ニック・サポナロ氏が語る「Diviと世界の暗号採用」とは？

今回のCryptonews Podcastでは、ホストのMatt ZahabがDiviのCIOであるNick Saponaroにインタビューを行いました。ニックの暗号化への道のり、Diva、スポーツギャンブル、暗号化を簡単でシームレスに見せることについて話しています。

エピソードのタイムスタンプ：

0:00 Intro 
2:27 Journey into crypto 
4:20 What is Divi? 
7:35 5 layered one click master node 
10:06 Making crypto easy and seamless 
14:46 Vaulting 
19:51 The future of Divi 
23:20 Sports gambling 
25:32 Bitcoin vs. Divi 
31:52 Crypto's investment narrative 
35:51 Accelerating global crypto adoption 
38:03 Rapid fire questions 
41:29 NFTs in the sports industry 
44:19 Outro

The episode premiered on May 24, 2021.

Listen to this episode of other platforms or explore the latest episodes of the Cryptonews Podcast here. 

Episode transcript:

Matt Zahab: 0:09

Ladies and gentlemen, today's guest is an entrepreneur, crypto enthusiast, world class programmer, and keynote speaker who is passionate about helping crypto achieve its vision to deliver a truly decentralized financial services paradigm that benefits everyone. Present day. Our guest is the CIO of Divi, where he and his team are developing a world class decentralized solution that makes cryptocurrency faster, more secure and accessible to people at all levels of technical expertise. This gentleman's end goal is to make crypto easy and drive its mainstream adoption. I'm very pleased to welcome to the crypto news podcast, Nick Saponaro. Nick, welcome to the show.

Nick Saponaro:

 0:49

Matt, I can't thank you enough for having me on.

Matt Zahab:

 0:51

We are very fired up to have you on and you're the first guest like you and I were talking about pre show who is also rockin the Scarlet 4I4. Folks, Nick will probably have the clearest audio we've had yet. So Nick, big thanks to that. Appreciate it.

Nick Saponaro:

 1:05

My pleasure. My pleasure. I'm an audio file myself. So I try to run with the best.

Matt Zahab:

 1:11

I absolutely love that. So you are on the west coast of North America right now in beautiful California. How is that and what is the crypto scene like in Cali?

Nick Saponaro:

 1:20

I love California. I actually grew up on the east coast in New Jersey, not far from Philadelphia. So it was a big dream of mine as it is many on the east coast to move to sunny California and live your best life so to speak. And it's been an incredible, it was a little hard in the beginning. I'll be honest, very very expensive to live here. But once you get past that hurdle, it's been an incredible experience. The crypto community especially in LA is amazing up in San Francisco it's amazing. A little slower in San Diego, but San Diego's a little slower in general. But uh you know, we make it work.

Matt Zahab:

 1:57

I love that. That is awesome. Actually still never been to California. It's on the bucket list. I'm born and raised in Toronto. Currently in Florida, I got out of the banana lands that Toronto and Canada is with all the lockdowns and restrictions and mandatory quarantine. That's craziness. But California is on the bucket list. I do feel like once I get over there, I will never go back. So that is one little thing that scares me a little. Before we get into into Divi and I'm so excited about this pod because you guys have such a cool project, you and your team. Before we get into Divi the bread and butter of the show. I'd love if you could tell our guests how you got into the crypto space. Woah, you were that far into it? You met a guy at a

Nick Saponaro:

 2:31

I got in much like many others as a speculator initially. This was back in like 2014 end of 2014, early 2015, a buddy of mine had actually had the opportunity to meet Joe Lubin in New York at one point, and he was going on and on and on about Ethereum and he's like, dude, you have to get into this thing. It's like at the time, it was like 30 cents when he was telling me about it. I didn't jump into it until about 80 cents and crazy experi nce because I literally at a m et this guy at a mall, swap s me cash for BTC It was like a mall and swapped cash. super almost drug deal experi nce. And then ultimately, I was ble to purchase my Ethere m with the Bitcoin he sold m and the guy. Yeah, I didn't know how else to get it back then. You know, it wasn't so easy, as you know, just hopping on Coinbase.

Matt Zahab:

 3:25

What did he give you like, what did he give you in return to give your private keys how'd that work?

Nick Saponaro:

 3:29

He just, he showed me how to set up my first wallet which was actually the airbitz wallet which eventually became edge and Paul Pugh is an awesome guy also from San Diego. And yeah, he just showed me how to do it how to backup my key and everything like that. He didn't see any of it of course he was very honest and straightforward. Of course I didn't know that at the time. And yeah, and he just he pulls out this huge laptop I mean like this clunker of a machine and and yeah, I handed them a cash he sent me the transaction we waited for almost 30 minutes probably to make sure that you know it was fully confirmed and everything and then we went our separate ways and he strongly, he's like do not buy Ethereum if I can give you any advice, just you know just keep it in Bitcoin. Ethereum is a total shit coin and I ignored that advice anyway.

Matt Zahab:

 4:20

Wow that's a cool one only we've had a story like that on the pod yet I absolutely love that. And present day Divi. What a cool project. Before we get into it, tell me about the name, why Divi? And for the folks at home it's a D i v i. So divi why the name Divi?

Nick Saponaro:

 4:38

So Divi in US English means to equitably divide up right and disperse. And because we developed an ecosystem and technology that allows for people to earn cryptocurrency is actually pretty good name. I actually came into the project after it was named however. And I still thought it was a great name, although there are some other projects out there like a WordPress theme called Divi. But yeah, that was kind of the concept because the whole philosophy is making it accessible and easy for people to earn, spend and use cryptocurrency in the real world.

Matt Zahab:

 5:17

Right, then it's a very ballsy philosophy and company slogan. Like, it's, you know, it's ballsy if you're if you're actually going to try to achieve that. And your mission is to accelerate the adoption of digital currency to make life better, while also making it fun and easy. Which leads me to the next question, tell me about the Divi project all the way from its inception to where we are present day.

Nick Saponaro:

 5:43

So in 2017, when the concept was coming together, and I was brought into the project. Actually, I was a freelancer initially on the project. But I you know, as I mentioned, I'd been investing in the space for a little while so I had a somewhat of a deeper insight than some of the other people that were building out the white paper and the tokenomics. But the philosophy really hasn't changed. We found that there were a lot of user experience hurdles, a lot of friction in cryptocurrency, all the way from the blockchain, all the way up to the client side level, at least as far as layer one protocols were concerned. So we really wanted to change that without sacrificing the decentralization that makes cryptocurrency so beautiful. And a lot of people said that that was ridiculous. But we felt that if we could create one technology that proves the concept that you can create an easy to use crypto, then the rest will sort of fall into place. So in 2018, after we did our ICO and that everything was all done said with or said and done, we launched our blockchain and the first master node one click cloud installer, which we call mochi. And that allows anybody of any skill level as long as you have enough Divi to set up and run a master node, which is basically for listeners that don't know what a masternode is, it's essentially a program that's run in the cloud. Or you can run it like on a Raspberry Pi or a small computer, that supports and verifies the transactions in the network and secures the network, and secure the network it did because of how easy we made it. We now have over I think it's like 53% of the coins in our ecosystem allocated to masternodes, which, as you know, creates a very secure ecosystem. You know,

Matt Zahab:

 7:35

Nick, if I may jump in here. So you're talking about the five layered one, click masternode. Now, I do not have a very, you know, prominent technical background, could you do your best? I know, this is an almost impossible question. But could you do your best to explain this to me like I am a five year old.

Nick Saponaro:

 7:51

Of course. So you've heard of dash, right? Yes. So dash, basically created and coined the term masternode and they used to facilitate private sector transactions. We don't use it for that reason, necessarily. But we saw the power of masternodes because it's basically a computer program that requires very, very little hardware or energy consumption. Unlike Bitcoin, where you need significant mining power, both from a hardware perspective and an energy consumption perspective, staking and masternodes allow you to perform similar functions within your blockchain network, whether that's sending and receiving the very simple most basic level of utilization, all the way up to I've seen implementations where people are using masternodes for VPN or cross chain, interoperability or storage. At any rate, it's a program that you run on your computer. It helps our network and for running it, you earn cryptocurrency, however, there was a problem. Two problems really. One being that masternodes are very difficult, like you just said, as a non technical person, this is a very unapproachable topic. The other issue was they become cost prohibitive, right. So you see, dash is like, almost a million dollars for a single masternode now. So for those two problems to be solved, we had to do two things, we had to A make it as easy as possible. So even people who don't fully understand the technology behind it can still use them. And B, we had to make it cost effective. So that's why we created multiple tiers of nodes, we have five tiers. And of course, the more that you allocate to the masternode, the more you earn, but anybody from I think the lowest tier right now is about $3,000 I'd have to check the price right now, all the way up and beyond. But even that felt cost prohibitive. So we created an ecosystem that also relies on staking, which you can stake with as little 10,000 Divi. And soon you won't even need that much thanks to our vaulting technology, which I know you want to talk about later.

Matt Zahab:

 10:06

No, perfect segue. Before actually, before we get into the vaulting technology, you talked about making it as easy as possible for users to join. That's part of your company's vision, making crypto an easy and seamless, you know, aspect and allowing anyone to jump into the ecosystem, who has absolutely no clue what they're doing. Can you talk about how you are actually making that happen?

Nick Saponaro:

 10:28

So we really initially started, like I said, with mochi, you know, the earnings and security of the network seemed to be the lowest hanging fruit, as well as the longest hanging fruit. It's kept us strong for years, even through the bear market. And that was step one. So now you have these one, click masternodes, you can stake with the click of a button as well, but it doesn't end there. We I mean, you've been to conferences and stuff in the space, I'm sure you hear influencers talk about these things, you have to push blockchain in the background, you have to make it easy enough for grandma to use, blah, blah, blah. But no one then focused on actually doing that. Everyone says it, but no one does it. So we are the company or the project, I should say that is pursuing that. So in our mobile wallet that just launched in the US, you know, you have human readable addresses you onboard, like a normal application where you just, you know, sign up with your username, if you so choose, and get right into it. You're not forced to backup long seed phrases, or come into a level of confusion that you're not familiar with before the time is appropriate. So it's really these little quality of life things and then these big features that allow people to access the aspects of cryptocurrency that are most important, earnings, send, receive. By making those things easy, and then literally pushing the blockchain to the background, to the point where you're not even necessarily aware that this features blockchain and this feature isn't. I think that is the step toward the user experience that needs to be present to achieve mass adoption. But really, it's not just crypto, we really felt that in order to bring mass adoption into reality, there needed to be a essentially a hybridization of traditional finance and decentralized finance, which is why the applications that we're building, implement both, and you want to talk about hurdles, that is where it becomes really, really difficult.

Matt Zahab:

 12:34

That's a nightmare fuel right there.

Nick Saponaro:

 12:37

From a regulatory perspective, from a technological perspective, but we're incredibly committed to this. And we've secured relationships with financial services companies that are allowing us to do this. So we'll be able to provide bank accounts, cross border transfers of funds, wires, ACH, all that stuff in tandem with Bitcoin Litecoin Ethereum, all the, all your favorite coins Divi as a decentralized application, and that

Matt Zahab:

 13:05

Sorry, if I may, and that was a great description, but Divi, I've seen many times that you and the team want to be sort of digital cash that is, you know, that you cannot make mistakes with it on fuck withable it is unmistakable, if you will. And I've also heard the term many times that you and the team say that you want to be like apple in the sense that all these complex, you know, all this complex code is running in the background, but they make everything so simple for the user. That is the end goal, is it not something of the like

Nick Saponaro:

 13:37

100%. You see, with major industries consolidation over time. The internet industry was not dissimilar from crypto as it is today. At one point, right, you had all these basically penny stock companies doing a bunch of little things and it wasn't super easy, and a lot of them crash and failed. A lot of them got consumed by the bigger companies. And ultimately, we end up with several of the world's largest companies, basically facilitating all the things that we do online, one of which, of course, is Apple and their approach, I think, is most relevant to us because, and I don't know if you've ever heard Steve Wozniak speak, you got to look him up if you haven't, but he literally had the exact same philosophy as we do. He had it for computing, of course, we have it for crypto, where it's this really complex, really robust system that can be so beautifully used for humanity. But if it's not accessible and easy to use, it's impossible for it to grow and be used in the way that it's intended. So yeah, in a very major way, we take Apple's philosophy to heart.

Matt Zahab:

 14:46

I love that problem that you guys are trying to solve. It's literally you know, every guest who's been on the pod, one of the reoccurring questions is how can you bridge the gap between the complex crypto industry and the average you know, Joe or Josephine, who's trying to get in? And no one really has a concrete answer for that. And it seems like you and the team at Divi are doing it. But back to you brought up vaulting. And this is a question that I was so curious about. Little complex, tons of our listeners want to know about this. Tell me about vaulting and why it's so important to Divi?

Nick Saponaro:

 15:20

I will do my best to explain it in a pseudo technical fashion because it is a relatively complex feature to make something that's really, really simple happen. But essentially, there's an issue with staking on a mobile device. And that's actually kind of why we reverse engineered the solution.

Matt Zahab:

 15:42

Can you sorry, Nick, and can you just explain staking before going into the spiel?

Nick Saponaro:

 15:46

Certainly. Staking is essentially the counterpart to proof of work. Where proof of work requires you to have a machine that's consuming energy and running hardware and software in order to solve complex calculations that ultimately allow that machine or that node, we call them nodes, to add a new block of transactions to the blockchain, that's how block chains work, right? A bunch of people make transactions, they're added, they're submitted to a block, and one of the miners performs a proof of work and adds that block to the chain and all those transactions become real and confirmed. With proof of stake, you don't need that same level of hardware capacity, or energy consumption, all you need is a stake in the ecosystem. In other words, you just need coins in your wallet. And the more coins that you have, the better your node or your machine performs those calculations, and can hopefully add more blocks to the chain earning you more in this case, Divi or whichever cryptocurrency you happen to be staking. That's typically how staking works.

Matt Zahab:

 16:56

And can you segue into vaulting.

Nick Saponaro:

 16:58

Of course. So with staking vaults, it works essentially the same way. But again, we had this issue where if we want people to be able to stake from their mobile phone and continue to retain access to their keys, coins, and seed phrases, we needed to solve the issue of yes, staking can work on very minimal hardware, but a phone is not one of those minimal hardwires. Because a phone, you know, it's just battery operated, it would drain the battery pretty quickly, it would also consume a lot of the RAM and CPU power of your device. If you were to run a full staking node on your phone. This was an issue. So we developed the staking vault, which allows for you to basically generate a what we call a Vault Key, as well as a spending key which you retain, you grant permission to the vault with your Vault Key. And all they can do is essentially submit transactions to the network, staking transactions, that perform the calculations just like they normally would. And if your staking vault wins the block, you've earned the reward just as you always would. However, your coins never actually leave your wallet, all you're doing is signing with that spending key back in your mobile device to say, hey, I'm okay with you allocating these coins to these transactions. It's not quite multisig, because it doesn't really require the signature of anyone else you have full control over the entire time,

Matt Zahab:

 18:36

Right. And this is the lottery block, right?

Nick Saponaro:

 18:40

You can earn lottery blocks from staking, so they are they're related but not the same.

Matt Zahab:

 18:45

Okay, go into this for me because I love the lottery block too. And just to sort of, just for clarification here, the lottery block, is it more so to incentivize people to participate within the Divi ecosystem? Or is it also like a traditional lottery where you could you know, win the head honcho the big prize, simply by just being a user of the lottery block,

Nick Saponaro:

 19:06

The lottery blocks are an incentive to participate in staking. Only stakers can win lottery blocks and essentially 11 nodes every week or portion of the super block, and the top prize is pretty substantial. It's like almost $15,000 right now, I think. But yeah, it's not too shabby. Not too shabby at all. We're the only blockchain that I know of that has a lottery function like this. But basically every staking reward that you earn, you could consider to be like a ticket, you're automatically entered into this right super block draw. And then, you know, the blockchain determines who wins by the end of the cycle.

Matt Zahab:

 19:51

Gotcha. Okay. Thank you for that. Now moving forward to again, I'm so intrigued by Divi's mission and really being the solution for unbanked people. Again, when we talk about mission statements, there's really no point let's try to shoot for the stars. You guys certainly have and you definitely want to be a solution for unbanked people and you want to make cryptocurrency transactions faster, cheaper and easier to use with, I guess an added focus on reducing the risk of user errors as well. Now, how do you follow through on such an ambitious project and what is the plan to actually make this happen?

Nick Saponaro:

 20:31

So a big step toward that was the release of the mobile wallet, which we have, like I said, soft launch now to the United States, we're expecting a larger rollout very soon to the rest of the world. In the app, when you go to, let's say, I want to send to you, Matt, I will just search your username, your avatar comes right up as long as you enable public viewing of that stuff, of course. You can still use it 100% anonymously and decentralized beyond belief if you want, but we enable users to set their profiles up in a way that can be discovered by people who know you. So you can type a phone number, and you can type their email address in if they've added those things. And then you can just see that person just like you would on Venmo, or PayPal or whatever. So that eliminates a lot of fear and sending. Because I mean, even I've made the mistake of you know, maybe it wasn't in my clipboard and I pasted the wrong address, or you have one wrong character didn't copy over whatever. And you lose. Yeah, exactly. It's really detrimental to the use of this stuff. And you start to see sacrifices being made by other projects, where they just say screw the decentralized aspect of it, we'll just you know, custodialize your funds. And then we're just back to square one, where, you know, where we were trying to obviate these centralized services, now we're recreating them? It makes no sense and like I said, we just won't sacrifice decentralization for convenience, I think both can exist. So that's like one of the major steps, right putting out this very easy to use user friendly crypto wallet that you could use while you're drunk and still not make a mistake. So the next step is the Fiat features. So of course, this includes the Fiat on ramp where you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies, including Divi with your credit card, your bank account, whatever. But also the ability to provide bank accounts to individuals across the entire world with little to no major KYC requirements. In many jurisdictions, all you really need is an ID, like a government issued ID and a phone number, and you can get an account. So we'll be implementing those types of things later in the year. That to me is the hybridization that we talked about earlier and that, to me, is like one of the biggest pieces of our puzzle, because you have all these underbanked and unbanked individuals who have no access to any financial services. And that's everything about bank accounts who have regular insurance account, you know, they don't have any of it. If we can start to provide that infrastructure to people who don't have it, the effect on the world at large is, you know, unpredictable, but in a good way.

Matt Zahab:

 23:20

Infinite, yeah. No, that's true. Definitely do not take a gamble with that and play it smart. But speaking of gambling, I do want to give a quick shout out to our friends at CoinPoker. You guys have heard me talk about CoinPoker many times on the crypto news pod. We absolutely love them. They are the revolutionary blockchain technology based platform that was developed by an ambitious team of poker lovers and sports gamblers. I absolutely love using CoinPoker. I'm no degenerate by all means, but I definitely love the odd game of Texas Hold'em or betting on sports. They have a mobile app where I can jump on and whip up my phone, play a couple hands of Texas Hold'em or bet on a couple of cheeky sports games. It's quick, it's easy. They have instant and secure transactions featuring USDT Ethereum, Bitcoin. They also have $CHP tokens, which is the end game currency. Absolutely love it. It's done quite well, too. And like I said, future developments, exclusive benefits, you name it. It's an absolutely great platform. And I highly recommend, and you can check them out at coinpoker.com. Or you can go to the App Store Android and download the app as well. And back to the show now. Nick, quick question. Are you a sports gambler or poker fan at all?

Nick Saponaro:

 24:37

I do. Admittedly bet on the occasional UFC fight and I'm a huge Texas Hold'em fan

Matt Zahab:

 24:43

I love that. Oh what did you get in the action on the last UFC, I guess not last couple weeks ago and we had that crazy was it Chris Wyden with the ankle fracture?

Nick Saponaro:

 24:53

That was a crazy fight. I actually didn't have money on that one but I did watch

Matt Zahab:

 24:57

it's sounds special. With UFC you can make some really good coin too. I'll take just one of those you know cheeky upsets where someone's plus four or 5 6 700 and all it takes is one punch right. It's not like other sports where usually it's an accumulation of goals or baskets or points or whatever you want to call it. With the UFC one punch and you can you know, down someone heads off the floor and, and it's payday. So, but anyways.

Nick Saponaro:

 25:20

I'm a big underdog better. I always pet the dog.

Matt Zahab:

 25:24

That's I feel like that intertwines with crypto people going for higher upside.

Nick Saponaro:

 25:30

Yeah, yeah, always.

Matt Zahab:

 25:32

That's awesome. But anyways, back Divi. One of the coolest parts about Divi is your sort of not war per se, but how there's a big debate in regards to Bitcoin versus Divi. Now, your team, I believe I saw this on Twitter, maybe Twitter, maybe another social app, maybe actually be the website as well. But there's like a chart where it says Bitcoin and Divi and then it categorizes a couple things. And those things that you categorize are, is it scalable? Is it fast? Is it cheap? Is it easy to use? And is it safe for newbies? And on Bitcoin? It's like and on Divi you have you got a bunch of checkmarks now, yeah, love the sound effects there. Now it's, again, for the for the average Joe, who doesn't know a whole lot about this, like, can you explain more into the pros of Divi and why you guys have sort of used Bitcoin as the villain in this aspect?

Nick Saponaro:

 26:30

Sure. So first of all, I should mention, you know, we don't have anything against Bitcoin, we support Bitcoin in our wallet. And truly, Bitcoin is the precursor to everything that I mean, you wouldn't have this podcast without it, I wouldn't be talking to you without it, right? So I just want to get that out there. I'm not anti

Matt Zahab:

 26:43

100%. Bitcoin at all, longtime supporter, but it does have its problems, right. Each of these blockchains is not without its caveats. And bitcoins, caveats are pretty extensive. It's very old technology, borderline archaic at this point. With a lot of a lot of, I won't say issues, but just, you know, critical things that a traditional technology development company would probably have have resolved already. But because of its decentralized nature, or just kind of the coolest thing about it, it's really, really slow to update. So with Divi, you know, we took a look at some of the most critical things, block size being one of them. So we doubled the block size, block time being another we made it a minute instead of 10. And consumption of energy is a huge, huge problem with Bitcoin. I know that most of the energy is renewable, and a lot of the fear and doom articles about you know, Bitcoin is killing the world, you know, I don't believe, I don't subscribe to that. It's all bollocks.

Nick Saponaro:

 27:52

It's bollocks. But at the same time, there is a lot of energy being consumed as a result. So that was another part of it that we wanted to resolve and make it easy to run nodes with the click of a button, right? So all of those things kind of make it a more accessible blockchain. And they're, you know, resolving a lot of the, again, not problems but critical flaws, so to speak in Bitcoin. But each each blockchain has a different use case too. Bitcoin, initially, was supposed to be that peer to peer cash system that Satoshi envisioned it didn't really turn out that way. It's more of a, you know, digital gold, if you will, that's kind of the new narrative. And it's more equipped for that. It's slow, but it's very, very, very well adopted, has a huge network effect. So it's perfect for a hedge against the dollar, a hedge against the financial markets, whatever. So yeah, I mean, we just wanted to not necessarily create a better Bitcoin, but a blockchain that's more well equipped for peer to peer transacting.

Matt Zahab:

 28:56

Right. Now, when you started talking about Bitcoin and the differences between Divi, just a minute, you know, minute and a half ago, you mentioned increasing the block size and increasing the speed transactions. How do you do that, like, explain that to me? Because again, I have no clue. I could explain it, as you know, the benefits of it, but I have no clue how one would go in to the blockchain technology and actually make that happen. How do you do that?

Nick Saponaro:

 29:22

So with our blockchain, we have two megabyte blocks, which doesn't sound like a lot, right? That's a tiny amount of data. But when you consider what a blockchain actually is, a blockchain is just a list of strings basically, of text, a bunch of objects, JSON objects, if you parse them out. It's literally just a database. So it doesn't require a ton of space per block to actually exponentially increase the number of transactions that can go into said block. With Bitcoin, it's a megabyte, and it takes 10 minutes to, on average, to mine a new block. That's not really conducive to micro transacting or transacting at scale because the more people that are trying to submit to that block, the quicker that one megabyte fills up. So by doubling that, you actually see a lot more transactions able to fit into a single block. And by shortening the block time, you can, if people can't get into a specific block, they'll get into the next one. And it's a much more speedy experience for them. And we're not the only people that believe this way either. There are other block chains that have increased block size or shortened block time. And most of the newer chains are even moving to like a delegated proof of stake, which I have fundamental disagreements with but different topic, in order to even make those transaction times faster.

Matt Zahab:

 30:51

Okay, that has to lead me to my next question, which does definitely intertwine with this. You have a unique definition of frictionless. I'd love for you to tell me about that.

Nick Saponaro:

 31:02

Yeah, so friction, in any case, well, at least within technology is any point of contact with the user that creates frustration, or additional added difficulty in using whatever that technology is. For us, frictionless means you can jump right in, without any knowledge of what it is, get to work, or stake, so to speak, within minutes, and feel familiar the entire time that you're doing it. So you should always feel like you have used this before. Not that it's derivative, but that it's really, really familiarized, it feels like your Venmo feels like your cash app, or whatever. But it's protecting you in the ways that a traditional blockchain application would

Matt Zahab:

 31:52

Love that. Well said. I want to go back to the Bitcoin aspect and you had a, I believe it was an article or snippet in an article on the 10th anniversary of Satoshi Nakamoto sending his final message. I believe this was a couple months ago, and you were asked if he was any closer to achieving his dream and you said the following and after I give this little snippet I'd love for you to expand on this. But you said as follows. You could argue that the institutional investment flooding into the space the coinbase IPO big tech like PayPal Venmo taking crypto seriously, is excellent news for an industry that's been hungry for credibility for so long. But they can also present serious risks to the decentralized mission and vision of the crypto movement. Furthermore, the crypto industry is at the forefront of financial tech innovation. But if we continue to perpetuate the investment narrative and only focus on the price going up, we could easily miss the fact that we're giving away this great gift that's been given to us. That is an absolute gold quote, and the floor is yours.

Nick Saponaro:

 33:00

Thank you, first of all, for the compliment. But yeah, I truly believe what Satoshi developed for us is a gift. I don't know if he was a time traveler or just very, very pragmatic, but he knew what was coming. He built Bitcoin out of the decimation that was the 2008 recession. But, you know, over time, the narrative has changed. We just talked about a narrative change. It was a peer to peer digital clip cash, and now it's the digital gold whatever. We have been waiting for this level of indication that we're seeing right now and it feels very, very good to see all of these big institutions finally admitting that they're taking Bitcoin seriously, and cryptocurrency seriously. But there's also this other side of it where you have tik tok kids and random Twitter influencers and YouTube guys going on and shilling shit coins and true shit coins, like not not just you know how a lot of people just call every altcoin a shit coin? Yeah, they are literally shilling absolute crap. And people are making money on it, which is cool. But it has the potential to be incredibly dangerous and detrimental to us overall because those people that ultimately get wrecked by the latest, you know, dog coin or whatever, they may never come back to the space and they may never learn why we were part of the space, you know, the fundamental philosophy that drew us in, which is, you know, this democratization of finance, a global borderless system of transaction and commerce that is accessible to everyone everywhere. And with the bigger institutions and big tech coming in and taking huge chunks of ownership, you know, their goal is not to make the price necessarily go up indefinitely, and their goal is certainly not to decentralize finance. Their goal is to make money at any cost and that is the danger, right? If we continue to ignore the fundamentals, if we continue to tribalize around coin A or coin B, instead of saying, you know, coin A does this and coin B does this and they kind of are great in their own exclusive ways. We should all have the same goal of making crypto, what was meant to be a decentralized finance ecosystem thats accessible to everyone, and stop focusing so hard on whether your coin is the best one or not. So that, to me is the danger here. Ultimately, the markets going to decide, but if I have anything to say about it, you know, we're gonna go in this direction of decentralization and I just hope that enough people believe in that vision.

Matt Zahab:

 35:51

What are sort of the two to three base catalysts to really accelerate this global crypto adoption? I know he spoke about a couple of them the ease of fiat, you know, on ramps, taking away the narrative of it is investment only focus back to the core aspect of the blockchain and, you know, enabling this technology to decentralized everything and allowing people to unbanked themselves. But what are the two three biggest things and the biggest catalyst for growth?

Nick Saponaro:

 36:18

Well, yeah, I still believe first of all, hybridization is a huge aspect to it. We have to take that sort of Prius approach, or call it where Prius created these cars, that were hybrid cars, they were part electric, part gas, now you start to see more and more fully electric cars, eventually, we probably won't see any gas cars. But it takes time to transition to that, right, the human psyche just isn't equipped for change, because change fundamentally means that something that you're familiar with, is going away. It's literally a psychological flaw in our brains we are not equipped for it. So we have to take these long hybrid transition paths to get to the point where the ultimate goal is achieved. So hybridization first, ease of use, and accessibility, obviously, is huge. We've talked enough about that. But the third thing, and I know people are gonna hate me for saying this, but responsible regulations. And I don't mean overreaching, government oversight. I mean, get ourselves into the government, right, get our lobbying groups, which we're starting to see pop up into those meetings with FATF with Congress with the global action tech task forces that bring these regulations to the fold, and educate them on what we are building. How this is really just an expansion on commerce and expansion on cash and it can work beautifully and symbiotically with the traditional finance ecosystem. If they can see that then I think the regulations will become more favorable. But if we're not able to make that case, then we'll see a lot of more overreaching regulation.

Matt Zahab:

 38:03

Well said very, very enlightening. Nick, this has been incredible. A couple rapid fire questions, and then we will wrap up here. Two questions before this. We talked about Satoshi. Who is Satoshi can be your best bet here.

Nick Saponaro:

 38:18

Hal Finney was definitely involved, I have to say, but I do believe Satoshi was a group of individuals. I don't know who they were at all. I've met people who say, oh, yeah, I was part of the team or whatever. It's impossible to verify. But I do think Hal Finney was part of it. And that there was several others.

Matt Zahab:

 38:35

Tell me why. Why was Hal involved?

Nick Saponaro:

 38:37

He was talking about all the things that Bitcoin is and became, like, decades before. He's been closely involved with early transacting in Bitcoin. Some I think the first actual transaction was sent to him. Which was probably just a test from himself to himself.

Matt Zahab:

 38:57

Yeah that's a little suspect.

Nick Saponaro:

 38:59

Yeah, exactly. Because that's what I would do as a developer. What's the first thing you do you? Test it with yourself. So yeah, I mean, I think for those reasons, he was probably a piece of the puzzle. But I mean, it's such a complex technology, I can't imagine he did it all on his own.

Matt Zahab:

 39:14

Yeah that's a hot take. I've asked that question to a bunch of guests and Hal does come up many times. Bitcoin to 100k. When and if all that happened?

Nick Saponaro:

 39:26

I think we'll see it during this bull run. I know we've been in this channel for the past couple of weeks. We have seen, you know, an all time high at 60 or above $60,000, which is just incredible. But yeah, I think we will see it during this bull cycle. I think the summer is going to be kind of boring. But I think we're set up for one or maybe two more big big pops before we see you know, the next bear market.

Matt Zahab:

 39:52

Give me a hot take what month, October November.

Nick Saponaro:

 39:58

Yeah, I would say towards the end of the year, october november time is probably just based on historic data. That's probably one will see it. But you know, I'm throwing darts at a board. Any economist or any analyst who says they know, it's just so far out of line.

Matt Zahab:

 40:16

There's absolutely no one. One question that is totally not mine. I've stole it and I definitely need a traditional and original question on the show. But Patrick O'Shaughnessy's invest like the best, it's one of my favorite pods. And the finishing question that he asked to all of his guests is, what is the nicest thing someone has ever done for you? I know it's a tough one. But it's a great one.

Nick Saponaro:

 40:40

Well, that is a great question. You know, I'd have to say it's two people, it's my parents, allowing me to pursue the things that were meaningful to me, regardless of, you know, which direction they thought I was supposed to take in life. Because if I had followed the path that was laid out in front of me, I wouldn't be on this podcast with you. My life would be completely different.

Matt Zahab:

 41:05

Who's the other person?

Nick Saponaro:

 41:06

Not just my mom, my dad

Matt Zahab:

 41:07

Oh mom and dad. It went right over my head there. This has been awesome. I can't believe you didn't give a shout out to buddy who did the Bitcoin drug transaction with at the mall.

Nick Saponaro:

 41:19

Actually, you know what's funny? I'm pretty sure he got arrested eventually, for doing OTC transactions.

Matt Zahab:

 41:27

He's in the slammer right now?

Nick Saponaro:

 41:28

He's in the slammer.

Matt Zahab:

 41:29

Oh, that's a tough one. As a sports guy, and obviously a blockchain and tech guru, I'm a huge sports guy as well, I'm always curious to know what platforms or what type of technology can help bridge the gap and intertwined sports and blockchain or sports and crypto. You have things like NFTs which are obviously making crazy moves. You have chili token Chile's token with Alex Dreyfus, which is another incredible project. But do you see anything happening in the meantime, maybe 2021 2022 that's really going to bridge the gap between traditional sports and the crypto and blockchain ecosystem.

Nick Saponaro:

 42:06

It's really cool to see a lot of the bigger sports players. Well, I guess not the bigger bigger sports players, but some of the mid tier sports players, especially in the NFL, you know, requesting their contracts in Bitcoin. Yeah, you've seen I forget the NBA players name, but he tokenized his contract. Those things are really cool use cases. I really would love the ability to invest in a player's career via NFTs.

Matt Zahab:

 42:31

Yes.

Nick Saponaro:

 42:32

So tokenized contracts and things like that. I think, though, we'll see a more significant crossover in eSports first, and that will kind of lay the groundwork for how maybe the sports, and because you know, the sports leagues are so incredibly managed at this point, where eSports is a little bit more agile and loose and dynamic, right? So I could definitely see video games making that crossover to before sports at large.

Matt Zahab:

 43:01

Yeah. And last question for you, Nick. NFTs, we just touched on, what's your take on that NFTs? Where do you see the future of them going? Do you think 90% of them are just going to go to the shithole and the other 10 will rise sky high? But what's your take on that?

Nick Saponaro:

 43:15

I think that the current status, the current state of affairs in NFTs, is what you would expect from any nascent technology, a lot of jokes, people playing around and making games and things like that, which is great, because we're learning how it works. Ultimately, though, I don't know that, you know, $2 million dollar JPEGs will be the future of NFTs. But I do believe NFTs are an important part of the future. They allow us to tokenize things create immutable provenance. I'm a big art collector and I know I get I have like a folder of certificates of authenticity that I'm always worried just going to burn up. You know, having those types of things on the blockchain would be incredibly beneficial. But we do need to get through the early stages. I mean, it's just like with anything with the internet, the first things that came out with computing the first things that came out were games and, and fun things that are kind of frivolous. And then eventually you get down to the fundamentals and the nitty gritty of what the technology can be used for.

Matt Zahab:

 44:19

Well said, Nick, this was this was incredible. I had a blast speaking with you learned so much, and I'm sure our guests did as well. Before we let you go, can you please let our guests know where they can find you and Divi on social media.

Nick Saponaro:

 44:33

Definitely check our website out Diviproject.org. You can download the mobile wallet of United States right now and set up your account. Social media, it's at Divi project across all of the channels, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, telegram, etc. If you want to follow me on Twitter, it's NSAP productions, nsap productions. Just look for the blue check, that's me.

Matt Zahab:

 44:59

Humblebrag

Nick Saponaro:

 45:04

Yeah, but I'm always down to answer your questions or, you know, just chat about crypto or Divi or whatever. So, yeah, reach out to us.

Matt Zahab:

 45:12

Love it, Nick. Thanks again for having you on. This has been an absolute treat and round two 100% needs to happen. With how quickly you guys are going, I'm sure we will have tons to talk about in, you know, six months down the road. So looking forward to doing that with you. Thanks all for coming on.

Nick Saponaro:

 45:26

My pleasure. Thank you for having me,

Matt Zahab:

 45:27

Folks, this was the cryptonews podcast with Nick Saponaro from Divi project he's the CIO there. This was a great one. I really hoped you had a blast listening, I learned a absolute ton and I hope you did too. If you enjoyed this and you enjoy listening to our podcast, please hit that subscribe button. It would mean the world to us. And it allows us to keep banging out more content and more episodes for you. We air on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings and that is it for the show. Big thanks to the team has always, Justace the sound guy, you're the man, Richard, Isabelle. Everyone on the team, can't thank you guys enough and love you all folks love you as well and hope you had a great time. All the best. Bye.