#citizenweb3

Episode link:
https://www.citizenweb3.com/cryptocito

Episode name:
The Cosmos, it's Might and Economics with Cryptocito

Cryptocito: 
I would love to open a café or love to do things that I really would love to do. And most people are stuck because they're stuck with jobs where they would probably never make the money to be able to pursue that passion. 

Anna: 
I believe that you are a secret brother, so I don't know what is going on. 

Citizen Web3: 
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Good space time to you all and welcome to a new episode of the Citizen Cosmos podcast. We are joined by Michael today, also known as CryptoCito. 

I was supposed to pronounce his surname. You can't see Michael's face right now, but he's smiling and I'm not going to do it because I did not attempt to it, but you have guys probably heard most of his, if you haven't, then you should. As YouTube videos, you probably should watch them. They are very, very, very, very profound. Michael, welcome to the show, man. 

Cryptocito: 
Yeah, thank you so much for the invitation. It's really a pleasure to be here. 

Citizen Web3: 
Should I call you CryptoCito from now on or, Michael? 

Cryptocito: 
As you wish. As you wish. I think CryptoCito goes well, but you can also call me Michael, so it's up to you. 

Citizen Web3: 
I'm going to go with CryptoCitter. 

Cryptocito: 
All right. 

Citizen Web3:
First question, what is CryptoCitter? How did that come to life? 

Cryptocito: 
I've always had very close connections to Latin America. My first girlfriend was Colombian. I learned Spanish in school. So For me, Spanish is one of the coolest languages out there. After I lived in Latin America for one and a half year and then shortly after I started to make videos for YouTube, I thought about a name, obviously. 

I don't know. It just came to my mind, man, CryptoCito, that fits to me. Spanish, everything that you pronounce in the ending, you add a C-do or C-dine and it has this kind of slang ending. So I'm like, CryptoCito is very easy to remember. If I tell people about it, they're like, okay, you don't have to spell it 10 times. 

People can type it in and find you. So I think it was an easy choice and it just came to my mind randomly. But yeah, I think it's part of my personality in some sense. 

Citizen Web3: 
I like that story. In Russian, Cito is sieve. The things you sieve like flower, so CryptoCito, kind of like actually has a good flow to it. 

Cryptocito: 
Yeah. That's cool. I didn't know that. 

Citizen Web3: 
So you said that you have connections to Latin America and then you mentioned blockchain. So the obvious second question before we get into cosmos, of course, is your Crypto journey, man. I mean, I would love to hear it because I don't think I have. I think I've heard parts of it when we spoke to like personally, but I would love to hear the juicy parts now as well. 

Cryptocito: 
It's funny. I love it because I'm on the other side. Usually I ask these questions, but now people are asking me. I think it's actually the first time that I'm being interviewed. So that's really cool, really funny. 

Citizen Web3: 
Yay! 

Cryptocito: 
My Crypto journey started in early 2017. Back then I was a student at university. 

I met my very best friend back then and still very best friend today, Chris. And you like what students do, you know? We thought about, man, what do we do with our lives? 

What should we do? How do we want to make money? Because I don't want to get trapped in a company, especially in Germany, which is where I'm from. The dream that when you graduate from university or even after school, you find a nice job in a great company like Mercedes-Benz, BMW. 

And if you get a contract there, that's a jackpot, right? But Chris was the first guy that I met who thought kind of like out of the box and also had this ambition and this drive to maybe do something different and travel the world. I mean, there's almost 200 countries around the world to visit and I want to see all of them and being stuck for 30, 40 years in a company and then being old and tired. 

I don't think I would have the energy and time to travel all that. So that was kind of like always my dream and my goal to have a life where I can set the rules. When I met Chris, we dig deep into a lot of things. Stumbled on Bitcoin in, I think January or February, just a friend told us about it and we were like, man, this thing is going towards $1,000. I don't know if it actually went to $1,000 already, but it wasn't a process of getting back up and making new all-time highs. 

Like, man, this is crazy. Why are people paying $1,000 for Bitcoin? Why are they doing that? 

Are they crazy? And I didn't really look at the price for half a year. Obviously, I heard it and more and more the news, but what this triggered for me was to learn how money works and learn how banking works. 

That was kind of like the first step on that journey. I really found out that, man, this is a very blind spot education system and I studied Chinese and economics, so this should have been on my roadmap and my study program. How do central banks issue currency or money and how do commercial banks work and how do credit systems work and all these things? But I never really understood that. So together with Chris, instead of going to parties and drinking and what students normally do, we just were awake till 3, 4 a.m. every night and just reading and learning and studying, reading white papers. It took us half a year to really get behind it. And then I think in July, August, we bought our first coins. 

That's how we got into it together. And then, I mean, obviously the bull run back then, you know, everybody who was around was crazy. Everybody got rich really, really quick. We made a lot of money together. 

We had the same account. We're like, man, cool. We're getting rich now. We're coming millionaires. And then emotions took over, greed took over, and we're like left with more money that we thought about making, but we lost it all. 

We lost every single cent during 2018, 2019 because simply we weren't ready for that. I had no investment background. I had more of a middle class background where you just work for your money and you do things. You're not really educated to oversee your investment. So I never had experience in that. And I think everybody at least once has to lose everything so that you know how it is and know how to do better. 

So that was kind of the first big lesson. But instead of giving up, which I have seen personally, many, many people that just came into crypto, form it in, lost all their money and then left, right? And then four years later, form it back in. But what we've done, we stick to the industry. We're really convinced of blockchain in the long run, how it can impact our society, our economies and everything, right? It touches upon so many things, voting, right? A lot of niches and use cases where I thought, man, this makes so much sense to just replace human emotions through code, basically, right? 

And I think that's a beautiful idea. And that time as part of our study program, we moved to China, to Shanghai. And this has been the best coincidental move ever because Shanghai is the epicenter of crypto and blockchain technology. 

I didn't even know that when I went there. But I was like, man, this is crazy what's going on here. The amount of people that you can meet, project leaders, VCs, even people from government levels that are just interested in pushing this technology, investing into it, and then started to just go to events, just on meetup.com, hit up Bitcoin and see what event is going on. 

And ironically enough, my first crypto event that I went to in China was in the HSBC Tower, right? The guys that we want to get rid of. It was so funny. And I couldn't believe that, man, how can they have a maker-dow crypto event in the HSBC Tower? 

Like, this doesn't match up to me. So that was so funny. And when I was at this event, I thought, man, I love this. 

I love to meet people. I was literally the last one to walk out of the door. They had to kick me out because I was just walking to everybody and shaking hands like, hey, what are you doing crypto? What's up? 

How are you doing? And I love that. So I thought, I don't want to just attend. I want to organize events. And then it took me a couple of weeks to attend more events, build up a small network, open my first WeChat groups. And then I hosted my first events. And then from there, it kind of grew into what then would become crypto Mondays. 

So for those who don't know, crypto Mondays is basically the TED talks of crypto. And we co-founded that in Shanghai. And I think even today, they still run events. Obviously, I'm not there anymore, but it became pretty big. We have, I think, 2000 members in the community. And it's very international, very cool speakers coming from all over the world. We had Bobby Lee, even their controversial guy. 

But tier one, I would say, in terms of influence in the crypto sector. So that was really cool. And then after a year in China, I was like, man, I want to bring this somehow to Latin America. Remember, I had always close connections and emotions to Latin America. So I met this guy in the Shanghai crypto community, who is Colombian. 

And I told him, like, man, what do you think? Let's do this in Colombia somehow. And he's like, yeah, this would blow up. This would be so cool. Let's do it. So we organized a conference in Medellin, Colombia, May 2019. 

Citizen Web3:
Wow. 

Cryptocito:
I flew there one way and I thought, OK, I'm just going to stay there for a week and then go back to China because you know what you hear in the news. You get shot at the airport, you get killed, you get this and that. But after literally two hours walking through Medellin, I was, man, this is beautiful. I love the people. I love the culture. It's safe here. 

You know, everything that you hear is kind of not true to most extent, right? Sure, there are some areas in Medellin that you have to avoid, but most of the city center is very safe. So you can move very freely and very safely like here in Lisbon. 

Also, it's very safe. So I stayed there for almost a year. And in that year, I met a whole different culture, a whole different set of people. And I went from Shanghai, where you have all the money, all the hype and so many crypto startups to Latin America, where you have still a couple years to catch up to that stage. 

A lot of people are still trying to learn about basics, about what is blockchain, what is crypto, how can I get started? So it was interesting to see the contrast. And it gave me really the chance to expand my network, expand my knowledge. And yeah, I traveled all over to Chile. 

We had events in Buenos Aires, in Brazil. That was a really, really great time. And during that time, obviously, then I started to also invest more and more. And then 2020, when the pandemic started, I kind of like went all in on crypto because I thought, like, man, this is like picking up money from the floor, you know, this crash. 

So I was really convinced for a lot of years. And out of this kind of journey, I just started to make videos because there was also the pandemic and lockdown. So I was like, OK, I can't organize events. I was supposed to organize events in my city in Germany because I had to finish my study, my degree. So I was supposed to do that, but it wasn't possible due to COVID. And then I'm like, OK, I just buy a camera, buy a microphone. 

Right at the time when everybody did that on Amazon, so I had to pay the premium even on that. But yeah, I just started and now I'm, I don't know if I'm a full-time YouTuber. I don't even know, but I enjoy it. I enjoy doing it. 

Citizen Web3: 
Mama, I'm a YouTuber. 

Cryptocito:
Yeah 

Citizen Web3: 
It's great how you were talking about how people in economics and you studied economics, but you didn't study the juicy parts. And what I came to realize after 10 years of blockchain is that if I want to explain to somebody why blockchain is important, I don't talk about blockchain. I tell them how the current economic system works, really works. And then they're like, really, is that how it works? And I was like, well, yeah, that's exactly how it works. And then they're like, oh, fuck. 

And that's where it starts to go the wrong way. And you mentioned as well, like clubs and everything. And this reminded me in 2017 or 16, one of my good friends, the founder of Cyber, I remember we were in a club and he went downstairs, he got out his laptop and he just started reading papers inside the club. He put his headphones in and I was like, I'm not dancing. I'm reading white papers, man. And then I screwed that. What were your first coins? You said you bought some first coins. What were the first ones? Do you remember? 

Cryptocito: 
I think one of my first ones, and again, I was just starting, I never bought Bitcoin first. I bought altcoins. I think the first ones were XRP, XLAM. I think even EOS, I think EOS, I just threw in 50 euros. And then a few weeks later, it was a thousand euros. 

I'm like, how is this possible? This is a scam. I don't know what it is. I didn't even know what I bought. Those were my first ones. And then I also bought some ADA right after they did their ICO. 

I think it came out in October then. So that was also where I bought in pretty early. I held ADA over the years, some till today. So that was a good decision. But yeah, I mean, in the beginning, if you're new to crypto, you don't really know what you're buying. 

You don't really know what you're doing, right? You're just like, man, I like the logo. I like Droughts, Hoskinson's haircut. 

I like, I don't know what I like, but I just buy it, you know? Actually, I was also very early involved in some mining stuff. A lot of my friends picked this up and also this cloud mining thing, which is a 99.99% Ponzi scheme and a scam. But I was just learning a little bit about it, invested some money. 

But I think it broke even more or less. But those were my beginnings. And I think this also helped me better kind of like refine my strategy and my senses, which kind of like evolved into my research methodology as of today. 

Citizen Web3: 
I will ask you about that. That's a good point. But how did the Cosmos connection come? I want to hear that. I mean, I'm sure everybody wants to hear that. So where did the Cosmos? How did it click? That's what you asked me. When did you become a full blown Cosmos? Come on. 

Cryptocito: 
Sure. So Cosmos is actually a very new thing. I only got really into Cosmos in January of 2021 this year, which is like eight months ago. And obviously I was already really, really deep into other protocols. I studied a lot about Polkadot. I read a lot, obviously deep in Ethereum and Bitcoin itself, monetary policies. But then I always thought this already when I was in China, we need something that connects all blockchains. 

We need interoperability. And back then we had Icon, Aeon and Onechain. right So those were the three projects. 

That have kind of like created this interoperability alliance. I think they called it back then. And obviously it failed. Obviously they're not big anymore. 

The price is slammed. But it helped me understand what is interoperability and why does it matter? So when I'm in 2021, started to really do my research, I think I just had some atom that I bought maybe one and a half years ago. I have to check what this atom was again. I think I bought it sometime and I have to do more research. So I started to read more about it. I started to tweet about it as well. 

Because that time I was also getting more and more active on Twitter. And then Jack Samplein, who is one of the core developers at Cosmos, also other projects, he reached out to me on Twitter and he's like, hey, you want to jump on a call? I can walk you through and I'm like, OK, cool. Other project has ever done that and offered me to explain me how their project works. 

And such a big project. Charles never sent me a message. Gavin never sent me a message. But Jack did. So I'm very, very thankful for that. 

And he literally took the time to go on a Zoom call. I had a lot of questions, obviously, but to really explain me. And then obviously I spent a lot of time learning myself then. A couple of weeks later, I had him on my channel and that was kind of like the kickstart in my Cosmos career. 

Since then, I'm getting more and more addicted to it. And there are so many things that I haven't really fully covered. I have still to learn. But I think I'm pretty much behind how Cosmos works, how the structure works. Because at the beginning, I didn't even know, is this one blockchain? 

Is it many blockchains? There's like basic questions that I think I found the answers to. But I would still say I'm relatively new to the Cosmos community. And my channel also helps me a lot to understand things faster and understand things better. You mentioned earlier, like I have a lot of these people on my channel. 

I try to get all the core developers, CEOs of all the teams behind. And this is, I think, very valuable. And the fact that I'm just recording and sharing it, I think also makes it valuable for other people. So I'm kind of like just leveraging that. And yeah, so that's kind of my short Cosmos story. But I think this is definitely something that going to be busy with for the next years, at least that's my feeling. 

Citizen Web3: 
I've watched your channel before we spoke. In my opinion, the job you did with the channel as a YouTuber, I mean, let's like Cosmos for a second out of it. This is great. 

You did a fantastic job in such a short amount of time. And you have Telegram channel, which I saw the group, there was like 450 people or something like that. They actually talk. 

There is a Twitter account that has followers. And what's the secret? What's the secret sauce? How did you manage in such a quick short of time to great all that? 

Cryptocito: 
That's a great question. And as I think what I found out for myself, the secret is authenticity. Today, most content creators, they're not authentic. They're not trying to really share their passion. They're rather trying to chase numbers, chase KPIs or chase the algorithms. 

Right? Sure, you have to understand how algorithms work. You have to place your keywords in your backends that people can type in the word and find your video. 

Of course, you have to do that. But I think what most people in content creators and especially crypto YouTubers are not doing is just share what you're actually interested about. And everybody's just sharing referral links. 

And that's all fine. Of course, crypto is also there to make a lot of money really fast. And I'm happy for everybody who makes money. But I think most people are, again, just chasing likes and numbers and not trying to provide valuable content and also learn and be authentic. So I think that's at least my kind of secret. 

Anna: 
What is the most exciting part that you find in crypto world? What do you find that is you have an answer from deep inside of you that's, oh, OK, it's a point that I really like? 

Cryptocito: 
You mean about my content creation, YouTube story or about crypto in general? 

Anna: 
About crypto in general, because your YouTube story is just a part of your learning path, I think. 

Cryptocito: 
I think that what crypto is basically enabling is that it cuts out a lot of middle man and it cuts out a lot of intransparent business models that we don't even know how the fuck they work. 

Right. So I think it helps a lot of people to get access to financial services. When I got into crypto, I spent a lot of time trying to understand how can crypto benefit Africa or Latin America or Uzbekistan. 

Right. And I held presentations back then and I found some crazy numbers that people have to pay 80 or 90 percent to take a loan in countries like Uzbekistan, right, which is crazy. So I think crypto is kind of like in the long run designed to break up those business models and at least help some people to include them financially, to bank them without having to have a bank account, right? But just have kind of like financial sovereignty. That's kind of like what I'm really excited about in the long run. And in the short run, I think what excites me most is to have a little bit more wealth decentralization or wealth transformation, because obviously crypto is the fastest growing asset class under the sun. And it provides a lot of opportunities for small guys like myself to just change their life fundamentally and to just settle their finances at an early young age. And then you can really focus on things that you actually want. 

And I think that's the net positive for society, for our economy. I know so many people that are like, man, if I had the time, I would love to do this. Or I would love to open a yoga school. 

I would love to open a cafe or love to do things that, you know, I really would love to do. And most people are stuck because they're stuck with jobs where they would probably never make the money to be able to pursue that passion. So I think that's in the short term. And then long term again, is breaking up those business models, disrupting finance, disrupting other sectors and industries. And I think cosmos can actually play a big role in that.  

Anna: 
Cool. And I cannot stop asking this kind of question. So what would you love to do, despite being a YouTuber? Maybe you want to open a yoga class or something else? Tell us. 

Cryptocito: 
That's a very good question. I have a lot of things that are right down always. You know, I have a book where I write down my kind of like motivations, my passions. And I have to actually do it now. 

The past weeks I've not done it because I was so stuck with my videos and all these things. But there's a lot of things I want to do. Obviously, I think for the next couple of years, I really want to build a very strong community of people that are like minded, people that are open. Because I think my mission is to help get rid of this tribalism in crypto. Because in crypto, you have all these chains, Ethereum and Cardano now and then Solana and this and Bitcoin. 

And they're all kind of like very fanatic about their coins that they're holding. But I think what I really would love to do is I don't know, build a brand, build an ecosystem, build a channel, build a community that is just very open and inclusive. And I think that's also one of the main reasons why I'm so hard on cosmos, because cosmos is at least to me the only project that reflects that, right? Maybe Polkadot and other layer ones, because their purpose is actually to connect all chains. 

But I like that from an ideological perspective. And then after that, I mean, I have a lot of things that I want to do in my life. I want to go on a boxing camp one day. I want to do a lot of crazy things. I want to travel a lot, travel the world. I have a big bucket list of things that I want to do. But I think for the next three, five years, maybe that's really what I want to do. Build a strong community. And I've always, like I explained to you guys earlier, hosting events is basically the same thing, right? 

In real life. And I'm just doing this online now. And I had really passionate and fun doing this a couple of years ago. In the real world offline. 

And now I'm doing it just online. And I think the feedback I get from the people is really, really amazing. Even from you guys, when you send me a message like, man, you know, I really love your channel because you're not just shilling coins, but you're also kind of like trying to express an ideology or express this inclusive mindset. If we all swim towards the same direction, we would probably achieve more instead of everybody's fighting each other and throwing shots at each other. So that's kind of like my mission, I would say. 

Citizen Web3: 
That's really awesome because this is connected a lot with what we're trying to do in Citizen Cosmos. And I think the mission that we're trying to kind of swim towards, I'm going to carry on using the analogy that you used. You know, so it's great to hear that we are not the only ones swimming in that direction and that there are other people who we've already managed to connect with like yourself. And by the way, I would just add one thing to you. You said like a lot of things that are great things. And you said to help to bank the people. 

I would sell to help the unbank the people you know fuck banking. No, but this is just a personal thing. Anna asked you about motivation and she asked you about what clicks with you. And there is one phrase that you said at the beginning of our interview, the beginning of the conversation after we started to record already, you said humans emotions through code. And I want to go back to that because it clicks a lot with me and it clicks a lot with things I'm obsessed with. So I even wrote it down because when I take notes and I wrote this phrase down to go back to that, what do you mean by that? Why did you mention that phrase and what does it mean for you? Human emotions through code? Can you elaborate on that a little bit? 

Cryptocito: 
So when somebody asked me what is blockchain, why does it matter? My answer is blockchain replaces human emotions with code with mathematical algorithms and code. Right. And I think that's easier to understand instead of coming with mining algorithms and proof of work, proof of stake, like people are like, OK, stop. 

I need a coffee or whatever. But if you tell them like, man, the way money is issued, we don't even know what's the current inflation, right? Because there's different ways to measure it. And if they want to have a certain inflation target, then they just change the way they measure it, right? And they calculate it. 

So it's very intransparent and we don't know what goes on behind closed doors. Same counts for the supply chain industry. Same counts for financial services and for so many things. 

And I think at least in my world the way I'm convinced  blockchain and distributed leger technology as a parent term of blockchain because it also includes Dag technology or other stuff the biggest innervation for me is that it elevates accounting from double entry to triple entry accounting I read like a lot of old papers also from Earn Greg and other guys who have worked on this separately from the kind of like the cyberpunk movement but they wrote about this I was like man what if there was a public ledger that keeps track of all the entries in the book right in bookkeeping and

This would change so many things, right? Because now, even today, if you just go from an institutional perspective, all the companies that release their annual statements, we have to trust that these numbers are even correct, right? Sure, the balance might be correctly, mathematically, but how do we know that whatever they write into that ledger is correct? 

Then blockchain or DLTs fix that. And I think this has such a large impact on many things. And again, it cuts out a lot of bullshits. It cuts out a lot of middlemen that take the majority of the cuts. 

And it also takes away and removes the power that they have. Because right now, all these large institutions and brokers and clearinghouses and all these things that go up in the background, they're making so much money, have so much control. And the majority of people don't even understand how it works, right? Even I, to most extent, still don't understand how money works, even though I spent a couple of years trying to understand it. 

But it's very hard to understand and how all is kind of connected. And through crypto, and we've seen this now with DeFi, you can be your own liquidity provider. You can put your money to work. You have so many other ways to generate cash flow in a trust minimized way, maybe not trustless. 

We talked about this yesterday, but in a trust minimized way. And I think everything that goes at least one inch closer to decentralization is already a win. I don't think we'll have full decentralization, also full privacy and peer-to-peer networks. I think we'll have a balance in between. We also see now CBDCs, for example, blowing up in most countries around the world, and they will come and they will not be decentralized. But I think crypto and blockchain and DLGs can really help to get us a step closer. And I think that's already a win. you know and

If we can drag in more people along the way, people that are in countries like Venezuela, like Argentina, where they're suffering from inflation. Now, I have a friend here. He's Lebanese in Lebanon. You have hyperinflation right now. He's always telling me, like, okay, if you have $100,000 in Lebanon right now, it's actually worth $10,000 because the bank will only give you $10,000. They don't have $100,000. So imagine living in a world where your money is dependent on the daily mood of the bank that you have your money in, right? And that's crazy. So that's kind of like how I see this, how code can really replace emotions and also replace kind of like the power structures to a certain extent. But yeah, we're still very, very early and we're still at a fraction of what's possible. 

Citizen Web3: 
You mentioned really great points. And I think you mentioned accounting at one point, bookkeeping. And you know, when I told you my crypto journey, I told you that at the beginning, I didn't really understand a lot, but then I started to study a lot of economics. What I realized at one point is that if you study economics, but by yourself, not taking university books, which I'm sure they're good and cool. I'm not trying to put them away here, but I'm just saying that there is a lot of things that you can go deeper where the university doesn't let you go. And what I realized is that every single scum, every single economic failure, and I call it a scum, maybe I shouldn't call it a scum, but every single economical failure goes, the roots go back to one single thing, tempering with accounting books. 

And even the biggest campaign, which is the Mississippi campaign up until today has happened because of tampering with accounting. It didn't exist. Simply those lands that they were trying to sell, nothing existed there. 

And I just swamps. And it's like the history just has been repeating itself again and again and again. And people keep on believing that. And yeah, I really hope that blockchain will change that because it's a new type of accounting book to begin with.  

Cryptocito: 
Yeah. And I think exactly then the next question is, okay, we have now all these public ledgers, right? We have the Bitcoin ledger, we have the theorem ledger, we have other ledgers, but they're not compatible to each other. 

So that's the next thing. If you think it through, you can't send information from Bitcoin or value, let's say you can't send Bitcoin to the theorem chain, right? It's not compatible to each other. That kind of like limits a lot of the capabilities and of the potential for this technology and for what's possible. Sure, right now you have bridges to actually do that, but those are very kind of centralized. 

You know, most of them have custodians in between. So if you do that, you're basically defeated in the entire purpose of it because the purpose of crypto, at least in my perception, is to have full self-custody and full control over your funds and information and value, right? And implementing a centralized bridge in between kind of defeats the purpose. But sure, this is maybe proof of concept. 

We're still very early. And at least it kind of like unlocks value. It shows, okay, there's product market fit for it. And I think Cosmos is one of the position projects that can fix that, right? And that can also really establish itself as this ultimate interoperability layer, the kind of like TCPIP standard for the blockchain economy. And that's what really, really excites me. And I think it's inevitably the next big thing in crypto and the DLT industry. 

Citizen Web3: 
I think it's a good point that we come to Cosmos here because obviously this is all about Cosmos to start with. What is your current take? Let's talk about bridges because you mentioned IBC, obviously, and you mentioned bridges. What is your current take on how did the way that IBC shaped should, for example, do you think we should incentivize relays as you take not to incentivize your layers? 

Do you think that we should wait with the release of the bridges and wait until they become decentralized or shall we already release what we have today? All those things that people talk about in chats all the time. And I'm sure that you talk about it. Well, I know for a fact, because I've heard that you speak about a lot of those things to a YouTube guest. What is your take on all of that? 

Cryptocito: 
Yeah, so first off, I'm not kind of technical. So from a technical angle, it's really hard for me to say which bridging model is better suited. But I think from an economic incentive model, this is one of the main thing that really needs to be fixed right now. How do you incentivize IBC relays? 

And I think Greg Azuri from Akash, she also made a tweet about this and like, hey, guys, we really have to find a solution for this because running an IBC relays like 8K a month. right So it's like, OK, somebody has to put the money down and there's no financial returns for it. So why would you do that? And crypto, of course, has to be kind of like a self-sustaining cycle where you provide security. For example, that's how proof of stake works. You provide security, but you get inflation rewards in return or a cut of the transaction fees and those kind of things. So there is kind of like some economic incentives behind. And I think that's also fair. That's fine. But this debate right now, I think, again, I'm not too deep into all of that. But the way I see it is I think it would be great to also maybe pack it to the Cosmos Hub. Right. I mean, there's a lot of discussions right now. 

How do we establish the Cosmos Hub as the heart of the interchange, as this kind of like credible, neutral space that does not become a DeFi application or a pure DeX or something, but it rather kind of like grows in value with the growth of Cosmos itself. And I think that's something really exciting. But I'm not sure actually, I think somebody tweeted about this, that there are people working on this and it's going to be interesting to see. But yeah, I think this is definitely something that needs to be fixed and this needs to be worked on. But yeah, I think maybe in the next couple of weeks, I'll have a more sophisticated answer as I'm also going to be talking to the Gaia lead, Billy Renicamp, in a few days and video will also be on my channel. So I'm going to ask him this question as well. 

But yeah, I think definitely would be cool to pack it to the hub and also maybe have some kind of structure that affects the tokenomics of Atom, so that it has some real organic demand. But yeah, we have to see how it unfolds. 

Citizen Web3: 
Enjoy the conversation with Billy, because it's going to be a good one. Billy is a very profound conversationalist, shall I say. He's a great guy and he has some deep thoughts. I think it was all weird, just probably a podcast episode in terms of we were talking about some strange, strange things. 

And this was exactly a year ago, I think it was recorded in Berlin, maybe a little bit more even and we were speaking. So you're going to enjoy this. Yeah, I think you're going to love the conversation. But I'm going to look forward. 

Cryptocito: 
I'll watch yours or listen to your podcast with him. And then I think I'm good prepared then to ask him about crazy things. 

Citizen Web3: 
He's good. He's good. So I'm really looking forward to that episode as well on your channel, because I really want to hear not just from the technical side, what it's going to say, because he's good at that as well, obviously. But from perspective of explaining his ideas, talking about like the IBC relay and instrumentation, I think the most obvious answer here is fees. But of course, we don't have enough fees. So I think in my opinion, maybe the second most obvious answer, if there is a relay or that connects obviously two chains, maybe they just shed the community. There is a community pool in every single blockchain on TenderMint. Well, so I hope that they at least devote something to the stakeholders. So I mean, why not take maybe until the fees become large enough to support IBC relays to take part of that community pool? 

I know it's going to be a manual and that's kind of defeats the purpose of a lot of things. This is kind of what like springs to mind as you were talking about it. And I was thinking, well, I mean, we do have community pools. We don't want to like empty them because it's not their purpose. And maybe in Cosmos and Atom, that's definitely not the way to go. But for other chains, maybe that's not such a bad idea to give them some of that money. Maybe it's rubbish. I don't know. So just come in here. 

Cryptocito: 
Yeah, but I think we're at a phase right now where it really makes sense to think about solutions for that. But I think the first and most important thing has really been that IBC shows that it has product demand and product market fit also. And I think for the first two, three months, it was a little bit, hey, OK, it's life. 

Nobody's using it. And then Osmosis came and really killed it and took it out there in your gain adoption. And I think that was a very important first step. Another next step is OK, how do we build this self-sustaining economy that further decentralizes the network and enhances the performance over the next years? But I think actually, Ethan Buckman, the co-founder of Cosmos along with Jake one, I think he is really trying to fix this, at least trying to find solutions for that to get away some other people. But I think him working on this is a good sign that IBC is going to be around for a long, long time. 

Citizen Web3: 
Ethan has got an amazing research team at it for all systems. And this is actually another suggestion, I would say, for YouTube. We managed to get one guy for sure, Jacques. I'm not going to try to pronounce his surname, but this was in terms of research and in terms of technology. And he works for Informal Systems, which is for everybody who's listening. This is the company that Ethan has founded and that's doing a lot of research for Cosmos and for IBC and a lot of the stuff that has actually been implemented is, first of all, research by these guys. And they're a very academic, a lot of academia. There is a lot of brains there and whoever hasn't heard of them, go and check these guys out. They are fantastic. They do some fantastic job and, man, like a suggestion for you. You're going to also love these conversations. These guys are really, really profound in terms of technology and how deep they go. And I'm sure your audience would love that, absolutely. 

Cryptocito: 
Yeah, I would love to talk to them. And also, I think what they're doing, and that's also something really, really important, I think they're also auditing all the codes. I think it's the primary sales pitch is basically their security firm, security company, if I'm correct. But yeah, I think that's something really important. And from what I've read and heard about, and I talked to Ethan before, not in the context of Informal, but in the context of Cosmos, he's definitely still incredibly active on many ends when it comes to IBC relays, when it comes to atom tokenomics. That's also a thing that a lot of community members, and I'm closer to kind of the new people that are joining to Cosmos. So I'm the basics, like, okay, how does the atom inflation works? 

How does this work and that work? So I think it's really cool to see that they're really deep in those topics and are fully aware of everything that's going on, and also checking on each other. So I think that's a very good sign. 

Citizen Web3: 
I was just going to say that when we recorded an episode with Tess Irini Arason, we had a lot of conversation about what's her job title called, and she's like the main developer. And it's amazing to see how all those teams on Cosmos, like Informal and these guys, how one team, for example, researches something and another team implements it, and another team checks the code or whatever. And this is exactly how Cosmos works as well. You have all those connections between different blockchains, and it's amazing to see that we're actually trying to resemble it, even in the real world, which we call Web2, or even not Webworld, right? But still, it's cool to see that all the teams that are working on Cosmos are trying to implement the same thing in real lives, and it's really cool. 

Cryptocito: 
I'm also a very big fan of the whole Cosmos ecosystem, and I think there are so many exciting projects that are trying to fix real world issues and you know trying to implement like, read the network, trying to build a carbon credit marketplace. So I think it goes way beyond that, but also on a kind of like infrastructure layer, like we're talking about Informal, for example, to also make sure that everything works smoothly, that the economics incentives are aligned, that the security is guaranteed. And I think so far they have done an incredible job. 

I mean, I think IBC is working flawlessly. It's amazing. It's very fast. 

It's very high performing. And I'm really looking forward to all the amazing things that are still coming. You know, liquid staking is coming, shared security is coming, relay incentives, obviously. This is another big thing. Kind of like seeing the whole Internet of Blockchains or Internet of Dows. I think we talked about this yesterday. This is something that I'm really excited to see grow in the whole space. 

Citizen Web3: 
I don't know if I can mention that. Obviously, you don't have two answers, so you could just tell us and talk about it. I know that you had some ideas about offline events. We spoke about this a couple of days ago as well, I think, actually, but off the podcast thing. So I don't know if you want to talk about it or if you want to mention it. But yeah. 

Cryptocito: 
No, no, sure. I mean, like I was explaining in my background and journey, you know, I always love to meet people also in real life. I think it has a huge difference also, like just this offline world, you know, right now everything is online through COVID also. Everything has happening online. 

So I think the offline world gets even more valuable and just shaking someone's hand and talking face to face. I think it has something special and it really helped me to jumpstart my crypto journey. And I know for a lot of people, it can be a great entry point because it's kind of like this event. 

I think it has something magical around it. Like this event, you know, this like, man, I was at this conference. It was so cool and I met so cool people there and the food was great and the presentations were great. So what I thought is I'm here in Lisbon and there's all these conferences coming up. East Lisbon is obviously a big one. Solana conference in early November. 

So I was thinking, man, we need probably the Cosmos conference here. We know with all these projects here. And obviously since I'm on ground here and I have a friend who is great at, you know, editing, videographing, he has a drone and 4k stuff that he can shoot. So I was like, man, let's maybe organize something here, get some speakers together. 

I also mentioned this to Sunny from Sika or cofounder of osmosis. And he's like, man, this is definitely something, you know, I'm also interested in and I have been saying for years now, we should have the CosmoCon, I think he wants to call it or has call it. But I think that's something I'm really interested to do, maybe something regular, but to start also given that we're still in this pandemic situation, people have travel restrictions. I think we could do maybe half a day or a whole day event with some speakers and just raise more awareness on what Cosmos is, how it works, all the projects behind it. You know, there's so much going on. 

And I think that's maybe one thing that we as the community could do better. Because if you look at other projects like Solana, like Cardano, they have an army of chillers, right? They have an army of people that like, man, Cardano is the way to go, Solana is the way to go. I think in Cosmos, having this kind of like very inclusive, open ideology, which is great, this gets a little bit fallen under the table and left behind, you know, that we still have to raise project awareness, right? 

You can have the best product, but if people don't know about it, then it's not worth anything, right? So I think we could potentially do a little bit better there. And offline conferences, I think, can help a lot. So yeah, that's kind of like my plan, obviously very early stage, and I have not really gotten any speakers or anything like that. 

But that's just something I would love to do. And if anybody's listening, it's like, man, I want to get involved, or I'm in Lisbon, I'm coming for the ETH conference, and would love to come to yours, then just hit me up and yeah, would love to connect. 

Citizen Web3: 
And like I said before, we definitely are up for any help, because obviously we based on Madeira, which is for anybody who doesn't know. Also Portugal, and we based in Lisbon, so we know all the community. It seems like everything is moving to Lisbon, and I hope that one day, it's going to be, you know, the crypto, not capital, but a crypto hub, yes. And that's how that cosmos is going to be at the beginning of this hub, right? 

And not at the tail. This is kind of like a changed traditional question. I mean, with the first season, we used to ask all of our speakers, what kind of crypto fascinates you? 

But now we decided to go slightly different way. And the question is, what resources, doesn't matter if it's podcasts, books, YouTube channels, GitHub pages, doesn't matter, somebody to follow on Twitter, what resources currently motivate you to do whatever you do? It doesn't matter if it's just the YouTube part, maybe it's something else that motivates you to do something else, but it doesn't have to be one, two, three, doesn't matter, whatever you can think about, something you would recommend to everyone, all the listeners. 

Cryptocito: 
This is probably an alpha league for a lot of people in crypto, a lot of community members that even don't have a large following. You don't have to have a large following, but just go on Telegram of the project that you like, the coin that you want to buy, maybe go in the admins profile, send them a message and say, hey, guys, I would love to learn about this and that. 

Most of them are even going to jump on a call with you and just explain stuff to you. I did this and I just started to tweet about cosmos in early January. And then Jack replied to me and even offered me, I didn't approach him. 

I think he first approached me and then I sent him a message and he took the time to jump on a call. And I didn't have a large following back then. So I think that's kind of something that anybody can really do. You don't have to convince people to talk to you or this and that or don't listen to YouTubers. I've been said this in the beginning. 

I should start saying it again. Like don't even listen to myself on video. Sometimes I do say, hey, this isn't this in my opinion, but this is just my perception. I think everybody should make their own picture and the perceptions of what's going on in crypto. Obviously there's great YouTubers there that you can follow confident in crypto is a cool one. 

There's many others that are also covering cosmos more and more. But just trying to connect directly with the team, with their community managers, with their marketers, with even tech people is something that nobody does in crypto. But it's actually the best thing you can do to help you take a decision whether or not you want to buy this coin. 

That's really something anybody can do. And from there, maybe build up relationships with them, become an ambassador of the project or help them with the marketing or help them with other things that whatever you're good at. There's so many ways to get started in crypto. 

It doesn't have to do the YouTuber and you have to show the top five coins of July or whatever. There's a lot of things you can do. And to also help on the research, I think just talking to the team directly is the best way you can learn. 

Citizen Web3: 
You said in my opinion, the best advice you could have given. This is what I do personally. And we spoke about it like I've been in crypto for a long time and I think this is the only thing that works if you're trying to learn anything about a project is you follow the people who create the project. It doesn't matter if it's actually people from the community as well. In my opinion, there's a lot of community leaders, especially with big projects that you can follow and find out a lot of stuff. So a great, great advice, man. Absolutely fantastic in my opinion. 

Cryptocito: 
If I can get two more sources, one is obviously find your local meetup, especially within a bigger city. There is going to be crypto, blockchain, Bitcoin meetups, whatever. Frequently also, crypto monies is in, I think, 50 cities around the world. 

But there are small events that happen all the time or the local Bitcoin round, where just 10 people meet up. Like that's also one thing that I recommend anybody doing. And the other thing is also something that nobody does is to just read the papers. Just read the research papers of how do you design proof of stake algorithms. Read white papers. I think most people haven't even read the Bitcoin white paper. Read the Ethereum white paper. 

Cosmos white paper. Just go through all these documentation, which is available for free, and then really spend time. I know it's a bit tedious sometimes and exhausting to have to read, especially if you're not technical and some of these papers are technical. But it really helps you understand how original is this project, how innovative are they, and the more you read, the better feeling you get on the kind of authenticity and innovation level of this project. 

So that's also another thing that people can do. I'm a YouTuber, of course, and I would love people watching my videos. I always love the feedback that I get from people sending me like, man, thanks for raising my awareness of this. It helped me with this and that. But I think it shouldn't be the only source of information. 

I think it should just be complementary and also more as a kind of entertaining thing. But yeah, reading papers, going to meetups and connecting with the team is I think the best way you can learn. 

Citizen Web3: 
Great advice, and we like links in our descriptions. So I think you mentioned the Bitcoin white paper there in the Ethereum white paper and the Cosmos white paper. So we're definitely going to link to those because one thing, if I can add there, in my opinion, it doesn't matter if you don't understand it, the first or the second or the third or the fourth or the 20th time. I find sometimes when I read Vitalik's blog posts, it takes me sometimes 10 times to understand what the hell was just mentioned. I have no clue what he said, but I'm still reading it. And then like the third time, you kind of start to understand. You're like, okay, I see what he's getting at. So yeah, but man, great advice, honestly, I think the best diversity that anyone could have said. 

Cryptocito: 
And another thing that most people don't do, unfortunately, is they judge projects without using them. So especially now in DeFi, NFTs, you have so many things you can actually use. So go and use them, right? Not as an investment tool. For example, when QuickSwap came out, QuickSwap is a DEX on Polygon, right? 

Or Matik previously, a friend told me about it and I was like, hey, this sounds cool. Let me provide liquidity. I want to play around with it. Back then the fees on Ethereum were crazy. So I stumbled upon QuickSwap, I used it, but I didn't really invest into it because I wanted to make money. I just provided some liquidity, played around with it, and I learned like, hey, man, layer 2s, this is how they work. This is how the polygon bridge works. This is the process that you need to do. 

This is where you need to click. Like there's so many things that you learn along the way. And that's also, I think, one thing that people don't do in crypto. Everybody is kind of like getting biased from other people's opinions that might have not even used the product. And then they're like, okay, this is a scam. This is this, this is good, this is bad. But I think really, I encourage everybody, before you yell, before you take your present decisions, use the products, dive deep into it, read the papers, and you'll understand if it's really a scam or if it's actually a solid, cool thing. 

Citizen Web3: Michael Cryptosito, thanks. It's been really cool conversation. I think Anna wants to add something before we finish off. 

Anna:
I believe that is. 

Outro:
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