Charlie Lee on How Litecoin Fits Into Tomorrow's Crypto Market

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It would be very hard to kind of start a
new coin today. There's so many out there. The main
reason that it's hard is it's hard to get like
mind share, right. The thing of the centralist currency is
if there are people running nodes and people using it,
the project would survive.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
It's almost like a living thing.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
So the central is network supported by people as long
as there are people supporting it, or it would go on.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Is there anything you would have necessarily done different in
creating like coin?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
I probably would have stayed anonymous.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
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to learn more, visit the link in the description. Hey, everybody,
welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host, Tony
Edward and joining me today is Charlie Lee, who is

(01:39):
the creator of like coin. Charlie, it's an honor to
have you on the pod.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Hey, Tony and nic See nice to be here.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, Charlie, I view you as one of the godfathers
of the crypto industry. You were here so early creating
like coin, you worked at coinbase, and boy, you have
a plethora of knowledge that I want to have so
many questions ask you, not just about light coin, but
you know the future of crypto and where you see
things are at. But I would love for us to

(02:06):
go back a bit in history so folks can get
a better understanding of light coin. For those who don't
know what was your first encounter with bitcoin and what
was your AHA moment and how did that lead to
the creation of light coin.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
So I first I read about bitcoin in early twenty eleven.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
It was an article on slash stot about how bitcoin
is the only currency used on stike World Marketplace, which
is a dark neck marketplace that sells drugs and whatnot,
and they only assent a coin because it's a it's
a more private coin. It's also a better form of

(02:49):
money than what's out there. So it got I read
into it and really got hooked up hooked on bitcoin,
just how that it's it's kind of like digital gold,
just very similar to gold and properties like it's mindable,
it's fixed, apply nobody controls it. But it's better than
gold in the sense that it's chick to hold, chick

(03:12):
to send, and you can easily send to anyone across
the world, whereas with gold you can't because it's physical
and it's hard, hard to hold, hard to send. So
I just saw it as just better form of money
than even gold. And then over the next half year
in twenty eleven, I kind of played around with with

(03:34):
the code, decided to just mess around and create my
own all coin and in the light coin, and I
positioned it as silver to bitcoins gold, so kind of
complementary to bitcoin and similar to how in the history
people I've used gold and silver as as money. I

(03:54):
saw kind of bitcoin and like coin go hand in hand.
So that's that's what happened in the rest is.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
History, and Charlie, you know there. I got into crypto
in twenty sixteen, and I remember being in the My
first bull market was twenty seventeen. I remember buying some
light coin. But now that I look back, you know,
lightcoin has had this staying power which is pretty incredible
because we've seen a lot of all coins have gone away.
Right if you look at the market capitalist and let's

(04:21):
say twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen to what we have now,
a lot of coins have gone away. So why do
you think lightcoin has this staying power? Is it because
it's similar to bitcoin with the proof of work, a
hard money type of concept.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
A few things. I think.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
One is that it's it's very similar to bitcoin, so
it has the all the good properties of Bitcoin, like decentralization,
like how the money supply gets or the translation gets
cut in half every four years, so I didn't mess
around with like what actually makes bitcoin work well? And

(05:00):
so a little bitcoin, it's it's just good money, right,
It's it's very simple, it works. People use it for payments,
low fees, fast transactions. So the fact that it's useful
it is the reason why it has staying power, and
also because it was launched fairly, so there's no there's
no pre mind. It's very decentralized, like a lot of

(05:25):
previous coins or other coins have huge pre minds benefiting
the founder or the foundation, and.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
A lot of people don't like that.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Right, You're kind of supporting a project that is making
someone else super rich, whereas like when it's decentralized, decentralized money, right,
it's something it's Yeah, I think that's the main reason
why it's survived for so long.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
So on that note, are you still a like coin
holder and how are you working or supporting the like
when ecosystem to these.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah, I still own a few. I'm not really invested
in like coin. I realized that not being invested is
the kind of best best way for meeting go forward,
So I still support the ecosystem. I'm a direct at
the like Con Foundation. I donate quite a bit to
the foundation and to support light coin.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
I have.

Speaker 4 (06:21):
A year ago, I announced a matching donation of two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year to the foundation
and to other projects supporting light coin for for five years,
so I'm doing that.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
I'm also on the board of light Strategy, the first
light coin treasury company, so I'm helping them with that,
and they're very supportive of light coin and the whole ecosystem,
so it's a it's a win win. Yeah, just focus
on like coin and doing whatever I can to help
support adoption and development of like coin.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
Yeah, for sure. So looking back, Charlie, is there anything
you would have necessarily done different in creating like coin,
like when you were you know, playing with the code
or you know, whatever it may be. I know, hindsight's
twenty twenty, right, but I'm curious, you know, would there
have been any pivots you would have made in creating
like coin.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
One thing I thought a lot about recently is how
I probably would have stayed anonymous, similar to what Stosha
did back then I created it. Initially, when I launched it,
I didn't say like, I'm Charlie Lee.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
This is my creation, right.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
I launched it in a in a bitcoin forum under
assumed them, and then people reached out to me wanted
the interviews and stuff, and then I figured out why not, right,
so I did interviews and then that's how like my
name came out, right, So I didn't really think too
much about it. In hindsight, probably would have been better

(07:59):
to be anonymous, just to just for for privacy reasons,
and I think having like an anonymous creator like bitcoin
would would be better.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
But hindsight is twenty twenty.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
It's okay, yeah, for sure. And I'm curious is there
anything that could be done to the code today or
enhancements or any type of layer two that could be
built on like coin to expand or create new features?
And not necessarily that that's a must, but I'm just
curious because we saw, for example, etherorem pivot from proof

(08:35):
of work to proof of steak. Whether that's a great,
a good decision, I don't know. History well, you know,
we'll see over time, but I'm curious, you know, is
there anything on the roadmap or what developers are looking
at to potentially expand things on like coin.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah, we've actually done something on light coin that is
different than Bitcoin. Two years ago we launched a privacy
fundibility layer called m web on light Coin that a
little bit of privacy which is important for fungibility. This
is something that is that is a property of good
money that has been missing on on bigcoin like con previously.

(09:14):
It's the idea the fungibility is an idea that for
money to work well, every coin is equal to every
other coin, right, they shouldn't get difference between one like
coin versus the other like coin. The example I like
to use is when you go to a store and
you pay for something, you can pull out any twenty
dollar bill or any bill for that matter. It doesn't

(09:36):
matter which one you pull out. It's it's the sake, right,
There's no differentiation between one twenty dollars bill versus the other.
Of course there's a serial number on it, but it
doesn't matter. Right with bigcoin and like coin previously, that's
not the case because there's because it's a public blockchain,
there's history attached to every coin, so people can discriminate

(09:58):
against certain coins. For example, if you if you use
a dark net marketplace and then you pull out coins
from that marketplace and deposit it with a regulated exchange.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
That exchange could.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Potentially see where the coins came from and ban you
from using the exchange, right, And that's not great for money, right,
for money that you own yourself, you should be able
to use it however you want, and having kind of
uh not having funny bloody is not great. So what

(10:32):
we did with light coin is we added a second
layer using technology called Bimbo Wimble that makes transaction uh
the transaction amount hidden from anyone else other than the
sending recipient. So there's no reason when you're sending money
that the whole world can see excuse me, that the

(10:54):
whole world can see how much money you're sending. So
having that kind of be hidden from everyone else is
important privacy and fungibility feature. So yeah, I mean that
it makes The reason why bitcoin is transparent is with
the transparent blockchain is it's simple. It's important that everyone
can see how many bitcoins is out there. Right, if

(11:15):
you can't like count all the bigcoins to twenty one million,
then you don't know if there's kind of hidden inflation.
And problem with privacy coins, with any privacy coins, is
that if you can't see, you have to use cryptography
and math to kind of prove that the number of
coins is constant, right it. Transaction did not create coins

(11:35):
out in there, and that gets complicated makes the blotchain bigger.
So there are trade offs involved with privacy and with
number one, but I feel like the trade off is
very great. It's not perfect privacy by any means, but
it's good enough for every.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Day use, oh absolutely. And speaking of everyday use, you know,
we saw we don't like coin has faster transaction times
and so forth and bitcoin. But I'm curious, you know,
there are folks who have created the Lightning network for
Bitcoin to help improve day to day use and small transactions.
Is there a lightning network for a light coin anything

(12:13):
along those lines.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
There is, Actually there is a landing network on on
like one as well. And actually the lightning network on
light coin was the first to have a lightning transaction,
uh with There's a technology called segued that happened quite
a few years ago. I don't know if you've heard

(12:35):
about it. It was activated on light corn first, and
that's when the lightning network kind of the became effective
and in a lightning at which transactionally.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
Happened on like coin before it happened on Bitcoin.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
So yeah, the Lightning network is is is on light coin,
but it's not used as much because the light cooin
main net works works really well in terms of bold
fees and transactions.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
Oh yeah, for sure. I remember that was one of
I had bought bitcoin. I remember reading up on light corn.
I'm like, wait, it's faster, cheaper, and so for it.
So I had bought some LTC token. So that's that's
really cool, interesting and maybe a little bit hard question
for you, Charlie. If you were to start a crypto
project today, right, what do you think it might be

(13:22):
focused on? Would it be like privacy, AI, tokenization? What
do you think it might be around?

Speaker 1 (13:28):
It would be very hard to kind of start a
new coin today, just there's so many out there and
it's hard to the main reason that it's hard is
it's hard to get like mind share, right hard. It's
hard for people to to why would they invest in
this new coin versus like on bitcoin or any other
coins out there, right?

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Why would they support it?

Speaker 1 (13:47):
So it's kind of tough unless you're like a lot
better than what's out there, which is it's hard to
do it. It's very hard for a new coin to succeed.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
So I would be.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
Building stuff on kind of on top of it, like
maybe maybe a payment processor, maybe something something that is
useful to people. The kind of the main hindrance with
crypto today and and kind of since the beginning is
just ease of use. Right, it's a user experience. You

(14:19):
want people to use it for payments, right, but it
has to be as easy or easier than credit cards.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
Right.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
Right now, you go to your store, you scan your
credit card, swipe it or tap, and it happens like immediately,
very quickly, you get your your item, whatever you're buying,
and that's it, right. You don't care about what goes
on in the background, how many banks it goes through
before it gets approved.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
It just happens like almost instantaneously.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
Where crypto today it's it's still not easy to use,
right JR Code, sending transactions, waiting for confirmation.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
All that all that stuff needs to be kind of
in background. Two.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
The one thing is you're you're sending value instantly and
you're getting goods and services. So I think companies that
make that happen make it easy is very important.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, well said, so on that note, right, one one
of my questions for you is going to be what
does the future of crypto look like? So, in addition
to making the usability easier, do you foresee it being
these all already or or the payment processors that are
already in the world your visas, your MasterCards, your paypals, UH,

(15:35):
your banks and so forth, they have to integrate crypto.
And also they're not just these crypto assets like like coin,
but stable coins that crypto has to kind of merge
with tradify and and we find that common ground for
the adoption to happen.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah, I mean, we're seeing a lot of advancement.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
With with stable coins, right, and that and that's for
good for for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin like coin, because if
if if all the stores accept U s d C,
it's very easy for you to want to hold your
money in something that is like better money, better sound money,

(16:17):
like bitcoin like coin, and when you spend, you just
convert on the fly, right, So.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
That makes it simple.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Right, So if if a store actepts you you s
c C, they effectively accept pickcoin and like onoin and
other cryptocurrencies because there are services that let you convert
coins on the fly, so you send out like coin,
the recipient gets USDC and everyone's happy. So you don't
have to store your money in in fiat currencies, right
U SDC is based off of USD. If you if

(16:45):
you're just holding USCC, effectively just holding US dollar which
is getting inflated away over time, so you can store
your money in good sound money and spend it wherever.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
So that's good for everyone, oh for sure.

Speaker 3 (16:58):
Now, jumping back to what you said about you know,
if you were too, it's going to be very difficult
to start a new project or token. You would rather
work on fixing the usability and experience. There are a
lot of projects out there now, Charlie, a lot more
than you know when you got into market, when I
got into market in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. What do
you think happens over time? Let's say we fast forward

(17:20):
to twenty thirty five. Is it going to be a
lot of projects are going to go to zero? Maybe
some consolidation, Maybe there's I don't know, Charlie, like top
fifty blockchains or crypto assets in the market, or top
one hundred, and that's kind of it.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah, I mean it's it's just normal right where if
you compare it to like the to the Internet, dot
COM's right there, everyone's trying different things, right, but the.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Valuable projects would rest to the top, So like.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
The Googles, the Ebays, the Amazons, and then stuff like pets,
dot com and other things would die off right, find
a product market fit, right, So that happens with it's
happening with crypto, right. They're like you previously mentioned, there
are a lot of coins other than like coin that
were potentially even launched earlier than like coin that don't

(18:15):
exist anymore because there's no product market fit that nobody
cared enough to support it. And the thing with the
centralized currency is if there are people running nodes, people
using it, the project would survive. It's it's almost like
a living thing, right, It's it kind of lives on.

(18:36):
It's a decentralized network supported by people. As long as
there are people supporting it, it would go on. So
if the project, the decentralized currency, dies, it's because nobody
cares about any where.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Nobody's running nose and nobody's using anymore.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
So yeah, similarly with with other projects, I think the
good ones, the ones that are useful, will will stick around,
and the ones that don't find the use case would
die off.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
Oh for sure. And some of the on and off
ramps so to speak that are being built for crypto
assets and of course for light cooin are digital acid
treasuries and ets. You know, you mentioned earlier light Strategy,
So tell us a bit about light Strategy as a company.
Was it formed specifically to be a light coin treasury

(19:22):
or was it a company that existed but is now
adding a like cooin strategy.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
It was a company that existed, it's a it was
a healthcare company. Better're pivoting into a like cooin treasury strategy.
So the company got uh an investment, a pipe investment
of one hundred million dollars, and they deployed that int
biome light cooin, and they're actively managing it, finding different
ways to to kind of make money off of that

(19:49):
initial investment. Yeah, in terms of like these treasure companies,
it's a it's an interesting kind of thing copening right now.
Started it by MicroStrategy, and it's it's kind of it's
very new, right, so nobody knows what the future holds
right now. A lot of these companies are having a

(20:09):
tough time. The market is down, the price of the
stock for those companies are are most of the cases
less than the amount of coins are holding, right, less
than less than nave. So it's a it's interesting where
things will go. It's a very exciting space. As a mentioned,

(20:29):
previous to light coin didn't have a pre mind, so
we don't have like a like a big foundation, right,
a lot of coins, including like Ethereum, they have a
very wealthy foundation holding a lot of coins that were
kind of printed out in there and they can sell
off the coins, use the coins to to further the project.
Although with like coin being more decentialized with no pre mind,

(20:53):
the foundation is very lean. We the amount of money
we spend every year is about like two hundred dollars
versus like millions with other coins, right, other coin foundation.
So having like a company like light Strategy with one
hundred million dollars with a light coin kind of supporting
the ecosystem is great for a light coin because they

(21:15):
can they have more more capital to kind of support
light coin, which which helps that company, which helps light
Strategy itself, right, So it's a.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Win wind for the company. For the coin and for
the ecosystem.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
I don't know if you can speak to you know
some of the strategies they may have for major market
downturns or bear markets, right, because we know inevitably there's
going to be a bear market. It's all cyclical. Would
it be like certain types of DeFi activities to earn
passive yield so to speak, so that even if the
value of the token is down with everything else, right,

(21:49):
the stock market, everything else, if we're in a bear market,
there's that revenue being generated so to speak, to help
keep things going. I don't know if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
Yeah, there there are strategies, uh, caval market strategies like
call options and stuff that that we're using to.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
To make money off of it.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
We also announce a twenty five million dollars buy back
of the stock. So because the stock is priced lower
than NAV, it's a created to investors for the company
to buy back the stock to sell to sell some
light coins, buy back the stock at a lot of price. Basically,
the market is pricing a light coin for for less

(22:34):
than it's worth. So doing that makes everyone who's holding
lets the stock own more light cooin, right, So it
increases the number of light cooin per per stock per share,
which is which is great for everyone, right, So the
company is doing stuff that that is that is good

(22:57):
for the for its shareholders. So whether it's if the
if the price is above nav, they would sell more
stock to buy more like coins and vice versa. It's
effectively like buying low selling high. So whenever the market
gives the company would take advantage of it and being
able to buy low and sell high. Over time, you're
just making more and more like coin for the shareholders.

(23:20):
So that's what the good company is doing and I
think it's a it's a great strategy. So we'll see
how that plays out. But like the market is, is
very volatile right right now, it seems like we're going
to bear market, but then the next day we get
to all time high again, right, So that's happened a
few times, so we'll see be.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
Able to kind of whether the storm is very in
the coin.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
Oh absolutely. And on the other side of the token,
you have ETFs and I just had Canary Capital CEO
Steve mcclar gone and we talked about the like on ETF.
So I'm curious what are your thoughts on you know
this body TF going live. It's it's the first if
I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, well, I've been a a supporter of Stephen and
the Canary Capital for a while. I'm an investor in
the company and also a seed investor in the ETF.
I provided the first million dollars worth of capital into
the or seed into the ETF when it launched. So yeah,
I'm here supportive that the ETF. I think it's great.

(24:21):
It's another way for people to get exposure to like
onin the asset class. Like normally, buying light coin is
not easy, right, You go to exchange, you buy some
like coins, and then you either you decide where not
you hold on exchange, which is risky, or have your
own wallet, which is more complicated. But with an ETF,

(24:43):
people are used to buying stock on a brokerage account
and holding it right, so they're just buying the LTCC
stock and then you're you have exposure to like quinn
ascid class. So it makes it easy for for anyone
to invest in like coin, So I think that's great.
Also in addition to you also Life Strategy is another
It's an actively managed like coin investment, so you have

(25:07):
both passive like investment ETFs and also active like investment companies.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
So it's great you can do both.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
Do you feel overall these ETFs that are being launch
not just for like coin before you from bitcoin in others,
is this major tipping point for adoption because to your point,
almost anyone can invest in it now because it's in
that safe wrapper, right, whether you're an endowment, you're some
pension fund, or even you're just their average joe who's like,

(25:36):
I don't I'm scared of coinbase or I'm scared of
you know, these wallets up, but hey, I know by
ets my ri a, my wealth manager tells me about it. Trump,
the Trump administration is opening up for one case to
invest in crypto assets and other things. So it just
allows kind of the mainstream capital to come in a bit.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yeah, it's huge.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
I mean if you just look at an issue when
when gold ETF launched, it was huge, the same thing
we have bitcoin and light coin. Just just making it
easy for people to for traditional markets to invest in
in cryptocurrency is is a huge step.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Right.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
It's just making it easy for like you said, for pensions,
for endowments, whereas before they just can't participate. Uh my,
my high school has an endowment. I went to boarding
school in New Jersey on Orangeville School.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
And they.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
A few years ago they invested a bit into bitcoin, right.
I think they only put like one percent, which is
which is pretty big, right of endowment in in bitcoin.
I mean I I kind of helped convince them to
do that. And then now like that percentage became a
lot bigger than than one percent, so they're trying to

(26:54):
figure out they still want to be that invested. But
it was tough to convince them to invest in in
crypto because they have to kind of hold cryptocurrencies on
a change or something like that, right, or on code wallets.
But now it's it's very simple right now for for
endowments to invest in cryptocurrencies. All they can do is
just by d atf Yeah, so I think it's huge, Oh.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
Yeah, for sure. And then you know, Charlie, what we're seeing. Also,
countries are including the United States, looking to set up
digital asset reserves, and obviously the big one, the bigcoin reserve.
But I can imagine that after a bigcoin reserve is established,
some of these countries may want to go beyond bitcoin
and add other assets. Are you and the folks of
the like Cooin foundation, you know, talking to different jurisdictions

(27:38):
and governments around the world about potentially holding light coin
part of their reserve if you want to call it that.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
Yeah, I think I think it's it's great that countries
are looking to you. I think it's the next next
big thing where countries are doing putting part of their
treasury into into cryptocurrencies. I'm personally not talking to any
any country about doing that. And the best thing about
like at the essential cryptocurrency like bitcoin like coin is
that they don't need to talk to me to do

(28:06):
They don't need my permission, and they can they can
just buy right. And similarly with bitcoin eight they can't
even find Satoshi right, so there's no there's no one
to ask, So it's decentralized. It's it's kind of like gold, right,
there's no one to talk to you gold and silver.
If they want, if they think it's a good it's
good kind of reserve asset for the treasury, they would

(28:30):
just buy some and hold it.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
Since you mentioned mentioned Satocian and like I said, yeah,
I view you as one of the godfathers of this industry, right,
and this acid class. Who do you think Satoshi is?
Is it one person, a group of people? Was it?
How finny you were on the forum? So I'm just
curious what you think it could be.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
How I mean, it's it's very strange. I think it's
a it's a very cool story with bitcoin. I think
it's hard to imagine one person launching it, just being
a wile to know all this and kind of create it.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Seems like it would require more than one person.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
But then if it was a group of people, I'm
surprised how nothing leak right. Normally, if it's more than
one person knows about something, something is going to come.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Out, right.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
So having a group of people keep the secret for
so long is is is unexpected. So so I don't
know the fact that how Canny passed away makes it
possible that it's it's someone that took kind of the
secret to his grave.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
So I hope.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
I mean, on one hand, I hope I find out
who it is. I'd be very cool to kind of
talk to Satoshi. But also on the other hand, I
think it's good for bigcoinning corsecurrency that like we never
find out, just that the fact that it's a mystery
and it's kind of just launched mysteriously and it works.
The one thing is that it doesn't matter who created it, right,

(30:04):
it works really well. It's the best form of money
we've ever seen, and it stands on the song because
of what it is and not because of who created
or how it was created.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
Yeah, well said I'm I have the same feelings and sentiment.
It's like, on one hand, I would love to know,
but also it's like it's a great feature that no
one knows who's stoti is and and that's one of
the big powerful, you know, benefits of bitcoin right that
people don't know. So yeah, it's just fascinating. I'm curious.

(30:36):
You know what's on your roadmap or on the foundation
roadmap that you can share that you know, maybe you
have for twenty twenty six and I know some things
maybe on the wrap, but anything that you can give
a hint on.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
We are so focused on on end web and web adoption.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
So and where like I said, was the is the
pharmacy fundability there on top of the like coin. So
I think it's key for for for a good sound
money to be to be fungible. So one of our
focuses is that just making m web easier to use,
having a support on different wallstside people use, and then

(31:13):
making it easier for people to kind of move coins
between m web and the main chain and and spend
m web spend like coin privately. I think it is
very important as I do as I think privacy is
a is a kind of a human right. People should
have the right to privacy in their money, right, monor important?

Speaker 2 (31:37):
Yeah? What else?

Speaker 1 (31:38):
We have like coin Summit every year. It's a place
where people like on supporters can come together to kind
of listen to the other speakers talk about like coin
and and just have a place where we can chat.
Last year we did it at the last in Las Vegas.

(32:00):
Next or sorry, this year we didn't Earlier this year
we did in Las Vegas. Next year we haven't an
answer yet.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
We're going to have a licron some of it. It's
going to be very exciting.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
As well awesome. Well maybe I can try to make
it out to that one, you know, once it's announced.
But uh, great stuff, Charlie. I didn't want to get
your thoughts on, you know, the evolution of the crypto market.
We are seeing Banks Wall Street firms. Uh, everybody is
now jumping into this asset class and technology. Not only
are there launching financial products, but they're building with the technology,

(32:33):
like tokenizing it much more. You know, what are your
thoughts on that? Is that both good and bad? You know,
I love to get your take as an OG who's
seen it from the ground up.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
I think it's great that people are embracing crypto watching
technologies and trying different things. The downside I see is
a lot of the people are building what I call
it solutions looking for a problem.

Speaker 4 (32:58):
Right.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
They're they're saying they only kind of fit crypto blockchain
in in in situations where it doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
Right.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
So the reason why bitcoin like goin use of blockchain,
why its centralized, is for.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
Is for is for its kind of decentralization. Right.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
Blockchain is isn't effectively an inefficient database, right, it's as
database storage solution for for transactions that is inefficient, right,
because you have to run those you have to mind.
So the reason why like coin needs it is because
it provides censorship resistant properties of money. Right, So nobody

(33:45):
can stop a like con transaction. Nobody can stop from
sending like on to someone else. There's no intermediary and
with that it makes it makes it good money. Right.
But then because it's decentralized, it's inefficient. You need a
lot of people running those, a lot of people mining.
So people trying to kind of use blockchain for something

(34:08):
that can be easily solved with just a centralized database
makes no sense, right, So amester really need decentralization, you
wouldn't use blotching.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
I guess I can just follow up with you on
the market conditions. Obviously we've seen a lot of volatility.
I don't know if you can give any predictions, not
necessarily price, but do you see this bull market, let's say,
continuing into twenty twenty six.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
For me, I've always been very bullish. I think.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yes, early on, like the peak of the cycle of
this bull market, I would say like one hundred and
fifty k bitcoin. I still think we'll get there. I mean,
all these bull markets and burn marks, there's always there's
always kind of ups and downs, right, It's very volatile.
So right now we're we're a little bit down, We're
still very high compared to like a few years ago.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
Right, So.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Potentially we'll we'll go back and give your ball market
and go to auto high again. No one, No one
really knows, right if someone tells you, tells you they
know the future, that they didn't make making stuff up right,
So it could go either way. I mean, it's kind
of like a cop out. But I'm very bullish. I
think it will go up. I think there's still more

(35:28):
legs for this, for this bull market. But I also
wouldn't be surprised if if we go back down from
from this point.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
Do you foresee that over time as this acid class
matures and there's more liquidity, there's more holders of tokens
and things like that across the globe, that there's less
volatility over time. Yeah, I think it's it's natural for
it to be. As as more and more people get
into this space, as as it mature, as it will
be less volatile. The reason why it's volta is, I

(35:56):
mean since the beginning, like when I first got into
though it's it's super balved, right. The reason why it's
fault is because it's about the price kind of is
capturing kind of the future outlook of crypto. Right, So
if people more and more real sorry, the lad bitcoin
is the future of money, it's going to be the

(36:16):
world reserve currency, then then price will shoot out. Right.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
If there's after like.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Exchange getting hacked and people are kind of concerned saying
like it's impossible to hold this coin, you always get hacked,
you just lose your money, then the price will drop.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
Right.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
So you see that all the time throughout the past
few cycles. Right, So when there's polish things in the
market where where recently like companies adopting crypto, even countries
allott in crypto, the price goes up and then and
then there there's just downturns. So it's as that kind
of evolves over time and becomes uh kind of the

(36:55):
future becomes more certain, the price will will say, right,
and I expect that to happen, but it might still
take a few cycles before that happens.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
Okay, Charlie, I got some wrap up questions here. First,
if you could create your own metaverse, what would the
theme be?

Speaker 1 (37:11):
So I'm a big Star Wars fan, so I'd love
to create like a kind of a Star Wars in
universe metaverse.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
That would be pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Yeah, I think something that is kind of nostalgic would
be awesome.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Yeah, I would love that to be immersed as like
you know in Star Wars. I'm a big Star Wars
fan too. That would be amazing.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
And I thought the the Star Wars Hotel before they
shut it down. I thought that was a very cool
experience if you're a Star Wars fan. Unfortunately, they couldn't
make enough money, so they shut it down.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
Oh man, is that in in California? It was in Florida, Florida. Okay, yeah,
I gotta check that out.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
I don't anymore because they it doesn't like they tore
it down.

Speaker 3 (37:59):
Oh man, that sucks. Rapid fire questions. First favorite food,
favorite food chees sticks, favorite musician or band, red hot
chili peppers, favorite movie, Star Wars, favorite book?

Speaker 2 (38:15):
Favorite book? Oh the hard one?

Speaker 3 (38:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (38:19):
What's that?

Speaker 3 (38:19):
I said? Yeah, somebod These are hard to pick your favorite, right, Yeah?

Speaker 1 (38:22):
I mean I've read so many books growing up. The Hobbit,
not out the Rings. The Hobbit was my favorite.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Ah.

Speaker 3 (38:31):
Interesting. And when you're not working, what are you doing
for fun? Watch sports?

Speaker 1 (38:36):
I also I played hockey, so.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, I love I love hockey.

Speaker 3 (38:43):
That's awesome, man, Charlie. Absolute pleasure. I Like I said
at the beginning, I have some like corn tokens from
back in the day. Yeah, so I'm certainly a supporter,
and you know, I appreciate all you've done for the
industry and we've come afar away, and I you know,
I'd love to interview you again at some point. Maybe
I attend to summit and we can talk a bit

(39:05):
and chat and record there. But thank you so much
for taking the time to do this.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, thanks for having me. That's fun.

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