Intro Vocals [00:00:01] You’re watching The Blockchain Interviews hosted by Dan Weiskopf. Each episode features interviews with leading industry experts so that viewers can have a deeper understanding of today’s quickly evolving blockchain marketplace.
Dan Weiskopf [00:00:21] Thank you, Greg, for joining me here in the blockchain CEO interview series. Here I am with Greg Feller, CEO. Your CEO? Actually, I got that wrong with somebody. Are you, CEO or co-CEO, by the way?
Greg Feller [00:00:35] I’m actually president.
Dan Weiskopf [00:00:36] President.
Greg Feller [00:00:37] My identical twin brother technically has the CEO title.
Dan Weiskopf [00:00:42] Yeah. Well, you know, titles matter in this world. You know, it’s funny. You know, in the year that I’ve gotten to know you, I’ve really been impressed with the ability for your firm to deliver on your targets. So, tell me a little bit about your journey. For those who don’t know how you ended up in Canada of all places working with your brother.
Greg Feller [00:01:10] Yeah. So you know, I guess background is I’m from Vancouver originally, so I’m Canadian, actually dual citizen now, live in New York today, and my brother and I are actually identical twins. And we, sort of, we went to college together and then went down different paths. He went down the entrepreneurial path. I went down the more the traditional finance path, wound up on Wall Street. I was an investment banker, Wall Street, for about sixteen years. And probably, you know, during the dotcom days, I was actually a banker at Goldman in Silicon Valley, you know, working on the original dotcom IPOs. My brother at the time started to get interested in what the internet could do in financial services. And I would say he always had a passion around personal finances and understanding personal finances. And ultimately, you know, there are some basic principles in managing your personal finances, which most people don’t understand. You know, most people find it very complex and hard to understand. And that’s why, quite frankly, most consumers don’t get it right, and half of consumers are struggling with debt and don’t have a retirement account. And so he was really interested in the idea of bringing that online into the internet world but that was, you know, kind of as most dotcom things were, you know the technology really wasn’t ready yet. And then he kind of got into lending, that’s where he sort of started. As I say, every fintech out there, their journey generally starts with one product. So it’s Robinhood with free stock trading or Square with peer to peer, everybody starts somewhere. But ultimately what most of the players are doing, and like MOGO is doing, is building a much broader digital wallet, which ultimately bring all these financial products into one single wallet. But everybody’s journey starts with one product and MOGO started with lending. By the way, MOGO originally means money on the go. That’s where that name actually came from. A little bit of history there. And, so, then about 10 years ago, I was actually at Citadel working for Ken Griffin and the whole fintech space started to take off. And I realized what my brother was doing in Canada was really ahead of the curve, ahead of any of the fintechs in the U.S. But what he didn’t have were sort of the pieces that I brought to the table, the capital market side, the financial side. And so we kind of realized that we complement each other very well by working together. And so I joined him full time 10 years ago, and we kind of then built the company together from there.
Dan Weiskopf [00:04:04] Yeah, so at the end of the day, as twin brothers, you complement each other with your strengths and weaknesses and how does that flow into a culture at a company, right? Having two twin brothers leading the charge? I mean, what’s the culture at at MOGO?
Greg Feller [00:04:24] Yeah. So I would say that we’re first of all in a lot of ways we are, you know, we’re similar, but we have different backgrounds, we have different opinions and views, and we do complement each other well. But we also challenge each other. And so there’s people on our team that see that we’re constantly challenging each other and it kind of takes that right. And we’re pioneering new space sector. We’re trying to understand where, as you say, where the puck is going and there’s not always a clear roadmap. And so we spend a lot of time challenging each other on our opinions and where they’re going. And it’s funny because sometimes others will hear us and say, Oh, or you guys are you?That’s sounded pretty heated, are you guys? And we’re like, No, I mean, that’s just part of what we do. There’s one of the benefits, actually, as I say, is when you generally get into a debate with a lot of people, other personal things start to creep in like, Oh, are they challenging, whether I’m smart? Or maybe they think I don’t know what I’m doing. And when you’re identical twins, none of that comes in. You’re just debating on the facts or your views. And so it allows sort of for a very sort of clear debate that way, which actually sometimes is refreshing. But anyway, I think that that sort of permeates our culture, that we want everybody to be challenging everything and make sure that we all agree as we sort of move forward on this journey together. Our senior team has been together a long time. I’ve been there 10 years and the majority of our senior team, over half of them have been there longer than me. So that’s also a very long time in fintech land.
Dan Weiskopf [00:06:17] It is, yeah, you know, we do that at Toroso, where we challenge each other. And you know, if you’re, frankly, if you’re secure with yourself and your relationship with the other person, you could do that as long as you don’t get personal and you shouldn’t get personal when you have disagreements. So I get it, you know, and what it ends up doing is fostering an environment where people aren’t afraid to take risk. And in fintech, you’ve got to be taking risk.
Greg Feller [00:06:44] Yeah, yeah, 100%.
Dan Weiskopf [00:06:46] So you’re a fintech company that’s public, not private, you know? How does that affect your decision making?
Greg Feller [00:06:55] Mm hmm. Yeah. So, you know, look, we did go public early, I would say, relative to, you know, your typical U.S. fintech. One of the ways I describe it is, I mean, it used to be that companies like Amazon went public at a $300 million market cap, if you can believe it. And that journey to a trillion dollar plus actually happened in the public market context. And but today, as you know, the majority of U.S. companies are going public at 10, 20, 40, $50 billion plus. And so the majority or a big, big part of that, you know, enterprise value appreciation happens in a private market context. And I would say that, so we went public in Canada where I would say that because we don’t have the deep venture capital pools, it’s much harder to raise several hundred million dollars privately. And the big barrier to entry in this space ultimately is capital. It is a sector that requires a lot of capital. So you have to have access to that. And so our path in Canada was going public, and as they say, it’s a pro and con in Canada. The con is that we don’t have the deep venture capital pools, so it is a challenge. However, if you are one of the few to figure out your, navigate your way there, there’s. In a way less, competition. Because if you look in the U.S., how many fintechs have raised five hundred million plus? How many fintechs raise one hundred million plus? How many fintechs raised 50 million plus? I mean, there are probably hundreds. Right. And so the level of competition, I would say, is much higher in the U.S. because of that. Obviously, Canada’s smaller but on a relative basis for the size of the market and competition, I think in a lot of ways we’re better off in Canada.
Dan Weiskopf [00:08:47] You know, Greg, I apologize for those who are watching this. I haven’t given you an opportunity to tell the audience what MOGO is. Maybe we should just take a step back here and you could do that.
Greg Feller [00:09:02] Yeah. So MOGO is really building a digital wallet for next generation Canadians in Canada. We’re one of the top, say, two consumer fintechs in Canada with about 1.7 million users. Our digital wallet, today, does everything from helping the consumer control their spending, managing their credit score, I.D. fraud protection, giving them convenient access credit, and now we’re moving into automated investing, crypto, and soon we’re going to be launching a free stock trading app, which we’re super excited about. And we’re also doing this in the context of, as we say, financial health and planet health. And that’s actually a topic that we think is hugely relevant to the demo that we’re going after, number one. And ultimately, we just look what’s going on in the broader sector. You see all these sponsorship deals happening in the sector because brand matters, right? And so you’ve got, effectively, a whole new group of companies, both on the fintech and the crypto side building their brands and investing in those brands. And ultimately, we want to have a brand that we believe resonates with that next generation consumer. And we think there is a very unique and relevant connection point between financial health and Planet Health. Happy to get into that a little bit more. But that’s one of the things that also makes us unique. We are not just trying to provide digital products, but we’re trying to provide a solution that helps consumers make smarter financial decisions. So if you think about the historical financial products, they were there, but most consumers find it very complex to figure out their own financial journey. Everybody’s trying to figure out, Hey, how do I retire and have enough money to retire? What’s my path to financial success? In the meantime, the average consumer is generally overspending on their credit card, spending too much and not saving, while they are stressed out about their financial future, and our view is that nobody’s really provided that consumer with a solution that makes it easy for them to make smarter financial decisions. That means controlling their spending, which is being more mindful of your spending. When you’re more mindful, you’re more in control. And at the same time, being aware of some actually very simple financial and investing things that a consumer can do, like start investing early, invest in a diversified fund, start early and the power of that investing early, and that compounding effect over years is massive. Effectively, every single person working, if they start investing early when they’re 18, 19, 20 can retire as a millionaire. I mean, even if you’re making $40000 a year and you don’t make any more than that for the rest of your life and you actually save the recommended amount, you can actually retire as a multimillionaire. Most people don’t understand that. It’s effectively a guaranteed path to financial success in the future, and we’re trying to make that guaranteed path easier for the consumer. At the same time, we’re making a very direct link to the environment, and that direct link is that the majority of the consumer is carbon footprint is from their everyday spending. So how do we as a society reduce our carbon footprint? As you know, every country is trying to get on a path to being carbon neutral. And the only way to get there is either by reducing consumption by the consumer or by bringing an offsetting program as well. And ultimately, the right solution, we believe, is bringing the two together. Everybody is talking about ways to make an impact in the climate. But very few people actually want to change their habits. So it’s like, Yeah, I would like to make an impact, but I’m not going to stop driving my car. And so our view is what is one of the easiest ways to do it? Our card, as an example, basically allows you every time you use our card, we will plant a tree for every single purchase, and that will effectively put the average consumer that uses our card in more than a carbon neutral position, so that they’re more than offsetting their own carbon footprint. And that link between financial health and Planet Health is, hey, do I need that extra pair of running shoes? That probably is not a smart decision because I’ve overspent this month. Oh, and by the way, what’s the impact of those shoes on the environment? So thinking about both of those things together actually will allow the consumer to make a smarter decision, and at same time, we then offer that carbon offset through planting a tree. And literally, we have a path for Canada to be completely carbon neutral if more Canadians move their everyday spending to MOGO. And as we say, it’s sort of. Are you willing to give up your cash back or your air miles to save the planet? As we call it, sort of the Ultimate Rewards program, saving the planet. And that’s good. That’s a big part of our branding and who we want to be to the consumer as well.
Dan Weiskopf [00:14:40] Yeah, interesting. You know, two years ago, you were moving a little bit slower than you have been of late with some of your collaborations and acquisitions. Talk to me about how you’ve decided to make certain acquisitions and collaborations or partnerships of late versus before.
Greg Feller [00:15:07] Yeah. So a couple of things. Canada is unique in financial services. Canada is still dominated by five big banks in a way that even Wells Fargo and J P Morgan do not dominate in the US. And so Canadians just talk about being a fifth generation TD Bank customer. And so they talk about their bank in a way that they don’t in the U.S., as an example, and because of that, fintech adoption, I would say, has been much slower, historically. COVID actually, as we all know, has been an accelerator to digital adoption across all products and obviously in financial services as well. And that’s really kind of been a tipping point, I think, in Canada, as every single consumer in Canada needed to find a digital solution during COVID. Also, I would say crypto has been an accelerator to fintech adoption globally and in Canada in particular, because by definition, if you want to buy crypto, you can’t do that at your bank. And you know, the Canadian banks, one of the most conservative banks on the planet, the only banks globally, they kept their Triple-A rating during the credit crisis, which means that they’re even more conservative than even the big U.S. banks, which means they will be one of the last banks we believe to really embrace cryptocurrency as an example, which we think kind of gives a very clear runway for players like MOGO that are that are building out that capability. So that, I would say, is sort of why sort of pre-COVID, a lot of fintech adoption was slower, and our growth was slower because of it. And then as things started to accelerate, we have been big believers in consolidation in fintech. And the reason we’re believers, and I would say we’re probably one of the early players as far as sort of embracing it, and I think you’re going to see more and more of it in the U.S. as well, is because it really accomplishes some really important things that every fintech needs. Scale, number one, scale is critical, right? By the way, as you think about building a brand, as you think about lowering costs for the consumer across all your products. Scale is going to be critical to do that. And expertize across multiple verticals. Building a next gen digital bank, which is actually what we’re doing, requires expertize in multiple verticals. Whether it’s lending, whether it’s payments, whether it’s crypto, whether it’s investing, whether it’s trading. All of these actually are industries unto themselves and require expertize. What is the best way we believe to get that expertize? Actually acquisition, because a lot of those people, very difficult to hire the type of people that you really want. But through an acquisition, you can find those like-minded entrepreneurs that are building out verticals within those industries and have that passion as well. And that’s what we’ve sort of found with our acquisitions. Speed to market is another critical one. So one of the companies that we acquired MOCA Saving Investing Tool brought the securities industry expertize in investment industries. One of the senior guys there helped build Fidelity’s clearing business in Canada as an example. And it was really through that acquisition that has accelerated our path to be able to be in a position for the upcoming launch of mobile trade. We were probably a year, a year and a half away from launching our own free stock trading app without this acquisition. And so that time to market having, and by the way, that includes development capabilities and resources, which everybody’s constrained on. That includes the people around the table, compliance regulation, understanding of the industry, really. And then by the way, we also acquired registration capabilities as well, and that actually shortens the time frame. So for all those reasons, we’ve really embraced M&A as a strategic component of they way we are building out our platform. We did the same in payments where we acquired a company called Karta, which is a next gen issuer, processor, competitor to say a Marqeta. And that basically vertically integrated is on payments. Our card, which I talked about with the carbon offset, really are one of our biggest cost of goods sold is our processing fees to our processor. But now we were able to capture that in-house. And in addition to that, it added a B2B payments leg to the MOGO stool, so think of MOGO as a B2C consumer app in Canada and then a B2B digital payments business outside of Canada. And by the way, we haven’t talked about it, but we are very much of the view that this is an industry unlike software, unlike e-commerce, that is going to be one geographically because there are significant geographic regulatory barriers here that actually require feet on the ground in market expertize and capabilities. You can’t just turn on a new country and ship your product there. This industry doesn’t work that way.
Dan Weiskopf [00:20:29] Yeah, talk to me a little bit more about regulation, because everybody looks at regulation as a bad thing. I don’t think it really is. It’s how you embrace it. And usually it’s a catalyst to move forward, you know? Talk to me a little bit about the regulation in Canada.
Greg Feller [00:20:46] Yeah. So we are, as we say, regulated across pretty much all our products. We are not regulated by one entity that governs our entire business because we are not a bank. So we’re not regulated as a bank in Canada and we don’t actually see the need to become a bank. We believe ultimately we can offer all the products bank offers without ever becoming a bank through partnerships like we are already doing. But every one of our products is subject to regulation, both provincially and federally. And our view is that it would likely take a company two years to duplicate all of the regulatory pieces we have across all our products, both provincially and federally. And so that’s obviously, in a market that’s moving so quickly, that’s a long time, right? And that’s by the way, why our general view is when international players do come into Canada, they are going to be more likely to come in through partnerships or through acquisitions because organically is going to be a much bigger challenge, by the way, it requires regulatory and compliance expertize on the ground. You can’t use your U.S. people for that. You need Canadian people. It requires development expertize. We had the former head of PayPal Canada on our advisory board who said PayPal was never that successful in Canada outside of its main sort of legacy PayPal solution for buying on the internet. But if you look at PayPal, Venmo and the digital wallet they’re creating in the US, none of those products are really available in Canada, why? Totally different payment rails. Totally different regulatory environment, which would require actually development resources just focused on Canada and most of these players, even PayPal in a $300 billion market cap doesn’t actually, isn’t willing to sort of commit those resources to to Canada given, you know, they’re still early days and even penetrating the large U.S. markets. So, you know, regulation is absolutely a barrier here and a moat for local players like ourselves in Canada. I mean, if you look at the Canadian banking and broker dealer industry, despite the presence of big U.S. players like Goldman or JP Morgan in Canada, Canada is still dominated by the Canadian banks and still dominated by the Canadian broker dealers. Why is that? Regulation, right? And regulation is going to play, is already playing a role in crypto as well. So Canada is really one of the only companies in the world right now that has sort of laid out a clear path, a regulatory path, with cryptocurrency. In particular, it is requiring all crypto companies in Canada to be regulated, similar to equity broker dealer registration, and every company operating in Canada has already been given notification to that end, and you’re already seeing players like Binance exit Canada because of the regulatory requirements. And so those who are in Canada and are following that path like ourselves, like our partners Coinsquare, which we’ve got a significant investment in, we believe, have an advantage there from a regulatory perspective as well.
Dan Weiskopf [00:24:06] You covered this question, but I want you to expand a little bit on if you can, you know, who are your competitors and who do you admire as a competitor?
Greg Feller [00:24:17] Yeah. Well, so our competitors probably the, you know, there’s really one big player of scale that we sort of see as a competitor to MOGO right now in Canada, and that is, Wealthsimple. I mean, a lot of people have sort of called MOGO the Square of Canada because our app has very similar products to, say, Square’s Cash App. And in that vein, they would say, Wealthsimple is the Robinhood of Canada, because they’re the first to launch free stock trading in Canada. And right now they’re the only one. We expect to be the second free stock trading app in Canada. And they’re great company. The reality is, I say competitor because they’re the other big fintech player. But the reality is we’re really both going after the legacy market. That’s where the majority of business is today, where the majority of the consumer’s financial wallet is today. The big Canadian banks will make one 100 billion of pretax profit this year in Canada. So that is a massive TAM on any definition, and that’s the big opportunity. And I think ourselves in Wealthsimple, we think, are both well positioned. What you are seeing in this space is in general, consumers aren’t necessarily just going with one player as an example, Square and Robinhood, you see somewhere between 40 to 50 percent user overlap between their users, right? So the average user has a Robinhood account, may have a Square account, may even have a Coinbase account, right? And they sort of spread their financial wallet across multiple players. I don’t think anybody has emerged as sort of the dominant digital wallet for anyone yet. And I think we’re still at a stage where you’re going to have multiple players. The average user having multiple wallets that they use. So I think we really like our position in Canada because of the competitive landscape there. And I think, look, we you know, we obviously look at players like Robinhood and what they’ve done with their free stock trading app. And obviously their challenge now is moving from really a volatile trading base revenue which you kind of see in the last couple of quarters, how volatile that revenue can be to more of a recurring revenue model. And I think Coinbase is struggling with the same thing. MOGO’s come at it the other way where we’ve really built this recurring revenue model of subscription services revenue, and we don’t really have a big component of what I call the high octane trading revenue, that revenue that can go up and down very quickly. We think that the ultimate model is bringing those two together where you still have a large percent of your revenue in that recurring revenue area. Like today, probably ninety five percent of our revenue, we would call recurring revenue versus, say, a Robinhood, or Coinbase, the majority is more of that trading based revenue. But we really think the holy grail is going to is bringing all those together. But I would say other companies that we look at, we also look at brands right? You sort of think of the brand, one of the brands that I know my brother always looks at as sort of a north star and branding is Nike. I mean, think of Nike as this brand that’s been around forever, but it’s still managed to stay relevant with the next generation. And it’s a brand that’s inspiring to the next generation. And that’s what MOGO wants to be, is an inspiring brand to the next generation of brand that can help them getting control of the finances wealth while literally saving the planet. And those two things can actually happen together, and we don’t think anybody else is focused on that, and we think we’re starting to get some very good feedback from people on that. You think about marketing and user acquisition costs, ultimately, user acquisition cost, a big driver of that is how viral is your product? Do consumers want to share your product with somebody else with their friend and tell them about it? Right? Brands that they actually feel good about. Hey, I just went out and I purchased this item and I planted a tree and more than offset my carbon footprint. That’s actually something that consumer feels good about and wants to share. Do they want to share that they just made ten dollars of cash back on the card? Probably not. But do they want to share that they’re actually living a life that they think is sustainable and relevant?And we think the answer is yes. Ultimately, we believe that then translates into lower customer acquisition cost and better overall unit economics for the business.
Dan Weiskopf [00:29:22] So you touched on a couple of, a lot of different things, actually. You know, a business that is built as a subscription model or an annuitized model usually can trade at a higher multiple than one that is completely transactional. And then I know you’re also talking about launching MOGO Trade. Now, free trading sounds great, but you know, we’re in the business of making money. You know, how is something really free trading?
Greg Feller [00:29:59] Right, so in the US, as you know, the way that product is free trading is, and it’s commission free, right? The way it’s commission free is that players like Robinhood are making money from selling the order flow, you know, to players like Citadel and effectively offsetting the cost of delivering that service to the consumer and they’re generating revenue off that. And by the way, the other piece of that is you can have a break-even product from a financial perspective that is driving enterprise value in business. How does that happen? Well, it happens because if that is a huge user acquisition tool and just look at what free trading was from a user acquisition to a Robinhood. Look at, they’re opening up more accounts than all the other discount brokers in the U.S. combined, right? The biggest single cost in that sector is user acquisition. So if you’ve been able to create a product that may be a low margin product but actually drives low user acquisition cost, you’re effectively transferring revenue, or lower marketing spend. And if that ratio is in your favor, you’re actually better off. And I think that’s what Robinhood is actually proven their ability to do. So, A, we are big believers, especially in Canada, because we’re very early days. There’s only one free stock trading out there right now. None of the big banks have gone to free stock trading that this can be a very powerful user acquisition tool. But in Canada, actually, the revenue model is actually different, and we think it’s a lot more profitable because it’s not a pay for order flow model. It’s actually an FX model. And that is for the Canadian user, any of their US trading is shown in their account in Canadian dollars, and there is an FX fee for those transactions that sort of converts it obviously FX to Canadian dollars, and that revenue model can be five to 10 X what the pay for order flow model is in the US. So it’s a, let’s say it doesn’t have the controversy of the pay for order flow, and it’s actually significantly better in terms of financial impact. And so it’s a unique model in Canada versus what you’ve got in the U.S.
Dan Weiskopf [00:32:24] Hmm, interesting. So with all these questions and these interviews, I always like to have some wild card questions. And as a former banker, you’re always thinking out of the box, I’m sure. Looking backwards couple of years from now, what do you think investors are going to say, oh, I missed about the blockchain.
Greg Feller [00:32:54] Um yeah. I think look, good question. There is a lot of things that we’re thinking about around the blockchain right now. I would say an area that let’s say is a trending term right now, so you could say nobody was sort of missing that. But I actually believe is people are still trying to figure out what it means is the metaverse. And ultimately, I think the blockchain is going to power the metaverse. And, you know, I just see it with my own kids. I mean, my younger son is spending a lot of his free time in the digital world, right? And you can see a path, and by the way, his disposable income, right?Whether that where he wants to spend his dollars is actually not on a new pair of running shoes, but on digital items in a digital world, that’s literally where he wants to spend his money. And so, so many things that feel foreign to our generation to even try to wrap our heads around what is the value? Why would I ever pay real money for something that’s just purely digital? That world is already happening. I mean, it’s not even a debate. You may not understand it, but it doesn’t matter that world’s already happening. And I think the blockchain is going to empower that to the next level because what the blockchain is effectively enabling with, you know, look at games like Axie Infinity, which is powered on blockchain, where instead of actually spending money and actually having an in-game asset which really doesn’t have any monetizable value outside of that game, you can actually now spend money in the game for an NFT that actually you can monetize outside of the game for some form of cryptocurrency, which ultimately you can then turn into Fiat if you wanted to. But by the way, we’re in a world where a consumer and a user, in the next generation I think you’re going to see a lot of this, can literally spend a big portion of their life in that metaverse earning cryptocurrency in that world and keeping that currency in in the metaverse, lending, earning returns on it, investing. And now you’re getting into the world of DeFi, right? And effectively building their financial, I mean, they could literally become millionaires in the metaworld than never, even literally take that money out into Fiat, into the real world. Right? Because there is an entire system that is building to actually support and enable that. It’s already happening. I mean, Axie Infinity in the last 30 days has generated revenue of a billion dollars literally in the last 30 days transaction volume, real dollar transaction volume in the last 30 days in that one game of about a billion dollars. I mean, it’s really it’s already there. So a lot of people think it’s just kind of science fiction, and maybe one day, you know, it’ll be ready player one kind of world, but that world is already happening and, you know, now, and so you sort of think about NFTs. And so obviously with MOGO, we ultimately see ourselves as going to be a bridge to that world. And you think about the impact on the financial system. So interestingly, a lot of people I remember early days of fintech when we say, here’s what we’re doing to kind of be that next generation digital wallet and we say, well, the banks will build an app, so they’re going to have an app too. So what’s different, right? Well, it was obviously a lot more than that. But now with the cryptocurrency and blockchain and the new world that in DeFi, people are realizing that the entire banking system is actually changing and how retirement money supply system is actually changing. It’s a completely different world. The Fiat world and the cryptocurrency world. But I think it is going to explode exponentially, and it’s already starting, and it’s going to impact. And look, marketing dollars, think about marketing dollars, where do you want to put your marketing dollars? You want to put it on a billboard, physical billboard? Or do you want to put it in a virtual world in an NFT and support that economy? Because that’s where more and more of the next generation users eyeballs are actually spending right? That, to me, is really exciting, and we’re spending a lot of time thinking about kind of how we sort of play a role in that bridge because that bridge is obviously going to be required.
Dan Weiskopf [00:38:02] Yeah, don’t tell my son about all this because, and my dad used to always say, follow the kids, and that’s where you’ll know the direction of money, but I could see my son getting into all this. He’s 18 years old and he loves games, right? And he won’t leave his room, you know if he got into this. So maybe that’s what he’s doing in his room. I don’t know. Hey, Will.
Greg Feller [00:38:26] But now, by the way, what actually Axie Infinity is showing is actually literally gaming is a skill set that you can actually make money on, right? It’s not just a skill set that’s fun. You can literally make real dollars on that.
Dan Weiskopf [00:38:43] Yeah. So OK. So talk to me a little bit about different industries beyond finance that are going to be impacted by blockchain, as you said.
Greg Feller [00:38:52] Well, you know, I think if you sort of take that conversation about the metaverse. Advertising, right, marketing. That’s going to be impacted because that’s where more and more ad dollars may have to flow into that world outside of the physical world. And so then obviously you think of NFTs and you think of the art world. And again, people are still struggling trying to understand, Why would I ever want a digital NFT versus a physical piece of art? But that’s actually already happening. And you think about this term flexing, kids talk about flexing and you know you’re wearing your new running shoes because you’re flexing. Right? But actually, now a lot of their flexing is happening in the digital world. So do they want running shoes if they’re actually not spending a lot of time with their friends in the physical world? Or do they actually want an NFT that sort of says something about who they are in the digital world? So, I mean, it really is going to impact so many aspects of our lives. And it’s obviously already happening in a lot of ways. So it’s super exciting. And you know, I think everybody who says, I don’t understand it, all you have to do is talk to a teenager and then, you know, it doesn’t matter that you don’t understand it or that you wouldn’t do that. That’s what they are doing, right? So that’s just the way the world is going.
Dan Weiskopf [00:40:27] I agree with you about that, so. Greg, thanks very much for your time. You’re one of the presidents that we focus in on because you’re block and tackling every day and dealing with all the challenges of building a real business. Thank you very much for your time and stay tuned.
Greg Feller [00:40:48] Great. Thanks, Dan.
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