Full Transcript

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slava (00:01.759)Hello and welcome back to another episode of Smart Humans. Once again, very excited for today's guest, known Kendrick for a while. It's been incredible to see what he's accomplished with equity crowdfunding and beyond. Kendrick Nguyen from Republic, welcome to Smart Humans.

kendrick_nguyen (00:18.702)Slava, wonderful to be here and an honor to be considered smart enough to be a part of Smart Humans, the podcast.

slava (00:26.823)Absolutely, one of the best, here you are. So we always start with the same first question, which is how did you even get into alternative investments? Where did it all start? What was that story?

kendrick_nguyen (00:40.19)I actually started out in an earlier career in alternative investment, but of a different blend. I have a little bit of an untraditional, non-traditional background. Started out as a securities litigator and then joined a fund of funds. So fund of fund is actually alternative, but there's an arm that invested long short direct.

But it was a 40 plus billion dollar fund at the beginning of the last financial crisis. And after a couple of years of doing that and realizing that it's the other side of alternative investments that is much more compelling, which is early stage, hands on, certainly much more interesting for me. So eventually clawed my way to Silicon Valley and build a career out of there.

slava (01:38.099)And for you, was that your entry point, which is working at one of these startups?

kendrick_nguyen (01:43.754)No, the entry points after a stint in finance on Wall Street went back full-time academia at Stanford Law School and the Business School. And Stanford still sits in very much the center of the tech, private equity, and certainly financial ecosystem on the West Coast. So through that and the extended network.

me my way eventually to AngelList and Navol. And AngelList was where I so-called started my career in tech and grateful to Navol and the team at the time, a very small team, that they had taken a bet on me, even though I didn't exactly have the tech chops, so to speak, at the time.

slava (02:37.083)So AngelList obviously is one of the original companies in the space. So beyond working there, did you start actually investing any of your own money into some of these opportunities on AngelList?

kendrick_nguyen (02:50.034)I did. Actually, I invested because of the interview that I was going to have with Naval and I knew that this guy was into blockchain and I figured he's going to ask me about Bitcoin and I didn't own any. I didn't know anything about the process. I was like, all right, I got to buy a few just to be able to have a conversation.

if that were to come up and it did come up, but I bought my first, I think 15.15 bitcoins at the time. It was still very inexpensive because of that interview. And then of course, after joining

slava (03:43.627)That's awesome. So was your first alternative investment that you made yourself actually Bitcoin?

kendrick_nguyen (03:49.01)Well, my first alternative investment was probably into my friend's restaurant in New York. It's amazing how few lawyers and doctors, even very high net worth law firm partners in New York City have ever invested privately. They may own a massive public stock portfolio, but private investing then and even now is still something that very few...

high net worth individuals, people actually do. But I had a close friend and it was launching a restaurant and I didn't know anything about investing, but I was betting on the founder and the idea of being able to get some free food or at least a good discount. So I made a small investment in that restaurant then, but indeed the real startup.

investing that is venture grade was not until I joined Angelis and obviously Angelis made that feasible that is syndication enabling mass affluent folks to now invest five, $10,000 into tech deals that was, you know, that was new. That was very innovating back then, 10 plus years ago.

slava (05:16.651)So what year was that restaurant investment? Was that before the 2013 Bitcoin?

kendrick_nguyen (05:20.274)It was, so when I was still at the hash fund in New York, that was 2010. And I mean, I haven't seen any money back, but the restaurant still exists. You know, I get some discount, but the thing is over time in the past 10 years, I've transitioned from being a very heavy meat eater into almost...

slava (05:35.047)Oh, that's great. So are you getting the free food and the discounts?

kendrick_nguyen (05:50.346)you know, a pesky terrian in its entirety. And it's a barbecue restaurant, so I don't really have a lot of reasons to patron, to come back there, which is too bad.

slava (06:03.007)So it's interesting, you say you haven't seen any money back, so was the structure like an equity structure or were you expecting to get yield return? Like how was the restaurant investment made?

kendrick_nguyen (06:12.378)Yeah, you know, which is on an LLC investment and the assumption is that if they ever sell the restaurant that, you know, will get a percentage of that back. As I mentioned, the investment for me, I believe it was $5,000, which at the time, I mean, it's a lot of money. And at the time, it was a lot of money for me. But quite frankly, for, you know, someone general

kendrick_nguyen (06:41.326)could afford to lose and fully expect that I may not see any of it back. I was investing because I believe in Charit and it's our friendship and it's a learning experience for me to even quite frankly know the dynamics or like read up anything at all about the ROI of a restaurant investment. So I think that the lens of if you knew to something that you invest.

partially because of your heart, partially because of the desire to learn. And maybe a little bit of it is a hope that, all right, I'm gonna make some money on this, but no one should be investing early on with money that they cannot afford to lose and certainly hope to get rich. You know, oddly enough, one of the largest investments that I made in tech.

at the time was already General Counsel at Injulies, ended up being a big fat zero. And it was a very early on in investment. I'm like, wow, this company is great, already value at $300 million. And after I invested in, again, one of the largest, series A, series B investment that I did personally for like 10 years, they then raisin' it around at like two billion. I'm like, wow, this is amazing.

and shortly thereafter became a big zero. And that lesson, the value of that lesson so that five years later I didn't even sell my house and invest everything into a deal that I thought would make me rich. I think along the way losing on an investment, if you can afford that loss, it's a great way to learn to deepen your repertoire.

slava (08:32.419)Oh yeah, failure tends to be the best education. You rarely learn too much from success, that's for sure.

kendrick_nguyen (08:36.394)Absolutely. In fact, I don't even believe in failure. I think that it's just an opportunity to learn. If you're not unhappy, if you're not so distressed about it, or that if your wife or your spouse or husband is not divorcing you for making a stupid financial mistake, then it's not a failure. It's a lesson learned.

slava (08:49.052)100%

slava (09:03.031)I completely, completely agree. That's awesome. So fast forward from the early days to how you think about investing into alternatives today. Obviously, you're the founder and CEO of a platform that gives tons of access to all kinds of amazing alts. And we'll dive into that in a few minutes. But how do you think about your personal portfolio now? How are you diversifying that? How are you trying to get those allocations?

kendrick_nguyen (09:26.282)I'm very blunt and unusually so blunt and transparent when it comes to my own investment activities. And this podcast won't be an exception. Even in today's climate, equity market very down, crypto market total bloodbath.

probably to an extent that, you know, even someone like me who was expecting a correction didn't quite seeing the extent in how fast it was happening. A significant majority of my investment portfolio is in alternative, that is in private assets and in crypto. And that remains now and will be the case.

the merit of a very safe portfolio that you invest in, the vast majority into yield and then public stock and just a little bit of it in private may work for other people with less of an interest in what's happening in society than me and maybe suitable for those perhaps with a lot lower risk tolerance. But in my case,

We all live once. Money matters, how you buy and certainly how you invest. And if I put my money in a public company, I mean, the impact, the influence, it just can't compare to investing or backing small businesses, innovations and ideas and technologies. So for me, investing is not just about wealth,

preservation or wealth generation is also a function of being involved and engaged in an active social citizen. So alternative investing will be even more of a total percentage of my overall portfolio in the future than it is now. And compared to 10 years ago when I left New York, I think I can tell you that now more than 80% of my

kendrick_nguyen (11:53.155)portfolios in Alternative.

and not in a public market.

slava (12:00.108)Over 80%. That's very, very high.

kendrick_nguyen (12:05.926)I am an unusual person with high risk tolerance, and I can tolerate that risk, meaning I'm one of those people that maintain a lifestyle and a standard of living that's quite modest. And so if I were to, my personal net worth, my liquid cash were to drop by 90%.

or go up by 900%, it doesn't fundamentally change how I live. And because of that, it's very, very long-term thematic investing for me. Because of that, alternative investing is the way to go. I don't think it's for everyone, but that's my approach.

slava (12:52.063)So that 80%, imagine that was the 100% of a pie, how does that pie get split up? Is it 100% crypto or how much do you put into real estate, debt, collectibles, art, pre-IPO venture, all that stuff?

kendrick_nguyen (13:08.702)Yes. As you can imagine, the past six years, I've been all in as a founder, building a company and also co-founded a couple others on the side. So I haven't had a ton of time to learn about new sectors that I didn't already have knowledge or expertise in, like art, like gaming.

you know, collectibles. Hopefully one of these days I'll have the bandwidth to learn more and get involved more. So much of my portfolio is around industry sectors that I have a degree of understanding and knowledge, a varying degree of understanding and knowledge, either familiar, very familiar, or, you know, some level of expertise around it.

So it naturally surrounds FinTech, early stage investing and obviously certain type of crypto assets. Real estate and my own position, my own ownership in obviously Republic and companies that I found excluding that then of the remaining portfolio.

between private deals that is early stage private deal from seed all the way to Siri DNF, I think is about probably 40%. The remaining 40-50% is in, you know, between crypto asset or crypto leverage startups and only about 10% in.

public stock or high yield product.

slava (15:03.491)Okay. And when you're getting yield, how are you trying to get exposure to yield? Because it doesn't sound like something that's important to you.

kendrick_nguyen (15:11.602)Slava, with a disclaimer here that the market has been so volatile. I haven't tracked the exact percentage in the past week or so, having been on the road. So it may be off by 10% or more here, depending on where things land. You can see the extent of how alt leaning I am just as an investing citizen.

slava (15:28.383)That's all right.

kendrick_nguyen (15:39.014)And that's weird because a lot of my net worth is already tied up in private companies like Republic, Angelis and Coinlis. But again, this is with a view of backing technologies and people that I'm very excited about and can be meaningful in helping this growth. Yield, well stablecoin is one way of yield, but I do have a saving account. Bank of America, you know, it's a bank that I've had for...

got dating myself here over 15 years, nearly 20 years, since my college days when you just open up a bank account. That's the first thing when you do, when you go to university and I'm a loyal Bank of America customer. The interest rate on my saving account, I think average in 2021.

less than 15 basis point. I think at one point was below 10 basis point in the single digit compared to my stable coin deposit in a couple of these exchanges. And it gives me without me even asking for it, nine, 10%, 8% yield.

Now, of course, warning, everyone saw whatever happened with Terra and what have you. So these things come with a great degree of unknown risks. So by all means, don't take out your savings from your Wells Fargo deposit into the next Luna. But for those willing to see what's new in financial product and wealth generation tools,

living in an unprecedented time of products that are widely accessible to the masses, again, come with a great degree of risk. But if you're risk-loving and if you're a learner and you want to test things out, you can literally deposit 50 bucks and see how much yield you get out of it. You're not going to be rich. You probably wouldn't be able to buy

kendrick_nguyen (17:59.758)great way to learn and to see and track if fintech, if financial sophistication is something of a strong interest.

slava (18:10.139)So you actually led me here, which is you're super knowledgeable in crypto. You have a ton of exposure in crypto and your alts. Um, obviously you're building Republic, which knows and has access to a ton of different crypto and blockchain projects. Given what's happened recently with the stable coin, Luna and the rumors around Celsius and the concerns there, um, how have you changed any of your own personal investing or where you're holding or have you not, or

What would you give suggestions as to someone who's navigating those things now?

kendrick_nguyen (18:44.31)Because I was never a trader in the public equity market during my time in Wall Street, that never interested me and it requires a degree of personal bandwidth to track that I never had and don't have. The same applies for crypto investing for me, meaning I invest with a view to hold very long term.

uh, absence, something crazy that I'm like, all right, this thing is going to collapse that I just need to like get out of it. Uh, but because of that.

slava (19:20.771)But that's actually what I'm asking about, which is have you moved any of your crypto out of something because you're concerned that institution was gonna collapse? Because isn't that what some of the concern is with like Celsius and others, that there's a quote unquote run on the banks and will your Bitcoin or ether or whatever still gonna be, will it still be there?

kendrick_nguyen (19:29.183)Yeah.

kendrick_nguyen (19:36.492)Yeah.

kendrick_nguyen (19:41.534)So I never even never had and now do not have significant deposit in exchanges that are not some of the largest like Coinbase. You know, I am a Coinbase user. I'm a BlockFi user, Voyager Digital. So these larger institution still have more of a.

bankruptcy risk compared to like the fidelity of the world, but they are very large, right? I mean, they sit on Coinbase, sits on an absurd amount of cash on this balance sheet. Sure, I think if I were to have a significant deposit in Celsius, one of the more niche exchanges, I would take a close look on their ability to operate as a firm, as an institution.

during a time when undoubtedly most businesses operating in a blockchain space, if they weren't very capitalized, well capitalized in April, they're likely going to go through a painful time. And if they're very under-capitalized, you got to wonder if they're going to be able to make it through the next six to 12 months. It just happens to not

be an assessment that I need to make because of those that I do personal business with. But it doesn't mean that there aren't very legitimate concerns out there. I would not be surprised if you're gonna see even well-known household names going belly up over the next 12 months because if the market continues to towards it.

slava (21:29.855)So yeah, give me your point of view. What's Kendrick's point of view on the next 12 months? Not even just within crypto, just the entire market. What do you think of the economy? What do you think of where we're at? Set the table for me and let's hear your point of view on it.

kendrick_nguyen (21:44.91)Yeah, so preparing for the worst, which is a multi-year prolonged global recession, but personally, cautiously optimistic. I think that the macro factors that have led to a quicker correction, if not recession, across multiple sectors, like the war in Ukraine global supply chain,

These issues, I believe, can be mitigated relatively quickly, almost as quickly as they came into existence. And to the extent that does happen, then we're gonna see our way out a little bit sooner, adding on to the fact that the world is just becoming more and more interconnected. Commerce happening faster and faster, and that lends a degree of resiliency and a degree of recovery.

that I think older mathematical models mapping recovery track may be undershooting the fundamentals on the speed of recovery and the resiliency of the global market. So in short, if we operating as a business, and for me personally as well, that, yeah, we may be in this for a couple of years of like, you know,

but at the same time, optimistically cautious in keeping an eye for opportunities so that those who can time the market and make the right move correctly also benefit greatly in the upside as well. We don't wanna miss out on that. It's a balancing game, but I've been through this rodeo personally and even at Republic a couple of times, so we feel that we're very prepared for it.

slava (23:39.303)In terms of timing the market, is it the sort of thing where, you know, we're at the bottom? Uh, do we still have another leg down to go? Is it the sort of thing where we're looking at a V recovery? So we'll be back in good shape by the new year, or this might take 24 months. You have any perspective on that given the macro elements?

kendrick_nguyen (23:59.426)Yeah, I think few people are expecting that we're going to see a V-shaped recovery this year or even early next year. The question here is that whether it's going to linger or even worsen a little bit. Why don't we just pit Bitcoin as the bare weather for the crypto market, give or take 20, 21,000 USD per Bitcoin today. I think if you pull, I haven't done a methodical

of averaging of what crypto experts say as report and coin death and et cetera. But the general consensus is that, hey, it's going to linger at this rate for another six months or so, or even a little bit longer before you see an uptick. Can go a little bit lower. But I think that's the general, the overall consensus. We and me personally, I'm pretty agnostic to that.

time in buying Bitcoin at the bottom of the market. There's always a losing value proposition. You also never want to time the peak and try to sell. You do as it makes sense for you financially. But I think that I do not see, for me, in mapping out for the industry, I don't see a significant crash beyond where we are.

Currently, it's just a question of how long it will take to recover. The thing is, it's an incredibly exciting time for investors and for those who are building at the earlier stage. Because during this time, this is when talents get less distracted, you have less capital, and so talents coalesce more and build out new things that perhaps can be the rail of the next summer.

in the same way that out of the last crypto winter, you see folks who build what is now Avalanche, Solana, et cetera, there's no question that kind of consolidation and the new industry darlings are being incubated today. Investors that make their way to those projects and back them can do very well for themselves. I think it's an exciting time still.

kendrick_nguyen (26:24.614)for investors and for founders alike, not to not empathize with the pain of many crypto investors, what many crypto investors are experiencing today, I'm sure.

slava (26:39.879)So speaking of builders, you're one of those builders in building Republic. And many know that Republic is one of the top equity crowdfunding platforms out there and more. But some have not heard of it. So can you just give some background? What is Republic? Why did you create it?

kendrick_nguyen (26:58.794)Yes, so we started out being an equity crowdfunding or retail investment platform, but we have grown and now much more than that. Our vision at the beginning was never to just be angelists for non-accredited investors. That's what a lot of people know of us, early stage startup, anyone can come and invest and help the community. No, I think we believe that.

If you manage to unlock the value of community by incentivizing that community using equity, using a token model or otherwise, then you as an enterprise will see exponential business growth. So for us, we operate an investment platform. So that's one side. The second belief that I'm sure everyone can share, and this goes back to my time in Wall Street is that

When it comes to financial access, the world is split between retail, that is everyday folks, and high net worth and institutional. On the institutional side, you have a wealth of diversity and choices in products, in how to earn, in how to generate wealth. And on the retail side, you have Bank of America cash saving account and the public markets, which we know now.

that if you look at the 12 months performance of company after IPO, benchmarking it has been disastrous. It's like retail investor holding the back. So our mission has always been to democratize finance, but that term is very vague. What does it mean exactly when it comes to Republic? And it means one thing for us at the beginning, that stay consistent all throughout, which is how do we bring more and more institutional grade?

product to the retail public, start-up, revenue sharing, art financing, music financing, litigation financing and the list goes on. So we have an investment platform that aims to do that. More and more product that used to be the purview of the rich, the high, high net worth and more to more and more people. And on the other side, we also operate what we describe as a merchant bank.

kendrick_nguyen (29:22.09)a digital merchant bank that help enterprise unlock the value of community. And I'll give you one example of our sister company in the UK called Cedars. Revolut raised a few million dollars on Cedars when they were valued at $800 million valuation. Already a very mature company. And the founders, a few years ago, the founders have gone on to very publicly credit the fact

Thousands of users who now become investors and evangelize for Revolut led them to build and to raise the I think 800 million dollar raise that they did led by SoftBank last year value at 33 billion

The token model is exactly the same way. It's just a different form of incentivizing community. An ICO or whatnot is all the same. That's why there's Meta, where there's JP Morgan. The idea here is how do you roll out a model of incentivization to activate that community? The more the community participate, the more they get intent incentivized, they'll come back even more, and your business go straight up. So again, we at Republic run.

publicly to the investing public and investment platform that feature a wide range of products, more and more being added every quarter, and separately a business on the services enterprise to help them bring on community compliantly and manage them and activate them.

slava (31:01.711)And in terms of the investments platform, who's like the average user, you know, as the listeners are listening is Republic for them, how should they think about it?

kendrick_nguyen (31:07.799)Yeah.

kendrick_nguyen (31:12.434)So if I may answer that in a forward-looking way first, I firmly believe that sometimes in this decade, maybe take, or next decade, anyone and everyone will wanna be an owner and investor in things that they care about. So it's really meant for everyone. It's like, is Amazon who is the ideal user? We're not saying that we Amazon today.

But people buy, if you're a college student, you're gonna buy an AirPod earphones with a cork like mine, like 1999. And if you're a little bit wealthier, then you're gonna buy a cork-less earphone, the $200. So the gradient and the appetite and the interest and the amount for investing over time is gonna mimic the world of e-commerce. Really meant for everyone. Even now, today at Republic,

a very early version of that future. We already have deals that take investment, minimum 10, $20, really open up for everyone. And we have deals that you gotta invest at a minimum $50,000. Now, SpaceX, I'm gonna use that example, minimum investment, $50,000. But outside of Republic, you gotta invest $50 million into a massive fund in order to have exposure to SpaceX.

So we are bringing what used to be a very institutional product to high net worth, not exactly everyone, but slowly, one step at a time. So SLAVA, again, it depends on the vertical, the industry, and the type of deals, the profile of an investor very significantly.

slava (33:00.167)And I know that there's other platforms out there, you know, that can have coffee shops or can have that health tech company. But one of the things that makes your platform even more unique is you have a lot of these blockchain type projects and crypto oriented projects and with tokens, et cetera. Can you give some more color about that?

kendrick_nguyen (33:21.21)Yes, I think that soon enough, if there's one thing that we want people to think of Republic as a company and how we

stand out in the fintech or financial services space is that we are a blockchain leverage, crypto first, financial services company. And what do I mean by that? I don't mean us featuring Dogecoin or whatever, the latest meme coin or selling NFTs. We may over time, but that's not the...

the blockchain element of blockchain first. What I meant is that this technology, the ability to fractionalize, to automate KYC AML, to make an able payment with very low fees happening instantaneously, record keeping, the ability to fractionalize a share of Apple into a million pieces and making it affordable even to a college student in Nigeria with...

almost no money at all. That will fundamentally change all aspects of the financial sector, private, public, commodity, derivative across the board. And being intentional about incorporating that, digitizing the different component of the infrastructure of investing is something that we have been doing for five, six years now. Now more and more

we're doing it at a larger scale because we're only until very recently was a very thinly capitalized small startups now better capitalized but still very much a startup. But indeed somehow as far as I know the ability to introduce traditional financial product but being intentional about how to

kendrick_nguyen (35:29.226)apply blockchain and make it easier for people to buy, to trade, to invest. I don't know about other platforms out there, but I know that investors, VCs have found what we do to be relatively unique. So you see music financing or litigation financing being done on a tokenized basis and as such the investment presented to the general public on Republic.

is such that it's a normal traditional investment product, but if they want to take it in digital form, they have the ability to do so. I think that's what you're going to see going on our platform more and more and more in the future that is digitized investment opportunities that otherwise is just your traditional equity investment.

slava (36:26.611)Got it. And then in terms of scale, you mentioned that word a couple times. Can you give any numbers to give us an understanding of your scale?

kendrick_nguyen (36:33.718)Yes, I mean, we have grown.

kendrick_nguyen (36:39.226)significantly year over year. And we're now over six years old, I have deployed collectively across all the different product deployed throughout user base, our investor base, over $1.5 billion dollars deployed. Now much of that happened in the past 12 to 18 months. We're talking about like 80% plus in to that side. And that growth trajectory still continues.

we manage over a billion dollars AUM in fund and SPV product. And again, that size has also been growing much more recently. So despite these numbers, when you talk about AUMs with a B rather than an M, that is billions rather than millions, and yet I feel like we're like a pre-seed.

company because the financial market is so vast. It's been largely undisrupted. Blockchain is now getting much more awareness, but true adoption, six seconds into this new day. So because of that, the challenge of building this business, we're doing so many things, more than offset by the natural enthusiasm.

by the huge potential of what it can be or what it will be if you manage to survive and last and build in this space.

slava (38:19.089)What will it be? What will it be five years from now?

kendrick_nguyen (38:22.854)Slava, I am convinced that by the end of this decade, we now in 2022, about less than 20% of the time in, it's going to give rise retail investing, that is folks owning, investing, participating in tokenized music financing and startup investing at scale and secondary trading. It's going to give rise to a multi-trillion dollar new market.

Probably the only space is larger in scale, in size, in time. The time here is so absurdly large that I think probably space tech may rival that. But all of that is happening so rapidly and why am I so convinced of that? Despite having some 50 or so platforms in the US doing retail investing. If you walk...

onto the street of Manhattan or Chicago or LA or anywhere or London. And you ask 10 people, some may be a young lawyer, a bartender, you know, homemaker, whatever. I can put some money at the fact that less than one out of 10 know that they can invest privately in the US legally if they don't have to be an accred. No one still knows about it. It's almost no one does it. You know, I'm the last one of five in a...

immigrant family from Vietnam, all of my siblings that are like doing the things that Asian immigrants do, which is like take the most safe career, doctor, engineer, as lawyers, and they live a comfortable middle-class life. They surely have larger public equity portfolio than I do. Up until, since they hear me talk so much about it, but they and their friends only now barely invest privately.

So it's just the scale of the market that is to come. And the adoption is happening rapidly and rapidly and Slava not to deviate from the topic here. That's on the one hand, that's my older siblings. Their kids, my nieces and nephews, Clayton over Thanksgiving, the kid is in sixth grade, was telling me that he's investing in crypto on crypto.com. And...

kendrick_nguyen (40:43.946)I'm sure he's down now, but he was making $100 money from his mom and generate $800 of gain out of it. Sixth grader, way more sophisticated than I was when I graduated from law school and started working at a hash fund even, right? So you have a generational shift in adoption in wanting to do and invest and own in a way that makes me so incredibly optimistic, despite.

the market of what it is today. If you look a little bit further beyond just the immediate near term future, one can't help but be super excited about where we're heading as a global economy.

slava (41:24.991)So let's say I'm bought in on the generational shift.

slava (41:44.767)Sorry, my son literally just came in. So here we go. So let's say I'm totally on board with you on the generational shift in the midterm here by the next 10 years or the next coming years. But in the absolute moment, as you mentioned, right now my understanding is there's like, you know.

kendrick_nguyen (41:46.882)You're good.

slava (42:11.679)over 70 of the top 100 tokens have lost over 90% of their value. How is that impacting your business today? How is that impacting the investor trying to decide if they want to get involved? Or is it?

kendrick_nguyen (42:28.302)So we're lucky, Republic is a business. We're lucky that our business has not been to make available the top 100 tokens to investors. In the past year or two or five, we've been identifying companies and projects that we think are building important infrastructure.

and enable people to invest in them, oftentimes as an equity investment. In some cases, we do enable token investment or token issuance, but those are new projects. So I think people who have been hurting and losing a lot of money are those who look at the top 10 or 20 coin.

on coin market cap or coin base and think that, oh, these are super safe. It's just like investing in Apple or Amazon stock, except they give me 10, 20% yield, because if I stake them, now they're obviously in for, it's not a surprise, but it's just a learning that it's a new industry. There are a lot of unknowns. People are still figuring this out, and there are a lot of unknown risks.

with it. So there's no question that the space, a lot more people are being cautious about investing in crypto, but I definitely think that one is healthy. Two is that the rate of adoption right now is still quite low.

There are plenty of people who are sitting on the fence and they're still learning and they're seeing this and they're like, ha, I told you and I'm glad I didn't put my money in then in and now maybe that they will put in a very small amount but at the end of the day, the future of this industry and the future of finance and of what we do at Republic is about mass adoption. It's not about those who invested a lot of money yesterday and whether they're gonna...

kendrick_nguyen (44:46.29)you know, invest even more tomorrow. That matters, of course, customer expectation and performance matters. But the future, the growth, the potential hinges on such a thin level of adoption today. And with more, the industry being more and more mature, that you're gonna see with each passing year, more will come in and...

and participate and the industry become more resilient yet. Not unlike the internet, Slava, that was that huge tech, you know, bust in the late 90s before I hit, before I entered the job market. But since then, people have been predicting more and more tech busts over time. But the adoption of the internet has grown so tremendously high that it became just more and more resilient. And I think that we're basically...

Not even, we're like in the compared to the internet. If crypto is the internet, and we're like in the early 90s, very, very early on in that adoption. And if you look forward with a 10 year view, in the same way that if you look at Amazon with a 10 year view back in the late 90s, it's hard to, again, not be incredibly excited about.

slava (46:06.563)Awesome, and a lot of the listeners want to be more like you. You're obviously sort of knowledgeable about so many things. What are you listening to? What are you watching? What are you reading? What are some of those examples that you can share with our audience?

kendrick_nguyen (46:19.866)I'm incredibly embarrassed to admit that I, lately, I once upon a time in college and law school was a very well-read individual, someone who loved reading, and I do love reading, but lately, I have not, lately meaning the past six years, have been doing a terrible job at that. The amazing thing is that I have incredible friends who are...

way more knowledgeable and smarter than myself than Navar and you to name a two exactly that if I managed to get an hour lunch in with you and Navar here and there that I download a bunch. But there are two books that come to mind that happen to be on my reading list and I'm going through them right now. One is called Legacy of the All Blacks. That's the New Zealand rugby team and apparently...

the most successful sports team in the world ever. And James Kerr, who was the coach of the All Blacks, turned the lessons of the All Blacks into, I'm halfway almost done with it. It's beyond just a professional tool. I think it's incredibly compelling and it's kind of like life hacking tips. And the second one is, I haven't read it yet. This was sent to me by our lead investors called

the partnership, the making of Goldman Sachs, which is, as everyone knows, an incredibly successful organization. And given that we aim to be Goldman Sachs of the future, the next Goldman Sachs, that I do very much wanna go through it. But it is 600 and 700 pages. That's like, you know, war and peace length. So.

I'll let you know on our next hang on how that book, how I liked it.

slava (48:18.099)love it. And then just to put you on the spot, this is always our final question. What is one investment that you would suggest today that when we have you back on, especially three years from now, that you think you'll be a great investment? So you can say anything just we like the more specific the better. Any alternative investment.

kendrick_nguyen (48:38.99)Can I give two?

slava (48:42.154)Yeah.

kendrick_nguyen (48:45.486)I think Bitcoin, Amazon.

kendrick_nguyen (48:50.182)in three years, I just don't see in my subjective worldview a future three years from now that Bitcoin or Amazon would be less than what it is today based on in one case execution and market dominance and the other one is based on adoption any new crypto

curious person about to invest in. The first thing is like, all right, if I'll put 10 bucks in Bitcoin. So because of that, but they're boring and two are so boring. Anyhow, you're not asking for exciting things, you're asking for things that I have high confidence that they will do well three years from now. That's one for the public market, Amazon, and the other one is crypto.

slava (49:47.143)All right, perfect. Well, thank you so much. This has been an amazing conversation. You took us for a nice ride all the way going back to you got 15 Bitcoin for an interview with Naval. That seemed to have worked out okay. And you know, you taught us. Nice, nice. And you taught us that, you know, you should be investing for more about learning and for with your heart. And I love the quote, which is failure leads to learning and that 80% of your, you know, portfolios and alts more than the average bearer, but you know, you, you know, it's working for you.

kendrick_nguyen (49:58.052)I sewed half of that.

slava (50:16.475)Now is a good time for the investors and for the builders and your heads down building the next Goldman Sachs. And you're very, very bullish as to where this market is headed. This could be a multi trillion dollar market where everybody's starting to invest in these things. And if there's two investments, you say Bitcoin and Amazon. Thank you so much, Kendrick.

kendrick_nguyen (50:34.314)Thank you so much Slava. Have a wonderful weekend.

slava (50:39.251)All right.