Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Living on Blockchain. Today we are speaking to Vijay from Bitscrunch. He has been in the space for some time now and this was a very interesting conversation for me because I wanted to really pick his brain on all things NFTs and SBTs and just understanding his take on how the end user is basically responding to this particular bear cycle.
It was a really, really fun conversation, very insightful as well. I can’t wait for you guys to hear this. Let’s deep dive right in.
Hi Vijay, thank you so much for taking out the time to speak to me today. How are you doing? Amazing podcast. Alright, thank you so much once again.
So just for our listeners, I think everybody would know, whoever is in this space, they would know about you. Bitscrunch is quite a legacy in itself. But for the listeners who just joined in perhaps, would you like giving an intro about yourself and how you got into this space? Yeah, sure.
So myself, Vijay, Vijay Praveen, originally from Chennai in India, but then living in Munich, Germany for the last decade or so. So I moved to Germany to do my master’s in 2013, 2012, 2013. And since then, I live in Germany.
I worked for companies like Volkswagen and Siemens, two of the German OGs in the web space before I founded Bitscrunch amidst pandemic. So it’s been more than two years with Bitscrunch. So far, the journey has been so amazing.
A lot of ups and downs, a lot of interesting happenings. We managed to raise close to six and a half million dollars, but from prominent investors. So I mean, it’s not just about the money, but then we got the money from Coinbase, Ventures, Animoca Brands, Chainlink, Polygon, Crypto.com, Ketelabs, you name it.
So we have what two bits of the cap table is filled with. Some of the top three, top ten web-creative VCs. And I’m glad that Bitscrunch is taking its shape in the market.
And what we are solving is the NFT forensics part. So just for any crypto guy or girl, we are more like a chain analysis of NFT space. I would say we are an amalgamation of Dune analytics plus chain analysis for the NFT space.
So we want to bring more trust and transparency into the NFT space. And so far, so good. So the journey has been amazing.
Thanks. So tell me a little more about how you came upon this idea. How did you stumble upon creating a platform for analytics, for insights, for NFT? When I was with Volkswagen, I have been doing data analytics for those wonderful multinational companies over in Germany.
I wanted to do something on data in the blockchain space as well, because being a retail user, I’ve been in crypto since 2017 or 18, where I’ve made some money, lost some bucks as well. But then I’ve been in touch continuously as a retailer, as an investor, used to follow things in the space. And I decided to build something that is comfortable for me.
And that is when I started assembling the pieces. I set up a team. I know my CTO.
We did masters together in Germany. So I reached out to him. I reached out to my founder, Saravanan, who back then did his masters in Ireland.
So we set up a team. We started decoding blockchain data. And as you know, blockchain data is something that is not straightforward.
We cannot understand blockchain data as such. So we need people like Bert Scringe or team like Dune Analytics or Nansen to decode what’s happening. So I started there and then saw a huge surge in the NFT space.
And we wanted to focus on that growing sector rather than focusing on the entire blockchain. We wanted to set our footprints on the NFT space first before moving out on blockchains. So your plan is basically to move beyond NFTs and perhaps cover other assets as well? Yes, we will take one step at a time.
We started with NFTs to begin with. And as we move forward, yes, the plan is to also move beyond NFT assets that are on the blockchain. We will tell when is that move going to be.
But right now, we are pretty much occupied and happy with what we are doing, focusing on the NFT space. Okay, awesome. And just for my understanding and for the understanding of the users, so anybody can go on BitScrunch and sign up and they would be able to make use of your analytics platform? Yes, we have launched a B2C platform, which is called UnleashNFTs.com. So it’s a B2 segment of BitScrunch.
And anybody can go and see the wallet portfolio, the NFTs that they own on their wallets. And they can see a whole bunch of crazy analytics plus forensics for free. Wow, okay.
So if this is for free, so what is exactly the business model here? You’re targeting enterprises for gaining insights? Yes, right now, we are primarily B2B. So for instance, we work with a couple of fortune 500 companies as well. So not just that the capital is strong, but they are also strong.
We work with MasterCard for the NFT security segment. And then KPMG Israel is also in talks with using NFT tools that could help NFT auditing. And then Dappradar is a customer.
A lot of products using our APIs. We charge the enterprises. We have different sets of API calls limiting aspects.
And B2C is free for now. But then the plan is to eventually make it a subscription model for the end users. Okay, awesome.
And for these particular NFTs, like are you guys chain agnostic or are you working with a particular set of chains? So we are currently live across three chains, Ethereum, Polygon and Avalanche. And we are about to go live on Binance as well. So that makes it four chains by end of this month.
And then we are also indexing Solana, which is a beast, which eventually takes us beyond EVM. So up until now, yes, we are heavily EVM based. But then the goal is to also break the shackles and move beyond EVM by indexing Solana and other chains as well.
Awesome. Awesome. That was going to be my next question.
So, you know, these are all EVM compatible chains when we were moving further ahead. But, you know, it kind of took care of that. Awesome.
So this is very exciting. But just from a perspective of a builder, like now that you know you’ve launched a B2C platform as well. What is the kind of response that you’ve seen from the end user? Like, has it been as promising as that of enterprises? Or do you feel that analytics and insights are still not something that, you know, really the end user is not that interested in to perhaps to get all of those detailed insights? What is your take? I mean, analytics and forensics are pieces that that’s more like an add on to whatever services people are providing.
Right. I mean, it’s more like a seat cover for a car, right? Because people can still drive the car without the seat cover. But then ultimately, it gives you comfort.
It gives you so many amazing business insights. And as the market peaks, I mean, this happened in the last bull run as well. Right.
If you look at some amazing firms like Dune Analytics was was raising up to one billion valuation in the last bull run. And then Nansen was raising three to three quarters to the four or four billion dollar valuation last time. And chain analysis, for instance, on the other hand, was sitting at eight billion valuation.
So right now, if you look at things, yes, the NFT market has cooled down. Things have gone down. But thanks to Blur, OpenSea and others.
Now that the marketplace wars are going on, it has seen a little upside. But then in general, we are nowhere close to the peak performance of the NFTs like last February. Right.
Yeah. So I think all markets have their cycles. But it’s interesting to know that, you know, users are taking on and they are looking at insights and analytics, because I feel that that is one of the problems with perhaps the three space like the users, some users or a category of users is getting to the space for making a quick buck.
And they don’t really do their due diligence with this particular tool. You are actually able to empower them. And it’s good that they recognize it.
Yeah, exactly. That’s the plan. I mean, there are like so many users that say that they are a power user of Nance and they are a power user of Dune.
That’s for the general, broader crypto market. And we want to be the same for the NFT user. So for all the NFT regions out there, no matter what change that they are buying NFTs into, we want them to have BitScrunch or UnleashNFTs.com as a platform where they go and decide their investment opportunity.
So we help people in picking the right investments. And also, most importantly, we tell them where not to invest, because we show what are the wasted assets, what are the malicious assets on the chain so that they can stay a little bit away from those malicious assets. Right.
So now moving a little beyond the platform, what is your take on the NFTs that are being, you know, the collections basically being launched by the bigger companies? Like Amazon had recently, you know, I think they had announced something. I’m not sure if that is out yet, but Starbucks definitely has launched their collection. And like what is so has many other retail platforms.
So what is your take on these NFTs and what has been the user response so far? So just coming on to the user response first. Even during this market, we are clocking 200,000 visits per month on our platform, which is so amazing. Right.
I mean, we just launched our beta and we are live across three chains now and already we are seeing 200,000 visits per month, which is quite amazing for what we think that the NFT market is pretty much dead. And coming to the brands that are coming on to NFTs, just remember NFTs just saw one bull run. And just within that one bull run, you are able to see a lot of brands shipping into NFTs, starting from Adidas, Nike, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Reddit, MasterCard, Amazon.
As you said, Amazon has announced launching an NFT marketplace. And if it is likely to happen by end of this month, if that happens, then Amazon can literally bring millions of users into Web3. And that is what brands have realized because they can easily onboard people in the name of NFTs to blockchain.
But it’s literally difficult for brands to educate people what is DeFi. So they see NFTs as a tool, as an option to educate users and onboard users easily because you can create a digital twin of whatever physical product that you’re selling. And you can make them buy an NFT.
You can attach an NFT with whatever physical purchases that you make. And like I said, it’s just one bull market it has seen. And I’m really curious to know how things are going to be in the next bull for NFTs.
Absolutely. You and me both. I think, you know, I was one of the naysayers when CryptoKitties had come out.
And I did not understand what is the huge deal about NFTs. But because I felt that it’s more like about just ownership and a digital art. But as time has progressed, there are so many use cases for NFTs.
And I’m happy to stand corrected that this is like a booming space. And as you said, I do believe that, you know, in the next bull run, we are going to see a bigger boom as against the first one. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. What is your take on Bitcoin ordinals? Because, you know, we’ve been hearing a lot about it. Again, something that has been making a little noise.
But what do you think about ordinals in general? And again, because, you know, you have the insights. So I would love to know how has the take been for users as well? Do they understand it well? Are they interested in ordinals? Or is it just a lot of noise right now? What is your take? I mean, some some say that it is it is actually a destruction for the purpose of the Bitcoin, because Bitcoin was was meant for a financial tool in the first place. And it’s just a store of value.
Yeah, exactly. And when people see things getting inscripted onto Bitcoin, they feel that the Bitcoin’s purpose is being misused. But on the other side, there are people who celebrate the other opportunities Bitcoin could provide.
But it’s too early to take a call on ordinals at this point in time because we we lack a lot of infrastructure projects. Like there are very few marketplaces where you can make Bitcoin ordinals. Or there is another thing called Bitcoin stamps that also became popular last week.
I have not heard of that. Please tell me more. I have not heard of Bitcoin stamps.
Is it like ordinals? How does that work? Yes, it’s similar to ordinals, but the way it is inscribed is different. Ordinals is something that it’s where this particular block is associated with the particular ordinal piece. But stamps is something it’s more like a certification.
So this has been stamped or something like that. It is yet to boom. But yeah, those were also in the talks.
But like I said, the marketplaces are not really there for people to have a look at what’s going on. What is the number of sales? What are the number of transactions? And it’s also not easy process to mint NFTs or mint ordinals on Bitcoin, right? There is a 10 step process attached to that. Whereas if you look at Ethereum NFTs or NFTs on any other chain, it’s just a few clicks away from getting an NFT.
And you could potentially see it on chain, either store it on IPFS or any web to cloud services. But that’s not the case for Bitcoin. And this will take some time to mature until people see the actual use case.
See the ordinals out of their own eyes. But yeah, that’s likely to happen in the next months. Time should tell how this is going to be.
Right. So this Bitcoin stamping is really interesting. I’m going to read up right after this recording about it.
Thank you for sharing that. So now that you know, we kind of touched upon Bitcoin ordinals, I actually wanted to go back to when you were talking about physical asset-backed NFTs. I had recently read an article about how there is a certain real value to NFTs which are backed by the property, the real estate.
So, again, is this something that you see will boom more in the next bull run? Or do you feel that this is going to be one of the foundational things that is going to take NFTs forward? Because, you know, then you have something tangible, you know, along with that NFT sale. Yes, I see a lot of sort of fidgetals coming up. If you look at fashion brands, Nike and Adidas, they are milking a lot of money out of NFTs.
And it is being followed by brands like Gucci or Tiffany & Co or Louis Vuitton. They are also releasing pendants with brands like UGOLAPS, CryptoPunks and Bored Apes. So this will follow because this creates an opportunity for brands to create an exclusive community, right? Because if you ask who are the fans of Nike or Rework, you can literally see a lot of hands going up.
But you are not really sure if they are really fans or if they are one time buyers. But if a brand decides to nurture its own community, much like a Web3 native community, it can do it with the help of blockchain and NFTs. And this is what brands will be able to do in the next few years.
They’ll nurture their own community and they’ll give either airdrops or free physical products to whatever they produce in their stores, right? Because if you look at the stores, sometimes there is a lot of items that are getting unsold because of various external conditions. So teams, instead of either giving it off for lesser price tags or bulky discounted sales, they could do it to their closely knitted community, right? Yeah, that’s true. That is like a ready-made audience for you.
Yeah, exactly. And that is being enabled by NFTs and blockchain. So I will definitely, I mean, I’m looking for more brands stepping into NFTs for creating this exclusive community.
And also, like you mentioned, there are also apartments and lands getting sold and they are having a NFT asset on chain as well. And this has made a whole bunch of paperwork so easy. It’s so much more efficient, right? Exactly.
I mean, I saw a news just a month ago where Siemens, one of the biggest German conglomerate, I mean, my ex-employer, they signed off a bond worth of $60 million on chain, on Polygon. Wow. So they were able to do it without having to spend a lot of time and they were able to sign it off within a week, which would have taken three to six months of their time.
Wow. This is brilliant, right? These kind of use cases really make you a believer again. Do you feel proud to be a part of such a pioneering industry? Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that’s what keeps us going. I mean, founders like me, we go through a lot of good phases as well as bad phases, right? Last few months have been a horrid time for founders like me. Every day when you wake up, you see something crashing, you see FTX going down, you see Celsius going down, you see something or the other blowing up.
But when you look up to real use cases where Siemens is doing something, Reddit is doing something, MasterCard is doing something, that is when that brings smile to founders, not just the founders, but the whole team. Right. Yeah, absolutely.
It’s heartening, right? When you’re doing something right. So it seems like it’s a little bit of validation, I think. Exactly.
Whenever there is validation from bigger brands, then you feel more happy and relaxed. Absolutely. So this is like a question that I’ve always had for a while.
So NFTs, and I think you’re the best person to answer it. What is like the user base? So for these physical asset-backed NFTs, like for example, if a fashion brand is coming out of these NFTs, which are backed by some physical asset or their merchandise, so what is like the user base that they are targeting? Are these like the millennials? Are these the next? Like, who are these people who are perhaps purchasing these NFTs? Because there has to be some sort of a purchasing power that you need to have. But is that dependent on the age? Are they targeting age-wise? What is, again, your take here? So NFTs, if you look at the whole segment, yes, the millennials, the early 20s, the mid-20s are the ones who are going after most NFTs in the form of TFPs or gaming NFTs.
But if you look at the costlier ones where, let’s say, I’m sure that not all of us can go out there and buy a CryptoPunk or let’s say a BoardApe. These are what people with money, they are coming out and buying out there because you see the traction, right? Because you see millions of degens, millions of millennials aping into NFTs. And those who want to spread their wealth, those who want to diversify their accumulation of wealth, they prefer going NFTs way because it’s digital.
And on top of it, it’s blockchain. It’s not just digital, but blockchain, which is erasable. So that is something that people started to believe.
And most of the VC firms, they own NFTs as well, if you know that fact. Some of the prominent VCs, they own NFTs, they own CryptoPunks or BoardApes. So they have it as part of their portfolio as well.
And it’s also a risk management where they buy some Ethereum, buy some Bitcoins, and at the same time, they also buy BoardApes and CryptoPunks to diversify the risk. So, yeah, in the majority of the NFTs, yes, it’s the millennials, but the expensive ones, like, let’s say, GoodSee or Louis Vuitton NFTs, which are worth, let’s say, $50,000 can only be bought by a handful of people in the market. So it’s a mix.
Exactly. I mean, look at people playing golf. It’s not one of the fanciest or the most entertaining sports.
I mean, golfers, don’t get offended by my statement. But just saying, because if you compare it with, let’s say, football or even cricket has been criticized for not being one of the attractive sports, right? But if you look at this golf thing, even I know certain golf clubs, which has an entry fee of several thousand dollars. Right.
Exorbitant. Absolutely. Yeah, exactly.
I know a golf club in Spain, which has an entry fee of $50,000 or $100,000 per annum. So that tells you that there is no entry for a layman. There is no entry for somebody who works for Volkswagen or Siemens, unless he’s a director or a certain managerial position in Siemens, right? So why do they cap it? Because they bring exclusivity.
If Ambani goes out there and plays golf, he is likely to meet Adani over there, or he’s likely to meet Tata over there, right? Because that gives exclusivity and then that lets them interact with people who are on par or above par of their levels. Right. If you look at the holders of Boredapes, it’s whom? It’s the Justin Bieber.
It’s the big names in the industry. And when they all meet in a Boredapes get together, they get to exchange thoughts on what is the next industrial hype, what are the next generative AI projects that they wanted to invest and so on. So that sort of exclusivity is also given by NFTs and also certain collections.
So yes, you’re right to a great extent. Okay, cool. Now, you’ve mentioned generative AI.
So I must ask, I had also read something very interesting. I keep forgetting where I read these things. But basically, I had come across this article where it talked about how one of the trends in the NFT space is going to be NFT collections generated by AI.
So can you tell us a little more about that? Because I found it very fascinating. And do you think that it has any scope of becoming big? Or would it be just big because it’s something like very novel? It’s still early days. Yeah, has it been done already? Like that was another thing.
I’m getting ahead of myself. But yeah, I do wonder, like, are there any collections that have been generated by AI? Yeah, there are. Even Binance launched one called Picasso.
They got the name inspired by Picasso. They also ended up in a controversy by launching the collection. But yeah, it’s already happening.
People are deploying collections after collections on different chains. But it’s still pretty early days when it comes to NFTs being generated by AI. Because there is a lot that can be done by humans and AI as well.
Because with the advent of ChatGPT now that people are realizing the power of AI, right? I have been working with data for the last 10 years, last 11 years. I have been part of Siemens and Volkswagen in the data department. But it is the last few months that the people have realized the potential of AI with the ChatGPT and BARD coming out.
And that is also something that investors believed in BitFringe because we use AI to detect the unusual patterns of NFTs. Right. So AI has been used for a while.
But for ART, I think with MidJourney and all of these other platforms, it’s become so big all of a sudden. Everybody is talking about it. I think it’s just that ChatGPT became really big very quickly.
So a lot of focus is shifted to AI. Absolutely. It’s still early days and people are testing its waters.
And there are already voices coming out to ban AI, to ban ChatGPT. In fact, a couple of governments, Italy has banned ChatGPT and Germany is also considering banning ChatGPT. Because of the privacy laws, right? Yes.
Because of the GDPR laws, right? Yes, exactly. And I come from poor Germany, poor in the sense of data privacy laws, because we always have this tough, tough nut to crack. And GDPR has always been a tough nut to crack for a lot of firms, a lot of firms, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, and others have been sued by the European government for violating their privacy issues.
But it’s good to have both, right? Because you cannot just give away everything just because computer is learning. You cannot just be open for all. So you need to find a balance and time will have to tell how it’s going to be the next few months.
So, you know, this is not to do with NFTs now, but because, you know, we are talking about AI, I would love to know what’s your take, because we kind of mentioned, so there is this petition, right, that has been signed by Elon Musk and some others, putting forward like a moratorium on the development of ChatGPT and AI there and for six months until, you know, policy kind of catches up. What is your take on that? So AI is, again, similar to what a coin is, right? The coin has two sides, heads and tails. So I see AI the same way.
So right now people are seeing that the AI is reaping benefits out of all the machine learning models that have been built over the years. But at the same time, it also lacks certain intelligence, right? I mean, definitely at the end of the day, a computer cannot be a human, at least in terms of emotional intelligence, right? So in that case, yes, there will be some odd days where AI could fail miserably. It is already evident that BART has given a false statement and Bing search has also been under several controversies in recent times because of their search functionality.
So we need to strike a balance. And if you ask the readiness, readiness is always a subjective thing, right? Because what you think is ready may not be ready for me. Same with Dapps or Bitscrunch.
If you think Dapps is ready to onboard the next million users, you could be wrong in my opinion, in my eyes. Same with Bitscrunch. If Bitscrunch unleashes NFTs.com, if it can handle millions of users tomorrow, you might feel it different.
You might stand against my point. So that’s the point with AI. So we need to have framework.
We need to have guidelines. And I assume and I’m sure that the governments or the lawmakers or the policymakers will come up with certain guidelines for AI. Because if you cannot deploy AI all of a sudden in every aspects of life, it could be fatal as well.
Eventually, we cannot have self-driving costs yet. Because it’s directly related to human safety. So things will happen, but eventually it will happen not overnight.
That’s my take. Right. I do think that policy catches up with innovation.
But you’re absolutely right that there needs to be some sort of a balance. My take is also that perhaps the industry as a whole needs to do some self-regulation perhaps. That is something I say for crypto as well.
I think by the time policy catches up, usually it’s retrospective. So might as well do some self-regulation to be ahead of the game. Then that way, at least the retractors cannot pull you down because you’re already doing something.
So with AI, I also feel that it’s like garbage in and garbage out. We were taught for computers, right? It’s the same people. I don’t believe in all of this talk about AI taking over jobs and all.
Not immediately at least, because right now it’s such early days. I do think that people who are actually using a chat GPT perhaps to make their job easier, you’re only as good as what you are asking or what you’re prompting, chat GPT or open AI. Because it’s exactly how you do Google search.
Not everybody would be able to do a search properly and get the relevant results. So I feel that that is pretty similar to AI as well. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, people need to find the nuances, right? So the professionals are getting paid so high because they know how to get it done, right? And then most of the engineers, I’m sure you can back this statement. Most of them use Stack Overflow or whatever options that are available on the internet. But that doesn’t mean that everybody can code, right? People needs to know what has to be written in that particular place.
That is why they are getting paid so high and some are getting paid so low, right? So that that has that remains the same in AI as well. They need to understand what sort of questions that they can ask and what sort of answers that they’ll receive and they’ll have to tune AI accordingly. So in a way, it will take some time for people to get adjusted to what they wanted to receive and it’s a process.
Yeah, absolutely. So now, you know, just one question I want to like jot this in anyway before we wrap it up and I come to my penultimate questions. What is your take on soulbound tokens and you know, NFT is associated with SBTs to do with academics and identity? Do you have an opinion here? Do you think that, you know, users will find value in SBTs apart from the crypto natives already? Do you think that this is something that they can understand? Yes, there is definitely some scope for SBTs as well because not all the tokens that has to be traded, right? Because yes, look at look at NFTs, unique collections, unique collectibles, they have to be part of an exclusive collections or exclusive community that is fine.
But there are some certain things that can be made as an SBT, for instance, degree certificates or your land certificate registration certificate or whatever can be made as a soulbound token so that it’s not tradable, whereas you can keep it as an asset, which doesn’t accrue value, but at the same time, it’s more of a token of appreciation or token of recognition. So those can be made as an SBT. So SBTs will eventually flourish in the coming cycles.
But as of now, people prefer to have liquid cash. So they are going after non fungible tokens. But eventually there will be a separate market for SBTs as well because it’s the father of all the L1, L2 chains, Vitalik who has himself vouched for SBTs.
So I’m sure there are so many teams who are working on SBTs and their existence. It is just that we need to see how it unfolds in the future. Right.
Okay. Okay. So quickly now, what are your three predictions for this particular year in the coming year regarding the bull cycle coming in or just the NFT market as well? So like quick three predictions.
Bit scrunch. We’ll have a good time. So that’s my first prediction, because we are focusing on decentralizing the top data stack, data layer.
So we are definitely going to stay as NFTs in the picture. And the second prediction is Bitcoin will see a raise during FAG end of the year. Because with the Bitcoin halving that is going to happen in the beginning of next year, I assume that the Bitcoin will see a mini rally.
I mean, don’t ask me if it is a bull or bear market, but I am hopeful of Bitcoin raising in value. And then more brands will step into NFTs after Amazon steps into it. Already there are so many brands stepping into NFTs and I see a lot of NFTs coming into the picture in the near future.
Awesome. Awesome. These are great predictions.
I think I agree with all of them. I do think that you guys are going to become so much more bigger, especially with your B2C platform. That’s going to be awesome to train your enterprise model as well.
And for Bitcoin and for more people coming into NFTs, I think those are hopes that I have as well for the market as a whole, because more people or more brands launching NFTs would mean more users coming into Web3. And that is essentially, I think, what all builders want. So coming to, I think we are running out of time, but yeah, coming to my last question, this is something I ask everybody that kind of comes on the show.
If somebody is fearing in from the Web2 end of things and wanting to leap into Web3, what would be your two, three cents to give this person your suggestions for this person so that they can start living on blockchain? It’s just, I mean, people call it D-Y-O-R, but it’s really tough to do your own research before stepping into something. So rather I would suggest people to take their own time in order to read things, right? I mean, see people investing on gold or land or stock markets. It’s the amount of time that they have put in.
Because of that, they are having a full conviction towards investing in gold or land or apartments. So I would, I would ask them to do the same for crypto. Just because your friend has invested on crypto, it doesn’t mean that you have to jump onto the boat right away because that eventually will lead to a loss.
So take your own time, read a lot of stuff. We don’t live in 2013s. We are in 2023.
So now we have enormous amount of materials to read through, enormous amount of projects to look up to. So take your own time, spend time over weekends or whatever, and then slowly get into it. Just take investment as the last option of your exploration.
Until then just read, read, read, and then try to understand what’s happening. That’s quite a quotable quote. Take investment as the last option for your exploration.
Good. But I have a quick follow up question now. So what would you recommend for people who are looking to read or assimilate information about this space? Do you have any recommendations or people that you think they should follow on Twitter or elsewhere? I mean, they have to definitely up their Twitter game because Twitter is where crypto is happening and they need to follow some of the well-known professionals out there, right? Look at CZ, look at the Coinbase CEO.
And there are a lot of firms that have been there, done that. Take for instance, Chainlink is doing a great job in educating people. In fact, Binance is having a particular section for education on their platform.
So you don’t have to go anywhere. Just go to coinbase.com or binance.com where you will have ample amount of learning opportunities on their platform itself. And then there are so many influencers out there, but the problem with influencers is just, since they are getting paid, sometimes they go off target.
They promote something that is fishy, something that is scrappy, which eventually makes the retail user feel bad. But yeah, it’s a balance between so many resources available. It’s a mix of YouTube, Twitter, and some of the platforms that are available that have been there, done that without getting burst.
Right. I think, yes, I think that’s good advice to follow, which is what I tell people as well that, you know, just follow some builders, people who are actually building in this space, you know, learn from them and look at what they are reading and who are they following. Because I think it’s good to take information from several sources, but, you know, just sort of doing what you feel is right for you.
Because I do think that risk appetite and perhaps your own take on how you want to invest or if you just want to learn or if you want to take up a job, all of those are very individual decisions. Exactly. So we need to be mindful of investments.
Like I said, investment should be the last option of their exploratory journey. But otherwise, just keep learning, keep pushing your limits and attend a lot of physical events. Yes, I agree that we got used to this whole home office things during COVID.
But now that the world has opened up, go out there, reach out to people or at least attend a few Web3 events. I’m sure there is a lot of Web3 events happening across cities, not just prominent cities. But then I see Web3 events happening even in tier two cities in India or in places out there.
So just try to spend your time and meet some people, go out for events, and then those learnings will eventually help you grab right information, right sources. Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right there. Okay, so this has been such a good conversation, really.
I’m smiling from ear to ear. Thank you so much Vidya for taking out the time to speak to me. Any parting thoughts before we wrap this up? For builders, just keep your heads down and focus on building.
The space is not going anywhere. And we need more builders for the upcoming bull or beer cycles or whatever. So just keep your heads down and focus on building.
Things will eventually fall. Wow, that’s good. That’s great to hear from you.
Thank you so much. I think I need this advice as well. Thank you so much once again.
You’ve been wonderful. And again, I’m really, really grateful you could take out the time. Yep.
Thanks again. It was a pleasure talking to you, Tarusha. Great job and also best wishes for DApps.co.
Thank you so much.