0:00
You recently made a comment that went kind of viral.
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0:02
I think you got a lot of heat for it.
0:03
You said you want to financialize everything. Do you really mean that?
0:08
>> Why'd you scare my grandma with that comment?
0:10
>> If you believe that markets work, what they do is they discover [music] prices.
0:14
But what if we applied it to some of the most important pressing questions about our future?
0:18
>> Should you be able to bet on anything?
0:20
Calcia is one of the fastest growing companies on Earth and it lets you do exactly that.
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They fought the government and won, raised billions of dollars, and are in the middle of a fierce rivalry with Poly Market to win the prediction market race.
0:33
>> Okay, Powers Shift is brewing in the sports betting world.
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What does this mean for sports betting and the gaming stocks?
0:40
>> This week on the show, we have Koshi CEO Tar Mansur.
0:42
We talk about insider trading, why Koshi employees aren't allowed to use Khi, what he thinks of Poly Market, and his controversial comment about wanting to financialize everything.
0:52
But first, Ellis and I talk about the rise of storytelling in tech [music] and why X is pleading for its haters to return to the platform. This is Access.
1:05
>> Ellis, how's it going, my friend? >> I'm well. How about you? >> I'm good.
1:09
We've got a lot to talk about today.
1:10
We've got Trek Mansour on the show of Khi.
1:13
But first, Ellis, uh, I've been noticing that everyone seems to have FOMO about what you do, about being a quote unquote storyteller, that storytelling is the hot new thing.
1:27
>> According to the Wall Street Journal at least, uh, they had a big story, was it yesterday, talking about the rise of the storyteller and the frankly the decline of reporters.
1:38
[laughter] How did that feel going from uh earned media to uh maybe we'd call it invented media? >> Yeah.
1:47
>> Co-created media, masturbatory corporate media, one of the above. Take your pick.
1:52
>> This was one of those stories that got viral, screenshotted on X by a bunch of people we both follow in in the tech world.
1:59
Everyone, you know, glamping on about their savvy media strategy that they have.
2:05
And I just think it's kind of interesting that uh this is becoming a a hot topic.
2:10
And I think it kind of signals where everyone's head is at that in an age of infinite AI everything and products that all kind of do the same thing, maybe the thing that matters is how you talk about your company. I don't know. You're the professional. You tell me.
2:26
>> Humanity has never been more important.
2:28
What we need is storytelling.
2:30
[laughter] I mean, to me, it's nothing new.
2:33
I feel like this is just the next evolution of content marketing and social.
2:38
I mean, it's so crazy to me.
2:41
I remember being back at the Verge like 12 years ago.
2:42
And our friend Sam Schoffer was doing social probably paid a pittance to do this like every other social media person in the industry. >> Shout out Hype Desk.
2:55
>> And that's all there is now is social.
2:57
Unfortunately, these folks are being paid a lot more now uh for the value of their work and their skill at packaging content to fit in algorithmic social feeds.
3:06
To me, this whole storytelling revolution, I think, kind of coincides with this whole idea of founders and creators being interesting.
3:13
And when you are telling whatever you have to say from the horse's mouth, it's typically feels more authentic or more interesting than it's being translated by somebody else, whether it's a reporter or the social media desk or otherwise.
3:28
So yeah, to me, I mean, this is just kind of the next step.
3:32
I mean, selfishly, the way that I think about what I do is that it's more than just telling a story, but actually understanding all your audiences these days.
3:39
audiences these days. as a tech founder whether it's investors or candidates or internal teams or advertisers or in you know retail even before your IPO and so I do think there is like a meaningful difference there uh I guess when I reflect on this I'm glad it's being appreciated I'm glad people are seeing
4:00
this convergence I guess of the way that we communicate with the world and just being real about it um but yeah I don't know I mean it definitely it feels a little funny as the attention turns away from creators or even influencers uh and reporters in terms of how you get your narrative out to the world. You know,
4:20
You know, >> uh you can still get your narrative out to the world through sources. news. Thank you very much.
4:24
you very much. [laughter] uh >> you bring like immense context I feel like to every story and so if you're a company that has trouble translating their differentiation I mean but that but that is what a storyteller is in my mind >> yeah I don't know I I I think founders should go direct more but I think a lot
4:46
of founders are wet blankets and have no personality and no ability to talk about what they do beyond the nuts and bolts of the actual thing And to really do this well, you have to be, I think, someone like TK, who we have on later in the show, who can talk about it more at a high level. And that just takes, you
5:02
And that just takes, you know, that takes like a certain personality. It takes experience. It takes training.
5:07
Um, but yeah, I mean, I just think storytelling as a concept in the tech world becoming so popular right now with AI, I think, yeah, just to me suggests that there's a lot of copycats and a lot of um cookie cutter type things out there.
5:24
I'm reminded of a a quote that Ilia Suscover gave the Dark Cash Patel podcast recently where he was like, "Silicon Valley has more companies than ideas right now."
5:35
And it does feel that way. >> Yeah.
5:39
And when there's less differentiation or when everybody's building the same thing, the story becomes even more of a potential lever to hook people or just talk about yourself to the world more without pitching your product every day.
5:52
I mean, that's really how I think about it.
5:54
It's just a world now where everything is content.
5:59
And that applies to us as well in the way that like we package this podcast, what clips we choose, what platforms uh we post on.
6:06
And in some ways, I think it's nice that it's a bit more of a meritocracy maybe than it once was where it was all follower driven and it took years and years and years to build followers so you had any leverage.
6:19
So I think that's the bright side of it.
6:21
But yeah, when everybody's building uh AI rappers, it is it is awfully hard to stand out now.
6:25
So we need to invent a new job for that.
6:28
>> Everything is content.
6:28
And is that the first slide of your deck? >> Kind of.
6:32
[laughter] I think the first slide of my deck, which is no longer as relevant as it once was, was like if you build it, they will come and it's just crossed out.
6:40
That was a more of a hot take a couple years ago.
6:42
Now that seems kind of like obvious.
6:44
You know, how's anybody going to use your app if they haven't heard of it? >> Right. Right.
6:50
And I mean I definitely feel this from my perspective of being a independent journalist now for just a few months, but the amount of outreach I've gotten from VC firms, startups, big companies that want to work with me on quote unquote storytelling and I'm like, "No thanks.
7:08
Um, you can just, you know, give me an interview."
7:10
But it is a huge >> Wait, you don't plug me in that conversation?
7:15
[laughter] I do if it's >> you had a perfect opportunity there and you you didn't take it. >> No, I plug you a lot. I plug you a lot.
7:22
Um but I'm not I'm not, you know, for the person to come in and like brand the company, right?
7:27
It's like figure out how to reach so and so audience, you know, I think of what you do a little more high level.
7:33
But yeah, I just I I think there's a lot of people who think analytically and from an engineering mindset or a product manager mindset, but very few people who actually can step back and think about how is this actually going to engage an audience.
7:48
And you know, I struggle with that.
7:48
You know, it's something that I can rotate too much in one way or the other all the time in my work.
7:54
And uh you don't want to like be overly I don't know, programming overly trying to game the algo.
8:01
I mean, we talk about this with the podcast and how we how we do the podcast, but you also want to be relevant.
8:07
So, it's it seems like a very hard line to walk.
8:11
>> I think maybe in some ways you have had a bit less practice than others because you have scoops to lean on. >> Yeah. Scoops do help.
8:19
>> You don't need to sensationalize >> what a company is about when you are breaking news that has that inherent value. You know what I mean? >> Yeah.
8:28
And that is the core of the storytelling to me when I work with any client is in some ways just trying to find what's most newsworthy about them. >> Uh and you are right.
8:36
Um I don't know if I'd call them all wet blankets, but they all do think that what they're building is inherently interesting cuz that's why they're building it for 24 hours a day. Yeah.
8:46
>> And I do think as that Wall Street Journal article points out, the reporter's instinct to know what is going to break through.
8:54
That's all you do every day.
8:56
three, four, five times a day. Bit different for you.
8:58
You know, you're probably spending a lot more time over the long term building these relationships.
9:03
Sometimes the source will tell you something in a year >> that they may not tell you today, but back when I was doing it, it was like I mean, especially at Business Insider when I was writing [ __ ] five articles a day, getting immediate getting immediate feedback from the algorithm and also the clicks on the front page of what headlines are working.
9:24
Sharpie, >> you get pretty good, right?
9:25
You get pretty good at at understanding what type of language people need.
9:29
But yeah, I mean, I guess one other nice thing about former reporters is that we also have some pride and dignity in trying not to like completely give in to the tricks, if you will.
9:44
Like I don't feel comfortable doing that.
9:47
I think a lot of people probably do.
9:50
>> That's why we're all broke as reporters. [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
9:53
So, I do think we we embody a better balance than than than many others.
9:58
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10:38
Well, speaking of scoops, you you want to talk about this this uh this interview I did recently?
10:44
>> Yeah, I want to talk about the interview you did.
10:46
I mean, this was a good one, man.
10:48
I mean, this is some stuff I've been wanting to hear for a while.
10:52
>> So, yeah, Alex, you you sat down with Nikita >> uh Beer, >> who is the head of product now for X, formerly Twitter.
11:00
And nice to hear someone actually talk about what they're doing with the fine tooth comb, an actual product builder.
11:08
I mean, what do you feel like when you look back on this, you know, you took away the most?
11:13
But nice to hear that there's someone there like keeping the lights on and thinking about the product direction. Yeah, for sure.
11:19
Um yeah, I mean I've known Nikita for a long time.
11:22
He's this I would say he's become a personality in in the tech world.
11:26
He's this viral uh master of of social apps who sold one to Meta back in the day, TBH, and then another called GAS uh to Discord.
11:40
And uh I think Nikita's hilarious.
11:40
Like I said, I mean he's in LA, too.
11:42
We've I've known each other for years.
11:44
But yeah, when he reached out and was like, "Look, do you want to do you want to do an interview about bringing journalists back to X," I was like, "Yes." Uh, of course.
11:53
Uh, it was his first interview since he took the job about seven months ago.
11:57
Uh, he reports to Elon directly.
12:00
And yeah, I thought this was interesting that this was the first thing that a senior, you know, leader at X is coming out and saying, which is we really want media and even, you know, Capital Journalists to come back.
12:14
And I think I know why, which is that, you know, I've been covering Twitter before Elon bought it for many years.
12:21
I extensively covered when Elon bought it.
12:24
And Twitter has always had this problem where a very small percentage of the user base posts most of the content.
12:33
And that's true for I don't know I guess Snap was a little different because that was messaging, right?
12:39
But these one to many platforms that's usually the case.
12:41
But even by kind of industry standards, Twitter was always pretty uh topsided that way.
12:45
And they would call them like uh vi I think they were vit someone's going to an ex tweet was going to >> very important tweeters.
12:58
>> Yeah, something like that.
12:58
Very important tweeters or something.
12:59
And they would track this obsessively because this would kind of this this factor would basically determine whether Twitter was working or not.
13:07
And I mean what you saw with Elon, right, is like obviously a bunch of people in the media left, including many of my peers and close friends in the media who um to be honest like kind of made me feel like [ __ ] for staying on X.
13:22
[ __ ] for staying on X. uh it became like a >> it became like a it is a political thing and um you know you had blue sky happen, you had threads happen and this diaspora now where everyone's kind of spread out and like I wrote in this interview and now I check three apps a day instead of
13:39
one to find out what's going on in the world and that hasn't changed you know three years it's crazy to think like it's been basically three years since Elon bought Twitter which is wild and Nikita basically just outlined mind with me that, you know, they're making changes in the product that he thinks will hopefully incentivize people to come back. That's a new link viewer uh
14:00
That's a new link viewer uh that is driving more traffic to web pages.
14:05
I can attest to that personally in my completely shadowbanning Substack links as they want.
14:13
>> So, he says that's not happening.
14:14
There's not no shadow banning of like certain link domains.
14:16
There's no >> That was not a shadow ban. That was a public ban.
14:20
That was a no that was a direct Elon ban.
14:22
And the interesting backstory to that at the time when that happened that was again around the acquisition was Elon was trying to buy Substack.
14:29
He was actually trying to pitch Chris Best the CEO on being the CEO of uh you know de facto CO.
14:33
I mean Elon's obviously the real CEO but the deacto CEO of Twitter.
14:38
Um, so there was, I think, some more stuff going on in the background there.
14:43
But yeah, they were doing that and, you know, Elon was banning journalists for reporting about the whereabouts of his private jet based on publicly accessible information.
14:50
Uh, I think really stretching uh, the definition of doxing to target journalists who were doing some pretty critical reporting of his acquisition at the time.
15:02
So again, I have no there's no fault or no um I have no qualms I guess with my friends in the media who just who have said we're never coming back as long as Elon's running it.
15:12
But it's interesting to see Nikia to say look like you'll get traffic.
15:17
I mean he posted like this is the biggest arbitrage opportunity of your career for your journalist to come back because we have the audience I think it's like half a billion plus people a month coming to the platform.
15:29
Who knows how many of those are bots, but you know uh and you know time spent is at a record. >> It's true though.
15:36
>> You don't think it's true? >> No.
15:38
Like they have vacated so much of the quote unquote newsiness I feel like of this platform.
15:44
Like what I see most of the time I'm very interested in news.
15:49
And yeah, most of the posts I see are still from the last couple days, but it has really become for better or worse like Tik Tok for text or uh memes or what have you.
15:59
I mean, I don't know if it feels like that for you, but like I don't know.
16:04
I feel like engagement is down when I post about anything newsy.
16:08
Like, it is very much just kind of visual opinion driven stuff similar to the other platforms.
16:13
It's just kind of incidentally who's still there.
16:15
I feel like that's working and in a lot of ways because the subject matter is a lot more personalized now as opposed to your follow graph.
16:24
I think it's actually even harder to stand out. >> That's interesting.
16:28
I mean that also speaks to what Nikita said about the algorithm.
16:32
>> Or maybe I just suck at posting.
16:33
[laughter] >> No, no, no.
16:33
I think I think I think uh what they've done is they've replaced the traditional algorithm which had a bunch of classifiers and labels that someone like Elon could go downrank so and so downrank this category of content or these accounts to this purely Grock based which is like >> uh yeah for better or worse um grock based personalized LLM based algorithm that is entirely training on your preferences and your interactions.
16:57
So maybe that's what you're telling X you want.
17:01
Well, I am, but how many people are saying I mean I'm obsessed with the news more than most people.
17:08
And like it's it's good these days, you know, like I start engaging with more like I started playing some old Mega Man games and I'm really enjoying them.
17:16
And now I'm seeing like really good Mega Man accounts like doing niche memes and old artwork from the old games. Like that's great.
17:24
All I'm saying is that they don't appear to be focusing, especially if they're not tipping the scales on news.
17:32
Um >> well I don't think they have a lot of news on the platform. That's the problem.
17:36
I mean that's that's why he was doing the interview is like they need the posters to come back and journalists were the posters and uh you know some of us have stayed you know and the reason I never left is because I think it's my job to be close to my sources.
17:50
I named sources for a reason and the AI community in particular has never left X.
17:57
like to say that you're trying to cover this industry and understand what's going on and you're not on X and you're not interacting.
18:02
I don't you're not to me you're not doing your job well.
18:06
Sure, you can still break news and you can still, you know, you may not need it, but it still has been tremendously uh advantageous to me from that perspective and it's the main reason I've stayed on.
18:15
But yeah, I think that's why he did the interview.
18:19
It's like there's not a lot of news.
18:20
It's kind of all over the place.
18:23
I mean, I feel like you go to do you check Blue Sky or threads much? >> Not really.
18:28
I think I see threads via the crazy cross promotion module inside of my Instagram home feed.
18:35
Blue Sky, uh, I get Blue Sky links from a friend or two, but that's it.
18:41
Um, by the way, uh, great headline.
18:43
I love X wants its haters back.
18:46
Did that just come to you? >> That just came to me.
18:48
No LLM involved, actually. Yeah, thank you.
18:50
Um, I mean, I wanted I wanted a little bit of rage bait.
18:54
You know, this was like a classic blue sky rage bait story.
18:56
I would say the vast majority of my peers in tech media are very active on Blue Sky and not at all on X. Maybe some on Threads.
19:06
I think threads is actually trending in the direction of Reddit.
19:08
If you look at what they're doing with the community stuff, uh the sports stuff that they're leaning into, uh Connor Hayes, the head of threads, is also going to be in sources this week, but he just did a podcast uh with a bunch of NBA people.
19:21
I think they're going more in that direction.
19:25
And for X, I mean, they really need to convince people to leave Blue Sky, which I don't know.
19:30
I mean, Blue Sky is its own echo chamber, man.
19:33
It's like, >> yeah, >> you jump on there and it's like you better you can you can imagine immediately in your head like this is this is what it takes to work on blue sky and to to be successful.
19:43
And it's a very particular POV on things.
19:45
It's like you're very skeptical or you just downright right hate AI. Um you hate Elon. You love Mandami.
19:53
Like there's it's just like there's this ven diagram of like all these things that makes you on Blue Sky.
20:00
And like that's I I [snorts] wish we were all together again, I guess.
20:04
And Elon was, you know, he says he wants to make the town square and he has utterly failed at that in the last few years, right?
20:10
It's the it's the opposite.
20:12
And I think everyone is is right to be very very skeptical of of that uh not happening, I guess.
20:20
>> Um well, to close things out before we get to the interview, um did he divulge any any juicy little funny Elon stories or habits? >> No, he did not.
20:29
We're going to have to save that for a future conference. >> You didn't ask. >> I asked a little bit.
20:33
Uh he said he meets with Elon multiple times a week and that Elon is spending most of his time on X and XAI.
20:41
>> Is it still going to be the everything app?
20:43
>> They're launching X Money, the payments thing that he said he was going to do when he bought the company.
20:47
I think they're launching it this month before uh before New Year's.
20:50
So, you're going to be able to to to pay the the bots this uh in crypto or whatever.
20:55
I think it'll be fiat, but yeah, that's launching very soon.
20:59
Yeah, it is interesting to watch.
21:00
I mean, these platforms, the features, as is long become obvious, are no longer really the differentiators, whether it's the feed or the DMs or the size of images or videos.
21:12
It seems like it really just kind of has become who's on here, you know.
21:16
Uh, and that may, I think, be fine for companies of a certain scale depending on their ambitions.
21:21
Um, but I'm hopeful, you know, that these different platforms can emerge for different communities.
21:27
though I really do miss that moment of monoculture where everybody on Twitter was live stream live tweeting the Oscars or the Apple event or whatever it was that there is no place for that these days.
21:37
Um and that was a special moment.
21:40
I wonder though I guess that was the idea with Twitter that didn't allow them to grow to the size of that their investors wanted is that not enough people wanted that.
21:50
I think Twitter didn't grow for a lot of other more practical [laughter] just bad execution reasons, but that's a whole another conversation. All right. Should we kick it to TK? >> Yep. Let's do it.
22:01
[music] >> When I recently decided to start my own media business, I chose Mercury as my banking solution.
22:10
And I want to tell you a little bit about how I use it dayto-day.
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The thing I love the most about Mercury is how simple it is.
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23:01
[music] Track, we were joking uh while we were waiting for you that we should have started a market about what time you were going to join. >> That's nice.
23:17
>> I don't know how uh specific the markets are getting these days.
23:19
Do do people make them for such specific things?
23:23
>> Uh no, nothing like that.
23:23
Um but um there are certain things that like people have interested interest in that could be about like a uh well nothing about like someone who works at the company or anything like that.
23:37
And also the people at KI can't trade.
23:38
Uh so we we because we run a regulated exchange so you cannot actually trade. >> Oh really?
23:45
You have a no trading rule.
23:47
>> It's it's also like the rags the regatory framework doesn't enable us to trade on our own exchange.
23:51
It's an interesting thing because you know it's hard to build a product when you can't actually really use it.
23:55
It makes it a little bit harder.
23:57
Uh so there's like that interesting dynamic.
24:01
>> Have you talked about that before? How do you do that? Yeah.
24:02
How do you how do you build a product you can't use yourself?
24:05
yourself? uh you just have to be very close to the customers like really really be very I mean I mean it's cliche like all all companies obviously talk a lot about staying close to the customer but I think this is especially true here where you just have to really be uh at all times as close as possible to
24:22
the customer um to um basically figure out like what you need to build and like how to make it better and what are the points of friction but but there are like there are some industries where like you know the technologist or the pro like you know the product builder cannot fully experience their own product. You know, it's it could be like
24:38
You know, it's it could be like an hard tech or like if you're kind of machinery like right like you you you're not sitting in the office and like operating some heavy machinery and so you also have to really kind of embed yourself with the customer.
24:49
Um but yeah, no I think it's feasible but it is a challenge.
24:53
>> Do we believe that Tim Cook is actually using the vision pro in his office or not is uh is the real question.
24:58
I mean that does strike me as like pretty remarkably tough especially when things are moving so quickly and I do believe that like having worked at Snap and the browser company that founder does have a unique ability to make changes in the product when things don't feel right whether it's with like the way a screen flows or a notification or otherwise.
25:21
I've definitely come to believe over the years that dog fooding is a is a pretty pretty critical lever.
25:25
I wonder if there's any way to like say, "Hey, uh, my friend, you're about to take a sbatical for a little while.
25:30
You're going to gather some feedback, use the app for a while, come back."
25:33
But I guess that would still be biased. Uh, wouldn't it?
25:36
[laughter] >> Yeah, it would also would work.
25:38
You have to have like a six month post couch period.
25:41
Uh, so if if you leave, you have to wait for six months um before you could trade.
25:46
So, uh, but but it is it is I mean there are ways to kind of like like you could still use the app without trading, right?
25:54
Like so so that could get you a lot of the I mean that could get you a lot of the flows um except for maybe the core trading flow and then we have you know we have like an internal like demo like no no no real money like free money uh version of the product but that's also different that that also has different dynamics.
26:10
So we get close but not quite there yet.
26:14
>> Same product no dopamine.
26:14
>> Same product no dopamine. It's like I mean the whole point right is like having skin in the game >> right >> changes the behavior of people right like like that's the whole point it goes back to sort of the whole question about polls versus prediction markets or like experts versus prediction markets like
26:31
>> the whole difference is there's some skin in the game here right if if if you take out the the sort of monetary incentive uh or this idea of like you know put your money where your mouth is then we we default back to kind of a regular poll right people can just say anything sort the the the whole kind of truth seeeking aspect sort of erodess. You can bring back the bias, bring back
26:48
You can bring back the bias, bring back subjectivity and so so the money component is a critical component to kind of take you from the subjective to the objective rational uh plane.
26:56
Um so it's a it's a big difference.
27:01
>> I think if your employees were using it, they'd also be spending a lot more time in the bathroom as well [laughter] >> as they were.
27:06
I maybe uh uh they'd be distracted.
27:10
I was reading recently about how companies are deciding whether or not to ban prediction market trading for their employees as well.
27:18
So, it's interesting to hear that Khi bans it.
27:19
I actually was reading too that Google built its own internal prediction market uh um and that this is becoming more common. So, yeah.
27:29
What's your advice uh to companies weighing whether they should allow their employees to use your product? >> I think that's okay.
27:37
I mean look the same rules apply.
27:41
So the the rules that apply to the stock market generally mostly like basically the same rules apply to prediction market or at least regular prediction markets which is the the case for Khi.
27:50
Um it's an important distinction to be drawn right like if from the early days from the kind of day one it's like we're it's we're in financial services um and we're offering a financial product and I think in in those in that industry I would say like regulation is a very critical component or pillar of how you
28:06
build things and so we define a principle which is regulatory first you know do everything regulated upfront and what regulatory means I think at a high level is like you know figure out like customer protection like make sure that people understand what they're what they're getting into and what they're doing. And number two is market
28:19
And number two is market integrity or this idea of fairness.
28:23
Create create rules that are fair and you know um for the different participants.
28:28
It's right like if you if you're getting into a game that is not fair, you don't want to participate in that.
28:34
Um or or whether it's like anything in life and like if it's and so you have to kind of create a like the stock market a set of rules that like make it fair.
28:42
And so like the stock market the way that we've regulated this you know we worked for four years before we launched a single product.
28:46
So working with the CC which is the the federal regulator um to regulate this like a financial market and so you have the same set of prohibitions.
28:54
So like you know like market manipulation is not allowed uh things like wash trading, spoofing um and then like this notion of insider trading um and what it means like what is insider trading and and how do you define it and so that is regulated like exactly the like the stock market and so we have the same sort of set of protections.
29:12
sort of set of protections. we have systems that flag for these things and then if you flag somebody who committed it um you know it could go from from a fine to like like if you committed inside trading on a stock it could be like a financial crime like it could be
29:25
criminal prosecution and so it's an interesting question like when it comes to companies it's it's very similar to um like um I if you are an employee of a of a tech company and you know something about the quarterly earnings like you cannot buy options based on that knowledge Right? And and the way to draw the line
29:44
And and the way to draw the line is essentially like you cannot use material non-public information to trade. Right? And what does that mean?
29:54
So it's basically you cannot use information that is not supposed to be public.
29:58
That is like you are not supposed to make that information public by trading because actually trading with that information is in some way one way of making it public.
30:05
of making it public. like you can go make information public by like saying it to the press or saying it to friends but another way is actually trade on it because if you trade on it you're moving the price in a certain direction and so that's another way to make it public um and the same rules apply to cashi and and and so that that applies to people
30:21
other companies government members of for example like Congress if they have an impact or knowledge on a specific like bill or something that they are themselves doing um and kind of a you know it's kind of like a case by case also applies to sports >> I was just going to ask has anyone ever been fined or sent to the slammer then for something on Koshi. >> Um so a few things because we've like
30:40
>> Um so a few things because we've like okay why do we take this whole regulator approach?
30:45
We take this whole regulator approach because we look we believe this market could be very large and and and you know we believe that one of the ways to go like the only way to go mainstream really is to kind of build it regulated regulated rails so that institutions big partners can adopt it over time.
30:56
partners can adopt it over time. But then the second thing is that you know you want to build something with the right set of safeguards so that you know you mitigate and avoid sort of like the risks to happen any new technology especially financial techn technology comes with certain set of risks that
31:12
that's always true self-driving cars Uber Airbnb all of it comes with risk and regulation what it does is like it is a forcing function because you have a regulator that has decades of experience that that have seen how things go wrong whether it's you know in drugs or in financial markets or whatever to
31:29
basically like pressure test your systems and you know we've done four years of pressure testing before we got went live now kind of since start to finish we started in 2019 now we're you know basically 2026 um it's been like seven years of pressure testing the system so the systems work really well
31:44
like it's working as intended and you see you probably have noticed like you don't really like there there haven't been kind of cases of like people doing bad things on cash because it was very regular we ask you for your KYC all the trader report to the government like it's kind of a bad place to try to commit fraud. There are other
31:57
There are other alternatives offshore, unregulated, and it's an easier way to do it, right?
32:00
Like if you want to do something weird with crypto, you probably won't go to Coinbase.
32:04
You'll probably go to some offshore, you know, exchange that like offers similar services because there's no KYC.
32:10
They don't know who you are.
32:12
They don't report things to the government. So that's that's one.
32:13
So I think in Kashi those risks are very largely mitigated because of a regulated nature.
32:18
Two, there's something else that's interesting, which is the rules for um an exchange.
32:22
for um an exchange. Shaw exchange which is an SRO a self-regulated organization you have to have a bifurcation between the commercial business aspects and the market surveillance regulatory functions so the market surveillance regulatory functions report to the CRO who reports directly to the board and a lot of the
32:41
specific cases actually I'm not privy to so the yeah it's interesting because then you because you don't want to have impact on you don't want to have like a conflict of interest right like for example if it's like a a big customer that did something wrong like the business may want to like be like Oh, maybe you should. But the rules say like
32:54
But the rules say like actually there's an information wall between those two so that the regulatory side can interface with the regulator and the audit committees etc in like independently of the commercial side.
33:04
So they have full autonomy. >> Wow.
33:07
So not only not only do you not um get to use the product, but you don't actually fully know when people misuse the product.
33:14
It sounds like the >> well the relevant team including exactly the chief regulatory officer know but the commercial side doesn't know.
33:21
the commercial side doesn't know. So and this by the way this is common for example you know how at like Goldman so at banks you know how like the the trading side and the banking side cannot share information between each other I guess the trading side can share with the banking but the banking cannot share
33:36
with uh with the with the trading and is the same thing I guess commercial can share with the regulatory but there's some some set of information the regulatory cannot share with the business >> are these regulatory bodies equipped to investigate potential insider trading on scale as the number of things that you could bet on or trade just dramatically uh multiplies. Uh the answer is
33:56
uh multiplies. Uh the answer is definitely I mean like look the the CFTC it's interesting people talk about the scale of prediction markets but look I mean this year we we prediction markets have grown massive like to be clear so the right now I mean I think so Koshi is doing something like 70 80 billion of
34:13
volume a year um and the broader industry maybe is 150 $200 billion with millions of customers participating but then let's compare that to the uh commodities markets and the and the swaps markets that the CFTC regulates And actually let me ask you how much volume notional volume do you think goes through the Chicago American Tal Exchange a year? I was more interested
34:32
Exchange a year? I was more interested maybe I mean I don't know the number but I think maybe the more relevant number is you know volume per trader per se like I know that you know >> small for u cow sheet it's tiny >> right and so that's what I'm saying I
34:49
realize it might be smaller but I think the the number of potential retail investors or just everyday people who are getting involved has just got to be on a very different scale I would think >> I mean that number that I was going to mention is quadrillion. [laughter]
35:02
[laughter] >> Haven't heard quadrillion on the podcast yet.
35:08
We need a air horn or something.
35:10
>> Yeah, it's 1,00 trillion.
35:10
So, so, so you know the the the CME does like $3 trillion of volume a day and it's a massive market.
35:17
There's very large diversity of participants in the US and outside of the US.
35:21
Um, some of it is institutional, a lot of it is retail.
35:24
institutional, a lot of it is retail. Um but and and then you have you know the S&P futures you have uh a bunch of different kind of products but it's a regulator that has kind of overseen like mass mass amounts of data like mass amounts of transactions on daily basis
35:38
across the board and yes you could have a composition and and I think it's not as kind of kind of we still have sort of a concentration of volume amongst the kind of like proumer traders or institutions these these things are not like they're not like uniform right it's not like you have 100 traders that do equal amount of volumes. It's kind of
35:55
It's kind of very tilted and it's also existent in the traditional markets.
35:59
You have kind of a kind of a longtail distribution uh or like a skewed distribution.
36:02
Um but the important thing here is like actually and this is very interesting when people look to commit fraud, they don't do it for like 10 bucks or $20, right?
36:15
Like they usually, you know, they try to make money out of it, right?
36:18
Otherwise, why are you why are you violating the law?
36:19
And the the fortunate thing about that is that the larger the size, the easier it is to flag.
36:23
The more unusual the pattern is.
36:25
You you know it's like you know when someone for example goes out like when you hear about the SEC investigate some insider trading it's because usually some some trader at a bank bought a kind of an out ofthe money option two days before earnings but that option they bought like millions of it right or they bought like a large size.
36:44
That usually is actually pretty it's it's kind of a problem that's like a much easier one to solve.
36:49
very sneaky realistically >> it gets flagged.
36:52
It gets flagged fast and then you look at like who are you? Who do you know?
36:54
How do you get this information >> and then you can escalate to investigations in the regulators.
37:00
>> So in this context people are probably seeing headlines recently about there was this trader I think the name was like Alpha Raccoon or something who netted over like a million dollars by very accurately predicting Google's 2025 year in search rankings to the extent that like this person probably worked inside Google.
37:18
But that happened on Poly Market and you don't actually hear stories of this or at least I haven't seen stories of something like this on Koshi.
37:27
Maybe I just haven't seen it.
37:27
But I imagine for you you get lumped in with those kind of headlines and it's like oh prediction markets allow insider trading blah blah blah like why why did that happen on poly market and not koshi?
37:41
It's the same as the kind of like the regulated versus unregulated model, right?
37:44
Like it's and I always say this, it's like you can take any financial market like you can take the stock market, right?
37:49
Which a lot of us perceive is regulated and there's the right set of rules and etc.
37:53
And if somebody offshore like opens up a stock market without KYC, without this the sort of like same level of protections, yes, things are going to happen on that marketplace, right?
38:04
Like it's it's not like a like the thing I always say is like there are bad actors everywhere, right?
38:10
right? the bad actors are like they'll always try to find outlets to you know do bad acts that's what they do and and so there's this key distinction between regulated and unregulated and I think generally with nent technologies people sort of like merge the two and like treat them as similar and you see you
38:27
saw this with crypto right like there were good actors in crypto that were doing things regulated and you know sometimes they had challenges with the government like Coinbase had all sorts of challenges with the government but that was a good actor it was like trusted KYC you know what you know where your money sits and you can trust us with it. Um, and we report to the
38:41
Um, and we report to the federal government and so on and so forth.
38:44
And then there were like, you know, offshore actors where you you could put your money and you have no idea where it's going, right?
38:49
Like you have absolutely no guarantees that that money could be going to somebody's pocket.
38:54
It could be going whatever.
38:54
And but for new technologies, people like if something goes wrong in the unregulated piece, they can lump like they can lump the entire sort of space in in in one.
39:05
As you said, I mean, it's totally right, Alex.
39:06
Like I totally agree with this.
39:08
It's a matter of education.
39:08
And it's a matter to show that like, you know, look, there are actors that are going to do things the right way and then there are actors that, you know, may have started to do things in maybe not so so so much the right way and over time may kind of converge.
39:18
But the most important thing, and maybe this is kind of the thing that we're we're getting at in some ways, like if you want to commit a bad act, you're not doing a regulated exchange.
39:28
We we would know the name of that person.
39:30
We would investigate that transaction.
39:31
We would report it to the government and everybody could see it transparently, right?
39:34
you would prefer doing it by paying somebody in some crypto and you know not traceable like dark web thing right and and and that's actually reinforces the importance of a regulated transparent model for this because then all the activity is out there for everybody to see and you know we can work with regulators and we could we could put the right set of like sort of checks and balances and enforce them.
39:58
Yeah, you all are really big, but Poly Market is too.
40:00
And it's actually amazing to me the amount of mind share Poly Market has in the tech community, especially considering they're not officially launched yet in the US.
40:08
I was just at the Dealbook Summit in New York where Andrew Russin was talking about Poly Market from the stage constantly.
40:16
The all-in guys talk about them. They're everywhere. Chain is everywhere.
40:18
Um, I really want to know how you feel about that.
40:23
I have to imagine poly market being so prevalent in the mind of like the tech community specifically bothers you.
40:30
Um but how do you think about that and and your rivalry with them right now?
40:36
>> I don't know if it bothers us as much.
40:36
I mean like I would say a few things like the number one metric we track is is not really mind share or like you know I don't know like visits or other.
40:43
It's it's like actual number of users, volume, financial health of the company.
40:50
Um and do you have a real business?
40:50
And I and I think on that sort of from that perspective we're much larger and there's a bunch of ways to kind of measure that and you know you probably have seen the sort of charts coming around and and other to us that's kind of the most important thing like number of users real volume real kind of revenue like financial financial metrics.
41:08
It's interesting because last year if you were to kind of look at the mind share of gals like versus poly market we were probably kind of like 5 to 10% of the mind share.
41:16
Um there's ways to measure.
41:19
You can look at Google search for example like how many people know about uh a company versus the other.
41:24
It was a tough year because you know in 2024 and early 2024 what really kind of that that similar dynamic was happening.
41:30
So we again stood firm by a principle which is regulatory first.
41:32
We we are not going to do anything that is sort of a um like outside of the bounds of the law.
41:38
of the law. We that's kind of a principle we're never gonna >> you didn't want to be a shoot first ask questions later tech company >> just financial services I don't think is the right is the right thing to do right it's I I really think financial services the long-term winners are like you know measure twice cut once do it right >> it's one thing when it's burrito taxis
41:55
it's another when it's financial services huh >> it's very very different right because in financial services when things go wrong they go wrong in a bad way and you so you really need a regulator and you need regulatory oversight um so so it was hard last here was hard because you know they were getting the mind share because they launched the market they just did it you know there's a whole
42:13
debate whether it was in the US or not but you know it was obviously a lot of people were in the US but like that you know they scaled because they had the market and they had the offering obviously they scaled much ahead of us they basically went ahead and before us um and that was a difficult period for the company because like that was I would say the most difficult period because we were kind of like hamstrung
42:31
like being told no by the government and you know we um and then you had a competitor that's sort of like doing it, you know, and you've seen this kind of I think Coinbase had their fair share of competitors that operate that way and and that happened over and over and it was tough because you just got to you go to the regular like you're blocking us but you're not blocking them. Like how
42:48
Like how is this fair, right?
42:49
Like and that was I think the toughest part of the journey but the beauty is like when we won the lawsuit last year.
42:55
So we sued the government over the election market and we won that and we were right on the we were on the right side of the law.
43:00
were on the right side of the law. you know the market share obviously changed but the mind share now when we were looking at the metrics for the this last quarter like the fall we're actually something like 55% of the Google searches in the US like we've actually overtaken even in mind share and so you know for a while we've been leaning on
43:14
like the core business metrics and the product and the team but now we're also actually at least equivalent in terms of the mind share we've gained a lot of territory there so it's just a matter of time I think at the end of day everything will converge towards a better product you know and and I feel pretty good about our product >> do you think poly market is doing things the the right way. >> Um, I think that's on them to comment. I
43:32
>> Um, I think that's on them to comment.
43:32
I think that like >> Oh, come on.
43:36
>> I mean, look, our view is like we approached it differently.
43:39
I I think we approached it sort of regulated in the US, do it right as a US company and you know, they kind of did sort of offshore and the VPN thing and all of that.
43:47
That was kind of the historical thing.
43:49
And and you know, I just mentioned like that was sort of like a a source of difficulty for us because it's like we are carrying all the burden of legalizing the space which was so tough, right?
43:59
Like we spent four years And it was really like a very very difficult journey to to to make this happen because you know you you had the the kind of battles of the the government and they were kind of pushing us and they really wanted to sort of like this model not to exist uh uh without a lot of like real basis and then you had like a bit of a sort of dynamic where the the the opponent or the competition like had no restriction whatsoever. Right?
44:21
It's a bit like you're in a in a boxing ring and then your hands are tied behind your back and then you have to you have to kind of go box, right?
44:28
whereas your opponent like doesn't have their hand tied beh and and you're just getting like you know you're just kind of in that ring. So that was tough. That was tough.
44:37
So that was tough. That was tough. We there's no secret about it and like and you know we had a history our history between the two companies as you know like um >> it's a very fierce rivalry I would say you guys >> it was a very fierce rivalry because
44:48
like because of that dynamic right it's like you're sitting there and we're getting bloodied here and like you go to and people weren't realizing it is like guys like you know and it's not like customers or others like give you props to try to do things right way. That's
45:00
That's the tough part about doing things the right way. It is hard right? It's not the easy route.
45:04
It's not like you do it and then people are like, "Great job. Congrats.
45:08
You did things the right way."
45:09
Actually, no, no one really cares until it matters.
45:10
Like no one cared about, you know, for example, like FTX was sort of like the golden child for a while up until it sort of blew up and then everybody cared overnight, right?
45:19
Every the the the and so so that was the hard part.
45:23
And like look, I mean, we made some mistakes as a company.
45:24
There were some incidents where, you know, the the we made some bad tweets about them and they made some mistakes, they made some bad tweets about us.
45:31
And there was a lot of this sort of back and forth where like we would go to press, they would go to press and so on and so forth and and we were just at the time at least in the 2024 is like we we just go up to the press is like guys do you not see this dynamic like we are being blocked from doing anything and then they are not like how is this fair? How is this happening?
45:49
So that was I think deeply frustrating I think this year well one we learned from our mistakes in the past but but now we're also like a very different paradigm where like we did actually win that lawsuit and legalize the space.
46:00
We did open up the space in a legitimate way and there's a real way for the space to exist in a regulated, safe, responsible way.
46:06
Now it could become legitimate and I think that changed the dynamic because well one that was very advantageous to to us.
46:12
It was a huge kind of boost for us as a company obviously the result but it was also beneficial for them because now they have a path to come and do it the right way and do it regulated and and and and legal and I think it seems like this is the path they were doing.
46:26
They're trying to converge.
46:26
They're trying to converge. they're pivoting towards our strategy and I think that's a good thing like and I hope they stay committed to that because I think over time both of us will push the space like as long as there's sort of fair and reasonable competition between two of us I think this is going
46:38
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47:49
If you would have told yourself 10 years ago that you were you would be suing the government and be on South Park in 10 years, what do you think you would have said?
47:58
>> I mean, it's just like an absurd problem.
48:00
You know, it's just it's like also how do you kind of relate those two, right?
48:03
It's like [laughter] I think >> you're like, is this a good outcome or the world's worst outcome?
48:10
>> I think it's pretty good outcome.
48:10
I think that like you know the Well, I I I would just sort of dissect that for a sec.
48:16
Like I think the suing of government and South Park, they're both interesting and they talk to two different things.
48:19
Like suing the government is interesting because not many people do that.
48:22
Um especially your own regulator.
48:24
So that you know and but the beauty about the US is like you you have that sort of system, right?
48:28
Like the government has checks and balances and that's that's an amazing thing about our system.
48:34
It's like none of the three um powers that may be have full autonomy and full power.
48:40
They kind of selfch check and check each other.
48:42
We disagree with the regulator's assessment.
48:44
with the regulator's assessment. these markets the law was clear clearly saying they were legal and I always say this I think the law applies to the industry to participants and people but it also applies to the government sometimes this is kind of missed right the government is not the law that is the law and the
49:00
law is something that we all have to apply including the government and we disagree with that decision and I think we were bold enough it was a very difficult decision I think suing a government comes with a lot of cost um and we were hurt pretty dramatically by that but we won and we were right Um, and so I think that's number one. I
49:15
I think that's kind of like a beauty.
49:17
I I came from Lebanon, right?
49:19
Like that is something that would never happen in Lebanon.
49:21
Like just like the notion of like, oh, you know, I disagree with the government. I'm going to go sue it.
49:24
It's like where do you even go?
49:26
Like I I don't even know.
49:28
Like if you walk into the courthouse with a with a lawsuit in hand, I don't even know.
49:31
Like I think they turn it into a cigarette maybe.
49:33
I don't I you know, and and the South Park thing, I think, is just a statement that like we built something that have g has gone mainstream.
49:39
like I think that like people care about and I think that's a you know that's um I think that's it's been a wild ride to get there.
49:48
>> How do you think about Kalia as a part of everyday life?
49:51
It seems like everywhere you turn there are billboards, Instagram ads, even on the Apple sports app they've got betting lines and I know you guys do a lot of advertising that uh certainly I'm seeing a lot of the advertising about about sports betting on NFL and this and that.
50:07
How does it how does it feel to have this kind of a part of daily life?
50:08
I think on the one hand it is very fun.
50:10
On the other I think you know I have seen some ads that talk about creating a side hustle or passive income whether it's from you guys or others.
50:19
Uh how does it feel to be a be a part of that that reshaping of kind of how people interact uh with the financial markets?
50:28
>> I I'll the way I'll answer this question is I I'll sort of go back to kind of the core of how like kind of why we started the company.
50:33
So I I spent time in financial markets like at Goldman and at Citadel. at Goldman.
50:37
The thing that struck me is sort of the large institutions.
50:42
What they I was there in 2016.
50:42
There were two big events in 2016.
50:44
Brexit and then um the US election.
50:46
So the first Trump election all the kind of big guys what they were focused on is essentially you know uh I want to get exposure to Brexit or hedge against it and then I want to get exposure to Trump or hedge against that.
50:59
And then we would create these financial bundles and all of that and there were three issues like one it was a we we gave them the wrong products like the traditional financial markets don't get you the exact sort of yes no is Trump going to win exposure that they were looking for.
51:11
So one of the big things we sold is the the S&P if they wanted to go long Trump.
51:16
So people were right about Trump and then they lost money.
51:19
So it's a horrible you know the second thing is there wasn't an open fair market for people to price this question.
51:26
It was just like the bank deciding and we would charge crazy fees.
51:29
It was it was exorbitant.
51:29
And the third that like hurt me the most is like a lot of people have views on this like and I also a lot of people are impacted by Brexit.
51:36
It's like this notion that like you are only impacted Brexit if you're big enough to get a seat at the Goldman Sachs table like was a bit weird to me.
51:44
It was like kind of like you know but this is where the idea was like you have a financial market to price companies commodities like what if you built one to price like simple questions about the future.
51:56
And if you did something like this, like the beauty of this is like areas of expertise, like everyone is an expert on something.
52:01
Like areas of of knowledge and expertise and passion lie much in a much broader set than just Wall Street.
52:08
There's a lot more people out there outside of Wall Street that have views and have knowledge about politics, have knowledge about the economy.
52:16
They read the news every day and they love it and they love interacting with the news.
52:19
uh could be the culture, it could be sports, it could be any of these sort of categories, but right now it's kind of this this you know um the set of instruments is very Wall Street specific like an average person is not look at an interest rate swap and be like I'm going to participate in that.
52:34
It's just you know too complicated, very unrelatable.
52:39
And I think the thing that's changed and that's that's great.
52:42
I mean, there's, for example, like um there's this account on Twitter.
52:45
Um it's like only grounded 10 or or something like that, you know, this person basically has made $70,000 uh trading on culture culture markets.
52:56
So, how successful movies are going to be, what Taylor Swift is going to release or not release.
53:00
And uh they paid off their student loans with that.
53:06
And it's just kind of like their favorite com like they they love the company so much because they're like, I have spent like hours and days and weeks and months getting learning about this and up until now it was kind of like it was like a fun side thing.
53:21
Now I can like actually you know actually exercise my skills and it can become a hobby and I could sort of try to make money off of it.
53:27
Um, and I see this very similar to kind of like Uber's value proposition with these types of marketplace, new category kind of creators.
53:35
Like Uber was sort of like you have a lot of free time.
53:37
How about you you ride a little bit and make some money?
53:40
I think in our case, like you have a lot of knowledge, sometimes very niche, weird knowledge.
53:43
So like maybe even your family doesn't even want to hear about it at Thanksgiving, but how about you kind of try to make some money off of that?
53:49
And and from the beginning it's like if you can build that financial market in a regulated safe way like where you put the right set of customer protection and you let people kind of openly in transparently trade against each other that could be a very interesting things because you can have this sort of like social crowdsourced let's figure out the truth together.
54:08
Let's figure out the price the same way that markets figure out the price of >> when you talk about expert knowledge.
54:12
I know there's this idea, you know, from Warren Buffett and others that when it comes to the stock market, nobody knows anything, you know, that that isn't already priced in.
54:21
Do you feel like that's different?
54:23
Maybe could you call it like a long tale of topics or is it you feel like that dynamic is different if you're making that proposition to people?
54:31
>> That's a great question. I I actually think so.
54:32
You know, it's interesting like I I think that um because like let's think about it in simple terms, right?
54:37
like the the if if you go to the stock market and try to buy an option on Tesla, like how could you know more than like the market makers, right?
54:44
I mean, I actually worked at like at some of these like how could you, right?
54:48
Like it's kind of rigged there.
54:50
It's like there's asymmetric information.
54:52
The large institutions, Wall Street has more information about where options and stocks are going to move than the average person.
54:59
It's it's kind of a truth, right?
55:01
And no matter what you do, you can do all the research in the world on the stock.
55:03
you're not going to have the vast data sets and pools of data that like the big hedge funds have.
55:07
So, they will always have an advantage over you.
55:10
And to me, it's that imbalance of advantage that make it sort of like it's very hard to actually gain an edge if you put in like if you put effort into the stock market.
55:20
On Cali is different because like there's a team of traders for example um on the weather that like scrape satellite data and they create correlation patterns and and they have meteorologists in the team etc.
55:34
and they figure out like you know all these sort of like sophisticated data science models to predict the weather next day and they are making money of it.
55:44
They're pretty successful and the beauty of it is like I don't think the hedge funds have any more information than they do right like if >> you could call that like creating the fundamentals if you were or like doing the work of understanding the fundamentals.
55:58
That's that's where the truth side comes in.
56:00
I have studied Timothy Shalamé's eyes more than anyone and therefore I know that he is SKD, right?
56:07
That's like [laughter] that's what you're saying is like there's there's people who obsess about things.
56:13
That's got to be a prediction market, right? Shalom and SKD. Do you know about this? >> I I don't know. What is it?
56:18
>> There's like a rapper who is in disguise and people think it might be Timothy Shalom. >> Oh, I don't know. That's interesting.
56:25
>> People like claim to know his eyes cuz you know and say that it's him.
56:28
These markets reward people to go out and do research and then bring it into the open market, right?
56:35
It's it's a and and over time we get holistically.
56:38
So think about for example the okay whether tariffs are net good or net bad for society or whether there's going to be a recession this year or not, right?
56:46
Like one way to do this is like you go and do this Bloomberg economist survey and you ask a bunch of, you know, experts, hey, what do you think?
56:54
And then they give an answer and that's our forecast, right?
56:57
that's historically been this is what we we believe to be true.
56:59
Um but it doesn't work that well.
57:02
If you compare that to the Kali economic forecast over the last few years, we have been much much more accurate.
57:08
It's just much better kind of gauge of what's going to happen.
57:09
And the reason is because it's a very different mechanism which is now I'm giving an incentive.
57:15
I'm rewarding people to actually go out and do research and then come and trade on it, bring it to to the market.
57:21
market. And if you give that think of it that incentive at scale it's holistically making us smarter about for example the economy it's making us smarter about co and whether it's going to come back like maybe this whole co
57:30
episode of whether hey co is done co is not done if they were listening to the markets we were saying is going to come back there's an omicron wave and it was going to come back because some traders were doing research and they spent
57:41
copious amount of times you know they're not necessarily by the way like doctors or like people that you would imagine to be the co experts the people that maybe love the topics and spend so much time in quarantine reading about it and And
57:51
then they brought that information to market which is very useful and if we had listened to the markets maybe we would have put like kept the mask on for a little bit longer and we might have avoided the second second wave. >> Before we let you go TK um you recently
58:01
>> Before we let you go TK um you recently made a comment that went kind of viral.
58:05
I think you got a lot of heat for it because people rightfully have concerns about uh the gamblification of society where you said >> gamblification >> you were uh yeah trademark um you said you want to financialize everything.
58:19
>> What did you actually mean by that?
58:19
Do you do you really mean that?
58:21
Why'd you scare my grandma with that comment? >> Interesting.
58:25
I think that Yeah, I saw that.
58:27
I mean, it was taken out of context and people sort of like, you know, um took it in all sorts of directions, but but really what it means is this notion of if you believe that markets work, what they do is they discover prices.
58:40
They're a very good mechanism for discovering fundamentals.
58:46
I think you said it in a great way. right?
58:47
Fundamentals behind something.
58:49
And so, and then uncovering as much truth as possible behind that thing.
58:51
And so, what we're saying is like, sure, applying that to companies is very important.
58:57
Applying that to commodities or currencies is very important, but what if we applied it to some of the most important pressing questions about our future, right?
59:03
Like, could we applied it to a much broader set of things?
59:07
And like, look, from first principles, like we live in a world where the the ratio of noise to signal has gone up a lot.
59:15
Misinformation is everywhere.
59:17
Polarization is kind of at an all-time high.
59:19
People say different things about everything and you you don't know what to like you go to Twitter.
59:24
If you go to my Twitter feed versus yours, we might see literally two entirely different versions of the world.
59:29
To us, like this is kind of a bit of an antidote.
59:31
It's like how about we apply some of the things that we discussed like this mechanism for truth, this incentive to be truthful, to be unbiased, to be objective to a lot of these questions, right?
59:40
Is there going to be an earthquake in California?
59:41
Where is hurricanes going to hit in Florida? COVID?
59:45
is going to mean a recession.
59:46
These questions that do actually impact people in their day-to-day, but today there's just like it's like social media where like the the incentive is engagement whereas prediction market the incentive is truth.
59:54
And so that's really what I meant by that.
59:55
But I think that that [ __ ] was taken out of context out of a kind of broader uh conver like kind of broader explanation that I was giving.
1:00:03
Do you guys have a mission or vision or document for your own team to like steer people toward whatever type of truths you think are important or is it just kind of going to be driven by engagement, culture, excitement?
1:00:16
Because I feel like that's potentially a pretty big question for you guys and in what type of role you want to play in the world.
1:00:24
>> Um, that's a great question.
1:00:24
So, yes, the answer is yes, definitely.
1:00:25
the answer is yes, definitely. And I think that uh the way that I sort of describe it is like um you have to have a balance and you know there are certain things that for example may be more engaging but less useful from a truth seeking perspective but that help kind of like the things that are like less engaging but more truth seeeking um from a kind of forecast perspective right so
1:00:50
and you have to balance out between those two it's a bit like and the example is like you can look at a lot of marketplaces right like for example, maybe where Ubers are most needed are like in urban areas, but that's where it's harder to get riders and they're less needed in like sorry by rural areas, but it's less needed in urban areas, but you still have to build a critical mass in urban area to get to the rule. And I think it's a little bit
1:01:09
And I think it's a little bit similar here like you have to get enough of a critical mass in a certain places to basically get for example I, you know, for example, >> when the McRib is coming back this year. >> What is McRib?
1:01:25
Is it the the the [laughter] >> Oh my god. >> Good for you. Good for you. >> Good for you, man.
1:01:30
>> Well, who who exactly is making the who exactly is making these calls about what goes live on the site?
1:01:35
>> Uh we we so a lot I mean and then the second point I was going to say so a lot of it comes from our team that like are figuring out what's trending on Twitter and like what's double people's mind like what's in the news.
1:01:43
like what's in the news. But the other thing it's like this is the other thing like look I believe in markets right like I'm a believer in markets and like it's like look at what customers want and like what they're interested in what they're asking about and like have them suggest markets the one thing the one
1:01:57
cover is like that doesn't mean you just do everything anything I mean we again we're regulated everything goes to a regulated pipeline and there's a number of things that we don't touch like war ties assassination violence things that could create a bad incentive we never touch those um one because it would be
1:02:12
illegal and two even if it wasn't like I think those would not nec even even though there could be interest from the forecast like for example if you have a war market I think it could create a perverse incentive it could create a bad incentive and we basically shy away and do not touch those so I think you have to have a like a you have to have a
1:02:28
balance and I think I think we've gotten fairly good at that balance >> all right TK well we'll let you go research the McRib and uh SKD and uh yeah we appreciate you you being on the show >> thanks so much guys appreciate you having >> care Thanks to Trek for coming on the show. >> We're a new show, so please follow,
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