Investing in Web3: Trends, Strategies, and Legal Insights from the WoW Summit

In this episode of Edge of NFT, co-host Josh Krueger interviews Andrey Kuznetsov, CTO of HAQQ, about their Sharia-compliant DeFi solutions and real-world asset projects in Brazil and Indonesia. The discussion also features insights from James Ho of Animoca Ventures on the evolving landscape of blockchain investments and the future of real-world assets in the Web3 space.

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Please enjoy!

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Key Topics Covered:

• Sharia-Compliant DeFi: The discussion highlights the development of a layer one network, HAQQ, which focuses on creating Sharia-compliant decentralized finance solutions by consulting Islamic scholars to ensure adherence to Islamic values.
• Real World Assets (RWAs): The podcast explores the growing interest in RWAs, suggesting they may represent the next evolution of NFTs, with potential applications in tokenizing various assets and improving transparency in supply chains, particularly in halal food production.
• Investment Strategies in Web3: James Ho from Animoca Ventures shares insights on their investment approach, emphasizing the importance of fundamentals and the integration of AI tools to enhance portfolio management and support for early-stage Web3 companies.

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What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let us know in the comments on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@edgeofnft/

Episode Highlights:

• "DeFi, which is Sharia-compliant, is DeFi which lacks certain haram mechanics, such as gambling or interest rate or some other things." - Andrey Kuznetsov (00:01:18-00:01:29)
• "One of the greatest strengths for Animoca, having 500 plus companies within our ecosystem, is the network effects." - James Ho (00:12:29-00:12:39):
• "To build a Sharia-compliant DeFi, you don't just implement it in code; you also consult with Islamic scholars to shape it in a Sharia-compliant way." - Andrey Kuznetsov (00:01:18 - 00:01:29) 

For the full transcript, see further below. 

People and Resources Mentioned: 

• Andrey Kuznetsov @onsails 
• Andrey Kuznetsov LinkedIn 
• HAQQ Network @The_HaqqNetwork
• Haqq Network Website 
• James Ho LinkedIn 
• Animoca Website 
• Sandbox Games Website 
• KIP Protocol Website 
• Centrium Advisory Services Limited Website 
• Erika Evasdottir LinkedIn 

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About Our Guest 1:

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• Bio: Andrey is leading HAQQ, a layer one network focused on Sharia finance. The platform aims to create a smart contract environment that aligns with Islamic financial principles, converting traditional DeFi into Sharia-compliant solutions. He emphasizes the importance of consulting Islamic scholars to ensure compliance with Sharia values, similar to how companies consult legal experts for government regulations.
• Website: Haqq Network
• Twitter: @onsails 
• LinkedIn: Andrey Kuznetsov

About Our Guest 2:

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• Bio: James has been deeply involved in the blockchain space since 2017, initially working on a project that paid out in Bitcoin. He joined Animoca at the end of 2017 during a bear market and has since played a crucial role in the company's investment strategy, focusing on digital ownership. 
• Website: Animoca
• Twitter: @JIQQYJONES
• LinkedIn: James Ho

About Our Guest 3:

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• Bio:  Erica co-founded Centrium Advisory to provide legal and compliance support to Web3 companies and funds that cannot afford their own legal teams. Her firm aims to help clients grow to a point where they can hire their own compliance officers. 
• Website: Centrium Advisory Services Limited 
• LinkedIn: Erika Evasdottir

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Disclaimer:

This is not financial or tax advice. Edge of NFT content is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Whenever making financial decisions, we recommend doing your own research and talking to your accountant for financial advice. Disclosure: From time-to-time we may feature sponsored content for which we receive value and we may share links for which we receive a commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. See our full Disclaimer (https://www.edgeofnft.com/disclaimer), Terms & Conditions (https://www.edgeofnft.com/terms-of-use), Privacy Policy (https://www.edgeofnft.com/privacy-policy), and Copyright Notice (https://www.edgeofnft.com/copyright-notice) for details. 

Full Episode Transcript:

Josh Kriger: Hi, everyone, this is Josh Krueger, co-host of Edge of NFT, and we are live at WoW Summit in Bangkok, Thailand. It's been a year of travel and adventures throughout Asia and all over the world and meeting interesting people. I have as my guest today, Andrey Kuznetsov , the CTO of HAQQ. Great to have you on the show. Nice to meet you. So what brings you to the WoW Summit today?

Andrey Kuznetsov : Well, this event is full of builders in different areas, specifically in RVA, Railroad Assets, so we are looking for new partnerships and synergies.

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Josh Kriger: Cool. For those that don't know, give us a little bit of background on what HAQQ is, and then we'll dive into real world assets, which I think is a really interesting topic.

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Andrey Kuznetsov : HAQQ is a layer one network focused on Sharia finance. So we're building a smart contract platform for Muslim world. We're organizing Islamic financial instruments. and trying to convert traditional DeFi into a Sharia compliant device as well.

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Josh Kriger: What makes DeFi a Sharia compliant?

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Andrey Kuznetsov : DeFi, which is Sharia-compliant, is DeFi which lacks certain haram mechanics, such as gambling or interest rate or some other things. And usually to build a Sharia-compliant DeFi, you don't just implement it in code, you don't just build the interface. You also consult with scholars, Islamic scholars, in order to shape it in a Sharia compliant way. It's the same way as you consult with your lawyers to make it compliant to government regulations. The same way you consult with the scholars to make it compliant to the Islamic values.

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Josh Kriger: Very cool. So I know you all launched, was it about a year ago or over a year ago?

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Andrey Kuznetsov : We launched more than a year ago, but the public listing was a year ago, exactly.

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Josh Kriger: Cool. And you've been focused on sort of implementing this layer 1 now around the world. And I know you're doing some projects in Brazil, if I'm not mistaken, as well as Indonesia. Maybe you can talk a little bit about what you've been up to there.

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Andrey Kuznetsov : Yeah. First, why Brazil? Brazil is not a Muslim country, but Brazil is the country number one, which produces a lot of halal food, specifically meat, beef. Some of the best meat in the world, yeah. What makes food halal? You will ask. Well, the whole supply chain should be compliant from slaughtering to transportation, etc. So when we speak about supply chain, we speak about transparency. You need to know ideally in real time what happens to the cargo on every critical point. So that's precisely what we're building. We are increasing transparency of the halal food production and supply chains, transportation. And Indonesia is actually currently our focus. First of all, it's the largest Muslim country in the world. FinTech is booming here. And at the same time blockchain innovation is just getting started. So there is not much blockchain adoption here in terms of the institutional side. But at the same time blockchain can bring a lot to this country because in this country many people are underserved and unbanked.

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Josh Kriger: All the key ingredients for why people are all about blockchain and the future of decentralized finance, right? It's a population that's looking for opportunity and without shackles, without handcuffs to sort of prosper in society, right? Very cool. So real world assets have become a hot topic. Someone yesterday told me that they feel like real world assets are actually like the next NFTs or the remodeling of NFTs. How do you look at real world assets and what are you all doing in that space?

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Andrey Kuznetsov : NFTs are used as technologies, enabling technology there. For example, in Brazil, we use NFTs or there are also SBTs, the form of NFTs, to mark some accounts or assets as Sharia compliant. But in Indonesia, we're building RVA, which acts as a connector between not even web 2.0, but offline economy and online and web 3.0 economy. So, for example, we recently launched a product which tokenizes the debt market in Indonesia. Debt is a very sensitive topic in Islam. So in Indonesia, there are a lot of big companies which provide short-term loans in a Sharia-compliant way without interest rate but still with some cost which is structured in a Sharia-compliant way. And they, this debt market is growing like crazy and they are in need of liquidity. Blockchain has a lot of liquidity, so our product offers for blockchain people, it offers up to 20% APY on your stable coins, which then gets converted to Indonesian rupiahs and go to the debt market in Indonesia. It kind of connects the needs of both markets. This market in Indonesia, they need liquidity. This market here, blockchain, they need high APY. And now it's pretty rare in blockchain itself. 20% APY, you will find it in maybe two places, and the risk will be very high.

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Josh Kriger: All right, so you're sort of figuring out a way to solve that problem between two groups that have you know interesting means that that makes sense so uh really appreciate learning a little bit more about HAQQ and sharing it with our audience if folks want to learn more about what uh your sharia compliant layer one is up to where should they go on social and where can they follow you

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Andrey Kuznetsov : Well, you can follow us on Twitter. My Twitter is OnSails, and the Twitter of… Can you spell that for us? O-N-S-A-I-L-S. All right. Easy enough. Like sailing, yeah. Yeah. And the project is called The Underscore Hack. H-A-Q-Q.

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Josh Kriger: All right. Thanks for hanging out with us today. Hi everyone, Josh Krueger, co-host of Edge of NFT, live at WoW Summit in Bangkok, Thailand. I'm here with James Ho, the managing partner at Animoca Ventures, and we've hung out a lot. I don't think you've ever officially been on the show, so welcome to Edge of NFT.

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James Ho: We've caught up everywhere in different cities. We just saw each other in Dubai. We haven't actually chatted, so I'm happy to share a bit more about my background and how I… Yeah, that would be great.

Josh Kriger: How did you get started sort of in this crazy space we love called blockchain?

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James Ho: So in 2017, I was working for a project that was actually based in Taiwan that paid out in Bitcoin. I finished the project and then yeah, I reached out just about setting up the Animoca team to really… Hopefully you held some of that Bitcoin. I sold it, but then went into a lot of the early projects that Animoca was really sort of seeding and promoting and growing. So I joined Animoca at the end of 2017, really in the deep trenches of the bear market. A lot of appreciation for that, because you tasted how hard it was in 2017. I joined first together working with Yat, Robbie Young, our CEO, at the time Arnold Ketsepsion, and again, it's a five-person team at Animoca. In 2017, Animoca had only done one investment, which was Dapper Labs out of Vancouver. And my role there as a business strategist is really to map out what we invest in if we believe the future is digital ownership. Luckily, I think my first investment was OpenSea as the seed round. I do remember that it was a $350,000 investment on the $20 million safe. So I had an early conviction on betting on the Marketplace. And then I think the man himself, Yat Siu, had invested in the early company called XInfinity, which I didn't believe in at the time, but clearly he proved me wrong. And then really supported Sebastian Borge on the fundraise for Sandbox. So I was very early on in supporting the ecosystem. We did about 15, 20 investments in 2018, of which everybody knows now, several of them became quite large companies, including Atomoka. Subsequently, I evolved into an investment role, working with a core team as we grew, entered into the bull market, and really invested across BFI, infrastructure, gaming, NFTs, etc. I did about 200 plus investments for Animoca Group before establishing Animoca Ventures in 2022.

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Josh Kriger: Very cool. Yeah, a lot of history there and some flashback moments for me. Of course, Jiho was our keynote opening speaker at the first NFTLA the day after the hack. And actually, you don't know this, I don't think, but the first crypto meetup I went to sort of outside of what the DNA house was doing. was actually hosted by the co-founder of NFTLA. And it was with Mac, one of the original founders of Dapper Labs, Ethereum CryptoKitties. Basically, I met him in a room with like six other people a month after that launch. And he was just talking about, you know, all the craziness. So it was so early and he didn't even at that moment know the gravitas of what he had done. So it was like an intimate sort of, you know, Fire conversation. That's amazing. In the early, early days. So that was a flashback when you were sharing your story.

James Ho: Yeah, when CryptoKitties crashed the Ethereum network, that was when Yahtzee was like, we think this might be a new sort of transition. Wow, he saw it right there. And we were able to really operationalize and grow a team. From there, I set up Animoca Ventures, which is a LPGP. We also raised external funds. It's a $100 million plus fund, really focusing on Web3 builders, early stage seed series A. So we've been writing checks to a lot of founders. 2024 has been a tough year, not to say the least, but we have backed over 39 companies.

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Josh Kriger: So I gotta ask you a question that's on my mind. What's going to happen with all these companies that have been deferred their launches for the last nine months and they all launch around the same time? Are we going to have a different sort of problem with the abundance of choice in terms of what projects that people support? I mean, you could go to an ice cream store and have 20 flavors of ice cream, but you're only going to pick a few to actually eat in a given week, or that's not going to be somewhere you want to keep going.

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James Ho: Sure. So I think for retail messers, it could be quite complex to navigate the landscape because there's so many different things to parcel your money into. I think from a VC lens, I think what's exciting is that you've seen the, I've been in the sector for eight years now, it feels like a couple decades, I think the transition on how the metagame of how we play listing and growth and fundamentals have really evolved. No company can just launch without any fundamentals. And almost every company we're betting on has to have a very clear business need and nature in solving a problem. Better yet, there's some companies that we're betting on and preceding that actually have users and hitting revenue. I think fundamentals are really evolving and tokenomics as a sector is also evolving. What sort of value proposition are you bringing to the ecosystem? And one of the greatest strengths for Animoca, having 500 plus companies within our ecosystem, is the network effects. When I invest in a company, my check is likely the least important sort of alpha there for them to really support them. It's really more, can my network support you? Can I give you 100,000 users or a million users? Can we grow the ecosystem together? So we're very excited to have met some really amazing founders in this cycle. I say to everybody, the best investments come from bear cycles because There isn't a lot of easy money out there, right? People are really grinding it during this time.

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Josh Kriger: Are you specifically looking at projects that have both an equity and token component? Or are you looking at straight token and equity projects as well?

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James Ho: So we're a token equity fund. We are predominantly token focused, but 60% of our portfolio has equity, just because of the nature of being early stage. Token, as you know, has a much higher degree of liquid liquidity and exit liquidity. and risk as well. Token also gives us some level of governance. I've been taking up a lot more positions in terms of board directors to support a lot of companies' deep strategy or integration.

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Josh Kriger: So are you also looking at creating an AI twin of yourself so that you can actually give them strategic advice and be in five meetings at the same time?

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James Ho: I think a lot of the, I think a lot of the portfolio, they need the handholding because Animoog has done one really good job is we've stayed agnostic. In the early days, people didn't like it. Are you choosing Ethereum? Are you choosing Solana? We've always stayed really neutral in terms of how we see the sector growing. That has given us a sort of peripheral view on what we're betting on, what we're investing in. In this cycle, we invested in Monad and also VeriTrain. So we're agnostic in that we think that all these Layer 1s and Layer 2s are bringing more users in collectively. So having the ability to spend time with founders is not… I can't spend time with every founder, right?

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Josh Kriger: That's what I was wondering. You need an AI twin.

James Ho: So we are applying AI tools into our portfolio to track on-chain, off-chain data to give better insights of how we manage the portfolio, how we enter and exit. And we have a small sort of liquid strategy within our fund as well. So I think that's been the case, I think the evolution of VCs is becoming quite interesting. How we run VCs in the future are no longer going to be capped by traditional methodologies because of AI and the advancement of AI.

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Josh Kriger: Tim Jaipur came on our Edge of AI show and talked about his new digital twin that's going to give portfolio updates on all of his. Yeah, because he has a large portfolio too. So I was half joking. I was like, maybe you need to have a James digital twin at some point. Yes, yes, yes. I'm sure it won't be that far away from reality. So what are some of the specific projects that you recently invested in that you can share the public information now? Then we'll talk about projects that are launching after that.

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James Ho: Sure. So one of which, you know, you know, following our sort of thematic on AI, we made it one of our first investments in AI called KIPP protocol. Okay, K protocol is building the web to a web three AI base layer, we call it similar to what you mentioned earlier, if I am I am a knowledge base in blockchain, if you're not one of oil, we're figuring out how we can actually incentivize and pay people per query. So they've developed a lot of the tools for that right now. And they've actually signed, recently signed a really big deal with one of Animoca's subsidiary companies called Open Campus. So they're building the whole tech stack for the Open Campus. How do we democratize education? You know, when you write a textbook, you know, I'm sure we both bought tons of textbooks that we only read 10% to directly.

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Josh Kriger: Yeah, I just actually, I got rid of a lot of them. I mean, they were in storage and I was just like paying this ridiculous storage fee.

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James Ho: So imagine if you could learn through these educators and authors per query, better ways of engagement. How do we democratize the music industry like Spotify? So this team has a very strong technical background. They're signing quite a few real world deals in terms of operationalizing and starting to get revenue. So we're backing them, we preceded them. We're quite hands-on in terms of in the initial stages of helping them get off the ground. They signed several companies in the Animoca ecosystem as well as external as well. So the KIPP protocol. And that's K-I-P? K-I-P.

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Josh Kriger: Cool.

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James Ho: And who else recently? So the other one that we also did was Cethys. which is on the Sway Network. So they're one of our companies that we're backing as well. And there's a few other ones. We have two we haven't announced yet that I'm pretty excited about. One is going to be in the payment space. So in 2018, the small team that we had, we always felt that payment was a really smart, intelligent way for user acquisition and user adoption. If you look at Visa MasterCard alone, there's 2.3 billion users. How do we actually exercise opportunities as a driver for users to come into Web3? So we're working on that. The second one is that, as you guys may know, the TAN ecosystem is proving to be very exciting.

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Josh Kriger: Yeah, we were just at, I think we saw each other at the TAN event in Dubai.

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James Ho: So with 900 plus million users, several sort of companies you probably saw in the time gateway event that were lined up. One we think will be very well suited for Animoca is what we call decentralized ad tech. When we see the future of millions of users coming into Web3, what data points are we creating? Can we create better advertising dollars to be shared amongst the creators, like you and myself, like this podcast there, this interview? So we're going to be investing in these founders that come from 25 years of ad tech. They're going to be building tool sets to allow us to better monetize the future of advertising and that type of thing.

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Josh Kriger: Very cool. And then, you know, amongst that very large portfolio, there's a lot of projects that I'm sure are doing their token soon. What are some of the upcoming launches that sort of you're keeping a close eye on?

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James Ho: Sure, so within our portfolio we have one that's created a lot of hype recently, it's Godzilla. Godzilla launched the game on the PS5 and Xbox called Off The Grid. Funny story is that right after the election they launched skins for Carmilla and also Trump on their game. So kudos to them. The game looks pretty amazing. So this is a blockchain game that you can play on… So the team comes from a studio called Godzilla. They come from traditional console gaming and PC gaming and whatnot and mobile gaming. Very strong producers. I think they are actually incorporating and building on the AVEX chain. But the game itself right now is not fully Web3 yet. I think that's later on in their product roadmap.

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Josh Kriger: But that's cool. I mean, they get to, you know, get out to the masses first. And I think, you know, I've heard a lot of leaders in Web3 gaming talk about, like, just build a great game that gets the masses, then figure out how to make it even better with blockchain. Absolutely. So that's it.

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James Ho: So they're taking that strategy. So the game itself looks pretty amazing. But I think in this industry, making a hit game is also a one in a million chance, right? Yeah, so I think they've managed the budget very well, so we're very excited about their work.

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Josh Kriger: You've got to bet on the studio and know that they'll figure it out. I mean, these studios crank out 20, 30 games, and it's one game that's still creating a million dollars of revenue a day years later, and you just don't know which one. It's diversifying your portfolio, right? Exactly. That makes sense. Well, really cool to have you on and catch up on some of these things. One last question before we wrap. Real world assets, it's been a major conversation topic lately. You know, I mentioned someone yesterday who told me it's kind of like the new wrapping paper for NFTs. What's your thought on RWAs and where that's going?

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James Ho: Yeah, we're starting to look deeper into, we think it's going to be, now that the US government passed us, you know, with President Trump elected, We're excited on copper funds because we now have a path for clear regulation. I think this is going to mark a very important time in history for blockchain. Real world assets and also DeFi, integration of DeFi and how we move future sort of decentralized digital currencies is all going to happen within the next term, I believe. Asia, as you know, has been moving a lot quicker in regards to Hong Kong, Japan, and some of the stances within what China thinks Hong Kong should be holding, how we sort of manage DeFi. So I think real world assets, even tokenizing property deeds is something that is a lot more efficient to do it than filing it on paper in a computer system on a database. So we're starting to see a lot of innovative solutions on fractionalizing. We're starting to see funds getting fractionalized. Yes. Right. So which is which I think the future tokenization is moving very quickly. So we're starting to look at Deepin more closely and also real world assets more closely. We think that's going to be the future. We do also for my final remark is we're seeing some amazing sort of builders that are reshaping and rethinking how NFQs should interact in the real world. The smart contract and how we sort of access the, you know, the last cycle we saw between you and me was collecting abort apes, which was exciting at the time, but it can sustain that level of growth. I think the evolution of the new sort of standards on NFT that are coming will be very exciting.

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Josh Kriger: Well, thanks for your insights and great to catch up today. I learned a lot. Likewise. Thank you. Hi everyone, Josh Krueger, co-host of Edge of NFT, lives at WildSummit in Bangkok. It's bustling here and I have the pleasure of meeting some great people like my guest now, Erika Evasdottir who is the CIO, COO, NGC at Centrium Advisory Services Limited. And you probably know quite a few of her clients. Great to have you on the show, Erica. Hi, thanks for having me. Tell us a little bit about your background, what you've been up to lately, because I know you've been fighting some giant battles on the field.

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Erika Evasdottir: Unfortunately. So Centrium Advisory started out just as a little itty-bitty group of lawyers who just wanted to help Web3 companies and funds sort of get off the ground. They can't afford their own lawyers. It's too expensive. So we came in as a fractionalized GC compliance type. So many of my clients you would have heard of, And our business plan, by the way, I need to say this, it's very important. Our business plan is to get you to the point where you're making enough money, you should hire your own compliance officer and your own lawyers. And so I will say that FTX had done that by the time things went wrong. But I started Alameda and FTX.

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Josh Kriger: Well, you tried to start us on the right foot. What went awry there, in your opinion? I'm sure you've been asked this a million times.

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Erika Evasdottir: Yes, by some very important people, actually. So what went wrong there was desperation. I think it all traces back to the collapse of Luna. Another important client of mine was a fund, a $16 billion fund, which also collapsed because of Luna. And I think desperation causes people to do terrible things. What's his name? Warren Buffett said that everything's fine until the water goes out and you see everybody's naked or whatever.

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Josh Kriger: That's what I think happened, and they made some of you know foolish choices so Are you optimistic with sort of the possibility that Gensler is no longer? Sort of running the show over in the u.s.. In terms of how that's going to open up the global markets for the industry I

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Erika Evasdottir: Look, the SEC is always dangling this in front of us that someday they'll get around to making the regulation logical and rational. But in fact, they never did for securities law. So why would they do it for us? People don't seem to understand, regardless of your politics, the SEC thrives off of ambiguity, because if they don't like you, then they switch the way they're looking at it and you become the bad guy. If they like you, you're a good guy and you're going to be a good guy no matter what you do.

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Josh Kriger: How do you prepare a company with limited resources trying to put their money into product, marketing, and adoption? How do you prepare them for battle if they happen to grow? But they can't necessarily put all that legal infrastructure in place on day one, because I know as a founder of a media company, there's a million things I'd love to do on the compliance side, but it's impossible to do everything.

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Erika Evasdottir: Yeah. So what you have to do is to stage it. You really do. You're going to be violating every single rule, but one or two. And you're going to be aware of that. And you may even sort of pay attention to that. Oh, yeah, we're still violating that rule. Okay, whatever. So and, you know, there's certain rules that you do not violate from day one. And that's going to depend on your industry. So we will look into what it is that you're doing. Are there other ways that even if a regulator came to you and said you shouldn't have been doing that, you said, look, we didn't follow those rules, but we did this instead, which, you know, isn't the letter of the law, but it has the same result. So AML KYC, for example, there's a lot of things I can do that will protect your company that have nothing to do with a passport and proof of address, which is the stupidest way of doing it.

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Josh Kriger: So essentially, you're here, you know, the analogy that comes into my head, I don't know why. I'm short on sleep. There's been a lot of jet lag. It's like, you know, you have these lily pads and you're making sure these lily pads are close enough together that you can jump from one to the other at the right moment.

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Erika Evasdottir: That's right. That's right. You're a frogger.

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Josh Kriger: Okay, cool. You're a frogger, basically. So you help all the Web3 blockchain companies play frogger and not lose.

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Erika Evasdottir: Right.

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Josh Kriger: Not lose all three times.

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Erika Evasdottir: Exactly. But that doesn't mean that they're not going to get into trouble. So, you know, 

KuCoin's $30 million fine is like we had a party. We had a huge party. That is great, like KuCoin just made another $30 million while we've been talking, okay? $30 million is nothing. It's a slap on the wrist. Why? Because they had tried to do what they could. Clearly, they didn't make it. They didn't have the resources. They hadn't put their resources in the way that the regulator wanted them to. Fine. But $30 million is, you know, please change. Okay, going forward, my favorite phrase is, you know, somebody comes to me, they've murdered somebody, whatever, doesn't matter. I'm like, well, going forward, we won't do that again. Right? Going forward, let's do things better.

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Josh Kriger: There we go. And, you know, you've been in the industry for a while. You know, 2016. Interesting to learn that you've chosen to sort of abstain from X and Amazon. Is that because you're a big proponent of decentralization of anything that, you know, should not be controlled, I guess, by Big Brother, or what are your thoughts on sort of… I'm really into competition.

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Erika Evasdottir: I think it's competition, and I think as Amazon gets too big, as Twitter gets too big, everybody will flock to quit Twitter. There's nothing wrong with the way that Twitter organizes itself, but it's just that kind of organization. There's nothing wrong with the way Amazon organizes its algorithm. It's not the best algorithm. It's not the worst. It's just one way of doing it. But the problem I have is the one. I want multiple. I don't want to just go on Amazon and be told, these are the books you're going to like. I want somebody to make, you know, another one to go on to somebody else and see what books they're going to tell me I might like. I don't know why I'm saying books, but do you know what I mean? Like it's the singular approach to anything that freaks me out.

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Josh Kriger: That makes a lot of sense. And we've talked a lot about, actually on the panel I moderated about how this convergence of AI, blockchain, Web3, FinTech, DeFi, where we're at now, really does sort of enable smaller and medium-sized businesses to have a fighting chance as we see this convergence of larger players sort of controlling the cloud storage market and whatnot. We need to make it easier for smaller businesses to have a chance, right?

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Erika Evasdottir: That's right, that's right. We need to break that up. I'm very anti-cartel, which I never knew until I sort of came at it the other way. I took a cartel law class and was like, but cartels are good. You can reduce costs. From a capitalist point of view, cartels are the most amazing thing ever. Profits go up, blah, blah, blah. But then having come from the blockchain world and realizing DeFi, decentralization, different approaches to the same, trying to address the same problem, whatever that problem is. These are good things and we need to keep that.

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Josh Kriger: I have so many more questions for you. I know we have to wrap up because you're going to be on stage soon. I am curious about what you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities in this sort of bull cycle ahead, in particular in this region where you're focused on supporting companies.

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Erika Evasdottir: Yeah, so the Asian region, look, it's very fragmented at the moment. Here I am talking about how fragmentation is good, but on the other hand, what we have here are a lot of different approaches in each country, often by province or state in each country, and what we're going to really have to be pushing is getting connections. so that even if my state it's almost regulatory legal arbitrage like well my state makes us do it this way well we can do it this way over here why don't you move over here so but we need more venues where people can meet each other so i'm working a lot with um you know, the startups, the accelerators, the governments that are trying to put money into this. Like, we just need more. We just need more. And they're going to miss the bull cycle. I'm worried they're going to miss the bull cycle because they're all sort of still in a very nascent stage over here.

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Josh Kriger: A hundred percent. Well, this has been fascinating. Where can folks find out more about you and your company since they're not going to find you on X? They want to learn more about your services. Where do they go?

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Erika Evasdottir: Yeah, just on the web. Centrium Advisory. Centrium is a weird word. C-E-N-T-R-I-U-M. It's actually the name of where my dentist is in Hong Kong. All right. I just happened to be passing by in a cab when my co-founder was like, what should we name the company? I'm like, something central, global. And there it was, Centrium.

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Josh Kriger: I was like, excellent. So I actually have, because I've been studying so much, I'm in Asia, I now have a new dentist in South Korea. So there you go. You know, it's also a good place to go, I guess, if you're over in Hong Kong and you chip a tooth.

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Erika Evasdottir: Yes, that's right. Go to the Centrium building.

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Josh Kriger: Thanks, Erika, for hanging out with us today.