In Episode #93 of Diving into Crypto, join host Jason Fernandes, Co-Founder of AdLunam Inc., as he sits down with Faraj Abutalibov, CEO of Crypto Executives and Co-Founder of CrossCurve by Eywa. With a rich background spanning 15 years in Corporate Oil & Gas, Harvard Business School credentials, and numerous keynote sessions globally, Faraj brings unique insights into scaling crypto startups in today’s competitive landscape. Together, they discuss the strategies, challenges, and opportunities for fundraising and growth, and how startups can stand out in the Web3 space.

Catch DIVIC live every Thursday on the AdLunam Twitter page (https://x.com/AdLunamInc).

Scaling Your Crypto Startup : Strategies for Success

SPEAKERS :

Jason Fernandes, AdLunam Inc Co-founder

Faraj Abutalibov, CEO of Crypto Executives & Co-Founder of CrossCurve by Eywa.

Thank you so much for that introduction. So I'm curious you said that you moved from oil and gas into crypto. How did that sort of transition occur? That's not, you know, we don't see that a lot in the crypto industry. See a lot of people, you know, in from the finance side and some other people in from the tech side. We don't see a lot from oil and gas. How did that transition occur?

That's exciting. I mean, you know, I'm curious, when you think about the fundraising sort of scene right now, we, you know, we do a lot of the similar things that you guys do in terms of connecting projects with investors, advisors and things like that. Matter of fact, one of the things that we've noticed is that a lot of projects we're getting, we're having a hard time raising funding. And a lot of the existing investors that we had in our network, when we refer projects to them, they would say that they were not really investing, you know, actively at the time, perhaps that's because of the market. I'm curious if you think that, if that's been your experience, and if you think that you know, the Bitcoin hitting, you know, 73, 75K, yesterday, could help change things.

yeah, we've seen that for sure. I'm just, what do you think about narratives? You know, you mentioned quite a few. Do you have a sense for the narratives that are popular amongst VCs these days. I mean, I know that meta was, phase has kind of died down. Ai, seems definitely still hot, but, you know, it's quite saturated. I'm curious if you think, if you see any other, you know, narratives other than, let's say, layer ones or layer zero, is that that could be compelling for investors.

So to be honest, like, it's very hard to predict the narratives, right? So the narratives always change. They you know, the latest narratives were TON, I would say, you know, that TON Ecosystem in general, like investment from Pantera, the TON Telegram, Mini Apps, the meme coins was another, like, large narrative that still is, you know, is huge. Some people, they say that we didn't even see the bull market on meme coins yet, right? So some people say that all this tech projects and tech startups that kind of Polkadot, Cardano style, polygon and others, which didn't lead to its promise of changing the world, they should go away. And perhaps, you know another meme tokens type launches which would be similar to ICO or whatever would be, would be way better in in the way of fundraising than through conventional VCs. So in the past, for example, if you see the project that is backed by binance and Pantera and galaxy, you're trying to find an allocation, because you know that when it launches on the big exchanges, this will be the. Came to buy, you know, and it will continue to grow. Lately, people were saying that the only projects that were listed on binance Were already the projects like similar to mean, coins that had huge volumes, right, like Pepe and others and all the coins that launched on binance that were coming from this elite group of projects supported by big VCs. So like 40, to 50% drop from the listing crisis, right? So that could be a narrative, you know, finding some good technical team that wishes to distribute and grow the community from the very early on, distribute the token, get some traction, get early adopters. Some might say that this is ICO again, right? And like, we know for sure that it didn't work out back then, but you know it might reappear. You know, everyone is saying that new is something all that well forgotten, right? So, you know we might relieve the past again. So that's but again, you know, the amount of narratives are large. You know, some people are saying that risk taking could be another narrative. So risk taking still was only like successful on the Ethereum so far. So some people are saying that projects like symbiotic so layer like and other projects like that, kind of working on the risk, taking on different l ones could be the way to go. Some people are pushing for RWA concepts, where projects like on the finance and others are pushing through. Some are saying that, you know this way, this time it will be all about revenue. So if you are producing revenue, like, for example, stable coins or payments. So those will experience growth because you scale up, not the community, but you are scaling up the revenue model, right, and then you kind of push the investments that are coming in are directed not to grow the audience, but rather to grow the business model and try to achieve higher profitability. So that's my take on that.

So what do you think about, like, the social fine narrative? Do you think that that has been exhausted, or do you think you know, people haven't quite done it right yet?

Like when everyone is asking me on the socialfi side, I always tell that, Listen, guys, you know, an example of Netscape and Facebook and, you know, Friendster that, you know, sometimes the same app that launched in the wrong time, right, would be well forgotten, and then the same app launched in a better time. Like, for example, there was an app called friend tech, which got very popular, and then it died. You know, there was a project called forecast, right? You know, it also kind of got some traction. And there were projects like threads from Instagram that tried to replace Twitter. I don't know how many people are using threads now, but I don't think there are a lot, right? Another one was the clubhouse, for example, where the clubhouse was, like a thing and, you know, yeah. I mean, even though you kind of

I think even if you look at, for example, big cloud, right, like that was similar in terms of it blew up briefly and then it just sort of fizzled,

yeah, absolutely. I mean, the lens protocol is another example. The founders of Ave behind that, so it was quite popular, and still is, you know, among some crypto native people. But the problem is that to have a mass adoption, you don't need crypto people to adopt, okay, you need the people outside crypto to start a document, and competition with Facebook and competition with Instagram and other social medias, it's so fierce that by just saying, Oh, you can have your own content, you can have this and that's not a not COVID and

not compelling enough. And another one is you, the social effect that everyone that you know are using this platform, and it's very hard to get to the level where everyone that you know, or half of that are on that particular platform. So that's why I know socialfi is good on the pitch deck, but very hard execution wise. Yeah,

I think one of the issues is that there's a lack of utility. There's a lack of utility around like so, for example, big cloud. I was, we had a $20 million fund on big cloud in terms of tokens that we had of individual creators. I was, I was over at NFT Tech, IBC, and we were sort of managing this, and essentially all that is has gone to zero. Because what you're doing at the time is you're sort of buying into creators, which has been a model that hasn't really quite worked. And then other guys have sort of tried to just say, okay, look, we'll pay you in tokens to contribute content, but there's no end goal for what they're gonna what people would do with those tokens, or where the utility is, right. There's just an assumption that the network will become more important, more valuable as more people join, and then somehow value will just materialize in a token, which generally tends to not work.

For sure, they're really struggling. I mean, even wearable, for example, is really, really struggling. OpenSea is really struggling, not to mention they, they've got impact employees that were arrested OpenSea for insider trading and things like that. So this is, like, this just struggling really, really badly. And you're right about pump.fine. I think at one point they were doing, I don't know, like, a million dollars a day or something, but, but that meme market isn't going to last forever, and and even if it does pop on, won't necessarily be the place that people go there forever, right?

Absolutely. I mean, there are like other competition you know, that you know, will always try to eat the profits away from you and grow it further, you know, and you know, it will be almost impossible to get, you know, the market share always, and keeping that market share for longer, right? So, yeah, that's, that's the biggest challenge is, you know, finding the business model in crypto that works and works for models, right? For example, there are projects like curve finance that generated revenue in defy summer and still continues now, generating revenue and there is like 70% of decentralized finance, stable coin swaps are going through that particular, that particular company app, right? So if it always sits in top 10 of revenue by the revenue generating, How popular is it like? Just look on their Twitter, right? So it's like, I think, like, below 100,000 or something like that. So not, not as popular at some meme coins, however, you know, you just provide the service, so that actually, it's 356k but the engagement rate. It's not, it's not that. It's like about 10, 15k per tweet, right? Sometimes even below, below 10. So that's, that means that, you know, there are not, so I would say sexy apps in the short time. But they found the model that. Is useful for some people, and they're willing to stick with that. And in my opinion, that particular thing you know when, when you're trying to build your own startup, you need to look for that will be a short time. Are you building this AI token that you know, will actually generate revenue, or it's just AI token that will only be used for the governance, and you know, will have no real utility, no real value after that. So sure, yeah, that's my two cents.

So how does that evaluation work for when it comes to meme coins? I mean, what are even the criteria that, let's say, an investor will look at? Because for me, it's really, really, you know, I look at, I went on bump dot fund, I checked out some of the projects that were, you know, highly popular and stuff, and then I went and checked their Twitter, and in some cases they had, like, seven followers, Telegram, you know, the link didn't work, or if it did work, there was no engagement. It was just that the bot that prints every time somebody you know has made an investment. How does one even evaluate meme coins from an investor perspective, or retail investor, or even institutional investor for that matter?

Yeah, I was surprised that, like the entire establishment in crypto, meaning, like institutional investors, family offices, VCs and, you know, defy audience, some degens, like focus on the on defy, for example, all missed meme points, right? And they were all waiting for meme coins to die any moment, and that fad to go down even quicker than what when NFTs went down, right? So, but it didn't happen, right? I mean, it reduced, but it's still going on. And I would say that three, four months ago, the institutions like Sequoia and few other funds were really interested to kind of going and participating in this market, which is again, very difficult to analyze. It all is driven by communities. It's all driven by the large trading firms that pick winners. And you know, there is, like a strong competition among the projects that a have some kind of community and cult around it. There is a guy called Murad on the Twitter, very popular, you know, that is advocating for meme coins and saying that basically altcoins, all out, coins that are based on the technology are the same meme coins, just without fun and with some pretend, yeah, and just some, I would say, lie in general about some technology. You know, you can hire developers. You can develop something that no one needs and no one uses. And you know, try to promise the heaven in three or five years from now. But for now, just hold on to your Cardano or hold on to your polka dot. And you will, you will, you will, see the great future in the future. And what he's saying is we are not saying all that right, and we're offering the people to be a part of the community. We're offering people to be a part of the cult. We're offering the people to be part of the family, have fun at the same time and together, move the token up and enjoy the upside. So those kind of things, you know, are at the end of the day. You know, it's a valid point, because that's actually what was happening. And from the VCs and institutions, they're all waiting for this just to shut down the next day, right? Yeah, so I don't know where it will go, but both of them, another, another thing that I was thinking, and I read it in this from a TM he's a founder of TGRC capital. He believes that meme coins are basically the decentralized lottery, but with skill based, skill based lottery, basically so, however, everything, yeah, whoever can build the meme coin community in a nice way, quickest way, using the best like theme. And the most quality way as well. So for example, catching up the trends, entertaining the community, so they will win. So if you're really into building this type of product, so you will actually get funded. So that's, in short, basically, where, like, that's also an interesting take on that, right? So, yeah

I mean, it's, you're right, yeah, you're right. It's a really interesting perspective, because if you think of it as sort of gambling, like, literally, as, let's say, buying a lottery ticket, then you can kind of see why somebody would think that, because they say, okay, look, I'm essentially buying a lottery ticket. If it works, it works. You know, I know that the chances of winning are really low,

yeah. I mean, I think what, what it is, I think what Institute, the reason institutional investors have been staying away is because, you know, I mean, I had investments over there. He takes for a while. I was, I was CBO then, so we looked at a lot of projects that were coming to us for investments and the way you evaluate projects is, you like, looks for utility, and you try to say, Okay, what's the real utility? What are the, what are the potential? You know, inputs and outputs in the tokenomics, is there enough of a demand for this business, for the amount of tokens that they're creating. I mean, you'd ask all these questions, and then, you know, decide whether, and then also, you look at things like how much of it was released, you clearly wouldn't want, you know, a large amount released to the public early on, because generally speaking, you know, the public tends to dump tokens as soon as they have the opportunity. So you'd want to be really control public the amount of tokens that go in a public sale, for example, and then slowly introduce more tokens over time. But like the meme coin, sort of tokenomics are completely in opposition to that. That concept doesn't have any utility. A lot of times, massive amounts of the token is, you know, shared with the community. And so it becomes like a very weird thing to be able to evaluate from any sort of the traditional like metrics that you use.

The only metric that you can really evaluate is virality, right? So if the community achieves the virality for the token, there is a chance that the market makers, other market makers, and other people with capital, can deploy in that token and pump it up. You know, another one is trust of the founders of those meme coins. So if it's open team, and we have previous traction, which not often the case, but sometimes it is, so then it's another aspect where, which you can evaluate in points based on right the third one is the quality of the concept. You know. Know, some new tokens and, you know, it's a completely different psychology of the way how you do that. But you know, if you gonna read some Twitter influencers that like similar to Murad, you start understanding how they actually evaluate those coins, right? So they do have a system which is not similar to what we are, you know, used to do, but definitely which makes sense for that particular industry. So I'm not a meme coin expert. I cannot give, yeah, give, give all those tips to you guys.

But no, I'm just curious. So you know, sorry, since you like, how do you evaluate lottery Yeah, why exactly one lottery ticket is better than another one?

Okay, so let's shift gears a bit back to kind of what you guys do? At Crypto Executive, so what role do partnerships with VCs, launchpads and centralized exchanges play in the growth cycle for crypto startups? And how do you know? How should startups approach building these relationships? Is it best done via, you know, an intermediary who already knows them, or is it best sort of reaching out directly,

like I would say, one of the main important things for any startup is fundraising. If you ask your CEO, what is the one single thing that you spend most of your time on, usually it's also fundraising, right? It's either building a product, if the fundraising is not an issue, but fundraising becomes an issue very, very quickly, usually, right? So when you complete your pre seed, then you start fundraising for seed, and then after that series etc. So you always are in constant communication with VCs, with advisors, and if this is your focus, it means that you need to have strong support in something that you do. The companies like ours and yours, we help founders to save time, and we help founders to achieve like I would say, I would say the points of contact to the DC. So I always say that you only, like, I call them touch points. So you have to get, like, seven times, up to seven times or more to touch the VC before it actually commits to an investment. So if you just come up to them in a cold email, they're most likely to not invest into you, but they will read and they will remember your name. You do it through an introductory so that's warmer. You have a call, but they might forget, you like after a few weeks. Then if they hear it from two or three disease their friends, then you know it's already four or five contacts, they become interested. If they see start seeing you on the deal flow boards, if you start seeing you in specific forums where the VCs start to discuss, like that this project is hot, so at six or seven connection, they can start getting feeling that this project is everywhere. All my friends are in why I'm not, yeah, right. So it's very important to have this first few connections from reputable source, because it comes from, like, a cold email, or if you kind of burn your first impression, you know, they might think, Oh, we're just gonna skip. I don't like the founder that said. But if it comes like, in some reputable channels, like, some deal flow channels, some channels where they know there's a like, for example, we have 700 chats with different VCs, so we come and send the blurb there. So they see the blurb, they might say, Okay, it's not for us yet. But later on, like, after a few weeks, we send an update about the project, that they have raised the capital from this fund, etc. And, you know, they can always come and talk to the Fund and, oh, this is already connection number two, yeah. So, so this is so if the project is always thinking about how many touch points I can have, the, also the personal connections, right? So like, if you are on the on the, let's say event like binance week, right? And you walk alone, it's unlikely that you will get an impression and meet a lot of VCs. But if you like, for example, if I'm. Having my own portfolio company working with me. You know, the founder, I might just in, in like an hour, make like five or six introductions to the founders of different VCs and partners of different VCs. So this way he will warm up this touch points like way more quicker and way more easier. So, and if there is, like a bull market and all this, what I'm saying is all about bear market that we were living in last two, three years, right? So, yes, in the in the bull market, it's opposite. It's actually, you know, the you can get capital very easily, but it will be like the capital that will not bring you long term success, at least in the past, if you are getting like companies like Pantera and Alameda, I mean, and for example, Pantera galaxy, right behind, behind you, you could get like, really, you could raise your pre seed, then seed, then private series, a very quickly, and then you have funding for the next two, three years to build your tech, build Your community, etc. And then this is a chance for you to build something like layer zero, something like something big, if you are, like opposite to that, if you are, you know, just collected money from some syndicates, from Telegram, you know no name communities and community VCs, you will see no benefit from this VC So, so the best and first change from bull market to bear market is when projects start to ask, what kind of value can you provide me, apart from the funds? Yeah? So yeah, because you know you're right, it becomes too abundant.

Yeah, we are right because there's so many more, there's so many more good, so many, so much more funds than there are good projects to invest them in. You know, particularly in the bull market, it becomes really, it becomes really difficult to get good companies, because just so many companies that will come up, and I remember you 100% right too. Because what would it, what would happen a lot is, you know, we hear about a company, we would sort of turn them on, that we might even have a phone call with them, and then sort of turn them down. This is back when I was at Fe tech. And then we would see, you know, they would keep it, we keep having a group with us, and they would just keep posting updates. And then we'd hear about, you know, other investors investing them. Maybe hear them about them through other deals, so groups and other investors. And then we pretty much would very quickly get formal, and then often, like, circle back and be like, Hey guys, let's have another call and closes that sort of thing.

Yeah. I mean, like again, that even the nature, even the FOMO effect, right? So it's a term from bull markets. No one have is having FOMO in the bear markets. Almost no one, right? I mean, there is always five or 10 projects that everyone wants to get a portion of. Like, for example, there is monad and there are, like some others. But you know, apart from that, it's very difficult to get, apart from that, it's very, very difficult to get, you know, the FOMO effect from VCs, that everyone will be knocking your door. So this all is part of, you know, of course, of the strategy of any startup to create such an effect that you can actually, you know, have to do this. I mean, the ways to do it is, there could be different, the different ways of doing that, but that's should be your as a founder, that should be your objective to create a formal effect among investors. So, yeah, you

go ahead,

So in terms of tokenomics, you know, you mentioned the token a couple of times. Is there anything that projects can do with regard to tokenomics that could ensure better long term success. Are there things that you think you recommend to projects?

First of all, best to consult with tokenomics experts. That's my view. Do not really think that you can do it on yourself, or you can copy someone's tokenomics, and that will be enough. So it's not true. So if you do have the tokenomics experts reviewed that reviewed your tokens, the token economy, the chances that you will not you will miss, the you will not do. The mistakes are quite high, you know, like that. The experts will actually be able to catch majority of issues, and majority of you know super big problems that you have with your token. It can come at the cost. But I know that we see is that sometimes prerequisite usage of tokenomics experts to make sure that your tokenomics is actually solid. So you always need to think about what kind of cell pressure you will have, how much of initials market cap you'll be having, who will be your market makers, how you're gonna deploy, etc. What would be the announcements, updates of the tokens? I mean, what will be the roadmap? How will it will follow the tokenomics in general? But, you know, unfortunately, not a lot of projects are thinking about tokenomics This way, so I would, I would wish them to spend more time on that, because sometimes they just bite their elbows, you know, when it's too late.

Yeah. I mean, I think you're right. I often find myself telling projects, you know, to really look at tokenomics that they don't really give enough thought to it. You know, there's, I mean, and it's a complicated thing, right? Like you every, every minute change you might even, if you're just looking at not even token utility, if you're just looking at like token structure, and you know, if you, for example, put out change of vesting schedule, you know that that token distribution schedule that could, you know, modify how much should you have open at TGE, and how much potential selling pressure you have in terms of circulating supply at TGE, and those things can change massively. So, for example, you change your valuation now, all of a sudden, the circulating supply. TG, you multiply it by a much higher number, and you know, so many different numbers are involved that influence other numbers that it's just, you know, way too complicated. If you think that you're going to do it yourself, and it's really, you know, not advisable either. So I tell people that like one of the companies. So there's a company called reveal their the fifth most traded coin on KuCoin. And so when they came, they came to NFT tech for investment. I was the guy who was evaluating them, and I realized that what we had, what we needed to do, was sort of rework the tokenomics. And fortunately, Mo those guys are great, great guys, and they, and they understood the utility of that, yes, the other thing is that they have to, like, trust, you know, the VC to help them as well sometimes. And so we, we basically reworked the tokenomics and ended up investing them and, and I was an advisor, so, and right now they're, like, I said, fifth most traded coin KuCoin. And had they, you know, sort of gone the way they had initially come to us? I don't think that that would necessarily been the case.

Yeah, I think everyone can give examples of the coins that, you know, have a terrible initial economics, right? And never thought through all the aspects. Never thought through if they have enough tokens for the market makers initially. Never thought through, you know, the distribution schedule, like how, you know, ecosystem support will happen. How would you pay for listing fees, etc? So all that you know is definitely having a big impact on how you grow and what you are actually. You know what kind of like long term success of the project it is. So in my opinion, economics is one of the most crucial things that you need to really focus on your when you're working on your startup.

So you mentioned market makers. You know, I'm curious. Do you have recently there were a few market makers, very, very prominent in crypto, that have had, had, you know, issues with the legal system in the US over market making. Do you have any thoughts on what a good market makers and what makes a good market maker? How one evaluates them?

Yeah, in my in my opinion, like all market makers in crypto, should follow what market making really should be looking like when they look in the traditional finance market making principles right in crypto, just due to lack of regulations, the Wild West happened, and, you know, people just started to manipulate the market and calling it market making, right? So which is two different things, and a lot of people, they didn't see the difference. So yeah, My recommendation would be to work with people that would be focusing on providing liquidity for your token, rather than creating this pump and dump schemes that will get you in trouble later.

Yeah. I mean, artificial volume doesn't really help anybody, and eventually, you know, just everybody ends up ends up losing money. So what do you what would you see? You know, how do you see the blockchain industry in general evolving over the next five or 10 years? Are there any specific aspects of it that you're excited to see? What do you think so, for example, like, what do you think of the BTC five movement, for example? And you know, what other narratives Do you think that on the horizon that you're excited to look at?

So I think that's really interesting. I mean, it sounds like you're saying, you know, NFTs and I, and by the way, I agree with you on this. We have a show called The Future NFTs that my co co-founder hosts, and, you know NFTs have sort of fallen out of vogue, particularly if you think of them as, like, you know, pretty pictures or pictures or PFPs. However, if you consider that NFT as a technology, there's a company, one of our partners, Envelop, they're building, you know, NFTs that are like containers and dynamic NFTs. And there's just so much innovation around NFTs that doesn't involve, you know, a picture or graphic in any way that, you know, it's almost a second renaissance. And I think that there's still a huge, a huge space for innovation when it comes when it comes to NFT. So that will be, you know, I think I'm interested to see how that plays out. Also I'm interested in is seeing how the DID narrative plays out. I mean, I think that, you know, as regulation starts becoming more of a thing, and then, you know, defy will want it will need to have the ability to plug into that. And I think, you know DID, where you can have sort of the privacy, but still be in a way where you're sharing. The kind of data that you need to only with the people that you need to share it with. Like that could be a really interesting thing to see about how, you know, finance evolves, when, when, when the idea is a factor.

With regards to decentralized ID, you know, I really believe that there is a lot of utility to that. This involves, usually governments. Governments are usually the last to utilize any technology, so some of the government institutions in us still use fax machines. How far ago did you use fax machine? Yeah, I personally never used it. I'm 38 years old, right? I never used fax machine in my life. I mean, once I had to. So I asked someone, I don't know how to use it. I don't know so, but they do right? And they require you to do this. They don't have emails, right? So I came from oil and gas when I was in the largest oil and gas conference in the world, at the pack, when I was talking to the people about blockchain, they know they sent me to their vice presidents because anyone below them, Vice President of Technology. Anyone below them, they didn't know clue of what I was talking about, right? Yeah, for them, Blockchain was all about, all Bitcoin thing, no, right? It's like a technology. Oh, no clue, right? So yeah, and, and the VP of technology told me that, yeah, there is a lot of things that your technology can do. But imagine that, like there is a refinery that brings like $2 billion in, like, in a week to us, right? Every, every week there is like a $2 billion one of the largest refineries in the world, right? Yeah and, do you know that these guys are still using paper? You know, they're not digitalized. They're not digitalized, right? So, so when we're trying to make them digital, but it takes time, right? So we're trying to use the for them to use PDF and get all the paperwork and then try to get some machine learning in half, science and everything for that particular, you know, company. So there are a lot of companies that are, you know, working on the principle, if it's working, don't break it. And new technologies always offer this points of failure, right? Like, remember this, Facebook getting down, and millions of, you know, businesses worldwide went down when there is Microsoft error. And half of the worldwide, you know, you know, airports are shut down. So some industries can't afford, I can't afford that, you know, they can't afford their like business to be shut down. Like, imagine hospitals, yeah, that's true. Like, yeah. I mean, like, nuclear factories, like oil and gas platforms. So governments, institutions are also like that. I mean, they and when you come and talk to government and tell them that, okay, you have this your ID, we need to replace it with decentralized ID. I mean, it will take ages for that decentralized is right, yeah, it's

a tough sell.

It is a tough sell. So I wish all those startups that are working this area, good luck, you know. And maybe with time, we'll come to that, how soon, I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, I think you're right. I think, you know, I've often told people, if your business involves depending on government, then probably, and if you're in an innovative business that moves really quickly, you pretty much forget, you know, any contribution from government. But we're massively out of time. Actually, we're over time, but it's just been just so fascinating chatting with you. So I guess we went over but why don't we? Why don't you, you know, briefly, some of your sum up your thoughts, and maybe talk about, kind of like, what keeps you going in this in during the bear markets, and what sort of motivates you. And I think maybe some parting words would be great,

yeah, that's a really good perspective. Faraj, I mean, I like Elon Musk's code about running a startup being like, somewhat like chewing glass and staring into the abyss. It's really difficult, but, yeah, it's also very rewarding, and particularly if you're working in an area which is innovative, it's a lot of fun. So this has been an incredibly insightful session. Definitely want to extend a big thank you to you, Faraj, for joining us today. I know it was really busy over at binance blockchain week, and I appreciate you. You know, trying really hard to hear me over, over the noise. So thank you so much for joining us. A huge shout out to everyone else who tuned in. We're excited to bring you more insights into the web, free world. Stay tuned. We'll see you next Thursday for another episode of diving into crypto. Thank you, everybody. Y'all have a great day.

Thanks a lot. Jason, really great conversation.

Thanks, likewise, talk soon, bye, bye.