn't work, whatever people didn't want it. Crypto crash into nothing. And so you can't even do it, whatever, whatever. Like [00:29:00] there's some, something there.

Brian Casel: Like, what do you think, whether it's in our software world or even just crypto in the larger world, what shoes need to drop?

For this to go mainstream. Cause I feel like it's even as popular as, and we're starting to see it in like news coverage and stuff like that. But like, it's still not mainstream to a point where like everyone who's investing in crypto, including myself is like, just in case this becomes huge. People like to talk about it.

Like this is the next internet, right? Like just in case it actually is the next internet, but what would that even look like? Right. Cause like. My brother who is not in the tech industry or my parents, you know, they've heard of NFTs. Uh, they maybe have thought about opening a Coinbase account once, but never really did.

Like they're so far, so many steps away from ever actually participating in this world. So it's not mainstream yet to me.

Ian Landsman: I think you have a ways to go with that. I think that like, we're [00:30:00] in this world where like, we expect everything to be super fast, right. And happy instantly. But I think the reality is, like I said, these more real software teams doing real stuff, even the ability to do this as new basic things like Ethereum, Solana, like they don't have good libraries in all the programming languages.

They literally just have JavaScript. Like if you don't primarily use JavaScript, you can't even really use them, JavaScript and Rust or whatever. Like each have a couple of languages, but like you can't just go in any common language. Ruby or PHP or anything like that, any of the web languages and be like, Oh, where's the like full SDK.

That's got everything I need to be able to do transactions that like literally doesn't exist. So we're so like incredibly early that I think on that regard, I just think it's a while and then you're going to have to have like, yes, the couple of things that make it hits, then it starts to build out.

We're like, who makes it easier? Cause the way it works right now, like it's hard to do. And the normal people are never going to do the way it works right now. It's going to be. There's going to be people in the middle to facilitate that. [00:31:00]

Brian Casel: And I know this sounds like I'm very skeptical and anti this whole thing.

I'm, I'm really not, it's just more like I don't quite see the bridge to get there. Cause like, when I think about the early internet, yeah, we had like the dot com boom and bust and all that, but like, it was clear that like the existence of the internet solves major problems for major parts of the world, like literally taking commerce,

Ian Landsman: disagree with you.

Totally disagree with you.

What do you mean?

There's a very famous article. I can get it for you to like post up here on the show notes or whatever, where a guy wrote a post a news week in like the early two thousands or whatever. And he literally goes through line by line, every single thing. The internet's stupid because like, nobody's ever going to book the hotel room.

Nobody's going to ever book airfare. Nobody's going to ever buy books. Nobody's going to all this stuff that we all literally do every time we do anything on the internet. The whole thing. It was like, no, a couple of years later, not even that long later. It was like, I was totally wrong.

Brian Casel: But at least he could envision that person.

I [00:32:00] haven't read that article, but I've seen stuff like it where completely right off the internet, right?

Ian Landsman: There's a lot of, yeah, that was,

Brian Casel: but at least they could point to it and say, like, all these people are saying we're going to buy books and we're going to buy dog food on the internet. They're wrong, but at least they can point to it.

Like. I don't know what it is that we're arguing like will happen in the future. Right.

Ian Landsman: Well, I think it's like the stuff we're talking about. Like people will fund very successful companies by using token rewards. People will buy digital art will overtake physical art in total revenue in 10 years from now.

I mean, we didn't even talk about other uses for things like NFTs, which is like connecting the NFTs can connect the real world to the digital world. So like I could have an NFT that gives me access to a place. Like a club, like I have an NFT, give me access to the club when I don't want to be a member of the club anymore, I can just sell the NFT and now I'm not a member anymore.

And that person who bought it is

Brian Casel: the other like physical thing that I think about are like contracts, right? Like it's literally we're talking like with a theory [00:33:00] and we're talking about smart contracts. So anything that is contract based in the world, whether it's like real estate or. Or yeah, like ownership or membership or access can be digital access.

Ian Landsman: Right. So now that's where that's kind of like the line where like I become the person who is the naysayer. Like, cause that's the like, Oh, you're going to buy a house and like, you'll just do it on the blockchain. And like, it'll just magically instantly happen. And like, that to me is probably like. For me is probably too far.

Like maybe not in like the distant future, but like in terms of comparing it to the internet, like 2. 0, I don't know if I feel like in five years. That like all mortgages are going to be an Ethereum contract. And, you know, I think that that's like, to me, I don't think that's true. So that's like my line of where, like, I don't think it's going to be that.

Brian Casel: I mean, why are you skeptical on that?

Ian Landsman: I don't think the blockchain solves a lot of the like. Or not easily, uh, solves a lot of things involved with something like that. You have to have like [00:34:00] title. You have to go to like the County clerk. Like there's a whole bunch of stuff in there beyond just the bank gives me money.

Yeah.

Brian Casel: Like a lot of like government infrastructure needs to become right.

Ian Landsman: The bank gives me money. That's going to be like the last one to come along. But yeah, but there's like all this other stuff that happens as part of it. Like, I don't know if that's, that's all going to be just on the blockchain. Like, could you write a contract that theoretically does all this?

Absolutely. Like, will it actually happen? That feels unlikely to me on like a near ish term timescale. And there's a lot of things that work out. Like, people don't want all their stuff. There's like this dichotomy where it's like everything's public, but it's sort of anonymous, but it's sort of public. So there's a lot of stuff to work through there.

Societally, people have like privacy expectations that may not be Applicable in a blockchain based financial system and things like that. So, but I think, you know, there's other things like authentication, which are interesting to be able to have this. Using it for authentication. I mean, [00:35:00] I don't think web three, I think the term is a little bit unfortunate because I don't think it's as big as web one, two, like in terms of, and again, maybe I'll be the one who's like 10 years from now, I'll be like, Oh, I got totally got that wrong.

But to me, it's like this idiot on the podcast said web three wouldn't be as big as web one, but like, to me, web three is more like the natural extension of like digitization that occurred with like web one, two, and like, it's more just like, It's bigger in web one, two, more than it is like, Oh, the like mental C shift.

That was like everything just literally only physical to now

Brian Casel: in terms of like growing the economy. I guess there's all sorts of different arguments you can make here. But like, when I think about like web 1. 0, it literally expanded the economy for so many. People, right? Like it took the corner shop who makes t shirts and now they can sell them all over the world.

Ian Landsman: Right. It did put a lot of those out of business also [00:36:00] eventually. Yes. But yeah, no, I agree. Like, I mean, obviously like the amount of economic activity that's come out of it. I don't know if I think it's that same level of economic to me. Maybe it is like,

Brian Casel: yeah. And you know what? Maybe it didn't even happen all that.

Like looking back on the nineties, it's not fast. Like we like to look back on it. Like, Oh, it all, it all changed when we were teenagers and it was like overnight, but like, it was like over a 10 year process. Right. And we're only a couple of years into like crypto really being like an actual thing that people talk about all the time.

Ian Landsman: Right. I think it's like that phase of like. Yeah, it was like, okay, 95, you had like your AOL and like stuff like that. And then you couldn't really do anything. And then, you know, that progressed and you had the crash and it seemed like nothing was going to happen. Then you had Amazon and Google and all those things come online.

And it's like, okay, now you have like the modern internet, but that's like seven to 10 years.

Brian Casel: And then it's even sort of hard to remember the internet before what people think of us as web 2. 0, right? Like social media [00:37:00] and. Like that stuff did not come along until well into the 2000s. Right?

Ian Landsman: No, if you're not in your like mid forties, like you don't remember that.

I don't think really like they're not well. Cause like that was a whole different world where it was just like. Chat rooms and email and yeah,

Brian Casel: a couple of like random websites, like, you know, you know, all the websites, you can just find a little bit

Ian Landsman: like you went to Yahoo and literally went through the directory of every website on the internet.

Like that's what you did. And so like, you know, obviously we're so far away from that and that explosion, you know, it is a short time span in the history of the world, but it's a long time span in terms of like, yeah, like in crypto. Yes, we've had a year or two, like where this stuff has even been on people's brains.

It's like you could theoretically do other types of things besides just change the financial system. Like there's this database essentially and the contracts and what that could mean. And so ownership and how it's all tied together. And so I think it's going to take some [00:38:00] time to see if it becomes something or nothing.

Like it could totally become nothing. I am happy to tell people all the time. I would not be like shocked if it becomes nothing. Definitely could become nothing. You also need luck. Like maybe the world, right. You have war in Ukraine and maybe it spreads to Europe and maybe all kinds of shit happens and like everybody, this all loses steam or maybe it creates more steam, like maybe people want money.

That's outside of country boundaries, even more than they did before. And like, who knows, like it's hard to predict these things. Right. So I wouldn't be surprised by any outcome really, but. I do think it's like early and you want to die, like being involved in it and just seeing what's going on.

Brian Casel: It does seem still very relatively early.

And it also seems like in the last couple of years, it has taken the next logical steps toward becoming a bigger thing, right? Like you see like major companies investing in crypto and all the investment and all the, and everything, you know, kind of like, and yes, it's like kind of crazy and volatile, but [00:39:00] like.

That's what happens in the early days of something that eventually becomes big. So,

Ian Landsman: I mean, it's all this web one was like all these companies, what crazy valuations, and then they all like went out of business and then on the ashes of that, all these other companies rose up and were like, became what we think of as the internet.

Right. So yeah, it's hard to know.