The DeFi Revolution: Unlocking the Future of Finance

Staci Warden  0:00  
The answer for algorand is of course, you know, total world domination of crypto. I expect that to be happening in five years. But crypto is going to continue to make inroads into traditional finance and traditional finance I think is going to continue to avail itself of the of the good things about crypto.

Anthony Scaramucci  0:26  
So joining us today on speak of is Staci Warden  she is the CEO of the Algorand foundation. Before I get into it with Stacy, we do have some exciting news. I just want to prepare everybody, all Wealthion.com. Listeners viewers, the date of our next conference is June 1 in conjunction with salt. Okay, and this is a conference I started 15 years ago here at skybridge. We have some of the most prominent names. On the economic side, equity side, also the political arena, they'll be coming up to talk to you about how to help you grow your assets, invest your assets, how to think about the macroeconomic geopolitical dynamic, all coming up June 1. We hope you'll join us and the details for all of that are on our website, Wealthion.com. Now, Staci, I'm not great at reading prompter. And to right now my production team. Look at the font size of

Staci Warden  1:28  
20 years old.

Anthony Scaramucci  1:29  
I'm not great at reading, that was the best I could do. Go to the Wealthion.com website. But you are the CEO of the Algorand foundation. It's a Singapore based entity. It's one of the leading blockchains. And I will point out that people hold on because I have props. I wrote a book. Okay, I wrote a book about Algorand. It's called the genius of Algorand. Technical elegance and the defy revolution. And so this is a book about what I think is one of the best blockchain technologies out there. It's a layer one technology, you're running the foundation. Before joining algorand. You were at the Milken Institute, which was an amazing event. This past week. Actually. I was in Los Angeles. I think it's one of the world leading events, then obviously, Michael Milken is a genius. Prior to that you were at JP Morgan, you've worked at the US Treasury, you worked in NASDAQ. You're a trade fi person by origin. But you're a Defi person by calling. I believe that the defi world called to you and once you understood it, you want to be a part of it. So let's start there. Pretend I've got people on here that don't really know what defi is, and don't really know what Algorand is. And take us through why they should be interested in this. And what what they need to learn about this. If you don't mind. Let's start. 

Staci Warden  3:06  
Yeah, well, thank you for that. I appreciate that. And I was at Milken global conference this weekend. It's almost as good as salt, really. So I look forward to doing them both this spring

Anthony Scaramucci  3:17  
That's very flattering. And so I actually think it's better than salt. Even though salt is mine of a Sunday, you and I will start the pepper conference. And that'll probably be better than both. But but but but but go to go to defy you know, you've you've you've made a great career in trade fi. Yeah, in a great career and think tanks. Yeah. But something captured you about Algorand, it obviously captured me. I wrote a book about it. Yeah, it was what people need to know. 

Staci Warden  3:48  
Yeah. So you know, what called me really was financial inclusion. I saw a number of of over the year many years that I worked in, try and find a number of different elements that the where people were not included, where, you know, you had 2 billion people in the world that can't access money, they can't borrow money, they can't save money, they can't buy insurance the way you and I can. And the paradigm there is you need to start with a bank account. And it grew to believe that you don't actually need to start with a bank account in order to participate in financial inclusion. Then you and I both know that there's a lot of risk in the tribe fi system. There's settlement risks. There's counterparty risk. These are the kinds of things that when crypto comes along, they have answers to that those answers aren't always perfect, but the they have good answers to that kind of thing. And then when you look at blockchain technology more broadly, it brings with it a whole host of other very exciting solutions. The idea that you could program money that you could put rules around a transaction that would follow that transaction, wherever it went from person to person to person This idea that you could take big, illiquid assets, and we call it  tokenize them and make them into smaller assets that that would enable much more many more people to invest in them that would create markets where they didn't already exist. The idea that you could understand the origin of transactions and understand the destination of transactions, all of these things are, you know, are enabled by a blockchain. And you know, the one sentence on it for me is it, I think it's crazy that you can send from Nigeria, if you're in Nigeria, you can send somebody in Malaysia, a movie over WhatsApp, and that movie will get there in one minute. But if you try to send them $10, it's gonna get there, maybe 10 days later, bunch of different intermediaries along the way will have taken you know, up just five or 6% off the top. Why can't you send money immediately from one person to the other, the way that you do that is if all parties are participating on one ledger of transactions, and everybody can see what's going on. So for me, this idea of shared knowledge, one ledger that the blockchain delivers, is really just an absolute game changer. And I want to be a part of rolling that out globally.

Anthony Scaramucci  6:17  
Okay, so I'm gonna throw some things at you, I want you to react cash some day on my phone, this smartphone that's distracting everybody, I'm going to have my money, right there on my phone, and I'm gonna be able to not use a credit card, I'm gonna be able to go right to you peer to peer, and I'm gonna be able to buy a coffee shop in a supermarket, I'm going to be able to do things that we're typically doing now that have frictional costs to them. I go to the supermarket, and I pay with my credit card, there's a 3% charge to the credit card companies it sort of an amazing thing. That credit card company has a 3% partnership with every vendor in America. And there's trillions of dollars that go through the world of finance. I tabulated this the other night, I was in a debate, where some people don't like blockchain, other people do like the blockchain by pointed out that people there are $4 trillion dollars of costs associated with verifying transactions in our society $4 trillion. So what it said, If I heard you correctly, is we now have the technology to bypass those costs the same way, we now can make a long distance phone call or the internet, which is virtually costless. When when we were growing up as kids, maybe it cost us three $4 a minute to make that call. We can do all of this now, seamlessly, we can be protected by the verification mechanisms of the blockchain. What am I missing? 

Staci Warden  8:01  
Yeah, I mean, I remember being, you know, on the Euro rail, like a student backpacking in Europe, and always hoping that my mother would answer when I called collect instead of my father, because he, you know, the cost was so high, he be like, Okay, I hope you're doing well. Let's hang out with my mother. We'll keep talking to me, you know, but I think you can get super duper futuristic on this, for example, why are we talking about assets and money as different things at all, if everything is digital, and you have, say, an Aberdeen money market fund, you could have the tiniest, tiniest sliver of that fund tokenized say, for example, on the algorithm blockchain, you could pay for a cup of coffee with the tiniest little piece of that fund, right. And you could do that directly without intermediaries. And this idea that your money is always earning income, always earning income, that your bond coupon could be earning money for every hour that you hold it not have to do this complicated bond math from coupon to coupon payment, right, it becomes very, very continuous as opposed to a very discrete financial system. You know, we there's a, a rental income protocol built an algorithm called lofty, and you can buy tiny pieces of rental property for $50 investment. That's already cool enough, because that's the kind of investment that normal households don't have access to. But as a rental property owner, you are paid daily, on your property, not monthly, because finance is becoming more and more continuous, as opposed to I mean, remember when we all cheered when we went from t plus three to T plus two in traditional finance, it took like two years to get that done. This is all you know, the thing about crypto is that clearing is settlement. There's not there's no difference between it. So back to your cell phone. An example is you can get this done immediately. You can make a payment immediately. You can make it with sub Penny transaction costs. But there's an onus on you to make sure that you don't lose your password for your money. You know, these intermediaries do serve a very important purpose. So there's a lot more responsibility involved right now in crypto. And I think one of the problems is that we've got to make it more user friendly, and kind of meet traditional investors in the middle with how well we take care of them versus how much we can save costs by getting rid of some of these these intermediaries.

Anthony Scaramucci  10:25  
Okay, so what go on, I'll stipulate this. I'm sure you agree. We're both bullish on the sector. We're both bullish on the idea that the blockchain and layer one technologies like algoryn, will be used to tokenize real world assets. I personally just invested in a self portrait. That Basquiat made of himself and Andrew Warhol, the portrait was sold for $32 million at auction a few years ago, the gentleman that purchased the piece of art is a friend of mine, he sold 20%, of the painting to a group of his friends, and he tokenized it and so I bought the token, it's sitting in my wallet, it represents this painting. And so that's happening, is going to happen in real estate is going to happen in other real world assets. I want you to paint a picture for me, of where we are in 2029. It's, it's five years from now, that was well time the horn outside wearing five years from now, where are we? What's tokenized? What isn't? What is algorithms role in all of this? Five years from today? And as you and I both know, the five years comes up very quickly.

Staci Warden  11:46  
Yeah, five years comes up quickly. But I think we are in very early innings for crypto more broadly. So I'll start with crypto more broadly. And then the answer for algorand is of course, you know, total world domination of crypto, I expect that to be happening in five years. But crypto is going to continue to make inroads into traditional finance and traditional finance, I think is going to continue to avail itself of the of the good things about crypto. So we just had a Sandy Kaul, who runs all digital projects for Franklin Templeton at the Milken global conference, for example. And she said that she has saved with where they are using Blockchain solutions for their money market funds, they've saved something like 500x in cost reduction. Just adding securities in and out of ETFs is much cheaper. If you have them on a blockchain as opposed to if you are kind of moving paper around back and forth to each other and you have a million different databases trying to talk to each other. The problem with moving Trad fie to crypto is that it's very hard to move by yourself. Everybody has to kind of agree to move together. But I think what where we'll start is in sucking costs out of the system. So if you think about a security bit, securitization vehicle, a lot of this is very simple math on a spreadsheet, but it can take, you know, you know, 15% sometimes or or, I'm sorry, 15 basis points, sometimes out of the cost of, of putting your house in securitizing mortgages and all like and you can imagine the paying agent, the calculation agent, the prime broker, all of those could kind of be those costs could be extracted, I think, to a large degree. So I think traditional finance will start by looking at their back offices and trying to find ways to save money. And then micro payments and other kinds of payments. Programmable money type payments will start getting used more and more and more. Third, I think markets will begin to be created where they don't exist now. So for example, another protocol building on Algorand, has started a secondary market for airline tickets. So you now if you buy an airline ticket, and you don't want to make that trip, you have to give that ticket back to the airline. And you're going to get fined, or you're going to have some restrictions around how you can sell it. But now, if you have and if you look at the flat air Bondi website, which is the first airline that they partnered with this company is called Travel X. If you look on the air, Bondi knows now a marketplace where people are selling their tickets back and forth to each other. And if I'm a gold standard flyer, I can sell my lounge pass with my airline ticket to somebody that might want to buy it. So that's that third piece, I think creative creating markets where, where they don't exist. I think that things that can be digitized will fall naturally into this kind of new world. The tricky thing always is going to be two things. I think one is getting real world assets to talk to digital assets. And so there you're going to need Internet of Things type solutions to make sure that you bridge those gaps. This will be like sensors on cargoes too, so that you can, you know, you can follow the supply chain. And the other piece will be user acquisition main stream making it friendly for for people. And I think we will see advances in both of those things, making it more user friendly for mass adoption, and making and finding ways that the real world can talk to the digital world. That's where and I think we'll succeed on those things in five years. And algorand, I think has some very unique, you know, I'm not going to turn this into a commercial for algorithm, but it has some very unique properties that make it a particularly good for traditionally traditional finance operations. It can do 10,000 transactions per second, for example, it this gets very technical, but when you make a transaction, it's immediately final. And surprisingly to a lot of people that is not true with really every other blockchain, you have to wait a little bit to make sure that your transaction is final now, you cannot give Bitcoin a hard time for having to wait 15 minutes when in traditional financial wait two days, of course. So it's already anywhere is better than you know, in traditional finance. But with algorand It's it's actually immediate, it's instantaneously. It's instantaneous, and you know, transaction costs are sort of sub Penny. So we think we're going to be able to compete pretty well, as these two worlds start coming together in the next five years. 

Anthony Scaramucci  16:25  
I brought you on for a reason, by the way, I'm a bull on algo ran and it's so okay to talk about Algren, I appreciate the elegance of you not wanting to make it an advertisement. But I think it's important for people to understand it because it has unique technological characteristics where you can get high speed transactions, low cost, high security. And these are problems. You know, the Vitalik Buterin , if I'm pronouncing his name, right said that one of the big problems is to trilemma for blockchains. Right, we can't have everything. We can have high security, speed, and decentralization all at the same time. But you seem to be getting that with algorithm tell us why.

Staci Warden  17:14  
So the juice in any block. So a blockchain is run by a bunch of different computers that don't have to trust each other and that don't talk to each other. And how, and the reason that Satoshi Nakamoto is a genius is because he figured out a way to get all of those computers to agree on the order of transactions on the blockchain. And that was the beginning with Bitcoin. But getting those computers to agree is called the consensus mechanism of the blockchain. And we were founded by a Turing Award winner from MIT, he invented a couple of cryptographic primitives that the entire ecosystem uses verifiable random functions, zero knowledge proofs, and he came up with a very elegant way for these computers to come to an agreement quickly, and in a way where the decentralization of those computers did not mess with the scalability of those computers. So if you think talk about Aetherium, for example, it's very, very decentralized, but it doesn't scale very well. The transaction costs are very high that call gas fees are very high. If you look at another protocol, like Solana, for example, it's a very fast protocol, but it's not particularly decentralized. You have to run enterprise grade hardware to participate in that network. With algorithms you can participate in the security of that network with the laptop but performant laptop, but you also have a lot of scale, to to and speed to it. And we are quantum secure. That comes from having some Brainiac cryptographers working with algorithms so the history of transactions on Algren are quantum secure, meaning you cannot go back in time and say, Oh, Staci didn't really pay Anthony actually Anthony paid Staci and change that and so that I can kind of double spend the same amount of money, the same dollar that I have. So we solved what is called what vitiligo Buddha is very famous trilemma. So we were able to get decentralization and at the same time, speed and scalability and at the same time security. So thank you for teeing me up to talk about that.

Anthony Scaramucci  19:24  
Somebody's going to tune into the show. A lot of people are not where you and I are. You know, I had the eureka moment. Five years ago, I knew I had to be in this part of the world from an investment point of view. I needed to understand it better. Some people are going to tune into this show. I want a part of it. What makes this show successful is here's a portal here's a look into the future. And you've described it eloquently. Talk about the roadmap ahead, the consensus invest incentive coming up. I had the chance to be With your CTO, serendipitously this morning, and he was talking about some of the things that are coming up in terms of tokenomics Algorand, and some of the things you guys are working on, tell us about that. 

Staci Warden  20:13  
Okay, well, as I said, we were founded by an academic and or academic is very, let's call him pure of heart. And he recognized that you only need a laptop to help run this protocol. And so he said, you as a good citizen, if you avail yourselves of this ecosystem, you as a good citizen should help run you know keep up the security of the network. Every other blockchain though, pays you to do this to keep up the security of the network by staking your currency of choice or by mining in the case of Bitcoin. So we have though, and then so we have decided to move to a forum where you are going again, you're going to be compensated for putting your algos to work to secure this network. Now the difference and we call this a pure proof of stake because unlike other networks, you you maintain ownership of your algos, you're not locking them up anywhere, you can continue to use them. But if they're staked now, for the first time, you will be able to earn money for for performing that service. That is very easy for me to say. But that is a very big engineering project. And we have been working on that for you know, a good part of a year. And when I say we, I mean the brainiacs over at Algren technologies in Boston, but they are building that out. And we expect to go live with that this this fall. So if you want to participate in the end, you will be able to do this easily. It's not that you have to go and big box, you know, get a mainframe computer or any of that other nonsense, you can do this easily. And you will be able to earn money for the work that you do securing this network. So it's pretty exciting. Because you know, because the energy footprint of this network is about that that is required to charge a Tesla for a year. It's very lightweight. It's a very lightweight network. But you do have to stake your algos to make sure that we're decentralized enough because that's a part of where our security comes from. So we're going to pay you to do that. And I know you're going to do that Anthony. So

Anthony Scaramucci  22:20  
yes. Well, yeah, I'd love money. So of course, I'm going to be doing that you have a new CMO, I also had the opportunity to meet him this morning. Your new cmo told me that for the last 10 prior years, he worked at Google to build out something called Android and the largest software package operating system for cellular phones in the world. So it's not just Samsung, it's Motorola. It's everything other than Apple is coming through Android. How did you snare him? Tell me, you know, I need recruiting techniques from Staci Warden and the Algorand foundation. So give me the pitch. Did you snag it? 

Staci Warden  23:07  
Yeah, you know, I did, I'm sure some members of the algorithm community are also going to be listening. And we have had some marketing stalling on our grand for some time. And we had a good cmo before, but not quite good web three CMO. And I will say very talented, but not right for us. And so I could not make a mistake with our CMO again, you know, the community is just has no tolerance for this at all. So I really needed to make sure that I got the best the a perfect CMO. And when you think about Android, and he told me when I first had the opportunity to speak with him that he had a budget of $30,000 when he started and there was no Android on one phone. And he had to build this thing up from scratch for for for Google. And it occurred to me that Android is an operating system in the same way that algorand is an operating system. And what you're trying to do with Android is to get developers to build on Android and not just build for iOS. And I want developers to build for El gran and not Gino Bitcoins, right. Yep. Good. So it's the same thing. So I immediately intuited that if this guy was competent, that this is the kind of experience that I wanted plus, of course, the Google name he, his the first question he asks is, is this going to scale? Right? That's how he was taught at Google. And that's the first thing he comes to the approach that he comes to now he has been helped enormously by John Wood's our CTO who has spent the last two years making algoryn Fully Python developer environment. So all you need is to know Python. There are 10 million Python developers in the world. And you can build on Algren, because we are thinking about these these these computer coders and engineers, they have good jobs. They're curious about web three, but they're not going to learn a whole new language and a whole All new thing on the chance that web three might work out. But if it's already in Python, and I'm not talking about some slightly modified version of part of Python, I'm talking about Python, you know, Python, you can write smart contracts and algorand, then okay, they'll probably say, Well, why not? Let's give it a whirl. And since we're very performant Chang on the back of that, we're expecting a lot of engagement, and a lot of building and mark or his name is Mark really knows how to get at those developers, and how to get them excited, and how to make a bit of a splash. But I will say, we are giving him a lot to work with that we did not have to work with a year ago. So it's a it's a good read a good part. And we're gonna very good spot right now, I think for 2024 For Algorand.

Anthony Scaramucci  25:46  
So Staci, is this every week? And you're a smart person been around the investment world for a very long time? Is there something actionable that you can recommend to Wealthion, listeners, viewers of this program, you say, You know what, this is something I see right here right now that you can take advantage of or you should potentially invest in?

Staci Warden  26:10  
Well, you know, I have just come from the Milken conference where they're the world's greatest investors are have been there. And so maybe I can be forgiven for stealing some insights, I think from some of these amazing institutional investors. But compared to last year, everybody thought that 2024, 2023-24 was going to be the hard landing, they were hoping for a softer landing, but really expecting the other shoe to drop, you can't just raise interest rates 11 times in two and a half year period, and expect nothing to happen to the economy. And this year has been very much an acknowledgment of the fact that we have so far been in a bit of a Goldilocks situation. Now, that does not mean that the business cycle as a, as a concept has been killed, right, we still have a business cycle, it can still be difficult times ahead. But so far, it's been a pretty good. And so if you look at it globally, I think the smart money really is on the US and that and I say that, despite all of the problems people are saying with the politics, the fact that how we neither one of us, nobody here would hope that two presidential candidates we have for the two presidential candidates we have, despite the budget deficit of you know, six to maybe even 7% All of these kinds of headwinds. I was very struck there by the fact that people are still bullish on the United States, and the United States is the place to

Anthony Scaramucci  27:44  
By the s&p, 

Staci Warden  27:46  
you know, look, I always say, you know, my friends come to me and ask me for investment advice, I say, first, leave it to the professionals, and second be diversified. And so I think if you don't have a lot of time and a lot of expertise, you're definitely better off buying broad index. This is why these Bitcoin ETFs are so exciting, by the way, because, you know, there are there's a, you know, let's call it $4 trillion in retirement income, and people of our age Anthony, we use, we typically use registered investment advisors, and ri A's they typically buy ETFs, right? And so the idea that, you know, Wealth Advisors, like you guys, you are, of course, you know, you are, of course, the professionals that people should leave their these, these decisions to, but also you have an opportunity now to have an entirely new asset class, in a product that your that your users are covered that your that your customers are comfortable understanding and so if you take that, that those trillions of dollars in assets under management, that that advisors like wealthy on have, and you just imagine, this is not financial advice, but just imagine 1% 2% 3% In a Bitcoin ETF, for example, then that's, to me a very interesting way to diversify. And it's a bullish, of course signal for the sector as a whole. And the cryptocurrency sector as a whole does tend to follow Bitcoin, bitcoins lead. I think that was a bit a bit garbled, but

Anthony Scaramucci  29:29  
I think it's, I think it's important because you're tapping into consensus and a lot of very smart people. And of course, for those listening in you can go to wealthion.com. And you can yourself plugged into our group of RAS wealthion advisors, if you will, for free consultation. So wealthion.com Before I let you go, we take questions from the audience. 

Staci Warden  29:54  
Okay, 

Anthony Scaramucci  29:54  
so we're going to fire up some questions, and

Staci Warden  29:57  
all the hard questions go to Anthony all the easy questions come to me. 

Anthony Scaramucci  30:01  
All right, well, I'm gonna read them. And then you tell me the ones you want to take? Okay, you're ready. The economy on paper seems to be going in the right direction. However, I want to be prepared. What are the top things you suggest to protect myself from an economic collapse? This is Johnson from New Hampshire.

Staci Warden  30:21  
Okay, I think if you are a global investor, I think the problem always is that when the neighborhood starts going to if your neighborhoods go first, and so you want to be in the center of town as it were. So I do think if the if the economy globally starts to get in some trouble, I think you want to bring back to the US, I think you want to make sure you are in well capitalized too big to fail bank, I think you should make sure you probably stay under the FDIC 250,000 limit in in each bank. And I like property for diversification. And I think you should consider some small allocation to digital assets as well. 

Anthony Scaramucci  31:08  
Alright, so, It's good. It's great answer, I think I think the biggest thing Johnson is stay diversified. stay optimistic. I think what ends up happening is we get very nervous when economies are shaking, or there's a recession or a financial crisis. And we get nervous, but the best thing to do really is just to sit tight. Let's go to the next question. I know that things. No, I'm sorry. That's the same question. I apologize. The money supply? Can you give me a boil down explanation of this term? I've heard it thrown around a lot in relation to inflation.

Staci Warden  31:47  
Okay, so let's say I like to think about these things in terms of first principles. So say you have this economy, and let's call it wealthion and in wealthion, there are 10 people, and the Central Bank of wealthion has $10 that they give out. So every dollar has a person, the person a produces A's produce, person B produces bees, and they all cost it all. Now, if the central bank of wealthion decides to increase the money supply, they basically they print money, it's a little bit more than McCain, there's more mechanics to it. But basically they print money. And if they print 10 more dollars, then you have inflation, because every person now has $2 each, so you have inflation in your economy. The problem is that person see, maybe only maybe will raise their prices to $2, but still only paid person B $1. So Person B ends up in real terms worse off because of this inflation, person D might have a debt to person see, now that debt is used to be $1. But now that debt is half as expensive because it's $2 to the economy. So that debt got easier to finance. So, so this this kind of inflation, it hurts, savers, and it tends to help debtors, but it comes from a central bank, printing money. Now, if well, if India has gets 10 more people, and there's still only $10, then you don't have enough money in the money supply to support the economic growth of welfare India. So it's a very tricky road that the central bank has to walk to make sure that the money supply increases with the amount of economic activity, but not too much so that you get inflation. If you trust your central bank, then you're very happy with that fiat currency. If you don't trust your central bank at all, you tend to look towards a money supply that is embedded in code. And so the interesting thing about the Bitcoin money supply dynamics is that it is written in code it was written down, it can't ever change. Now, you would never pick that versus the fat never because you need a you need a flexible money supply. But you might pick that versus Zimbabwe, right or Argentina if you want to build wealth.

Anthony Scaramucci  34:10  
Yep. With with interest rates, where they are now. Is real estate worth investing in? This is Ty from New Mexico.

Staci Warden  34:21  
Well, I will let you take the empirical answer to that. But I will just say I think about these things in terms of first principles. So for me, it's not so much where the cost of the money where it cost of money is it's can you find a use for that money, where you get a return on that money that is higher than the cost of the money for you. As long as you do that you are should make the investment and if you can't do that, you shouldn't make the investment.

Anthony Scaramucci  34:52  
Well, I'll add to that and I'm here I'm here in midtown Manhattan where you can hear the sirens. If you have cash lowing real estate, and you're thinking about it from a property perspective to generate income and eventual appreciation that I would say take a long term approach to the real estate. Remember, even if you have interest rates that are several 100 basis points above the peak, you know, if you if you were lucky enough to buy a house in 2019 2020, you have a two and five eighths mortgage today, you may have a six, six and a half or even 7% mortgage, depending on the timing. But remember, you can refinance these loans fairly easily if rates go down. And so I'm a big believer of making core investments, whether it's in the stock market, real estate, the blockchain, making core investments regularly irrespective of current rates, but it's a great, it's a great question, let's go to the next one. Did you want to add?

Staci Warden  35:57  
And just that when interest rates are high, sometimes that has a negative impact on prices. So you might be able to buy the property for cheaper given that interest rates are higher too. So you have to kind of think of it all together.

Anthony Scaramucci  36:11  
Alright, so we have a really smart question coming in. From Andrew from Florida. I'm in my 40s. And I've always put eight to 10% of my salary into a 401k. Nice job, Andrew, which is a great job and lots of discipline yet fidelity. When I go on their website, it says I'm still not in a strong enough position for retirement 500k in a in a in a fund. And so the question is, what am I missing? And I'll start, I say, Andrew, unfortunately for this stuff, you've got to go up the risk curve. One of those, I've mean, I've done so many stupid things that have phone books of stupid things that I've done over my career. But one of the smartest things that I've done is similar to you, I maxed out on my 401 K, starting in 1989, put 100% of it into stocks, over that period of time in in the 35 years of my career that has served me and my family very well. And you're young man, you're in your 40s Put the money in the stock market, be brave, don't hang around in the bond market. Because over 30 years, if you think like Warren Buffett, you'll be well rewarded. And of course, you could always plug into one of our Wealth Advisors at wealthion.com. To get connected there. I'm gonna go to the next question. I'm gonna let you.

Staci Warden  37:37  
Let me say one thing on that to always, always do as much as your employer will match. If your employer matches you have to put 100% towards up until your employer

Anthony Scaramucci  37:48  
well said I should have added that and I'm glad you did. Okay, so James from Vermont is asking you a question. And maybe you can provide some of the differences, like what is the difference? We've talked about? I've seen you talk about Solana a few times?

Staci Warden  38:05  
what what what does he say, Anthony, you talked about Solana a few times what's that about?

Anthony Scaramucci  38:09  
Okay. So, so let's talk about it what are the differences between Solana algoryn avalanche what are the differences between a theory them and something like Bitcoin?

Staci Warden  38:21  
So, Bitcoin is the first as you as you have said, and it is very much like a digital gold and the reason that it holds the value proposition for holding bitcoin is basically twofold. One is that the money supply is fixed in code so you can never kind of inflate that money supply away and number two, you could never shut it down. I mean, Bitcoin is all is run by computers all over the world. It is very secure for that reason no one government be there to USB they China be there Russia can ever shut Bitcoin down. So if you want to hold assets digitally, and not in bars, Bitcoin is an option for you there. The thing is, though, it's like an army base that is extremely secure. Except nothing really happens on an army base. There's no cards, there's no girls, there's no you know, fun, there's no mess tent. So vitiligo, Gudrun came along and said, we could make this blockchain more programmable and it could do more things and also stay quite centralized, as decentralized. And so he introduced this idea of of blockchain that you could program and do things with. And so I won't get into all of the details, but the block chains that have come along since then, have all basically been in this vein. So they've seeded this digital assets space to Bitcoin and now the rest of the blockchains are trying to figure out how to be the most versatile, how to get the most things done, and these trade offs around something RMS performance and decentralization and security. So, so Aetherium came along and said, You can do all these different things you can really what he introduced was programmable money. It's decentralized, but it's also not very fast and has some still costs associated with the performance, performance. Then people try to lower those costs by building things on top of Aetherium. Our founder watched all of this develop. And as I said, he invented some very important cryptographic proofs. He never had the idea to attach money to them. But he watched this. And he said, I think I could probably build a good one of those, like, I know how to build this. And so he, he came along, and he built Aetherium. And I mean, algorand and Elgrand. takes the best security principles from Bitcoin and the best programmability from Aetherium. And has we have a very performant blockchain, I would say, on those in those regards.

Anthony Scaramucci  40:57  
That's a great answer. Thank you. There's another question from a business owner. This is Adam from New York City. barely anyone I know is signing a commercial real estate lease. What do you see for this market in the coming years, as pre COVID leases expire? And I can say this from the restaurant business, because I own a restaurant in New York City with a few friends. The foot traffic on our restaurant is down 35%. And so the question, Stacy, for me is will people return to work? Will? Or will there be this working mobility, I can say here at skybridge. And again, I'm being very honest and vulnerable, I probably have twice the size of an office that I need. And you can see behind me, there's a few empty desks. For some people working, if I move my head, you can see them. But the truth be told, we have a lot more work flexibility now than we did a few years ago. And I think people will downsize accordingly. I think it could have a negative impact on commercial real estate. What's saying you do you have anything to add to that? 

Staci Warden  42:04  
Yeah, I mean, I will say I'm really looking forward to my ability to buy a nice apartment on Park Avenue. I mean, I might have to have a coffee machine next to my kitchen. And not every room will have windows. But I really am looking forward to the repurposing of all of this office space into nice apartments for people. Look, I'm not going to comment really on the commercial real estate market, except to say that those of you listening that are in your 20s, especially but in your 20s and 30s. Go to the office, if you can, I mean, you are really missing something, it's okay for me to work from home. It is not okay, if you're in your 20s to have a career where you are working from home, the culture, the mentoring, the being in the information flow. This is really, really important. So if you can get in there, at least three days a week, but if you can get in there four days a week, it will be very good for your career, I can promise you that.

Anthony Scaramucci  43:00  
Well set any more questions out there team? Well, while theum was say we see you too much, but some of our wealthion family may want to see you speak in person. How can we find the dates and locations of your book to work? Okay, these are the ball busters in the control room, Stacy. Okay. I will be at next chapter books in Huntington on June 5 at 7pm, which is a great local bookstore and I'm a long Islander. And I'm looking forward to that, about what I will do on the wealthion website. For those that are interested. I'll post where I'll be, bring eggs, bring tomatoes, anything you'd like. And I can look forward to you throwing them at me. But in the meantime, you are a great friend and a great business partner. And I want to say thank you so much for joining us on on speak up today. 

Staci Warden  43:57  
And I will say go and go get this book sign. I have just read this book last week and it's a terrific book out today. I thought it was it was I mean, I read it in two sittings. I was completely captivated by it. It has great life. You're very humble and you really expose your you're very vulnerable, I think is really the right word. You will really show your vulnerability. 

Anthony Scaramucci  44:21  
Try to write a real book I appreciate. 

Staci Warden  44:23  
Exactly. 

Anthony Scaramucci  44:24  
I'll add you to the list, the shortlist of you and my mom who have read my book. I appreciate that Stace. 

Staci Warden  44:33  
nice, short chapters really good. Good advice and I see you it's really written and you feel like you're talking to really a very nice style.

Anthony Scaramucci  44:44  
It's sweet of you, we'll keep you on for another half hour or less. All right, God bless you. Okay, we'll see you soon.

Staci Warden  44:50  
God bless you all. Thanks Wealthion for having me on.