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Welcome Mario, thank you so much for giving some of your weekend up to come on and help us, I’m Natassja.



Pleasure is mine, thank you for having me.



You’re welcome! This is our ChainChat series where we ask some people some questions about Blockchain, Web3, and crypto, and what we do is we get each guest to leave a question for the next guest. Now there were two previous interviewees and they both left a question. The first one from Natalie: What was your gateway drug into Web3?



OK! It’s extremely easy, but a very good question. I’m actually from the e-commerce world so I launched an e-commerce business about a decade ago. It still exists today and is doing extremely well. I wanted to expand outside of something I’m comfortable with. Blockchain technology — I hadn’t heard about NFTs, or Bitcoin being a transfer of value, or a medium of exchange, none of those things, just like, the first story I heard was We’re decentralizing the internet, back in 2017. That’s what got my attention and got me into Blockchain and how I launched IBC initially, the consulting firm.



OK, great. The second question Dzhuliana left which may be a little more difficult, depending, is What one action have you done in the last week to support diversity in Web3?



Define diversity.



We can go as vague or as specific as you like but we generally talk about the inclusion of historically underrepresented groups now in Web3.



Well, I can give you a cheesy one, and I can give you an honest one. The cheesy one I retweeted a Tweet, about how we need more women in Web3 and we need better support for women’s rights, especially considering what’s happening now in Iran. That’s cheesy because it’s very easy for someone to just Tweet something.



Something I do on a regular basis to support diversity in crypto and outside of crypto is just to treat everybody equally. I don’t care where you’re from, or what your sexuality is, I don’t care about anything about you. For me, I only care about what you have to say and what’s happening inside your brain. That’s how I always function, to an extreme level, and I think that’s needed further in Web3 because some people do take men more seriously than women. Listen how crazy this is, there’s a project that had an undoxxed founder, which means nobody knew who the founder is. The project was doing extremely well. Then the founder doxxed himself and went on a Twitter Space. He had an Indian accent. As soon as he started speaking, the project dropped by a significant amount, something like 20% or 30%. Which is ridiculous. One of the biggest incubators in crypto TDeFi actually, who I’m really close to in this space in Dubai is Indian. So it just fascinates me how ignorant people can be to this day.

 
 



We’ve been having a few conversations around that recently, at least on social media with the anonymity aspect and it’s like a double-edged sword, because you need to know who is participating to make sure everybody has an equal chance, but at the same time, as you say with your example, anonymity gives people a chance to gain attention when they unfairly might not have otherwise.



I think this is one of the advantages of pseudo-anonymity. Pseudo-anonymity allows someone to create an unlike persona, a decentralized persona, completely unlinked from the physical world. Punk6529 is a representation of this. The positive thing is that it allows someone that, for whatever reason, does not get equal representation in the physical world, to get another shot. There are multiple examples. It could be a student in Nigeria that happens to be extremely intelligent, but that would not be treated the same way as a mildly intelligent person in the UK. So that’s the beauty of pseudo-anonymity and something that’s not being discussed enough. The reason I bought my Punk and I believe in the PFP hype in the NFT space, is because it allows someone to have a separate identity from their physical self. It also allows you to have a digital identity. There’s a downside to pseudo-anonymity in that at least for now, it doesn’t carry the same risk if you do something bad. You don’t have that same level of accountability as you do with a physical world identity.



I think it’s worth looking into more and weighing up the pros and cons. Alright, let me steer this in a bit of a different direction. You obviously have a few years of experience in this space. Are you more into crypto, NFTs, the building, or the code behind it all?



I’m really bad with tech. So a brief overview of myself. I got into the space in 2017, I launched IBC which started as a consulting firm, later became a marketing firm, and now it’s an incubator-accelerator, doing extremely well. It’s got a media arm as well, so I host the biggest live show in crypto, the Twitter Space that we do. And we’ve acquired assets and we’re building them up, I can’t disclose more about that. That’s at IBC, and then I’m the co-founder of NFT Tech, which is a public company now on the European and Canadian stock markets. It’s run by Adam De Cata, ex-Decentraland and he’s incubating Metaverse project, doing extremely well, so that’s where I come from. I’m more the operator, I know where the space is heading and understand the space but I still take my hat off the people building, the developers. 



What would you say to somebody who is trying to get into this space? Where would you suggest they go first to start learning?



If you look at Web1 and compare it to where it is today, it was a slow evolution of moving things from the physical world to the Web 1 and Web2 world. In other words, moving events to the internet, moving meetings to the internet, moving interactions, signaling, gaming, entertainment… The same jobs that existed in the physical world now exist in the digital world. So now we’ve got Web3. We have a decentralized ecosystem. Web1 was the movement of information, Web2 is two-way interactions, so the social, and Web3 is digital ownership. So if someone’s looking at the space and like, I’m not a dev… I barely understood Blockchain when I got into this space. But I knew how to operate a company and hire the right people. That was my strength, and I applied it to Web3 or whatever buzzword you want to use. So if someone organizes events, well you can organize crypto events. If you’re a developer it’s really easy. If you’re a marketer, it’s easy. If you’re a doctor, it’s a little too early, but you can start looking at what the metaverse is and how you can offer your services in that ecosystem. Doctors are using virtual reality to perform surgeries. Still extremely early, and virtual reality is not very different from an open metaverse, I was about to Tweet something about this today. But it’s heading in that direction. So you can look at what you’re doing in the physical world and apply it in the Web3 world. If you're an entrepreneur just starting out, my answer is very cheesy and basic. Educate the hell out of yourself and embed yourself within the community. There is nothing that will give you the same ROI as this right now.



Educate yourself where? University of YouTube? Do you have any tried and trusted sources of reliable info?



You’d want to avoid any channel that’s hyping up a project. It’s really simple. If you do that, you’re pretty chill. Most respected media platforms never shill a project. And if you’re following the person that shills the next hot thing, you’re not doing it right. Follow channels that will explain tech, and projects, that will teach you what to look for, which makes more sense. Now that’s the main source of information. I’m going to give a second, more controversial thing you can do. There’s also value in embedding yourself in those communities that shill projects. Maybe not ones that only shill projects, but ones that talk about the exciting side of the Web, for example, This influencer did this, this creator did that. I’m really referring to the NFT community. The NFT community is still very childish compared to the rest of the crypto community. Most of us crypto OGs or whatever term you want to use kind of look down at the NFT community as a fad that won’t last. I think this is a mistake, embedding yourself in the community — not necessarily investing in the next sexy project — but understanding the community and understanding what they look for is a skill that got a lot of people massive ROI last year. If you do that in the bear market, you’ll have an edge when the market increases. So number one is looking for educational content that doesn’t shill a project, and number two is delving deep down into the degen community. They shill projects, but you also start to understand various players, projects, and what causes a project to gain value.



Cool, thank you. What barriers do you think there are to entry? Let’s speak about crypto specifically for this one, for people who are looking to start investing or even just understand it.



Yeah, there are a few barriers because it’s still relatively early. The barriers I would consider the most severe… The first one I’m going back to education. By far the most important one. People still don’t understand what NFTs are which is mind-boggling to me because it’s so simple. It’s like OK, you can own something online, the same way you can own something in real life and put it in your pocket, you can own something online without a third party being in the middle. That was very easy for me to understand but some people think VR is the Metaverse, whereas the Metaverse is a digital representation of the physical world, it’s where you can own things the same way you can own things in the physical world. People don’t understand that. Gamers don’t understand Web3 gaming. Smart people say foolish things because they don’t understand the definition of various terms. They think Web3 gaming or play-to-earn is a way to play purely for the focus of earning money whereas earning money is only one of the multiple factors within the Web3 gaming ecosystem. There are all these examples of where education is still the main hurdle. Obvious ones, like what is a private key? So I’d say education is by far the biggest one. Once education is resolved, regulators can be more understanding although they’re pretty good right now, surprisingly. But they’re doing a pretty good job in most countries. Regulators will be more understanding, and financial institutions will obviously invest more in this space, and that’s already happening. So we’re kind of past the hurdles we faced back in 2017, but education remains the main hurdle. That’s relatively common with every new innovation. 



With the whole crypto scene then, where do you think it’s going?



I’m extremely bullish, I’ve never been this bullish. It’s crazy, a bit foolishly bullish. I’ve got a company that is outside of crypto and I’m moving all my resources, all my capital, my efforts, into IBC and what we’re doing with crypto, and we’re doing well and we continue to scale, and I’m saying no to opportunities outside of crypto, that’s how bullish I am. Why? We have killer use cases. I remember back in the last bull run, the discussion was What’s the killer use case for Blockchain? All these different guesses, will it be logistics? Will it be avoiding counterfeit goods? Will it be digital NFTs and digital ownership that became the hot thing? All these different things. We have an answer now, I think gaming is the killer use case that Axie Infinity has proven to make sense. Obviously, it wasn’t sustainable back then just because the sole reason you’d play the game was to earn money because it was so early. But you’ve got a lot of money flowing into Web3 gaming as the early adoption of digital ownership in Web3 comes in. You’ve got Bitcoin acting as a way to transfer value, Bitcoin, and other stablecoins. And you’ve got countries, someone told me… A Latin American country, um, Venezuela, where the majority of people hold their savings in USDC, for me that’s what matters. That’s another use case that you have and you have all these institutions pouring money into various applications of decentralization. Mainly through digital ownership, that’s what’s taking a lot of the attention right now, and of course, the Metaverse. I’m talking about the open metaverse, not virtual reality. So there are so many indicators that we’re at a stage that we weren’t at before. What makes me more bullish, is the valuations. Things are so freaking cheap! I always use this as an example, there’s a company that valued their domain for US$200million last year. Their domain was valued at more than US$200 million. The entire company today is worth US$10 million, if not less. US$200 million was too much, but US$10 million is too little as well, so we’re acquiring a lot of assets and we’re getting incredible deals. That’s been extremely positive for us. I’m so excited.



I can see. Good energy. Back to diversity, then, where do you think companies that you invest in for example, where do you think they should be focusing their diversity efforts?



One thing I’ve seen is that VCs in our ecosystem, it’s shifting now, but we deploy capital in countries we know — and there’s a reason VCs avoid investing in countries like Nigeria, which actually is currently doing very well. There are some countries that don’t get that same representation. African startups significantly underperform other countries. There are logical reasons for that. The success rate of African countries is significantly lower than other countries. The other reason, which is more important, is that the legal system isn’t as powerful. In African countries, if you have a startup that raises money and takes the money and walks away, they don’t have that same accountability as an American startup. That puts us in murky waters. What I recommend for founders is if someone is based in a country with a weaker legal system, it makes sense that you want to mitigate your risk and not invest in them. But if you see someone working in the UK or they’ve moved their headquarters to the US, they’ve taken steps to be able to be compliant from a legal point of view and taken steps to mitigate the risks for an investor. Then give them a fair shot. That would be one thing I’d recommend from the VC ecosystem. 



From a gender perspective, it’s very easy for me. It means nothing to me why should it to anyone else? I would open my mind to Web3 decentralized representation which is pseudo-anonymous identities. It used to be unheard of a few years ago, now it’s frowned upon, but some VCs accept it, and you’ve got some incredible companies founded by anonymous founders. Anonymity is a risk, but anonymous people that have actually built a representation have proven through their actions that they can be trusted and there are digital or decentralized ways to kind of mitigate your risk. I think we should have a more open mind to these things. One reason I’ll focus on is if someone is not going to do anything wrong, why would they want to be pseudo-anonymous, it goes back to your point. We don’t have the diversity we need. A lot of people feel underrepresented or not treated equally so building a pseudo-anonymous identity like the example I gave earlier, makes sense to them. Pseudo-anonymous identity could be a massive step in the right direction.



Think we lost you… Can hear you again now.



Pseudo-anonymity is going to be one of the biggest things to allow misrepresented people in society to have a fair shot.



Cool. Well, we keep these to about half an hour so I’m going to ask one more question and then ask you to leave one for our next guest. The last question is a bit more general — any other wisdom, insights, or predictions, something that you want to get off your chest and share with the audience?



Yes. You have to be able to become unemotional when it comes to investments and decision-making in business. Especially in crypto. When you make an investment you say to yourself OK, this is a one-year investment. It means you don’t look at the chart for one year. That’s number one. Number two, you have to learn to separate yourself from the herd. When the market is blowing up, everyone loves to Tweet things like WAGMI, and then everyone thinks that things are only going to go up. But when the market corrects itself, as it should, everyone thinks crypto is dead and moves to the next thing. If you are one of those people, you’re going to be what they call exit liquidity. You’re going to be the one dumped on. You’re going to come in when everyone’s excited and then sell when everyone’s too scared, which is exactly where you should do the opposite. So if you are able to be educated and unemotional in crypto, and I’m talking about investing and trading in this case, or even building, you have a massive edge over most people in the space. Because most people in the space are more immature than other people in other industries because it’s such a new space. There’s more emotion, they’re more illogical, and more of a sheep. So that would probably be the thing that even myself, that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m in a really big investment in a project since the end of last month, a decentralized social platform, called DeSo. If you look at the chart of DSo since I made my investment, because of my investment, it picked up really heavily. US$6 to US$20 something. I’ve invested in over 150 projects privately. When you’re investing privately, your money is locked, so you have no choice, you cannot sell. But when you invest in a listed token which I rarely do, I think DeSo is my biggest investment in a listed token, I’m like F***, I can actually check the price right now, because it’s listed and I can sell. It was worth US$25 and now it’s $US15, I lost whatever amount. I started getting emotionally connected! So yesterday, I deleted it from my favorite web pages. Even I, a person that runs a big company, fell into this trap. I didn’t sell my tokens, because I’m not stupid, but I still looked at it and my emotions were dictated by the chart. It’s horrible. I’ve ignored it now I’m not going to look at it at all. And tell my colleagues not to message me about it every time it spikes up or spikes down. Another thing I tell everyone is “When there’s blood in the waters then you should be excited.” I think it’s a Warren Buffet quote that I butchered. When everyone is scared, everything is cheap. When someone is scared means they have already sold. So when most people are scared, it means most people have sold. There are not many people left to sell. Now, there are only buyers, that will be coming in and vice-versa. When everyone is excited that means they already invested. And soon they’re going to have to take profit off the table. So, basic information that most people still fail to apply. 



We will leave it there then! Question for the next guest?



What’s one thing you’ve done within the Web3 ecosystem that you’re not proud of?



OK, I like it! We will wait and see!



Mario will be watching to make sure they answer correctly!