 So, how you been man? How's everything? Good. Busy. Good boy. Yeah, lots of work to do still. So, how about you? Yeah, I would say the same. Not quite, I would say as busy as you, but very interested in seeing the more development and excitement within the space, especially since the launch of, well, the announcement of the so-called launch of Facebook Libra, which kind of prompted this talk for us. Let me ask you this. What's your take on that? Well, I think there's like, there's a number of interesting like perspectives coming out still. I think people are kind of looking at it. Some people are responding to it saying, well, this is like Facebook traditionally extracts value and it's going to continue to use this to extract value. And then there's also people talking about like the governance structure and the bodies in the governance structure. Obviously having an economic incentive to do so. I think like for me, you know, the thing that I always kind of look at is, so they introduce Libra, it's a stable coin, it's feedback from a number of currencies. In that opportunity, I think the single greatest opportunity in my mind is to not just have a stable coin that is kind of borderless or in a borderless, but more is like to rethink the way we structure the internet and value distribution systems of the internet. And like to quantify that, I think last year, the statistic in 2018, Facebook generated $55 billion in advertising revenue. I think Google did $46 billion. But I think the question is, is like why do we, like software is becoming ubiquitous, like everything has chat functions, everything has video messaging, it's not that hard to do this stuff anymore. And so to rebuild these types of infrastructures, so then the question becomes is like, why don't we build a system that benefits everyone rather than just benefiting one person or a company? Like how do we build an internet co-op so that all network participants based on their proportional usage benefit from the economic value of the network? Which then leads me into kind of like the topic that I want to talk about is can you go into and explain the whole process of how buns started and what you guys are doing and where you guys are currently and what's kind of the futuristic roadmap with buns? Sure, yeah. So buns started as a Facebook group. It was really simple. Emily Bitz, she founded the Facebook group, the first one. It was the number of other groups were founded by other people who believed in similar things, but it was a binary economy. So people could just like post stuff that they weren't using anymore and other people would be able to make them an offer for it. And we launched the buns app I think in 2016 and that was our first, like we almost look at like Facebook and because we came from Facebook. So we almost look at it like we wanted an alternative where we could build a sustainable community and have that community benefit from its existence rather than Facebook. Like to demonstrate this, to kind of make clear what I mean by that is like Facebook, if you run a Facebook group with like hundreds of thousands of people in it, you actually have no mechanism by which you can monetize that group. And what that means is like the people who are actually doing the work to maintain and create quality of that group are actually not being compensated for it because that's Facebook's business to advertise to that group, not there. So we wanted to create a kind of a home where that could be sustainable. We thought that, you know, we often joke like we're a fork of our own community for Facebook. We looked at it saying like, hey, how do we win at something, you know, head toe-to-toe as a really small company and we beat Facebook at something and we said, look at them at bartering. So in 2018, we built the bartering application up to the point where it had a billion transactions, a million transactions a year, not a billion, excuse me. And then we started to explore the need for a currency and a medium of exchange because as we approached a million transactions completed in the bartering economy, the classical economics issues associated with bartering like medium of exchange, value disparity, divisibility of goods starts to present themselves. So we started to level off the transaction velocity and we needed our own medium of exchange to be able to create kind of that to relieve the bottleneck. So when we looked at it though, we said like, okay, well, we could use dollars or Fiat and a lot of people to transact just like any other classic marketplace, but that's, you know, that's been done. So really like what would happen if we really did kind of take on some of the decentralization ethos around you know, the distribution of value derived from the network being paid to people, particularly from data and attention and then use that as the medium of exchange in the network. So, you know, by using this application, you passively earn this value and then you can use it with each other in the network. So that's kind of how we ended up where we are at a really high level. And so how does Bun's work right now? So yeah, so there's a the application centralized just kind of works better that way. I think the throughput probably bottleneck at most any public chain right now. Like in the last 13 months, people did 4.7 million transactions in bits. There are some coffee shops that are doing like 30 percent of their monthly transactions now on the currency. So it's been, you know, quite a quick growth from like the prior year doing 1 million transactions to 4.7. So the application, the currency is centralized on the application today, but we have a bridge where you're able to send bits from the application to Ethereum mainnet. So if you want to hold the ERC, ERC223, you can. Bits we never sold to anybody. We never did a token sale. We wanted to create a currency where by people again could earn the value derived from the network rather than having to pay. Because I think like the two big technologically prohibitive, there's two big prohibitive factors to adoption of cryptocurrencies as we understand them. And I'm extracting, I'm using like a very abstracted definition of the term cryptocurrency. Probably like Libra would define it. And I think the two big prohibitive factors are technical barrier to participation, meaning like the technical knowledge required to be able to participate in the space is quite high. And I think secondly is no one really talks about this is you have to buy it. Like it costs money to get currency rather than rather than having the opportunity to earn value on the future value of the network's throughput. So I think those are the two big barriers and we wanted to reduce those so that we could create what we describe as probably the most usable currency. And I mean right now, right now there's over 375,000 users on the Buns app. And you know, I think there's over 110,000 active wallets now. So it's grown quite a bit. And as Buns, you guys control for stability, so it's dollar for dollar? Yeah, so it's actually not not it's not dollar for dollar. It's more like penny. So essentially the way it works is like a business who wants to reach like, let's say a business wants to reach Facebook. This is the best analogy. If you imagine Buns, you know, is a is a Facebook, you know, it works with advertisers 100% of the value that they they sell to advertisers who want to get in front of their their users or their customer base. Facebook keeps that as profit. That's the social contract. The social contract is you get to use Facebook for free and Facebook gets to monetize your data and information and attention. With Buns, it's a bit different. A brand wants to interact with a you know, a person on the application. And when they do that, let's say they spend $10,000 to advertise $6,000 gets turned into 600,000 bits, which gets circulated to the community. And once it's expired, that 600,000 bits has been earned based on the number of impressions or CPM rates. Then that currency is now in full full circulation. And then that person has the ability to spend it peer to peer and or walk into a retail location and spend it on coffee or go to, you know, IQ foods or other locations. There's like, I think there's like 100 over 155 different locations in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Hamilton, Montreal and San Francisco now. And so if I go on the Buns app right now for people who don't know and I want to for example do bartering, let's say I got like brand new really good sharpie markers, right? They go for like, I don't know, $15. Do I, does it automatically then put like the Buns amount? So if I say this is $15 Canadian, how does that process work? So like, you know, the interesting thing about how the currency value came to be is it was the weirdest thing. It sounds kind of silly, but a lot of the stories are quite organic here. But we never were like, okay, we're gonna set it to one bit is equal to one cent. What happened was like, we, you know, we created the ERC 223 contract. You can look it up on ether scan. We're like, okay, let's go talk to a business who would want to accept this and explain to them what we're doing and then have them upload an item and set a price to it. And the first shop was a coffee shop and they uploaded an item that was a cup of coffee for, they typically charged $3.25 for it. So it was $3.25 is what they put in without any decimals. And then as we started to talk to other businesses, they use that cup of coffee as a reference point. And so they're using that same value and then the community started adopting that value based on the redemption rates. So, um, but yeah, like when you post that item, you go to the buns app, you post your marker, you say how many bits you want for it. And people can make you offers for it. They can directly message you and negotiate and they can send you bits both through the chat or in real time or in real life when they meet up with you. And some people will even pay you for like delivering things to closer to where they are, right? But is it within the app that let's say it's like a thousand bits? Does it give you the equivalent of a Canadian value? No, no, it's not like it's we never listed it on an exchange. I mean, obviously you could take you can transfer your bits through the bridge to a theory mainnet and hold them as Years, 223 and if you wanted to you could sell them on a dex or something, but we don't have any formal exchange support Just because that really hasn't been our focus. I think In like sub 1% of the total supply of bits is in circulation. So it's like it's still really early And we're not in a rush to to have it listed on an exchange That's your guys What's your guys like issuance rates? Are you guys trying to figure out like how much do you guys have? A formula or system you've created for how many bits are you will be creating? Yeah, there's the well that contract is governed Already, it's already published. You can look at it on ethers scan. There's scan. There's 200 billion bits as a fixed supply but When a business essentially when a business buys Advertising or wants to reach our community 60% of the value that they spend goes directly to our users and bits So And so let's say I'm a coffee shop somewhere in toronto and i'm accepting bits What a why then as a coffee shop do with the bits So there's a couple things So you can use the bits to so okay You know you have a let's say you've done a bunch of service news and you've seen some ads and you've sold some stuff And you've got a bunch of bits now you can walk in a coffee shop And let's say you spend the same classic amount of 325 bits and you buy a cup of coffee The business has the ability to redeem with us the bits But they also have the ability to do other things with the bits Like they can use the bits to turn on modules that will help them generate more value from the community They can use the bits to reach more people to come into their shop and spend more bits at their location But they do have redemption like a contract that allows them to redeem against treasury with us And so if they want to reach more in the last 13 months people have earned and spent Over 1.3 million dollars Wow. Yeah impressive And so if i'm a business and I want to then Target and acquire more users geographically obviously since i'm a coffee shop and let's say I don't know like This month somebody you know total $5,000 worth of bits people have spent on my coffee shop Yeah, how does that process work if I want to get more users from the bit platform into my coffee shop? Yeah, so these are things that we're working on right so There's we designed about 40 different modules that are specific to both brands and retail locations So like bigger and smaller some of them are chains some of them are not Well, like the classic example of something we're working on is and then we took the first step to doing this by building a merchant app So we piloted a merchant app where the retailers could use the app to maintain Or like quickly check out customers rather than just having a static qr code with an open wallet um And so that merchant app allow will allow them in the future in the near term will allow them to Do things like if you're a coffee shop. Maybe you want to turn on a geo fence around your coffee shop and Anyone who hasn't purchased a coffee from your location on buns? Uh can be offered a coffee or target that person with advertising letting them know that hey You know you passed by my shop today. I accept bits actually and you can buy coffee there Um, so what it allows them to do is to build more community around their local business And like one of the important things I think what we see about these stable coins And I actually think this is a hugely missed Conversation piece is that it the thing you don't want to do if you're going to take a whole bunch of value That would typically go to a company like facebook and you're going to redistribute it What you don't want to do is have that money go back into centralized organizations What you want to do is to have it circulated at a geographic level where where the where the application is proportionally used That way we create more resilient localized economies rather than Having the the the value redistributed where a class that we would have been centralized and then all of a sudden Recentralized because it all goes to amazon So I think there's key things and nuances here that although it's you know attractive to just kind of put it into uber You know as an example like part of uber and have them accept it or something I think that's attractive as an idea because people use uber a lot But I think really what we need is to have software systems that benefit localized economies Where they're earned and used Yeah, it's also the buying power too right like you look at the stablecoin or even like the u s dollar What's the buying power u s dollar in toronto versus the buying power of a u s dollar in bangladesh Etc. Right different scales of economy over there Um have another question Sure, since you said it's not correlated to the canadian price How does one like say say i'm a neophyte a newbie and i'm logging in i'm like i do have a bunch of stuff I want to sell or barter et cetera a specifically sell Um since I don't know i'm not in inundated in the community. I'm not you know I'm not familiar with how the bits derive value Um, how do I know that what to set my item as for the amount of bits? I think a lot of people look to each other to get a frame of reference. Um There are blog posts and stuff that we kind of explain what we're doing So and we we try and ensure that those are circulated with the advertisements and the applications so people are educated But we don't put like an explicit value because we don't really know like this is kind of one of the things where Uh, you know at the time like a year and a half ago when we started a year a year and a bit ago when we started doing this You know a lot of people were like hey like you know listen on exchange have an explicit rate So that people know but I think really people look at each other's posts and are like hey That person's kind of charging about this at this for it or if I go and spend at this retail location I can kind of get this out of it So there isn't really an explicit rate when you're posting an item that we would quote Um, and I think it's a purest form of like Liz or fair capitalism. We don't know we don't know like I think that And like I think we we're stabilizing the redemption rate like that's what we're doing now But it doesn't mean that that's the true rate. I think I think like it's it's naive to believe that we you know We know that And I think it's it's a bit of a social experiment in that regard But I think pretty quickly people understand what the value is based on like what the merchants are taking the currency at and then they're either you know Charging more or charging less depending on that one of the really interesting things also is like how people Like this is one of the recent observations We have like a team of researchers we work with at mit and like we started looking at gift cards and whether or not people would accept Uh take more bits or less bits than the value of the gift card um Because the bits would have because of the number of retail locations that it's accepted at has a Perceived greater value than a card that is isolated to one specific company And so it's just super interesting to see what's happening and allowing people to kind of make their own decisions rather than prescribing You know the rules up to the logic um Yeah, have you noticed uh, so let's say do you finish a transaction and I earn a bunch of bits Have you noticed the ratio of how many people reuse these bits versus how many people want to cash out for let's say Redemption of fiat or whatever they want Yeah, we we closely monitor. Um, so I think like the vast majority of the value is being held onto by users and used peer to peer Um, so I think there's like typically two things I think like when you first use the application and you earn some bits and then you go buy a cup of coffee for the first time You're like I think the realization people have is like oh wait a minute like I can actually use these And I think I think then like the next piece is like can we rewind when people like when you say like earn the bits Is there more than just one way of earning bits so I can go there sell this I earn a base There are other ways for me to earn bits. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so every day There's something called the real airdrop where you can answer questions and typically they're sponsored by businesses Look, we've done work with like Lyft wealth simple coho Borowell open care There's tons of amazing metro Tons of amazing partners have literally looked at this and said hey, this is an alternative to traditional advertising whereby The community is benefiting like we want to get behind this So we've made it possible for businesses to participate in this space in a meaningful way But so the airdrop the typically that every day there's a question asked It's multiple choice question when you answer you get to see how everyone else in the community responded. There's You know a huge number of people that do that every day That data is like targeting data That you know brands can use to be able to respond to your response itself So let's say the question is like hey, which one of these suite of microsoft tools do you use most frequently and you say office? And i say excel maybe tomorrow we'll see an advertisement for a surface pro But you see office and i see excel on the computer like so contextualizing things Based on our preferences. So there's the daily airdrop. There's the traditional feed ads So there are ads as you scroll through the application and as you see them And again attention economics dictates that that value is yours to be paid for those Um, when you activate your wallet when you or you invite someone to the network You get bits when you What else if you have something that comes really popular There's a small bonus for that to you. So really like it's data attention and contribution to the network Are the three key pillars? That make a network valuable and those are the three key pillars that pay out bits in in in response to interacting with them So currently right now is just It's just for products, right? So I have a physical product product I can sell are you guys planning in the roadmap? People post services people post apartments It's like there's a lot of just pretty much a classified you can post whatever you want you can post whatever you want Yeah, I think the idea here is is like Um, it's just like it's a marketplace. Um, but what we're about to launch is going to be really interesting Next in the next three weeks. We have a beta right now happening for uh, actually social communities and What we're doing is like, you know, if you run like a facebook group or you run like a you know one of these social communities You actually again, you have no mechanism by which you can monetize your work And so as your community grows and a business wants to engage with your community. Let's say you you happen to run like car spotting group and I run Toronto foodie group Maybe nissan wants to reach your customer base and they can show advertisements for nissan cars to your community So 60 of that money would go to your community of of that 60 percent Maybe 10 to 10 to 20 percent would go to you as the administrator So all of a sudden if they spend $10,000 you're taking home 2000 of it that month Um, he gets $4,000 of it and bits and let's say I run the foodie group and Maybe law blahs wants to reach that community by saying like hey, we have this new artisanal cheese that you guys have all been looking for and and uh by by having them Advertised to my group. I earn a percentage of the total fee a gain that would be taken by the community So commute to community marketplace where we can cross promote each other Yeah, it's a social community. So essentially it's very powerful like facebook groups But the difference is that like and I keep I keep making this analogy It's like what we're really looking to highlight is You know facebook is like a social application and a marketplace combined And buns is a market marketplace and now we're going to have a social application now as well associated on the same app So when you have two things that are comparable The question becomes which one do you pick the one that doesn't pay you or the one that does it does pay you? and The hypothesis here is that crypto economics or value distribution systems will actually likely Have a significant effect on what we understand about network effects Because when you have two identical not identical, but you know nearly at parity platforms Uh, and one compensates you the economic incentive will likely create new new forms of network effects as part of our recovery You and I were talking about earlier a little bit about ubi, you know, so we spoke about libra before the call we're talking about ubi and He mentioned as well as uh, we as a user even though it's an opt-in We're not forced to use facebook or twitter etc. It's an opt-in. We can opt out whenever we want. Yeah We're not we're not betting or benefiting from it. But what's What do you envision like how do you see? Like if you had that magic wand, how would you envision the future with like a web three stack? Sure Well, I mean, I think like, uh, you know, there's a number of amazing infrastructure projects like polkadot and ethereum And there's tons of different stuff and stuff that's being worked on I think the question on the infrastructure side is who's going to achieve scalability Um, but I think if we imagine reimagine the future of the internet, it's not just about the infrastructure It's actually also about who we're like how the value distribution system of that that that kind of Ecosystem goes and I think dows are like the first kind of shot at that Um, but I think the the answer around ubi is really quite simple Is like on an annual basis last year in 2018 325 billion dollars was spent on digital advertising Of which pretty much zero went to people who use these platforms And when we look at a platform like facebook and we say, okay, well facebook's work worth huge amounts of money Um, and yet if we removed all the people from the platform, it would be pretty much worthless So clearly people are creating the accrued value, which means that data is almost like work or data is money Um, and so then the question becomes is what happens if we took that 325 billion dollars? And which is reoccurring. It's not just a one time one time thing All right, this is like annually that the demand for grow digital advertising is only growing And so what happens if we redistributed that to our network participants? That would actually be a sustainable There's an existing demand to do this today to digitally advertise And all we have to do is create an alternative whereby the value to paid to advertise Is distributed to users rather than centralized in a company as profit And the reason that it's almost impossible for these companies to replicate this I think Is because they're so deeply entrenched in the capital markets that for them to all of a sudden come out and say Hey 60 percent of the 55 billion that we made last year from digital advertising is now going to go to people They're stuck And so our opportunity like blockchain represents The fundamental building block a trustless building block theoretically For us to make change Because we no longer have to have you know one entity we trust to do this And I think the question then is like, okay If we agree that that it's a great foundation to make change The question is what do we was what do we won't really want to change? And I think the answer is like We should have better distribution value distribution systems so that these companies don't become mega monopolies Centralizing value, but instead benefit the local economy Proportionally to where the software is used and if we can achieve that we're literally going to have three impacts It's going to be environmentally more sustainable Economically more sustained environmentally more sustainable because secondary marketplaces are great for creating better distribution of goods at a local level So we don't need to ship everything We have better peer-to-peer relationships because people are transacting more Um economically more sustainable because it's getting super expensive to live in cities And if all of a sudden your passive behaviors on the internet are earning you You know if you're an administrator, maybe you're earning comparable to like 2000 bucks a month that'd be huge Um or and maybe if you're just a regular, you know passive person on the application Maybe you earn 50 bucks and you buy like lunch every month or two um and then lastly um It's we have the economic benefit the environmental benefit and the social benefit I think there's like this this problem around social applications where like we actually have no mechanism to actually really Connect with each other at a localized level. So all their social functions are focused on local geography We'll we almost describe it as like a neighborhood network where You know, there'll be a building for like, you know, one york street if you live there Or you know upper beaches or like queen in ostington area and then there'll also be social interest groups So like things that we're interested in like toronto classic car club or toronto blockchain group And like we're already seeing in the beta people are creating these kinds of groups so but I think What I see in the future is Uh kind of like a take back with like this new infrastructure being built Our opportunity in it is to ensure that we don't migrate the existing problems from the existing infrastructure like the practices Of setting value we want to create new practices on this new infrastructure That benefit everyone everyone because You know, I think everyone in no one will on the infrastructure. That's the idea And I always had this idea before where it's like I think uh stos are interesting, but not how people are approaching it. I think we're super early But I had this idea before where it's like Okay, let's say you and I were starting a new facebook as of today And we don't have to start off in this like crazy decentralized way because we're not there yet and it's uh collusion issues with like starting up a team And uh just scaling issues when you're all decentralized and all the big protocols are are suffering this issue Yeah, my thinking was like, okay So you're familiar with like brave or the trend idea of like monetizing your data Same thing where you guys are you know monetizing my my intellectual knowledge with the surveys that you guys give me And I get my bits. Yeah, but now imagine where it's like, okay, this is cool because that's currency give or take Uh if the currency is pure liquid on exchanges fluctuates a dollar today is 22 cents tomorrow And maybe two cents in a week in a week from now. Who knows a crypto market fluctuates. Yeah Um We'll be more interesting where you have two options where it's like, okay, you have your local token You have then the option within your ecosystem. You can switch the token over to any crypto bitcoin ETH whatever you want, you know, it's your choice. However, with an stio when it's done properly I wouldn't have more skin in the game. I love the platform that I'm using. I want to own a piece of it So let's say hypothetically through me contributing on this network. I'm earning. I don't know 500 bucks a month, whatever, right? Yeah, you're gonna add a month. You don't want bits. You want so it's a two token system, right? Yeah, you want bits. You want bonds Yeah, so I I'll take but I want to split. I want some cash. Let's say I take 200 bucks I want 200 bucks some cash, but the 300 bucks. Give me some stock Yep, so this is something we talk about a lot Um, we're actually have quite a number of plans to do something to this effect So really what you want is you want you do want a two token system You want a system whereby somewhere by you have a stable unit of value that can be transparently earned not just bought but earned Network for participation data and attention because it has a very real market that we identified earlier Which is that 325 billion dollar annual reoccurring revenue market Then you want a token that represents the total network value or the or or The and that's almost like a stock or a security token that represents not just the stable version But like if all of a sudden tomorrow 15 million more users start using bunz app um That that token because of the number of new Uh more people the 15 million people add attention and earning capacity to the network Which we can fulfill with advertising increases the value of that security token So very much like and yes, and you could you could essentially take your bits and buy buns So we we often talk about it in terms of bits tokens and bunz tokens Bunz tokens have not been something we've openly discussed, but But it is something that works early the infrastructure. I would say the infrastructure is not there yet Then it's also like a psychological game too is like I think people need some time to wrap their head around the fact that A they're earning Let's say You can call a point space whatever they're earning value in a system Yep, and they can move that value from point A to point B. It's up to them How they decide to move value at the exact same time now they have it's it's not on the public and traded tsx It's it might be something different like a red d reg a some own st. Oh offering Where they can actually own ownership inside of this Yeah, I think it's going to be a long curve before people kind of get uses in the type of system Yeah, I think like if we go back it's like I I agree with everything you're saying about this and like this is something That's very much an ongoing conversation internally here Um, I think really if you look at it what you're looking to do is essentially this you're looking to create an alternative to traditional advertising models and networks And what you want to do is instead of centralizing the value you want to distribute the value the best you can While making sure that the business or the operation of the company currently is still sustainable And then what you want to do even further than that is not just distribute the ongoing value But it's distribute the equity value of the company to its participants So everyone has not just an income but a form of ownership of the total network Um, and so really like the way we look at it is you know There's a lot of platforms out there that are social community oriented and none of them compensate people So really like the the differentiator that the moat between facebook and buns Is uh distributing value derived from data attention and contribution to the network Because because it's something something that facebook simply can't copy Because if they did theoretically Cause massive issues And like wouldn't it be something it'd be something amazing and I mean maybe maybe buns is it maybe buns won't be it I don't know But wouldn't it be amazing if we saw this suite of software be held as the Alternative to traditional software as we understand it today whereby everyone owns it And everyone benefits from it Just for their current behaviors today like that that's I think the key here because then all of a sudden you have a sustainable form of income That's based on past behaviors Yeah, it's an opt-in co-op as opposed to a forced one. Yeah, we talk about it as an internet co-op Yeah, that's really what it is Yeah, I think once uh, you know, we do have like certain legal frameworks in Canada like the jobs act But it's complicated in the states of reg a and reg d Um, I don't think so tech wise are quite there. Yeah, but I think I think the writing's on the wall and I think the ingredients are in the recipe if you look at what's happening with The lack of trust in facebook you look at them Um, I don't be a following following but the issues with free speech, you know, they're targeting people either you have a Either you have a blanket law that applies all or you don't have it at all. Yeah, and I so Yeah, no, I agree, right? Go on to write. I'm gonna do Yeah, it's okay. Um, and so for me, I think I think the narrative Is hyper accelerating where people are just fed up with facebook twitter, etc We need a better solution is and like the problem is this though I think like the problem is that like We look at facebook and we see a lot of it's really easy to bash facebook But really like it was this important mission critical stepping stone in how we got here Yeah, like it's so like amazing amazing things were achieved through what they did but like the missed opportunity Was like these companies promote like we're going to change the world. It's going to be a better place It's you know, we're all about environmental sustainability. We're all about community We're all about cannot whenever I hear that That's like negative social signal to me. It's like, yeah, why do you why do you have to tell me this? Yeah, and so I think like I think whenever whenever I totally agree with you it is But it's like, yeah, we're we're all it's like I'm a socially conscious entrepreneur. I'm like Okay, like yeah by default you should just be a good entrepreneur I don't get it like why do you have to label yourself like like even google? I think they removed it like don't do evil is like, yeah, okay Yeah, the blockchain space's response was can't do evil right can't do evil Yeah, so I think like but I think there's a temptation to just be like this is all crap And like they suck in this and that but like they brought a ton of good to the world But I think now we're at a state where we look back on it a bit With like retrospect you can look back it has enough history to look back down and be like Hey, maybe like it's against that. What if feeling like what if we did this a bit differently whereby We really actually paid the people the value rather than The network earning the value while still making it a sustainable operation like wouldn't that be something different friend and I think like people are beginning to look for alternatives because There's something fundamentally unagreeable about that amount of centralization of value when we know That without people that value would not accrue so yeah, that that's the the kind of the That that's I think with the root of a lot of where this is coming from I think it's not just also it's not just like, you know, there's a huge amount of mistrust in facebook Then blockchain came around and there's a ton of hype and crypto and people were talking about ubi Like it's not a coincidence that all these ideas are being discussed in parallel um, I think really what's happening is like we're looking to As we move from one infrastructure stack call it web 2 to a new infrastructure stack call it web 3 We have an opportunity the change is opportunity We have an opportunity in that change to make more changes And I think the question is we need to know what we want to change about it and to me the obvious thing is Like wouldn't it be amazing if people we can make people's lives more affordable affordable We could create a more sustainable environmental future and we could connect people meaningfully locally Like those three things are worth doing because they're having hugely negative impacts on the world today Yeah, that's a major trend of a noticing too. I think you know Globalization had its benefits for global economies But at the exact same time we've negated localization Yeah, like specifically with tariff rules and certain tax like it's cheaper for us in canada from a taxation And trade agreements that we have to import apples than is for us to buy apples and agar falls Which is pretty fucked up. Yeah, it's like mega falls is 70 kilometers. How the fuck's the more expensive? Yeah, so this is something that comes up quite a bit like One of the things that we're doing with the reason we built a pos app like a merchant app for our businesses Is we wanted to give them the ability to bring their inventory online Because like something very special happens in the internet when new inventory comes online And a good example is uber or air bnb Um, like when that inventory inventory comes online, it wasn't previously on the internet like it has a very you know interesting effect Because it could create again it creates an alternative to what we understand as the marketplaces today And so when we launch the merchant app, we actually give the merchants the ability to Bring items online. So essentially the way we think about it is like imagine, you know, six months from now When all of a sudden, uh, you know, you have all the stuff that is typically available Through, you know, all these centralized platforms that ship things in like amazon or whatever else And instead you can get it locally you'll actually be able to get it cheaper and faster theoretically Um through this network because you have new inventory available in an aggregated marketplace at a local level Um, and that that could actually at you know, with the right enough density in population enough density in usage You actually could create a competitor to amazon from that Um, so these are like some really crazy ideas, but by essentially by bringing new inventory online Essentially, you're you're going to reduce again the environmental impact of shipping But you're going to have things readily available faster and cheaper, especially with 3d printing. Yeah, so Like my last business was in china was in clothing, believe it or not. We had specialized underwear And uh, you know supply chain nightmares, right? Guangzhou to we actually Our business is crazy. We shipped from china made in canada stamp made in canada shipped back to hong kong We sold to the asian markets and um, yeah, yeah, um, but You know, if you look at a lot of stuff like you look at ali baba ali express Except for a select few items majority of that is all oil based products Right, you look at stuff on amazon ebay, you know sunglasses plastic jewelry Cups like regular stuff to people buy right? Yeah, a lot of that stuff can be fucking 3d printed right here Yeah, there's there's a lot of I think like we're still at this inflection point where We have an opportunity to really change the way we look at things I think there's it just it just has to be has to be profitable. That's the only difference, you know I mean like once once a tech is is Uh, matured enough and the scales of economics make sense then it's going to become ubiquitous Yeah, I also think though that like by refocusing Like when money goes into one of these large like kind of monopolies be it a marketplace or a managed marketplace Or a social network. You're really what you're doing is you're extracting value from a geography Because that wouldn't you know would otherwise have been spent within a local economy And now it's being centralized into like an irish bank account by a san francisco company that domiciles there So I think the the opportunity is also to create simply more resilient economies by having a higher velocity of transactions happening locally with local business owners and entrepreneurs that then Focusing on and the key is that they have to be cheaper and easier than the existing competitors Yeah, and that's what software does right so I think so I think somewhere in between Learning from web 2 and using those strategic advantages in our favor while adopting these mentalities of web 3 where Like we don't need a company. We don't need another company that makes 200 billion dollars a year We don't need that what we need is to recirculate 150 billion of the 200 billion dollars to people in canada or to people in america or to people wherever in the world And have those that that proportional usage Create more affordable lives for everybody. That's what I think Yeah, the thing is like you look at taxation you look at for them going to ireland, you know 1% or has majority of them like amazon walmart to do ip like leasing deals between different jurisdictions, right? So they have no, uh What's it called no no profit? Yeah The human psychology No matter what from a game theoretical model People will go where they can save money. That's it, right? So the more you squeeze squeeze people the more intellectual capital disappears. It's simple as that and so I think one thing and and this is why I'm big locally. This is why I've been screaming here for In canada for a long time other places exist. Singapore is one example. No place is perfect, but I'll use singapore as an example Um, I think in canada. We have a golden opportunity since we have such a diverse background of different people different ethnicities different cultures Very small population fucking huge landmass We have Canada is one of the biggest issues of great startups starting here and disappearing because the opportunity is not here Yeah, um, we need to start creating economic zones If you want to incentivize company and like big companies is easy for them They have the profits like you like fuck if I wanted to do what they do It's going to probably cost me like a million dollars a year just to run the the financials and the legal team to have that afloat Yeah, and uh, they need we need to have economic zones here where it's like, hey listen And they've done this in some areas in new york david rose Uh, uh, one of the original angel investors in, uh, united states wrote the book I think so like he's he's been doing angel investors since day one. I think dust was i forget his book's name. Um And so it's like, okay. I'm a small business Yeah, taxes are so so but what if There's economic zones where we have subsidized rent because rent's a huge fucking issue when it comes to like startups Like that's probably like 25 of your overhead costs just for rent alone Where we have subsidized area economic zones where it's up to five years tax free. Whatever you make doesn't matter But there's there's criteria is higher locally Uh, you know, we'll make we'll make we'll make proper criteria, but the incentive it's all about incentive You know, um, Warren Buffett's partner charlie monger has a great saying show me the incentive I'll show you the outcome. Why would a big multi? Corporate, uh, national company that has billions of dollars in public trade. Why would they take a 25 cut? They wouldn't The incentives incentive is not there as simple as that you can scream and shout all you want You think you go after them. Good luck with that. It's not there's no incentive for them to give the government 25 percent Of their, you know, whatever they made a hundred billion dollars. Yeah But what happens if we do make incentives where it actually makes sense for the company to make even more money in the future? Yeah, I mean like I think this is interesting because like What we're essentially I think those economic incentives need to exist at an individual level and at an organizational level Mm-hmm. And so like at an individual level I think you're you're echoing what I was saying earlier around When you have two platforms that are, you know, feature ubiquitous meaning they're identical almost and capability for both social Social market social application and marketplace. Which one will you choose the one that pays you're the one that doesn't Well, this goes back to nature like you look at something called gall's law Yeah, there's no complex organism every wall from another complex organism Everything came from a singular cellular organism and slowly evolved over time If you look at like the human body from the mitochondria within our human cells and going all the way up into let's say Red blood cells and then the muscle tissues and into skeletal tissue, etc Eat from from the very small microscopic level within the mitochondria all the way up to my muscle tissue They work in a hierarchical level. Everything's connected. Everybody actually has skin in the game. One thing fails. Everything fails So imagine like That's the problem like people don't have skin in the game So they scream a shout is like, oh fuck that guy. Fuck this guy. I'm like, but you have nothing to lose So you're screaming all day. No shit, right? If you have something to lose He won't be screaming. You'll be protecting what you have to lose. So imagine like if you have like, I don't know I don't know like a million canadians that have like buns stl like a stock of buns, right? And then they come to realizational fuck. We're getting fucked for taxes You know, you have a million canadians getting fucked for taxes. They have skin in the game. They're losing Yeah I'll bet you money those million canadians will speak out be like, yo govern you fucking fix something. Yeah Yeah, I think um like So we actually have this conversation quite a lot and they get kind of again, it's resembled the co-op ownership It resembles the st. Oh Um, and I think it has implications for sure um, but I think like there's there's two there's always two pieces to this like Well, I think most importantly the most important thing I think to take from this conversation is that like We need an alternative Is we don't have one you can like right now that we don't have a good alternative to Create a new narrative whereby the people that use a network benefit And be you know possibly there's the ability for them to be able to convert their bits to buns tokens And also if you don't have bits to be able to buy buns tokens with some sort of crowd sale Like even that kind of model we've discussed Um, and I think it's important because what it does is it it gives people again It gives what you're saying it gives people skin. It gives them a reason to have um excitement that that the network work could work will continue to grow and we've actually seen this be a highly successful um kind of model for growth and for profitability of company Um, because now people are cheering for it because they feel that they economically benefit with a multiple Not just the stable coin If it succeeds as a platform It's a mythology or it's a narrative. It's a psychological trigger where I am not a user I'm the owner. Yeah, and like I this is one of the things I actually try really hard Like do is make sure we call them people like because like they're just like you and I everyone who uses this like and like You know, I think like over 20 of toronto now uses buns Uh, and like so I think like when we look at it. We really want to do something that um, and it's it's not entirely like, you know Altruistic like, you know 40 of the money right now goes to the operational side of our business and 60 goes to the community So the lion's share is going to the community But you know, we have a long way to long way to go to getting to the point where even more goes to the network But obviously right now we're at the early stages and we've got to do quite a lot to build And get that infrastructure stood up to where we're satisfied that it can scale and others others can take it over Um, but I think that the idea there is definitely that Uh that in like, you know in early meetings. I always said things like I would love for this to end up where Everyone and no one owns it And uh, you know that it has a positive impact on local economies Wherever it's used. Um, and I think That narrative is becoming more and more likely as we close the gap between like what facebook is today and what buns is And as we kind of release our social functions, you're not going to be able to run social groups on buns You can run them on facebook You can post up for sale on facebook or you can post up on buns And this one pays you and this one doesn't and like as that narrative begins to to favor Uh, the you know, the economics begin to favor the individual dual rather than favor the profit of the company Um That in itself is going to be the most important thing that we can achieve at my belief This is the most important thing we can achieve out of this technology And like I continually caution people do not migrate existing systems like for like on chain It's irresponsible because we know they're not sustainable Um, and so we need to make changes and we need an alternative alternative narrative And that alternative narrative is that people matter more than profit Um, and that that that will be A great business model in and of itself Because you're you're you're putting the economics of the the person first and aligning the company's incentives to the person's incentives Beautifully said, uh, if people want to find out more information about buns can evolve help you guys out What's the best resource? You can download the buns app. Uh, it's for ios and android or you can go to bunz.com Or bunz if you're canadian, right? Which one's the canadian american version? B where the zed where the zed is it? Yeah, we're the yeah, i'm pretty yeah Yeah, so bunz for the american folks, uh, bunz for the canadian folks um You can download in the ios or android app store Uh, if you activate your wallet, uh, you can enter the handle z e r o c o o l zero cool That's my username and you'll get a referral bonus Um, but yeah, use it post some stuff that you're not using anymore transact with other people locally tell your friends and Like let's change things piece by piece. I mean day by day I appreciate thank you so much and talk to you soon. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks so much for the time