Village Global's Venture Stories

Erik and his co-host Tony Sheng (@tonysheng) of Decentraland interview Nic Carter (@nic__carter), partner at Castle Island Ventures and co-founder of Coinmetrics.io.Nic explains why Bitcoin might end up like gold, where everyday people have little day-to-day interaction with it but it has a big influence on the monetary system, and how Bitcoin can be a check on the behavior of central banks.He explains why he started Castle Island Ventures, explains its philosophy and how they plan to invest. He also explains his take on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and whether any of the altcoins will turn out to be worth anything.He explains why he is bearish on DAOs in the short-term but in the long-term is very bullish. Nic also talks about how projects can improve their governance structures and how users can spot potential governance problems within projects. Quotable lines from this episode:“You don’t need the ‘gold standard’ to be the day to day currency, just like in the era of the gold standard people didn’t transact in units of gold.”“I eventually think we’ll get to this world where we have the advantages of the cryptocurrency capital raise mechanisms together with the guarantees of equity — we just need to marry those concepts.”“I’m kind of heretical in that I think there is a really big role for financial institutions to play in the crypto asset story.”“I think that voting makes people feel more comfortable being governed because they think they have buy-in into the governance system.”“The highest ROI on these projects is transparency — to be so transparent that it hurts.”-Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik and his co-host Tony Sheng (@tonysheng) of Decentraland interview Nic Carter (@nic__carter), partner at Castle Island Ventures and co-founder of Coinmetrics.io.Nic explains why Bitcoin might end up like gold, where everyday people have little day-to-day interaction with it but it has a big influence on the monetary system, and how Bitcoin can be a check on the behavior of central banks.He explains why he started Castle Island Ventures, explains its philosophy and how they plan to invest. He also explains his take on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and whether any of the altcoins will turn out to be worth anything.He explains why he is bearish on DAOs in the short-term but in the long-term is very bullish. Nic also talks about how projects can improve their governance structures and how users can spot potential governance problems within projects. Quotable lines from this episode:“You don’t need the ‘gold standard’ to be the day to day currency, just like in the era of the gold standard people didn’t transact in units of gold.”“I eventually think we’ll get to this world where we have the advantages of the cryptocurrency capital raise mechanisms together with the guarantees of equity — we just need to marry those concepts.”“I’m kind of heretical in that I think there is a really big role for financial institutions to play in the crypto asset story.”“I think that voting makes people feel more comfortable being governed because they think they have buy-in into the governance system.”“The highest ROI on these projects is transparency — to be so transparent that it hurts.”-Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Trent McConaghy (@trentmc0) returns for another interview with Erik. He’s the founder of Ocean Protocol and BigchainDB. In this episode, he starts by explaining Ocean Protocol’s mission and gives us a history of how the overall philosophy of the web has changed over the years, going from what could be called Web 1 to Web 2.0 to the yet-to-be-written story of Web 3. He explains how the web started out as a tool for democratizing access and how Web 2.0 created some undesirable effects when it comes to the siloing of information, questions about privacy, and the prevalence of advertising. Trent is hopeful though that Web 3 will be a return to the roots of Web 1. He lays out a compelling case for why several of the web’s biggest names should be tokenized and how that will remedy the current case of misaligned incentives between company and users. Trent also helps us imagine a world where AI and blockchain are working to amplify each other and what kinds of changes for society that might portend. He explains a number of scenarios related to digitally autonomous organizations, self-driving cars, road infrastructure, medicine and art.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Trent McConaghy (@trentmc0) returns for another interview with Erik. He’s the founder of Ocean Protocol and BigchainDB. In this episode, he starts by explaining Ocean Protocol’s mission and gives us a history of how the overall philosophy of the web has changed over the years, going from what could be called Web 1 to Web 2.0 to the yet-to-be-written story of Web 3. He explains how the web started out as a tool for democratizing access and how Web 2.0 created some undesirable effects when it comes to the siloing of information, questions about privacy, and the prevalence of advertising. Trent is hopeful though that Web 3 will be a return to the roots of Web 1. He lays out a compelling case for why several of the web’s biggest names should be tokenized and how that will remedy the current case of misaligned incentives between company and users. Trent also helps us imagine a world where AI and blockchain are working to amplify each other and what kinds of changes for society that might portend. He explains a number of scenarios related to digitally autonomous organizations, self-driving cars, road infrastructure, medicine and art.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis), CTO of Coinbase, joined Erik on stage in San Francisco at the Founders Embassy Borderless Summit in June 2018 for a fascinating conversation about the coming impact of blockchain technology. They discuss how the world will change as work and entertainment — but especially finance — become virtual. Balaji explains why governments will need to compete for the best individuals and explains the new role of government in a “borderless” world. He also discusses his recent exits and his new role as CTO of Coinbase. Balaji gives his surprising advice for new grads looking to start a company and explains why your “personal burn rate” is one of the most important metrics to track. Erik talks to Balaji about Balaji's lesser known history buff side and they discuss world finance, world history, and China.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis), CTO of Coinbase, joined Erik on stage in San Francisco at the Founders Embassy Borderless Summit in June 2018 for a fascinating conversation about the coming impact of blockchain technology. They discuss how the world will change as work and entertainment — but especially finance — become virtual. Balaji explains why governments will need to compete for the best individuals and explains the new role of government in a “borderless” world. He also discusses his recent exits and his new role as CTO of Coinbase. Balaji gives his surprising advice for new grads looking to start a company and explains why your “personal burn rate” is one of the most important metrics to track. Erik talks to Balaji about Balaji's lesser known history buff side and they discuss world finance, world history, and China.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Today’s guest is Jimmy Song (@jimmysong), crypto developer and teacher. He is a venture partner at Blockchain Capital and creator of the Programming Blockchain course. Jimmy has been a crypto developer for a long time now (in crypto terms), teaches programming blockchain, and has written a number of influential posts on crypto. He talks about how he got into crypto and what about it was so appealing to him. He explains how an economic lens, rather than a technical lens, is what brought him to blockchain.Jimmy and Erik discuss the merits of Bitcoin versus other coins, why Jimmy believes Bitcoin will win, and what misconceptions VCs have about blockchain. They discuss what makes a good store of value, the biological impulse humans have to hoard that which is scarce and the potential impact of Bitcoin 30 years from now. They also discuss a good amount of economic history, what makes a true “hard money” as well as why war led to the gold standard going away. To apply for a scholarship for Jimmy’s Programming Blockchain course, visit www.programmingblockchain.com.Quotable lines from this episode:“Money is strengthened when it doesn’t change whereas tech is strengthened when you iterate and try different things and see what works for the market.”“The big thing that Bitcoin brings to the market is hard money, which is what disappeared when Roosevelt seized gold and all that other stuff.”“It’s not just armies against armies, it’s entire countries against entire countries now, very literally speaking, because the government can take away all the money and wealth away from the populace and use that for their war effort.”“You don’t have to believe that it has value, it’s enough that other people value it. I might not value Bitcoin but as long as other people value Bitcoin I will value Bitcoin.”“The things that make it a good medium of exchange are totally different than what makes it a store of value.”-Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Today’s guest is Jimmy Song (@jimmysong), crypto developer and teacher. He is a venture partner at Blockchain Capital and creator of the Programming Blockchain course. Jimmy has been a crypto developer for a long time now (in crypto terms), teaches programming blockchain, and has written a number of influential posts on crypto. He talks about how he got into crypto and what about it was so appealing to him. He explains how an economic lens, rather than a technical lens, is what brought him to blockchain.Jimmy and Erik discuss the merits of Bitcoin versus other coins, why Jimmy believes Bitcoin will win, and what misconceptions VCs have about blockchain. They discuss what makes a good store of value, the biological impulse humans have to hoard that which is scarce and the potential impact of Bitcoin 30 years from now. They also discuss a good amount of economic history, what makes a true “hard money” as well as why war led to the gold standard going away. To apply for a scholarship for Jimmy’s Programming Blockchain course, visit www.programmingblockchain.com.Quotable lines from this episode:“Money is strengthened when it doesn’t change whereas tech is strengthened when you iterate and try different things and see what works for the market.”“The big thing that Bitcoin brings to the market is hard money, which is what disappeared when Roosevelt seized gold and all that other stuff.”“It’s not just armies against armies, it’s entire countries against entire countries now, very literally speaking, because the government can take away all the money and wealth away from the populace and use that for their war effort.”“You don’t have to believe that it has value, it’s enough that other people value it. I might not value Bitcoin but as long as other people value Bitcoin I will value Bitcoin.”“The things that make it a good medium of exchange are totally different than what makes it a store of value.”-Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

In a first-ever two-hour episode for Venture Stories by Village Global, Erik talks to two of the most interesting crypto thinkers around: Arjun Balaji (@arjunblj), crypto investor, trader and incubator, and Murad Mahmudov (@MustStopMurad), crypto analyst and angel investor.In this wide-ranging and mind-expanding interview, the three discuss a number of topics relating to cryptocurrencies, effects on government, economic history, and predictions for the future, among many other things including:- The arguments for Bitcoin over other cryptocurrencies and whether Bitcoin can be toppled- Why Bitcoin is less like digital gold and more like “digital nuclear weapons”- Whether Bitcoin will be “the MySpace of money”- A history of the Austrian school of economics- The impacts of hard forks on a community- How competition between monies accelerates capitalism- Whether blockchain as a technology is overrated or underrated- The parallels between cryptocurrency and the Asian construction bubble- Institutional movement into cryptocurrencies- The psyche of crypto hedge fund managers- How crypto changes how countries compete for tax revenuesQuotable lines from this episode:“The creation of a non-sovereign sound money system has the potential to be one of the most significant events in our lifetime.” - AB“I view money as a good, just like anything else, and I don’t believe we have pure capitalism until we have competition among currencies.” - MM“Cryptocurrencies in general and in particular Bitcoin are a higher quality form of money.” - MM“Through the fat money lens, all tokens are cryptocurrencies.” - AB“The whole market is like a prediction market for which one or few coins will be the long term money winner.” - MM“Bitcoin is the Schelling point of the market”. - MM“Despite all the fancy bells and whistles that blockchains enable, the fact that nobody can print more Bitcoin is the greatest innovation here.” - MM“The idea that money has to be continuously in circulation is completely non-sensical.” -MM“We’re not trying to build another PayPal here, we’re trying to disrupt central banking.” -MM“Miners don’t control Bitcoin, businesses don’t control bitcoin, users and full nodes control Bitcoin.” - AB“As time goes on, everyone is going to become a Bitcoin maximalist whether they like it or not.” - MM“The number one thing that we can learn from economic history is that if there is an actor that can create more money, they will.” - AB“If there’s free competition around money then the market would never naturally converge around something [the US Dollar] that is expanding at 6% a year. It’s totally irrational.”“Just as we witnessed the separation of church and state, in the next 20-30 years we are going to witness the separation of money and state.” - MM“People who say capitalism is dead or that we are entering the end of capitalism don’t know what they are talking about, because capitalism is going to go into overdrive.” -AB“What previously took a 200-person team in 2000, took a 100-person team in 2007 and takes a 5- or 10-person team now.” - AB“We’re entering an era where businesses will be able to be built and run on the internet by one person.” - AB“These tokens suck as money or are absolutely and utterly useless.” -MM“Almost all of these tokens were unethical fundraising scams by the founders.” - MM“This whole thing [the ICO boom] was a form of IQ arbitrage, where people took advantage of these overvalued shit tokens… Do you want to walk around New York and use a different form of currency at each store?” - MM“Erik, if you’re looking to hold your wealth in the equivalent of gift cards to the Gap,...

In a first-ever two-hour episode for Venture Stories by Village Global, Erik talks to two of the most interesting crypto thinkers around: Arjun Balaji (@arjunblj), crypto investor, trader and incubator, and Murad Mahmudov (@MustStopMurad), crypto analyst and angel investor.In this wide-ranging and mind-expanding interview, the three discuss a number of topics relating to cryptocurrencies, effects on government, economic history, and predictions for the future, among many other things including:- The arguments for Bitcoin over other cryptocurrencies and whether Bitcoin can be toppled- Why Bitcoin is less like digital gold and more like “digital nuclear weapons”- Whether Bitcoin will be “the MySpace of money”- A history of the Austrian school of economics- The impacts of hard forks on a community- How competition between monies accelerates capitalism- Whether blockchain as a technology is overrated or underrated- The parallels between cryptocurrency and the Asian construction bubble- Institutional movement into cryptocurrencies- The psyche of crypto hedge fund managers- How crypto changes how countries compete for tax revenuesQuotable lines from this episode:“The creation of a non-sovereign sound money system has the potential to be one of the most significant events in our lifetime.” - AB“I view money as a good, just like anything else, and I don’t believe we have pure capitalism until we have competition among currencies.” - MM“Cryptocurrencies in general and in particular Bitcoin are a higher quality form of money.” - MM“Through the fat money lens, all tokens are cryptocurrencies.” - AB“The whole market is like a prediction market for which one or few coins will be the long term money winner.” - MM“Bitcoin is the Schelling point of the market”. - MM“Despite all the fancy bells and whistles that blockchains enable, the fact that nobody can print more Bitcoin is the greatest innovation here.” - MM“The idea that money has to be continuously in circulation is completely non-sensical.” -MM“We’re not trying to build another PayPal here, we’re trying to disrupt central banking.” -MM“Miners don’t control Bitcoin, businesses don’t control bitcoin, users and full nodes control Bitcoin.” - AB“As time goes on, everyone is going to become a Bitcoin maximalist whether they like it or not.” - MM“The number one thing that we can learn from economic history is that if there is an actor that can create more money, they will.” - AB“If there’s free competition around money then the market would never naturally converge around something [the US Dollar] that is expanding at 6% a year. It’s totally irrational.”“Just as we witnessed the separation of church and state, in the next 20-30 years we are going to witness the separation of money and state.” - MM“People who say capitalism is dead or that we are entering the end of capitalism don’t know what they are talking about, because capitalism is going to go into overdrive.” -AB“What previously took a 200-person team in 2000, took a 100-person team in 2007 and takes a 5- or 10-person team now.” - AB“We’re entering an era where businesses will be able to be built and run on the internet by one person.” - AB“These tokens suck as money or are absolutely and utterly useless.” -MM“Almost all of these tokens were unethical fundraising scams by the founders.” - MM“This whole thing [the ICO boom] was a form of IQ arbitrage, where people took advantage of these overvalued shit tokens… Do you want to walk around New York and use a different form of currency at each store?” - MM“Erik, if you’re looking to hold your wealth in the equivalent of gift cards to the Gap,...

Joining Erik for this episode are Felix Feng (‪@felix2feng)‬, founder of Set Protocol and Nadav Hollander (@NadavAHollander), founder of Dharma Protocol.Felix and Nadav explain their respective companies and what they are looking to do for the open financial system. They talk about how the coming wave of decentralization in financial services will bring the same accessibility and ease of use that individuals are accustomed to with Web 2.0 services to financial services as well.They discuss the opportunities for blockchain and cryptocurrency to scale given that as big as it has gotten over the past few years, they still account for only a minuscule portion of the value of the entire financial system. A lot of attention is focused on venture capital and how that could be disrupted by blockchain, but they talk about how debt financing is many orders of magnitude larger than VC.Felix and Nadav explore what the implications of everything being tokenized might be and Erik also asks about what they are excited about in terms of products and protocols in the space as well as what they would love to see built in the future.Quotable lines from this episode:“If the cost of issuing an asset goes to zero, what happens when everything is traded? Then things get really interesting when you add derivatives and loans on top of that.”“Imagine you’re in a virtual reality world and you’ve made a virtual piece of art that’s hanging in a digital museum and you get revenue from people visiting it every so often. Now imagine you tokenize it or draw a loan against it, and pay off your mortgage in the real world.”“If you look back on this podcast in 20 years, it’s probably not going to age well because everything [that will be tokenized] is going to be even weirder because we have had no idea what these things are going to look like.”“I think that blockchain is going to create new asset classes that will be tremendously more valuable and will look like almost nothing we’ve seen in the traditional world.”“If there are going to be monoliths that emerge from this in some capacity, they’re going to have to capitalize on some irredeemably scarce resource that can’t be traded or commoditized, and I think it’s likely that resource will be trust.”“The high end estimate for the value of all derivative contracts is 1.2 quadrillion. I didn’t even know that was the number after a trillion.”-Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Joining Erik for this episode are Felix Feng (‪@felix2feng)‬, founder of Set Protocol and Nadav Hollander (@NadavAHollander), founder of Dharma Protocol.Felix and Nadav explain their respective companies and what they are looking to do for the open financial system. They talk about how the coming wave of decentralization in financial services will bring the same accessibility and ease of use that individuals are accustomed to with Web 2.0 services to financial services as well.They discuss the opportunities for blockchain and cryptocurrency to scale given that as big as it has gotten over the past few years, they still account for only a minuscule portion of the value of the entire financial system. A lot of attention is focused on venture capital and how that could be disrupted by blockchain, but they talk about how debt financing is many orders of magnitude larger than VC.Felix and Nadav explore what the implications of everything being tokenized might be and Erik also asks about what they are excited about in terms of products and protocols in the space as well as what they would love to see built in the future.Quotable lines from this episode:“If the cost of issuing an asset goes to zero, what happens when everything is traded? Then things get really interesting when you add derivatives and loans on top of that.”“Imagine you’re in a virtual reality world and you’ve made a virtual piece of art that’s hanging in a digital museum and you get revenue from people visiting it every so often. Now imagine you tokenize it or draw a loan against it, and pay off your mortgage in the real world.”“If you look back on this podcast in 20 years, it’s probably not going to age well because everything [that will be tokenized] is going to be even weirder because we have had no idea what these things are going to look like.”“I think that blockchain is going to create new asset classes that will be tremendously more valuable and will look like almost nothing we’ve seen in the traditional world.”“If there are going to be monoliths that emerge from this in some capacity, they’re going to have to capitalize on some irredeemably scarce resource that can’t be traded or commoditized, and I think it’s likely that resource will be trust.”“The high end estimate for the value of all derivative contracts is 1.2 quadrillion. I didn’t even know that was the number after a trillion.”-Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Alan Curtis of Radar Relay, a Village portfolio company, joins Erik to talk about what Radar Relay is working on and to discuss what is needed to get bring the world into the token economy. Alan explains the four main categories of tokens: utility, security, collectible and currency. He then compares and contrasts centralized and decentralized exchanges for those tokens.Alan gets into what a relay is, why it matters, and what the future of Radar Relay will be. He explains market makers in crypto, why he decided to build on top of 0x and discusses the pros and cons of a business built on another company’s platform. They also discuss what the bottlenecks to widespread adoption of crypto are, what kinds of moats he hopes to build as well as what kinds of moats the incumbents in the traditional finance have.Quotable lines from this episode:“The ethos around blockchain is about self-agency — it’s about efficacy.”“Talent is evenly distributed but opportunity is not.”“For any cool project online there will always be those 1000 true fans, but if you’re not thinking deeply about how this crosses the chasm and how you get your next users, your project is probably going nowhere fast.”“I think most people underestimate the power of brand in the long term and overestimate it in the short term.”“A decentralized exchange is an imprecise term that people have been using as a noun when in fact it is a verb.”“We’re moving a world where the centralized exchanges become fiat brokerages.”-Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Alan Curtis of Radar Relay, a Village portfolio company, joins Erik to talk about what Radar Relay is working on and to discuss what is needed to get bring the world into the token economy. Alan explains the four main categories of tokens: utility, security, collectible and currency. He then compares and contrasts centralized and decentralized exchanges for those tokens.Alan gets into what a relay is, why it matters, and what the future of Radar Relay will be. He explains market makers in crypto, why he decided to build on top of 0x and discusses the pros and cons of a business built on another company’s platform. They also discuss what the bottlenecks to widespread adoption of crypto are, what kinds of moats he hopes to build as well as what kinds of moats the incumbents in the traditional finance have.Quotable lines from this episode:“The ethos around blockchain is about self-agency — it’s about efficacy.”“Talent is evenly distributed but opportunity is not.”“For any cool project online there will always be those 1000 true fans, but if you’re not thinking deeply about how this crosses the chasm and how you get your next users, your project is probably going nowhere fast.”“I think most people underestimate the power of brand in the long term and overestimate it in the short term.”“A decentralized exchange is an imprecise term that people have been using as a noun when in fact it is a verb.”“We’re moving a world where the centralized exchanges become fiat brokerages.”-Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Amitt Mahajan (@amittm), co-founder and CTO of Rare Bits and investor at Presence Capital, joins Erik and his guest co-host Tony Sheng of Decentraland for this episode.They dive into all things non-fungible tokens, explaining how they work, why they matter, and why they have so much potential. They explain why you you really only have tenuous ownership of the virtual goods that you purchase online and how the company that sold it to you can unilaterally take it back. Amitt and Tony get you to imagine the potential use cases if you could take virtual goods purchased in one game and take them to another game, re-sell them, or tokenize them. The three carry on to discuss the issues around the discussion of crypto more generally and how to get a broader audience to use crypto by ending the fixation on the technology itself and instead focusing on the value to the end-user. They talk about how to solve the supply and distribution problems when it comes to digital goods and discuss how marketing of crypto projects might evolve in the future.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.