Ep. 568 How Fund Managers are Investing in Web3

Ep. 568 How Fund Managers are Investing in Web3
October 10, 2023 #CRYPTO101

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In this episode of Crypto 101 we have On Yavin who is a Founder and Fund Manager for the Cointelligence Fund who has been trading Digital Assets since 2016.  Cointelligence is an early stage venture capital crypto fund focused on the metaverse and blockchain based games and we always appreciate the insight from people who are not only doing the research into these unique areas of the Web3 world but who also put their own money to work!  It is always fascinating to have On talk to us where he is seeing Alpha and with Brendan being into the Blockchain gaming space himself this is a great opportunity to get in depth knowledge around this field!

 

— TRANSCRIPT —

 

SPEAKERS

Brendan Veihman

 

Brendan Veihman  00:09

All right, everybody. Welcome back to the crypto 101 podcast. My name is Brendon V min, I’m one of your hosts over here. And we have a very special podcast in store for all of you today. This is actually someone that I was talking to a few months back during one of our crypto hedge fund summits. And I have to say it was one of my favorite interviews that I have ever done before, we got a guy that is very passionate when it comes to web three gaming and decentralized gaming. And for all of you out there, that’s something that I am certainly a little bit biased on as well. It’s a space that I really enjoy hearing about. So we had the break in the heavy artillery to kind of catch us all up to date to what’s happening over in that space. So without further ado, I want to go ahead and introduce my dear friend, Mr. Ahn Yavin. He is the managing partner of pointelle of the core intelligence fund, excuse me, and he’s also the co founder and CEO over at syndicate. He has more than 19 years of experience as an angel investor. And he is one of the top dogs that I look to when it comes to the metaverse blockchain based games. So on. Welcome, it’s great to have you here.

 

01:15

Thank you very much. And thank you for the very, very kind introduction.

 

Brendan Veihman  01:20

Hey, well, this is gonna be an exciting one, because both of us are very heavily involved when it comes to this side of things. And there’s a lot of developments, we’re seeing global developments. It’s one of those spaces where we truly are seeing worked on an infrastructure bill, all over the globe. It’s not something that’s just in the United States. And it’s a growing industry as well. So I’m excited to kind of pull you in here, get your thoughts on this. But for everyone that’s tuning in and ask him what is coil intelligence? And what’s the core intelligence fun. Now, how can you catch everyone up to date on what you’re actively doing?

 

01:54

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for asking. So core intelligence Fund is a crypto VC fund completely focused on the metaverse and blockchain based games, we usually invest in the most early stages, seed or precede. And one of the things that we are very proud at Coin intelligence fund is the fact that we are actively helping the founders of the projects that we are investing in. And I have to tell you that even though it’s supposed to be an industry standard, to help the founders, it’s actually exactly the other way around. And most of the investors unfortunately, will not do that. And that’s why I am really, really proud of the fact that we’ve helped so much, so many founders already. And obviously, what I’m saying is based on the founders feedback, not just the based on my personal opinion. And lastly, with regards to coin diligence fund, we are a, it is very important for me to make a note that we are mainly investing in tokens, unless we get both tokens and equity. We never invest in equity only. And yeah, that’s basically us.

 

Brendan Veihman  03:28

Yeah, no, that’s great. And so I want to go back to kind of your past, you have 19 years as an angel investor, you’re someone that’s been around, you’ve been doing this for a long time. What has you so excited about crypto gaming? Like why shift your focus to pretty much this entirely?

 

03:45

Great question. So first of all, let’s start with the fact that I’m a gamer. And I’ve been a gamer all my life. And I’m very, very, very excited about the new gaming revolution that is happening. And that’s the beginning of my answer to you. Besides the fact that I’ve been a gamer all my life, and I can actually understand why this is such a big deal. I can tell you that the main reasons for me to be so excited about blockchain based games is the fact that everything related to identity and ownership. And thanks to the decentralization of blockchain, it’s something that we can actually achieve. Especially when the time is right for cross platform transfers, and I’m referring to in game characters and in game items, then it’s going to become really, really exciting, but there’s a long way to go until we get there. And besides the identity and ownership, I think that the fact that players can play and while playing make money Ernie, I think that’s an amazing concept, which, by the way, is not something new at all, because it’s been going on for at least a decade now, according to my personal experience, maybe even longer. And it didn’t start in the last few years. Like, too many people think about that. And besides the two aspects that I mentioned, I think that there’s going to be so many possibilities and opportunities, thanks to the everything that I mentioned. With regards to the gaming revolution. I think that some of the things will be found in the next few years. And even I myself cannot figure out what’s coming, at least some of it. So I’m very, very excited to see what’s happening in the next few years.

 

Brendan Veihman  05:57

Yeah, and I want to clarify before we begin here, that the gaming space in its entirety, not just blockchain gaming, the gaming space is a huge industry, we’re now looking at somewhere between three to 4 billion gamers across the world, it’s pushing about 40% of the world’s population is playing video games in some sort or another, whether that’s on their phone, whether that’s on a console, whether that’s on a computer, it doesn’t matter. It’s pushing towards that 40% mark. So we we now have billions of people that are doing this every single day kind of as an escape from reality. And we also have this now as as a multi 100 billion dollar industry like this is a huge industry has grown rapidly over the past couple of years, especially in the last couple of decades. And so we’re looking at this, and for all the people out there that are saying, hey, gaming is kind of a kid’s thing, this is what kids do when they’re growing up, it has very quickly become so much more than that. This is something that people of all ages are doing all around the world. And it now is this global phenomenon. And it’s not just something that’s limited to little kids, it’s not just something that’s limited to maybe just like boys that are growing up like this seriously is this massive industry that billions of people are taking part of, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars are involved with this every single year. And I think that that’s an important reference point to look at from an investing standpoint, because when you look at the market share that cryptocurrency has taken out of the gaming pool, it’s still so small. So you know, maybe you can kind of talk towards that. But crypto still represents such a small portion of that overall gaming market.

 

07:41

Absolutely. I completely agree with you. And I think that we’ve seen huge growth for the gaming industry in the last decade. And when I say huge, it’s actually an unbelievable growth. And to be honest, I think it didn’t even start yet. Because thanks to everything that we discussed before what you mentioned, I think that the gaming industry is going to explode in a way that it’s impossible to understand now. And I think that gaming is not just going to be standalone, but it’s going to be a part of so many other things that we are doing today. And everybody already heard about the word gamification. And we’ve seen that so many companies out there went through gamification processes. But don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m not referring to that I’m referring to something on a much, much higher scale. And on a much, much deeper and in depth scale compared to what we’ve seen until now.

 

Brendan Veihman  08:43

Yeah. And I’d love to have you kind of just talk about like, what is gamification? How is web three different from web two? And for the people that are kind of watching this and listening, you know, how is when three gaming going to be different from the gaming that everyone’s been doing for so many years? Now? Of course,

 

09:00

of course. So first of all, I mentioned before everything related to identity and ownership. And I’d like to explain what I mean. So today, when you play a game, everything that you’re doing while you’re playing, everything that you gathered, everything that you achieved, everything that you have completed, belongs to the developer of the game, it doesn’t belong to you. It’s exactly the same as people sometimes think that their money in their bank account belongs to them. No, it belongs to the bank. And it clearly states that way. In every agreement that you signed with the bank, by the way, most people are just ignoring it or missing it. And going back to gaming. Same thing is happening with gaming, everything that you’re doing all of your efforts belong to the development company that created the game with Blockchain based games. And the fact that you You can actually own your in game characters and in game items, is one of the biggest deals, in my opinion. And I’ll give you an example. That happened to me, I spent hundreds of hours playing one of my favorite games, or I should say, my favorite game, which is World of Warcraft, I, my account was hacked. And I never, I was never able to recover everything that I achieved for that specific account. Now, you have to realize that I spent hundreds of hours hundreds, over hundreds of hours of achieving everything that I have achieved, and it was all gone one day, as simple as that. Now, even so, Blizzard, the developer developer company behind World of Warcraft, they could have helped me potentially, they decided not to help me, for their own reasons. So not only you don’t own it, you’re also completely helpless, and dependent on the developer company behind the game. With the new blockchain based games concept, it’s not going to be the case, you’re going to be the owner of everything, you’re going to be in full control of everything. And one last thing I would like to add, it doesn’t mean that if your, let’s say crypto wallet was hacked, and all of your assets were drained, nobody will be able to help you just to clarify on that, not the development company that developed the game, or anything like that. So don’t get me wrong, it’s not a perfect solution for everything. But it’s a much, much better scenario, and much, much better. Use Case compared to the current ones.

 

Brendan Veihman  11:56

So let me get this right, if someone is playing a game, and in these games, they’re always working towards items, they’re purchasing items, whether that is maybe an alphabet for your character, maybe it’s a skin for something that’s in game, maybe it’s a vehicle or a car, or clothes, or whatever it is, right, there’s all these different facets for every single game, maybe it’s the character itself, you will have ownership over pretty much everything in that game. So that way, if you get a rare drop, if you do a rare achievement, you can actually negotiate and buy and sell and trade that for other things of value. Is that kind of correct?

 

12:33

Absolutely. And not only that, it’s and as you mentioned, it’s going to be every single item and character in the game. And also, it’s not only what you gathered and what you achieved, but also what you created, because a part of these games is to create, so if you’re going to create your own space inside the virtual world of that game, is going to belong to you.

 

Brendan Veihman  13:04

Yeah, I like this, because you look at some of the most successful games out there. Not every game, but you will look at something like CSGO, right Counter Strike Global Offensive, they have this semi decentralized marketplace, right? It’s not truly decentralized, because you can only trade items around within steam, which is a game provider. So you know, yeah, you can buy and sell for real money. And let me add that in there. And so there’s items that people have that are 1000 10,000 $100,000 per each item. In game, not everything’s that expensive. But it allows players to actually have in game items that have that are a value. And some people hit it big, and they all the time that they put in and it shows and it pays back. And people love that about a game like that. But then there’s other games like World of Warcraft, or maybe even like League of Legends, for people that are familiar with those where you can get something crazy, and you can put 1000 hours into it, and you’re really going to have no way to capitalize on it. It happened to me, in a game called League of Legends, I got this crazy rare drop, it was worth $500. But the only way to get rid of it was to go to a third party site and sell the account and in its entirety giveaway like the passwords in the email and everything. And no one wants to do that, right? Because then you’re giving away your digital identity like that person is who you are, it’s what you built. And sometimes you don’t want it to be this all or nothing scenario that may or may not go against the gaming providers Terms of Service, which I think it’s its own entire conversation to kind of talk about how silly that may be. But there’s a lot of like different ways that this can go so I’ll kind of

 

14:44

Yes, absolutely. And these third party websites that you’re referring to the these marketplaces they are actually offering people to buy characters to buy a The in game currency and so on. but they do not offer you to buy or sell specific items, as you said, because that’s completely impossible because you can’t transfer them. They’re really good items, because then they are considered to be so bound. And they are not transferable to anyone else. So you’re, you’re absolutely right about that. And the biggest problem is that, it’s like you said against the game rules. So first of all, if you do that, you are risking getting banned. So if you sold the account, or if you bought the account, then either way, you get a, you can get banned, and then you lost. So it’s completely worthless. But beside that, and more importantly, in my opinion, it’s too much of a hassle. And it’s, and because it’s considered to be shady, then most people will not do that. So the market for it is very, very low, considerably, because it’s not considered to be legit. And beside all of that, like you said, you can capitalize it or monetize you playing the games. But I have to tell you, that as much as I love that concept, we do have to remember that the first priority for any game developer out there is to build a game that is great and fun for the players. And then think about the monetization, a part that players will be able to achieve. So that’s very important is that our A listeners will will realize that

 

Brendan Veihman  16:49

I think that’s a super important point. Because we see a ton of these blockchain creators, a lot of these blockchain games come out. And the first marketing material that you see is like, Hey, everyone, this is a blockchain game. So you should come play it. By the way, secondarily, this is what it’s about. This is why it’s a good game, but you feel like the blockchain side of things, is slapping you in the face first, when in reality, it should be the other way around. It should be these these companies or these creators saying, here is this really amazing game that you’re going to want to play. By the way, a facet of this is that it integrates blockchain tech, so that you’re able to do all these other things, but it should complement the game. It shouldn’t be the game. And I think that’s where a lot of projects have gone wrong. And that’s why they have these shorter lifespans when it comes to web three games is because they do things in the wrong operation. Would you agree with that? Absolutely.

 

17:43

Yes. I think that most of the blockchain based games that we’ve seen until now, were actually either scams or bullshit projects. They were not real games, I actually tried most of them in 2021 2022. And as a gamer, I can tell you that these are these were not games. The second part is that, as you mentioned, they used to market it in that way. And I can tell you that today, I’m advising all of my founders of our portfolio companies, to not discuss anything related to blockchain or crypto at all, actually, to launch the game as a regular game, to onboard users. And then, at some point, see if they are interested in registering everything that they’re doing on the blockchain, using the NF T’s that are allowing you to do everything that we discussed before. And, and only then. But one last thing, don’t get me wrong. And I’ve seen two problematic cases already, when blockchain based games projects actually hid the fact that they are based on blockchain. And that created a huge backlash for them at some point. So I’m not advising anyone to hide anything, in general, never hide anything, or never lie about anything, as long as you’re raising funds. And as long as you’re working with the public and doing advertising or marketing for the public, what you shouldn’t do it in general, but I’m emphasizing these are like the biggest problems that I see when founders are lying to potential investors or are lying to the public. And, and I think that they shouldn’t be talking about the blockchain or cryptocurrency part, but they should have a page on the website explaining these parts. Yeah, but no need to push it to market it or to talk about that before anything else. Of course.

 

Brendan Veihman  19:48

No, that makes total sense. So when you’re looking at these projects, like what is your vetting process look like? Because clearly, at this point, you’ve probably seen hundreds of them. So how do you vet out the good versus As the bad ones, the ones that have potential the ones that don’t, what are you looking for?

 

20:04

It’s actually 1000s By now not

 

Brendan Veihman  20:06

analysis even better?

 

20:09

Well, we already made more than 50 investments. So you can imagine the percentage is very, very, very low considering what I said. And to answer your question is the following. First of all, as we discussed already, it has to be a game, and it has to be a real game. Now, since we are usually investing in very, very early stages, we cannot be we cannot see the full game. But I have to tell you that today, if they don’t have at least a demo, like I wouldn’t even call it an alpha version, it can be a pre pre pre alpha version, but just to see something that they actually created and built. So we will be able to understand if they actually understand gaming at all. The second part would be everything related to the selection of the blockchain. The third part would be everything related to the crypto tokenomics, which is probably one of the most important key factors for the success of the project. And lastly, everything related to their abilities and capabilities with regards to the web three and crypto industry in general. And just to make a point, I don’t think that the last part that I mentioned, means that if the founders don’t have practical experience within the web three and crypto industry, it means that we will not be investing in them. Absolutely. That’s not the case. Actually, in some cases, it’s actually an advantage for us. Because when we talk to crypto founders, and we ask them, this is your first project. And they say, No, it’s actually my sixth or seventh project. And then I’m asking them, in what timeframe and they say, two, three years. And that’s when the call is ended. Yeah.

 

Brendan Veihman  22:06

Yeah, I’m sure that raises a lot of red flags, right. Like what happened to the other ones? Why were they failing so quickly?

 

22:12

I’m not even bothering asking to be honest.

 

Brendan Veihman  22:15

The call just ends right there. Easy enough.

 

22:18

I mean, I mean, for me, a dedication of founders is one of the most important things, if I can’t see that they dedicated themselves fully, completely, for at least a period of two to three years. For one specific project. It’s game over and the pun intended?

 

Brendan Veihman  22:35

Well, because at that point, if they’re doing six projects in two or three years, it almost seems like they’re not even putting in the effort and trying right, they have no dedication towards the long term goal.

 

22:44

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you will be surprised that that’s the industry standard, unfortunately. Well, are there any about six projects, but the industry standard is, when you ask them about the last two, three years, they will take them? And even if they don’t answer immediately, but if you keep asking them, you see that they worked on a few projects during that time, and some of the time on more than one project at the same time?

 

Brendan Veihman  23:09

Yeah, I mean, it’s the same as like going and applying to a job somewhere, like imagine that you are a manager of a fast food chain, you go into somewhere, and you’re like, Oh, hey, here’s my resume. I’ve worked at managing a McDonald’s or Chick fil A, and in and out of this, or that a Wendy’s or Burger King, all in the last two years. And immediately, the employees are going to be like, What did you do to have this kind of turnover? But the same, you know, funny enough, the same applies here, right? People want consistency, they want to show that you’re gonna be able to stay on top of something and, like, make that long term dream, come to reality. Because if you can’t sell yourself, you’re not going to be able to sell a project to 1000s or millions of other people.

 

23:51

Absolutely, absolutely. And one last point that I would like to highlight is the fact that we will never invest in any project that even one, one of the co founders, or the core team members is interested in remaining anonymous, that like a complete deal breaker, immediately, and it doesn’t matter what’s the explanation? And and no matter what, then actually, this is my biggest advice to any investor who is listening to us. And I’m never giving any financial advice. But I am telling you that today to invest in any project, while one of the team members is anonymous, is completely insane, in my opinion, like completely insane, seriously,

 

Brendan Veihman  24:44

there’s too much risk involved, right?

 

24:47

It’s not just a matter of too much risk. Forget about the risk if they don’t want to disclose their identities. It means that something is wrong period, and nobody can convince me otherwise if you’re raising funds from investors don’t even get me started on mom and pop investors from the public. I’m just talking about any investor right now. And you’re not willing to disclose Yourself. I mean, it was another industry standard within the crypto industry. But it’s completely insane. Seriously, like completely insane. So if anyone is listening to us and planning to pitch their project, don’t even bother unless you are willing to completely disclose Yourself. And just to clarify, we will also ask to see your ID just to make sure that that’s you.

 

Brendan Veihman  25:37

Fair enough. Well, I think that kind of begs the question. Are there any projects out there that you’re allowed to talk about? I don’t want to get you in trouble. But are there any blockchain based projects out there gaming projects that caught your eye right now?

 

25:50

So yes, there are. But instead of telling you the ones that caught my eye recently, I can tell you about two or three projects that coin intelligence fund invested, okay, and they didn’t even launch yet. So definitely interesting for everyone to take a look. And I’ll tell you about the following. So first of all, I’d like to mention cradles, cradles is an amazing open space. metaverse. And it is actually the kind of game that I am into myself personally. And it’s focused on everything related to dinosaurs, and Fighting Dinosaurs and so on. And one of the things that I love the most about this project is the fact that they actually managed to do something that I didn’t see anyone do before. So everyone knows that everything with the blockchain based games is based on NF T’s because that’s the way that you can own your in game characters and items. But what these guys did, the team behind Kratos is make the NF T’s changed number, which is very, very interesting for games because when you play and you use items, they are supposed to change this, some of them are likely to level up or become a not as good as they used to be because they become rusty. Like if we talk about weapons, or if it’s, let’s say, an item that is supposed to be considered a consumable, which you’re not supposed to have all the time. So it just should be gone at some point, and so on. The second example that I would like to give you is a project called beast League, Beast league actually created the metaverse based on everything related to animals. That’s why the name beast, and they created a casual set of games, the first one is basketball. And they’re planning to build other types of games based on the same mechanisms. And I can tell you that when I actually played the alpha and the beta versions with my kids, together with my kids, I can tell you that we’ve had so much fun. And while we did that, we also discovered some bugs, of course, because that was the purpose of me playing with my kids team at home, I can tell you that we’ve had so much fun. And if I compare it to the big traditional mainstream casual games, I think that these guys are going to give them a very, very, very serious fight. So I’m excited about these two projects very much.

 

Brendan Veihman  28:34

I think that’s great. Because when I asked that question, I’m sure a lot of people were like, Oh, he’s going to talk about xe infinity or decentraland, or sandbox. And these are names that people haven’t heard of right off the RIP, like, what are your thoughts of those, those big names that have been around out there? Because I don’t know about you, I don’t have too much animosity towards them. But I just don’t think that they’re great faces to represent the space.

 

28:58

Not only, let’s say, You’re being very polite, and very, they say, let me put it this way. I played x infinity for five to six hours, to make sure that I actually understand x infinity. First of all, it’s not a game. It’s a bullshit game. You can put a bot to play the game and it will do as good as you do as a human person that says everything. But I have to tell you that unlike many people out there that are claiming that x infinity is a Ponzi scheme. I don’t think that the Founders intended I can’t tell you for sure. I’m guessing here, but I don’t think that they intended to scam anyone. I think that they just mismanaged the company. Besides the fact that they just built a bullshit game, which is completely fine. Because there’s, I mean, it’s not fine, but there’s so many out there that are bullshit games but they didn’t have any intention to steal money or scam people in And, and so on. But But that’s my personal opinion. And I think that with regards to the other names that you mentioned, I think that there’s two huge issues. One, I think that the blockchain technology is not there yet. We need to improve so much for things to be registered in real time on the blockchain as they tried to do. And the second part is, I think that they lack a bit of execution. And I am being nice here. And the main reason is that they already made a fortune. Yeah. Why would they want to make such a great effort now, considering that they already made their millions of millions by selling the tokens for these projects?

 

Brendan Veihman  30:52

Well, I want to get your thoughts on who you think the face of the crypto gaming space is now because for a while, I felt like it was kind of Gala, you know, maybe Axi a little bit. But with everything that’s been going on over at Gala, I feel as if there is a void in the crypto gaming space, and that it truly doesn’t have a face anymore. Like there is no person or project to look up towards. Like this is the definitive leader of the crypto gaming space. And I think that’s probably for the best. But, you know, what do you think of that whole situation? Like, who do you see stepping up and kind of taking on that role?

 

31:29

So besides saying, and I’m going to be completely completely non impartial here. Okay. But besides a few of my portfolio companies, I don’t see anyone out there that can actually take that position. I completely agree with you that gala games actually had that chance. And they completely screwed that up with that stupid lawsuit. Yeah, against each other, obviously. And, and unfortunately, the situation right now is so horrible in our industry, in my opinion, that I can’t really answer that question right now. It’s going to take some time for the industry to recover from everything that’s happened, and not only with regards to games, but everything that’s happened with the bankruptcies. Yeah, FTX sells use network and the friends. And, and with regards to games, I think that people just tried to become too rich, too quick. And that’s why we are in this situation. So it’s gonna take us some time, maybe the next time that we have a chat, I will be able to tell you who’s going to take the lead for this. You know, I don’t think

 

Brendan Veihman  32:50

that it’s an awful thing at the end of the day. And here’s why. Because what this does is this opens up the floor for a truly great project to come in. And lead by example. And I completely agree with you, I think gala had the opportunity to do that. And they fumbled the bag. And so now we kind of have almost a clean slate of sorts, where we have room for someone else to come in and take that market share. And you know, hopefully the next person that comes in and does that is a really solid, solid project that knows what they’re doing. And that’s all I can hope for.

 

33:26

Agreed beside the fact that meanwhile, too many people lost their money, including life savings. And that’s the biggest thing that I will say that I can’t agree with the statement that it’s a good thing. Yeah, I know that you didn’t mean, you didn’t refer to that part. But I’m just emphasizing that. Because besides that, I agree with you. And I’ve been saying myself, I had a I did a social media post about six months ago saying that I think that the entire industry should be flooded, similar to the Noah arcs, flood story. And yeah, that posted a lot of a lot of noise back then, because people actually agreed with it, many of them. And and that’s why I keep mentioning that not only the founders are scammers in our industry, too many of them, actually most of them. It’s also the investors, which is absolutely insane, in my opinion. That’s something that I didn’t see in other industries, to be honest.

 

Brendan Veihman  34:28

No, well, fair enough. Well, I think all this begs the question, how do people capitalize on this opportunity of crypto gaming? Because it seems to be and correct me if I’m wrong here. But it seems to be something that you believe is going to play a massive part in the future of society. It just might not be something that happens today, next month, you know, maybe not within the next year. You both of us believe that it’s going to happen, but it couldn’t be a little bit further out than then people might want is that correct?

 

34:55

Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. I think the revolution is still coding, you can say that it started. But I’m saying that it’s starting. And I think yes, it’s gonna take a few good years for us to see the real results for everything related to blockchain based games.

 

Brendan Veihman  35:15

Awesome. And so in order to get to this mainstream global adoption, where we have a large majority of people that are playing video games, playing blockchain based games, what needs to happen for us to get to that point?

 

35:29

So I think that the first is what we already discussed with regards to the level of the games, the quality of the games themselves, as soon as we will be able to see high quality games, it’s just going to happen of its own. And the second part, I think that the industry itself with no regards to games, the entire blockchain and crypto industry must be regulated, must we have to stop with a Wild Wild West, it doesn’t stop, it didn’t stop until now. And without the proper regulation, which I don’t see anytime soon, by the way, they keep talking about it all the time. But they’re not doing too much. I think these two elements are going to be the most crucial ones for the advancement and progress of the industry in general, and specifically blockchain based games.

 

Brendan Veihman  36:22

And so when it comes to capitalizing on on this opportunity, this has to be one of the most frequent questions that I get asked, I’m sure you get it as well. But people were saying, Hey, do I invest in the games at an early stage? Do I buy their tokens do? Do I buy their NF T’s? Do I be the person to play these games? Like there’s so many different ways that people can capitalize? But what are the ones that might be worthwhile from your perspective?

 

36:47

So I’m going to answer that question in a way that you are not expecting to be honest, right. And I’m sure that the founders of the project that we’ve invested in is going are going to be a little bit pissed off when they hear me say that, but I’ll tell you the following. If you’re going to invest, most chances, you’re going to lose your investment. Most people invest in cryptocurrencies, they completely lose everything that they invested or most of it. That’s the according to data that I have gathered and reviewed in the last six years, it doesn’t change. I don’t see changing anytime soon. And as much as I’m considered to be a crypto enthusiastic, or fanatic, or whatever you want to call me. And besides the fact that we are very happy with our investments in the last few years, and specifically with regards to blockchain based games, and besides the fact that we are very happy with our investments, I can tell you that most people will lose their money. And that’s why my advice is unless you really, really, really know what you’re doing. And unless you can really, really afford to lose that money, do not dare to invest in anything in this industry. It’s as simple as that. And the last thing that you should do is listen to your family and friends with regards to investments and not because they don’t care about you, because most likely, they don’t understand anything themselves, even if they sound like they understand. Yeah, like they understand.

 

Brendan Veihman  38:28

There’s an easy rule here that was always said in the stock market. But I think it equally applies in crypto, if you don’t understand what you’re investing in, don’t invest in it, you shouldn’t be investing in things that you don’t understand. And that’s the mistake that people make. And then when something doesn’t go according to plan, they don’t know why they don’t know when to get out. They don’t know when to exit at either a loss or a take profit, because they don’t understand what they invested in in the first place. Exactly. Well on hey, we really appreciate you coming on. It’s great to hear from someone who is so deeply woven into this blockchain based gaming side of things. So where can people continue to follow you on your journey, and track everything that you’re doing?

 

39:10

So it’s very easy to find me because I’m the only one with my full name on your VIN. So if you look me up on LinkedIn, or Twitter, you can easily find me. And I invite everyone to reach out. And if anyone would like to ask me questions, I’m always happy to answer questions. If founders would like to schedule a meeting with me, I’m very happy to schedule a meeting, even though I don’t even when I don’t think it’s relevant for our intelligence fund. I’m always happy to help young founders and I’m inviting everyone to reach out and try me.

 

Brendan Veihman  39:46

Awesome. Well, you heard it here first. If you are looking to build the next generation of crypto games, or your gaming fan at all, this is going to be your man to check out so on once again. Thank you, my man.

 

39:58

Thank you very much. It was up later bye bye for now

 

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In this episode of Crypto 101 we have On Yavin who is a Founder and Fund Manager for the Cointelligence Fund who has been trading Digital Assets since 2016.  Cointelligence is an early stage venture capital crypto fund focused on the metaverse and blockchain based games and we always appreciate the insight from people who are not only doing the research into these unique areas of the Web3 world but who also put their own money to work!  It is always fascinating to have On talk to us where he is seeing Alpha and with Brendan being into the Blockchain gaming space himself this is a great opportunity to get in depth knowledge around this field!

 

— TRANSCRIPT —

 

SPEAKERS

Brendan Veihman

 

Brendan Veihman  00:09

All right, everybody. Welcome back to the crypto 101 podcast. My name is Brendon V min, I’m one of your hosts over here. And we have a very special podcast in store for all of you today. This is actually someone that I was talking to a few months back during one of our crypto hedge fund summits. And I have to say it was one of my favorite interviews that I have ever done before, we got a guy that is very passionate when it comes to web three gaming and decentralized gaming. And for all of you out there, that’s something that I am certainly a little bit biased on as well. It’s a space that I really enjoy hearing about. So we had the break in the heavy artillery to kind of catch us all up to date to what’s happening over in that space. So without further ado, I want to go ahead and introduce my dear friend, Mr. Ahn Yavin. He is the managing partner of pointelle of the core intelligence fund, excuse me, and he’s also the co founder and CEO over at syndicate. He has more than 19 years of experience as an angel investor. And he is one of the top dogs that I look to when it comes to the metaverse blockchain based games. So on. Welcome, it’s great to have you here.

 

01:15

Thank you very much. And thank you for the very, very kind introduction.

 

Brendan Veihman  01:20

Hey, well, this is gonna be an exciting one, because both of us are very heavily involved when it comes to this side of things. And there’s a lot of developments, we’re seeing global developments. It’s one of those spaces where we truly are seeing worked on an infrastructure bill, all over the globe. It’s not something that’s just in the United States. And it’s a growing industry as well. So I’m excited to kind of pull you in here, get your thoughts on this. But for everyone that’s tuning in and ask him what is coil intelligence? And what’s the core intelligence fun. Now, how can you catch everyone up to date on what you’re actively doing?

 

01:54

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for asking. So core intelligence Fund is a crypto VC fund completely focused on the metaverse and blockchain based games, we usually invest in the most early stages, seed or precede. And one of the things that we are very proud at Coin intelligence fund is the fact that we are actively helping the founders of the projects that we are investing in. And I have to tell you that even though it’s supposed to be an industry standard, to help the founders, it’s actually exactly the other way around. And most of the investors unfortunately, will not do that. And that’s why I am really, really proud of the fact that we’ve helped so much, so many founders already. And obviously, what I’m saying is based on the founders feedback, not just the based on my personal opinion. And lastly, with regards to coin diligence fund, we are a, it is very important for me to make a note that we are mainly investing in tokens, unless we get both tokens and equity. We never invest in equity only. And yeah, that’s basically us.

 

Brendan Veihman  03:28

Yeah, no, that’s great. And so I want to go back to kind of your past, you have 19 years as an angel investor, you’re someone that’s been around, you’ve been doing this for a long time. What has you so excited about crypto gaming? Like why shift your focus to pretty much this entirely?

 

03:45

Great question. So first of all, let’s start with the fact that I’m a gamer. And I’ve been a gamer all my life. And I’m very, very, very excited about the new gaming revolution that is happening. And that’s the beginning of my answer to you. Besides the fact that I’ve been a gamer all my life, and I can actually understand why this is such a big deal. I can tell you that the main reasons for me to be so excited about blockchain based games is the fact that everything related to identity and ownership. And thanks to the decentralization of blockchain, it’s something that we can actually achieve. Especially when the time is right for cross platform transfers, and I’m referring to in game characters and in game items, then it’s going to become really, really exciting, but there’s a long way to go until we get there. And besides the identity and ownership, I think that the fact that players can play and while playing make money Ernie, I think that’s an amazing concept, which, by the way, is not something new at all, because it’s been going on for at least a decade now, according to my personal experience, maybe even longer. And it didn’t start in the last few years. Like, too many people think about that. And besides the two aspects that I mentioned, I think that there’s going to be so many possibilities and opportunities, thanks to the everything that I mentioned. With regards to the gaming revolution. I think that some of the things will be found in the next few years. And even I myself cannot figure out what’s coming, at least some of it. So I’m very, very excited to see what’s happening in the next few years.

 

Brendan Veihman  05:57

Yeah, and I want to clarify before we begin here, that the gaming space in its entirety, not just blockchain gaming, the gaming space is a huge industry, we’re now looking at somewhere between three to 4 billion gamers across the world, it’s pushing about 40% of the world’s population is playing video games in some sort or another, whether that’s on their phone, whether that’s on a console, whether that’s on a computer, it doesn’t matter. It’s pushing towards that 40% mark. So we we now have billions of people that are doing this every single day kind of as an escape from reality. And we also have this now as as a multi 100 billion dollar industry like this is a huge industry has grown rapidly over the past couple of years, especially in the last couple of decades. And so we’re looking at this, and for all the people out there that are saying, hey, gaming is kind of a kid’s thing, this is what kids do when they’re growing up, it has very quickly become so much more than that. This is something that people of all ages are doing all around the world. And it now is this global phenomenon. And it’s not just something that’s limited to little kids, it’s not just something that’s limited to maybe just like boys that are growing up like this seriously is this massive industry that billions of people are taking part of, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars are involved with this every single year. And I think that that’s an important reference point to look at from an investing standpoint, because when you look at the market share that cryptocurrency has taken out of the gaming pool, it’s still so small. So you know, maybe you can kind of talk towards that. But crypto still represents such a small portion of that overall gaming market.

 

07:41

Absolutely. I completely agree with you. And I think that we’ve seen huge growth for the gaming industry in the last decade. And when I say huge, it’s actually an unbelievable growth. And to be honest, I think it didn’t even start yet. Because thanks to everything that we discussed before what you mentioned, I think that the gaming industry is going to explode in a way that it’s impossible to understand now. And I think that gaming is not just going to be standalone, but it’s going to be a part of so many other things that we are doing today. And everybody already heard about the word gamification. And we’ve seen that so many companies out there went through gamification processes. But don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m not referring to that I’m referring to something on a much, much higher scale. And on a much, much deeper and in depth scale compared to what we’ve seen until now.

 

Brendan Veihman  08:43

Yeah. And I’d love to have you kind of just talk about like, what is gamification? How is web three different from web two? And for the people that are kind of watching this and listening, you know, how is when three gaming going to be different from the gaming that everyone’s been doing for so many years? Now? Of course,

 

09:00

of course. So first of all, I mentioned before everything related to identity and ownership. And I’d like to explain what I mean. So today, when you play a game, everything that you’re doing while you’re playing, everything that you gathered, everything that you achieved, everything that you have completed, belongs to the developer of the game, it doesn’t belong to you. It’s exactly the same as people sometimes think that their money in their bank account belongs to them. No, it belongs to the bank. And it clearly states that way. In every agreement that you signed with the bank, by the way, most people are just ignoring it or missing it. And going back to gaming. Same thing is happening with gaming, everything that you’re doing all of your efforts belong to the development company that created the game with Blockchain based games. And the fact that you You can actually own your in game characters and in game items, is one of the biggest deals, in my opinion. And I’ll give you an example. That happened to me, I spent hundreds of hours playing one of my favorite games, or I should say, my favorite game, which is World of Warcraft, I, my account was hacked. And I never, I was never able to recover everything that I achieved for that specific account. Now, you have to realize that I spent hundreds of hours hundreds, over hundreds of hours of achieving everything that I have achieved, and it was all gone one day, as simple as that. Now, even so, Blizzard, the developer developer company behind World of Warcraft, they could have helped me potentially, they decided not to help me, for their own reasons. So not only you don’t own it, you’re also completely helpless, and dependent on the developer company behind the game. With the new blockchain based games concept, it’s not going to be the case, you’re going to be the owner of everything, you’re going to be in full control of everything. And one last thing I would like to add, it doesn’t mean that if your, let’s say crypto wallet was hacked, and all of your assets were drained, nobody will be able to help you just to clarify on that, not the development company that developed the game, or anything like that. So don’t get me wrong, it’s not a perfect solution for everything. But it’s a much, much better scenario, and much, much better. Use Case compared to the current ones.

 

Brendan Veihman  11:56

So let me get this right, if someone is playing a game, and in these games, they’re always working towards items, they’re purchasing items, whether that is maybe an alphabet for your character, maybe it’s a skin for something that’s in game, maybe it’s a vehicle or a car, or clothes, or whatever it is, right, there’s all these different facets for every single game, maybe it’s the character itself, you will have ownership over pretty much everything in that game. So that way, if you get a rare drop, if you do a rare achievement, you can actually negotiate and buy and sell and trade that for other things of value. Is that kind of correct?

 

12:33

Absolutely. And not only that, it’s and as you mentioned, it’s going to be every single item and character in the game. And also, it’s not only what you gathered and what you achieved, but also what you created, because a part of these games is to create, so if you’re going to create your own space inside the virtual world of that game, is going to belong to you.

 

Brendan Veihman  13:04

Yeah, I like this, because you look at some of the most successful games out there. Not every game, but you will look at something like CSGO, right Counter Strike Global Offensive, they have this semi decentralized marketplace, right? It’s not truly decentralized, because you can only trade items around within steam, which is a game provider. So you know, yeah, you can buy and sell for real money. And let me add that in there. And so there’s items that people have that are 1000 10,000 $100,000 per each item. In game, not everything’s that expensive. But it allows players to actually have in game items that have that are a value. And some people hit it big, and they all the time that they put in and it shows and it pays back. And people love that about a game like that. But then there’s other games like World of Warcraft, or maybe even like League of Legends, for people that are familiar with those where you can get something crazy, and you can put 1000 hours into it, and you’re really going to have no way to capitalize on it. It happened to me, in a game called League of Legends, I got this crazy rare drop, it was worth $500. But the only way to get rid of it was to go to a third party site and sell the account and in its entirety giveaway like the passwords in the email and everything. And no one wants to do that, right? Because then you’re giving away your digital identity like that person is who you are, it’s what you built. And sometimes you don’t want it to be this all or nothing scenario that may or may not go against the gaming providers Terms of Service, which I think it’s its own entire conversation to kind of talk about how silly that may be. But there’s a lot of like different ways that this can go so I’ll kind of

 

14:44

Yes, absolutely. And these third party websites that you’re referring to the these marketplaces they are actually offering people to buy characters to buy a The in game currency and so on. but they do not offer you to buy or sell specific items, as you said, because that’s completely impossible because you can’t transfer them. They’re really good items, because then they are considered to be so bound. And they are not transferable to anyone else. So you’re, you’re absolutely right about that. And the biggest problem is that, it’s like you said against the game rules. So first of all, if you do that, you are risking getting banned. So if you sold the account, or if you bought the account, then either way, you get a, you can get banned, and then you lost. So it’s completely worthless. But beside that, and more importantly, in my opinion, it’s too much of a hassle. And it’s, and because it’s considered to be shady, then most people will not do that. So the market for it is very, very low, considerably, because it’s not considered to be legit. And beside all of that, like you said, you can capitalize it or monetize you playing the games. But I have to tell you, that as much as I love that concept, we do have to remember that the first priority for any game developer out there is to build a game that is great and fun for the players. And then think about the monetization, a part that players will be able to achieve. So that’s very important is that our A listeners will will realize that

 

Brendan Veihman  16:49

I think that’s a super important point. Because we see a ton of these blockchain creators, a lot of these blockchain games come out. And the first marketing material that you see is like, Hey, everyone, this is a blockchain game. So you should come play it. By the way, secondarily, this is what it’s about. This is why it’s a good game, but you feel like the blockchain side of things, is slapping you in the face first, when in reality, it should be the other way around. It should be these these companies or these creators saying, here is this really amazing game that you’re going to want to play. By the way, a facet of this is that it integrates blockchain tech, so that you’re able to do all these other things, but it should complement the game. It shouldn’t be the game. And I think that’s where a lot of projects have gone wrong. And that’s why they have these shorter lifespans when it comes to web three games is because they do things in the wrong operation. Would you agree with that? Absolutely.

 

17:43

Yes. I think that most of the blockchain based games that we’ve seen until now, were actually either scams or bullshit projects. They were not real games, I actually tried most of them in 2021 2022. And as a gamer, I can tell you that these are these were not games. The second part is that, as you mentioned, they used to market it in that way. And I can tell you that today, I’m advising all of my founders of our portfolio companies, to not discuss anything related to blockchain or crypto at all, actually, to launch the game as a regular game, to onboard users. And then, at some point, see if they are interested in registering everything that they’re doing on the blockchain, using the NF T’s that are allowing you to do everything that we discussed before. And, and only then. But one last thing, don’t get me wrong. And I’ve seen two problematic cases already, when blockchain based games projects actually hid the fact that they are based on blockchain. And that created a huge backlash for them at some point. So I’m not advising anyone to hide anything, in general, never hide anything, or never lie about anything, as long as you’re raising funds. And as long as you’re working with the public and doing advertising or marketing for the public, what you shouldn’t do it in general, but I’m emphasizing these are like the biggest problems that I see when founders are lying to potential investors or are lying to the public. And, and I think that they shouldn’t be talking about the blockchain or cryptocurrency part, but they should have a page on the website explaining these parts. Yeah, but no need to push it to market it or to talk about that before anything else. Of course.

 

Brendan Veihman  19:48

No, that makes total sense. So when you’re looking at these projects, like what is your vetting process look like? Because clearly, at this point, you’ve probably seen hundreds of them. So how do you vet out the good versus As the bad ones, the ones that have potential the ones that don’t, what are you looking for?

 

20:04

It’s actually 1000s By now not

 

Brendan Veihman  20:06

analysis even better?

 

20:09

Well, we already made more than 50 investments. So you can imagine the percentage is very, very, very low considering what I said. And to answer your question is the following. First of all, as we discussed already, it has to be a game, and it has to be a real game. Now, since we are usually investing in very, very early stages, we cannot be we cannot see the full game. But I have to tell you that today, if they don’t have at least a demo, like I wouldn’t even call it an alpha version, it can be a pre pre pre alpha version, but just to see something that they actually created and built. So we will be able to understand if they actually understand gaming at all. The second part would be everything related to the selection of the blockchain. The third part would be everything related to the crypto tokenomics, which is probably one of the most important key factors for the success of the project. And lastly, everything related to their abilities and capabilities with regards to the web three and crypto industry in general. And just to make a point, I don’t think that the last part that I mentioned, means that if the founders don’t have practical experience within the web three and crypto industry, it means that we will not be investing in them. Absolutely. That’s not the case. Actually, in some cases, it’s actually an advantage for us. Because when we talk to crypto founders, and we ask them, this is your first project. And they say, No, it’s actually my sixth or seventh project. And then I’m asking them, in what timeframe and they say, two, three years. And that’s when the call is ended. Yeah.

 

Brendan Veihman  22:06

Yeah, I’m sure that raises a lot of red flags, right. Like what happened to the other ones? Why were they failing so quickly?

 

22:12

I’m not even bothering asking to be honest.

 

Brendan Veihman  22:15

The call just ends right there. Easy enough.

 

22:18

I mean, I mean, for me, a dedication of founders is one of the most important things, if I can’t see that they dedicated themselves fully, completely, for at least a period of two to three years. For one specific project. It’s game over and the pun intended?

 

Brendan Veihman  22:35

Well, because at that point, if they’re doing six projects in two or three years, it almost seems like they’re not even putting in the effort and trying right, they have no dedication towards the long term goal.

 

22:44

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you will be surprised that that’s the industry standard, unfortunately. Well, are there any about six projects, but the industry standard is, when you ask them about the last two, three years, they will take them? And even if they don’t answer immediately, but if you keep asking them, you see that they worked on a few projects during that time, and some of the time on more than one project at the same time?

 

Brendan Veihman  23:09

Yeah, I mean, it’s the same as like going and applying to a job somewhere, like imagine that you are a manager of a fast food chain, you go into somewhere, and you’re like, Oh, hey, here’s my resume. I’ve worked at managing a McDonald’s or Chick fil A, and in and out of this, or that a Wendy’s or Burger King, all in the last two years. And immediately, the employees are going to be like, What did you do to have this kind of turnover? But the same, you know, funny enough, the same applies here, right? People want consistency, they want to show that you’re gonna be able to stay on top of something and, like, make that long term dream, come to reality. Because if you can’t sell yourself, you’re not going to be able to sell a project to 1000s or millions of other people.

 

23:51

Absolutely, absolutely. And one last point that I would like to highlight is the fact that we will never invest in any project that even one, one of the co founders, or the core team members is interested in remaining anonymous, that like a complete deal breaker, immediately, and it doesn’t matter what’s the explanation? And and no matter what, then actually, this is my biggest advice to any investor who is listening to us. And I’m never giving any financial advice. But I am telling you that today to invest in any project, while one of the team members is anonymous, is completely insane, in my opinion, like completely insane, seriously,

 

Brendan Veihman  24:44

there’s too much risk involved, right?

 

24:47

It’s not just a matter of too much risk. Forget about the risk if they don’t want to disclose their identities. It means that something is wrong period, and nobody can convince me otherwise if you’re raising funds from investors don’t even get me started on mom and pop investors from the public. I’m just talking about any investor right now. And you’re not willing to disclose Yourself. I mean, it was another industry standard within the crypto industry. But it’s completely insane. Seriously, like completely insane. So if anyone is listening to us and planning to pitch their project, don’t even bother unless you are willing to completely disclose Yourself. And just to clarify, we will also ask to see your ID just to make sure that that’s you.

 

Brendan Veihman  25:37

Fair enough. Well, I think that kind of begs the question. Are there any projects out there that you’re allowed to talk about? I don’t want to get you in trouble. But are there any blockchain based projects out there gaming projects that caught your eye right now?

 

25:50

So yes, there are. But instead of telling you the ones that caught my eye recently, I can tell you about two or three projects that coin intelligence fund invested, okay, and they didn’t even launch yet. So definitely interesting for everyone to take a look. And I’ll tell you about the following. So first of all, I’d like to mention cradles, cradles is an amazing open space. metaverse. And it is actually the kind of game that I am into myself personally. And it’s focused on everything related to dinosaurs, and Fighting Dinosaurs and so on. And one of the things that I love the most about this project is the fact that they actually managed to do something that I didn’t see anyone do before. So everyone knows that everything with the blockchain based games is based on NF T’s because that’s the way that you can own your in game characters and items. But what these guys did, the team behind Kratos is make the NF T’s changed number, which is very, very interesting for games because when you play and you use items, they are supposed to change this, some of them are likely to level up or become a not as good as they used to be because they become rusty. Like if we talk about weapons, or if it’s, let’s say, an item that is supposed to be considered a consumable, which you’re not supposed to have all the time. So it just should be gone at some point, and so on. The second example that I would like to give you is a project called beast League, Beast league actually created the metaverse based on everything related to animals. That’s why the name beast, and they created a casual set of games, the first one is basketball. And they’re planning to build other types of games based on the same mechanisms. And I can tell you that when I actually played the alpha and the beta versions with my kids, together with my kids, I can tell you that we’ve had so much fun. And while we did that, we also discovered some bugs, of course, because that was the purpose of me playing with my kids team at home, I can tell you that we’ve had so much fun. And if I compare it to the big traditional mainstream casual games, I think that these guys are going to give them a very, very, very serious fight. So I’m excited about these two projects very much.

 

Brendan Veihman  28:34

I think that’s great. Because when I asked that question, I’m sure a lot of people were like, Oh, he’s going to talk about xe infinity or decentraland, or sandbox. And these are names that people haven’t heard of right off the RIP, like, what are your thoughts of those, those big names that have been around out there? Because I don’t know about you, I don’t have too much animosity towards them. But I just don’t think that they’re great faces to represent the space.

 

28:58

Not only, let’s say, You’re being very polite, and very, they say, let me put it this way. I played x infinity for five to six hours, to make sure that I actually understand x infinity. First of all, it’s not a game. It’s a bullshit game. You can put a bot to play the game and it will do as good as you do as a human person that says everything. But I have to tell you that unlike many people out there that are claiming that x infinity is a Ponzi scheme. I don’t think that the Founders intended I can’t tell you for sure. I’m guessing here, but I don’t think that they intended to scam anyone. I think that they just mismanaged the company. Besides the fact that they just built a bullshit game, which is completely fine. Because there’s, I mean, it’s not fine, but there’s so many out there that are bullshit games but they didn’t have any intention to steal money or scam people in And, and so on. But But that’s my personal opinion. And I think that with regards to the other names that you mentioned, I think that there’s two huge issues. One, I think that the blockchain technology is not there yet. We need to improve so much for things to be registered in real time on the blockchain as they tried to do. And the second part is, I think that they lack a bit of execution. And I am being nice here. And the main reason is that they already made a fortune. Yeah. Why would they want to make such a great effort now, considering that they already made their millions of millions by selling the tokens for these projects?

 

Brendan Veihman  30:52

Well, I want to get your thoughts on who you think the face of the crypto gaming space is now because for a while, I felt like it was kind of Gala, you know, maybe Axi a little bit. But with everything that’s been going on over at Gala, I feel as if there is a void in the crypto gaming space, and that it truly doesn’t have a face anymore. Like there is no person or project to look up towards. Like this is the definitive leader of the crypto gaming space. And I think that’s probably for the best. But, you know, what do you think of that whole situation? Like, who do you see stepping up and kind of taking on that role?

 

31:29

So besides saying, and I’m going to be completely completely non impartial here. Okay. But besides a few of my portfolio companies, I don’t see anyone out there that can actually take that position. I completely agree with you that gala games actually had that chance. And they completely screwed that up with that stupid lawsuit. Yeah, against each other, obviously. And, and unfortunately, the situation right now is so horrible in our industry, in my opinion, that I can’t really answer that question right now. It’s going to take some time for the industry to recover from everything that’s happened, and not only with regards to games, but everything that’s happened with the bankruptcies. Yeah, FTX sells use network and the friends. And, and with regards to games, I think that people just tried to become too rich, too quick. And that’s why we are in this situation. So it’s gonna take us some time, maybe the next time that we have a chat, I will be able to tell you who’s going to take the lead for this. You know, I don’t think

 

Brendan Veihman  32:50

that it’s an awful thing at the end of the day. And here’s why. Because what this does is this opens up the floor for a truly great project to come in. And lead by example. And I completely agree with you, I think gala had the opportunity to do that. And they fumbled the bag. And so now we kind of have almost a clean slate of sorts, where we have room for someone else to come in and take that market share. And you know, hopefully the next person that comes in and does that is a really solid, solid project that knows what they’re doing. And that’s all I can hope for.

 

33:26

Agreed beside the fact that meanwhile, too many people lost their money, including life savings. And that’s the biggest thing that I will say that I can’t agree with the statement that it’s a good thing. Yeah, I know that you didn’t mean, you didn’t refer to that part. But I’m just emphasizing that. Because besides that, I agree with you. And I’ve been saying myself, I had a I did a social media post about six months ago saying that I think that the entire industry should be flooded, similar to the Noah arcs, flood story. And yeah, that posted a lot of a lot of noise back then, because people actually agreed with it, many of them. And and that’s why I keep mentioning that not only the founders are scammers in our industry, too many of them, actually most of them. It’s also the investors, which is absolutely insane, in my opinion. That’s something that I didn’t see in other industries, to be honest.

 

Brendan Veihman  34:28

No, well, fair enough. Well, I think all this begs the question, how do people capitalize on this opportunity of crypto gaming? Because it seems to be and correct me if I’m wrong here. But it seems to be something that you believe is going to play a massive part in the future of society. It just might not be something that happens today, next month, you know, maybe not within the next year. You both of us believe that it’s going to happen, but it couldn’t be a little bit further out than then people might want is that correct?

 

34:55

Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. I think the revolution is still coding, you can say that it started. But I’m saying that it’s starting. And I think yes, it’s gonna take a few good years for us to see the real results for everything related to blockchain based games.

 

Brendan Veihman  35:15

Awesome. And so in order to get to this mainstream global adoption, where we have a large majority of people that are playing video games, playing blockchain based games, what needs to happen for us to get to that point?

 

35:29

So I think that the first is what we already discussed with regards to the level of the games, the quality of the games themselves, as soon as we will be able to see high quality games, it’s just going to happen of its own. And the second part, I think that the industry itself with no regards to games, the entire blockchain and crypto industry must be regulated, must we have to stop with a Wild Wild West, it doesn’t stop, it didn’t stop until now. And without the proper regulation, which I don’t see anytime soon, by the way, they keep talking about it all the time. But they’re not doing too much. I think these two elements are going to be the most crucial ones for the advancement and progress of the industry in general, and specifically blockchain based games.

 

Brendan Veihman  36:22

And so when it comes to capitalizing on on this opportunity, this has to be one of the most frequent questions that I get asked, I’m sure you get it as well. But people were saying, Hey, do I invest in the games at an early stage? Do I buy their tokens do? Do I buy their NF T’s? Do I be the person to play these games? Like there’s so many different ways that people can capitalize? But what are the ones that might be worthwhile from your perspective?

 

36:47

So I’m going to answer that question in a way that you are not expecting to be honest, right. And I’m sure that the founders of the project that we’ve invested in is going are going to be a little bit pissed off when they hear me say that, but I’ll tell you the following. If you’re going to invest, most chances, you’re going to lose your investment. Most people invest in cryptocurrencies, they completely lose everything that they invested or most of it. That’s the according to data that I have gathered and reviewed in the last six years, it doesn’t change. I don’t see changing anytime soon. And as much as I’m considered to be a crypto enthusiastic, or fanatic, or whatever you want to call me. And besides the fact that we are very happy with our investments in the last few years, and specifically with regards to blockchain based games, and besides the fact that we are very happy with our investments, I can tell you that most people will lose their money. And that’s why my advice is unless you really, really, really know what you’re doing. And unless you can really, really afford to lose that money, do not dare to invest in anything in this industry. It’s as simple as that. And the last thing that you should do is listen to your family and friends with regards to investments and not because they don’t care about you, because most likely, they don’t understand anything themselves, even if they sound like they understand. Yeah, like they understand.

 

Brendan Veihman  38:28

There’s an easy rule here that was always said in the stock market. But I think it equally applies in crypto, if you don’t understand what you’re investing in, don’t invest in it, you shouldn’t be investing in things that you don’t understand. And that’s the mistake that people make. And then when something doesn’t go according to plan, they don’t know why they don’t know when to get out. They don’t know when to exit at either a loss or a take profit, because they don’t understand what they invested in in the first place. Exactly. Well on hey, we really appreciate you coming on. It’s great to hear from someone who is so deeply woven into this blockchain based gaming side of things. So where can people continue to follow you on your journey, and track everything that you’re doing?

 

39:10

So it’s very easy to find me because I’m the only one with my full name on your VIN. So if you look me up on LinkedIn, or Twitter, you can easily find me. And I invite everyone to reach out. And if anyone would like to ask me questions, I’m always happy to answer questions. If founders would like to schedule a meeting with me, I’m very happy to schedule a meeting, even though I don’t even when I don’t think it’s relevant for our intelligence fund. I’m always happy to help young founders and I’m inviting everyone to reach out and try me.

 

Brendan Veihman  39:46

Awesome. Well, you heard it here first. If you are looking to build the next generation of crypto games, or your gaming fan at all, this is going to be your man to check out so on once again. Thank you, my man.

 

39:58

Thank you very much. It was up later bye bye for now

 

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