Progress

broadcasting live from warm sunny colorado always warm always sunny always colorado at least recently it's negative five out it's not warm at all it's cold it's very cold and i'm wearing my yukata again it's a beautiful thing to wear on valentine's day and i figured i'd come into the office and spend some of valentine's day with you guys how about that yes i love this day it's a fun one it's an excuse to buy lots of chocolates and flowers and when you get addicted to it you just buy tons of people chocolates and flowers because [ __ ] it why not so the hype train is is going and i see a lot of newcomers to the cardinal community and i figured probably be a good idea to make a video and talk a little bit about who we are for all of you who are new here this is a no-hype community this is a community that does not care about price from the leader on down and the leader is on down in the bottom on up we don't do things to try to influence the market or cycles we do things to build things we do things because we're legitimately excited about the utility and progress of the ecosystem if this does not appeal to you there are ecosystems that do do that tron as an example and there's dozens of others you should probably leave now and go over there when you're in cardano we're here to change the world we're here to do interesting things we're here to do research we're here to write code and so forth now lately i've been legitimately very excited because for about three years now we've been commercially running around trying to convince nation states big companies running pilots doing all kinds of things and we're starting to finally see substantive progress in that vision it's always hard to get a thousand no's or pilots that don't go anywhere or mousse and the commercial viability of the deal doesn't look good but when you finally get to a point where what you've done starts to bear fruit and it can bear fruit with potentially millions to tens of millions of users with a commercial path that allows you to have a continental play that's a moment to celebrate and enjoy and take in it's a validation of everything that we sought out to do six years ago it's a validation of this entire ecosystem of our technology of who we are and how hard that we worked so yeah i'm gonna celebrate that even if for some bizarro reason the country falls apart it doesn't materialize the fact that we got it so far that it's where it's at i'm going to celebrate that we all worked really hard our people on the ground worked really hard and i enjoy the fact that they finally have something so substantial to put their flag in it's easy to do defy i laugh when people say how will you catch up with ethereum's network effect it doesn't exist what 80 000 developers compared to 22.6 million developers only 31 of the new dapps deployed in 2020 were on ethereum it cost 50 bucks to do anything even send a transaction and i have to compete with that that's a karate match where the other person is 96 years old and is in a wheelchair i'm not worried about it not worried about it at all it's not a competition at all let them go do their thing great i am so glad that as the first mover they were able to accumulate a little bit of a monopoly as mosaic did in the browser wars as myspace did in the social media wars there that network effect means nothing to our industry what really means things is who have you helped where have you gone what have you accomplished who is using this application who will be using it five years from now 10 years from now 15 years from now and how is that changing their lives for example all the time people come to me and say i'd love to do something in africa or i'd love to donate but i can't even move money and give money to people in uganda or tanzania much less a loan or an insurance product or what have you the markets just simply don't work at all some days they're okay other days they're not and it's just a flip of the dime and if we're really here and serious about what this technology means and what it's going to do for the world when we look five years 10 years 15 years 20 years into the future we have to ask ourselves is it going to be the case that the average person in africa who wants to get a loan does so through a peer-to-peer application as opposed to a bank will the average person who wants to send money from their home to someone else somewhere in the world will they use western union or paypal or some service like that or they use a peer-to-peer application that's totally decentralized we are on a path to destiny everything we do is lining up to take us to that particular reality those are the billions of users that not only will enrich the network and make it something worthwhile but will change the entire fabric of how the world works and make it more fair and more just and more transparent every bit of commercial progress we make as a company as a protocol as a community towards that end makes me incredibly happy the price goes way up it goes way down guys i've been in crypto so long i remember when bitcoin was under a dollar and i remember when it went way up and i remember when it collapsed way down and what that's the cycles and that's what happens and if that's what matters to you stop listening to me go do something else i don't know why it goes up or down i don't think anybody does the technical analysis is useless the fundamental analysis is useless there's too many unknowns in this environment but what i do know is this tech works this ecosystem has finally built something that actually deserves to exist it's nothing but promises before and potential and maybe one day but the reality is we as a community we as an ecosystem are getting dangerously close to that threshold where it goes from potential to reality that's what i care about and then i care about how do we make that a reality for not just the thousands and the hundreds of thousands and the millions how do we make that a reality for the billions and how do we make that a reality for everyone over a period of 10 or 20 years that's the point those are the things that get me excited get me waking up and going around and just fired up ready to go yeah if you build something that billions of people use yeah of course it's going to be probably one of the most valuable things on the planet but the value comes from the fact that the people use it they do something with it it's integral to their lives it's an essential component of it and it's a value that's spread around the entire globe and it's a platform for people to host their dreams their visions their realities with how many people live unfortunate lives for no consequence of their own no fault of their own think about that take it out of yourselves for a moment and realize that it's not a fair world until it's fair for all of us and it's unacceptable that in 2021 an age of wonder billions of people still do not have access to basic things that we take for granted every day especially when we have a solution it's one thing to lament about the evils of corruption and bad systems and broken societies it's another thing entirely to know you have the cure in your hands but do nothing about it not be part of it to be apathetic or cynical or say that somehow these people don't deserve it and let's be clear let's be frank this is the cure there's nothing in my life i have been more certain about than that and i see it in the way this technology evolves i see it in the way this technology collaborates with people how it inspires people i see it in the hopes and dreams of young entrepreneurs and we as humans have witnessed this before we saw it with the dot com revolution we saw it with the software revolution we saw it with the computing revolution we saw it with the energy revolution the aerospace revolution every time you have a transformative technology that brings us together and changes the way we live the young gets so incredibly inspired and they wake up every day dreaming about how they can take that to the next level the difference here is it's not regional it's not a hollowed few companies in silicon valley or new york city who say hey let's get it done instead it's local to everyone the people who are most inspired are people who don't live in california they live somewhere else and that is new and while the past rhymes it's always different every time and it is here so i figure i just make this to the newcomers just to let them manage expectations it's a great ecosystem we have the best people we have the best technology we have the best engineering and every now and then we have some fun and not every tweet or every communication is some subtle message of fortunes in the future sometimes it's enjoying the present and the moment and loving the fact that we have already accomplished so much so quickly sometimes it's loving each other because we've all gone on this journey together and we've gone through hell when shelley was a mantra that we listened to and endured for years we were scorned and spit upon as an ecosystem we were called just a wallet even today they say just a wallet the new one is ghost chain even though we have billions of dollars of transaction volume every day ghost chain is what they say every day and then after that it'll be something else and something else and something else every single member of this ecosystem who's been here for a while has endured profound criticism they've been attacked demonized beaten up by their peers for having the audacity to believe that maybe just maybe people want to wake up every day and make the world a better place and that's not a scam they would show the papers the code the effort the progress the people and everybody just put blinders on and their fingers and their ears and now the most insulting thing of all is that people are actually starting to pay attention to us not because of the hard work we've done but because the price went up people in my own social circles ignored me for a long time i cannot tell you how many text messages and telegram messages and pms i've gotten facebook messages things well i'm so proud of you congratulations as if we've achieved a great thing because the markets decided to go up a little bit and i say to myself what about all the years all the papers we're nearly at 100 papers we've written so much code we keep growing we keep having these huge community milestones what about catalyst we're fundamentally transforming everything we touch but there was never once a congratulations for that because people stay at the shallow surface level and all the love we have right now that you're seeing and the euphoria you're seeing it will completely disappear in a bear market regardless if it's our fault or not if bitcoin goes to five thousand dollars probably the entire cryptocurrency market will collapse does that in some way invalidate everything we've done all the things we've accomplished and if bitcoin goes to a hundred thousand dollars because apple decides to buy some of it and u.