Hello Future Buzz, Max Walker Williams & HashPack talk everything Hedera

In this week's episode of the Hedera Corner, King Solomon and Genfinity interview Elizabeth from Hello Future Buzz, Max Walker Williams, and Marc Ugas from HashPack. In this conversation, the panel discusses everything related to Hedera and the potential catalysts that will make it grow in the future.

Transcription

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
Alright, guys, we are going to get started. Yeah, if you haven't joined into these spaces before, every Monday we do a Hedera Corner space. We interview Marc, who could probably stay better than I even know at this point in time. I feel like we've probably done 100 or more interviews. But yeah, we do interviews every Monday within the Hedera ecosystem for builders within the space, and they're normally at 3 P.M. Eastern Time. Obviously, we've got different time zones across the globe. Right now, I know across the pond where Max is at, it's a little bit later in the day, so certainly wanted to accommodate with that time, and we missed last week, so I really appreciate everybody being able to pivot with us. We got back from Consensus, and we're just absolutely exhausted. By our normal Monday spaces, uh, but super excited to have um some real OGs and some real legends in this space today up here as panelists. First of which is Max Walker Williams, as well as Elizabeth and Hello Future Buzz and Marc from HashPack as well. Like I said before, we normally do these interview style, but we're going to kind of do a round-robin type aspect, during this. I'll certainly be asking a lot of questions, but Marc is Marc from HashPack is probably glad today because he doesn't have to transcribe multiple interviews. We'll just do it as uh, as a One-Shot one go type thing. First and foremost, I would love to introduce Max Walker Williams. Certainly a legend in the Hedera space. I normally ask for a little bit of an intro and a background about each person or each project within this space, so Max, if you could provide a background of yourself, kind of what led you into Hedera as well, that'd be great. ‍

Max Walker Williams
Yeah, thanks ever so much, King Solomon, for having me on. Hello, everybody what led me into here? So, I was interested in building or I was into land building a group of businesses in web 2. But I've always had an interest in cryptography, cryptographic technology, and cryptographic-based platforms. And so, when Bitcoin came out, I got very excited. Started researching it and found that I kind of, couldn't understand what all the hype was about and somebody was going, "What, what it could be?" but couldn't understand how it could technically get there. And 14 years later, you know, we're kind of still waiting, so, um, I was busy building my businesses. It's never really got into crypto, sort of watching from a distance, if you like. And then, I got introduced to somebody who's building on Hedera, and they said I should check it out. So, I checked out Hedera, and Hedera was what big people thought Bitcoin was going to be. It is the answer. It's pure math. It's fantastic, and the technology is undeniable. And so, I recognized what it was almost immediately and then, and became a fan. I was an early, early, relatively early investor at a lower but institutional level, and then I've been, you know, sort of a H-Barbarian and covering crypto in general,  for the last couple of years basically, when COVID hit, I went from working sort of 100 hours a week to like 40, and I was at home doing my wife's head in. She says, "You love talking, why don't you start a YouTube channel?" So I did, and, you know, it kind of went from there, really. And so, rather than just boring my wife at home, I was boring everybody on the internet. So, but a few people seem to like it, and it's, you know, we've got sort of two and a half million views in the last 12 months. And I've had the fortunate opportunity to interview and become friends with quite a lot of really smart and intelligent people, people I believe are really interesting, some of the GC members, leaving a month, you know, and others. So that's kind of my journey.‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Max, for the intro. And then, Elizabeth, if you could kind of provide a background or overview intro of yourself, what led you into crypto, what brought you into the Hedera ecosystem, also, that'd be fantastic.‍

Hello Future Buzz – Elizabeth - Founder
Solomon, thanks for having me. It's really a pleasure to be on your space this morning. Appreciate it, and being with Max and HashPack is awesome. Very happy that Max made it today. I know it's hard for him sometimes and other people in various time zones to join us, but we always appreciate their participation. So, um, a little bit about me, I guess, is, I've been in technology for 20 years. I started before the, you know, I started with a green screen and a hacker and trying to find places to go to. I worked at places like Bell Laboratories in New Jersey and ATT headquarters in New Jersey when I lived in New York, and I moved to Los Angeles to experience the entertainment business and also always being in the kind of entertainment, music, and movie industry and technology also. So I had a stint with the dot-com in 2000 and building infrastructure out here. There's an internet hub called May West downtown and on Wilshire Boulevard. So I first got into crypto, and like, I don't know if it was 2011 or 2013, when a friend of mine who's a full-stack developer kept bugging me about this Bitcoin stuff, and I'm like, "I don't know, I don't know what you're talking about." But he didn't drive, and that's an unusual occurrence in Los Angeles, so he's trying to tell me to go to some Bodega to get something called Bitcoin out of a machine. Eventually, I caved, and I took him down there, and I put a hundred dollars into this looked like a vending machine, and I got five four Bitcoin, you know, and I'm like, "Oh, wow." So I sold it at the top, thirty dollars. And, so you know, I've been developing websites and stuff for small to medium-sized businesses here in Los Angeles. And, before the pandemic, I was looking for, I've always been curious about things that aren't hackable, so I was looking for a technology that, you know, had a strong security, and I ran into Hedera, and I'm like, "What the heck is Hedera?" So I did a deep dive into it, and then, I thought, "Well, this is awesome." And then life got very busy, and then the lockdowns happened, and I was trading options, and I thought I didn't like that too much, so I started a Twitter space, mostly to see how I could interface with Hedera and find out more about it, and it's grown. And I love the community here, and building community is what it's all about for me. And I think distributed layer technology is the future. And so, HBAR, you know, I'm an investor, not a trader. And I just think the technology is really great. And having interfaced with Leemon and Mance gave me the security that I wasn't dealing with. I was just talking with someone today that they were saying, "But memecoins are, you know, terrible," and I'm like, "Well, no, that's not true in my opinion." Because a lot of people in the Hedera space came here because of Dogecoin, and I think there is a place for memecoins in our ecosystem. You know, it's not financial advice, but don't buy something. It's gambling. You know, don't, but that. I look at this whole space as like each one of us is a mini-venture capitalist, you know. We take our money and we put it into different projects, whether it's NFTs or wallets or any kind of things being built out on the ecosystem, and we invest our time and energy and some money. So, in general, I, you know, I've lost so much money, won money, up and down, but it's not about, to me, it's more about advancing the ecosystem and building the community. There's a network effect, and the network effect concept is that the project needs community, and the community needs the project. If you don't have a community and a good project, you're not going to make it. If you have a community but no project, you're not going to make it. I think it was it's Brandon said, "We're more a P2P, a project, a person-to-project people, you know, than B2C is dead." You know, so web3 is we, which is we. And that kind of sums it up for me in the web3 ecosystem.‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Liz. And then Marc, you're up here as well. Maybe a brief intro of yourself. I know Marc has helped us and HashPack has helped us streamline so many interviews. So, like, this is pretty interesting. I get to ask Marc the questions that I would normally ask other people. But Marc, if you could give an intro into yourself, what brought you into crypto? I know really interesting, even if you could touch base on your a little bit of your backstory, just because you told me that you invested into, like, you started investing when you were, like, 10 or 11 years old, and I was like, "Damn, dude, like, that's an absolutely amazing thing to even say." So, like, background of yourself, what brought you into crypto and web3, what led you to HashPack and building within the Hedera ecosystem as well, and then we'll kind of get rolling with some of the questions here.‍

HashPack Wallet – Marc Ugas – Director of Operations
Yeah, so, so thank you so much. Yeah, so it's, it's great to be on the other side for once. But yeah, so a little background myself. So, I've always been super interested in investing like you said, you know, started investing when I was, like, you know, 10, 11, or 12 because I was just, you know, very much into saving. And then I was like, "Okay, well, like, what do I really do with this, right? Like, you know, I can go buy something. But like, what is this actually going to give me? So, like, I really started investing with the help of my parents very early on, and you know, was able to get into some pretty interesting stuff. You know, I feel like, you know, a lot of the times when investing, you know, there's not one story that, you know, your first investment always hits it. So, you know, that, I got into Facebook at IPO, and yeah, so that, that was definitely interesting, and it was definitely a different story. And then I always, since very young, I was very interested in technology. I was always kind of playing around, and, you know, I had a dad that basically built hardware for the music industry. And so, you know, the whole family was very tech-inclined. And then we have, yeah, one of the closest family friends. He's a physicist. And then, you know, around 2009, which I was, you know, extremely young, they started talking about Bitcoin when they first came out. And, you know, they were just doing different stuff, you know, going to Luxembourg and opening accounts, which back then was, like, super, super complicated. And then, around, I'd say, like, 2010, 2011, got in, lost a bunch of money, Mt. Gox, and then that's kind of how I started getting into crypto, to be honest. Like, I saw it a lot more as a very long-term investment. And really, you know, I always say, you know, never invest what you wouldn't be willing to lose, right? So, yeah, I mean, obviously, that I learned that through going through Mt. Gox and all of that. And then, you know, it was really after the pandemic that I decided to really get more involved and start actually, you know, engaging with the community because, like, I had so much stuff going on that I never really had the time. So, you know, in terms of work background, you know, I've worked in venture capital, so managed a couple of funds. Before that, I worked with an agency that basically caters to, I think, it's like all of the Fortune 500, not all, sorry, all the Fortune 50 companies. And so, you know, that being in tech products, traditional digital marketing and stuff like that, mostly focused on consumer goods, products, so companies, sorry. And then, once, so it was like about, it's been about eight months, so once when I was managing the two funds, I was like, "Well, you know, I really like investing for the long term, but, like, I like to get my hands dirty, so, you know, I still do a little bit of investing on the side, but, you know, I recently moved to Canada, and then, out of the blue, we kind of just, I just met May because we live in the same city. We kind of just started talking and, you know, doing things here and there, and then around October, I joined the team. And yeah, I mean, from there, it's been, it's been incredible to see everything that, you know, the founding team did, and what we've done since then, with such a small team. I mean, we're six people, and, you know, it's all-consuming in the sense that, you know everyone's working around the clock, and you know, I always tell my wife, like, there's really no weekends here. But it's also fun, right? And the other thing that's really interesting to me personally for about web3 is this, you know, the thing about community, right? Because when you're working and you're kind of like, you know, not getting constant feedback, it sometimes can be discouraging. But once you have, when you have a community behind you that's basically helping you figure out what the next steps are, it makes it a lot easier. So, yeah, that's along with a way of introducing myself. But yeah, really looking forward to the conversation.‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
Yeah, I mean, 100%, and thank you guys all for the intros. I mean, I think it's really important to, kind of go over everybody's background. I mean, for those of you guys down here that may not have heard a little bit of my intro, I'll keep it to 30 seconds. But got into crypto late 2016, bought Bitcoin, had no idea what Bitcoin was, paid a record producer that I was recording an album and looked seven or eight months later and saw that what I had in there went up, like, you know, 300%, and I was like, "Wow." Um, still, you know, I still even today don't really know what I'm doing, to be honest with you guys. But started researching a lot in 2018, 2019, a lot of XRP Ripple-type aspects, diversified probably in that late 2019 time frame. Participated in the Hedera test net, where you used to just have to scroll through articles and you would get micropayments of HBAR, which was pretty cool back then. I wish I still had that wallet or knew where that wallet was. But, you know, on top of that, you know, Quant, other aspects, and, you know, from Genfinity's purview, we started kind of the Lighthouse report later last year, probably July. And then these Twitter spaces as well. The goal is to try to break as many, you know, ecosystem silos down as possible. And obviously, you know, we're sponsored by Hedera, so we do as many Hedera ecosystem interviews and bigger events like HashingTimes and HederaWeen. We created 15,000 wallets on the HBAR Ecosystem network as well during those two events. Alright, enough rambling for myself. From Max's standpoint and Elizabeth's standpoint, you guys have both interviewed so many ridiculously amazing people across this space. I'll start with Max and just looking through all the fantastic work that you've facilitated. Even just your YouTube, I mean, you mentioned your YouTube. If you guys aren't following Walker and Williams' YouTube, I'd certainly recommend doing so. He recently did an interview with Paolo Tasca, I believe, who's heading the DLT Science Foundation, which is an initiative that kind of stemmed out of Hedera. That guy's resume and track record is like one of the most ridiculous track records in crypto, period. I mean, he was like one of the original OGs at Quant, has helped Hedera tons of CBDC initiatives. Outside of Paulo, you interviewed Jordan Freid recently. Jordan Freid is one of the original individuals at Hedera as well, now moved on to Immutable Holdings and NFT.com. Mance Harmon, Andrew Gasworth of DLA Piper. So, I guess the question that I have for you, Max, first and foremost, is how do you get these interviews with these people? The second question that I'll ask is, what's been your experience in talking to these Enterprise-driven, Enterprise mindset individuals as far as where this space is going?‍

Max Walker Williams
Yeah, so, just because, yeah, Paolo, his CV is so good, it actually looks made up. It looks like he's just gone, "I'm just gonna make myself everything." But it's, but it's, but you check him out and it's legit. I think he has, I think he has Algorand in there as well. Like his resume is ridiculous. Yeah, he's one of the co-founders of Quant. He wasn't just like working out. He was one of the co-founders of Quant. And he's got more letters after his name than I have letters in my name. And I've got a long name. So, yeah, the guy's nuts. But, and he's really approachable and stuff. So, to answer your last question, how do I get the interviews? Lucky, I guess. I just turn up and don't leave them alone. It all came about because there was an auction way before auctions were possible on Hedera. So, there was an auction, and it was crazy because it was for charity, and for ladies and pregnant women living on the street in Texas or something. And so, they were raising money, and the main prize in this auction was a gold coin that had been pressed with the H and the opportunity, if you lived nearby, to meet Leemon. And it was Leemon's coin, to get the kind of Leemon. And so, I made a short video. I was bidding, and the auction function was so ridiculous that when you bid, you had to bid with all your HBAR. So, say you said ten thousand HBAR, you bid ten thousand HBAR. They took the ten thousand HBAR. If you got outbid and you wanted to make another bid, you had to have the HBAR. So, you didn't get your ten thousand back until after the auction. So, if you wanted to bid ten thousand five hundred, you had to give another ten thousand five hundred HBAR. That's how prehistoric the auction feature was. Anyway, I was winning the auction all the way through three days, and I made a short video about how I walked in the gym in the morning, like Conor McGregor, swinging my arms around, thinking I was king dingling. And I came out of the gym thinking I'd won. This isn't, you know, it's a closed case. I came out the gym and got absolutely battered. But I bid, I think I bet one hundred and thirty-five thousand HBAR in the end, and I got outbid by somebody but three hundred and fifty thousand HBAR. And so, it was good for a good cause. I said it's a shame, but it's good they've raised a lot more money than I was going to bid. But I'm guessing I'm not gonna get to meet Leemon and Zenobia Godschalk. I've also interviewed her. She reached out to me and said, "Your content's good and whatnot, would you like to meet Leemon?" Anyway, but he meant on a Zoom call. So I said, "Yeah, yeah, no problem. Can we arrange a time and a thing?" And she said, "Yeah, like next Wednesday at three o'clock." And I said, "Okay, I'll see you there." She said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, I've just booked my flight because as she was emailing me, I was booking the flight." So she meant on Zoom, but I, and I think I knew she meant on Zoom, but I wasn't going to let that opportunity pass. So I jumped on a plane with the big boss, and we flew out to Texas to see Mance and Leemon. I had the pleasure of getting to meet them both because I interviewed them first. It was a lot easier getting interviews afterwards, and we were there for three. We were there for half a day. I had dinner with Leemon the night before, and I was probably there for a week and spent a couple of days with them. The interview itself was three and a half hours long, and then it was cut down to about two hours. So it was really intense. But I think they really enjoyed it because a lot of the people who meet the people I interview are quite often a bit starstruck or I don't know what it is. But when I meet them, you know, I rightly or wrongly, probably completely wrongly, I see them as peers, believe it or not. I know that sounds arrogant, but I just see them as people. So I just treat them with respect. But I ask the tough questions, and if there's something I don't like, I'll say so. And I'm in a fortunate position in my life where I've got the luxury of not having to care. Because, you know, without trying to sound like a dick, I could retire tomorrow and never have to work again. And that's important because it keeps me honest. I don't need to shill anything. I don't need to. If I find something better than Hedera, I will say so. And of the 16,000 projects out there right now, there isn't one that I, that I've certainly heard of anyway. So, to answer the question before that one, in terms of building, it's unbelievable how much building has been done on Hedera. Like, interviewing LSE, you know, London School of Economics, they have entire teams of people who are, so basically, there are people working in like Fortune 500 companies. They go to LSE to learn further education for promotions that they've been given or for new roles that they're looking to apply for within their companies. And so they go back to LSE for top-ups, and a lot of it has to do with technology. So, they have to learn cryptography or learn how to build, or whatever it might be for an FT500 or FT100 business, in some cases. And so there's 22 of these people, and they invited me down as a lecturer. So, I went down as a guest lecturer and gave a talk to these people. And they're some of the high-ups of some of the largest companies in the world and are there to learn about new things. So it's generally guys and girls that are too young to be able to retire soon and not have to care, but they're too old to not know what's going on in the world. So they kind of go for these refresher courses to find out what's happening in the real world. That was really interesting. These guys are building projects for their course, for a module on their course, and they're from Barclays Bank, they're from all these huge organizations. That's just one example that nobody would ever know that these people are building projects on Hedera as part of their module for their course that they're doing for their promotion or, you know, hope promotion or whatever. And then there's guys like Paulo. He founded and now directs the largest blockchain Research Center on planet Earth. Those guys are doing some fantastic things at University College London. Also, mainly from academia, from that point. But you should check them out because, as you alluded to, King Solomon, they have grants and stuff. So if you are considering building something on Hedera or you already are, you should definitely check those guys out. Because, yeah, they're offering grants, support, even just little things like they'll be a third-party independent witness if you build a product and you claim that it meets these standards. Those guys will, as part of their grant, they will be a witness to that and they'll endorse it with their credentials. They'll look under the bonnet and ensure that it is what you say it is. So, yeah, that's a really good one. And then on the governing council side, some of the stuff that those guys are doing is mind-boggling. You can see this in real life with the likes of Avery Dennison's Atma.io project, which I had the pleasure of seeing live in Davos when I drove over to Davos. ‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
I mentioned that yesterday. If you look at Avery or Atma.io's product portfolio and all the companies that they deal with, I mean, it's literally billions of transactions through RFID tagging, like per second. And I mentioned Adidas. So I saw that somewhere too, and I'm sorry to interrupt. ‍

Max Walker Williams
That's okay, no, no, no. Yeah, so I mean, that's massive. Quite quickly, we're going to see labels in Adidas stores, and you can QR code the label and it'll tell you where the materials come from, with the CO2 emissions in doing so, how they've offset it, if they have. And it's not just millions, but genuinely billions of transactions. But what's even more exciting than that is then that starts to feed into other things. So the manufacturers of those products have to connect into that, and you know, it just sort of like a ripple in a pond. It just spreads wider and wider and wider with more and more use cases. And guess what? The Coupon Bureau is going live very shortly with their Universal coupon. So if you're using a Coupon Bureau coupon in Adidas, then you're tracking the clothing and on and on down that down the product line it goes. So it's, yeah, it's a really, really exciting time, and there's so much more being done as well, stuff that I even I haven't heard of or don't know of. Mega, mega use cases. ‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
And I forget the statistic, and I've got a question for you to follow up similarly, Elizabeth as well, but Coupon Bureau, isn't it like 90 or 95% of all coupons used globally flow through Coupon Bureau? I believe that could be wrong there, but I know it's like a ridiculous statistic if I remember correctly. ‍

Max Walker Williams
That's definitely true in the U.S. Yeah, it's okay. I don't know about the world, but I did a thing about them quite recently, and from memory, yeah, it was something like 93% of every coupon that's validated or created in America has gone through the Coupon Bureau. ‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
100%. And I know Elizabeth, a very similar aspect with you. I mean, you've been able to, even as recent as last Thursday, and if you guys, maybe Valor or Sarah, if we could pin up Elizabeth's Twitter space with Dr. Leemon Baird, obviously the inventor of the Hashgraph algorithm and everything else. A fantastic Twitter space as well. And I think you did one that was really interesting with a few guys down there in the audience aren't familiar with mtech and Project New Dawn, essentially Federal Reserve, Microsoft, Hedera. I believe Elizabeth interviewed recently the CEO of mtech. I think her name is Camille, if I'm not mistaken. And I was talking about mtech. They recently put out a document between Ripple, Hedera, and Lipis Advisors. mtech was mentioned in there. And the interesting thing within that is that was, I know we hear a lot of the ISO 20022 hype type stuff. It really doesn't deal natively in any crypto asset. But I know a lot of people were talking about HBAR being ISO 20022 compliant without really any backing to that. And I think that Lipis Advisors document that was co-authored by Hedera and Ripple, which is also a little bit interesting. So just those three organizations, Lipis, Ripple, and Hedera, that might be why you're getting double, Valor. So feel free to join from your personal ones, Sarah, or whatever you need to do. I wanted to start it from Genfinity to make sure that we could just host this. But within that joint document from Lipis Advisors, that actually was the first time that I saw that HCS was actually ISO 20022 compliant, and that is literally through mtech, whatever the infrastructure for payments and messaging. What's really just messaging that mtech has built. And again, to recap, Project New Dawn or yeah, Project New Dawn was like maybe 18 months ago, Federal Reserve, Microsoft, Hedera. I think there's one other organization that I might be missing, but I wanted to ask you, Elizabeth because you've had the opportunity to interview so many great people, even as recently as Leemon Baird and people like the CEO of Emtech, what's your experience been like talking to these people? How have you nailed down these interviews? How do you prep for them? What type of questions do you find that you need to formulate to make sure you're doing your due diligence to make sure the interviews go as well as possible? Also, just your experience in general with interviewing these great people in the space. ‍

Hello Future Buzz – Elizabeth - Founder
With Emtech, it only took me two years. I'm very polite, but I'm consistent in my desires to get them on, and I think a lot of the bigger players need to be assured that because it's live, they're not going to have to say no comment. You know, so in terms of preparation, that's a really important thing. I never give questions. I never give a list of topics. In general, I do give the panelists that are going to be on there. I try to get the panelists to support the topic and have some synergy between the spaces. I just put the Emtech Twitter space up on the Jumbotron, and I encourage everyone to read it, listen to it, because it really is an amazing space. She's an amazing person. But how do I do it? I don't know. You know, I think that you cannot discount the value of meeting people in real life. I've been fortunate enough to spend time with Leemon and Mance and also travel to different conventions, and I think it solidifies relationships when you get to meet people in real life. They see that you're a person that they can deal with, and it's nice to make friends online, but when you're having a drink or eating with somebody, it really does make a difference and them getting to know you. And just really getting to know people in real life and being consistent. Next week, I believe, is my two-year anniversary of doing Twitter spaces, and as recently as a while ago, Mance said, "So do you do these like once a quarter, once a month?" And I'm like, "No, every week for two years, plus pop-ups, plus charity events." And that's the other thing. I love to do charity events. We're a very generous community and charitable community in the Hedera ecosystem, and that follows through. If we've raised over $350,000 for women and abused children, and you know, it's very interesting to do that. And part of my mission to further the adoption of Hedera as well as grow the community is Hello Future DAO, which is coming. I want to thank everyone for their patience, and it's going to be wonderful. And you can go to hellofuturedao.com if you'd like to know more or at Hello Future DAO on Twitter. The DAO is going to be really awesome.‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
Yeah, I definitely want to get into the DAO aspects here shortly. I want to ask both you and Max. Um, being you guys have interviewed so many people and talked to so many people, I mean, my experience with that is there's always really interesting conversations before the record button gets hit and after the record button stops. I guess I'll ask Max first. I mean, what types of conversations, and you probably can't talk about some of it, but what types of conversations get you kind of excited about where web3, where crypto, where the hedera ecosystem is going with those conversations that you might not be able to have with the record button on? And do those conversations, do you find that those things normally do exist as well? Those types of conversations? ‍

Max Walker Williams
Yeah, my personal experience is yeah, they 100% exist. I think it depends on who you are, who you're speaking to, and how well you know each other because there's obviously quite a large element of trust. But I only do my interviews in person, which is obviously quite detrimental to growing quickly. But I, I just feel it's such, it's more fitting for me to be able to do that in person. So every person I've interviewed, I've obviously met, and, yeah, the conversation, I wish I could record the conversations before and especially after because the adrenaline dumps and then people sort of just tend to open up a bit and we have conversations. But yeah, stuff potential, maybe I've had conversations about, businesses that could be in conversation about potentially being a new governing council member. And maybe if I had have had those conversations, some of them are absolutely mind-blowing and incredibly exciting. And just things that are being built at an enterprise, particularly with the enterprise guys at an enterprise level, is really, really, really exciting. In terms of TPS, I would say the one thing that Hedera specifically lacks at the moment is Hedera is incredibly good at enterprise-grade stuff, and it's very, very good at B2B, you know, business-to-business or E2E and enterprise-to-enterprise. But it's not very sexy and not very cool. So, I mean, the high transaction numbers are fantastic, but if you discount that, why is Hedera different or special? Well, not many people understand, let alone care about, you know, asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance and stuff like that. So, but I think if we were to, if Hedera were to land more B2C use cases, like the Juicyverse with Starburst, you know, we'd probably, you know, the older guys probably know them as Opal Fruits, but they're now called Starburst. And, they've done the Juicyverse, which is cool. But if we could get a real retail, uh, you know, an Apple, a Tesla, a Starbucks, something like that, Lock, Stock, and Barrels, a GC member with a real use case, come on and say, you are now going to be able to use Hedera Hashgraph in all Starbucks stores. That is going to be the bridge, I believe, to close the gap between the value of Hedera and the technology of Hedera and the price of H-bar. That's why, Hedera struggles, the price of H-bar doesn't reflect the value, in my opinion. ‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
I think also, to let Elizabeth touch on a little bit, but you mentioned the tech behind it and people realizing, okay, so TPS, like real TPS, is actually occurring on network is massive, and I would expect for it to make maybe a little bit more waves than it has. But I actually had an interview with—I think, I don't know if it was—it might have been Jesse from Hashport. We always talk about the blockchain trilemma, right? And he was actually saying, you know, the fourth pillar within that, that most ecosystems haven't really addressed in a certain way that can scale, is fair ordering of transactions. And I think within that, within the Hedera ecosystem, is really interesting as well. Elizabeth, I'll let you maybe touch a little bit on, you know, the prior to and after conversations that you may have had. And I know that Mark had his hand up as well, um, with whether it be Emtech or Leemon or Mance or anybody. And if you want to touch on that, that'd be great.‍

Hello Future Buzz – Elizabeth - Founder
I always do a pre-interview, like for last week, with Leemon, on especially. Of course, I wanted to make it as best as possible because I wanted him to be aware. Sometimes, I come from a community standpoint, so I want to let them know what is being built in the community. Because I think a lot of times they get lost, and they are running a billion-dollar company, after all. So, in terms of talking, you know, prepping people, I usually have Zoom calls with them. I find out what they would like to talk about and also what they wouldn't like to talk about. I give them a sense of what the community would like to hear from them. And I think TPS is all well and good, but, you know, my focus is really about. So, like last week, I had Pixel Land and Astronova and uh, Deca4's Sphera. Deca4 is a humongous player with 500 million users on it. It's a football soccer site. And so, I'd like to do a mix of small nascent teams and larger teams. So, you know, I don't usually get into things with them that I don't want that they don't want to talk about. You know, I want them, most importantly, to feel comfortable. I think at this point, I have a good reputation to be as non-biased as possible. If I'm doing a space on wallets, I want every wallet to come. I think the more wallets we have, the better. The more DEXes we have, the better. The more NFT marketplaces the better. There's room for us all. And if we highlight what project does best, then the community will gravitate towards that project. So, in terms of, you know, you can't—I agree with Max—you can't discount the fact that you're meeting these people in real life. But if somebody's in, Saudi Arabia or, you know, Dubai or something, it's not up to me to get there. So, I don't know. I mean, I really try to make them feel as comfortable as possible because a lot of these people, especially on a higher level, are very, you know, for example, LG Art, I've met with them twice in person, and they have a very hard time interfacing with the community because they are part of LG Electronics, which is a huge corporation. So when you're dealing with a huge corporation like that, there's rules and regulations that all of these people have to follow. And coming from me, being an entrepreneur my whole life, I don't have the visceral experiential knowledge of working in a corporation that size. And neither do they understand a more nascent or entrepreneurial perspective. So, you know, with even the event we're having in October in Los Angeles Arts District called "Hello Future Live," which is sponsored by Hedera and Swirlds, and if anyone else wants to sponsor it, please contact me. And follow at "Hello Future Live" on Twitter. I want, I think there's great value in bringing together the larger players with the talent that exists in our community. Developers, artists, project managers, social media people. There's what I'm hoping for in October with "Hello Future Live" is that there's a mesh that happens so that enterprise can understand what's happening in the community development and community can understand enterprise better. And if, if anything would happen, like some, they would collide and decide to work together or collaborate together, it would be amazing. I just think that would be an amazing thing. I can talk more about "Hello Future Live" if you want, King Solomon. But, you know, it's, it's, we have what's booked. It's a great space. Actually, the arts district is getting excited about it. And there are some real Hollywood stars that are asking me if I want to pay them to come, and I'm like, no, you're, I'm not paying you to come, but you can get a free ticket. So, Hollywood is a funny place. And it's going to be a great event. And I hope everybody can come if that's at all possible. And if not, we're going to do some live streaming.‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
Yeah, 100%. And I want to get into Utopian Lab with Max. I want to get into "Hello Future Live" and "Hello Future DAO" with you as well. I mean, I hope you guys have a little bit of time. I know we did rug anybody that's down there in the spaces. I would, you know, I usually don't ask for sharing these types of spaces, but this is such a great panel up here. And we did rug initially, so if you guys could give it a share, that would be awesome. But, you know, on top of that, Elizabeth, you know, we've talked multiple times, and I'm sure everybody up here probably has thoughts and opinions on this. I think I mentioned in a space, it's like, man, imagine if, like, the enterprise mindset could leverage the mindset of community engagement, even with the memes, which are, like, mostly total. And I know memes are, you made a good point earlier before we rugged, where it's like, yeah, they do bring people into the space. But a lot of the meme stuff is, like, and a lot of people are totally gonna get wrecked as well. But imagine leveraging that community mindset and then having the enterprise aspects or the tech on the back end to actually back it up. I mean, then it becomes almost a zero-sum game where it's like, there's almost, you know, if you can leverage that community aspect on top of the tech that can actually back up everything else, I mean, it's going to be massive. So, I mean, I think I have to bring up HashPack in this regard just because, you know, you need sound infrastructure regardless of what you're doing. And HashPack has made so many massive achievements in this space. I was asking Marc for some internal figures a few days ago, and he was like, "You can't post these on Twitter spaces." So, like, but just to hear from Marc and HashPack standpoint, like, can you guys give an overview of everything that you facilitated? You know, what you guys are doing within the Hedera ecosystem, as far as wallet onboarding, how much of the community you have outreach into, some of the more recent milestones you guys were excited about? Just like an overview would be great.‍

HashPack Wallet – Marc Ugas – Director of Operations
Yeah, so, I mean, I don't want to beat around the bush in terms of, like, you know, pitching the whole HashPack stuff, because, like, I feel like most of the panel, well, most of the listeners in the panel here know what we do. But one of the things that we are constantly thinking about is how do we reduce friction? And, you know, it's complicated, right? Because, like, this space is at the moment, it's basically driven by Web3 enthusiasts and, like, crypto enthusiasts and stuff like that, right? But the next thing is, like, how do we bring in, you know, millions and millions of people that are not that excited about the tech, but they just want to enjoy some of the value, right? So, one of the things that, you know, we're really focusing on is nurturing a community. Because we believe that as a distribution channel, and it's amazing, and also as a way to learn and get feedback quickly, is imperative, right? So, like, most of the features that we've actually developed inside of HashPack have come from community feedback, right? So, when people are saying, "Okay, like, you know, we're really struggling with seed phrases," it's like, "Okay, well, let's just figure out a way to make it easier," right? So, that's how we introduced email onboarding, secure trades. People were getting scammed when transferring NFTs, and Pluto down in the audience was like, you know, very smart and was like, "Well, you know, we can use atomic trades inside of HashPack and basically just make sure that, you know, when people are making a trade, they're protected." You know, obviously introducing them to in wallet Swaps and so on. And then, you know, um, a couple of weeks ago, we released the store, as just the first snapshot of what we're working on and, you know, it just really showed me, it's like, it was supposed to be a test, it was supposed to be a beta launch. Like, we didn't even hype it up ahead of time, like, you know, from start to finish, it was seven, less than seven, seven days. And we didn't even give a heads up, right? And, you know, we didn't expect to have, you know, 30,500 NFTs, wait, actually, no, sorry, um, 29,935 NFTs minted. Or being able to increase the total amount of NFT holders in the ecosystem by 24%. Like, that was not expected, but really, that shows the power of community, right? One thing that, Elizabeth, you mentioned in terms of enterprises struggling with, um, community and outreach in Web3, that's very normal. I mean, you know, people at LG or any other enterprise, they don't have the same flexibility that people that come into the spaces have, and that's a fact, you know? They have to be very, very careful on what, on what they say but I do believe that there is a way of introducing them into and helping them build a community that meets them where they are. You know, at HashPack one of the things that we're always focusing on is like, okay, how do we meet the users where they're at? You know, like the email onboarding is one example, right? How do we make it easier? Also, one thing that Max mentioned is like, you know, Juicyverse and, you know, bringing someone like Apple, that would be amazing, right? But to get to that point, it's going to be very important to make sure that the user experience is top-notch. And also, that, you know, that it's not a basic copy-paste of, you know, a Web2 application into Web3. Because at that point, it's like, okay, where's, like, is there really value, right? The value lies on, you know, the ownership aspect, the community aspect. And, you know, big enterprises, big corporations, they struggle to understand that. Because, you know, normally, on their distribution channels, you know, they have budgets that are allocated for paid marketing and display ads and so on. And then they use those mediums to reach their end user or their user at the point of sale or stuff like that. But when you're talking about, you know, community outreach and having that direct relationship with the end user, that's something that's complicated for enterprises. So, you know, we are working on a ton of stuff to really make sure that when either enterprises or traditional companies come into Web3, that it meets them where they're at. And that we can use our expertise to help them, you know, to set them up for success. That's the last thing that we want to do, or anyone would want to do, in the Hedera ecosystem, is to have a massive name come in and not be, you know, a resounding success. That's, you know, that's the detriment of Web3. So, you know, I think that there's a lot of work to be done. But, you know, we're working, we're working on it. We have a lot of ideas in terms of how to really help onboard these massive brands. And you know, again, I think that, I think that for Hedera and, you know, really the whole of Web3 to go mainstream, we have to kind of, you know, we're always going to be looking at TPS, but that's going to be almost like an inside thing, you know? The people who are really, you know, that are really familiar with the technology, we'll be looking at these metrics. But I think that, you know, for the people that will be coming in, you know, the millions, hundreds of millions, potentially even billions of people, um, they will be focusing on the use case, on the problem that each use case solves. You know, and the perfect example is Atma.io. Like, I mean, you don't see Avery Denison shouting off the roof that they're using Hedera. They're shouting off the roof, the fact that they're solving a problem that, up until this point, couldn't be solved, right? And I think that this shift in mentality will really make it so there's a new wave of adoption. But yeah, that's a long-winded way of kind of saying some of the stuff that we're working on. ‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
And I think Elizabeth alluded to this before, where it's like, we want, there's so much opportunity in this space for let's say real builders and traditional project managers, or traditional XYZ. And I think the Hedera network, you know, and this is obviously just from my purview, I think the fixed cost in USD is something that's a massive thing that's kind of undervalued. ‍

HashPack Wallet – Marc Ugas – Director of Operations
And it's like, to see traditional, yeah, 100%. I mean, you gotta think that these bigger companies, they have budgets. If you tell them that their budget is going to be fluctuating depending on how, you know, on how busy the network is, like, that's a massive red flag. You know, like, they do have variability of, like, five to ten percent up and down. But, like, what if you tell them that, you know, they could be, they could see a variability of 100%? Like, that's a big No-No. Like, yeah, that, that's gonna cause that impacts their bottom line. That actually doesn't, you know, if they don't follow the budget. So, there's really set up for a great incentive and a great way to introduce these companies into DLT technology.‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
Yeah, and I mean, even, traditional businesses that can leverage the services, whether it be HCS or HTS or the file service or anything else within Hedera, that, you know, you don't have to, and like, look, I'm not going to take any value away from the multitudes of NFT projects and everything else we've interviewed. But, you know, real businesses coming in and building and leveraging Web3 in ways that make sense to them is something that I think will be really interesting to watch occur over the next couple of years in crypto. And I think that there's some networks that can really provide value in order to actually facilitate real business use cases and inject Web3 in ways that make sense. Kind of pivoting a little bit from that, um, into that aspect. And, you know, Max, you know, if you guys are just joining now because we did end up, you know, our Twitter space is rugged before. Max Walker Williams, has Walker and Williams group on YouTube. Uh, previously with the real estate, I think you're still doing the real estate aspects as well. Can you talk a little bit about, where you see maybe real estate going, where it, you know, kind of injects itself into crypto and Web3 in ways that make sense? And then, if you could give us an overview of utopian lab as well and what you guys are facilitating from the utopian lab standpoint, whether that be, Mint Condition, which I know is a new marketplace you guys are working on, or whatever you want to talk about. So, I know I try to load patches, always yells at me for this. I load multiple questions into one. But from the real estate aspect, injecting into Web3, and then give us an overview of utopian lab and everything.‍

Max Walker Williams
Okay, so yeah, real estate or properties, as we call it in the UK, can benefit hugely and is benefiting usually from cryptographic platforms. It's just an easier, more efficient way of doing stuff that's data-related. Uh, and property is no different. So, fractional reserve ownership is something that's being trialled at the moment, hasn't really hit yet, but I think that will be the future where you'll be able to buy one square foot of an apartment in New York, you know, in Manhattan, and you'll be able to buy that for a thousand dollars, and it'll return you eight percent and buy another square foot and buy investments through fractional reserve ownership. And real estate is just one asset that the likes of DLA Piper are working on a use case right now on Hedera that does exactly that. So, for real-world assets, whether it be art, property, bullion, whatever, fractional reserve ownership is going to play a big part. But I am actually working with, so I do a bit of work consulting for large companies who are looking for cryptographic solutions to problems that they have in the real world. And of course, I bring them to Hedera and then help onboard them to Hedera, introduce them to the relevant department, whether it be the Hbar Foundation's, Swirld Labs or the Hashgraph Association, generally depending on the use case and generally depending on the size of them. And what a lot of the guys like that I deal with is the trustless aspect of it. So, imagine, for example, just to give you an example of what that means in real life, imagine that you own a skyscraper and you want to get insurance on the lifts. But the insurance is really, really expensive because they have to make allowances for the fact that some of these lifts aren't serviced properly as they should be, all unique parts aren't used in the servicing of these lifts. And then eventually, there's a catastrophe, a load of people are hurt, and they've got to pay out, you know, low millions, tens of millions of dollars. And so, that's built into the insurance and it's really expensive.  And as the owner of the asset, which is the lift in this example, you want to ensure that your premium is as low as possible. But also, that if you go to make a claim, that the company, third-party company, the lift maintenance company that you pay to look after the lift has been doing their job properly. Because if the insurance company finds out that the lift third-party company hasn't been out for six months and it's supposed to be done every quarter, they've got an excuse not to pay out. And then you're left with that liability. And it's real, these are real use cases, like real examples in real life, real buildings, real addresses. And so, what happens is one of the companies that I'm working with effectively creates these workflows, which sound really boring until you actually see what they do. But it's quite amazing. So, the lift engineer turns up, he logs in remotely to this system. Him logging in is then an NFT, so it's a smart, it's a uniqueness, it's immutable. He has to be on location so he can prove to the insurance company, with complete trustlessness, that they don't have to trust you to know that it's true, that the lift guy was there and he hasn't sorted the paperwork after the fact, after the crash. There's a big lift collapse, and it's awful. And the lift company, to save their own backs, start filling out paperwork retrospectively. Well, he has to be on site to log in once he's logged in. They know he's on site. He carries out maintenance on the lift. He uses original parts from the left, which is another company that is much like atma.io. They have QR codes to prove that they're legitimate, where they've come from, how they sourced these parts. He used them in the lift. He QR codes the ones that he takes out, and everything is immutable and recorded in real-time on the hashgraph. And then that is all reported automatically to the insurance company, and then it's immutable there forever. So nobody can say, "Well, that lift was not serviced," or there's any question that if the lift fails, is it the manufacturer's fault, is it the servicing company's fault, or is it just a freak accident or whatever. And so, that's one real-life example of a use case that's being built right now on Hedera. And I've assisted them in going through the grant process and all that sort of stuff. And then you start applying that to all sorts. So it's not just the lift, then you apply it across all the housekeepers looking after the apartments in a hotel and all those sort of things that tie into that. And then you can QR code the linen, like Atma, and where was it? Where did it come from? Is it sustainable? What were the CO2 emissions and that sort of thing? So there's some really, really interesting stuff. And it's going to compound as well. It's going to be like a hockey stick in the sense that we see very little use cases in real life, and then all of a sudden, the lift operator is using it, and then the local authority or the governance or the local state or councils, as we call them in the UK, using it, and the suppliers are using it for procurement, and the NHS is using it to prevent fraud. And then you have to be on it in order to be able to supply some of these large organizations, which forces smaller businesses to be on it, makes it more efficient, prevents fraud, makes everything cheaper. So, it's really, really good. It's not without concern, though. In the health department, I think that if there's too much tracking, then there are going to be people who currently are able to get insurance that might not be able to. So, that's a bit of a concern in the background. And then in terms of Utopian Lab, we work with some of the largest and best brands in the world to help them enter web3 and in-verse of commons, more like web2.5. So, creating and then monetizing digital assets. And we're doing that currently on Hedera. We're planning to go live with our first client in Q4 of this year. So, that's going to be really exciting, and we hope that's going to be a huge step towards what I was talking about earlier, which is the b2c, the retail element, and the very visceral bits that people can go, "I love that brand, and they're doing it on a crypto I've never heard of before called Hedera," and that, I think, will help move the needle on the price of Hbar and play a big part in that. And then again, that compounds because these huge companies, they're looking for really boring workflows back of house, but they're also, for example, to take Apple for example, it's not Apple, but just say one of our, they're not our customer, but let's say they were. So they're using Hedera for their workflows. They're using Hedera for the lifts in their offices, but then they're also using Hedera for their retail element and for everything else that they use throughout the business. So it's top-down and bottom-up, and you can really vertically integrate Hedera into many different aspects of any business, which is the really exciting bit. And I know a lot of the people personally who are building these solutions at all different levels of the manufacturing process, from HR all the way through to very cool retail AR stuff. And that's what's really exciting. I think personally this is all well and good, but we do have a problem at Hedera, and that's that we are incredibly small, if we're being honest with ourselves. We have an incredibly small ecosystem, and some of the people that we have, we're in late-stage talks with some really huge American companies, which is ridiculous. But we are, that's kind of, we are incredibly early because these businesses, in any other aspect of their day-to-day life, wouldn't give us the time of day. But because we are considered experts in the space, you know, they do take us here, and I can get into these rooms and have these conversations with late-stage talks with two companies in particular in America. And their biggest concerns at the moment, being honest, is that the ecosystem isn't quite big enough. You know, it's undeniable that if you're a big company and you sell something on OpenSea, whether we like it or not, and gas fees and all that, I get all that, but they will sell out. Now, you do that on Hedera, and who knows, because it's never been done before. We don't have that, I know of a really large brand, wholly on Hedera, and that's something that we definitely need. But we've got a bit of a chicken and egg situation because we need the customers to buy, particularly for the secondary market, because a lot of these big brands, they have no concerns about selling out brand new NFTs in inverted commas because they have huge followings. So their people are going to buy their product on their website or wherever it may be. But if a lot of those people are buying to speculate, to sell onto somebody else, but you've got to have a secondary market. And I don't mean a digital marketplace, a place to go, because we've got those. But you need to have a lot of people buying. And when you look at the numbers on OpenSea, there's just nothing close to it unfortunately yet. And I just hope that Hedera can break that chicken-egg cycle where we need a lot of people to attract big brands, retail, and we need big brand retail to attract a lot of people. And that's something that I'm working incredibly hard. My team and I are working incredibly hard to break that chicken-egg cycle.‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
It is really interesting if you look at, I forget what the statistics that normally come out, but it's like that. Is it? It's not Lunar Crush. It's somebody that puts out, like, the top 10 ecosystems by NFT volume. And obviously, Ethereum is, you know, above and beyond as far as liquidity aspects with how much money flows through that ecosystem right now. But then, if you get down to, like, number five, like, Hedera's been in, like, number four, number five at certain times. And it's only, it's like sixty thousand dollars worth of, you know, worth of trading that's going on, like, even at, like, you know, some of the peaks. And it's like, yeah, it has, it has, but, but slightly, misleading if you wouldn't mind me saying about those stats. It's like the 80-20 principle. ‍

Max Walker Williams
It's like, yeah, okay, so we're number five, but number one is, I'm just making the thumbs up, 100. Oh no, yeah, number two is ten, number three is six, number, and number five, which is Hedera, is sixty thousand. So yeah, yeah. So, for example, I have friends, I invested in the business because I have to know them in real life, from a long time ago. And they started an incredible project working with, um, I think they've got about 65% of the UFC roster now, exclusively called Block Asset. And they're on, um, Solana. And they've just gone, by chain with Chili, so they're on Chilies and Solana. They did their one project on Solana, which isn't even the biggest, and they did more in NFT sales than the whole Ethereum ecosystem did last year. They're one company and one platform. Um, so it kind of gives you an idea. And I'm not poo-pooing Hedera, it's just, oh, you don't have to. Be honest, I was there. ‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
I was gonna make your same point where it's like, but, but I'm also saying, like, if I look at that, understanding how much liquidity is in, let's say, the top three compared to number five through ten, and that, to me, represents a gigantic opportunity to, you know, utilize and leverage a network that is just faster, cheaper, makes more sense in certain ways, but how do we get people here in order to do that? I think is the crux, too. And it only takes one, Max. I mean, you know as well as I do, as soon as one big brand comes onto Hedera, it's gonna be a domino effect, where, and this isn't just from, let's say, Avery Dennison and Atma.io or Coupon Bureau. It's like one big brand NFT project or one big brand X, Y, and Z, and then it's kind of game over. Elizabeth, I know you had your hand up.‍

Hello Future Buzz – Elizabeth - Founder
No, I really want to, uh, if you say the chicken is enterprise and the egg is retail, I'd like people to understand that from an alternate perspective. Two things: the, what we were talking about with LG or enterprise level, they move like the tanker out in the ocean. For them to go left, they have to go through 25 committees. That's a long sale right there as to in terms of Enterprise, in terms of retail adoption, where I'd say go to the egg. And the egg is, for example, in my little mini-thing that I've just been doing here in the LA Arts District in the past two or three weeks. I've been talking with these traditional artists, and they're like, "What, you know, what is it? What is an NFT like? And I don't understand what you say with mint, and is it hard? How, where do I go to learn how to do this?" And that is the value of doing in real-life events. You want to meet people where they're at. They're at the coffee shop, they're at the grocery store, lunch place, they're at the shop around the corner. They are in the art gallery in the Arts District in LA. You take those people and make them. This is all about, in order to get mass adoption or to get Hedera noticed, there has to be a lasting, transformational movement happening that comes from the community, that does not come from Enterprise. You want it to go up. You want the price of HBAR to go up, as we all do. Then get on the ground and start creating a transformational movement within your own physical, in real-life community. And that's what's going to be happening at Hello Future Live. It's the integration of people that have no idea. The only thing they know about crypto is it's bad. They don't know and they don't care about the tech. You don't talk to them about that. Talk to them about how they can streamline their entrepreneurial efforts, how they can sell more of their art. The reason I have the space on gaming and sports last week with Leemon Baird is because games can drive adoption. Sports can drive adoption. Music drives. The arts have always been the leaders in any kind of new revolution. And that's really what's happening here in crypto. It's a revolution taking the internet back from. I'm a veteran of dot-com. There was great promise for the internet in the year 2000, and then it got to be Web 2, which was, "Where do you want to go? Amazon, Walmart, or Netflix?" It became a closed garden. Lehman talks about having unwalled gardens, and that's what the combination of shared worlds is in real life and online. And that's where we're going. We've been online this whole time the past few years, and that was supported by lockdowns in COVID. It's time to get out into your communities, to meet people in real life, take advantage of AI, let it do the tasks that you don't want to do. Have a personal assistant be AI. But then, when it comes to real life, and I think the whole thing's going to swing back into, "You want to make a contract with somebody like, 'Let's have lunch and let's meet in person and let's shake hands.' And I'm looking forward to it. That's my right." ‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
I know, I want to hear a little bit more about Hello Future Live, as well as Hello Future DAO as well. But looking through your, um, Walker and Williams, and if you guys aren't down there listening right now, if you're not subbed to Max's YouTube channel, I mean, the guy does really good work. Consistently, really good work. Whether it be deep dives into different ecosystems, whether it be interviews with Governing Council members or, you know, Enterprise-minded individuals. One of the things that I did see that you did a video on was kind of a deep dive into all all of the patents that do kind of exist right now, that at least reference Hedera and the Hashgraph, if you could touch base on that as well. I mean, I think there's a lot of synergy with what Elizabeth is saying, from the community, the ground-up standpoint, but also how slow some of these enterprises do move. But talk about some of the patents that you've found. I mean, God knows I've looked through patents, but I would love to hear from you, you know, some of the patents you found from some of the big players out there that reference Hashgraph and Hedera specifically.‍

Max Walker Williams
Yeah, so I think a lot of the... There's about, I think I've covered three in depth. So I think there's another video that you're confusing with one of mine that covered all of their patents that have been registered and made reference to Hedera. But I can't remember who did that video. The one I was referencing was just, in general, that Nike had a patented trainers that had LED displays all over them, which meant that, in effect, they could... They were like a billboard, and they would facilitate NFTs on their Nike clothing, which is something that was, to me, was like mind-blowing. That wasn't specific, I have to say.
Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
Yeah, I think that's... I think those were the CryptoKicks things through Artifact, and what they're doing with those guys. But I did see a video from you where you did reference some of the patents that referenced Hedera as well. I know it was a video from you because I just watched it before this interview.‍

Max Walker Williams
So, alright, okay. Yeah, so I can't remember the specific video, but yeah, there's been quite a few patents, some by the GC. Atma.io's was an interesting one when it was first registered because it was quite confusing as to what it did, and they were quite cloak and dagger about the whole thing. And a lot of their wording was incredibly technical, I think on purpose to try and mask what it was they were trying to do. But obviously now that they've launched that product and it's clear that it's the tracking facility. One of the things that was really interesting was the... was the... um, what's the company called... I forget. They do the... uh, I've just covered them in the Governing Council board video that I did that you've kindly put up on the notes there. They do the the hardware for recording in real life, the data points of machinery, things in transit. So, for example, they have... um, I forget their name. It's not... it's not DLA Piper. Because is it DLA Piper? I forget their name. But they've just patented this unit effectively that you put into driverless vehicles, like tractors, agricultural driverless vehicles and autonomous vehicles. And so they're recording data in real time. And what was amazing about that was... So, this tractor's going through this field it's harvesting Bali, for example. It can detect if the bar starts to rain, the bar is too damp, it stops. It reports that back, but it also is recording literally thousands of data points in real time every second. So, it's like tens of thousands of transactions per unit. And they've got thousands of units being manufactured to go out next year. And so, you'll have these autonomous tractors going around harvesting grain and things. And they're saying, "What's the temperature? What's the latitude? Where am I in the field? How long have I got left? How much fuel have I got in the tank? Oh, there's a tree that wasn't there before. I need to record that, go around it, and report it so somebody can come and get rid of it so I can do what I need to do." The pesticides is detecting chemicals that may have spilled into the field or been sprayed on the field, or that shouldn't be there, or the lack of stuff that should be there hasn't been obtained. And then asking whether it should harvest it or not because it's missing or it's got this particular chemical on top of it. And the mind boggles at the number of transactions per second that things like this, which again aren't super sexy, but they're so, so important to be able to feed people in the future moving forward as the population grows. And that was a really interesting one from a really geeky point of view. I really enjoyed reading about the tag-back. Yeah, that was an interesting one. I'll try and remember their name during the conversation. ‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
Yeah, 100. And I mean, so hello future, and Elizabeth, I would love for you to talk a little bit more on the aspects of hello future DAO, kind of building out from the community standpoint, as well as hello future live. We know that it's in, I think it's October, in LA. And the pivot of the venues, as well as the sponsorship from Hedera for the event. And hello future DAO, if you can give us an overview, that'd be fantastic. And feel free to pin anything that you want to pin up there as well. That'd be great. ‍

Hello Future Buzz – Elizabeth - Founder
Thank you. Well, I'm super excited about hello future live because to further the mission, my mission of creating a transformational movement to go global and introduce people to the real benefits of distributed ledger technology and how it can make their lives better. I think if you show people how they can improve their lives, most people are ready to listen. They just need to be a little bit of an education going on. And actually, Christian Hasker said something about a month ago, the Hbar Foundation had a space about Hederacon, which was the original name for the event, which I thought was fabulous. And what Christian said on that space was, people are going to be drawn to distributed ledger technology through the use of infotainment. If they want to get in Information, but in order to do that in the general public, you have to give it in a fun way, make it interesting. Have it be music, have it be art, have it be gaming, have it be something that they're already into. And then they can say, "Oh, look, I don't just play the game anymore and rent all these pieces, I can own them. And if I get tired of playing the game, I can sell that asset for possibly more than I paid for." And that's ownership economy. That's happening. I think if we highlight the ownership economy, retail is going to get excited about it. They don't care if it's Hedera. They don't care if it's secure and transparent. They don't care how much it costs. They care about, "Is it fun? Is it something that's going to help my life?" You know, hello future live is a place for us builders as well as the retail investor in Los Angeles. And I'm hoping to get a lot of press and have a lot of celebrities there and have, you know, publicity does matter. And Max, I think, said it, that HBAR isn't very sexy. It's not sexy. There's nothing sexy about HBAR. But you know what? We gotta make something sexy about it. So I woke up at three o'clock last night, as I often do, and I went outside and I was looking at the night sky, and I'm like, "Oh, look, there's the hash star." And I'm like, "That's what we need. We need a hash star." So that's my new hashtag, hash star. Last year, we had Hedera Heatwave. We need a hash star. We need to tell people that this is the star of the ecosystem of cryptocurrency and cryptography. And the only way we're going to do that is to meet them where they are, which is, you know, at the grocery store or around the corner at an event that you're going to because people, I think, in general, are dying to get out of the house. I know I am. And Los Angeles, a month ago, removed its mask mandates, which, if you can believe that, it's true. So people are really eager to get out and to create a lasting transformational movement. It is you take all the communities that we've already developed for the past three years on Twitter, and each one of those little NFT tribes, they come together to form a community, and then the community has a shared goal. And what is that goal? That goal is to promote the Hashgraph and the ecosystem to make the world a better place. And that's how you're going to get people excited about things. People care about the climate because they love nature. They love air. They want to give something to their children. It's nice to say that Hedera is eco-friendly, but that's already a different group. We have to come with a hash star and say, "This is the star that's going to let your life flourish." You know, I just really believe that. So, part of the hello future DAO is to create a more community globally. So, um, it has other aspects to it, one of which is super important, which is going to be the first leg being built, which is a project directory listing where projects can list their directory. The DAO will do an internal KYC on that project, whether they're anons or not and list them on the project if a project has concerns, then the members of the Dow can speak freely about that project on the Dow's platform, sort of like a Twitter-like platform, but it's on the Dow. So, its members of the Dow will be able to speak freely. And then if a project is going south of the voting system that Hedera gives us, which patches is really familiar with, and I'm hoping he'll help build, is the voting system. So, if a project is causing concern within the community, the community will be able to vote on that project, whether it should be delisted from that project directory listing, which I think is going to help people. At least, if you're in a, you know, you're thinking about investing in a DEX, you know, check out the listing. Is it there already? Do they have a good rating with the community? And I think that's going to help in terms of putting out projects that aren't don't have the business acumen to succeed or our rug pulls. ‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
Yeah, I mean, 100. I mean, I think, well, I think one of the interesting things I would like to ask both of you guys, and you know, I won't talk too much about some of the stuff and the ethos that we have with the Genfinity stuff we've done, like with the cross-chain aspects. But I think a lot of this space, especially from a lot of these ecosystems, whether it be Hedera and H-bar or Constellation and DAG or let's say Casper or you know, anybody else out there, we have like a huge opportunity to pull together forces and make, make, you know, these ecosystems kind of known even outside of Ethereum and exist outside of our silos. So, I mean, the question I would have for you guys, though, is like, being, you know, you guys have been here really early since the onset of Hedera and the H-bar ecosystem. I've seen a lot of things being really early as well where it's like, there's so many tools and utilities built now for people to come in and utilize the network. Can you talk about where the Hedera ecosystem, and this isn't necessarily just from a liquidity standpoint, but from tools and being able to come on and actually interact with the network in meaningful ways? How different is the Hedera and the Hbar ecosystem now compared to where it was, let's say, even a year ago or two years ago? And I would love to hear maybe Max's thoughts on that first and what work needs to be done even further outside of that for tools or are they there and now it's just we need kind of the big names to come in? So, Max, I'll kind of let you take that first. ‍

Max Walker Williams
Yeah, so back in the very early days, I don't know if anybody remembers, but the way NFTs used to be bought and sold was basically just through trust. You would, you would see, "I'm gonna DM you right now and send you my, I'll send it to you, send me some H-bar exactly Yeah, yeah, you'd see people would advertise the NFT that they had, you know, just on that, on Twitter or wherever, and then they'd say, "Does anybody want to buy this for a five-day H-bar or whatever?" And then you say, "Yeah, I really like it, I'll have it." And then you would send, either they'd send you the NFT first or you'd send them the 500 H-bar, and then you'd hope that they'd send you the NFT. And it was literally that, and everybody knew everybody by their, pretty much by their first name. And that's literally how small it was. So, and it's easy to forget that, actually, and that was only, what, two years ago that we were doing that. ‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
That was, so we're in 2023 now. That was, that was October of 2021 when that stuff, I, or somewhere around there where that stuff started going out. ‍

Max Walker Williams
Yeah, I remember, like, the, um, those The Lazy superhero guys, and they, they had, they were really exciting projects. They were like, you know, they're 150 H-bars each. Anybody who wants one, just put it in the comments below and your wallet address, and then we'll associate and we'll send it to you, and then you send us the money if you can when you get a minute. And that was kind of like the whole marketplace. And you forget that, actually, it's quite nice to remember that and how far we've come and how quickly we've still got a long way to go. And what I meant when I said, you know, Hedera isn't sexy, I think it has the, it has the, it certainly has the technology to be so. It's not about, it's not for Hedera to be sexy. It's for the products. It's not for the platform. It's for the product to be sexy on the platform. And that's what we really need. The technology is agnostic. It's just what it is, what it is. It works incredibly well. So it's what we do with it that will be deemed, sexy or not. And so I think, and that will come. And as you said, it just takes one, one big use case to sort of break that cycle. And I'm hoping that we're going to be being four, five, or maybe even six, later this year. So, I'd like to think that we're going to play quite a large part. I'm going to play quite a large part in breaking that cycle. So that'll be really interesting to see. And it'll be really interesting to see what the community does and if they rally around to make sure that the first one is a success because it needs to be, uh, really. And, you know, I mean that, not just for me, but for the whole, the whole ecosystem, obviously. Because if the first one is a success, others will pay attention. And so yeah, we've come an incredibly long way from where we were just only two years ago. And it's going to be really interesting to see where we go next and as more and more projects go live that is going to be, yeah, as I keep saying, things will compound and start to build off each other, which will be really interesting. And it's genuinely happening. And one of the things that can be frustrating, like Elizabeth said earlier, is that sometimes these large enterprises and stuff, they do move at a glacial pace. And even the young, you know, sort of the startups and the grassroots guys, you know, I've been a part of that, so I know that, you know, you think you're going to be live in three months, and then it's four, then it's five. Unfortunately, some of those projects do turn into rugs, which is just part of the growing pains, I guess, of any network or technology through history. You know, the minute there's money involved, you know, the bad people turn up. It's almost a positive sign that we're growing because that just wouldn't have happened two years ago because everybody knew everybody. And there wasn't enough money to make it worthwhile, sort of trying to rip people off. So, I guess it's a positive sign of growth. It's a shame that it happens in the space, but it happens in all spaces, and not even just in crypto. It happens in all new technologies. So, yeah, it's a positive sign, the growing. I think what we're going to go now into, the only fear I have for Hedera is platforms like Tezos hitting critical mass. They hit the tipping point where the technology is good enough, and there's a big enough market that they become a go-to platform. Like Tezos becomes the go-to for retail. That's a concern for me. I think if Hedera had any challenges, that would be one. It would be other platforms getting critical mass. Although I do appreciate there's enough to go around. You know, the 80-20 principle still applies, and I would like it there to be on the 80 side to that rather than the 20. And if we don't get there relatively soon, then that particular part of the Hedera platform could be a little disadvantaged and a little bit underutilized. Because the technology doesn't have to be the best, it just has to be good enough. But it has to have all the customers. And if you've got a platform like Tezos, which is a great platform, not as, I don't believe, the technology is as advanced as Hedera, but it takes enough of the boxes for a lot of enterprise-grade companies, that they could steal market share. And then it's very hard to undo that. It's really hard because everyone, like, you look at most business models today, it's like, "We don't make a profit until year 10 because we want to take market share." You know, Netflix, Amazon, all these different companies, Tesla, etc. They grow, grow, and then they get to a tipping point. They have the UFC did it. You know, they were giving all their content away for free. And Karate Combat now on Hedera trying to copy a very similar model, where they give access pretty much for free, loads of content, constant content, really high-quality stuff. Free Netflix, incredibly cheap. And then you reach a critical mass. And I'm just nervous that another platform, it could be any, but another platform that's good enough, takes the crown as the go-to for NFTs and I just, I just hope Hedera wins that arms race.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
Yeah, I mean, I think also it's interesting to point out, like, because I know you did do an interview with Jordan Freed from Immutable Holdings, like, and that's an OG, as OG gets like Hedera, you know, original, original member. Yeah, can you guys hear me? Sorry, yeah, yeah, he was employee number one. Oh yeah, yeah, so and I mean, here's what's interesting though, is he made the decision from nft.com to launch on Ethereum, and that branding in and of itself, nft.com, should be a massive, massive, massive branding in the space. And they launched on Ethereum, and it didn't go well. I haven't had the opportunity to interview him, but I'm assuming it didn't go necessarily as planned. ‍

Hello Future Buzz – Elizabeth - Founder
Yeah, community, he had, he blew off when he went to Ethereum. It's not that cross-chain is bad, it's that you can't snub the original community that you're dealing with. ‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
Yeah, and I mean, I mean, I'm just bringing up one example. So, I mean, like, just because Ethereum has the major liquidity pool and where a lot of that money flows throughout and within, I mean, you can still launch things in a way that don't necessarily succeed. So, it's getting people onto Hedera and leveraging the services that do exist to launch those good products where they make sense, not only to the Hedera community, but we can interoperate with other communities as well and bring people over to the Hedera ecosystem in a way that makes sense for pretty much everybody. I mean, Ethereum just went through, and I'll stop rambling in a second here because I'll ramble forever. Ethereum just went through the merge, like, what, six months ago, for, you know, moving from proof of work to proof of stake. Try using Uniswap right now and making a transaction, and it's, they're like 80 or 90 gas fees. It's absolutely, it's craziness that we're still doing this. And I mean, people are going to do it. Max is a million percent right. Everybody's a million percent right. People are going to do it if there's the ability to make money on these platforms. But at some point, there's gonna, my hope is that there's gonna be the ability to make platforms where their fees are, you know, a fraction of a cent to be able to facilitate the same thing you would do on these, you know. I don't hate Ethereum. Look, I mean, Ethereum has done a lot of great things in the space. They're probably not going anywhere. I don't think Bitcoin's going anywhere. I don't hate Bitcoin. But at the end of the day, it's like, are their original, you know, ecosystem ethos is totally bastardized by now. So, is Bitcoin's ethos bastardized by now? And I have to say, probably yes in certain regards. And same thing with Ethereum. So, I know HashPack, you have your hand up. Um, go ahead. ‍

HashPack Wallet – Marc Ugas – Director of Operations
Yeah, I mean, that is one of the things that we believe internally is that, in turn, like, for enterprises to come in or big companies there might be some that choose only one, but you know, we have a perfect example in Hedera, which is Google, right? And Google last week or a couple of weeks ago, they dropped the news about the Web3 startup credits and so on, right? But they're affiliated with a bunch of layer ones. The reason for that is because we're still very early, like, you know, you don't know what will happen on the next cycle and the next cycle after that. You know, hopefully, there's gonna come a point where, like, you know, the volatility of and the nature of the market in terms of cycles kind of ceases to exist. My deep belief is that having worked with all of these enterprises is that one of the things that they probably, the things that they that's most important to them is risk mitigation. So if they only choose one network, yes, that's great, but like, what happens if the people that, you know, we're working on the network just one day wake up and decide to go away or stop working on it, right? I do believe that, you know, the future is going to be a mix of, you know, a bunch of different networks, and people will try new things and leverage the best parts of each network. Obviously, Hedera's built in a way that is, you know, it takes all the boxes. Right? Like you were talking about the blockchain trilemma, and, you know, do the stuff that Jesse was talking about, which I think that he puts it as instead of being three things, it's five things, which is time to finality and fair ordering. And, you know, yeah, there is exposition of in a very, very well, but I do believe that there's going to be a mix. There's going to be no one network. Enterprises, big use cases, we'll start using a bunch of different networks. I mean, we're already seeing all of the big NFT marketplaces in Ethereum using other networks. You know, there's a lot of emphasis on multi-chain just because, like, you know, we always talk about liquidity and so on, but, like, you know, for people to come into a network and wanting to engage, like, they don't really should have to know that if there's enough liquidity for them to do this stuff, right? ‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
So, yeah, within that, real quick, through Marc, and we'll wrap this up in, like, 10 minutes, guys. I know you guys have been here for quite some time. I know we rugged earlier, but I think I saw Max posting about meme coins earlier today, and it made me giggle a little bit because, if you look at the valuation of Pepe, where it was, like, a couple of days ago, and I brought this up in the space yesterday, like, a 1.3 or 1.5 billion-dollar market cap. But if you look at the actual liquidity there, there was only, like, there was only, like, 50 million dollars of liquidity. So, like, even if everybody wanted to sell at the valuation that they thought that it represented on CoinMarketCap or wherever you're looking, only 50 million dollars would have been able to essentially be cashed out at the valuation that you thought that you were going to be able to cash out at so, it's like there's a lot of smoke and mirrors that go on in this space, and um, I mean, me personally, I'm really excited about, you know, hearing Max talk about working with, working with Enterprises, having the inroads with Enterprises, is really trying to bootstrap out the community. I'm really excited to hear Elizabeth talk about Hello Future Dao and Hello Future Live, and these not only in-person events but kind of the community-based aspects around the DAO, proposition as well, which are extremely interesting. I mean, I had the opportunity, and I know they're not here right now, they were here earlier, but I, I like the, the Brandon, so H2R Bull, uh, and Jesse, you know, came up with with Twigital, with Digital Twins, and that's like a real product, that's like a real product that can be utilized in Web3, not, you know, Hedera, obviously, with, uh, HCS and the speed and everything else, and the verifications and what that represents for those guys. That's a product that can transcend multiple ecosystems, and if it starts in Hedera and it lives in Hedera and it can interoperate with other networks, that's the stuff that really, I think, excites me. So, like, I just have to say, such a pleasure to be able to, talk to such smart individuals, such as Max, who's been, able to interview so many people, has such great thoughts on the space, same thing with Elizabeth, who I know is just absolutely gears to the grindstone, consistently building, one of the strongest people that I've ever met in Web3, uh, for, you know, the unwillingness to deal with and just to keep moving forward. And that, to me, deserves a lot of respect. I'll let you, Max, and Elizabeth, um, and maybe you Marc, kind of lead us out here, but any closing thoughts that you guys would have for not only, you know, maybe not only the Hedera community, but, you know, your thoughts on crypto and Web3 in general? Where we're going, based on conversations you've had, because I know you guys have all talked to so many people, and I know Marc from HashPack, we're probably going to have to revisit this again and do a just a specific cashback interview. But yeah, Max, I'll let you kind of lead us out a little bit, then Elizabeth and,  Marc, and then we'll go from there,‍

Max Walker Williams
Thank you guys so much again, by the way. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. It's been a pleasure, uh, it's really interesting talking to, you know, to like many people about where, where we are, where we might be going, what the future holds. I think that something is going to happen. It might be, I hate to say it, but it might be a crash in the general market, much like we saw in 2007-2008 that that's gonna wash a lot of the nonsense away. It's going to be painful, but it's going to be, it's required, and it's part, part of the cycle, you know, the slash and burn cycle. So when that happens, I've got no problem with buying, uh, meme coins, and I like, you know, but but just understand what it is, it's gambling effectively. So it was just greater full Theory be willing to lose all the money that you put in, and I hope you thousand acts, good luck to you then. But that's not investing, that's gambling for sure. So, but on the investing side, always back utility because when all is said and done, there are real, useful, use cases on platforms like Hedera that aren't going anywhere and that can't be done more efficiently elsewhere. And while that still remains true, they're going to be remaining on Hedera. And there are massive companies investing a hell of a lot of money, into building on Hedera, and so they don't do that lightly. The good news is, with these Enterprise-grade use cases, they take forever to make a decision. They move at a glacial pace. But that works in your favor because once they're in lock, stock, and barrel, they're not going anywhere for decades. And then they have no reason to Hedera. So, these guys are integrating a lot of their inner workings with the Hedera platform, and I genuinely, sincerely believe, um, with no real direct, uh, impact to myself, that HBAR is one of the most undervalued assets of all assets in the world. You know, property, bullion, whatever it might be. HBAR, trust me, remember this conversation. HBAR is one of the... I can't tell you when it's going to happen, but it's going to happen. Um, and I truly believe that HBAR is one of the most undervalued assets, and time is a great ally. And time is definitely on Hedera's side, and I do believe that time is working against other platforms, like potentially Ethereum, for all the, uh, reasons that you were saying just there, King Solomon. So, um, yeah, thanks very much for having me. If anybody's got any questions or anything, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter. ‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
Yeah, again, before Elizabeth and Marc kind of go here as well, I mean, I really, really recommend, going to Walker Williams' YouTube and signing up for that YouTube, because Max does amazing interviews and work within that channel. He compares different assets, he does interviews with some of the Enterprises that we can only wish to essentially interview in this space. Um, give them a follow on Twitter as well, uh, and then Elizabeth, uh, feel free to go ahead. I mean, your thoughts, uh, to close us out, and then we'll go to Mark, and then we'll kind of, uh, wind it. ‍

Hello Future Buzz – Elizabeth - Founder
So, listening to Max, that made me think about six years ago in 2017 when Leemon Baird spoke in front of Harvard class in Harvard and predicted that there would be a shake-up and 20,000 coins would go away, and there'd be five or six good businesses, good networks, good technology that would be left standing. I think we're there right now. And in terms of, uh, you know, a year ago to today, all I have to do is watch or read Leemon's hundred-year vision of Hedera Hashgraph. This was built differently from its conception in 2014, and they, Lehman and Mance, worked everything out. So, we don't really need to have to wonder how to do it? We just have to do it, you know. Hedera Hashgraph was open-sourced a year and a half ago, and that really, to me, is the birth of Hedera Hashgraph being open-sourced. So it's like, you know, we're a toddler, we're just learning to walk. So, in terms of what Max was saying, yes, patience is our friend here, but we have to be smart and nimble. And that comes from community, that doesn't come from Enterprise. I love the Enterprise use cases, and they're very important to establish trust and legitimacy to Hedera Hashgraph, but the people are going to decide. That's what Web3 is all about. Web3 is about community, so the community is going to take its cue from what works for them. And I do my best every day and every week on Twitter Spaces, and I'm so looking forward to Twitter, I mean, the event in real life in October at the LA Arts District, Hello Future Live on Twitter, and to build stronger relationships. So, I'm really glad to have been on this talk with you, King Solomon, and just know that everyone in the HBAR community really does support to infinity and really looks forward to all your talks. And you create a lot of value by bringing others of CT into our community. So, thanks so much for having me, and let's have a great week. Let's go.‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
Well, thank you so much, Liz. Um, and then, Marc as well, I mean, I know that we did not get enough time to probably dive into the weeds within, you know, just what, HashPack represents in an ecosystem like Hedera. And I guess maybe I'll give a little bit of an overview. I mean, Max brought up a really great point from, you know, September-October timeframe in 2021 where essentially, you know, NFTs going live on the Ledger and people sending just trust-based, you know, transactions that were literally through like DMS where it's like, "Hey, just pay me an HBAR associate this token and I'll send you the NFT." and certainly, I have to give a huge shoutout to the OGs who are, you know, lazy superheroes. And, um, ah, what was it? it started with an X. The, uh, their platform they built out, they were the first, uh, what was it? Exact wallet. Yeah, it was Exact, and Exact had the first, Auction House on Hedera. And then seeing, like, the fruition of HashPack kind of come out, and, you know, at the onset of it, you know, it didn't look too different from what was kind of built, and this was like, you know, probably 16-18 months ago, but the amount of updates that you guys would push and the amount of community feedback that you guys have reciprocated into what you guys have actually pushed out into the application is absolutely massive. It's by no mistake that you guys probably have 90-95% of the entire, HBAR, you know, ecosystem kind of wrapped under HashPack, which is self-custodial, by the way. You can stake through HashPack, you can do all the things you would want to. I think there's Fiat onboarding at this point in time, if I'm not mistaken. There's the store that's available right now. You guys launched the NFTs for one, what one of which was freely claimable like two weeks ago and propelled your guys' selves to the largest kind of diverse holders within NFTs on Hedera as a whole. I mean, so many achievements that are ridiculous. So I will let you guys kind of close this out, Marc, and thank you guys so much for coming. And by the way we did HederaWeen and Hashentines and the wallet creation aspects and working with Marc. Marc putting together those events where we were giving away like six or seven hundred thousand HBAR, combined, and creating 15,000 wallets. Like Marc was one of the guys who's up here right now that there's no payment between Genfinity and HashPack. Like, there's nothing. It's literally just we want to streamline content, information. Marc spent, I would have to say, between both events probably 40 hours with me just sitting down and trying to figure out these events and making sure that they were going to go successfully. And I can't say enough for great people in the space because they are few and far between. So Marc, I'll let you close this out, man, and yeah.

HashPack Wallet – Marc Ugas – Director of Operations
Well, thank you so much. I feel like you just gave me the full Patches intro, but, yes. So, yeah, no, it's great to be on the other side of the mic. Here, and yeah, we'll definitely have to do it again. But it was super interesting to hear, both Elizabeth and Max's insights on, and what you guys are seeing. I think that it really reaffirms the thinking that we have internally. And, you know, it's great to hear, in terms of, you know, from HashPack, you know, we always say, "Keep your eyes peeled," because there's, there's a lot more coming. We're working on a lot of cool stuff. You know, I like to reiterate that, you know, I think that's super important to meet users and individuals, uh, where they're at, uh, in their journey into Web3. Telling people about, you know, tech stuff, um, it's sometimes just kind of, you might miss them there. But, you know, talking about more, you know, about the value that this space brings is super important. And, yeah, I mean, with this, I really appreciate everyone that tuned in. Max, Elizabeth, always a pleasure. Valor I see over there, and Ryan, thank you so much. We'll be putting this out on our community side in the next week or so. So, yeah, if you missed the first part of the rugged Spaces, udon't worry, we'll be putting that out as well.‍

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
I gotta give a shoutout real quick before we end here because I see Kabila, who also has a wallet down there on Hedera right now. They're an all-in-one platform for Hedera NFT creators. Um, please give Kabila a follow, please give its Brandon a follow from PixelRug. Uh, Hedera Yacht Club has been here for quite some time. Uh, Charles has been here forever in this space. Uh, Jesse, I think from Twigital. I see Psyched Era down there as well. Uh, Elizabeth and Psyched Era does women in Web3 spaces. So, you know, I'm, you know, I've tried, you know, I usually just like builders and Web3 aspects and some of the people that I just so happen to meet are women, which are like the most badass builders in the space, period. But I think, you know, they're highlighting women, which is fantastic. So, I know he's trying to put together some great spaces for women in Web3. So many great people, such a pleasure to be able to talk to, uh, you know, what I would consider like legends in the Hedera ecosystem, Max and Elizabeth today. And always great to hear from HashPack as well. Thank you guys all so much for joining. I think we've got a lot of value out of this. I hope, I'm sorry for rambling earlier, and, looking forward to doing this again next Monday. Who do we have next Monday, Mark? We... I think we might have, N2 and ServiceNow. So, we have N2 and ServiceNow. So, we actually... Oh, I'm taking a page from Max's book. At least at the very onset, I'm trying to get into the Governing Council members somehow. But N2 and ServiceNow will be a badass interview. Um, I gotta do some due diligence around that. But, uh, thank you guys all so much for joining. We'll touch base next time. All right, guys?