Right on. Good afternoon. We'll coin talk community. My name is Noah. I'm sorry a bit under the weather, but we got Ryan Ryan of the UW Blockchain Club. Ryan, welcome. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, my pleasure. And Ryan before we get started, do any
Thank you for the quick background of yourself, which are currently studying what piqued your interest in Web 3 and how you plan on bridging your studies, your academic career with your future Web 3 aspirations. Yeah, my name is Ryan.
a student at the University of Washington studying economics, finance and data science. First got into crypto in 2015, 2016, mining ETH on my home rig. I couldn't open a Coinbase account or have any other way of accessing
Ethereum are big one at the time so the only way to get involved was to mine and that's why I did for like a year or two years. Briefly joined a crypto hedge fund in 2018-2019 and it actually took a break from crypto between
2019 and 2021-ish and went into like the bioinformatic space pretty deeply but this past year I took a gap year kind of went back deep into crypto and yeah and helped and and helping reading the the Udo blockchain club now.
Got it. And so that's cool. You reminding Eve on a home rig back in 2015, 2016. How did you learn how to build a rig?
It was just like my gaming desktop rig. So it was a good way to take my parents' power bill and translate that into some of the area. It was nothing special, but I think I had an AMD graphics card which just happened to be pretty good at mining.
So back when my name was pretty easy you didn't build some crazy rig I was I was imagining that you're just in your parents garage building this massive rig my necterium, but you're doing it on a basically a PC game PC laptop PC So got it. Okay, so crypto hedge fund in 2019 2020 tell us the
about that was that experience like yeah it was it wasn't like a quant trading fund it was more of like a thesis-driven long short funds so like some that kind of say too much like you want to take the best L1 that you like and maybe short the L1 that you're not
So excited about and try to create some pseudo delta neutral trades so that you can be at a risk neutral if the market goes up or down together. But like if you're L1, if you're chosen L1 outperforms that you're one that you're shorting, then you'll make some money.
Yeah, not sure what else to do.
to say they're sorry, sorry, it looks like it looks like I wasn't able to hit my new button or my on the button. So you're working, you're working on building UW Blockton Society now and tell us a bit about the blockchain society's origins. When did it start? How long has it been around? Yeah.
So I started in, I believe 2017, a guy named Zach, I think we were actually one of the first, one of the first blockchain clubs in, in the US, really just a bunch of like people interested in like building and interested in like crypto and they wanted
to have a tri-campus club because UW has three campuses, one in Seattle, one in Bottle, one in Tacoma, and we wanted to have a way for people to talk about crypto without just talking about hourly
price movements and actually talk about the fundamental text out of crypto in some sort of college club setting. So that's kind of how it spawned in 2017 to 2018, that sort of school academic year.
We held war club meetings, we held some workshops and people around the Seattle area came in and gave talks. We also hosted the 2018 Uda blockchain expo, which was, I believe, one of the first college kind of blockchain expo.
I think there was some international as well. I came in and gave some great talks. It was really focused around education, especially in the other days.
So, really are focusing on education like we have maybe three to five workshops per quarter. So because we're on the court system, that's about once every like 10 weeks is the court system.
order. So maybe like once every other week we have a speaker or someone come in and talk about different projects that they're working on or different things to learn about and to get excited about.
That's awesome. Okay. And how big is the club members? Yeah. So I think on Discord, as many others can probably relate, it's a much more inflated number. So I think we have like 500 to 600 people in
in our discord, but in terms of active weekly students coming to meetings, it would somewhere between like 20 and 40, I would say. So somewhere around that scale. Got it. And you guys are recognized by the university, correct? Yeah.
So we actually, we started as an RSO, like a general RSO. We were a registered non-profit. And now I think we just got accepted to like the computer science school. So we're like one of the few clubs under the computer science, like official RSO list.
That's awesome. And the speakers that you guys bring in for these workshops every quarter into three to five workshops every quarter. Have you brought on people that are that are leaders in the industry or just students that are building an industry? Yeah, we definitely
So I think we're going to have to be able to do that.
They run like a $1.1 billion fund. And then we also recently brought in the head of developer relations from Axelar, another pretty big Web 3 cross messaging protocol. So that was really cool to see.
some deep dives and some new things that these projects are developing and trying to onboard new developers from universities like us to help build on their platform.
And what are your guys' goals for the blockchain side going forward? Where do you see yourselves in three to four years? And I might not be a student there anymore, but how big do you want it to be? What kind of influence do you want it to have on campus? Do you guys want to design your own course at some point and teach other students?
So I'd love to hear some more exciting to that. Yeah, sort of all of the above. I think in terms of trying to get an accredited blockchain class, I think that's something that we definitely want to do. I think it's something that we actually had because there was a professor that
out of you that actually started his on blockchain project that previously taught a class, but getting all that paperwork, especially at a public university is often a very long, very arduous. That's something that we're definitely talking to administrators about in terms of more shorter term goals.
We are hosting another expo similar to what we did in 2018. Another blockchain type expo in spring of this quarter. So around May ish, I believe we are.
I'm going to do something like a smaller scale of what Penn recently did. I think I saw you guys on Twitter that attended there. So if they're smaller, like a smaller scale of that. And I think what we really want to do is really
And we kind of create an everlasting culture and like not have the club sort of die after the four four years happens and like that cohort of friends graduates and we think that it's really
important to kind of create like a culture of like building and a culture of just people interested in crypto in a really cool space or people to get together and talk about all things crypto.
Absolutely. And so what are the strategies you guys are using to get some more of that student base to join the club, especially with society, especially freshmen and sophomore? Yeah, so we're done.
We're definitely doing all the standard things like we have an RSO fair in the first week of school in October. We also have, I think I believe another RSO fair the first week of winter quarter. So that was in January.
So that's a really good way to bring on kind of more freshness off more people people that don't have immediate exposure to the club. I think we're also trying to think about onboarding through through other clubs.
I can hear you there. I'm sure. Yeah, I can hear you. I think Ryan's having a connection issue. Yeah. Go. Okay. Yeah, sorry. Bye. Bye. Hey, Ryan.
Yeah, so my Twitter time limit, like screen time thing went off. So I had to ignore that for today.
Yeah, so we're just trying to either talk with do our so fairs like club fairs and also talk with other with other clubs on campus that are interested in crypto that don't know too much about crypto like finance clubs or
like general computer science clubs, startup clubs and things of that nature to kind of really bridge that gap and provide a space for resources for these other students to go out to.
I love it. Okay, so you guys are young, but you're growing fast. What's what's the sentiment like when you're out there trying to attract new students trying to
the word of Web 3, what's the sentiment like towards this industry, especially with all the nonsense that's happened over the last year? Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's a lot of
skepticism, some of it is definitely healthy, especially in the past few months. But I think
I think of the people that are perhaps a little bit more risk-on and are a little bit more, like, 10 more towards startups. I think that people are pretty open-minded about crypto and the sense of it is actually
pretty healthy in terms of the the number of people and like the amount of passion that they show and they're really here for like the long term and not in it for like the next one or two months.
Got it. Okay. So look Ryan, I wanted to cover everything that we could about UW blockchain. Is there anything at all that you find exciting to share or that I might have missed? That's important to discuss. Otherwise, you can move on to the next part of the broadcast. I think you've definitely hit upon the
The main parts, yeah, I think for us it's really about creating something that that lasts beyond our kind of four or four years in college. I think that like we've seen a lot of clubs around around the US do a good job of kind of creating these like structures and like these leadership structures.
and advisors and mentors for these clubs to to last a lot longer because we think that crypto is going to be here for a long time. We want to have kind of a club that suits that ethos. >> Beautifully put. Okay. So look, you're studying econ. You said you're doing data science as well.
When you graduate, I'm going to go ahead and assume you want to work in Web 3, you want to have a career in Web 3. What are you interested in? Do you want to go work for other companies? Do you want to start your own thing? Yeah, I think I'm definitely still exploring now. I could definitely see myself doing kind of either one of those things.
Yeah, I think because crypto of the rea so into a disinhibit plenary that like it takes a lot of different disparate skills to really excel at crypto, I think that everyone can find their niche.
I think the niche for me is definitely perhaps a little bit more towards like the defy or like infrastructure or tokenomics side. But I think what crypto has really kind of pushed for me is that like opening
opening my eyes and opening my horizons to like different aspects that speak to different kind of subsets of people like the NFT community or like other sorts of kind of sub-sub industries within crypto.
I wanted to know what you think about this industry going forward as a place where you could really build out a career. Do you think that we're going to continue to grow in a way that Web 3 becomes dominant and is
intertwined in people's lives as a web 2 and so what do you think needs to happen in order to see that mass adoption? Yeah, I think that's a great question and definitely the the billion dollar question.
I think people might underestimate today how
how slow and perhaps semi-paying for the next six to 12 months will be. I think crypto is perhaps tied to macro and interest rates a lot more than people think.
So things could get like a sentiment could definitely change. I think the sentiment is still pretty good in crypto today, but I'm not I'm not sure where it'll be in the next six to 12 months.
In terms of mass adoption, I think that a world in which crypto succeeds is a world in which
And I think that we're a long way from kind of realizing that dream, but I think that we're going to be able to do that.
I think that people really do underestimate how long it takes for kind of like the research, all the research and all of the industry to develop like the internet, like AI, I think that people really do underestimate how long these things take.
Absolutely. So let's do one Q&A part of the broadcast that I enjoy. And remember, audience members, everything is meant to be taken for research purposes only, nothing is financial advice.
But let's start with the OG Ryan, let's start with Bitcoin. What are your thoughts on Bitcoin? Do you see it being the dominant crypto asset for the foreseeable future? Or do you see it eventually being flipped by another asset? And if so, what?
Yeah, I think about this a lot. I think that obviously not financial advice, but I think that people generally want to hold productive assets. And I think that Bitcoin has served a very unique
a skewomorphic form of a digital representation of gold, but I'm not so sure about its long term viability, not to say that no one can continue to make money off of Bitcoin or Bitcoin like one exists.
but I'm not sure in terms of like flipping or e-flipeting Bitcoin or some other token or protocol-flipeting Bitcoin, I think that's highly possible if not the base case that one should expect the next five to 10 years.
Fair, good answer. Ethereum, what are your thoughts on ETH and talking about an ETH that has sharding implemented and is really serving as a layer of proofs while transactions are executed on highly scalable rollups? What are your thoughts on the fusion of
Yeah, another great question that I've talked to a few friends about recently. I think that a lot of like ETH has definitely hit some sort of network effect or mind share effect. And I think the best the best hell for that is that all the innovation
All the things that are happening from like zero to one all the new things are generally happening on Ethereum whether it's that that's new protocols or new papers being written I think that like all the all the really smart developers and really smart researchers Like definitely flock to eat and flock to like
kind of analyzing those those datasets. That's not to say that these that that that does network effect is like impenetrable, but I think that it's highly possible that it has kind of reached a point where it might become like a JavaScript.
of Web 3, where not everyone agrees with every original design decision, but there will be so many libraries and so many things built on top of Ethereum that it will be hard to sort of migrate away in the long-term and yeah.
Absolutely, it has that network effect. So Ryan, NFTs, what are some industries that you see NFTs disrupting the most? And let's skip gaming art music, because we've already kind of seen that shift begin, but I would love to know
What do you think NFTs are really going to change the way that businesses operate? Yeah, I think that the only true product market fit that NFTs have had so far is probably profile fixtures, which is like a pretty big
space and it's something that is definitely admirable by the NFT space. But in terms of new use cases, I'm less bullish than a lot of others on using NFTs to tackle super high
high-quality, regulated industries like housing, like mortgages, like, or things of that real world nature. I think that stuff can happen and perhaps should happen, but I think those timescales are super, super long and super, super,
There's a lot of uncertainty in terms of the regulatory environment. In terms of more digitally native things, I think one used case that I've been looking at personally with NFTs is using NFTs as like digital real estate. So say like the
Google homepage, like I think on like holidays or certain events like Google changes their logo. So like having a way to kind of embed and sell that digital real estate as NFTs like a use case that I'm perhaps more bullish on than some others.
That's certainly an interesting answer and I can see where you're coming from in that end Ryan Let me let me ask you this. What are your thoughts on centralizing fees in the space? What do you think is gonna happen when D5 becomes more mature when?
transactions on D5 become faster and when a lot of the components are the advantages that sexes usually typically have today are ones that we see through all D5 applications. You think that centralized exchanges will disappear entirely or centralized entities will disappear.
We are in Tyler. Do you think that they will always have a place in this industry? I think for the foreseeable future, they'll always have a place, and at least at the very least, the on/off ramp industry, like your corn bases, any sort of institution that bridges Fiat and crypto.
As you hit network effects in crypto even within a decentralized exchange, there's still some market forces that want these entities to become more centralized.
see some really interesting things the next two to three years, especially with Uniswap. As they try to move upstream, I think Uniswap recently released an NFT aggregator platform on their website and there's rumors that they're supposed to be
like a unit swap for that UKYC into similar to Coinbase in a unit swap that you can use in a decentralized manner and the KYC manner will have tighter spreads and better prices. So I think that's something that's definitely
on the horizon and is definitely going to be explored. So I think that having an option for centralized exchange is like not necessarily a bad thing as long as there are legitimate alternatives that people can use in some sort of permissionless manner as well.
Well look Ryan, it's been a great space so far and you know we're heading in towards the last part of the segment I want to know what your thoughts are on the market as well going in 2023 and
in 2024. Do you think we've bottomed? Do you think that we can't really see too much more fear unless some other crazy kind of cosmic event happens, like Binance blowing up? And then when do you see us going back into full book bull mode?
I think I alluded to this a little bit before, but I think that crypto has basically been a liquidity function basically up up until this point from 20 we've seen that from 2010-ish to sort of 2020 and then when COVID happened we
I saw this massive stimulus lower interest rates. I think that crypto was really that sponge that kind of accepted all this money was really and was really like the asset on the farthest right part of the risk curve. And I think that in the next in the next two years.
I'm not sure if we hit the bottom yet, but I think that if crypto really is going to be its own independent asset class these next two years will either show it or won't show it.
some really good indicators and some really good, hopefully some really good products, indicators and other sorts of things to kind of inform people's thoughts and decisions about crypto for the long term.
which side of that coin you think it's going to fall on in your opinion? I think especially with the amount of time that I spent in crypto, I hope it's on up and up and everything goes well in the next five
10 years and I truly do think that crypto can fulfill its original promise of kind of self-sovereignty and all the other aspects of crypto that people cite that they want to embody for crypto.
Sure. Last question for you Ryan, for you wrap things up. What are some, what are some dApps or some, I don't know,
DeFi applications or NFT projects, what's in the space right now that really excites you? Yeah, I think I'm definitely less
in touch with the NFT community, I think there are some really cool projects and cool experiments at the very least there, because I think that there's so like the design space for NFTs is like barely scratch the surface. I think that in terms
projects that I'm looking at right now, I think they're mostly infrastructure type projects, so things that are perhaps a little bit less sexy to the to most people, so projects including like Eigenlayer, which
which allows validators to not only secure smart contracts, but allows you to just secure other forms of liquidity through like
bridging or other sorts of core infrastructure, I think is missing today that we will need in the next five to 10 years if crypto is to succeed.
You've been a pleasure hosting you today. I know it's Friday so I want to get let you get a early start here weekend, but it's anything you want to share with us or anything.
any questions you have for me. Go ahead and do so. Go ahead and ask or share so now. Yeah, it's been great chatting today. Definitely check out UW.
YouTube blockchain and yeah, I love to ask how you got into crypto and what excites you about crypto in the next five to 10 years.
Hey, thanks man, and thanks for bearing with me. I'm really under the weather. What got me in the crypto was really just I Was working at a tech job. I wasn't making a lot of money or at least as much money as I wanted to No one in my family had ever taught me about investing right everyone was super
for a immigrant family. So everyone's super, save your money, put it in the bank, don't put it in stock market. It's a casino. But I really wanted to learn more about how to build wealth or crew wealth, make money while I sleep. And so at first I was looking at the stock market
and buddy in mind said, "Hey, you should go research this thing called Bitcoin." And so I went, it's September 2017, I went, sat down at the library of a law school that one of my friends was going to at the time, and he was working on his homework. I was just watching a bunch of videos on Bitcoin.
And I spent one evening about six, seven hours reading and learning about how Bitcoin works and it just clicked to me man. I bought my first bit of Bitcoin that night and I've been descieing into Bitcoin in each ever since. So what really peaked my interest about this industry was the tech but really
Also, the opportunity to make good amounts of money if you're an invested asset set or so, relatively low cap and have the potential to yield astronomical returns if you pick the right ones. A lot of people say they're not in it for the money, they're in it for the
I'm interested in both. I really think a lot of people wouldn't be in this space if it wasn't for the financial gain that you could get from getting in early into a lot of these projects. But I think what kept me in the industry was the opportunities that I provided, the people that I met, the ability to be able to work from my computer
form of defi apps that I otherwise wouldn't have if I wasn't in the industry. I think those are the things that kept me in and those are the things that piqued my interest in watching a grow and watching some detect ERC 721 and FT be born and be utilized and then me being able to see the potential that has for video
games and asset ownership in a video game is remarkable. So I think that, you know, tying it back to what you said earlier, it's very interesting to see how much is space is evolved and how fast it's evolved. And I have a hard time seeing a world. I have a much harder time seeing a world where this technology isn't a part of it.
Then it is, so I'm an asymmetric bet for me at this point like you and I've spent a lot of time on it but I just make sense. This Bitcoin makes sense to me the tokenization of in-game assets for a video game, a popular MMORPG for example, makes
sense to me and there's a lot of ways to capture value and make things easier with blockchain technology. So yeah, I'm a believer and I hope that answers your question. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I'm not sure if you're going to eat Denver but if you, the folks that you do blockchain are going and would love to meet anyone that goes there.
Absolutely, man. It sounds like everyone's going to eat them for this year. We'll see. We'll see if we'll make it out there. We're pretty busy at Whalecoin talk this year, but I think I know next year will definitely be it. But it seems like that's that is the spot to be at this year, but I hope you have a great time.
there Ryan and thank you so much for coming on. Yep thanks for having me on today. Take care brother. We have Quintilk Community member everything that you hear on these broadcasts is educational purposes only nothing is financial advice so be safe out there. Bye bye.