Luke: [00:00:00] You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist, and this one features Chris Ghent, a blockchain growth expert currently serving as chief growth officer at Input Output, where he’s helping deliver a future vision of Web3 with research and development at the core. He’s also an advisor at Bit AI, a platform enabling you to leverage agents that can create, sell, and manage digital assets across multiple blockchains. In this episode we discuss the evolution of blockchain technologies and the convergence of Web3 and AI, how to approach marketing and product development in the blockchain space, along with strategies for community engagement and brand development, the significant role of privacy in the future of digital transactions, and the transformative potential of AI in areas like identity protection, governance, and social advancements.

Now for this week’s episode of The Brave Technologist.

Chris, man, welcome to brave technologist. How you doing today?

Luke: Good, it’s good

Chris: to be back in the Brave realm,

Luke: I know.

Chris: technologist, the marketer, all the things.

Luke: It’s great, man. And I know that you’ve recently switched roles. why don’t you give us a breakdown of what [00:01:00] you’re up to these days?

Chris: Alright, so doing a lot of things,

Luke: actually. The last two years, actually, a year and a half since I left the Near Foundation, I’ve been doing a lot of advising work. Funny enough, we’re sitting in an AI summit in the AI space and watching the evolution of Web 3 and AI kind of culminating. So I’ve been advising a Mint based team, which actually rebranded as Bitta, super focused on where Web3 meets AI.

And really, I ended up taking a role with Charles Hodgkinson’s input output as Chief Growth Officer. So really looking across portfolio opportunities across all Web3, but also looking at, again, where Web3 meets AI. And what the growth of the industry looks like based on that. So it’s been pretty neat to see.

Things have evolved a ton, but there’s a lot going on. I mean, you can see the floor out here. It’s just. Crazy see where things are going and a lot of folks here, not exactly web three native, but I think we get where things are going and how to talk to them today.

the interesting part is what’s going been built. So, privacy’s been

Chris: Also, [00:02:00] the interesting part is most people know input output for launching Cardano. You know, IOHK has been a name for quite some time. Charles has been a name since the days of Ethereum and even further back into Bitcoin and doing education there. And a lot of the focus really has been about advancement.

The team’s been building, building, building for a number of years. You know, sometimes they get flack for, oh, things are happening in Cardano land, but they’ve had a ton of other projects being built. And a lot of what they’re looking at doing is fostering ventures to be developed, not only in Cardano, but actually looking at what the needs of the wider ecosystem are. And so, privacy’s been a huge focus, which obviously, the lion here is a little bit focused on that. But really, it was an opportunity to look at not just trying to drive a community. Layer one brand forward, which I did across Tezos and across near. And even with singular DTV later breaker, which is a consensus spin out.

But really looking at how do we teach the world where things are going? Cause I don’t think people realize how fast both finance and the kind of normal e commerce worlds are [00:03:00] changing with AI at the core when you guys see it with brave and all of that stuff. So. It’s kind of wild. The, the notion of where Charles is going is really how do you unlock human potential and how do you give people their freedoms back in a way to actually associate with who and what they want to drive, like, commercial opportunities forward and really be able to express yourself in the most natural way of who you are and so unlocking human potential really was the thing for me of going, I’ve been in this industry, I’ve been in traditional brands and every brand talks about unlocking humanity but truly he’s been looking at What are the things that we can truly do to not only advance Web3, Cardano, and frankly, every other major chain.

But really drive adoption in a way that’s going to allow people to fully experience their full potential. And obviously, AI is playing a big role in that in the short term and medium term

Luke: Yeah, well, and I think one of those things is kind of like, it’s interesting in the crypto space, people get dogged for a lot of stuff that like in other spaces are like benefits, right? having longevity, like having a really strong community that stuck with you for a long time, right?

Like, [00:04:00] and it seemed like, I don’t know, we were at Rare Evo, right? they were going through some major changes with like, decentralizing a lot of the governance for Cardano and stuff. And it was one of the takeaways for me that was surprising is just like, One, how many things are actually there that we don’t know about?

And then two, like the community is so diehard about this. you have these really good ingredients. what are ways that you guys were thinking about growing input, output, like, more adoption or kind of getting the word out.

Chris: First step, obviously, we’re always looking at things like how do we get Project Catalyst to fund things like Brave. Obviously we don’t have a ton of influence. Charles and team don’t really vote with data that they hold. So when we really look at the opportunity, it’s about, a lot of these, like, ecosystems don’t truly know how to go to market.

And so a lot of the, the growth function I have now oversees marketing as well as BD and starting to go, how do we mix those worlds across products like Lace, which is one of their wallets? How do we develop better infrastructure? How do we ensure that the standards are up to par? And at the same time looking at what do people actually need?

What are they engaging with? Where are good investments and bad investments from a technology development perspective? And again, [00:05:00] privacy is the big one for, for input output. So they’ve been doing a ton of research and development in that front. You’ve probably maybe heard of Midnight Network but launching new layer one next year benefits to Cardano, but benefits to six or seven other core ecosystems, everything from potentially Avalanche to Solana, to Ethereum, to BNB. And so. The idea of cross chain, I’d say, removing the competition and really getting back to a collaborative nature of the industry, I think, is really what we’re looking at is.

Luke: Let’s drill into that a little bit. Like what, what is midnight all about? Like what, what is that, you know, kind of project working just so people understand,

Chris: So, everybody used to talk about blockchains can’t keep a secret.

Luke: Right!

Chris: The team at Midnight has really looked at how do you actually shield data and metadata. Like, if you think about enterprises being able to come on chain, if you do all your

transactional things on chain, it might be quite hard for an enterprise to actually justify sharing those and even optimizing their businesses. So for this team, they’re really looking at how do you actually deliver that in a way that’s secure. And when you look at things like the way Cardano is actually distributed, like pretty [00:06:00] healthy node network, truly how do you decentralize the access, but how do you decentralize privacy?

And so thinking about that a little bit further down when you step back to input output, it’s, you know, you’ve got something like Cardano that’s in a lot of ways stood the test of time, multiple cycles, still top 10. Couldn’t tell you where it is today. But really thinking about, that’s by market cap, we’re looking long tail at what’s the 10 year vision of where things are going.

And so, the idea that privacy is going to be a core requirement in a lot of ways. And in an AI driven world, privacy is going to become more important. So, thinking AI agents actually access data. How do you ensure data protections are in place. A layer one like Bindite could actually be a core infrastructure component to that recipe.

Some of the teams like Bitta that I advise, same thing. They’re going, well, we want to be able to do these things and help people either create a certain action, whether that’s purchasing a pair of shoes at the best price, all the way down to like, how do I make more money? You know, BlackRock’s not going to want to be out there shilling all their trade secrets, because that’s how they make their money.

And so for [00:07:00] us, it’s, you know, really looking at how can something Like midnight become core infrastructure. And that’s a lot of the layer one games, but at the same time, the idea that you can actually be Almost a layer or two for privacy to everybody. It becomes a really interesting

opportunity.

Luke: Well, just to kind of back up a like, um, you’ve been advising projects, you’ve been working on different L1s through different cycles, and like, how is that, navigating through like these like crazy, you know, volatility, right? Like where you’ve got you’ve got one team you’re advising on one, has one mission, and then you’ve All of a sudden the bottom goes out from under everything, right? is it, is it a game of pivoting and kind of finding where the market fit lands or how do you navigate that?

Ohh.

Chris: It’s interesting. If you actually watch folks like nears evolution kind of fascinating. They started as near AI way back when prior to ever launching a blockchain or a token and their evolution actually went from being an AI company when AI wasn’t hot to being and recognizing that. Web3 actually can enable protections for the AI world that they saw coming.

And thinking about things like [00:08:00] singularity. It’s like, well, actually, how do you get ahead of these things and, and create the right infrastructure requirements? And also, how can it scale? You look today and it’s like, they’re probably one of the hottest AI focused layer ones. But at the same time, you start to go, well, was that always the plan?

Luke: right.

Chris: There, there was, there was dancing. My argument would be, I think there was always a Semblance of a plan there and at the end of the day, I think a lot of teams Really comes down to what’s their funding because like anything it’s is it token funded is the Treasury managed well Do you have what you need to actually deploy?

Do you have what you need to run? Do you have the right distribution? Because at the end of day for example if a foundation were to run out of money does the community still continue thriving and growing So a lot of what I’ve seen is actually really interesting, smart treasury management, as a requirement. And actually when you think about where AI could be helpful for people, how do you actually be smart about treasury management.

Luke: True.

Chris: In the, off season, and being able to think about how do you focus on building and prioritize, which tends to be the problem in the on season, right? Because money comes in, price goes [00:09:00] up on certain assets, and next thing you know, people are spending, and product focus sometimes loses focus.

So I, what I’ve seen actually a lot of people, the good teams have been refining and really just staying true to, to who they are and where they’re going. And that’s actually going back to your original questions. Part of what interested me in input output, Charles has always had a long term vision and you know, you hear things about ADA or Cardano and all these things plenty of FUD, but at the same time, the focus for input output isn’t just Cardano, it’s been a core infrastructure development partner.

But when you look at what’s the long tail vision, it’s really where’s the world moving and how do you participate in that?

Luke: Yeah. And I think like, uh, you and it’s not every day to that. I’m talking to somebody that works on the go to market side that has worked on multiple different like ones and right? Like more generally speaking, like, I mean, we’ve both been in this game for a long time. When you look at go to market and adoption with crypto in general, like do you think that we’re pacing behind where you? Would hope we would be by now or do you think that like we’re [00:10:00] farther than we should we imagine like what do you and what do you think the hang ups are like? Yeah,

Chris: But thinking about brand has always been the biggest thing. Like, why does this lion matter? Like, what does it stand for? I think a lot of the, the industry is, you know, Not invested enough in it. I mean, one of the things I always thought was interesting that Vitalik had put a paper out for was good marketing takes time.

And I always found that to be an interesting insight but then you look at Ethereum and you go, has it ever really done marketing? Not really, like, the Ethereum Foundation hasn’t really been out there fostering it. You’d see things like Gitcoin and other projects getting traction and fostering development and people excited about the price action and I think that’s always been the switch.

It’s really how do you move from price action as the marketing vehicle, which I think is terrible, to the idea that it actually is going to mean something in your life and in your world. And so thinking about what the associations of, frankly,

Luke: [00:11:00] Right.

Chris: And being able to think about, hey, what does that brand mean to you?

What does that layer of technology mean to you? Half of us don’t know how half the things on

our phone or credit cards or any of those payment networks work. Those technologies don’t really mean anything to us on a day to day, but the platforms built on top do. not to show brave, but thinking about brave has always meant something to me because it’s been privacy, privacy, privacy.

Having worked in ad tech going, well, I know how much data we’re hemorrhaging and you, know, I worked on a certain brand that Literally made band aids and I go, so if I can get 50 percent off my

band aids, I’m going to give up this, this, and this, whether it’s my phone number, my name, my email address, and then those became precursors for removing privacy. And so when I think about, is AI going to make that better or worse, is Web3 going to make that better or worse, big question. So for, for me, it’s really, how do we move the industry forward? How do we look at the products and how do we actually help them? Brands be developed in a way that [00:12:00] help people understand what’s changing around them and bring them in and not scare them The scary part I think those tactics work to a degree But you go if you’re a big brand like Apple you can afford a little bit of scariness and the idea that hey My iPhone actually provides privacy and one of the best privacy ads I think I’ve seen out there with the pigeons or birds flying around as cameras and you go. I mean it

Luke: game right now.

I agree with a lot of that too, I think, you know, it is hard, it is like fighting against the community against the community Yep How much of that becomes a distraction from actually like building something useful for people? Like it’s a tricky thing in this market. But are you finding like, um, at input output, like kind of thinking about products and go to market? is there a kind of a renewed attitude towards getting more useful products out there for people?

Cause I heard Charles that like where Ivo was talking about gaming applications and stuff like that, that you guys are up to. Like, are there some [00:13:00] killer use cases that you guys are kind of working to ramp up that you can share about?

Chris: Probably not share too much, but I think, you know, we’ve got a killer head of product in Mike Ward and really thinking about how do we take the products that have been in a portfolio or been existing today and look and go, what is their use from past years to future state? I’m really starting to think about how do you get more people in and involved in an active, and that’s not just from a, Hey, engage with like a Cardano, it’s really thinking about, how do you make this experience easier for people?

How do you dog food it in the right way, whether it’s internal organization to go, would our, would even our people use it? But also to go, if you’re testing communities, could it benefit the specific layer one community? Could it actually get out to the broader community? And I think about Brave often, because it’s right, you browse, you’re protected, you’re protected.

You’ve got a wallet. If you want to do Web3 stuff, you can. You don’t have to, but you can also participate at the easiest way of getting that.

And I think when we think about truly where is the attention these days, a lot of what we’re watching is what are people latching on to? [00:14:00] And how do we make it easier for them to try without being scared?

And that’s AI as well. So, you’re thinking about, well, everything costs money, compute costs money. Well, how do you incentivize that? And

actually I think that’s one of the most interesting things with Brave right now is You have the ability to actually incentivize people to not

only block advertising experience what the private web can be, but you also have means of potentially going, hey,

engage with this product over here like a Leo.

You start thinking about agents and what AI agents could do and how that could be funded or fueled by something like that

or ADA or some other type of token. You start to go,

actually, if you’ve engaged people in the right way, it doesn’t really cost them more than their attention to engage further. And.

When I think about things like near even ago, you know, the, the attention economy and the idea that the idea that attention is truly all you need which was the, the white paper that really did spark a lot of things like chat GPT and transformers, you start to think what’s the opportunity to actually help people understand that not just the, Hey, you know, you’re being [00:15:00] monetized and you are the product and all that stuff, but actually go, Hey, Your attention is value, but your attention’s value could actually make your life better.

And that’s one of the pieces with crypto that I go, I don’t think people realize that. It’s not just number go up culture. It’s technology, open source, and these things that can actually make lives around the world better. I just came from Argentina for Cardano’s Constitutional Convention, and it wasn’t lost on me that community governance hasn’t really been a very open and transparent process across different ecosystems.

And you start to think, governance isn’t always an open process either. Sure. You can watch on C SPAN and see who’s voting on what, but how do you actually get more people engaged and involved when engagement rates are low? Well, you got to get their attention. And so thinking about that, I go, what are ways that we can get more people interested and involved to be curious?

And oftentimes that’s through brand initiatives. That’s through marketing. That’s through, I’d say brand led products. And so we’re starting to look at that quite a bit of what are, what are Not explicitly branded products, but brand led products that actually help pay off why we’re doing any of the

things we’re [00:16:00] doing.

Luke: Yeah. No, I think it’s like, cool, too. It’s one of those things where, kind of one of the nice things about that ICO era, you know, with, with crypto was that, like, It was almost like there was this kind of people were thinking about how can we take these kind of not predatory some cases predatory models that have permeated the internet to like work on making them You know added value to the user right and and there was kind of a certain energy then around Thinking of rethinking these different things just because people were making tokenization cases for them, right?

Like, But I think, too, like, you mentioned Argentina, too, and, and that’s an area that’s been getting in the news lately around, I know that, that Charles has been working with, I think he was, there was some news around, you know, the incoming administration and, I know it’s Argentina stuff, like, what is, Input Output doing on the governmental level?

Is it, helping to kind of, like, educate on crypto or is it something else?

Chris: Yeah, so actually one of the things I was most impressed by is the legal team at InputOutput has been involved in educating for quite some time. And it’s not through specific ventures like Crypto Council for Innovation, or POSA, or any of the groups that a lot of former teams I worked [00:17:00] on were involved with.

They’ve really been trying to do the work and be in DC and talk. And talk like people that are professionals, not just talking about the importance of deregulation and trying not to get blocked from the SEC and all those things. They’ve really been looking at, how do we discuss the things that actually matter?

And I have to say the, legal team’s been phenomenal on that stuff. The, has any legal team been guarded about things to avoid and all of that? But I think the, the reality is they’ve been in the conversation. And when I was first interviewing with the input output team, one of the things that stood out to me was actually, Charles went and spent a lot of time in DC.

He was talking on the hill. He was giving insights He was talking about the innovations that his own company Which sits in Colorado is actually contributing to the US and trying to make us smarter And you don’t see a lot of people coming out and doing that There were some that you know, you want to look back and go should they have been in DC? at the same time you look and go, you know At least folks were trying, whether or not for good or bad reasons, a whole nother

discussion.

But the, the genuine nature of the [00:18:00] discussions, in DC for years, I think for input output have been actually impactful.

Luke: yeah. And how is that working in outside the US going to? are these other governments like receptive to the technology or you finding that they have like an understanding of the basics on it? Or I mean, cause it seems like, you know, you look at like, like El Salvador is taking pretty aggressive and different approach like with Bitcoin, but then like Argentina is kind of a different, you know, animal in itself, right?

Like in other places around the world too, but like, how, what’s your take from having been in the room and some of those things?

Chris: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of folks are looking at how do we make infrastructure leapfrog to current state advancements. And even if you look at our own country in places like California, right, you’ve got teams like Spruce Spruce Systems with Spruce ID working on DMV initiatives and you go, well, they realize that there’s a ton of fraud in the systems, how do you protect on that?

Some of that’s obviously how do you increase taxes and all of that stuff in terms of getting paid for IDs and likely tax compliance. But at the same time, you’re actually providing goods to the citizens and you can actually self custody your identity, you can potentially save people’s lives. [00:19:00] Time in your life by maybe not having to go back to the DMV.

But really thinking about how do you ensure that there’s safety in the system, I think is where a lot of these things are going. And so I think places like Argentina, I believe that they’ve talked about pilots around identity and those kinds of things as well. Starting to see those things pop up more and more.

And I think we’re only in the place now where some of the companies like a spruce are actually starting to look and go, Hey, the opportunity here is actually to get more people engaged. And if you can get more people engaged. Again, the tax system might collect a little bit more, but at the same time, you might actually get people voting on things better.

You might have people feeling

safer in the system. And if you can self custody your identity, you might actually be able to? remain more private, and actually shift the surveillance economy in a different way. And I think that’s part of where actually things like midnight can come into play too, because if you are who you are and you don’t have to share all your information, you can send proofs.

And so the idea of ZK stuff coming to market too. A lot of times people used to talk about privacy being a scary thing. You guys know from Brave, privacy [00:20:00] can simply just be blocking your browsing history. It can be like, I don’t want to hear about Adidas or Nikes all day long while I go around the other parts of the internet.

It’s, I just want to use the internet. I want to go out and do what I want to do. And I don’t need to be chased all around and monetized. And I think at the state and even federal level, if you start to think about passports, sure, everyone knows where you go into different ports of entry and those kinds of things.

But what if you never had to actually like. Hand someone your passport. What if you didn’t have to give your airline that information you could actually have? things like TSA pre check and all clear and all those kinds of things actually having Information without ever having to hold the information is a really interesting future that that I’m thinking about and going Those things actually matter a ton particularly in the crypto industry not just on the investment side But the idea that hey a big company like a black rock or anybody else could actually Help incentivize people to see that this stuff isn’t scary or scammy.

And I think we’re at a really unique time in that sense where institutional players are coming in, [00:21:00] but there’s also a lot of institutional liability when you think about the amount of data that they hold and data compliance and all of that. So I think we’re looking at the opportunity of Web three is, I guess we’re calling it these days, unlocking that and it not just be like, hey, token value might go up.

It’s no compute has value. We all, I think, for the most part, agree on that.

Luke: Yeah.

Chris: But the ability for us to actually go, the future can look very different if we build it that way. And when I think about AI using a ton of data the idea that your data can be monetized. I don’t really know of anybody else and not to pick on brave and, and, and pat you guys on the back, but I can’t think of anywhere else that’s actually going, no, your, your data has value too.

And you’ll, you’ll get value back from that.

Luke: Yeah, no, and I think, it’s also, like, just to build on that too, a lot of the things around personal data, Felt very theoretical, right? Like a couple of years ago, but now it’s almost like impossible to not have gone through a data breach at some point right by now. And so like businesses are starting to feel like you’re saying the liability, right? And [00:22:00] regulation And all these things are there. So it definitely feels like different. but one more question on the marketing side too. I think like, you’ve worked blockchain projects go to markets like, What stuff have you seen work well in marketing with these things versus things that just have not worked?

Chris: It’s interesting, I mean one of the the earliest things we did with near was actually out of home And the reason for it, which we never really talked about that publicly was The reason we did buses here in cities like New York and in Miami for Art Basel was because we knew we could actually penetrate Certain audiences that were exposed at things like Art Basel without ever having to be at Art Basel because we knew we could actually get here Device ID and prospect off of you.

And later have a conversation with you going, you didn’t have to go out all that data away. And you didn’t even know that that bus that went by that told you something about near crypto or mint base or whatever. You didn’t even know that we got your device ID like, and for the event organizers, it’s like, Hey, it was great.

You kind of [00:23:00] concentrated all those people interested in things we’re trying to communicate to in one place.

All we had to do is run buses

around it. Like we didn’t have to pay. We didn’t have to sponsor. We didn’t have to do any of that, but we could get device IDs. theoretically, we could track you in perpetuity,

Chris: Until it probably got annoying.

But I think being able to shift that conversation was actually quite interesting one for us to test. But even for something like brave, it actually gives the opportunity to say, Hey, those things shouldn’t be happening. Or at a minimum, if you’re willing to opt into that, shouldn’t you get rewarded?

Luke: Right, right.

Chris: And that’s the part for me where I think playing with those types of literal vehicles are Something that you can shift the narrative and tone.

We also gave people the ability to scan right from the side of a bus and get a crypto wallet and NFT at the time. Actually dead mouse was launching a song on mint base and it was easy challenge was people didn’t have the token to be able to get it. They didn’t have crypto. The on ramps weren’t exactly there from a Fiat perspective.

And so to be able to go, Oh, this can actually be easy and you can make it easy for someone as [00:24:00] simple as from a QR code. You take something that if you think about QR codes being something I believe came out of Toyota from their manufacturing process and going, sure, they got a wave through COVID and all of this stuff, but the idea that simple technologies can actually make life lightly better or could provide you access access to something that you might not have had access to before is fascinating to me.

So for us, it’s really how do we leverage the existing infrastructure that exists, whether that’s the trade desk. Google Display Network, or Search, which obviously you guys are playing there as well. How do you actually help people understand what’s happening? And the challenge is, most people don’t really care.

So how do you actually shift that from, hey, this actually matters on a human fundamental, like, rights level, to, it’s something you actually need to care about, to a point where, in the future, You don’t have to care because the system is evolved on that advocacy oftentimes needs to come grassroots. So going [00:25:00] from those kind of out of home or traditional marketing that people understand as brands to a getting grassroots people to advocate for you is always the multiplier.

And it’s it’s a hard balance because most crypto projects don’t love to spend money. They kind of stay in a little eco chamber. And then it was actually funny. I was driving in the city yesterday. Okay. And saw some of the, I believe, VectorMedia are big buses out there. And this is how I knew, kind of, we’re so back.

Gemini’s back out there. Coinbase is back out there. And you see all these, these brands being back out, but, granted, they’re exchanges. But you’re seeing people actually talk as brands. And so I think the, the biggest shift is, how do you get the technology to, to be more human? And be more human approachable and engageable.

It’s really, I think The biggest thing that shifted in the last number of years. User experience has gotten better. It’s not perfect, but on the marketing level, leading with brand is becoming more and more important because there’s God knows how many layer ones out there, layer twos, layer threes.

[00:26:00] There’s a new one. I heard the other day that one of the guys from Solana had launched and going. It’s interesting. But now we’re talking about even like abstracting the layers away. And so you go. Did any of that narrative matter? And it’s Has anybody really won yet? I think no, on an institutional level of people investing, sure.

But that’s again, going back to your earlier question, well, if his investment’s pouring in, it can fund people to build the projects with more longevity. But at the same time, it’s that balance of, well, what needs to be promoted? Is it the projects or companies being built on top of these? Is it the ability to engage with something like a smart contract or a DEX?

And being able to go actually in the wave of. Coinbase kind of challenges around both KYC accounts being locked. Another it’s how do you actually help people understand that products like even ledger might actually be a really important part of your life soon. Like you might need a ledger or ledger app on your phone or something like that, that might actually provide you access to, to holding these things.

And again, centralized challenges versus decentralization [00:27:00] maxis is going to be a tension from an industry standpoint, but from a brand perspective, I’ve been. How do you enable people? How do you meet them where they are? And how do you make this stuff less scary for people? And I think in context of AI, I think people’s heads are in the sand right now because they know jobs might go away, markets might shift, and I think people oftentimes run from what they don’t understand or they hide from it.

So I think a lot of stuff still sits in education. So those grassroots initiatives that let people see a logo like Braves and go, Oh, I know that one from somewhere I saw it, whether that’s on the side of a bus or somewhere else. Oftentimes when you mix the physical and digital tech, you start to actually see people go, Oh, there’s some type of value there.

And when you meet them in the physical world, it actually tends to be a different experience.

Luke: they are. Yeah, yeah. yeah. No, I mean, we covered a ton of stuff, too. I mean, like, just on a personal note. What do you think is super interesting right now, like in the crypto space, or aI space, or both, right?

Chris: To me it’s actually, I’m not a big gamer, but actually where physical world [00:28:00] goods come into gaming, and you can say metaverse, but I think a lot of the stuff is coming into gaming, where those things intersect I think is going to be really interesting. Yeah. Things like the work with California state DMV and title registrations and all of that, like I’m a total car nerd.

I’ve been watching one of the, I think predictions it was on the brave podcast or another one was really around things like Porsche, like Porsche wasn’t even in the conversation. And I was like, no, a high end brand comes in and offer something that’s kind of exclusive. Now the question is, what can you do with it?

Like, if you just keep it locked up in your ledger, your brave wallet or something else, it’s cool. It’s collectible. What can you do with it? Can it do something for you? And again, not just trade and make money. It’s, what does it represent? And so, I’m actually really excited about where physical world goods come in.

One of the earliest agencies I worked at Had worked on it was an app called Magic Vision. It was actually Johnson Johnson backed for Band Aid. It was augmented reality in the earliest days of it. And you could take a physical Band Aid on your finger for your kid [00:29:00] and Kermit the Frog would pop out.

And so when I think about it, I’m like, what are those moments that actually like bring a little magic to this for people that go, Oh, like it didn’t just add value, like it put a smile on my face or it enabled me to do something else, or, Hey, I didn’t even know that that thing would ever be worth money.

Just like holding onto a, I’ll say like a Lou Gehrig baseball, like the idea of a Lou Gehrig baseball having value, like 150 years later, whatever it is Start to go, well, why does that have value? Well, maybe it’s because it’s rare and scarce and all that stuff.

But at the end of the day, I also look downstream and go, How do you have impact with that value?

And so, when I think about actually some work we did with Major League Baseball, with the ALS Association, you’re able to actually create not only real value, but bring community together to go, Hey, technology can change things. You think about Hal Finney running Bitcoin, the idea that a tweet like that could inspire opportunity, that Potential integration with something like Major League Baseball because of the Lou [00:30:00] Gehrig connection to ALS and the house connection to ALS The idea that you could actually even not make money personally from it, but what if it could benefit a nonprofit?

What if it could advance drug research and therapies? Actually becomes a real thing because people often think a number go up in the crypto industry and AI is like Oh make everything go faster What if those two things converged? So medical science and research could actually get advanced based on sharing of your, my genetic data.

It’s not just, Hey, give it to 23 and me. It’s what if you could open source that and monetize it to where if I have a rare disease, which we have ALS in my family, what if you could actually take your family members, genetic system and not rent it out, but offer it out to researchers and what if that were to be able to drive value back.

Into a system that then could fund it and by your choice You don’t always have to go back to the the leader in the space But maybe there’s [00:31:00] new research methodologies that all you had to do was rent out your genetic information To help become a part of a pool You can actually shift the way that the world works in such a meaningful way And I think what most of the time when you think crypto value identity all those things coming together You We don’t really always connect the dots publicly of like what could be.

And I, I think there’s inspirations, right? You hear a little bit of IBM saying that kind of stuff. Is Watson even still a thing? I don’t know.

Luke: Yeah. Right. Well, I mean, like, even if you think about like things like this last election cycle, right, where it took kind of the industry really feeling under threat to then realize Hey, we’re great at raising money for things projects, whatever. what happens if we applied that towards trying to make a better, future for us, in this hostile environment, right?

And you saw people come together in a way, and I think, you know, to kind of build on that, like, even if it’s down to, like, helping to fund certain efforts that, you know, AI can help benefit that you [00:32:00] have the brain power to do it. but then using crypto to kind of as a funding source, like to get things off the ground, like it’s pretty transformative potential. Yeah,

Chris: And more accessible? And it’s actually one of the things that the team at Bitta has been working on, is how do you take natural language and actually make it easy for people to engage with the AI to do something that might be cryptographic?

And so when you go, hey, this doesn’t have to be so heady, it might just be like talking to a chatbot that actually could make you money. Sure, that’s what everyone talks about first. But what if you could do that in a way that actually incentivizes a community to move to action? whether that’s voting on something like a constitution like Cardano’s been working on.

And starting to really think about, well, what’s the future of funding look like? How do you do treasury management different? Whether you’re a crypto non profit foundation in Switzerland, or the Bahamas, or Bermuda, or you’re Fortune 50. Like, what if you could actually monetize your compute? Like, if I’m Amazon, or I’m Google Cloud, thinking, and, and even thinking about, like, Oracle.

Luke: [00:33:00] hmm.

Chris: What if you could actually Take your compute value that’s latent and

make more money off of it. Like, what if you could actually tokenize that in a different way that actually has gated access, but also has intrinsic value? Compute has value. What if you could

trade compute like a commodity? It becomes a really interesting opportunity for companies to think about, what are these crypto ecosystems doing today?

Or what are ecosystems doing today that is different? Like, sometimes they look similar, and I think oftentimes we’re looking for that Zero to one innovation. And it’s like, we might just play up 0. 5, 0. 25. But if you can engage with AI in a way that actually has protections, you could actually change the world.

And to me, that’s what’s kept me here for so long. It’s the, the idea that the technology is still new. I would, I don’t love the like, Oh, it’s still early days, narratives and all that. I go, no, there’s people that have been building and thinking about this for a long time. And they were the people engineering a lot of this stuff.

And some of these bigger corporations going. There is another way, and that’s not to say [00:34:00] that the old ones are going to go away. I think it’s, what’s the relationship shift?

Luke: Yeah.

Chris: Our relationship with technology?

Luke: Totally. No, it’s great, man. I can’t think of a better note to end on. So it’s gonna change the world, right? Like, where could people find you these days online?

Chris: I can find me, I’m super doxed on Twitter or X I think we’re calling it these days. Just at Chris Gent. Where else am I? I’m on LinkedIn of all places. But pretty much most active on X more

than anything.

Luke: All right, man. Well, thanks for dropping by, Chris. Dude, It’s awesome to catch up and love to have you back on again.

Chris: Uh, We’ll be here. All right, my man. Thanks. good to see ya. see ya.

Luke: Thanks for listening to the Brave Technologist podcast.

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