March 4, 2024 • 58 mins
Interested in the power of AI domain names for your business or investment? Tune in to our latest episode featuring Vince Cate! Vince shares his unique journey and deep dives into registry statistics, providing valuable insights for potential registrants considering a dot AI domain. Get all your questions answered and gain the knowledge you need to make informed decisions.
About Saw.com
We’re passionate about digital assets here at Saw.com. It’s our mission to create a transparent environment where you know what’s happening with every step of your domain sale or acquisition (and secure the best possible price!)
About Jeffrey:
Jeffrey M. Gabriel is the founder of Saw.com, a boutique brokerage that specializes in acquiring, selling, and appraising domains. With over 14 years of experience in the domain industry, Jeffrey has a proven track record of closing multimillion-dollar deals and delivering exceptional value to his clients.
Jeffrey's core competencies include remote team management, online marketing, and strategy. He is passionate about helping businesses and individuals achieve their online goals and dreams. He has been involved in some of the most notable domain sales in history, such as Ai.com, Sex.com, and Poker.org. He is also a Guinness World Record holder and a frequent speaker and writer on domain-related topics.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today on the Uncomfortable Podcast with
Jeffrey Gabriel.
If you're interested inbuilding your business on or
investing in aai domain name,then we've got the episode for
you.
Join us as we sit down withVincent Cate, the head of
Anguilla Domain Registry, akaaidomain registry.
He will share his story, delveinto some registry statistics
(00:22):
and address key questions thatpotential registrants like
yourself may have beforecommitting to aai domain name.
Getting to know Vincent he hasa bachelor's and an MBA in
computer science and he is veryinterested in financial
cryptography, cryptocurrencies,as well as his extremely forward
thinking and entrepreneurial.
I really can't think of abetter person to represent this
(00:45):
extension and I think you willfeel the same way as well after
listening to him.
And, as always, thanks forlistening and if you have any
questions, comments or wouldlike to be a guest on the show,
you can always email us at buzzat sawcom.
That's buzz at sawcom.
Have a good day.
Today on the Uncomfortablepodcast, we have Vincent Cate
(01:18):
from theai registry joining usand to give him a little bit of
a background before we begin, heis a software developer based
in Anguilla.
He graduated from theUniversity of California,
berkeley, and has a master's incomputer science from Carnegie
Mellon.
You had an Atari hardwarebusiness in the 1980s.
(01:39):
In 1994, moved to Anguilla topursue many business
opportunities like establishingan internet service provider.
Some people call it an ISP,offshore services, limited real
estateai, goldai, which payscash for gold.
You launch publicdatacomaiwhere people can look up
people's criminal records online.
You're also one of the foundersof the Financial Cryptography
(02:02):
Conference.
You're a published author,blogger and is also a model
plane slash boat enthusiast.
And, as I said before, youmanage the top level domain
extensionai and have done sosince 1994.
And I'm guessing that nothinghas really changed since 1994 in
the last 30 years with theaiextension.
(02:23):
So welcome to the show.
How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Doing well, so it's pronounced anguilla.
It rhymes with a vanillaAnguilla.
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Okay, I'm just going to say it's like I did your last
name on the first thing.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Father of four boys.
You've got to mention that too.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
What are their ages?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Geez 15, 17, 20, and 22.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
So I didn't really spend a lot.
I spent more time looking intoyour background and things like
that.
And Anguilla, is that also anEnglish territory?
Yeah, or is it its own Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
So if we ever declared our independence, they
would respect it, but we haven'ttried that yet.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Okay, so it's similar to Cayman, where it's an
English.
You still have to answer oncertain things back to the crown
, but most of it, you're on yourown.
So, with children getting tothe college age, are you looking
at sending them to England forcollege or United States?
What are you thinking about?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
It's not clear yet, they may not go to college.
I'm not convinced that collegeis worth all the time and money
really.
They're helping me out withthis job and learning stuff on
the job and that might be abetter thing, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
We'll see, I always felt that, and my dad said the
same thing to me.
And getting older and lookingat it is, I always feel, like
the four years that you would goto college.
Obviously it gives youexperience, a lot of life
experience, especially if you'reliving there and meeting people
from all over the place andit's usually your first time
living alone and obviously yourparents aren't there, and I
(04:07):
think that is more importantthan the education itself.
And then after you graduate,obviously you learn a little bit
of things, but I think yourcollege is what opens your first
or second door and then it'sreally obviously up to the
student or now the worker be todo something with it, and after
that I don't think it matters.
(04:28):
I find it bizarre when I speakto people in the business world
who say I can't go any higher atthe company on that unless I go
get a master's or I get acollege degree, and it's like,
really Does it matter at thispoint?
And I also one of the bestdevelopers that worked with me
at Uniregistry was a self-taughtdeveloper.
(04:49):
He never went to school forcomputer science and he built
the Uniregistry brokerage, allof the tech behind it, and so he
had every qualification, or hecould probably teach the class
better than most professorscould.
So it's definitely, yeah, Iagree.
So, anyways, I'm sure we couldtalk about that for days.
(05:09):
So how about you tell us alittle bit about your story that
I kind of went over, and howyou got yourself involved with
the Don AI registry?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
So I was interested in cryptography and financial
cryptography type things wayback.
I was on the cypherpunksmailing list in the early 90s
and so I wanted to writesoftware to do some sort of
internet payment system and theUS had these ITAR international
(05:39):
traffic and arms regulationswhich made it like my brain was
their property and you weren'tallowed to export outside the
United States and that my brainwas their territory.
So even if I was outside theUnited States and I wrote
software, it was consideredexporting it if I wrote the
software in Angola, and so I gotrid of my US citizenship.
(06:02):
That was early on, and when Ifirst came here I needed some
way to make money and the ideawas to do an email business, not
full internet, just email.
But I still wanted a domainname for the email address and
(06:22):
so when I tried to register adot AI name, john Postal was the
god of the internet back thensaid that nobody is managing it
and did I want to run it?
And I said sure, and so Iactually ran it.
At the beginning there was nocharge and only young Williams
could register names.
And then at some point, like ayear or two later, I felt like
(06:48):
this shouldn't be in my name, soI put it in the government's
name.
I made them the admin contactand then somebody came to the
government and said that theyshould run it.
And the government gave it tothis company in Taiwan which
thought that they could sell alot of names, because I in
Chinese means love.
And then they didn't sell anynames, didn't give the
(07:12):
government hardly any money anddisappeared.
Their company was struck fromthe books in Taiwan.
They never answered emails orphone calls or anything, and so
we got it back and then I ran itafter that.
Ed from Infermoney.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Sorry to interrupt you.
What year was that thatoccurred?
So you moved to Inguila in 1994.
And then you started workingwith theai or took over theai
registry for a period of timeand then you lost it.
So when did you lose it?
Speaker 2 (07:42):
I don't really remember the numbers, but say
three or four years in orsomething, and then it was gone
for maybe five years and then wegot it back and then I started
selling it to anybody for money,selling the domains for anybody
, and essentially it's beengrowing.
Back then when we started itwas around $5,000 a month,
(08:04):
$3,000, $4,000, $5,000 a monthand I used to print out the list
of names in a page or two andgive it to the government with a
check and it's just keptgrowing and growing and growing.
Since then and the way I wouldsay it is, it's about like 10
dubblings.
We've gone from like three anda half thousand a month to three
(08:29):
and a half million a month, sothere's like a factor of 1,000.
And so it's you know, two tenthis 1,024.
So we've had like 10 dubblingsin like 15 years, something like
that.
Right, so it's been growing,you know, for a long time.
But we had sort of two of thosedubblings in the last two years
when chat GPT came out.
(08:50):
It just shot up.
So yeah, it's just been doingwell.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
So let me ask you, when it came to losing it and
then gaining it back and thenworking with the government in
general, obviously they knew,when you were writing them
checks, that there is a value tothis and, being an island
nation with not a huge budget,that even if you were giving a
half a million dollars a year or$100,000 a year to their cause
(09:24):
and having you know 4,000, 5,000names, what did that mean to
them?
Like did they start to noticewait a minute, this is a real
good moneymaker.
Like when did that happen?
You know when they're sayingthis is a big deal.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
It's kind of like the you know the frog and the
boiling water.
If it just keeps going up alittle bit, a little bit, a
little bit.
Nobody ever gets too excitedbecause, you know, each month
the check is just a little bitbigger than last month, right
and so you know, and it didn'treally.
After chat, gpt came out.
Then some other people likeForbes or whatnot you know
(09:58):
people are Bloomberg came andinterviewed me and put some
articles out and then thosearticles got shared around
Facebook in Anguilla and theneverybody in Anguilla knew right
, and that's just like last year.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Before that it was yeah, I was going to ask are you
finished as of last?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
year.
There's people that now knowwho I am right and know what you
know, know that AI is big andstuff, but before then people
didn't really talk about it.
People didn't know really who Iwas, that I was doing this,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
So let me ask you this, so the people back in home
listening.
I'll give a little backgroundhere.
So I worked at Uniregistry.
Uniregistry was based in theCayman Islands and when I was
working there we provided aregistrar registry services
where and we had our own GLGTLDsas well, and one of the things
that we did in Cayman wasmanageky, and while I was there,
(10:54):
one of the things that happenedwas just like you said was it
went from being a free extensionfor locals to one that is sold
anywhere or at whateverregistrar will list itky, and
then they started charging $20 ayear or whatever.
It is an affordable amount ofmoney, but in our it's called
(11:15):
the Cayman Compass in our localnewspaper, people who had very
ruffled feathers and they kindof positioned it like Frank
Shilling, who's the owner ofUniregistry, has taken the
internet away from the internet,and then people were competing
that it isn't a local.
You know, anguillian, who'srunning it.
(11:38):
Now, I know you have yourcitizenship, but are there
people now saying why aren't,why aren't the Islanders running
this?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
So I'm training foreign willians to run this
business, you know, and my foursons, my four, sons are all born
here.
And it's so it doesn't get.
You can't do better than that,right?
You know that I'm traininglocals to run it, so I don't.
I don't get too much flack andI'm really pretty local after 30
(12:07):
years, I mean.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Oh, you certainly earned your stripes and you've
done a lot for the island.
I mean, you know, looking atthe numbers, I read in one of
the articles about dot AI.
Let me see here CassandraCassidy.
At Morning Brew, she publishedan article that said that your
revenue as of 2022 was 8.3million, but as of 2023, you're
(12:37):
expecting 30 million.
Is that something that is ofreality?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
or is she managing?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
those names out of the air and then well, that's
pretty insane lifting money.
So I'm sure you've gotten theattention of the island
government now as, being apretty big moneymaker and doing
some additional research, theirentire budget is just a little
bit north of 100 million for thegovernment.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Right, yeah, I think that it's 400 million EC, and
then there's 2.688 EC to adollar, so 100 something yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, 125 million.
So you're now making up a thirdof the income of the government
of the island.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Roughly, yeah, and we're likely to double.
Yeah, almost certain we willdouble in about a year, because
we do these two-yearregistrations.
Yeah, and we shot up a year ago.
In another year the renewalswill shoot up Right.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, it's like every other year, almost like pistons
coming back and down.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
So you know we're like January was 3.4 million US
that we gave to the government,but almost all of that is new
registrations, which it has, youknow, for the last year and
whatever it's, almost all themoney is new registrations.
So once the renewals kick in,we'll be over 6 million a month
and wow.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
So you're going to have to print those lists of
names on both sides of the paper.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah, so at some point we went to a PDF, An Excel
To a PDF file and an Excelspreadsheet, and then it got to
the point where we couldn't makea PDF.
That was the size of all thenames we had to do each month.
We thought it was.
It said it ran out of memoryand so we got a, you know, a
(14:30):
computer with bigger memory, butit wasn't really the memory.
It's like the.
That process just couldn't havethat much memory or something
Right, and so we couldn't we had.
We ended up just doing Excelfor the list of names.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah, you think Now, speaking of the government some
more one of the things in Caymanwas they didn't want outsiders
to be able to register the names, with the idea that if a local
comedian wanted to open abusiness in Cayman, they wanted
them to get a good name and theydidn't want, you know,
(15:07):
investors and people to own them, so they'd have to pay
thousands for a name.
What's the attitude of, like, alocal who wants to get jet
skiai or something like that tohelp their local businesses?
Are there some that are heldback for them, like registry
reserved, or is it just kind?
Speaker 2 (15:22):
of like They've outlawed they've outlawed jet
skis in Anguilla, so that one'snot a problem.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Bad example, but it's you know like you know.
Vacation I have not.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
So the normal situation, really, because we
had years where Anguillianscould register them for free and
then we had years where theyweren't that famous.
There's a lot of Anguilliansthat registered names you know
early on, like you know shopaior newsai or weatherai you know
different things right Yearslater have become worth huge
amounts of money.
Yeah Right, so people areselling you know Bingai or
(16:00):
campusai or you know somethingfor crazy money.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
We just sold campusai .
That's funny you mentioned that.
It's funny you mentionedcampusai because I think we just
as a brokerage, we just soldthat.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Oh, you were involved with that.
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Okay, well, I know the, I know the Anguillian that
had it for years.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Okay, small world.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah, so it's more.
There's many, many people herewho are getting this incredible
bonus of, you know, selling somename for tens of thousands of
dollars, which many cases theyweren't really using, right,
yeah, so most of the people arepretty happy with this situation
, honestly.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Okay, because, like when I when I again I'm making
the analogy back to Cayman iswhen I, when I lived there,
there was the generation ofpeople, so there was a.
There was a woman named Jessthat I worked with and she was
born and raised in Cayman andshe was telling me that there's
a.
There was a restaurant and barthat was a huge piece of land
called the Palms and it soldwhen I was there for like 40
(17:02):
million bucks or $45 million,and she said that in the 1980s
that her dad could have boughtit for like 25,000.
Because in the 80s the localsdidn't think land on the beach
was valuable, because you can'tgrow anything on it and it just
gets messed up when the stormscome.
So they always.
And that's why that when you goto Cayman you see graveyards on
(17:24):
the beach, because that was thelow value land, right.
So no one was wanting to buythe Palms for like 25,000 bucks
30 grand with the liquor licenseand everything.
I had a pool like the works, andthen it sells for this and I
and, and there was other piecesof land, like when I was there,
that a lot of the oldercomedians were then selling out
(17:44):
and getting out, but theneventually you know they're the
locals are getting priced out of.
You know all of the beachfrontproperties.
So I'm sure, like right nowit's good times, but I'm sure
that do you think that therewill be people that are going to
have an issue with it?
Or the amount of money thatyou're creating for the
government on a yearly, monthlybasis is probably providing some
(18:06):
really amazing services.
You guys never would have had,right.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
So they've been able to get rid of property tax on
residential buildings.
Right so your house, you don'thave to pay property tax anymore
.
That helps a huge portion ofthe population and yeah if I'm
right, and it doubles again inthe next year and keeps growing
after that they will probably.
The wages tax is tiny comparedto what we're going to increase
(18:34):
in AI this year, right, the morewebsites that are using dot AI,
the more people see it, themore people think of using it,
right, so it's sort of thebigger it gets the bigger it
adverts.
It sort of advertises itself.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
And yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
So yeah, so I'm not planning to do any, any
advertising, and we're growingat a really fast pace without
any advertising.
So doing what we're doing isseems to be working right.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
It sure is.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Absolutely.
And the, the advertising thatyou know I was driving around
California and you could seesigns on the side of the
buildings with you know I forgetwhich ones they were, but you
know something dot AI, right.
So there's a freeway, with, youknow, 10,000 cars per hour
going past this sign, which issomething dot AI, and you just
know all these people arethinking about.
You know, hey, we could use adot AI name, right, yeah.
(19:33):
And so the the advertisingthat's just organically
happening because people areusing it is beyond what we could
seriously do.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Yeah, and and I agree with that and I think with a
lot of extensions, when peoplewho are asking me what, what
should we buy for our business,and they can choose between you
know you look at a smallercompany and then they're talking
about registering like kind ofan obscure GTLD, I always say to
them, like you have to makesure that you see it in the wild
(20:03):
yourself and I think if you'reseeing that happening in
California and you're seeingthat happening in other places,
then the general public aregetting used to it.
But if it's a very obscureextension, I think a lot of
normal, especially if you're aB2C company, are going to put
dot com on the end of it and youbetter register the dot com as
well to protect you know yourbrand and that's, you know, a
(20:26):
big part of that discussion.
So I have some other questionsabout the dot AI extension and
for people in general who areinvesting in it whether it's
their business or to build abusiness on it or as a domain
investor is why do you have twoyear registrations anyway?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
So how did that come about?
It's a way to bring the moneyforward so we get it sooner
without increasing the price.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Right, okay, so we get more money up front.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Thank you, but it's not changing the yearly rate.
So if we were to like change itback, it like would drop the
amount of money we're gettingthis year substantially, right,
okay?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
But next year you're relying on, kind of like, if the
growth is next year, you'regoing to get your two years then
.
So then the year after you'regetting the next two years and
go, go, go, go, go.
Okay, so you believe thatcharging two years up front is
making it so you can stillprovide a more reasonable price
for your registrants and causingno price rate increases.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
It's a way of getting more money for the government
today without changing theyearly price.
Right Got it, and so yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Understood.
Another question that I wasactually thinking about is why
is it that you only auction offnames once a month when they
expire?
Speaker 2 (21:56):
It's easier for the accounting to have.
You know all these names aredone, you have a certain amount
of time to pay them, thepayments are done and we can
record what happened, right?
You know these names sold,these names were paid for, these
names weren't paid for, nobodybid on these names, and so we
have a chunk of accounting thatwe can file away, right?
(22:17):
If it was every day, it wouldbe just too much record keeping.
You just don't have a bandwidth,it's easier to just do once a
month Plus for people.
You know, I don't want peopleto have to come every day.
I mean, these people have otherthings they need to do besides
bid on AI domains, right.
We have sort of like 20 peoplethat do you know 80% of the
(22:37):
buying right, and I think it'sbetter if those 20 people just
come here.
They essentially do all thebidding on the last day, right,
and so essentially there's oneday a month where you know
there's bidding going on.
I think it's better than to tryto make them have to come every
(22:57):
day or something silly.
That just you know.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, All right, and then that leads me to the next
question is why do you only doit in one place, and is there an
opportunity to offer it onother registrations?
Speaker 2 (23:12):
It is on other places , so you can.
It is on other websites.
I think it's Dynadot has it ontheirs and other people have
been connecting in as well, sothere will be more places.
It's a lot we have.
There's something in the FAQyou know.
(23:34):
You can send email here if youwant to connect your website to
our auction.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Yeah, Okay, all right , so I'll link to that in the
description.
I'm sorry, I just understoodthat.
Let me see.
I have some other questions foryou that I was thinking about
that I wrote down here.
Oh, here's one.
That, as a domain broker, iskind of a strange one.
For me is at one period of timeyou did have the updated date
(24:01):
and the creation date and thewho is record, but then that
mysteriously vanished one dayand I'm like is there something
wrong with this who is?
So I just started typing inother names and it was gone from
them as well.
So why did?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
why did that vanish?
So there's a couple of things.
One is you know, if people stoppaying, we want to auction off
the name, right.
But if it's getting down to theend and everybody can see that
it's about to expire, thenpeople contact them and buy it
from that person, right?
(24:32):
And then we don't get the money.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
I got it, so you're doing it as a.
You've realized the amount ofrevenue you're getting from
these names and the expiry andyou, OK, I can see that that
makes sense.
And then, as for the who is onyour website, if I go to contact
a registrant it gives me anerror.
You know that there is an issuewith the who is through your
(24:57):
own who is.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
It's usually working.
Is it not working at thismoment?
Speaker 1 (25:04):
No AI names are actually actually relatively
challenging at times to be ableto contact the registrant
because for some reason someregistrars redact everything and
don't let you know who is worse.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
The, the command command line and the web page
are working.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
What do you think?
I've been to it quite a fewtimes and get an error.
When we put in the CAPTCHAletters and hit submit, it says
is an error.
It's been like that for months.
Yeah, I'll show you after I meanother brokers it was a
complaint, and another brokeragewas complaining to me about it
as well and then otherregistrars.
(25:43):
I don't know if you feel likeit's up to them to decide to do
this, but you also they.
They redact all of theinformation of a registrant and
don't let you contact them.
Is that something that ispermitted or is that more of a
registrar decision?
This is something I don'tunderstand.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
The registrars can do this and some of them claim
that for their you know privacylaws that it's better for them
to do that and we don't fight ittoo much yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
I got it.
I mean, what ends up happeningis the registrars that do that.
Usually when we contact them,they'll say something like you
know you will, will contact ourclient but you need to pay us.
You know, it's usually a prettyextreme commission to get them
to do the work.
So it's like they're kind of,you know, wedging themselves in
(26:32):
there and then and then charging, not just like, okay, well, you
know, we'll split it with you.
It's not like that.
It's usually a lot more thanwhat even we're charging our
client, it's usually a prettyextreme amount to do the work.
So you know and I think this isthis is kind of potentially the
direction in the name ofsecurity and privacy that you
(26:53):
know this is just kind of goingis people like me are taking
away opportunities fromregistrars or from names
expiring and they don't wantthat to happen, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
So people can put on their webpage how to contact
them.
So if they want to bypasseverybody else and let people
come straight to them, they can.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
They sure can, but the who is should be.
I think, whether it's protectedor not, people should be able
to contact someone through thewho is right.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, so I I kind of like the way it used to be and
that it was sort of a publicregistry and you could see who
owned everything and that sortof.
There's some niceness to that.
But when the EU came out withtheir new rules about privacy,
they the people that do thesoftware that we're using, the
(27:45):
COCA software believed that justgiving out somebody's you know
phone number from the registryor their email address from the
registry was probably aviolation of the new EU rules
right, and so then they had tomake all these changes and it
it's sort of annoying.
(28:05):
I wish.
I wish we could just say look,you give us information which
we're allowed to make public,and we make it public, and you
know, that's it.
And but then again, like yousay, a lot of the registers are
now hiding the informationanyway.
So it's, it's being hidden bythem, and then we're hiding it
and it's like you can tell thata name is registered, but beyond
(28:27):
that, well, I think, I thinkthe thing is is that like, maybe
a registrar doesn't need togive you an email address and
they don't need to allow you towrite free form messages.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
but you know, go daddy offers like a drop down,
so you would just say, hey,here's my email address and
here's a list of options, chooseone and they'll send a message
to the registrant saying JeffGabriel wants information on
your domain and if you want torespond, that's fine and it and
it has a capture.
(28:57):
So it's like you know.
So it it makes it.
So some guy doesn't write ascript and hammers everybody at
go daddy 30 million.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
That's.
The other problem is that spamhas gotten worse and worse and
worse over the years right.
You know, 20 years ago youdidn't get tons of emails where
people trying to buy your domainname.
And now you do and it's.
It got to where it's annoyingenough that, like, not that a
lot of people don't want to listtheir email address on their
domain name anymore.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, absolutely All right.
Well, you know we can talkabout this.
For days I was reading on yourwebsite that it is let's see.
I believe it's section 13.
I didn't write this part down,but it talked about the UDRP and
how and how people can use youuse UDRP.
(29:41):
So in cases where someone wantsto take a domain from someone
else and Gwila uses the UDRP tofile a UDRP challenge, you must
use one of the.
I can't approve disputeresolution service providers.
But then at the bottom of the,there's a very long and boring
paragraph writing about all ofthat, so I'm not going to read
it, but at the very bottomthere's a sentence that says as
(30:03):
of January 1st 2023, we do notaccept UDRP challenges for
domains where there's only one,two or three characters before
the AI, unless the Complaintinalready has domains with those
same few characters in at leastthree of the following five TLDs
comukdejpfr.
(30:25):
So a company you've been out ofthe United States for a long
time, but a company like CVS.
Do you know who they are?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
No, so the problem is that a trademark has to be
unique and special in some way.
Yep, and two characters andprobably three characters are
just if there's not some funnyfont or there's not some special
colors or something, and it'ssupposed to be for a particular
domain, right?
And if what you have is adomain name, it's not for a
(31:04):
particular field, it's not aparticular font, it's not
particular colors, and so Idon't believe that three
characters there's.
You can have many differentpeople that have trademarks on
the same three letters.
Oh yeah absolutely Use differentdesigns and they use different
countries and they use differentwhatever it's.
Even in the same country, youcould have many with the same
(31:25):
three letters.
So to me it's I don't wantpeople to be coming to us with
some little trademark they filedin some little country and
getting this domain name that isreally a big and attached to
some other big company, right?
Yep, yeah, so that was how.
That's how we decided to do it.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Okay, so a company like, let's say, bmw owns the
Comm, but they don't have the G.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
They're going to have it too bad.
They're going to have it inthree of those domains, right?
They already have three ofthose.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
And so they're the one that should get the Anguilla
one.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
What about, like QQ?
You know who they are right?
No, I don't.
Qq is the biggest messaging appin China.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Okay, okay, I guess I have seen users, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
So I'm saying that they don't have any of those
names in the extension, but itdoesn't make sense for them to
but AI.
It might make sense for themand if someone puts a messaging
app on the AI, I would thinkthey have a right to come after
it because it is aninternational product or service
.
But you know it.
I mean there.
I could sit here and dig fordays and find examples, but you
(32:34):
also make good, a good argumenton the flip side, where it's
protecting domain owners from.
You know these situations, so Iget it now.
The other question is from myunderstanding.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
But if you, if qq wants to get the dot AI, they
just get you know a couple ofother ones first, and then they
come to us and they'reeverything's fine, right and and
so it's not.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
So why dot UK instead of co UK, where co UK is a
little more widely known?
I?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Don't know.
The truth is, it's hardly evera problem that people don't come
to us with just three.
They send us a list of 50.
Yeah right, and it's like, okay, you get it, you know, it's
fine.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Oh it's, it's not, it's not been close right.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
They either have it or they just don't yeah, and
then and then the other questionis is that and I correct me if
I'm wrong, I'm not, you know, Ihaven't read all the ICAN rules
and UDRP rules and things likethat, but to my understanding it
is is that if I wanted to filea UDRP, I I file it, you know,
(33:44):
with WIPO, and then that itbegins where I'm saying that
somebody is squatting on my name, and for the following reasons
or I pay a lawyer to do that,and usually the registry isn't
involved in that in theslightest.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
So the first, if that rule altogether and just no,
the first email that WIPO sendsis the ask does this, does UDRP,
apply to this domain, right?
Oh, okay, it's the firstquestion they ask, is not that
one?
Speaker 1 (34:18):
You can say no, it doesn't, that's the end of it,
okay.
That's.
That's, that's life.
Okay, well, that answers that.
And then another one.
That's really the similar it'slike.
A similar situation is you havethe grounds for suspending or
revoking a domain and it talksabout things like anything that
would be illegal in Anguillaporn.
(34:39):
That would be, illegal and goout and Slap me in the head
violin, copyrights, hate speech,fun stuff like that.
And then Looking at differentthings.
Because in in the CaymanIslands, for example, you know
you weren't allowed to drinkpast past 12 o'clock at night on
a Saturday and you couldn'toffend the rights of a woman you
(35:01):
know and say mean things to heror talk negatively of you know
God himself or things like that.
So I looked into some Of thelaws and in, in, in, in in your
country it says any person whouses any decent, abusive,
blasphemous, insulting,threatening language in any
place to the annoyance of thepublic Is against the law.
So if someone has like Bibleburning, dot AI and that
(35:26):
wouldn't be okay In your country, would would you?
Would that lead to grounds forremoval of the name, or is it
kind of like a Case by we have?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
not had.
We have not had this test casecome up and I'm not sure what
would happen next.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Yeah, I think, like like, for example, I understood
that the story of I can was Ican was only created because the
US government Used to managecalm and what happened was is in
different treaties andsituations.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
It wasn't the US government.
Is John Postal there was oneguy and he died.
He died.
Something had to happen, right?
Okay, they replaced him withthis huge or institution.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
I Was told.
I was told that people wereincluding, like in different
treaties and things like that,limitations on Com and different
parts of the internet andcountries that didn't like
different things, and thenpeople are trying to limit it.
So they try to create anonprofit organization that
protected everyone from you knowdifferent views.
(36:30):
So, like in a Muslim country,they might block all the adult
related content and that mightbe illegal there, you know, and
and maybe is fire our firearmsillegal In in your, in your
country.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
You have to get in they work, you have to get a
permit, which is hard to getyeah.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Yeah yeah, and there's no reason to have one
there in reality.
But you know, I think like soyou haven't had a situation
where you've taken a name whereit's kind of like more of a
social issue or something likethat.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I wouldn't say we've had anything that was
Particularly like that.
Like you know, bible burning,offending locals with that kind
of thing no.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Okay, I got it and I've been looking around in the
background there and in myamazing office as well, which is
, if I turn, the camera wouldprobably look very similar to
yours.
Is this where Dot AI happens?
Yeah, is this the?
Is the head, the worldheadquarters of, of AI.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
That machine right there is the main one.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Which one?
The little, the little black?
Yeah, oh, wow, that's it.
Everything is on there.
What do you have for a backupin case?
Speaker 2 (37:45):
you guys get hit by a hurricane there's lots of other
backups, and then there'soff-site backups, and there's
you know there's there's backupson top of backups, there's
backups into safes, there'sbackups offline backups,
off-site backup.
You know all this stuff, do you?
When?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
when there is a large hurricane coming, do you are?
Is it up to you like you needto leave the island to be
prepared, or you kind of wait itout and hope?
Speaker 2 (38:12):
No, they happens.
So the worst that happens isthat there's a period where you
can't register new names, right,but the names keep working.
And then what happens is allthe companies you know name
cheap or whatever.
They save up the names thatpeople wanted to register and as
soon as we're back, they're allregistered, right, Okay.
So it's kind of it's weird, butwe could be offline for a few
(38:37):
days and it's not the end of theworld, but it's really only
happened once.
And and it was only for a coupleof days, so but we're getting
in.
We're building a new officeright now.
You know they're putting upblocks and stuff and this will
be extremely hurricane resistantand have oodles of power and,
(38:58):
you know, backup star links andall that kind of stuff.
So we should be pretty wellokay in the next hurricane.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
And tell me about the hurricane and Tell me more
about financial cryptography.
I'm actually, you know, Iobviously I got it.
I got into crypto in, like, I'dsay, 2013, so obviously I was
20 years late from when you gothim and you're talking about the
cypher punks and the history ofit.
Can you give me like a briefFrom someone like you who's been
(39:31):
involved everyone I've talkedto got in on the similar time or
a couple years before me, butwhen and tell me what it is like
back then?
I've never met anyone like youbefore okay.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
So once you understand public key, you know
cryptography and digitalsignatures in particular, you
realize that there's gonna beways for computers to process
payments, because somebody cannow use a digital signature to
authorize something and then acomputer can process it and the
computers are gonna Be able toprocess it much faster.
There's gonna be less chance ofyou know, there's no chance of
(40:03):
fraud on a digital signature,whereas any other financial
system payment there's there'schances of fraud.
Right, and the cost, yeah, Imean, if you compare to the cost
of credit cards that you knowThree and a half percent, or
wire transfers at $100 or youknow whatever, it's clear that
it should be the case that acomputer could process a payment
, but it's cheaper, right?
(40:23):
Anyway, we could see this.
You know 35 years ago thatcomputers should be processing
cryptographically signedpayments.
Somehow, it was just a questionof how right, what's the?
you know.
How do you want to structurethis?
How does the system set up?
What's the?
What does the software?
(40:44):
You know?
What's the user experience,what, what Institutions are in
the middle of it or whatever,whatever, right?
So that was all you know.
We had to figure that out.
But it was clear that in thefuture we wouldn't be doing
financial payments the same waythat we were Since the invention
of the telegraph.
Right, the wire transfer isreally from when they invented
(41:04):
the telegraph wire.
They could send a message.
Right, and it's still called awire transfer from way back then
and it hasn't really changedmuch.
Right, there's a message goingto another bank and account that
bank is being debited from it.
You know the count, this, youknow that kind of.
It's the same technology really, from you know, 200 years or
whatever.
I mean it's a long time,whatever the telegraph was.
(41:26):
So it's.
You know we could see somethingwould come along and we wanted
to be part of it.
You know we wanted to try towrite the software to do that.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Okay, so I have two questions off of what you just
said.
So during that similar time inthe 90s we have Elon Musk and
PayPal Coming out and obviouslythey Were able to do
international payments.
I don't know in the 90s, but Iknow that PayPal I had PayPal
(41:59):
back then, so that was somethingsimilar that the market quite
quickly.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
No to me.
There's no digital signature,no cryptography.
And then that PayPal was cooland it's nice, but it's not what
we were thinking about, rightokay, and and then?
Speaker 1 (42:21):
where did that lead to?
Really like crypto and what youhave on your shirt, like the
crypto that we know today?
How did it get there from whatyou were thinking about?
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah, so some of the stuff that people were doing
back then Came into Bitcoin.
Like they, they had theseRemailers and they used to do
this sort of proof of work tomake these little, you know,
like stamps for doing theremailing and that sort of idea
of yeah proof of work came intoBitcoin right, and so I think a
(42:54):
lot of the the the world viewthat we had back in cypher punks
has now come to pass, and it'skind of fun.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Yeah, I mean I was thinking about, when you're just
talking about it, that you knowthe progression of exchanging
money, and I was at the grocerystore a week ago and Older woman
was writing a check for hergroceries.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
I'm like oh my god.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Look at this, you know, like I haven't seen
anybody do that in a really longtime and I have a checkbook for
my business.
I think I use it once a year,you know, and someone's like
I'll take a check and they'reyou know, whatever, some random
situation.
But yeah, I mean, I think Ithink Bitcoin is obviously the
wave of the future.
It's instant, it's easy, youknow, it's pretty simple and it
(43:39):
makes sense.
So when you're in financialcryptography before the call we
talked about and you brought upin the very beginning is, you
know you doing the same workoutside of the country
Technically can make you an armsdealer.
Can you tell people the storyabout how, about what you did
and and and what it led to?
I mean, I thought it might leadto your arrest because
(44:00):
technically you're a felon atthat.
So why don't you tell us this?
I think it's a great story andI was laughing when I was
reading about it.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
So the international traffic and arms regulations
covered cryptography, and if youhad software that did
cryptography and you exported itout of the United States, that
was the same thing as if youwere an arms dealer.
You'd violated the itar.
And so in Anguilla I made a webpage where the default text was
(44:29):
like a three-line RSAencryption program, and If you
just hit submit on this web formwith that default text, it
would go from your browser, sayin the United States, to my
computer here in Anguilla Right,which means that you have
exported some software that doesencryption, Therefore
(44:51):
qualifying you as aninternational arms trafficker
Right.
So I put up this web page andeverybody that could went to it.
You know they could be ananonymous arms trafficker and
not put in their name, or theycould put down their name and be
an officially registered armstrafficker, right.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
And.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Something crazy like you know, 20,000 people and this
is back in, you know, like 97or 96 or so, you know, a long
time ago, where there were quiteso many people on the internet
and so we had some crazy numberof people that you know became
official international armstraffickers by doing this and
it's it's this sort of civildisobedience and making fun of
(45:31):
the law, right, and that that'ssometimes necessary to get a law
changed, and it got enoughnotoriety that it was actually
on a CNN Program where they, youknow, they talked about this
and and the law changed soonafter that, so it might have had
an impact.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
I'm sure it did.
I mean, I think it probablyhelped and I'm sure that you
weren't the only one probablytalking about it, but it created
the discussion and made itrelevant, you know.
But, like there's there's othersayings, like I there's weird
laws in the United States.
I think I remember there wasone that you couldn't beat your
wife with a stick no bigger thanyour hand.
I was reading about, and thenyou know there's one that's like
(46:13):
you can't hit your wife with astick thicker than your thumb.
That's where, like, the rule ofthumb Comes from, you know, but
some of these laws wereactually, like, still in
Existence up until, like youknow, the 80s or the 70s.
But obviously it only comes tolight when some crafty lawyer
says, well, my client used astick no bigger than his hand
(46:35):
and they'll go God, that's.
You know, it kind of comes out,but but it's also could
probably become dangerous,because if what you were working
on actually got momentum andand was getting a lot of, you
know, publicity, that that youcould become, you know.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
An extra I was no longer.
I was no longer a US citizen,right?
So they sort of don't have anyclaim on me.
But you know, the fun part wasthat Americans sitting inside
these crazy laws could justclick a button and officially
they're.
They've now violated the youknow, international traffic and
arms regulations.
(47:13):
But you know they're not gonnago arrest these 20,000 people
for clicking a button on awebpage, right, it's not gonna
happen.
And so it's a way of you know,it's civil disobedience, it's a.
It's a way to break the lawpublicly and Not seriously
enough that they could actuallyjustify arresting you.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Yeah, absolutely.
So.
What is a day, what is a normalday at the dot AI registry for
a guy like you?
Not at the end of the month,not when the auctions are going
on, but a normal.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
Day, like you know, in the morning we come in and
there's a few emails and we haveto deal with a few problems
that somebody has, and Most thetime it's, you know, we actually
do a several other businesseshere just At the same time.
So we have a cash for goldbusiness, we have Bitcoin, we
have a Bitcoin ATM here, and sopeople are coming to use the
(48:09):
Bitcoin ATM.
Uh-huh, we also do DNA testingto see who's the daddy.
So, and and we're working onseveral other projects.
You know, in the background,the last month we've been trying
to simulate Electrons in a wire.
(48:31):
So we bought a computer that hasa, an RTX a 6000, which is a
10,000 core, 48 gigabyte GPU,right, so it's a pretty beefy
GPU to run some of these AImodels.
We've been playing a lot of AImodels just because it's fun,
right.
But once they had this computer, which is apparently about as
(48:52):
fast as the fastest computer inthe world, like 21 years ago as
far as far, as far as flops,okay, gosh, we should do
something, we should try tosimulate something, right?
And so do you know?
Veritasium, the, the youtubeguy?
He.
He's worth following, but he didsomething about how electricity
(49:13):
propagates in a wire, which Ithink he got it wrong.
But it would be fun to be ableto simulate how the electrons
propagate in the wire right andto be able to, you know, very
clearly demonstrate what happens.
And With this GPU we cancalculate for thousands of
electrons.
You know what's happening,right, and so we've been.
(49:35):
We've been playing with that,but we're always doing, we're
always so.
The first thing is they, theytalk about a drift speed.
And how the drift speed is veryslow for electrons like.
The current speed is very slow,like you know, less than a
millimeter per second, but whatthey're missing is that's the
(49:58):
average speed of a bunch ofelectrons which are going in
different directions.
Right, the individual electronscan actually be moving quite
fast and they completely missthat.
Then all the explanationsthere's.
There's a bunch of people thathave tried to rebut veritasium
because you know he's wrong andyou got somebody's got to get it
cleared up because he can't.
You can't let something bewrong on the internet.
(50:19):
Right, and of course so, but inall of their cases they're
still, except the fact thatelectricity doesn't move.
The electrons don't move fast,so they can't be.
What's propagating theelectricity?
Because the electric signalgoes nearly the speed of light,
right, but it's it's wrong,because the actual electrons may
(50:43):
be going like a tenth or onepercent of the speed of light
just on each one of them.
Okay, the other thing that'sweird is that the electrons Like
if you look at sound, the atomsare just pushing on the one
next to them, but in electronsan electron could be if you have
like a wall of electronsthey're not just pushing on the
(51:04):
electrons right next to them.
Their field goes through many,many electrons deep, and so
they're pushing far ahead ofwhere they are.
Okay, and so the way of cantravel much faster than the
electrons themselves aretraveling, and the electrons can
travel much faster than peoplethink, and so actually it's not
(51:26):
that bizarre that the electronscan carry a signal at the speed
of light.
But we need to get you know Iwant it to be a nice simulation
that Everybody can see all thelittle parts of it and all that
kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
Yeah, I'd love to see that.
So let me ask you this I mean,if I went out and bought that
computer, brought it to my houseand I just casually say I'm
going to do a simulation thatyou just mentioned, I mean, how
do you even begin To do that?
I mean, I'm sitting herethinking to myself while you're
explaining it, like how do youeven begin, how do you begin to
(52:02):
do that?
I don't even get it.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
This is the other fun thing.
I had never written any code torun on a GPU a month ago, never
.
I don't know how to write codefor a GPU, but I have three AI's
on three different tabs upabove the browser.
Here We've got Google and chat,gpt and clodai, and if you ask
(52:26):
each of them some interestingquestion like what's the easiest
way to write code for a GPU,you could usually get an answer
that's probably pretty good.
And then if you say, ok, writesome code to do this they like
do, and you just try it out andI really basically wrote the
(52:51):
code with the help of thesethree different AI's and it's
not quite there yet and I mayhave to really learn more to get
it to all be right.
But we've been doing lots ofdifferent simulations and lots
of different visualizations andat times we're having waves
propagate.
We could get to 2% this speedof light so far.
(53:12):
When are you going to build acollider?
Speaker 1 (53:15):
underneath the island , is that?
The next step.
Speaker 2 (53:21):
No no.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
I remember when we spoke.
The last time we spoke was fouryears ago, pretty much in
December.
It was four years.
In December was the last timewe spoke and when I spoke to you
you said you're flying RCplanes with your boys and RC
boats and things like that.
And then this time I talked toyou.
Now you guys are doing this.
So I'm interested to hear whatyou're going to be doing.
(53:43):
Four years ago in the MadScientist lab, where you've been
, we'll see.
Speaker 2 (53:51):
It's pretty wild, right, because we have the
ability to buy whatever toy wecould possibly want to play with
and we have four boys that needto learn stuff and have time on
their hands, so I don't knowwhat we'll be doing.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
Well hopefully we keep building off of this.
I mean, if you get up to whatis the closest we've gotten to,
the speed of light in a normalscience setting, I don't think
we've gotten to the speed oflight.
We've gotten very close in thecollider, isn't that right?
Speaker 2 (54:26):
No, no, no.
So I'm trying to simulateelectricity in a wire.
This is like a very fundamentalthing.
We've been playing withelectricity for a long time.
People ought to understand howelectricity propagates down a
wire and in fact they have, liketelegraphers, equations from
100 years ago.
(54:47):
They sort of understood howelectricity propagated down a
telegraph line, but at a lowlevel.
What do the electrons do?
Yeah, and there's not.
I mean, I had got a degree inelectrical engineering and I've
wondered about this question for40 years.
Very few people have anythingreally as to what the electrons,
(55:10):
how the electrons are movingand why it's just like hey, it
works, it's fine, don't worryabout it.
Hey, it works.
We've got a high level equation.
This gets us the right answer.
Yeah, and I want to understandat the low level how does this
electron do what it's doing andwhy?
And what's the thing right?
And I can't find anything thatreally does it at the electron
(55:33):
level.
And we have a computer that'sbig enough to simulate lots of
electrons at a reasonable speedfor a tiny piece of wire right,
do you think?
Speaker 1 (55:43):
any of our listeners might have that answer for you
or give you some tips.
Do you think there's any odds?
Maybe, right, yeah, yeah, let'ssee what they say.
You'd be surprised, yeah, allright.
Well, is there anything you'dlike to tell our viewers about
theai registry or anything elsethat you're working on?
(56:04):
Or tell us any use cases thatyou've seen of any of the
domains that you find that arereally exciting or interesting
to look at?
Speaker 2 (56:14):
No.
I don't know it's just.
It looks to me like it's goingto keep growing and keep getting
bigger and I hope that Anguillacan keep reducing their tax
burden on the local population.
And thank you all for buyingdomain names, yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:29):
I mean, but it's an awesome story.
You know, I think it's anawesome story and I think it's
great that what you've been ableto do has helped.
You know, it's helping pushinnovation right, which you love
, and also is helping the 14,000people of an island nation move
forward into the future as welland get the things that they
(56:50):
need to survive, which is greatas well.
So, you know, I can't reallythink of a better outcome for
everybody in business.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
If you look at even countries like some of the Arab
countries, where they get a lotof money from oil, they still
have a bunch of taxes, right?
So we could be the firstcountry you know five years or
10 years from now, that'scompletely funded without taxes,
and that to me is just likeamazing, right?
As a libertarian, that would belike a dream come true if we
(57:20):
had a country that didn't needto have taxes.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
And.
Speaker 2 (57:25):
Willow might be the first one there.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
Yeah, I agree, and I don't mind paying tax.
I feel that the amount that Ihave to pay is debilitating and
life changing and I don't thinkthe amount of money I'm paying
in is giving me the value ofwhat I'm putting in.
You know, and I'm fine if Iwant to go buy a luxury car and
I got to pay a 30% tax on it.
(57:48):
Fine, I mean that's OK.
But you know, when I'm payingin tax more than I'm actually
saving a year, I mean that's alot, you know.
And then if I drive down myroad and there's a giant pothole
and I call the city and tellthem to fix it, they just say
too bad, you know.
So it just isn't.
(58:09):
I don't know, I just don't seethe value.
But we could have an entireother episode talking about that
.
But great, you know, I reallyappreciate you doing this,
especially on short notice.
I really, you know, and thankyou for your time.
I know you're a busy man.
You got a lot of great thingsgoing on there.
Today on the Uncomfortable Podcast with
Jeffrey Gabriel.
If you're interested inbuilding your business on or
investing in aai domain name,then we've got the episode for
you.
Join us as we sit down withVincent Cate, the head of
Anguilla Domain Registry, akaaidomain registry.
He will share his story, delveinto some registry statistics
(00:22):
and address key questions thatpotential registrants like
yourself may have beforecommitting to aai domain name.
Getting to know Vincent he hasa bachelor's and an MBA in
computer science and he is veryinterested in financial
cryptography, cryptocurrencies,as well as his extremely forward
thinking and entrepreneurial.
I really can't think of abetter person to represent this
(00:45):
extension and I think you willfeel the same way as well after
listening to him.
And, as always, thanks forlistening and if you have any
questions, comments or wouldlike to be a guest on the show,
you can always email us at buzzat sawcom.
That's buzz at sawcom.
Have a good day.
Today on the Uncomfortablepodcast, we have Vincent Cate
(01:18):
from theai registry joining usand to give him a little bit of
a background before we begin, heis a software developer based
in Anguilla.
He graduated from theUniversity of California,
berkeley, and has a master's incomputer science from Carnegie
Mellon.
You had an Atari hardwarebusiness in the 1980s.
(01:39):
In 1994, moved to Anguilla topursue many business
opportunities like establishingan internet service provider.
Some people call it an ISP,offshore services, limited real
estateai, goldai, which payscash for gold.
You launch publicdatacomaiwhere people can look up
people's criminal records online.
You're also one of the foundersof the Financial Cryptography
(02:02):
Conference.
You're a published author,blogger and is also a model
plane slash boat enthusiast.
And, as I said before, youmanage the top level domain
extensionai and have done sosince 1994.
And I'm guessing that nothinghas really changed since 1994 in
the last 30 years with theaiextension.
(02:23):
So welcome to the show.
How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Doing well, so it's pronounced anguilla.
It rhymes with a vanillaAnguilla.
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Okay, I'm just going to say it's like I did your last
name on the first thing.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Father of four boys.
You've got to mention that too.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
What are their ages?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Geez 15, 17, 20, and 22.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
So I didn't really spend a lot.
I spent more time looking intoyour background and things like
that.
And Anguilla, is that also anEnglish territory?
Yeah, or is it its own Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
So if we ever declared our independence, they
would respect it, but we haven'ttried that yet.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Okay, so it's similar to Cayman, where it's an
English.
You still have to answer oncertain things back to the crown
, but most of it, you're on yourown.
So, with children getting tothe college age, are you looking
at sending them to England forcollege or United States?
What are you thinking about?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
It's not clear yet, they may not go to college.
I'm not convinced that collegeis worth all the time and money
really.
They're helping me out withthis job and learning stuff on
the job and that might be abetter thing, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
We'll see, I always felt that, and my dad said the
same thing to me.
And getting older and lookingat it is, I always feel, like
the four years that you would goto college.
Obviously it gives youexperience, a lot of life
experience, especially if you'reliving there and meeting people
from all over the place andit's usually your first time
living alone and obviously yourparents aren't there, and I
(04:07):
think that is more importantthan the education itself.
And then after you graduate,obviously you learn a little bit
of things, but I think yourcollege is what opens your first
or second door and then it'sreally obviously up to the
student or now the worker be todo something with it, and after
that I don't think it matters.
(04:28):
I find it bizarre when I speakto people in the business world
who say I can't go any higher atthe company on that unless I go
get a master's or I get acollege degree, and it's like,
really Does it matter at thispoint?
And I also one of the bestdevelopers that worked with me
at Uniregistry was a self-taughtdeveloper.
(04:49):
He never went to school forcomputer science and he built
the Uniregistry brokerage, allof the tech behind it, and so he
had every qualification, or hecould probably teach the class
better than most professorscould.
So it's definitely, yeah, Iagree.
So, anyways, I'm sure we couldtalk about that for days.
(05:09):
So how about you tell us alittle bit about your story that
I kind of went over, and howyou got yourself involved with
the Don AI registry?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
So I was interested in cryptography and financial
cryptography type things wayback.
I was on the cypherpunksmailing list in the early 90s
and so I wanted to writesoftware to do some sort of
internet payment system and theUS had these ITAR international
(05:39):
traffic and arms regulationswhich made it like my brain was
their property and you weren'tallowed to export outside the
United States and that my brainwas their territory.
So even if I was outside theUnited States and I wrote
software, it was consideredexporting it if I wrote the
software in Angola, and so I gotrid of my US citizenship.
(06:02):
That was early on, and when Ifirst came here I needed some
way to make money and the ideawas to do an email business, not
full internet, just email.
But I still wanted a domainname for the email address and
(06:22):
so when I tried to register adot AI name, john Postal was the
god of the internet back thensaid that nobody is managing it
and did I want to run it?
And I said sure, and so Iactually ran it.
At the beginning there was nocharge and only young Williams
could register names.
And then at some point, like ayear or two later, I felt like
(06:48):
this shouldn't be in my name, soI put it in the government's
name.
I made them the admin contactand then somebody came to the
government and said that theyshould run it.
And the government gave it tothis company in Taiwan which
thought that they could sell alot of names, because I in
Chinese means love.
And then they didn't sell anynames, didn't give the
(07:12):
government hardly any money anddisappeared.
Their company was struck fromthe books in Taiwan.
They never answered emails orphone calls or anything, and so
we got it back and then I ran itafter that.
Ed from Infermoney.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Sorry to interrupt you.
What year was that thatoccurred?
So you moved to Inguila in 1994.
And then you started workingwith theai or took over theai
registry for a period of timeand then you lost it.
So when did you lose it?
Speaker 2 (07:42):
I don't really remember the numbers, but say
three or four years in orsomething, and then it was gone
for maybe five years and then wegot it back and then I started
selling it to anybody for money,selling the domains for anybody
, and essentially it's beengrowing.
Back then when we started itwas around $5,000 a month,
(08:04):
$3,000, $4,000, $5,000 a monthand I used to print out the list
of names in a page or two andgive it to the government with a
check and it's just keptgrowing and growing and growing.
Since then and the way I wouldsay it is, it's about like 10
dubblings.
We've gone from like three anda half thousand a month to three
(08:29):
and a half million a month, sothere's like a factor of 1,000.
And so it's you know, two tenthis 1,024.
So we've had like 10 dubblingsin like 15 years, something like
that.
Right, so it's been growing,you know, for a long time.
But we had sort of two of thosedubblings in the last two years
when chat GPT came out.
(08:50):
It just shot up.
So yeah, it's just been doingwell.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
So let me ask you, when it came to losing it and
then gaining it back and thenworking with the government in
general, obviously they knew,when you were writing them
checks, that there is a value tothis and, being an island
nation with not a huge budget,that even if you were giving a
half a million dollars a year or$100,000 a year to their cause
(09:24):
and having you know 4,000, 5,000names, what did that mean to
them?
Like did they start to noticewait a minute, this is a real
good moneymaker.
Like when did that happen?
You know when they're sayingthis is a big deal.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
It's kind of like the you know the frog and the
boiling water.
If it just keeps going up alittle bit, a little bit, a
little bit.
Nobody ever gets too excitedbecause, you know, each month
the check is just a little bitbigger than last month, right
and so you know, and it didn'treally.
After chat, gpt came out.
Then some other people likeForbes or whatnot you know
(09:58):
people are Bloomberg came andinterviewed me and put some
articles out and then thosearticles got shared around
Facebook in Anguilla and theneverybody in Anguilla knew right
, and that's just like last year.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Before that it was yeah, I was going to ask are you
finished as of last?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
year.
There's people that now knowwho I am right and know what you
know, know that AI is big andstuff, but before then people
didn't really talk about it.
People didn't know really who Iwas, that I was doing this,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
So let me ask you this, so the people back in home
listening.
I'll give a little backgroundhere.
So I worked at Uniregistry.
Uniregistry was based in theCayman Islands and when I was
working there we provided aregistrar registry services
where and we had our own GLGTLDsas well, and one of the things
that we did in Cayman wasmanageky, and while I was there,
(10:54):
one of the things that happenedwas just like you said was it
went from being a free extensionfor locals to one that is sold
anywhere or at whateverregistrar will list itky, and
then they started charging $20 ayear or whatever.
It is an affordable amount ofmoney, but in our it's called
(11:15):
the Cayman Compass in our localnewspaper, people who had very
ruffled feathers and they kindof positioned it like Frank
Shilling, who's the owner ofUniregistry, has taken the
internet away from the internet,and then people were competing
that it isn't a local.
You know, anguillian, who'srunning it.
(11:38):
Now, I know you have yourcitizenship, but are there
people now saying why aren't,why aren't the Islanders running
this?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
So I'm training foreign willians to run this
business, you know, and my foursons, my four, sons are all born
here.
And it's so it doesn't get.
You can't do better than that,right?
You know that I'm traininglocals to run it, so I don't.
I don't get too much flack andI'm really pretty local after 30
(12:07):
years, I mean.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Oh, you certainly earned your stripes and you've
done a lot for the island.
I mean, you know, looking atthe numbers, I read in one of
the articles about dot AI.
Let me see here CassandraCassidy.
At Morning Brew, she publishedan article that said that your
revenue as of 2022 was 8.3million, but as of 2023, you're
(12:37):
expecting 30 million.
Is that something that is ofreality?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
or is she managing?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
those names out of the air and then well, that's
pretty insane lifting money.
So I'm sure you've gotten theattention of the island
government now as, being apretty big moneymaker and doing
some additional research, theirentire budget is just a little
bit north of 100 million for thegovernment.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Right, yeah, I think that it's 400 million EC, and
then there's 2.688 EC to adollar, so 100 something yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, 125 million.
So you're now making up a thirdof the income of the government
of the island.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Roughly, yeah, and we're likely to double.
Yeah, almost certain we willdouble in about a year, because
we do these two-yearregistrations.
Yeah, and we shot up a year ago.
In another year the renewalswill shoot up Right.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, it's like every other year, almost like pistons
coming back and down.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
So you know we're like January was 3.4 million US
that we gave to the government,but almost all of that is new
registrations, which it has, youknow, for the last year and
whatever it's, almost all themoney is new registrations.
So once the renewals kick in,we'll be over 6 million a month
and wow.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
So you're going to have to print those lists of
names on both sides of the paper.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah, so at some point we went to a PDF, An Excel
To a PDF file and an Excelspreadsheet, and then it got to
the point where we couldn't makea PDF.
That was the size of all thenames we had to do each month.
We thought it was.
It said it ran out of memoryand so we got a, you know, a
(14:30):
computer with bigger memory, butit wasn't really the memory.
It's like the.
That process just couldn't havethat much memory or something
Right, and so we couldn't we had.
We ended up just doing Excelfor the list of names.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah, you think Now, speaking of the government some
more one of the things in Caymanwas they didn't want outsiders
to be able to register the names, with the idea that if a local
comedian wanted to open abusiness in Cayman, they wanted
them to get a good name and theydidn't want, you know,
(15:07):
investors and people to own them, so they'd have to pay
thousands for a name.
What's the attitude of, like, alocal who wants to get jet
skiai or something like that tohelp their local businesses?
Are there some that are heldback for them, like registry
reserved, or is it just kind?
Speaker 2 (15:22):
of like They've outlawed they've outlawed jet
skis in Anguilla, so that one'snot a problem.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Bad example, but it's you know like you know.
Vacation I have not.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
So the normal situation, really, because we
had years where Anguillianscould register them for free and
then we had years where theyweren't that famous.
There's a lot of Anguilliansthat registered names you know
early on, like you know shopaior newsai or weatherai you know
different things right Yearslater have become worth huge
amounts of money.
Yeah Right, so people areselling you know Bingai or
(16:00):
campusai or you know somethingfor crazy money.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
We just sold campusai .
That's funny you mentioned that.
It's funny you mentionedcampusai because I think we just
as a brokerage, we just soldthat.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Oh, you were involved with that.
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Okay, well, I know the, I know the Anguillian that
had it for years.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Okay, small world.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah, so it's more.
There's many, many people herewho are getting this incredible
bonus of, you know, selling somename for tens of thousands of
dollars, which many cases theyweren't really using, right,
yeah, so most of the people arepretty happy with this situation
, honestly.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Okay, because, like when I when I again I'm making
the analogy back to Cayman iswhen I, when I lived there,
there was the generation ofpeople, so there was a.
There was a woman named Jessthat I worked with and she was
born and raised in Cayman andshe was telling me that there's
a.
There was a restaurant and barthat was a huge piece of land
called the Palms and it soldwhen I was there for like 40
(17:02):
million bucks or $45 million,and she said that in the 1980s
that her dad could have boughtit for like 25,000.
Because in the 80s the localsdidn't think land on the beach
was valuable, because you can'tgrow anything on it and it just
gets messed up when the stormscome.
So they always.
And that's why that when you goto Cayman you see graveyards on
(17:24):
the beach, because that was thelow value land, right.
So no one was wanting to buythe Palms for like 25,000 bucks
30 grand with the liquor licenseand everything.
I had a pool like the works, andthen it sells for this and I
and, and there was other piecesof land, like when I was there,
that a lot of the oldercomedians were then selling out
(17:44):
and getting out, but theneventually you know they're the
locals are getting priced out of.
You know all of the beachfrontproperties.
So I'm sure, like right nowit's good times, but I'm sure
that do you think that therewill be people that are going to
have an issue with it?
Or the amount of money thatyou're creating for the
government on a yearly, monthlybasis is probably providing some
(18:06):
really amazing services.
You guys never would have had,right.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
So they've been able to get rid of property tax on
residential buildings.
Right so your house, you don'thave to pay property tax anymore
.
That helps a huge portion ofthe population and yeah if I'm
right, and it doubles again inthe next year and keeps growing
after that they will probably.
The wages tax is tiny comparedto what we're going to increase
(18:34):
in AI this year, right, the morewebsites that are using dot AI,
the more people see it, themore people think of using it,
right, so it's sort of thebigger it gets the bigger it
adverts.
It sort of advertises itself.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
And yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
So yeah, so I'm not planning to do any, any
advertising, and we're growingat a really fast pace without
any advertising.
So doing what we're doing isseems to be working right.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
It sure is.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Absolutely.
And the, the advertising thatyou know I was driving around
California and you could seesigns on the side of the
buildings with you know I forgetwhich ones they were, but you
know something dot AI, right.
So there's a freeway, with, youknow, 10,000 cars per hour
going past this sign, which issomething dot AI, and you just
know all these people arethinking about.
You know, hey, we could use adot AI name, right, yeah.
(19:33):
And so the the advertisingthat's just organically
happening because people areusing it is beyond what we could
seriously do.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Yeah, and and I agree with that and I think with a
lot of extensions, when peoplewho are asking me what, what
should we buy for our business,and they can choose between you
know you look at a smallercompany and then they're talking
about registering like kind ofan obscure GTLD, I always say to
them, like you have to makesure that you see it in the wild
(20:03):
yourself and I think if you'reseeing that happening in
California and you're seeingthat happening in other places,
then the general public aregetting used to it.
But if it's a very obscureextension, I think a lot of
normal, especially if you're aB2C company, are going to put
dot com on the end of it and youbetter register the dot com as
well to protect you know yourbrand and that's, you know, a
(20:26):
big part of that discussion.
So I have some other questionsabout the dot AI extension and
for people in general who areinvesting in it whether it's
their business or to build abusiness on it or as a domain
investor is why do you have twoyear registrations anyway?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
So how did that come about?
It's a way to bring the moneyforward so we get it sooner
without increasing the price.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Right, okay, so we get more money up front.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Thank you, but it's not changing the yearly rate.
So if we were to like change itback, it like would drop the
amount of money we're gettingthis year substantially, right,
okay?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
But next year you're relying on, kind of like, if the
growth is next year, you'regoing to get your two years then
.
So then the year after you'regetting the next two years and
go, go, go, go, go.
Okay, so you believe thatcharging two years up front is
making it so you can stillprovide a more reasonable price
for your registrants and causingno price rate increases.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
It's a way of getting more money for the government
today without changing theyearly price.
Right Got it, and so yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Understood.
Another question that I wasactually thinking about is why
is it that you only auction offnames once a month when they
expire?
Speaker 2 (21:56):
It's easier for the accounting to have.
You know all these names aredone, you have a certain amount
of time to pay them, thepayments are done and we can
record what happened, right?
You know these names sold,these names were paid for, these
names weren't paid for, nobodybid on these names, and so we
have a chunk of accounting thatwe can file away, right?
(22:17):
If it was every day, it wouldbe just too much record keeping.
You just don't have a bandwidth,it's easier to just do once a
month Plus for people.
You know, I don't want peopleto have to come every day.
I mean, these people have otherthings they need to do besides
bid on AI domains, right.
We have sort of like 20 peoplethat do you know 80% of the
(22:37):
buying right, and I think it'sbetter if those 20 people just
come here.
They essentially do all thebidding on the last day, right,
and so essentially there's oneday a month where you know
there's bidding going on.
I think it's better than to tryto make them have to come every
(22:57):
day or something silly.
That just you know.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, All right, and then that leads me to the next
question is why do you only doit in one place, and is there an
opportunity to offer it onother registrations?
Speaker 2 (23:12):
It is on other places , so you can.
It is on other websites.
I think it's Dynadot has it ontheirs and other people have
been connecting in as well, sothere will be more places.
It's a lot we have.
There's something in the FAQyou know.
(23:34):
You can send email here if youwant to connect your website to
our auction.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Yeah, Okay, all right , so I'll link to that in the
description.
I'm sorry, I just understoodthat.
Let me see.
I have some other questions foryou that I was thinking about
that I wrote down here.
Oh, here's one.
That, as a domain broker, iskind of a strange one.
For me is at one period of timeyou did have the updated date
(24:01):
and the creation date and thewho is record, but then that
mysteriously vanished one dayand I'm like is there something
wrong with this who is?
So I just started typing inother names and it was gone from
them as well.
So why did?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
why did that vanish?
So there's a couple of things.
One is you know, if people stoppaying, we want to auction off
the name, right.
But if it's getting down to theend and everybody can see that
it's about to expire, thenpeople contact them and buy it
from that person, right?
(24:32):
And then we don't get the money.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
I got it, so you're doing it as a.
You've realized the amount ofrevenue you're getting from
these names and the expiry andyou, OK, I can see that that
makes sense.
And then, as for the who is onyour website, if I go to contact
a registrant it gives me anerror.
You know that there is an issuewith the who is through your
(24:57):
own who is.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
It's usually working.
Is it not working at thismoment?
Speaker 1 (25:04):
No AI names are actually actually relatively
challenging at times to be ableto contact the registrant
because for some reason someregistrars redact everything and
don't let you know who is worse.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
The, the command command line and the web page
are working.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
What do you think?
I've been to it quite a fewtimes and get an error.
When we put in the CAPTCHAletters and hit submit, it says
is an error.
It's been like that for months.
Yeah, I'll show you after I meanother brokers it was a
complaint, and another brokeragewas complaining to me about it
as well and then otherregistrars.
(25:43):
I don't know if you feel likeit's up to them to decide to do
this, but you also they.
They redact all of theinformation of a registrant and
don't let you contact them.
Is that something that ispermitted or is that more of a
registrar decision?
This is something I don'tunderstand.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
The registrars can do this and some of them claim
that for their you know privacylaws that it's better for them
to do that and we don't fight ittoo much yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
I got it.
I mean, what ends up happeningis the registrars that do that.
Usually when we contact them,they'll say something like you
know you will, will contact ourclient but you need to pay us.
You know, it's usually a prettyextreme commission to get them
to do the work.
So it's like they're kind of,you know, wedging themselves in
(26:32):
there and then and then charging, not just like, okay, well, you
know, we'll split it with you.
It's not like that.
It's usually a lot more thanwhat even we're charging our
client, it's usually a prettyextreme amount to do the work.
So you know and I think this isthis is kind of potentially the
direction in the name ofsecurity and privacy that you
(26:53):
know this is just kind of goingis people like me are taking
away opportunities fromregistrars or from names
expiring and they don't wantthat to happen, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
So people can put on their webpage how to contact
them.
So if they want to bypasseverybody else and let people
come straight to them, they can.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
They sure can, but the who is should be.
I think, whether it's protectedor not, people should be able
to contact someone through thewho is right.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, so I I kind of like the way it used to be and
that it was sort of a publicregistry and you could see who
owned everything and that sortof.
There's some niceness to that.
But when the EU came out withtheir new rules about privacy,
they the people that do thesoftware that we're using, the
(27:45):
COCA software believed that justgiving out somebody's you know
phone number from the registryor their email address from the
registry was probably aviolation of the new EU rules
right, and so then they had tomake all these changes and it
it's sort of annoying.
(28:05):
I wish.
I wish we could just say look,you give us information which
we're allowed to make public,and we make it public, and you
know, that's it.
And but then again, like yousay, a lot of the registers are
now hiding the informationanyway.
So it's, it's being hidden bythem, and then we're hiding it
and it's like you can tell thata name is registered, but beyond
(28:27):
that, well, I think, I thinkthe thing is is that like, maybe
a registrar doesn't need togive you an email address and
they don't need to allow you towrite free form messages.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
but you know, go daddy offers like a drop down,
so you would just say, hey,here's my email address and
here's a list of options, chooseone and they'll send a message
to the registrant saying JeffGabriel wants information on
your domain and if you want torespond, that's fine and it and
it has a capture.
(28:57):
So it's like you know.
So it it makes it.
So some guy doesn't write ascript and hammers everybody at
go daddy 30 million.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
That's.
The other problem is that spamhas gotten worse and worse and
worse over the years right.
You know, 20 years ago youdidn't get tons of emails where
people trying to buy your domainname.
And now you do and it's.
It got to where it's annoyingenough that, like, not that a
lot of people don't want to listtheir email address on their
domain name anymore.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, absolutely All right.
Well, you know we can talkabout this.
For days I was reading on yourwebsite that it is let's see.
I believe it's section 13.
I didn't write this part down,but it talked about the UDRP and
how and how people can use youuse UDRP.
(29:41):
So in cases where someone wantsto take a domain from someone
else and Gwila uses the UDRP tofile a UDRP challenge, you must
use one of the.
I can't approve disputeresolution service providers.
But then at the bottom of the,there's a very long and boring
paragraph writing about all ofthat, so I'm not going to read
it, but at the very bottomthere's a sentence that says as
(30:03):
of January 1st 2023, we do notaccept UDRP challenges for
domains where there's only one,two or three characters before
the AI, unless the Complaintinalready has domains with those
same few characters in at leastthree of the following five TLDs
comukdejpfr.
(30:25):
So a company you've been out ofthe United States for a long
time, but a company like CVS.
Do you know who they are?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
No, so the problem is that a trademark has to be
unique and special in some way.
Yep, and two characters andprobably three characters are
just if there's not some funnyfont or there's not some special
colors or something, and it'ssupposed to be for a particular
domain, right?
And if what you have is adomain name, it's not for a
(31:04):
particular field, it's not aparticular font, it's not
particular colors, and so Idon't believe that three
characters there's.
You can have many differentpeople that have trademarks on
the same three letters.
Oh yeah absolutely Use differentdesigns and they use different
countries and they use differentwhatever it's.
Even in the same country, youcould have many with the same
(31:25):
three letters.
So to me it's I don't wantpeople to be coming to us with
some little trademark they filedin some little country and
getting this domain name that isreally a big and attached to
some other big company, right?
Yep, yeah, so that was how.
That's how we decided to do it.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Okay, so a company like, let's say, bmw owns the
Comm, but they don't have the G.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
They're going to have it too bad.
They're going to have it inthree of those domains, right?
They already have three ofthose.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
And so they're the one that should get the Anguilla
one.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
What about, like QQ?
You know who they are right?
No, I don't.
Qq is the biggest messaging appin China.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Okay, okay, I guess I have seen users, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
So I'm saying that they don't have any of those
names in the extension, but itdoesn't make sense for them to
but AI.
It might make sense for themand if someone puts a messaging
app on the AI, I would thinkthey have a right to come after
it because it is aninternational product or service
.
But you know it.
I mean there.
I could sit here and dig fordays and find examples, but you
(32:34):
also make good, a good argumenton the flip side, where it's
protecting domain owners from.
You know these situations, so Iget it now.
The other question is from myunderstanding.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
But if you, if qq wants to get the dot AI, they
just get you know a couple ofother ones first, and then they
come to us and they'reeverything's fine, right and and
so it's not.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
So why dot UK instead of co UK, where co UK is a
little more widely known?
I?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Don't know.
The truth is, it's hardly evera problem that people don't come
to us with just three.
They send us a list of 50.
Yeah right, and it's like, okay, you get it, you know, it's
fine.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Oh it's, it's not, it's not been close right.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
They either have it or they just don't yeah, and
then and then the other questionis is that and I correct me if
I'm wrong, I'm not, you know, Ihaven't read all the ICAN rules
and UDRP rules and things likethat, but to my understanding it
is is that if I wanted to filea UDRP, I I file it, you know,
(33:44):
with WIPO, and then that itbegins where I'm saying that
somebody is squatting on my name, and for the following reasons
or I pay a lawyer to do that,and usually the registry isn't
involved in that in theslightest.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
So the first, if that rule altogether and just no,
the first email that WIPO sendsis the ask does this, does UDRP,
apply to this domain, right?
Oh, okay, it's the firstquestion they ask, is not that
one?
Speaker 1 (34:18):
You can say no, it doesn't, that's the end of it,
okay.
That's.
That's, that's life.
Okay, well, that answers that.
And then another one.
That's really the similar it'slike.
A similar situation is you havethe grounds for suspending or
revoking a domain and it talksabout things like anything that
would be illegal in Anguillaporn.
(34:39):
That would be, illegal and goout and Slap me in the head
violin, copyrights, hate speech,fun stuff like that.
And then Looking at differentthings.
Because in in the CaymanIslands, for example, you know
you weren't allowed to drinkpast past 12 o'clock at night on
a Saturday and you couldn'toffend the rights of a woman you
(35:01):
know and say mean things to heror talk negatively of you know
God himself or things like that.
So I looked into some Of thelaws and in, in, in, in in your
country it says any person whouses any decent, abusive,
blasphemous, insulting,threatening language in any
place to the annoyance of thepublic Is against the law.
So if someone has like Bibleburning, dot AI and that
(35:26):
wouldn't be okay In your country, would would you?
Would that lead to grounds forremoval of the name, or is it
kind of like a Case by we have?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
not had.
We have not had this test casecome up and I'm not sure what
would happen next.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Yeah, I think, like like, for example, I understood
that the story of I can was Ican was only created because the
US government Used to managecalm and what happened was is in
different treaties andsituations.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
It wasn't the US government.
Is John Postal there was oneguy and he died.
He died.
Something had to happen, right?
Okay, they replaced him withthis huge or institution.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
I Was told.
I was told that people wereincluding, like in different
treaties and things like that,limitations on Com and different
parts of the internet andcountries that didn't like
different things, and thenpeople are trying to limit it.
So they try to create anonprofit organization that
protected everyone from you knowdifferent views.
(36:30):
So, like in a Muslim country,they might block all the adult
related content and that mightbe illegal there, you know, and
and maybe is fire our firearmsillegal In in your, in your
country.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
You have to get in they work, you have to get a
permit, which is hard to getyeah.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Yeah yeah, and there's no reason to have one
there in reality.
But you know, I think like soyou haven't had a situation
where you've taken a name whereit's kind of like more of a
social issue or something likethat.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I wouldn't say we've had anything that was
Particularly like that.
Like you know, bible burning,offending locals with that kind
of thing no.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Okay, I got it and I've been looking around in the
background there and in myamazing office as well, which is
, if I turn, the camera wouldprobably look very similar to
yours.
Is this where Dot AI happens?
Yeah, is this the?
Is the head, the worldheadquarters of, of AI.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
That machine right there is the main one.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Which one?
The little, the little black?
Yeah, oh, wow, that's it.
Everything is on there.
What do you have for a backupin case?
Speaker 2 (37:45):
you guys get hit by a hurricane there's lots of other
backups, and then there'soff-site backups, and there's
you know there's there's backupson top of backups, there's
backups into safes, there'sbackups offline backups,
off-site backup.
You know all this stuff, do you?
When?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
when there is a large hurricane coming, do you are?
Is it up to you like you needto leave the island to be
prepared, or you kind of wait itout and hope?
Speaker 2 (38:12):
No, they happens.
So the worst that happens isthat there's a period where you
can't register new names, right,but the names keep working.
And then what happens is allthe companies you know name
cheap or whatever.
They save up the names thatpeople wanted to register and as
soon as we're back, they're allregistered, right, Okay.
So it's kind of it's weird, butwe could be offline for a few
(38:37):
days and it's not the end of theworld, but it's really only
happened once.
And and it was only for a coupleof days, so but we're getting
in.
We're building a new officeright now.
You know they're putting upblocks and stuff and this will
be extremely hurricane resistantand have oodles of power and,
(38:58):
you know, backup star links andall that kind of stuff.
So we should be pretty wellokay in the next hurricane.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
And tell me about the hurricane and Tell me more
about financial cryptography.
I'm actually, you know, Iobviously I got it.
I got into crypto in, like, I'dsay, 2013, so obviously I was
20 years late from when you gothim and you're talking about the
cypher punks and the history ofit.
Can you give me like a briefFrom someone like you who's been
(39:31):
involved everyone I've talkedto got in on the similar time or
a couple years before me, butwhen and tell me what it is like
back then?
I've never met anyone like youbefore okay.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
So once you understand public key, you know
cryptography and digitalsignatures in particular, you
realize that there's gonna beways for computers to process
payments, because somebody cannow use a digital signature to
authorize something and then acomputer can process it and the
computers are gonna Be able toprocess it much faster.
There's gonna be less chance ofyou know, there's no chance of
(40:03):
fraud on a digital signature,whereas any other financial
system payment there's there'schances of fraud.
Right, and the cost, yeah, Imean, if you compare to the cost
of credit cards that you knowThree and a half percent, or
wire transfers at $100 or youknow whatever, it's clear that
it should be the case that acomputer could process a payment
, but it's cheaper, right?
(40:23):
Anyway, we could see this.
You know 35 years ago thatcomputers should be processing
cryptographically signedpayments.
Somehow, it was just a questionof how right, what's the?
you know.
How do you want to structurethis?
How does the system set up?
What's the?
What does the software?
(40:44):
You know?
What's the user experience,what, what Institutions are in
the middle of it or whatever,whatever, right?
So that was all you know.
We had to figure that out.
But it was clear that in thefuture we wouldn't be doing
financial payments the same waythat we were Since the invention
of the telegraph.
Right, the wire transfer isreally from when they invented
(41:04):
the telegraph wire.
They could send a message.
Right, and it's still called awire transfer from way back then
and it hasn't really changedmuch.
Right, there's a message goingto another bank and account that
bank is being debited from it.
You know the count, this, youknow that kind of.
It's the same technology really, from you know, 200 years or
whatever.
I mean it's a long time,whatever the telegraph was.
(41:26):
So it's.
You know we could see somethingwould come along and we wanted
to be part of it.
You know we wanted to try towrite the software to do that.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Okay, so I have two questions off of what you just
said.
So during that similar time inthe 90s we have Elon Musk and
PayPal Coming out and obviouslythey Were able to do
international payments.
I don't know in the 90s, but Iknow that PayPal I had PayPal
(41:59):
back then, so that was somethingsimilar that the market quite
quickly.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
No to me.
There's no digital signature,no cryptography.
And then that PayPal was cooland it's nice, but it's not what
we were thinking about, rightokay, and and then?
Speaker 1 (42:21):
where did that lead to?
Really like crypto and what youhave on your shirt, like the
crypto that we know today?
How did it get there from whatyou were thinking about?
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah, so some of the stuff that people were doing
back then Came into Bitcoin.
Like they, they had theseRemailers and they used to do
this sort of proof of work tomake these little, you know,
like stamps for doing theremailing and that sort of idea
of yeah proof of work came intoBitcoin right, and so I think a
(42:54):
lot of the the the world viewthat we had back in cypher punks
has now come to pass, and it'skind of fun.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Yeah, I mean I was thinking about, when you're just
talking about it, that you knowthe progression of exchanging
money, and I was at the grocerystore a week ago and Older woman
was writing a check for hergroceries.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
I'm like oh my god.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Look at this, you know, like I haven't seen
anybody do that in a really longtime and I have a checkbook for
my business.
I think I use it once a year,you know, and someone's like
I'll take a check and they'reyou know, whatever, some random
situation.
But yeah, I mean, I think Ithink Bitcoin is obviously the
wave of the future.
It's instant, it's easy, youknow, it's pretty simple and it
(43:39):
makes sense.
So when you're in financialcryptography before the call we
talked about and you brought upin the very beginning is, you
know you doing the same workoutside of the country
Technically can make you an armsdealer.
Can you tell people the storyabout how, about what you did
and and and what it led to?
I mean, I thought it might leadto your arrest because
(44:00):
technically you're a felon atthat.
So why don't you tell us this?
I think it's a great story andI was laughing when I was
reading about it.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
So the international traffic and arms regulations
covered cryptography, and if youhad software that did
cryptography and you exported itout of the United States, that
was the same thing as if youwere an arms dealer.
You'd violated the itar.
And so in Anguilla I made a webpage where the default text was
(44:29):
like a three-line RSAencryption program, and If you
just hit submit on this web formwith that default text, it
would go from your browser, sayin the United States, to my
computer here in Anguilla Right,which means that you have
exported some software that doesencryption, Therefore
(44:51):
qualifying you as aninternational arms trafficker
Right.
So I put up this web page andeverybody that could went to it.
You know they could be ananonymous arms trafficker and
not put in their name, or theycould put down their name and be
an officially registered armstrafficker, right.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
And.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Something crazy like you know, 20,000 people and this
is back in, you know, like 97or 96 or so, you know, a long
time ago, where there were quiteso many people on the internet
and so we had some crazy numberof people that you know became
official international armstraffickers by doing this and
it's it's this sort of civildisobedience and making fun of
(45:31):
the law, right, and that that'ssometimes necessary to get a law
changed, and it got enoughnotoriety that it was actually
on a CNN Program where they, youknow, they talked about this
and and the law changed soonafter that, so it might have had
an impact.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
I'm sure it did.
I mean, I think it probablyhelped and I'm sure that you
weren't the only one probablytalking about it, but it created
the discussion and made itrelevant, you know.
But, like there's there's othersayings, like I there's weird
laws in the United States.
I think I remember there wasone that you couldn't beat your
wife with a stick no bigger thanyour hand.
I was reading about, and thenyou know there's one that's like
(46:13):
you can't hit your wife with astick thicker than your thumb.
That's where, like, the rule ofthumb Comes from, you know, but
some of these laws wereactually, like, still in
Existence up until, like youknow, the 80s or the 70s.
But obviously it only comes tolight when some crafty lawyer
says, well, my client used astick no bigger than his hand
(46:35):
and they'll go God, that's.
You know, it kind of comes out,but but it's also could
probably become dangerous,because if what you were working
on actually got momentum andand was getting a lot of, you
know, publicity, that that youcould become, you know.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
An extra I was no longer.
I was no longer a US citizen,right?
So they sort of don't have anyclaim on me.
But you know, the fun part wasthat Americans sitting inside
these crazy laws could justclick a button and officially
they're.
They've now violated the youknow, international traffic and
arms regulations.
(47:13):
But you know they're not gonnago arrest these 20,000 people
for clicking a button on awebpage, right, it's not gonna
happen.
And so it's a way of you know,it's civil disobedience, it's a.
It's a way to break the lawpublicly and Not seriously
enough that they could actuallyjustify arresting you.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Yeah, absolutely.
So.
What is a day, what is a normalday at the dot AI registry for
a guy like you?
Not at the end of the month,not when the auctions are going
on, but a normal.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
Day, like you know, in the morning we come in and
there's a few emails and we haveto deal with a few problems
that somebody has, and Most thetime it's, you know, we actually
do a several other businesseshere just At the same time.
So we have a cash for goldbusiness, we have Bitcoin, we
have a Bitcoin ATM here, and sopeople are coming to use the
(48:09):
Bitcoin ATM.
Uh-huh, we also do DNA testingto see who's the daddy.
So, and and we're working onseveral other projects.
You know, in the background,the last month we've been trying
to simulate Electrons in a wire.
(48:31):
So we bought a computer that hasa, an RTX a 6000, which is a
10,000 core, 48 gigabyte GPU,right, so it's a pretty beefy
GPU to run some of these AImodels.
We've been playing a lot of AImodels just because it's fun,
right.
But once they had this computer, which is apparently about as
(48:52):
fast as the fastest computer inthe world, like 21 years ago as
far as far, as far as flops,okay, gosh, we should do
something, we should try tosimulate something, right?
And so do you know?
Veritasium, the, the youtubeguy?
He.
He's worth following, but he didsomething about how electricity
(49:13):
propagates in a wire, which Ithink he got it wrong.
But it would be fun to be ableto simulate how the electrons
propagate in the wire right andto be able to, you know, very
clearly demonstrate what happens.
And With this GPU we cancalculate for thousands of
electrons.
You know what's happening,right, and so we've been.
(49:35):
We've been playing with that,but we're always doing, we're
always so.
The first thing is they, theytalk about a drift speed.
And how the drift speed is veryslow for electrons like.
The current speed is very slow,like you know, less than a
millimeter per second, but whatthey're missing is that's the
(49:58):
average speed of a bunch ofelectrons which are going in
different directions.
Right, the individual electronscan actually be moving quite
fast and they completely missthat.
Then all the explanationsthere's.
There's a bunch of people thathave tried to rebut veritasium
because you know he's wrong andyou got somebody's got to get it
cleared up because he can't.
You can't let something bewrong on the internet.
(50:19):
Right, and of course so, but inall of their cases they're
still, except the fact thatelectricity doesn't move.
The electrons don't move fast,so they can't be.
What's propagating theelectricity?
Because the electric signalgoes nearly the speed of light,
right, but it's it's wrong,because the actual electrons may
(50:43):
be going like a tenth or onepercent of the speed of light
just on each one of them.
Okay, the other thing that'sweird is that the electrons Like
if you look at sound, the atomsare just pushing on the one
next to them, but in electronsan electron could be if you have
like a wall of electronsthey're not just pushing on the
(51:04):
electrons right next to them.
Their field goes through many,many electrons deep, and so
they're pushing far ahead ofwhere they are.
Okay, and so the way of cantravel much faster than the
electrons themselves aretraveling, and the electrons can
travel much faster than peoplethink, and so actually it's not
(51:26):
that bizarre that the electronscan carry a signal at the speed
of light.
But we need to get you know Iwant it to be a nice simulation
that Everybody can see all thelittle parts of it and all that
kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
Yeah, I'd love to see that.
So let me ask you this I mean,if I went out and bought that
computer, brought it to my houseand I just casually say I'm
going to do a simulation thatyou just mentioned, I mean, how
do you even begin To do that?
I mean, I'm sitting herethinking to myself while you're
explaining it, like how do youeven begin, how do you begin to
(52:02):
do that?
I don't even get it.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
This is the other fun thing.
I had never written any code torun on a GPU a month ago, never
.
I don't know how to write codefor a GPU, but I have three AI's
on three different tabs upabove the browser.
Here We've got Google and chat,gpt and clodai, and if you ask
(52:26):
each of them some interestingquestion like what's the easiest
way to write code for a GPU,you could usually get an answer
that's probably pretty good.
And then if you say, ok, writesome code to do this they like
do, and you just try it out andI really basically wrote the
(52:51):
code with the help of thesethree different AI's and it's
not quite there yet and I mayhave to really learn more to get
it to all be right.
But we've been doing lots ofdifferent simulations and lots
of different visualizations andat times we're having waves
propagate.
We could get to 2% this speedof light so far.
(53:12):
When are you going to build acollider?
Speaker 1 (53:15):
underneath the island , is that?
The next step.
Speaker 2 (53:21):
No no.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
I remember when we spoke.
The last time we spoke was fouryears ago, pretty much in
December.
It was four years.
In December was the last timewe spoke and when I spoke to you
you said you're flying RCplanes with your boys and RC
boats and things like that.
And then this time I talked toyou.
Now you guys are doing this.
So I'm interested to hear whatyou're going to be doing.
(53:43):
Four years ago in the MadScientist lab, where you've been
, we'll see.
Speaker 2 (53:51):
It's pretty wild, right, because we have the
ability to buy whatever toy wecould possibly want to play with
and we have four boys that needto learn stuff and have time on
their hands, so I don't knowwhat we'll be doing.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
Well hopefully we keep building off of this.
I mean, if you get up to whatis the closest we've gotten to,
the speed of light in a normalscience setting, I don't think
we've gotten to the speed oflight.
We've gotten very close in thecollider, isn't that right?
Speaker 2 (54:26):
No, no, no.
So I'm trying to simulateelectricity in a wire.
This is like a very fundamentalthing.
We've been playing withelectricity for a long time.
People ought to understand howelectricity propagates down a
wire and in fact they have, liketelegraphers, equations from
100 years ago.
(54:47):
They sort of understood howelectricity propagated down a
telegraph line, but at a lowlevel.
What do the electrons do?
Yeah, and there's not.
I mean, I had got a degree inelectrical engineering and I've
wondered about this question for40 years.
Very few people have anythingreally as to what the electrons,
(55:10):
how the electrons are movingand why it's just like hey, it
works, it's fine, don't worryabout it.
Hey, it works.
We've got a high level equation.
This gets us the right answer.
Yeah, and I want to understandat the low level how does this
electron do what it's doing andwhy?
And what's the thing right?
And I can't find anything thatreally does it at the electron
(55:33):
level.
And we have a computer that'sbig enough to simulate lots of
electrons at a reasonable speedfor a tiny piece of wire right,
do you think?
Speaker 1 (55:43):
any of our listeners might have that answer for you
or give you some tips.
Do you think there's any odds?
Maybe, right, yeah, yeah, let'ssee what they say.
You'd be surprised, yeah, allright.
Well, is there anything you'dlike to tell our viewers about
theai registry or anything elsethat you're working on?
(56:04):
Or tell us any use cases thatyou've seen of any of the
domains that you find that arereally exciting or interesting
to look at?
Speaker 2 (56:14):
No.
I don't know it's just.
It looks to me like it's goingto keep growing and keep getting
bigger and I hope that Anguillacan keep reducing their tax
burden on the local population.
And thank you all for buyingdomain names, yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:29):
I mean, but it's an awesome story.
You know, I think it's anawesome story and I think it's
great that what you've been ableto do has helped.
You know, it's helping pushinnovation right, which you love
, and also is helping the 14,000people of an island nation move
forward into the future as welland get the things that they
(56:50):
need to survive, which is greatas well.
So, you know, I can't reallythink of a better outcome for
everybody in business.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
If you look at even countries like some of the Arab
countries, where they get a lotof money from oil, they still
have a bunch of taxes, right?
So we could be the firstcountry you know five years or
10 years from now, that'scompletely funded without taxes,
and that to me is just likeamazing, right?
As a libertarian, that would belike a dream come true if we
(57:20):
had a country that didn't needto have taxes.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
And.
Speaker 2 (57:25):
Willow might be the first one there.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
Yeah, I agree, and I don't mind paying tax.
I feel that the amount that Ihave to pay is debilitating and
life changing and I don't thinkthe amount of money I'm paying
in is giving me the value ofwhat I'm putting in.
You know, and I'm fine if Iwant to go buy a luxury car and
I got to pay a 30% tax on it.
(57:48):
Fine, I mean that's OK.
But you know, when I'm payingin tax more than I'm actually
saving a year, I mean that's alot, you know.
And then if I drive down myroad and there's a giant pothole
and I call the city and tellthem to fix it, they just say
too bad, you know.
So it just isn't.
(58:09):
I don't know, I just don't seethe value.
But we could have an entireother episode talking about that
.
But great, you know, I reallyappreciate you doing this,
especially on short notice.
I really, you know, and thankyou for your time.
I know you're a busy man.
You got a lot of great thingsgoing on there.
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