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Hey, Nick what's going on brother? Hey, how are you?
Doing good man doing good. It was nice catching up with you last week. I hope you're okay out there and Yeah, we're happy to have you on we're happy you've not to reschedule before you get started Nick Do you want to give our audience quick background into yourself? Well, you are your origin story what Peter interests in web 3 what you currently studying in school and then how you ultimately
I'm a second year student sophomore.
on the state of Illinois and I've been very interested in blockchain technology since I was younger when I first got into high school. I started a blockchain club but at our local school in Indianapolis it was very successful and joy to had a good time that was back when it was really just Bitcoin at the time.
that was the Web 3 in blockchain space. So it was an exciting time. I got really into mining and was just fascinated with the space and what all it had to promise. So I continued to follow it very closely. When I went to college, we started a club. I'm currently going to
a smaller university in Illinois and essentially the club we started being in a more rural area not having as much access to kind of potential connections as people who would live in like a larger city, you know, like where I grew up in Indianapolis. Essentially we
struggled to find connections and really bring value to our students within the club. So essentially we reached out to some of the nearby universities and got connected with them. They all were having very similar problems. So I suggested bringing everyone together and essentially building out this alliance.
of small university clubs who could work together to share opportunities, partnerships, just generally provide more value to potential companies out there where they would be more interested in working with us on by extension providing opportunities to our students. So that was essential
The start of UBA that was around a year and a half ago. Essentially today we've grown in that year and a half from the original five universities that started UBA to over 150 universities in 29 countries and we're now the by far largest student organization in Web 3.
Okay, so lots to impact here one you said you a little start from the top actually you said you're interested in blockchain when you were younger How old were you exactly when you started this blockchain club at the local school in Indianapolis? So I had probably heard about Bitcoin
itself right before I was going into high school. So I think it was this summer before I started high school that a friend sent over the white paper on I read over it and personal experiences in like 2008. I was very young, but it impacted my family quite a bit. So
I always felt like it would be a good idea to have some kind of system in which the people have a little bit more control over as opposed to some of the banks and the people that in my opinion were kind of responsible for the mismanagement that happened around that time.
That was essentially my start. When we put together the blockchain club, I think it was maybe my sophomore junior year at high school. So it was a few years in and it was essentially me and a couple of friends we got together.
all interested in Bitcoin. At the time, as I'm sure it was with many people back then, it was less focused on building and a lot of this stuff you see in blockchain clubs at the university level today, where it's more focused on building, developer work, and
kind of creating these startups, these projects. Back then it was a lot of just kind of investing. Me and my friends were always interested in like economics, stock evaluation. So that was essentially the focus of our club and yeah.
Okay, right on love it love that you got started early I wish this stuff was around when I was your age and We had the infrastructure in college where people were coming together and talking about Web 3 super cool What did you do as far as mining you said you got into mining that you set up your own
on your own rig, your own operation, the garage would love to hear more about that. Yeah, so I'm not the most technical person. I'm studying economics. That was always kind of my main interest. So I wouldn't even know where to start with setting up one of those like home built home
made miners, but I got a bit main rig. I think an S9, maybe an S9 plus. I don't remember the exact model, but it was one of the, I think, S9s, one of the early kind of bit main models. And yes, set that up in a closet in my house.
And you know, enjoyed kind of that experience. I got a couple more over the years and it's always kind of been just a hobby for me. It was something cool. You get to feel like you're participating in a sense. You get to kind of interact and be involved.
involved on a way that, you know, especially back then, beyond buying Bitcoin and like utilizing it, spending it, there wasn't really much you could do to interact with the network mining was kind of one of those few options, especially for, you know, a broke high school student like me.
And are you still mine or did you get too hard and you kind of put it aside for now?
Yeah, I still mine across a couple of different networks. I think right now it's mostly Bitcoin Caspa and then Constellation are kind of the three there We talked about Caspa a bit and I want to
You're kind of the one that put it on my radar. I'd never heard of it before. I think other students had mentioned it to me, but you kind of on our call last week dove into it. And when I looked at the chart, I'm like, "Man, Cass was not having a bear market at all, right? I mean, from really from when the crash happened,
last May June, a cast was done a clean, let's see, a clean 10X. Is that a 10X or 100X that I'm looking at? I think I'm looking at 100X. Yeah, it's what 3X is. I didn't even recognize it. It's
100x in the last year. That's insane. I don't want to get off topic too much, but I think it's really cool when we have these chain link was an example in the previous bear market. This solution that kind of decouples from the rest of the market sentiment. We've also had
kind of B&B low key kind of decoupling in the previous bear market. So what is Caspa at a high level and why is it taking the world by at least the crypto market by storm? Yeah, and I think everyone here will be hearing from Caspa quite a bit soon. I know we're gearing up with a lot of stuff kind of published
things on our end getting them out to the student community. I know we're working with a few media partners so you guys may see a Twitter space here soon with some of the guys in Casbah but essentially if anyone's familiar with the Ethereum white paper and the early Bitcoin space probably a couple years before I first
kind of got involved with Bitcoin. There were a couple of academics who were writing papers on essentially the promise of blockchain technology and what it could mean on one of those guys was Ionathan who is the founder of Caspa and essentially he put out a paper kind of describing his vision
for what the technology could be used for outside of just the traditional finance things that Bitcoin provided as well as a few ideas he had as to essentially improve Bitcoin. Their view was always kind of that Bitcoin was an example. The show could be done.
not necessarily an end to all. So essentially, Jonathan and his team, they got to work and built Caspa. They were pretty quiet about it. They've been working, essentially, since they put that paper out, I think in 2014, and it was only just in the last year that Caspa actually kind of came out
was announced to the public, but essentially it's very similar to Bitcoin. It's a proof of work. L1, as of right now, they're undergoing a transition from GoLang to Rust, so anyone who can code on Solana will be able to build on a CASPA, one smart contract, Tom, which I believe is the
the current next focus. But yeah, it's a phenomenal team. They've solved a number of the most pressing issues that Ethereum and Bitcoin have presented. And if anyone's familiar with the Ethereum white paper, Jonathan is actually cited as one of the primary inspirations for Ethereum. It was Vitalik who read, "Yonah
Athens paper and was like, "We need to build this." Not knowing that Yannathan was already planning to build it himself. Aetherium jumped the gun. They got out much earlier than Casbah did. As Ethereum came out in a much less finished state than what Casbah has essentially been released at.
It's a project that UBA is working with very closely. We're helping to build out their developer team, helping to source talented students from across the world who are gifted developers. We're going to be helping Jonathan and his team continue to build and prove Caspa. The floodgates will open when smart
contracts are released because we've got a lot of students lined up on our end are ready to build on Caspa. So it's something that I think everyone should kind of pay attention to. They're doing some incredible things and I think you'll be hearing them a lot more. Well look Nick, I definitely want to get
more Caspa folks on our podium. We want to learn more. Definitely, you know, we can do spaces where you come and drop more knowledge on Caspa. Potentially even talk about ways we can mine Caspa. I mean, I am intrigued and I want to learn more, but I also don't want to, I don't want to go too far on a tangent, right? We're here to talk about you. We're here to talk about you#
UBA, you guys started about a year and a half ago and you said you grown from five to 150 universities in 29 countries. Can you, let's take a step back and talk the origin story. Why did UBA start? We talked about this in our call, but for the
How did you ultimately grow to this coalition of 150+ universities?
without members within these clubs, it's hard to bring in companies who want to get involved. But without having the companies coming in and providing opportunities, it's also hard to get members. So it's like, where do you start? Essentially, that was the solution that we came up with was what if we can put
preposition these companies, some of the larger L1s, I mean like Salana, Constellation and Bitmain, or some of our first partners that we've worked heavily with them to kind of expand their university programs on really get them involved with these communities around the world.
on essentially having those companies pre-positioned where if a club comes along and joins UBA, they're able to kind of directly get involved with those companies. They're able to work on initiatives that we have ongoing with them. They're able to host speakers from those companies, do workshops, kind of anything that you think of that a universe
the first club does, you have immediate access to essentially to whatever skill you want when you join UBA. And that was kind of the vision. And now today we've gotten to that point where clubs are able to jump into UBA. It's a pretty simple process. Anyone can join.
not really strict requirements, which was another issue at the time. There were a few other smaller blockchain associations that, in my opinion, were gatekeeping the space, in a sense, like they wanted Web 3 to be centered at only the most prestigious universities.
to top schools and their students and they wanted to have a monopoly on it. The guys who had started it were I believe former students at maybe Harvard or one of the Ivy League schools and they were running it as a business model where companies would come to them, pay them a couple hundred thousand dollars and then they would give those companies access
to these university clubs, to the university space as a whole. Essentially, we felt that's wrong here, profiting off the students. This should be a space where the students are not sold as a product, but are something that the companies
They want to work with young people, specifically developers, and they want to get them involved, and to essentially extort those companies to do that. I just felt was a little weird. I didn't really approve of that, so essentially we put together UBA to be the catch-all where
it was originally envisioned for smaller universities, but the view was anyone fits within UBA. As a larger university, you may not get as much as some of these smaller schools, but you can bring a lot to the table. There's a lot of great people at larger clubs around the U.S. and around the world who they just want to help
the Web3 space they want to support MassEd option. A lot of these top programs were more than happy to get involved and join UBA and essentially help us to bring in their partnerships, their connections, and provide those for smaller universities to help in a sense level the playing field.
So, and so now you guys are a juggernaut of a coalition. You've grown tremendously in the last year and a half and what's next for UBA? What's the long-term vision even past when you graduate? I want to get to know a bit more about you here in a moment, but
What, where do you see UBA in the next? Let's say three to five years. Yeah, so UBA, we always wanted it to be incredibly decentralized. We didn't want kind of a team and that's kind of how we're currently structured. We have a small kind of core team.
that helps manage UBA, runs everything. And essentially we felt like we wanted to get to the point where given that this is a Web 3 community, it makes the most sense to essentially apply this idea as a DAO. And so our current focus is to, you know, in the next year or two,
transform UBA into a Dow model in which it's no longer the core team that's running everything, it's the Dow. The students themselves have more say into which companies are brought on as partners and what activities, opportunities, deals are available within UBA.
We want it to be an entirely student run and in that sense it takes the pressure off of me that I don't have to find like a successor to kind of continue leading the core team that a lot of our clubs have had kind of a similar issue where you have a junior or senior will start a club.
They grow the club, but then the club is just people they know. So it's other juniors and seniors on it's like they then don't have anyone to continue the club. And when they graduate, then the club dies out. It's like then it's up to someone else on campus who wants to start a club to kind of pick up the pieces on Star
from scratch again. So essentially we wanted to avoid that and make sure that UBA and the value that we're looking to provide is there for as long as the students need it essentially. So the transition to a Dow is something that we're working on and we had a number of larger
companies that had approached us last year before the mayor market had started. I think, right as the school year was kicking off, August, October. Funnily enough, the largest of those people who had approached us was FTX. They essentially wanted to come in and
like bankroll the entire move to a doubt to get goodwill or press coverage, look at this positive stuff, FTX is doing. I'm sure that fit into their effective altruism message and how they were trying to shape the narrative there. A lot of people had reached
down. A lot of those companies actually ended up falling apart and then some of them were just less interested in that once the bear market hit. So we're currently in the process of revamping our plans for that. But we intend, especially over this summer to essentially get started on building out the Dow.
Very exciting. Do you find that building out this now is going to be a heavy lift? What do you... I suppose my question is, what are you guys doing to make sure all the parts are in place? And what are some of the challenges that you guys think you're going to face when
forming a Dow. I think a lot of other university blockchain clubs are looking at some similar structure, but we'll left to hear what your plan is. Yeah, a lot of our smaller clubs have already kind of transitioned to a Dow format themselves. And so in a sense, UBA has supported
some of those and we have just a lot of people across the network who are very familiar with that, UBA makes up a very large percentage of the active governance voters across like Uniswap maker of a lot of the big governance
programs. So we have a lot of people who are kind of very familiar and well equipped to essentially lead that program. So we're essentially working with those teams to kind of formulate a
plan lay everything out. But the main issue on our end would be onboarding some of the students who would be newer to Web 3 and who are unfamiliar with like Dow's and governance, how all that works. But again, we have
have so many great teams, great communities that have years of experience in this specific niche where we feel like it should be pretty easy to kind of put together onboarding programs similar to what we've done for our Uni Swap delegation program.
Nick, tell me a bit about the UNISWAP delegation program. I talked to, I think, FAM blockchain at Michigan and also UPAN. There's another university that's had A16 delegate tokens or delegate tokens to students and students that make protocol decisions.
What are the decisions that are being put out by AVA and Uniswap?
kind of loose governance arm within UVA where it's it's primarily held like and run by the universities themselves so each university will typically have kind of a wing of their club that deals with governance and and delegations they've received you know many of our clubs have received delegations from like a 16z
Dragonflies, Sequoia, a lot of the larger VCs and even some exchanges that a lot of times these groups, they have all these voting tokens but they don't want to utilize them because they don't want to like open themselves up to backlash from the communities where it's like we voted this way and the community didn't
So now people are mad at us. Like they're investing in these tokens as an investment, not to utilize that voting power. So they essentially go out and delegate them out to groups. And if students are well positioned to be one of the main groups where we get a lot of those delegations. So we have a lot of great clubs.
who are very active in governance, and then currently we're working with a specifically uni swap in AVE. I think it was AVE may have been both of them that they had reached out to us, and essentially said, hey, all of our student delegates, really voting in general, is very
centralized in the United States on essentially everyone outside of the US who's involved in governance is purely like in the Western world like it's it's the US a few in the UK and a very very small number in other parts of Western Europe so it's very centralized in that sense in those
regions and they wanted to expand it to be more of a global thing. So essentially they brought us on a, and that's being them to connect with our universities on other continents, specifically South America, Africa, and Asia, on get more schools in those regions involved with delegations where there's
more diverse and kind of a wide range of geographical locations that are represented within these delegation programs. So we're hoping to kind of get some more unique voices on some areas of the world that aren't often heard from the opportunity to make their voices heard within governance.
Nick, before we start talking a bit about you, is there anything about UVA that I might have missed that you think it's important to highlight that you want us to dive into? I know there's probably a lot that you guys have in the background happening in the background behind the curtain.
but just let me know otherwise we'll move on and get to know a bit more about Nicholas. Yeah, I think the the main thing that a lot of people on even some of the larger companies out there they went when they first hear about UBA they try and go online and like learn more about what we're doing and there's
There's very little coverage of UBA online. We're not like a lot of the other student groups where for the longest time we didn't maintain a website. And even now we have a community run website, but that's being transitioned to a actual UBA run website. So I don't even
think that's up at the time. I'm like most of our partnerships, they're not announced through the lens of it's a partnership with UBA. So if you look up UBA stuff online, it can be difficult to find because our vision from the very beginning was we don't want the attention to be on UBA, we want it to be on
kind of run everything behind the scene, behind the curtains in a sense, but a lot of the actual kind of publicity is done through the universities themselves. So each of the universities, they have their own websites, their own socials where they post plenty of updates.
We were never that interested in kind of putting those things up ourselves just because they have it covered and we felt in a sense it would take away from those universities and the opportunities that could come of that that we want all of that attention to be directed towards the students on you know it's it's
unique from the other student associations. But yeah, a lot of people aren't aware of that and it's always a good thing to point that out just because some people are confused like, you know, where's the UBA website? Where's the UBA socials? It's like we we put together this Twitter account the other day.
specifically for the list of Twitter spaces and interviews and different projects we have coming up. So in that sense, until very recently, there's been even less available out there on UBA and the things that we're working on.
Nick really quick, I probably skipped over this earlier, but when it comes to governance, I know that you guys are on a dial yet, but when it comes to decision making, what universities
at like a council, you have a council seat like which universities have the final say is there a leadership council is there a university inner circle would love to know how these high level decisions are made
So essentially, UBA currently is ran as regions. So we have regional presidents who manage kind of each of the regions around the world. So for example, I'm the kind of regional president for the Big Ten on Midwestern universities. So I manage a lot of the schools kind of out here in this region.
and then we have like an East Coast region, a Southern US region, a Canadian region, a West Coast region, and even the West Coast region, I think is split between like Oregon, Washington and like Vancouver, those areas, and then we have another one that's more like Southern California.
California. So like San Diego, UCLA, USC, some of those universities. And then yeah, we have, I think at least a dozen regions kind of around the rest of the world. We have like a Middle Eastern region, Southern
Asia that kind of like essentially Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, those areas. We have one that's like Korea, China, Thailand. Yeah, we just have regions kind of around the US where essentially those regional presidents are over those clubs. Decisions are made kind of
as a community between each of those clubs within the region. So I'm sure it varies kind of region to region. A lot of it is up to just those regional presidents as to how they want to do things, but at least within the the Big 10 region. A lot of what goes on is essentially made as a community decision between
between each of the constituent clubs within that region. So we have a group chat where we coordinate, we have calls every week or two where we get on, go over different initiatives, ways we can work together, different things we want to involve all of the clubs in, opportunities that are available, things
that sort. So that's kind of how UBA is managed for the time. It will be much more kind of streamlined in a sense, much more uniform across UBA once we get to the Dow format where everyone will be interacting more with the UBA community as a whole as opposed to right now most of that community.
is done within the regions. Beautiful. So you already have this unofficial decentralized, thou structure set up and it's based on region by region. Nick, let's get to know about you a bit more. You mentioned your second year econ student and you
That's what you're more interested in. You're more interested in economics, macroeconomics. Can you tell us a bit about what, tell us a bit about what your studies are like in university and how you plan on bridging those studies with potential Web 3 aspirations once you graduate?
Yeah, so in terms of when I graduate I intend to kind of stay in the web 3 world for a while I've got a few ideas We work very closely with a number of essentially startup accelerators and I'm very proud of a lot of the universities especially the UK schools who have tremendous
programs when it comes to supporting startups on campus. For example, LBS recently, the team over there has done a phenomenal job in the last couple of years and they've got at least a dozen startups that came out of the university on the last couple of years and recently
to have the opportunity to highlight some of those startups. It was awesome to see what they were doing, see what they were working on, see the support and success they had. All of those companies have went out and done successful raises, they've got partnerships.
They're becoming well established within the web 3 space and you know I'm excited to see that kind of continue across the space and See other universities kind of continue to do that. We've got a a number of hackathons where where we have schools that are heavily involved with those like Grizzly
on this whole hackathon going on. We've got a number of universities that have submitted projects for that and are doing very well within that or are some of the leading projects. So yeah, it's exciting to kind of see the startup space just because, you know, as a kind of business and econ student, that's where I'm most interested in.
So I'll probably either join a startup or create my own. I've got a few ideas as to things we'd like to kind of put together me and some friends within UBA. And yeah, I'm very interested in kind of the stablecoin space. I'm a big fan specifically of
of like reserve backed stablecoins, I think if you're going to have a kind of fiat based system, it makes sense to do it virtually and to have these essentially stablecoins out there where people who are still uncomfortable with the whole crypto and web3 thing, you know,
I feel like it's almost a gateway. It's an onboarding ramp where stablecoins can kind of be the in between that people who they're not ready for crypto. Maybe they'll be more open to it if they can try stablecoins. See how easy, see how effective it is, the technology it works, works super
well, super efficient, way faster, way more efficient than really anything we have currently. I think that would kind of calm some people's fears, get people more comfortable with it. Personally, not a big fan of the central bank digital currencies that some of these world governments are wanting
to launch. Well, I think the idea of, again, the virtual currencies is a good idea. I don't really like the idea of these centralized governments having full control over that. I feel like that would further breach people's privacy, give them even more
control than what they already have over the financial system in my opinion that's not really the best thing for the space. So kind of interested in supporting stablecoins across a few different chains on exploring stuff in that sense, but yeah, I'm also very interested in like L2s.
I think there are a number of major blockchains that could utilize some L2s that increase the functionality. That could be a cool place to explore. Super-interested in DAG technology. I know Caspa is one of the few DAG projects out there, but I feel that
that's a much better structure than the existing blockchain technology. It's much more scalable, much more efficient. It can solve a number of problems specifically speed increasing the number of blocks per second, which I think would be beneficial to a number of chains.
So I think there's a lot of potential out there to build essentially dag based L2s for some of the more popular L1s. So that's essentially my kind of view on this space. There's nothing concrete for my plans after school, but probably something in the startup world.
I kind of a side question before I follow up on the stable coins. I do want to pick your brain on stable coins here in a moment. You study an econ. I also studied econ at university and I found that a lot of the material that I learned, most of the material that I learned, which involved practice problems, cramming different concepts and
trying to ace exams best that I could, didn't really translate into the real world. So to sum it up, a lot of what I learned as an econ major in my undergrad didn't really give me tangible skills that I could use in the real world. I had to learn those on my own once I graduated, but what's your experience like?
Yeah, I would definitely agree. A lot of the material is in my opinion outdated. The world is advancing much faster than the textbooks can keep up. A lot of people kind of in charge of making those things. They're much older folks who are less familiar with this technology and less interested in it.
they may not feel it's worth covering but innovation is always going to happen at this point where we are today it's happening much much faster than people in some cases thought was possible. I know a big fan of like Gleck Friedman and some of the podcasts that are out there I never
recently he's been talking to a bunch of people in the AI field and they've been talking about kind of the innovation within AI, it's happening at such a rapid pace that it's even worrying some people. And it's like things are surpassing our expectations on essentially I think people
need to be more aware of that. They need to be more comfortable with that idea that as humans we're not always going to be able to predict everything with absolute certainty and sometimes we get things wrong as much as people may want to admit that that's not the case. We're constantly getting things wrong.
And when it comes to innovation, I think that's one of the places where we can't really predict what happens. We don't know what's going to happen, what's going to be invented, what's going to come out, how technology is well-volved. It's very kind of diverse in terms of the directions it could go.
to the point where you can't really calculate what's going to happen. I think the universities in our hopes, if we can get them more open to some of this technology, potentially, you know, UBA itself can address some of these issues. I know we work very closely with some of the universities and have been able to kind of
their fears when it comes to Web 3, get them more interested and involved in the space as a whole. That's something that hasn't been done before up until this point. There is no university bar, I think MIT, even MIT. I think they're crypto and kind of Web 3 media lab.
was more separate from the university itself. Essentially, that was really the only time you saw the university space except crypto and be open to it. Whereas now we're seeing, especially within the Big Ten, they're the work of UBA and some of the clubs here.
the administration that these schools are more open to it. They're allowing us to do research experiments in different projects where we're hosting a large conference at the University of Michigan next year or in the fall. So next school year it'll be probably the largest ever student event where we're hoping to get a
significant amount of people, you know, University of Michigan itself, I think, has 82,000 students. There will be a free to attend event. So we're hoping to get most of those on campus. We're working with the university there. They're actually co-hosting it, which is another big deal. No university
Everco hosted a Web 3 event like this before. So excited to work with them and kind of give them an intro to the space. We're going to be introducing them to a lot of our larger partner companies, a lot of the exchanges, L1s, help them build connections within the space and our hope in that sense is that that would serve as an example.
for other universities to follow, where if the University of Michigan goes all in on Web 3, and they can see the benefits that come from that, you know, other universities, they're not going to sit back and wait forever if they see another university benefiting from this. They're going to want to get involved if there's, you know, opportunities and benefits to be had.
What are some of the research experiments that you guys are doing? Kind of caught my attention. Yeah, so we've got a number of projects, a lot of them, specifically ones that I'm more involved with are on the kind of e-con side and studying how crypto and some of the Web3 technology can
be integrated into day-to-day life using these campuses as essentially a bubble, an ecosystem that we can use to replicate these things on a smaller scale. Instead of having to go out and convince a country like El Salvador to adopt it, you can
essentially try it on a scale at these campuses and really get the same type of results. You can get the same information that it's on a much larger or much smaller scale, but it's also better in the sense that it's young people at the University of
people who are more tech savvy, it's easier to see kind of in my opinion what the future would look like if we can integrate these technologies around the world around different countries. So a lot of it right now for example one of the larger projects is replication of the 24
Bitcoin experiment at MIT. We're currently working with the University of Illinois, the University of Michigan, University of Northwestern, and then MIT. So those four campuses to essentially bring in a number of L1 partners of UBA, where we'll be using stablecoins, we'll be
using crypto, we'll be using a bunch of different things across those chains, but essentially allowing all the businesses on those campuses, we're going to be onboarding them to Web 3 where they'll be able to accept crypto payments and in some cases pay employees and students in crypto.
Specifically working with the universities to pay some of their student employees in Crippdale and send advising them to do that or incentivizing the students to want to do that. It will be an opt-in thing where they can choose whether or not they want to do it, but we're hoping to make it more of
Peeling provides some incentives in that sense, but essentially replicating that 2014 experiment at MIT, but on a huge scale that hasn't been done before. We're intending to essentially onboard around 50 to 60 students across those four university campuses. I think the original
experiment had around 3,000 students that they worked with. So we're raising funds getting ready for that. And I think it'll bring a lot of attention to the Web 3 world. The 2014 experiment brought a lot of positive attention to Bitcoin. And it was really for most people
the first time they ever heard of Bitcoin because it was covered by a lot of mainstream news outlets that they wanted to know more about this Bitcoin and people are using it as a currency. How does that work? Everyone was interested in it with all the scams and the collapsing companies that are
Getting all of the attention right now within Web 3, we want to provide essentially a more positive outlook as to the positives that the space can bring. Whereas most of the media attention now is the opposite, it's all negative. We'd like to essentially change that perception.
So we're working with a lot of media companies both kind of you know non web 3 media companies and you know native web 3 companies that cover news in the space Working with a lot of like student press so we're hoping to get kind of the message out there across the US especially on if this
This all goes successfully, then we'll expand to our phase two, which would include more schools across the U.S. We've got a number of schools lined up in Canada, the UK, and a couple of countries in Asia to essentially expand the campus project there.
Nick, I wanted to circle back really quick to what you were saying regarding stable coins. You said you're really excited about them. They have a lot of potential. People haven't really seen the true potential yet. And there's obviously a lot of misconceptions around stable coins based on what's happened over the last year, specifically highlighting US
teeth and the teraluna collapse. What stable coins? I believe you said fraction. Actually, I'm not going to, I'm not going to put you away. I think you said stable coins backed by reserves. Tell me what stable coins excite you the most. Give us some examples.
And if you could design your dream stable coin based on what you know what would that look like? Yeah, I think in terms of the ones that excite me the most, those would be the ones that don't exist yet. I think there's a lot of innovation to be had, a lot of advancements that can be made in this category that
would greatly improve the experience on less than the potential risk there. I think in terms of my ideal stablecoin, I guess it would be something similar to the model of what Circle has done with USDC, but of course Circle is a company where they have investors.
and there are specific risks on that end, specifically with their reserves being kept in banks that those banks were up to no good, ended up collapsing and circle loss of that money. Fortunately, Circle had investors where they came in and helped them recoup those losses.
solved the issue in USDC is back to not really having much risk, but ideally with a stablecoin you'd have zero risk. I'd like to see essentially a non-for-profit or some kind of foundation come forward that was not a for-profit business model that would provide a stable
or we can get to zero risk the better on with specifically algorithmic stablecoins like what happened with Terra. I think that's not the way to go. I think algorithmic stablecoins are silly in a space with as much volatility as there is today. That was the primary issue is that
the way terror worked was if the price of Luna went down, my understanding was they would print more tokens to match the value. The underlying asset that backed the Teraluna stablecoins was the Luna itself. If the value went down, they just print
more Luna out of thin air to currently back in. It's like that's no different than what the federal government does with our money system that if they need money, they just print more of it. It's like I don't think that's a strategy for success. And I thought that was the whole point of the crypto and web three space. That was the point of
Bitcoin was we want to get away from that system. We don't want it where some entity can just print as much money as they want. So I think algorithmic stablecoins specifically are not a good direction to go. I don't see any scenario in which they are successful.
So I would like to see more of those go away, ideally in a way that doesn't devastate the people who are holding those. I know there are a lot of them out there that are still widely used. So I would recommend that people would divest away from those and stick to essentially things where there's a lower risk.
What are your thoughts on some of the stable? Yeah, it'd be great to see a nonprofit stablecoin foundation where not just back one to one but over collateralized by maybe it
not to see US dollars, but also baskets of goods. What are your thoughts on some of the stablecoins that do currently exist? Let's talk LUSD for a second. I don't want to talk maker
out just because of MakerDow is technically not decentralized. It's part of its backed by USUC. But what about LUSD? What about slimming that's fully backed by an over collateralized by an asset like Ethereum?
Yeah, I think in that sense, it depends on whether or not we believe them that it's over collateralized because I mean, for example, with Tether, it wasn't the fear there. Essentially that they were lying about having the money on hands that they were essentially lying
everyone about what was really going on behind the scenes and that caused some worry. Apparently not enough worry because it's still I think the largest stable point out there. But yeah, a lot of these essentially companies they have not been truthful in the same way you saw FTX with say a big
free. He was not telling the truth. He was lying about having all the money on hand. He continued to claim up until the very end that he didn't lose all of your money. He didn't secretly give it all to Alameda and blow it on big houses and political investments.
And you know other things that they spent it on there $5,000 a day on the lunches for their team at his penthouse. It's like they took your money. Why do you about what they were doing with it? Then when it came time to give the money back, they had none of that.
that they went through it. So I think in my sense, it's more ideal to have a company that can at least prove that the reserves are there. I think USDC does a good job of this on a few others, you know, particularly
outside of the algorithmic stablecoins, they do a good job of demonstrating that they have the reserves on hand, but I'd like to see more audits. I think that would be positive. I know, again, not to pick on Tether, but I think recently they did an audit or brought a company
to do an audit and then basically pause the audit in the very middle of it because they said the team was asking too many questions. It's like, well, yeah, that's the point of an audit. Just ask questions to verify things. And so the idea that it was concerning to them that these companies
where the audit company is asking too many questions, it's like that's their job, that's what you're paying them to do, that's why they're here. In my opinion, that's probably an ideal way to go. There are a lot of great auditing companies out there, I know, like CERTAK, I don't
I don't know if they specifically do stablecoins, but I know they audit a lot of projects. In general, I think it's better to have more security and again lower that risk across the entire space, not just within stablecoins. I think risk is necessary and there will always be a certain level of it, but specifically avoiding things
like rug poles within NFTs and even some of these crypto projects themselves. I think audits are very important. I think before you invest in a project, you know, make sure they've had audits done and make sure that those audits are coming from like well-known auditing sources, not, you know,
the founder of the project paid his cousin to audit it and give them the thumbs up. Like you want to make sure it was a well-known company who's done other audits for large companies in the past who's doing those audits on the smart contracts, making sure that everything's good to go. And then that way we can
hopefully avoid again some of the negative things that have happened within the space with uh, you know, rep bulls, scams, fraud, uh, all of that is detrimental to the space as a whole. And in my opinion, this is kind of the best way to go about lessening the risk of that stuff happening.
Certainly agree. And you know, the reason I bring up projects like liquidity, stablecoins that have their reserves, I believe verifiable on chain is because I do think that's the step in the right direction. But look, Nick, we're
We're closing in on the end of the broadcast and I do want to do the third segment with you. It's a fun Q&A, do it with all the students. We're just going to talk about Bitcoin, Ethereum and some other things. I'm sure you're not going to have an issue with this, mostly opinion based.
Let's get it started. First question, what are your thoughts on Bitcoin? Do you think Bitcoin or main king or do you think that over time Bitcoin will be flipped by some other asset by market capitalizations such as Ethereum? Yeah, I don't think there's anything currently out that comes close to Bitcoin and
value that it offers though, I think it is very possible that eventually something will come along that flips Bitcoin. I don't think that's a theorem. I don't think it's any of the projects currently out, at least in their current state. I think smart contracts are a big benefit to any project
because it allows them to better innovate, better make changes, and better evolve to adapt to whatever needs are necessary at the current time. So I think ideally you'd have something that was very similar to Bitcoin, but that would allow smart contracts, would allow that kind of
building and development to go on. I think there are a number of projects out there, specifically some of the the DAG based projects like CASBUD Conjunction, that are a good opportunity to eventually become the project that could flip Bitcoin.
and become the primary web3L1 that we talk about. But as it currently stands, I don't think there are any projects that have what it takes now, though I think that certainly will change eventually.
So next up Ethereum what are your thoughts on Ethereum and let's speculate Ethereum in its vital form where the main the main chain is a fruit like layer approves and then you have all the transactions happening on highly scalable roll ups Would love to hear your thoughts in the future of Ethereum? Yeah, I didn't
I don't really like the move to proof of stake. I think proof of work is better than that. And again, not to say the proof of work is necessarily perfect. There could be better alternatives out there. But as of yet, I don't see a method in which it has demonstrated that it provides
a better alternative. I also personally think Ethereum is a little bit to kind of centralized and relies to heavily on Vitalik on his team. There's been a lot of concerns, especially recently, about what would happen if something happened to Vitalik.
He's a young healthy guy, but it's like, you know, as of right now, he holds the keys to the kingdom in a way that may not be good for the future of Ethereum. If something happened to him, it's like, well, what happens to Ethereum then? Do we even have access to some of the behind the scenes?
he has. I don't know that it was a good idea to have someone who had that kind of backend access and that level of power over a chain, and especially one as big and far reaching as Ethereum. So that's kind of my opinion on ETH.
Okay, right on. Copy that and I figured you wouldn't be a big fan of proof of stake. Nick, what you mentioned stablecoins already? Are there any other sectors in the industry that excite you the most?
Yeah, I mean, L0s specifically the cross chain capabilities, I think are a big thing. Ideally, the L2s that would come out would be less L2s that yes, they're building on other chains, but essentially would build
above the chains where they can connect them all. There are a number of cool projects out there that are doing that, and I think those will be very successful, specifically in terms of kind of providing an opportunity to move value between the chains that when you would eventually find a
a successor to Bitcoin or Ethereum, someone who can flip them. Ideally, you want to have systems in place in which some of the projects, infrastructure, and value that are on those chains can be moved over to the new ones. Ideally, I'd like to see more happen in that realm.
And Nick, before you wrap things up here, it's been a pleasure for us talking to you. By the way, people listening, university, blockchain alliance is going to be our newest university partner.
and eventually announce it, but I'm super proud and excited to have them as part of the Whalecoin Talk family. I'm super excited to work with Nick and hear about some of the awesome projects that he's going to bring on that he's going to
drop knowledge on us about. So, you know, stay tuned, keep your eyes peeled. Nick, is there anything that we haven't discussed during the course of the broadcast? And certainly we're going to have you on again and talk about more things in depth. But is there anything we didn't talk about today that you feel is important to highlight?
I think we kind of covered most of the main things obviously we have the University tour coming up where you guys will get to hear kind of more of myself and especially the other University Presidents within UBA you'll get to hear from clubs across the space that specifically across the UBA.
US and then us and some of the other university associations that are working with Whelcoin talks. We are hoping to expand this to other regions of the world where we feature schools outside of the US and Canada that we can do a South American tour, show off some of the universities and the cool stuff they're
doing down there, Africa, Asia, Europe, all over where we've got clubs, essentially highlighting the exciting things that are going on across the student space that don't get as much coverage as the larger projects and other things that currently get more attention.
So that's you know gonna be exciting and then yeah for those who aren't aware at tornadoes came through the area I'm in Southern Illinois Central Illinois and yeah and the the last couple of days a group of tornadoes came through and essentially did a lot of damage
specifically to the University I go to suffered immensely a large part of the town was destroyed, heavily damaged, a good portion of the university was completely wiped out here. So UBA is currently raising funds in donations, I think currently across Bitcoins
Solana and Ethereum that were in talks with a couple other large L1s essentially where they themselves are going to host fundraisers. So if you're willing and able, I would encourage people to make donations. You can find those given that we just set this page up the other
day. I think it's the only tweet we have on here. But yeah, you can make donations there. And then if you follow any of the other L ones, they'll they'll be making kind of announcements about where you can send donations on their chains in the probably coming days.
exciting stuff Nick it's been a pleasure talking to you looking forward to having you on and getting in the future and definitely looking forward to learning more about CASPA and all the great things they're doing University of Blockchain Alliance continues to grow again guys that went from 5 to 150 universities in just a year and a half
So I can't imagine there will be another year from now. It's been a pleasure, Nick. We'll chat soon. And remember, WhalePoint Talk Community, everything you hear on this broadcast meant for educational purposes only, nothing is financial advice. So be safe out there, and we'll see you all in the next one. Take care. Bye-bye.