Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Living on Blockchain. Today we are speaking to Peter. Peter is the co-founder and CEO of Six Sigma Sports.
It’s an online decentralized sports betting platform on the Cosmos blockchain. Their testnet is live, their mainnet is about to go live very very soon. This is a very interesting conversation just simply owing to the fact that I’ve never really spoken to anybody who has been creating in the sports betting niche and in a decentralized way.
So a very interesting conversation with fairly good insights owing to Peter’s experience in traditional finance as well and as a market maker and how he’s sort of applying that to decentralized sports betting and the USP of the platform as well. So you know if you are into fantasy gaming or sports league in any way, this is a must-listen for you. I can’t wait for you guys to hear this.
Let’s deep dive right in. Hi Peter, how are you doing today? Great, thank you. Nice to meet you, Tarusha.
Likewise, I’m so glad you could make the time to speak to us and speak to our listeners. So just for our listeners, can you tell us a little about how you got into Web3 and then perhaps a brief overview about Six Sigma Sports and its unique approach to decentralized sports betting in the Cosmos ecosystem? Sure. Well, my professional background is from traditional financial markets actually, so I spent the better part of 20 years almost in traditional trading seats both on the buy side at a credit hedge fund and at two investment banks as a market maker.
And over the past I’d say seven, eight years, I’ve personally dipped my interest in and out of blockchain and crypto, initially being exposed to it back in 2013-14, then forgetting about it for a while and revisiting it more recently when I started seeing applications and the technology being applied to various use cases and starting to see the seeds of different types of businesses being developed probably in 2019-2020 plus. And then that genuinely piqued my interest again and I started iterating on some ideas with some friends and colleagues and we were exploring how to apply the technology and what we were learning to another space to maybe leverage our own expertise as well in financial markets. And we kind of believed that the sports betting industry was a prime opportunity for this technology to be applied to.
So sometime in that space, I’d say about a year and a half ago, roughly plus or minus, I made the decision to commit to it full-time and start and lead this project and leave the previous career and pivot to combining technology and markets, and in this case, sports betting markets. Yeah. Wow, wonderful.
That’s quite a journey. So, you know, you have extensive background in institutional finance and you’ve made that leap from Web 2 to Web 3. What was the inflection point perhaps for you where you thought that, okay, you know, you need to get into Web 3 now and something about this technology really propelled you to perhaps make that decision? What was that point? Yeah, I mean, I think it was a combination of both personal reasons and what I was, you know, seeing the potential in the industry and the technology. But I felt that, you know, this was an opportunity for the industry to start to go more mainstream, to start to apply some of these novel ideas to traditional sectors.
And personally, I was excited by the opportunity to create, you know, I think that was a little bit missing at some point. I felt after a couple of decades in traditional finance, I felt like this excitement you get from creating something, you know, had vanished. And, you know, and I always believe that you always got to be learning.
And I felt that I was really curious and really excited to learn more deeper into this space. So, I think the combination of that and seeing an industry at its early stage that still had so much potential, which wasn’t necessarily always being applied in the right way. But I think that excited me and I was willing to make the pivot, the transition.
I think those are two very compelling reasons, you know, for anybody to make a shift that, you know, you’re building something and just the art and the experience of creation is so beautiful. And it makes for a very compelling argument. And as you mentioned, which is, again, something I find very beautifully put, that this is an industry in its infancy.
And, you know, when something is starting off, it’s actually really wonderful to see how it kind of develops and how it paves its path. Yeah, totally. Wonderful.
So, can you tell us a little bit more about, you know, Sigma Sports and how is it perhaps different from traditional sports betting? Which kind of sports can people bet on? Is it open to everybody? Yes. So, I’ll take a step back and just talk about the industry as a whole for a little bit and how we’re developing it differently. And then we can go into some of the details of the application.
But we’re basically using the technology in a way to, well, we are improving, we’re raising the bar, in our opinion, of the experience that currently exists in the traditional industry and how we’re doing that. First of all, I think anytime you can leverage this technology, obviously, it brings some characteristics which we can call table stakes, to use that term. But transparency is one key aspect that is kind of an out-of-the-box feature of most blockchain tech.
And in an industry where, especially given the various spectrum of regulated and unregulated markets that exist in sports betting, in an industry where transparency is often lacking, first of all, from an asset protection standpoint, there are lots of offshore markets where the transparency involved with moving your funds around is not there and it’s quite opaque and you don’t have the benefit of that visibility. And also transparency from the user experience in that currently what the end user sees of what happens in a sports book is very limited. To take that even a step further, the way the user is managed is a very different approach to a financial markets approach.
It’s more like a retail casino approach and there’s very little visibility up front. So users are often restricted from betting or from accessing certain apps or heavily limited. And a lot of the times, it can be done.
There are some reasons and some situations where that’s necessary. But what I think is never okay is doing it after the fact. So I think really sometimes, even if someone isn’t happy about an outcome, it’s often about how that outcome is, how that’s executed.
And the way the investing application industry executes it is that they will take all the information from you, all your information, all the information about what you want to do, and then they’re going to haircut you after. As opposed to making it transparent, making it visible up front, and having that honest relationship with the user of what you see is what you get. So the traditional industry manages that relationship and deploys their technology in a different way.
Obviously, we also have the speed of settlement that blockchain facilitates. So traditionally, a user would often need to wait. In some areas, it could be a day or so, but oftentimes, it’s many days.
In some jurisdictions, it could be a couple of weeks to extract their own funds from an application. We, with the benefit of the tech, can make this near instantaneous subject to some safety buffers we might have to just capture any erroneous results. But otherwise, blockchain facilitates almost immediate movement of funds.
And we can also bring the benefit of self-custody. So that’s another powerful thing is that you don’t have to, as a user, deposit your fund with someone to store for you until you want to bet. The only time funds are engaged is when you’re actually engaged in the activity.
At all other times, the funds are in your control, in your self-custodial wallet, and you’re not trusting the project or the application to store and securely manage your capital. But furthermore, I’d say what we’re doing is we’re reimagining the actual business model of the application. So if we look at the traditional industry for a second, we step back, find two general models in the traditional sports betting application.
One is let’s call a centralized sports book, which is your bet 365 to the world where a user goes on the application to bet, and it’s the company that’s on the other side taking those bets. And they’re managing their risk, and they’re mostly managing their risk by managing their customers. But it’s very one directional.
Then you do have an exchange model, which is a P2P model of betting, where users can put up their own price, their own odds of what they think is the right price or where they would want to put a bet on, and they can wait for someone else to come in and take that bet from them. And that’s kind of like a P2P exchange model. The centralized sports betting model typically offers a much better, more premium, more fun user experience.
The exchange model is a little limiting in that it caters to probably sharp bettors or more sophisticated bettors or semi-professional bettors. A lot of the volume is mostly market makers on those platforms. And the reality is, in my opinion, I don’t believe most customers actually want to think about what is the exact right odds for this match and if they should be putting up 1.2 to 1 or 1.6 to 1 or 1.4 to 1. I think that loses the entertainment value of engaging in sports betting in the first place.
So what we’re trying to do is we’re reimagining that. We’re combining a little bit of both and we’re delivering a totally new feature, a novel feature, which is the way we let users engage as the house, so as the sports book. So we’re actually offering the opportunity for users to step into the shoes of the sports book and participate actively, actively engaging as the sports book.
So if I can just describe what that looks like, in addition to traditionally betting on the application like a user would on a centralized sports book, which will be available and will be a core aspect of what we do, the same users or other users could go pick their favorite sport, their favorite league, their favorite team, or their not favorite team. They could prefer to bet on their favorite team and at all other times engage as the house providing liquidity on other markets. And that user goes to, let’s say we could pick a money line bet, which could be like a win loss draw in a football match.
And they would provide liquidity there and be in the position that a centralized sports book would be in. So it’s probably worth explaining a little bit why that is beneficial for someone that hasn’t spent, if anyone hasn’t spent time studying the markets. But exchanges out there, the applications that are modeled on like a P2P sports betting exchange, will often use a phrase similar to what we’re saying as be the house.
So they’ll often use a phrase referencing the house, which implies that the benefit of the house is making your own price. In reality, the benefit of the house is more than just making your own price. It’s actually being in the position to capture the flow that’s coming into the sports book and to benefit from bets on all outcomes that are coming into the sports book.
And this allows you to net some of your risk to potentially earn some risk-free PNL, or at least it has the potential to minimize your risk. And should your liquidity get used, you also have the potential to then reuse and recycle that capital. So it’s efficient because if you have offsetting risk, it basically nets out.
So this combination of letting users literally step into the shoes of a sports book, be in the position to receive those bets that come in, be in the position to benefit from bets coming in on more than one side. All of that combined is what makes being the position of the house so valuable. And the other thing that’s worth noting is that to talk about odds for just very briefly at a high level, when you see odds on a sporting event, a sports book’s profit margin is implied in those odds.
So it’s not necessarily just because you don’t see an explicit fee doesn’t mean you’re not paying. Sports books are profitable because over time and over many events, not only are they positioned to capture what I described before, not only are they positioned to capture and benefit from bets coming in on multiple outcomes, but they are also, quote unquote, overcharging for the probability of an event. And occasionally that goes against them.
We have outlier events. No one is perfect at predicting the future. Sports do not always make money on any given day, but they typically do make money over long periods of time and over many events.
And by taking in that volume of activity. So that’s kind of what we’re opening up. We’re literally opening up that in a passive way.
It’s really in an active way. It’s a new way to bet because you are still betting. Even sports books, like I mentioned, can make or lose money on any given event.
But it is a totally new feature that passes through some of the benefits of being in a centralized sports book position to a user that wants to engage in that way. And that is something that has not been attempted in or out of the traditional industry. So I’d say that’s a differentiator.
Both of you were to look at other sports betting applications that are trying to use blockchain technology. And it is clearly something that is not available in a traditional betting application. But I realize I probably put a lot out there.
Yeah. If you want to rewind or go back to any point and ask me about it, please feel free. Sure.
So I think what I would perhaps first ask you, after all this information about the platform and why the use of blockchain technology is, it becomes very pertinent in setting it apart from, say, the traditional sports betting applications. That is profoundly clear. The fact that you allow users to be the house and benefit from bets on both sides, that is wonderful as well.
And the fact that you have self-custody, that is, again, very pro-users. So all of this, I’ve been able to absorb. But if you had to explain your platform to somebody who’s just starting off, I wouldn’t say to a five-year-old because that might not be correct.
But even a sentence or two, if you had to explain what the platform does, then how would you put it in just two sentences? Firstly, the platform allows you to bet natively with crypto and platform allows you to, for the first time, engage as the house in a sports book and to accept the bets as a house with the benefits that that brings. Now, those benefits are what we discussed. To articulate them requires a little bit of detail, but it really lets you profit from acting as the house.
Right, right. So then, you know, you are in a much stronger position and you’re able to benefit from both sides of the betting that is taking place, which is, I think, from my limited understanding of, you know, gambling in casinos, et cetera, I do understand that, OK, this sounds like a really win-win situation for the users. So what is the kind of traction that you have currently, Peter? Yeah, before I jump to that, I will just say, you know, just the way I would articulate the purpose, right, is actually to let users benefit from some of the value that they help generate, right? So if we think about how the value accrues to various stakeholders in an ecosystem, you know, as opposed to the traditional betting applications, which are really one-directional over time, they are, you know, we’ve designed this so that the users that most contribute to making a betting application valuable, i.e. the bettors, actually also have the opportunity to through their own means, but to capture some of that value accrual.
So that’s, you know, I just want to kind of zoom out a little bit and kind of just mention that again. In terms of, well, in terms of traction, so we’ve recently just launched our main net, which is the blockchain layer. The application itself for betting is going to go live in the coming weeks.
So we can probably revisit this question in a couple of months, but we are approaching launch of the application itself. So up to date, we’ve only been a couple of test nets at various times over the past year, but now we’re going to be live shortly. This is absolutely, I think, game-changing when it comes to perhaps sports betting.
So, you know, because you have been re-imagining perhaps how sports betting can be done, were there any kind of challenges that you did encounter? How did you perhaps turn them into opportunities if you could at all by, you know, innovation? Can you tell us a little about that? Yeah, I think, you know, I think some of our biggest challenges are probably to come, right? So, you know, we do have the traditional challenges of a startup, which are not unique to us, but I think some of the unique things to us or to our space and to the Web3 space that I’d probably comment on and which I think have the potential to be both benefits and challenges, but it’s really about smoothing out the friction points for our end users, right? So, you know, I think one of the, you know, self-custody, for example, as one example, is very powerful, right? I believe, as a user, I would always want to have self-custody as an option at the very least. Not everyone might want to self-custody. Currently, self-custodying involves multiple steps.
You have to be comfortable managing your own security, and this is on and off chain security. So, you know, it is understandably not for everyone. I think that’s going to be one of the big challenges of the space to reduce that friction point, because ultimately, we want to develop a product that doesn’t just appeal to a native crypto audience, which will be our first early adopter audience, but especially with the Be The House feature, we want to build a product that will appeal to someone that hasn’t considered crypto before for sports betting, right? And because we bring a different experience, a different feature set, we want them to look at this and want to experience it, but then we don’t want them to fall, you know, in the steps that it takes to experience it.
So, I think the biggest challenge, one of the biggest challenges we are going to be facing is going to be that bridge to a non-crypto user base. And how do we reduce that friction? And how do we, you know, make it worth their while to experience a crypto native application? So, you know, I think we haven’t hit the full scope of that yet, given we’re launching in the coming weeks. But I think that’s going to be, you know, one of the biggest challenges faced by us and a similar challenge will probably be faced by many applications that are being built for a user who may or may not be in crypto today.
Yeah, I think that is a challenge for any Web3 builder. What happens is basically, you know, what Web3 technology kind of brings to the table is privacy and, you know, security and a layer of decentralization when it comes to your data, self-sovereignty. But all of these concepts, they are very high-level concepts that perhaps do not really matter in the shorter, you know, term for the end user.
They are looking at convenience. They are looking at features that can perhaps really align with. And this is pretty much where I am as well.
Like, I do feel that over the years, I’ve been in this Web3 space for now nearly, I think, 12 years, going on 13 years. And I do think that the technology itself is very beautiful. But, you know, for the people who understand it, for the end users who we are trying to get to for mass adoption, these concepts are not their priority, right? They are looking at the features and how that life can become more convenient.
And educating them and becoming a part of their day-to-day life is a bit of a challenge. And yes, as you said, it will be one of your bigger challenges, perhaps, you know, working on the UI bit, you know, UI front a little bit, that that might help. And, you know, having the feature where the user themselves can be the house, I think that will be pretty much a USB for you.
Because, you know, that is something that your target audience, you know, people who are already using sports betting platforms, they will understand already, right? And that is something they will perhaps align with better, rather than tom-tomming that, okay, it’s on Web3, because it’s fine, like a lot of people are on the internet, they don’t necessarily understand how the internet works. So these folks can be on a Web3 application, because of the other features, and they don’t necessarily need to, you know, align with the Web3 technology in general. Exactly.
I mean, like you said, I think, ultimately, we need to start taking some of those boxes before, as an industry, we can have a chance at reaching some kind of mass adoption. Absolutely. Absolutely.
So, you know, that is very well put. And I love how, you know, you already have that insight that, you know, you foresee this as being a bigger challenge. So how would you perhaps tackle this challenge? Like, would you, do you believe that education is the way to go, like educating your customer? And how would you go about doing that? Or would you rather that, you know, you’re building a community, and then moving on from there, trying to see if it’ll catch on like a network effect? Yeah, I think it’s a little bit of both.
And I think, and I know there are some other projects out there that are working on solutions to streamline, you know, the steps involved in self custody, without changing the, I guess, the underlying technology, but to make it a little more user friendly. So I think it’s a combination of both. I think it’s a little bit of an education game.
It’s, you know, educating on the benefits and educating on the steps. But also, I think we need the technology, the infrastructure, just to maybe come to one further generation of development, where some of the more annoying, for lack of a better word, steps are just abstracted away a little. And, and I think, I think, I think the combination of both.
And also, you know, hopefully offering a reason for people to really take the time. And by offering something different, I think we and other projects have a chance of doing that. I think all those three things coming together, and maybe the next one, two years is really a prime time for, for all three of those, you know, paths to meet and really like elevate and move forward.
The whole UX that’s around Web3. But I think it’s going to take a little bit of everything. Yeah, that is true.
It’s going to be a bit of a mix of both. And there’s a need to iterate, like, you know, you can try out something and see if it works. So pretty much like experimenting and then finding a way there.
Can you tell me a little about how is Six Sigma Sports different, say, from platforms like BetDex? And I think Lunafly also does decentralized sports betting. And there was also another one, I think, DexSports. How are you different from these other platforms? Well, yes.
I would say the main difference, you know, the main difference that I’ve seen from other applications trying to also use blockchain technology is that those applications, you know, generally as a whole, applications using blockchain fall into like two categories, you know, the way I’ve come across them. One is the really traditional apps under the hood that are just using a payment provider or some payment rails to accept crypto. And it’s kind of like a, it’s really a Web2 app underneath that’s linked to Web3 payment rails.
Or there are some applications like some of the ones you mentioned that are trying to do something a little more natively with a tech stack and blockchain. However, what I’ve seen so far is really them trying to take the same or similar or exactly the same model that exists in like a traditional betting exchange application and just put it on a blockchain. And maybe there’s some marginal benefits to that, but I think the argument is hard to make that those marginal benefits by just doing that supersede the hurdles you introduce as well.
So, you know, I really think that one of the, you know, as we mentioned, the beta house feature, the way we’ve designed it, it’s unique. And that really involves re-imagining the business model, not just the technology stack. So it’s really the combination of both that I’d say currently separates us from other applications that I’ve seen.
Right. Okay, wonderful. So, you know, moving on a little bit more to perhaps, or moving back actually to the user experience aspect, how do you intend to enhance the, you know, user experience? Because in Web3, that is always a bit of a challenge.
And, you know, you also mentioned that the steps for self-custody obviously are a little tedious and there are platforms that are solving it, but, you know, it’s still a path and it’s still this, it’s like work in progress. So is there anything specifically that you guys have done to the platform for the UI so that the UX is better for the end user? Yes. Well, so self, like you mentioned, self-custody, despite the hurdles, they are just, it does introduce a level of control over the user’s funds that doesn’t exist on traditional platforms.
So there’s that. On the UI side, we, you know, it’s not in production in the app. Now we are developing and we are exploring various ways that we can leverage the transparency that’s offered by the blockchain to really refresh the UI, to really provide the user more information visually and through data, but more information about what’s the action that’s taking place, what’s happening in the sports book.
So that is one element where we’re currently exploring. So I can’t define for you the exact feature yet, but we are planning on experimenting with ways that we can use some of the basics that the blockchain tech stack, you know, makes available to us in order to really enhance that UI and make it more exciting. We do have a couple other things in the pipeline that we can’t really talk about yet because they’re kind of in a pre-development phase, but yeah.
Are you going to be mobile-friendly as well? So we are going to be mobile-friendly, not with a native app to start. It’s going to be a PWA app, but we will be mobile-friendly for sure. Excellent.
Yeah. What are the kind of sports that people can bet on using your application? So yeah, to start, it’s really going to be opening up with football, soccer, and cricket. It’s a combination given the global audience those sports have, the global audience they also have in sports betting in particular, and our focus, which is not going to include the US to start.
It makes, you know, I think prime market for really for us to roll out the app. And then we do plan on adding additional sports, potentially even fantasy sports at some stage in the medium term. But I think probably something like tennis might be soon to follow along with potentially the NBA before we grow that.
So it’s going to be, it’s going to, you know, the portfolio of sports, let’s say is going to, and leagues will increase as we go. Brilliant. So your platform is going to be a global in nature, like catering to a global audience or because of any compliance? Yes.
Yeah. The regulatory landscape of blockchain crypto and sports betting is very nuanced jurisdiction by jurisdiction. So I can’t like go into a lot of detail because it’s going to vary depending on what we’re talking about.
However, it is, it is a globally focused application. With that said, we are going to be excluding certain jurisdictions that the application is not going to be available in. For example, I could tell you to start that will exclude the US and the UK, but we are going to be very focused on regulating markets that have large sports audiences and markets where sports betting is becoming more mainstream.
That makes sense. So given your background in managing, you know, single name credit risk, how does your platform address and manage risks in the decentralized betting ecosystem? Yes. So, so risk management is, is an interesting topic in our platform because we’re going to either, you know, every user, well, every user is going to have their own risk to manage.
They could be doing things on and off our platform. They could be using multiple platforms. We are also going to be an operator alongside users in the sports book.
We are going to have our own risk limits in place, and that will, that will vary and change over time, depending on the activity, it’s going to be dynamic. But in a second version of the house functionality, for example, and this comes, you know, this also probably will highlight without going off on a tangent into too much detail, but this will also highlight how risk is managed in traditional, in the traditional sports betting industry to a large extent versus how we want to manage it. You know, coming from financial markets, risk is managed really based primarily on the activity and the trades and the risks that you actually take on, right? The sports betting industry largely works differently.
It has a tradition, more traditional casino approach to managing risk. And that is you don’t manage risk by the actual flow of activity. You’re managing risk at the customer so that you’re really managing the customer.
You’re not managing your risk. And this, this goes, this kind of distills to the fact that over time, you know, just like a casino bets on the math probabilities working over time, over time, they will win. Sports betting has adopted a similar approach in that over time, a sports book should be profitable.
So what they do is they manage any customer that’s winning too much instead. So, you know, in our old world, in traditional markets, you did not have that luxury. In fact, a lot of what happens in the sports betting market today would probably be illegal in financial markets.
So we couldn’t manage our customers. Sometimes our customers were the smartest people in the industry, right? And, and were, and they out resourced us as a market maker. However, that didn’t mean we could, we, you know, we could limit their activity.
We wanted their activity. We needed to manage our risk by managing the risk itself. And that, that goes into, there are tools to do this.
There are, there are techniques you can use to do this. One is for example, by adjusting pricing in a more dynamic way, which the sports industry, most of the sports books, except for a couple of large ones that are involved in really setting the lines early on in a period. But most sports books copy odds, and they just bet on the math working out.
And if anyone is winning too much, they limit the risk. We’re planning in a, in a, in a second version of the house functionality to actually make that much more dynamic, to, to make the markets and the pricing more dynamic and for the activity and the flow that the sports book is taking. So we’re kind of, we’re kind of introducing some financial markets practices in terms of how risk can be managed.
But that’s like, I would say that’s V2 of the house functionality. V1 is more simple. All right.
Okay. Kind of relies on just, just some strict limits. Okay.
Awesome. And just from the user perspective again you know, because you, we talked a little about the regulatory landscape and you know, how that might limit some users from accessing your platform, but what are the steps that you know, you have taken personally as the founder to ensure compliance? Well, I think I would say the founders should take proper due diligence on the markets that you want to target. So, you know, so it is really, it is really educating yourself and getting the proper advice not just for your domestic market, but for markets that you want to reach, you know, and it’s also a bit educational because the regulatory landscape, not just in crypto, but also in sports betting is dynamic.
There are a lot of markets that are opening up right now that are in the process of regulating. It is kind of understanding what, where markets are on that path. And, you know, even, even the opportunity to, to be involved at an early stage as, as, as those markets take shape, you know, exists for certain countries.
So, you know, I’d say it, it really is about education, getting quality advice and, and, you know, and just being prepared. That’s sound advice, that’s sound, Nidhi. So moving on to perhaps, you know, taking a larger look at blockchain adoption in general, beyond sports betting, where else do you see this technology making a significant impact in, you know, the broader financial and gaming industries? Yeah, you know, I’m really excited to, I’m excited by the technology in a couple areas.
I mean, I think gaming has, I think it has a lot of potential in gaming. I think how value, talking about value accrual in an ecosystem and in an application, I think breaking down some of these walled gardens and having, giving the opportunity to users to own assets and to make that asset portable across blockchains, across ecosystems, even across games. You know, while, while some of those technological hurdles there are probably underestimated, especially by me, because I’m not a game designer, but nevertheless, you know, I think that has huge potential to really change the business model of gaming and the user experience.
I, you know, I also think I was really excited there to see how some projects or some individuals were trying to utilize the technology to benefit creators, because that to me should be kind of like a very streamlined, easy win. But as, as a creator, having the opportunity to monetize consumption of your creation, whatever that might be, whether it’s art, whether it’s educational, but having that not only be transparent, but almost automated and, and persistent into the, into the future. I think that’s super powerful for creators.
And right now, I think, you know, it feels to me as an outsider speaking, but it does feel to me that creators lose the power they have past like T0, past the point of creation and that initial, whether it’s a sale or that initial production or that initial publication. Right. But after that point, the, the, the value and the control doesn’t accrue to the creator as much as it could.
I think blockchain does have a lot of potential to play there as well. Right. Yeah.
That’s wonderful. That’s a wonderful perspective, I think. And especially coming from, you know, someone like you, who’s had a massive experience in institutional finance space, I think, and, you know, you, you do bring a unique perspective because now you’re working in the sports betting space with the new financial world.
So that’s, those are very interesting insights. Now, you know, moving on, we’ve talked a lot about business side of sports betting. And I would love to take, talk a little about perhaps, you know, a personal moment from your end, like what has been your most memorable sports fan moment, or is there any game or event that you still get excited about, you know, in the larger scheme of things? You know, when I, I would say, so when I first came to, to the UK many years ago, I had the opportunity at the time to regularly go see Arsenal.
And, and that’s when Thierry Henry was playing and watching him play. I mean, people will disagree on, on, but watching him play, he played with an ease and a comfort that was kind of like, it was kind of like watching Michael Jordan play basketball or watching, or, or, or Valentino Rossi, like, you know, race a motorbike. One time I remember seeing how they, they, they had some monitoring equipment strapped to, to Valentino Rossi versus other racers.
And his heart, his heart rate was at the, at the pace of like a 12 year old playing a game versus every other racer was like super elevated and under high stress. And, you know, it’s watching, so I do have memories of moving to the UK, getting into football, going to Arsenal matches and, and kind of watching Thierry Henry play with the ball, right? It’s almost like he was the one out there on the field having fun. And, and, you know, so that, that’s, you know, I’d say pleasant memory.
I’d say that’s probably, that’s probably one, as I started to get into football more with the move to the UK and, and my first exposure to really following a team and a player on this side of the pond, I’d say that was it. That’s wonderful. I think, you know, that is what these greats do.
They kind of make it look easy. And they get into a flow state and they are really enjoying the process. And I think that is a part of what makes them great.
Yeah, exactly. So I think that’s amazing to watch. I actually regret, even though I grew up in the US, I actually regret never, never having seen Michael Jordan play in person.
So, but yeah, but that’s, you know, watching, watching players like that, I think is really, is really exciting. It’s very rewarding as well. I think, you know, watching anybody do something that they’re really good at, I think that can be so rewarding to watch because, you know, you, you feel your, their joy is so palpable that, you know, you, you take a little bit of that joy home with you after witnessing something like that.
Yeah, exactly. So now, you know, onto another fun question, if you could create like a blockchain based fantasy league, you know, on your platform for any sports or activity, what would it be? And who would you want as your hypothetical star player or participant? Oh, I mean, you know, this is, this is actually, I probably wouldn’t be able to put together a whole team right now. I think, I think I would, I mean, I like basketball as a sport.
And, and how can you not have the opportunity? How can you turn down the opportunity to include Michael Jordan in any team lineup? So I probably that would be my starting point. But, but, you know, I think now we’re probably getting back to the product and fantasy is actually something I would love to explore more it really, it really requires a little bit more nuance, you know, to kind of get it the right model for blockchain, but, but hopefully this is going to be an area where we are, we are developing something very shortly. Wow, brilliant.
Awesome. That’s super exciting. So, you know, this has been a wonderful conversation, and I completely lost track of time.
So now I need to perhaps ask you my very last question that I ask everybody who comes on this podcast, you know, you’ve made that leap from Web 2 to Web 3, like we’ve talked about before, if you had to give somebody, you know, top two or three suggestions, what would be those suggestions for them to start living on blockchain and make a similar leap like you did? You know, I would say, well, first of all, I would say, you know, if, if you have the itch, if you know, if you’re excited, and you’re naturally curious, it’s a great space to be in. And I would encourage it. I would say, though, if you, if you are going to develop something new, a new application, new project, I’d say, don’t just, it’s not enough to just take something that exists in the traditional world, throw it on a blockchain, and assume everyone’s going to love it, because it’s on a blockchain.
And that should make it better, right? I think you have to actually objectively try and evaluate every application, you have to compare it to what’s in crypto, what’s out of crypto. And, and hopefully you have ideas on how it can be better than both. So, you know, I would say, you know, blockchain and crypto and crypto assets in general, have a lot of potential.
But that doesn’t mean they automatically make everything better. So yeah, I think, you know, I think it’s definitely, I think that’s the only that’s the question that I would ask myself, or that I would suggest everyone ask themselves before they commit to an idea. But then, I would say totally, if you’re excited by, by, you know, by pioneering new paths, testing new ideas and creating, I’d say there’s probably not a, you know, not a more exciting industry right now to be in.
Absolutely. Those are good suggestions. And I think what you said, I, you know, resonate with completely, not everything, you know, is required to be on, on this particular technology, not everything has to be decentralized.
But this is a very, very exciting space to be in considering, again, going back to, you know, what you said, this is an industry, still, it’s an infancy, and it’s exciting to watch it grow and perhaps mature further. So this has been wonderful. Thank you so much, Peter, for taking out the time to speak to me.
Any parting thoughts before we wrap this up? Uh, no, I really appreciate the time. It was great speaking with you as well. Thank you so much.
Thank you.