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Desmond Fleming hosts visionary business leaders who share insights on how they built their companies and how venture capital made it possible.
Desmond Fleming 00:00
But I wanted to start with kind of your career and how you got into this market. Tell us a little bit of how you got to where you are today.
Desmond Fleming 00:08
You know, work us backwards from educational background and then whenever you made that decision to become a lawyer, because I think people do it at different points.
Desmond Fleming 00:15
And then talk to us about how you found your kind of specialty within digital assets, within crypto and particularly on the kind of venture and emerging market or emerging.
Desmond Fleming 00:25
I think you do emerging manager stuff too or no.
Rodrigo Silva 00:28
Yeah, sorry. So I'm, I'm Rodrigo, I'm a partner at Cooley in our private companies group. So I am.
Rodrigo Silva 00:34
My practice today is basically I work with founders and investors, particularly in fintech and the crypto space.
Rodrigo Silva 00:42
And I found my way into this role, I think like following my curiosity in a way.
Rodrigo Silva 00:49
I always knew that I wanted to be a lawyer or something related to that. And I studied philosophy so I had no other choice.
Rodrigo Silva 00:58
But I started my career kind of thinking that I would be a kind of like M and a capital markets lawyer. My family is from Mexico, so I initially had kind of like a latam focused practice started here at a big firm in New York.
Rodrigo Silva 01:14
That was around the time when the ICO boom started happening in 2017. That was, you know, bushy tailed lawyer watching kind of this explosion happen and running around grabbing the you know, capital markets partners by the lapels and being like hey, like you guys need to pay attention to, to this crypto stuff.
Rodrigo Silva 01:34
It's going to revolutionize how venture is done. Like and they all looked at me and thought I was crazy.
Rodrigo Silva 01:41
And one of them told me that it was for drug dealers and criminals and either way they would never be able to afford a rates, which I thought was a funny way to phrase it because it meant that if they could afford rates they would be like happy to work with.
Desmond Fleming 01:53
Doesn't matter that they're drug, drug dealers or criminals, can they pay?
Rodrigo Silva 01:57
And then I ended up leaving that, that law firm and joining one of the first crypto focused boutiques that launched called DLx with Lewis Cohen, who's now at, at Cahill and was one of my, my mentors.
Rodrigo Silva 02:11
And it was really again it was kind of following my curiosity. I thought that crypto was enabling new forms of human interaction in a way that really challenged the assumptions on which a lot of our regulatory regimes were premised.
Rodrigo Silva 02:28
Like one kind of simple way to understand it is it allowed for disintermediation of a lot of transactions where typically like the vector of regulation was that intermediary so it kind of creates all these issues of first impression of, like, you know, what do we do now?
Rodrigo Silva 02:44
Like, how do we. How do we think about this relationship? And it also kind of like, threw in, you know, like, game theory, like computer science, like macroeconomics, like, all these cool things.
Rodrigo Silva 02:55
So I got to kind of feel like I was back in school, like, learning a lot of stuff.
Desmond Fleming 03:02
Following your curiosity, had you already touched the crypto ecosystem? Had you bought crypto?
Desmond Fleming 03:08
I always like to ask people, like, when did you first buy. When did you buy your first Bitcoin or use it? Like, for me, very classic case.
Desmond Fleming 03:15
I was in college. People were, I was buying a fake ID and someone on my behalf used bitcoin to buy the fake id.
Rodrigo Silva 03:23
My exposure, all credit goes to my brother who was undergrad at Stanford and which is like, closer to that scene. So it was probably like 2015.
Desmond Fleming 03:32
Yeah.
Rodrigo Silva 03:33
That I heard about it. I didn't really understand it. I thought it was cool. I guess one of the kind of priors that I had to work through is my grandpa, who was like a really influential person in my life, was the minister of finance in Mexico.
Rodrigo Silva 03:46
And his kind of like, defining career moment was the Mexican debt crisis, where he had to devalue the peso against the dollar.
Rodrigo Silva 03:56
And so I had this kind of very hardwired conception of money as something that the sovereigns do.
Rodrigo Silva 04:02
And the idea that it could just be, like, you know, issued by this anonymous person on the Internet and scarce.
Rodrigo Silva 04:11
It was.
Desmond Fleming 04:11
But you also, you also had a direct understanding of how money can be influenced or moved by a government.
Desmond Fleming 04:21
I don't think everyone always necessarily realizes the role that can play because, right, some of the value prop of certainly the stablecoins, and I'm sure for Bitcoin was just like, hey, if people have a concern around how sovereigns are going to impact their money, yeah, there was flight to it.
Rodrigo Silva 04:38
And I, like, I lived in a society that felt the impacts of inflation, right. And then it was just like, what's a lot more interesting than what I was working at originally at the big law firm.
Rodrigo Silva 04:49
Right. I timed it, like, terribly. I, like, joined, you know, at the very peak of the ICO bubble.
Rodrigo Silva 04:55
And I was like, still a very young lawyer. So I wrote it down and it was pretty scary. I at some point, like, lamented having given up a real legal career.
Rodrigo Silva 05:05
And then I went to work at Cooley, where I am now as an associate, kind of like in a emerging company's practice, but still kind of focus on crypto.
Rodrigo Silva 05:16
And I did that for a while and then I joined Paradigm as an in house counsel there and Paradigm's like a large kind of crypto focused vc, although now they've expanded their mandate more there.
Rodrigo Silva 05:29
I kind of like really got got into it and started doing some of their deal work, but also a lot more policy work.
Rodrigo Silva 05:37
It coincided with a point in time where the SEC was kind of like aggressively regulating the space, like firebombing, like all the companies.
Rodrigo Silva 05:47
Right. So this was like 2020. So yeah, 2021 and onwards. Yeah, I think like after Terra Luna and after FTX and it was like a hard time because there were like a lot of like losses and stuff but.
Rodrigo Silva 06:02
But it also was like animating in a way because you felt like you were like in a foxhole, you know, kind of lobbing grenades. And I, I ran like a Gary Gensler like troll Twitter account for, for a while which was like my main, my main output and I had a lot of fun doing that.
Rodrigo Silva 06:19
And then I came back to, to Cooley to kind of continue with this practice. But as outside counseling and today I work with startups from two guys that are incorporating and have an idea and raising a couple hundred bucks all the way to folks like Circle and Coinbase and other more established crypto players.
Desmond Fleming 06:38
Yeah, super exciting. What do you think before we get to the current state of what's going on in the crypto ecosystem, what do you think you've learned right from 2017 to let's call it 2024 or 2026, what do you think you've learned about being a lawyer practicing in this ecosystem as well as just your own framework for value creation within crypto as an asset class.
Desmond Fleming 07:05
Because I'll frame it on my view of things as someone who started to operate more seriously in this market over the past year or 18 months or so, really starting with stablecoins is we've thought about value creation or I certainly think about value creation today that's coming from who's going to be the marginal user that comes on chain.
Desmond Fleming 07:25
Whereas a lot of let's call it from Bitcoin being accepted in 2008 or 2009 to let's call it around the like 2013, 2015 timeframe, 2017 timeframe and beyond.
Desmond Fleming 07:37
A lot of it was just like speculation on this asset and this asset speculated enough to where it turned into a thing and now it's a referential asset in a lot of people's call it model portfolios at 1 to 2% because people are like eh, it's not going away.
Desmond Fleming 07:50
It's kind of like digital gold. What have you learned as a lawyer practicing in this ecosystem? And how has your framework for value creation within the ecosystem changed over time, too?
Rodrigo Silva 08:00
On the first question, I think lawyers tend to be kind of like, professionally paranoid and have this instinct to take the most conservative position.
Rodrigo Silva 08:14
I think working with emerging companies in a space where the regulation is unclear and also being in house counsel has kind of taught me about how to be able to deal with regulatory risk as any other type of risk that a startup faces and kind of be able to get comfortable in that ambiguity.
Rodrigo Silva 08:38
Right. I don't see my job as helping people minimize risk. I see my job as kind of translating what I think the different kind of product and structuring choices are that impact the risk so that people can make a kind of a business decision.
Rodrigo Silva 08:55
Developing that mindset has taken a while, as opposed to being like, oh, here are all the issues with what you want to do. Right.
Desmond Fleming 09:00
So it's less minimization, more understanding.
Rodrigo Silva 09:04
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, and kind of being able to differentiate between different types of risks and being able to kind of like marry an understanding of the technology with an understanding of how the regulation is developing and saying, like, if you move this and this, I think this might happen.
Rodrigo Silva 09:20
Right. And I guess being opinionated about, like, what. What the right thing is, it's also taught me how, like, regulation can change.
Rodrigo Silva 09:29
Right. Growing up as a young lawyer, you kind of think of regulation as this thing that's written in stone and you have very little ability to influence it.
Rodrigo Silva 09:41
And for a while, when you work in policy, it feels that way because she's yelling into a void and nothing happens. But then things can move pretty quickly.
Rodrigo Silva 09:50
We have the genius act, we have clarity.
Desmond Fleming 09:55
We don't have it.
Rodrigo Silva 09:56
It's working well, I think probably stalled for now at least, but we have, you know, this SEC, like, last week, exempting AMMs from being an exchange when the prior SEC was trying to amend the definition of exchange to make sure that AMMs were caught.
Rodrigo Silva 10:14
Right. So it's like 180 completely. Being able to influence to whatever degree you can.
Rodrigo Silva 10:20
Like, those policy decisions can. Can be, like, really interesting and exciting. I think the kind of, like, core value prop of crypto is that it enables humans to interact in new ways and it kind of creates new.
Rodrigo Silva 10:36
It's like a. It's like a game theoretical tool. Right. I agree with you that a lot of the market and focus has been focused on speculative assets, which I hope is like a phase that we sometimes outgrow will eventually outgrow, but I think can also be a magnet for attention and capital and development.
Rodrigo Silva 10:58
I mean the current narrative is kind of crypto as new Rails for payments and capital markets is the dominant kind of narrative.
Rodrigo Silva 11:07
Right. Which is a far cry from kind of like the cypherpunk origins to this. Right.
Rodrigo Silva 11:13
Who would have thought that people would get excited about a DTCC pilot program when the Bitcoin white paper came out?
Desmond Fleming 11:21
Yeah, those are diametrically opposed.
Rodrigo Silva 11:23
Yeah. And who knows, maybe that's where we are now. But true DeFi is still alive and even though it's not getting most of the attention now, it could continue to develop and be integrated down the line.
Rodrigo Silva 11:38
Right. But yeah, I think it moves much more towards these market infrastructure is what
Desmond Fleming 11:45
I would call it relative to my kind of entry points into the ecosystem which were 2017 also.
Desmond Fleming 11:52
That's when I think like both Bitcoin and Ethereum are blowing up and a lot of news coverage on it kind of 2020, 2021 NFT craze.
Desmond Fleming 12:00
And now I think it is easier for the individual person to operate on chain and easier for the individual purpose person if they wanted to, to like actually have their entirety of their financial life on chain if they truly wanted to.
Desmond Fleming 12:21
I think that comes with a different set of risks certainly if you're a US consumer but if you did want to port out and have making it up, you know, $100,000 to spend in a self custodial on chain or self custodial wallet and then that's connected to a rain linked or a reap linked card like you can operate and live throughout the world and technically you are, you know, you, you're you, you are your bank.
Desmond Fleming 12:47
Right. And I think that is something that is much easier now and the trust vector for your average consumer.
Desmond Fleming 12:55
Yes, I'm aware there's risk I could be hacked and this, that and the third but like yeah, I trust that I can at least make sure if I'm in France or the US or in, in you know, Thailand or wherever I am in the world, I can access my dollars and my money in whatever shape or form I choose to hold them.
Rodrigo Silva 13:11
Crypto will succeed when it just totally fades into the background and, and, and people are just using it because it's a better product and it's better yield and maybe like you don't have like a ideological stance on like self custody and you just, you know, it's just like what makes sense for you to use.
Rodrigo Silva 13:28
Right. And I think that's where it's going a lot with these, like, traffic integrations.
Desmond Fleming 13:33
Yeah, we'll come back to the better yield component, because I think that's interesting. But let's talk about state of crypto today.
Desmond Fleming 13:41
And it feels like in the past month, you alluded to kind of the SEC exemption, but there's also been CFTC exemptions.
Desmond Fleming 13:49
There's also been the Innovation Advisory Committee, Clarity, the Clarity vote as well. So kind of walk us through what you're paying attention to most out of all the news on the regulatory front over the past month, two months or so, you know, what are the takeaways that you have and what's getting you excited?
Desmond Fleming 14:09
What's getting you concerned?
Rodrigo Silva 14:10
So I think right now we are in a regulatory environment that has never been friendlier to crypto because, you know, Trump made a calculated decision to kind of embrace the crypto industry in his second term.
Rodrigo Silva 14:26
And you have heads of the SEC and CFTC that are both, like, individually very bullish on crypto, and I think importantly also, like, very close to each other and able to collaborate on a lot of hard issues that touch on both agencies.
Rodrigo Silva 14:41
So it's basically as good as it could have. It could be. I think we're kind of coming off of a pretty big, although maybe not super unsurprising loss with the parity vote that failed to kind of advance to more negotiations in the Senate.
Rodrigo Silva 15:01
And while some people are keeping hopes alive that it comes back in the lame duck session, I think practically speaking, the chances of passage of Clarity, which has been the main priority legislatively for crypto for a long time, are pretty dim at this point.
Rodrigo Silva 15:19
What that has kind of resulted in is the agencies, the SEC and the CFTC basically, like, going full throttle on.
Rodrigo Silva 15:29
On rulemaking, which is very helpful, and I commend them. They've been doing a lot of really good work.
Rodrigo Silva 15:37
It's not as good as having, like, legislation. Right. Because it's less durable and more open to challenge and.
Rodrigo Silva 15:45
And potential rollbacks if the administration changes. But we're, like, living through that moment where basically the SEC and CFTC are locked hand in hand and trying to do as much as they can.
Rodrigo Silva 15:57
One of the reasons why I'm really interested in crypto policy is because it's informed by this theory from this Venezuelan economist, Carlota Perez.
Rodrigo Silva 16:08
Have you read this book?
Desmond Fleming 16:09
Oh, the Bubbles book?
Rodrigo Silva 16:10
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Desmond Fleming 16:11
I haven't read it. It's on my shelf.
Rodrigo Silva 16:13
Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital. Right. And she basically talks about how every regulatory environment adapts to the dominant technological paradigm of the day.
Rodrigo Silva 16:25
And what that means is that when there's a new technological paradigm that emerges, maybe you can argue crypto's one AI is definitely one.
Rodrigo Silva 16:34
It is at odds with the dominant regulatory framework of the day, which was kind of tailor made for the prior technological paradigm.
Desmond Fleming 16:43
Okay, so does it is her writing or her conclusion that regulatory environments will ultimately adapt to this technology?
Rodrigo Silva 16:51
Okay, so what happens basically is it kind of pushes the technology to the development, to the what she calls the fringes. Right. Where like it attracts a lot of capital because it's very volatile and like the returns are higher.
Desmond Fleming 17:02
Yeah.
Rodrigo Silva 17:03
And then it leads to what she calls a rupture, which is when it's just like, things blow up and it's clear that like the existing regulatory framework does not work and then they kind of realign. So I think we're like in that process of realignment right now.
Desmond Fleming 17:15
Yeah.
Rodrigo Silva 17:16
Which makes it like a very exciting place to be as a lawyer. Right. Kind of going back to the point about when regulation can change.
Rodrigo Silva 17:24
So yeah, I think, I think we're there. Like the sec, the CFTC have issued a bunch of rulemaking.
Rodrigo Silva 17:31
I expect that that'll continue for the rest of the administration. I expect that challenges will be mounted against that, like those efforts.
Rodrigo Silva 17:41
And hopefully like we land in a place where there's a little bit more clarity, even though we didn't get the clarity bill.
Desmond Fleming 17:49
Yeah. So clarity will. My guess is someone who's less deep on the regulatory front than you are. But I assume it will rebirth in different form with some things pulled out, some things pushed in, whatever it is, and whether that pops up again in six months, three months, nine months, whatever.
Desmond Fleming 18:04
There will be some, some renewed push at some point. I want to touch on the rulemaking process because there are a decent amount of founders in our world who are operating on some degree of those fringes.
Desmond Fleming 18:19
And whether it's legislation or whether it's rulemaking, it gives them more cover for operation that ultimately can result in less so for it can positively affect their business in the sense that it will allow.
Desmond Fleming 18:37
It'll give not necessarily them more clarity, but other practitioners more clarity who may want to build on top of their infrastructure.
Desmond Fleming 18:45
So let's talk briefly about the process of rulemaking and the removal of rules.
Desmond Fleming 18:51
Is it should people have the frame of mind where it's as easy to get a rule through or it's as easy to remove a rule as it is to establish a rule?
Desmond Fleming 19:01
Because as we're seeing that, you know, the rulemaking process, it's not like a. A, you know, Selig or Atkins can kind of just do whatever they want.
Desmond Fleming 19:08
There is procedure baked into it, and that takes time.
Rodrigo Silva 19:11
So, I mean, there's a range of different types of agency actions that like the CFTC or the SEC can take, which vary in how quickly they can implement them and also vary with.
Rodrigo Silva 19:24
And how kind of like durable or resistant to challenge. There they are. Right. The main kind of, like, statute here is the APA, the Administrative Procedures act, which basically governs how.
Rodrigo Silva 19:38
How different agencies can promulgate rules. And in the background, there's also an important Supreme Court case called Loper Bright, which basically limited the deference that courts need to give to administrative rulings.
Rodrigo Silva 19:56
So basically told courts you don't. You're not bound by what the SEC says the rules are.
Desmond Fleming 20:02
Yeah, they can still interpret it how they want.
Rodrigo Silva 20:05
Like. Like thing that matters is the law that Congress passed.
Desmond Fleming 20:08
Right, right.
Rodrigo Silva 20:10
And there's obviously some nuance there. So, for example, maybe a good way to get into it is to talk about the innovation exemption that just came out, which was a exemptive order.
Rodrigo Silva 20:21
So it's not a rule. It's basically the SEC saying we are going to, based on our statutory powers, exempt this type of activity from being designated as a exchange or a dealer.
Rodrigo Silva 20:38
And they're doing that. If you read Chair Atkins's accompanying statement, it's titled A Bridge Towards Durable Regulation.
Desmond Fleming 20:46
Right.
Rodrigo Silva 20:47
So it's a first step in a way to kind of run some tests, get some numbers, and then promulgate rules which go through, like, the.
Rodrigo Silva 20:56
What's called the comment and notice and comment process, which is where you need to propose the rules, give a bunch of kind of reasoning for why you're doing what you're doing, including like, you know, policy reasons, economic analysis, and then leave it open for a while for people to comment.
Rodrigo Silva 21:12
I do a lot of this, like, helping folks, like, submit comments, and then they have to, like, consider all that input and then promulgate the final rule.
Rodrigo Silva 21:25
And these things are open to challenge for, you know, being arbitrary and capricious, for kind of like, going beyond the authority that the regulator has.
Rodrigo Silva 21:34
And so basically all rules at some point get challenged. So a lot of what the regulators have to do is make sure they build up the record that's going to be most defensible once they end up promulgating the rules.
Rodrigo Silva 21:49
I mean, and the other thing that they can do, which, sorry, I should have probably started with this, is give, like, more informal guidance, like statements and speeches.
Rodrigo Silva 21:56
Right. Which is for a while. The only thing that we had, which they don't have the force of law at all, but will in practice kind of impact how lawyers are counseling their clients and have a more soft power effect?
Rodrigo Silva 22:10
Right?
Desmond Fleming 22:11
Yeah. It's a funny analogy. It's like your high school coach says, the fields are closed at 9, but you can be here till midnight.
Desmond Fleming 22:20
And they're like, interpret that how you want, but the fields are closed at 9. And maybe that's not the best analogy. But let's dive deeper into the AMM ruling because AMMs exist.
Desmond Fleming 22:30
There's multiple of them. They, they operate in a variety of ways. What has changed? So if someone is a startup founder that is out there in the world and wants to take on, you know, Uniswap or a Meteora or one of the, or an Astro or an Aerodome, for example, like, is there something new for them to consider?
Desmond Fleming 22:51
Is this just giving them better perspective on how to operate in the US and it's fine to like create a Delaware C corp.
Desmond Fleming 22:57
Like, what has changed with this innovation exemption?
Rodrigo Silva 23:01
So I think it's meaningful, but I also don't think it's kind of earth shattering. I think for.
Rodrigo Silva 23:08
So, so what's, what's happening? AMMs have been around for a long time. They're a new kind of interesting, like, market structure, like new venue where, you know, assets can trade more and more.
Rodrigo Silva 23:23
Like assets are being tokenized, securities are being tokenized. And the question has been out there of like, okay, like if a tokenized asset is trading on an amm, does that make the AMM a securitized exchange?
Rodrigo Silva 23:38
Like I mentioned earlier, the last SEC under Gensler had a proposed rule where they were going to amend the definition of exchange to include something called a communication protocol that was aimed at basically like making sure that AMMs would be considered an exchange.
Rodrigo Silva 23:53
Like, nice. Or like nasdaq, regardless of the asset types. Only.
Rodrigo Silva 23:59
Only when, only when securities would be trading on it.
Desmond Fleming 24:02
Yeah. And they would qualify a, a tokenized equity as a security.
Rodrigo Silva 24:07
Yeah, for sure. Or whatever. Other. Well, I guess if you went back to the last sec, they would say most crypto tokens are securities.
Rodrigo Silva 24:14
So yeah, even if it's not like a tokenized share of Tesla, they would say, like most of the token securities, therefore, if they're trading on an amm, you're an exchange, you're an exchange.
Rodrigo Silva 24:25
What this innovation exemption does, it basically provides a sandbox or like tries to come up with a proof of concept that enables what they call a TSV, a tokenized securities venue to use AMMs to trade securities under limited conditions with a bunch of guardrails and not be deemed an exchange.
Rodrigo Silva 24:55
So in a way it's like a permissive thing as opposed to a restrictive. So it's not saying all other AMMs can't work or this is the only way to do tokenized securities.
Rodrigo Silva 25:08
It's basically saying if you stay in this, in this box, like we will assure you that we're not going to treat you as an exchange.
Rodrigo Silva 25:15
Right. And they're doing that again to like kind of gather data, gather information with a view of eventually promulgating more rules for this.
Rodrigo Silva 25:24
It's been a very contested initiative. It's something that Chair Atkins has talked about and wanted to do for a while.
Rodrigo Silva 25:32
You know, tradfi incumbents in particular, you know, Citadel have been pretty active on the comment file like protesting and kind of commenting about different limitations that they think should apply to this.
Rodrigo Silva 25:47
Some of the more contentious ones have been should third parties be able to tokenize the securities of a different issuer?
Desmond Fleming 25:55
I don't know if you follow AMC
Rodrigo Silva 25:56
like Robinhood, there was an amazing Twitter fight between those two and then kind of like should we allow kind of like these synthetics, synthetic securities that are like linked to like an underlying share but don't really give you the same rights?
Desmond Fleming 26:15
Yeah, they don't give you the full economic benefit or flow through of them
Rodrigo Silva 26:18
and then have a bunch of intermediaries and maybe the end kind of investor doesn't have full like visibility and information about.
Desmond Fleming 26:26
Could you maybe comment more on the Citadel angle? Because there's a, a framework that I have where part of the value creation in, in this part of the cycle is going to be driven by obviously individuals trading on these assets, but also individuals trading on these assets with enough volume that attracts institutions and where market makers like Citadel or Jane street or Jump or a Wintermute or any of their contemporaries, what they care about is honestly in my opinion, they care about heterogeneity
Desmond Fleming 26:57
of ideas and perspectives. And I would have thought from Citadel's perspective, if there's another venue that exists that we can trade on where there's potentially a spectrum of views and positions, you know, it might be good for us to make markets against that.
Desmond Fleming 27:12
Now obviously AMMs aren't, you know, on order book style kind of liquidity function, but curious about what you might have your observations on why Citadel might be against some of the AMM structure as is.
Rodrigo Silva 27:26
So I'm not entirely sure. I mean I kind of agree with your point that this should just be another business opportunity for them.
Rodrigo Silva 27:32
I think part of it is they built a really profitable, you know, business that operates within the current regime.
Rodrigo Silva 27:40
And a lot of their commentary has been basically like, we shouldn't just exempt things from the current regime because they're on crypto rails.
Rodrigo Silva 27:48
Which I mean, has some merit. Right. Like, I, I, I agree with that generally. So, yeah, I guess I, I don't really know what's, what's animating them and, and why they don't see crypto as a business opportunity other than, you know, probably like some, some sunk cost in, in what they've set up already, which has obviously been a very profitable operation.
Rodrigo Silva 28:07
Yeah.
Desmond Fleming 28:08
And their sunk cost is, you know, in the billions.
Rodrigo Silva 28:10
It's a lot of money.
Desmond Fleming 28:11
Um, so that, that would make sense. Let's talk about perps. Perps are cool, at least to me. Uh, perps are also a little controversial to some people, I think people within the crypto ecosystem, it's very, it's very intuitive to them, the value and they don't worry about it where it is.
Desmond Fleming 28:28
Yeah, you want to lever up on Bitcoin 2, 3, 4, 10x, 40x be my guess.
Desmond Fleming 28:34
Um, I think other people who don't operate in the crypto ecosystem, maybe not your bohemian art friends, but let's say normies in Kentucky or Texas, they may say, look, yeah, just offering people extended credit and leverage is a bad thing.
Desmond Fleming 28:51
What if they don't understand what they're trading and having access to? I'd be curious to get kind of, you know, your personal view on, on perps and then talk a little bit about what's going on, both on the regulatory side and as you're observing businesses trying to build out perps products or perps exchanges.
Rodrigo Silva 29:09
So I think perps are like one of the great new crypto primitives. Well, I guess maybe they're not, they're not new.
Rodrigo Silva 29:16
They're not inherently like crypto, but the crypto has kind of popularized them. Right. With Bitmex and then obviously like, you know, Hyperliquid.
Rodrigo Silva 29:24
And I think they're like a very efficient way to trade. I think the, the leverage point, I mean, it's probably separate from perps.
Rodrigo Silva 29:32
Like you don't necessarily need leverage to
Desmond Fleming 29:35
trade a perp, but functionally people go to them for the lever up.
Rodrigo Silva 29:40
Yeah, that's fair. Part of what the core issue here is is the history of swaps and like the great financial crisis and the regulatory response in Dodd Frank.
Rodrigo Silva 29:51
Right. Like perps, I guess there's a fight going on right now about whether they're futures or swaps, but they're derivatives and they kind of look like, you know, the things that blew up the banks back in the day.
Rodrigo Silva 30:04
And the regulatory response to that was basically, let's make sure these things like, you know, trade through and they're like the response was basically to intermediate and make sure that these things had to pass through a clearinghouse.
Rodrigo Silva 30:19
And what perps do, they're like mechanically or structurally different than these swaps. And they, for example, if you look at something like Hyperliquid, like it clears and settles on chain in a way where like there's not a lot of that same risk.
Rodrigo Silva 30:34
So what I think we're seeing right now is the.
Desmond Fleming 30:37
And I guess, I guess to unpack that. Right? Or for my perspective, for my own learning and as well as for the audience. During the financial crisis, this leverage was opaque, yes.
Desmond Fleming 30:47
Today it's a lit order book and it settles on chain. So if you want to see how much leverage exists outstanding, you can go see now.
Desmond Fleming 30:55
Maybe the difficulty is it's hard to unpack who bears the risk of that leverage and how else are they maybe connected in the real world or not.
Rodrigo Silva 31:05
But I think again, fundamentally what you're seeing is a regulatory system that was reactive to a big blow up and as a kind of antidote to that happening again, focus its regulatory energies on intermediaries that are now kind of disappearing.
Rodrigo Silva 31:26
And so you have the regulators and people in the market saying, like, you know, how are we going to do this? Like, how does this fit?
Rodrigo Silva 31:33
Right. So I think a lot of the work that, like for example, folks at the Hyperliquid Policy center is to try to explain that even though this kind of looks the same, like a lot of the risks here are different.
Rodrigo Silva 31:45
Right, right. And we shouldn't just force everything into the existing regime. It's been exciting.
Rodrigo Silva 31:52
I mean, we were talking about how likely it was, I thought it would be that there was going to be security perps in the US like three months ago.
Rodrigo Silva 32:03
And I was initially kind of optimistic, talked to a bunch of other people that they told me something like 5%. And last week Kraken and Coinbase both announced that they were doing single stock perps, but they have a little bit
Desmond Fleming 32:15
convoluted ways of doing it where they're listed offshore but brokered through.
Rodrigo Silva 32:21
I think these are going to trade on, on DCMs. But yeah, I mean also like, I think, you know, the CFTC again has gone, you know, a full blast like trying to onshore a lot of these products.
Rodrigo Silva 32:34
We had Trump like name check on like immediate White House speech.
Rodrigo Silva 32:41
So yeah, I mean, I think things are moving and it'll be interesting. I think it'll be a big remaking of the market structure and I think a lot of the volume is going to go to these products right now for sure.
Desmond Fleming 32:53
And it's certainly one of the areas within, you know, early stage venture markets where there's a lot of attention and energy.
Desmond Fleming 33:00
Obviously Hyperliquid is the 800 pound gorilla in the room, but we will see, we'll see what happens in that respect.
Desmond Fleming 33:09
What is your framework for thinking about regulators? Because I feel like the core function regulators truly do care about as well as profess to care about is just safety and the health of the financial system and making sure that as new crypto products or the crypto industry and traditional financial services become more intertwined or overlapped, that we're
Desmond Fleming 33:40
making sure there isn't, you know, excess or unknown leverage in the ecosystem. And then how do you also unpack or maybe or the other framework I have underneath that is thinking there's also got to be like a little bit of a Darwinian survival component to this because like you mentioned, and it seems like you're very comfortable with it.
Desmond Fleming 34:00
But like you mentioned, a lot of the benefit of crypto is this programmability and the expressiveness of blockchains, which in many ways is saying, hey, these things that might have in the past required a contract or some agreement between two parties, it's just expressed in code.
Desmond Fleming 34:19
And you know, some people could say, oh like this is, you know, there's, there's elements where you know, could I, like, could I encode a safe on a blockchain that settles on Ethereum?
Desmond Fleming 34:29
Like maybe like I don't think people do it or care about it right now, but I'm sure if someone really did, they could do it if they want.
Desmond Fleming 34:36
But like, and that's where I think there's elements of the Darwinian aspect of certainly from a regulator side they might be thinking like, oh, if we start letting these things come, then what am I going to have?
Desmond Fleming 34:46
What am I going to be? Like, what's my function and purpose? Like what am I going to regulate?
Rodrigo Silva 34:50
I mean, I think regulators vary a lot, right? And I mean I think what you described is more kind of like the prudential regulator mindset where like my main goal is to preserve like systemic, like prevent systemic risk and like preserve stability, which I think you see out of, like, you know, what the Fed and stuff like that.
Rodrigo Silva 35:12
I think if you look at somebody like Commissioner Peirce, not to say that she doesn't care about market stability, but she also cares about, you know, capital formation and, like, having.
Rodrigo Silva 35:23
Giving people access. She cares a lot about privacy. She's spoken recently, a couple times, about how she thinks that one of the, like, really important aspects of American markets is that people are allowed to take on risks and fail and then do it again.
Rodrigo Silva 35:40
Yeah. Which is kind of not what you would typically think that a regulator would say, but I think it's, like, a deeply American thing to believe.
Rodrigo Silva 35:47
Right. So, I mean, I think part of what I've learned is, like, I mean, there are people, they're, like, interested in, like, you know, like, figuring out ways to help for the most part, and they're not homogeneous at all.
Rodrigo Silva 36:01
Right. I mean, I think Gary Gensler took a very different tact. Right. Like, his view was like, let's just jam everything into the securities laws, and if you can't make it work, it's because you are a criminal and, like, you don't want to do it.
Rodrigo Silva 36:15
And the current SEC has taken a much more, I would say, like, empathetic and, like. Like, kind of, like accepting more responsibility and said, like, you know, actually, like, we're gonna.
Rodrigo Silva 36:26
We're gonna figure out a way to tweak the system so that, like, people can comply. Right.
Desmond Fleming 36:31
Yeah.
Rodrigo Silva 36:31
I mean, for me, it's been like, a pretty surreal experience because I, like I said earlier, like, I literally, like, my main job at Paradigm was to, like, tweet, like, nasty things about Gary Gensler and kind of, like, oppose them in every way possible.
Desmond Fleming 36:45
Yeah.
Rodrigo Silva 36:45
And now, like, have a bunch of friends at the sec, and, like, I go and, like, I meet them, and, like, every time they do something, I'm
Desmond Fleming 36:50
like, did Gary Gensler ever tweet back at you.
Rodrigo Silva 36:53
This was awesome. No, he probably doesn't know I exist
Desmond Fleming 36:57
till this podcast.
Rodrigo Silva 37:00
So it's. Yeah, it's been like, a huge, like, you know, sea change. And. And it's been.
Rodrigo Silva 37:06
It's been kind of funny for me personally to. To go through that. The most natural and common, like, attitude of a regulator is to preserve their turf, to try to regulate, you know, because, like, they want to justify their existence like anybody else.
Rodrigo Silva 37:23
Right. But again, like, you look at this current sec, and, like, what they did for the first three, four months was issue statements about, like, this is not a security.
Rodrigo Silva 37:32
Like, this is not a security. This is outside of our jurisdiction. It's been like, remarkable to see a regulator concede that things are outside of their scope.
Rodrigo Silva 37:41
Right. But like those people are out there and like they're like in power right now. So it's been, it's been amazing to
Desmond Fleming 37:47
watch, I think, and maybe talk about the potential shift in power. I think it's obviously very. We'll see how the midterms shake out.
Desmond Fleming 37:53
We'll see how 2028 sticks out. But you know, I'm not a political observer, but you and I could both check polymarket or Kalshi right now and there are going to be some odds.
Desmond Fleming 38:03
I bet there's somewhat 50, 50, maybe 60, 40 or probably like 70, 30 Democrats win the House, probably less than that.
Desmond Fleming 38:12
I don't think they're going to win the Senate. But then certainly you'd feel like, hey, who's going to win the presidency in 2028?
Desmond Fleming 38:19
Probably feels blue. I mean, maybe that's my bias, but there's certainly a potential large shift in the political atmosphere that, you know, to be honest, I'd be surprised if it turns negative on crypto because I think there's so many other issues in the country.
Desmond Fleming 38:37
And also crypto is like, you take a step back, it's like, hey, it's an industry that we can bring onshore, that can create jobs, bring more capital that ultimately flows through society.
Desmond Fleming 38:48
But you know, certainly other people would be like, no, we don't want Chinese or you know, ex money launderers using these tools and siphoning dollars out of our system either.
Rodrigo Silva 38:58
Yeah. Assuming that the Democrats take the House or the Senate, I think what you will likely see are an increase in like investigations, Congressional investigations of Trump's crypto dealings.
Rodrigo Silva 39:13
Right. I think that's been telegraphed fairly clearly. Right. People are going to look into the meme coin, like the World Liberty Financial and there will be hearings on that.
Rodrigo Silva 39:24
I would bet. If the admin turns, whether they are more hostile towards crypto, it'll depend, I think, on a couple of factors.
Rodrigo Silva 39:34
I mean, one way to think about it is I think we're, like I said, we have an administration that is as favorable as they could be on crypto.
Rodrigo Silva 39:43
That means that there's only one way to go. Right. There's no way that they're more favorable. I think whether they turn hostile will depend on a couple things.
Rodrigo Silva 39:53
During the last administration, Elizabeth Warren was famously campaigning on the idea that she was going to build an anti crypto army and then fair shake the crypto PAC raised.
Rodrigo Silva 40:07
I think they were like the largest PAC in the last election. That had some scalps and they kind of really were able to flex some muscle.
Rodrigo Silva 40:14
And I think the Democrats by and large saw that being like actively hostile towards crypto was not a winning strategy.
Rodrigo Silva 40:24
I think Trump politicized a lot of it. Right. With, with his crypto dealing. So. So maybe the calculus has changed a little bit.
Rodrigo Silva 40:30
But I don't expect if you take Trump out of the equation that they will brand themselves as anti crypto.
Desmond Fleming 40:37
Yeah.
Rodrigo Silva 40:38
I think the best thing crypto can do to like lock in some gains and like prevent the sea from, or the wind from shifting too hard is to get adoption.
Desmond Fleming 40:50
Right. Yeah.
Rodrigo Silva 40:52
And get more users and get more embedded in the financial infrastructure just so that there's a lot more cost in trying to rip this out.
Desmond Fleming 41:03
Yeah. Or set another way value for the consumer. So we talked about coming back to the yield component.
Desmond Fleming 41:09
The way I'll kind of weighed us into this conversation is how do you use crypto rails today. Like, do you outside of trading?
Desmond Fleming 41:17
Is crypto part of your daily life? Do you bank on chain? Yes. No. Maybe. And then maybe unpack the yield component and what's going on there from like an industry perspective.
Rodrigo Silva 41:28
So I'm, I'm a lawyer, so I'm, you know, traditionally pretty conservative. But I do think it's important to kind of use the technology because I think it gives you like a, like a better understanding.
Desmond Fleming 41:39
Yep.
Rodrigo Silva 41:40
So I mean, I think I've collected NFTs, I've traded a bunch, I've messed around a little bit with perps in terms of yield. Like I have, you know, stable coins and I use like some of the vaults. I wouldn't say like the majority of my assets are in that just because I have a lot of liabilities that are dollar denominated.
Desmond Fleming 42:00
You gotta pay the, pay the bills.
Rodrigo Silva 42:02
Pay the bills, the childcare. They're not accepting my crypto yet. I've convinced a couple of art dealers to take crypto. Although that's nice, that's interesting.
Desmond Fleming 42:11
How'd you pay for it? Or did you just send it from your wallet to their wallet?
Rodrigo Silva 42:14
Yeah, crypto has some kind of remediation to do with our world because I think if you ask most art insiders, art world insiders about crypto, they, they feel kind of antagonistic because the whole NFT thing came off as pretty brash and kind of gaudy to them in the beginning.
Rodrigo Silva 42:33
So I mean, I think it's coming back and you still see like some digital artists making inroads and. Yeah, but, but that'll take a while I think to.
Desmond Fleming 42:42
To figure out, yeah, it was so like real art, like who wants that? Yeah, come by my boarding.
Rodrigo Silva 42:49
Super financialized, right?
Desmond Fleming 42:50
Yeah.
Rodrigo Silva 42:51
And art like it's also financialized, but it's a little bit more, you know, behind the scenes.
Desmond Fleming 42:56
There's more tact to it.
Rodrigo Silva 42:58
I mean not, no judgment either way, but I'm just a funny interact like experience that I've had. So. Yeah, I mean I think, I think vaults are for example, another like super interesting primitive where we'll see a lot of activity and like a lot of potential to integrate with TradFi. Right.
Desmond Fleming 43:16
Well, let me, let me ask it this way. Like, what would, what would. If part of what you and I seem to agree on is that more consumer for the longevity and health of the crypto ecosystem in the US more American consumers need to use it and love it.
Desmond Fleming 43:31
What would be a vault product that you would use and love as well as maybe talk to us a little bit about the regulatory dynamics there where I think there is.
Desmond Fleming 43:41
I think Peirce made some comments in terms of like, hey, if you're a vault manager, like you're an RIA or you know, you're an asset manager, so you're going to, you're going to be regulated.
Desmond Fleming 43:49
Like let's not futz around with this one.
Rodrigo Silva 43:52
Yeah, I mean I think like having stablecoins and depositing into like a, like a Morpho vault to like to earn some yield I think is a great kind of way to try out the product.
Rodrigo Silva 44:05
And I think I would assume that those will increase in, in demand over time.
Rodrigo Silva 44:12
This took a lot of attention in that Commissioner Peirce's statement. I think what she was basically saying was don't assume that just because it's on crypto securities laws don't apply.
Desmond Fleming 44:25
Right.
Rodrigo Silva 44:26
Vaults like DAOs before or like utility token before they are a term that is almost meaningless at this point because people will apply it super broadly to a lot of different products that are very different and have very different risks.
Rodrigo Silva 44:44
Right. So I think that something like a Morpho vault has strong arguments for why that should not be regulated as a fund.
Rodrigo Silva 44:53
Whereas there's things that are actively managed and investing in helocs that looks a lot like a fund.
Desmond Fleming 45:01
Right.
Rodrigo Silva 45:01
So part of what the industry and the regulator have to do is come up with a taxonomy and to kind of draw the line and say, you know, like this should be regulated, this, this should not. But yeah, I mean, I think like buy some stable coins and plunk them into like a Morpho vault, this is a great way to get your beak wet.
Desmond Fleming 45:20
But what is going back to pushing slightly, what is a vault product that if you had a whiteboard, a vault product that would get you super excited to increase your consumption on chain, like what do you think it would be?
Desmond Fleming 45:34
Because it's yield, right? Like if, if there's a. You know, I actually don't know what the going rates on Morpho vaults are.
Desmond Fleming 45:40
Let's say they're like 3% or like 4%, which is better than you are going to get at, you know, of our bank of America checking app.
Desmond Fleming 45:47
But you know, it's not enough to move 20, it's not enough to move your liquid cash or credit to direct your.
Desmond Fleming 45:56
Direct your direct deposit straight into Morpho every week.
Rodrigo Silva 46:00
It might be like. I think a lot of it comes down to distribution, right. Like it's just. I think a lot of people get stuck in the.
Rodrigo Silva 46:07
All right now I have to like buy stablecoins and like use my wallet to click through this like web app and like deposit.
Rodrigo Silva 46:17
Like I think that's where people get stuck. I think if it was integrated into. I mean like maybe some of the earn programs that are like integrated with exchanges are like a good example of this, right?
Desmond Fleming 46:25
Yeah.
Rodrigo Silva 46:26
Or like if they were integrated at some point like in your bank and you could just, you know, from my Chase account where like my paycheck gets deposited, I could just, instead of keeping it in my. I have right now like savings and checking option, if I could like have more of a vault option. I think that.
Desmond Fleming 46:42
Oh, in your Chase app you'd like
Rodrigo Silva 46:43
something that like I'm just.
Desmond Fleming 46:44
I think, I think that's bad for them.
Rodrigo Silva 46:46
Well, it depends. Right? Yeah, I guess they're losing deposits but like they could monetize it differently, I guess. Yeah.
Rodrigo Silva 46:52
Maybe not the best thought out like product. But my point is, I think where people get stuck is more the distribution and I guess also like more kind of assets being able to be the source of yield.
Rodrigo Silva 47:08
Right. I think more regulation and more hardening of the technology from like a security standpoint will bring the perceived risk of these products down.
Desmond Fleming 47:18
Right.
Rodrigo Silva 47:19
Because I think as people get stuck because it's hard to do and they think it's scary because they're gonna like fat finger like something and like lose like a bunch of money.
Rodrigo Silva 47:28
Right. So I think addressing those things and giving them. Giving consumers more optionality as to the sources of yield is, is one good answer.
Rodrigo Silva 47:39
I don't really get to ideate on product much, so this is fun.
Desmond Fleming 47:42
Yeah. Yeah, no, look, I, me and some friends on the VC side, you know, we, we talk about, you know, I'm a Bank of America customer. Why am I a Bank of America customer? Because my parents were.
Rodrigo Silva 47:53
Yeah.
Desmond Fleming 47:54
I got this account when I was like 12. Right.
Rodrigo Silva 47:56
So I've been the same way I've
Desmond Fleming 47:57
been, you know, 18 years, you know, with the bank. And what do I get for it? Nothing. So I'm like, yeah, I would, I would happily move if there were a.
Desmond Fleming 48:08
And I don't care. To your point of, you know, part of what the crypto ecosystem is going to need to do is to just abstract away the rails.
Desmond Fleming 48:17
I don't care if it's on chain or off chain. I just want to have the option to say I want to earn the yield on my dollars.
Desmond Fleming 48:26
And the way that someone would definitely get me to switch is certainly, if you make it easy. I'm not going to move my, you know, direct deposit overnight.
Desmond Fleming 48:35
Right. Because that feels risky. But if I can move a thousand bucks, right. And it's plunked into something that earns 5% yield and it's clear and it's also liquid.
Desmond Fleming 48:47
So I can also pay down my, you know, day to day. Not my child care bills yet, but whatever my other bills are, my rent from it very easily.
Rodrigo Silva 48:55
Your art budget.
Desmond Fleming 48:55
In my art budget, yes. Because you're going to take me shopping. If I can do those things easily, would I move?
Rodrigo Silva 49:01
Absolutely.
Desmond Fleming 49:02
I don't have loyalty to bank of America. You could also brand it, you know, I think airborne and all these other things are like their own specific thing.
Desmond Fleming 49:08
You could brand it as like, you know, the new bank of America. Like, who cares? Like, so that's one area that we, we, we.
Desmond Fleming 49:15
I've at least. And again, this is in the small VC bubble circle. Think is cool and think is on the precipice. But to your point, you know, it is a distribution game and then there's still like an orchestration game on the back end of making things work with like Privy or Morpho or, you know, sourcing, you know, you know, basically originations from people like Valinor and whoever it is, maybe to wrap things up.
Desmond Fleming 49:41
Rodrigo, what are some of the cool projects you're seeing? Like, what are you excited about? Where, when you think about where you sit in the ecosystem, do you think your business is more oriented to new fund formation?
Desmond Fleming 49:55
So more VCs and managers trying to get into the crypto space? Is it more on the new company formation? I think there is a interesting dynamic where you kind of mentioned it earlier, where people like Paradigm crypto native fund have now, you know, expanded their mandate and they expanded it after.
Desmond Fleming 50:12
It sounds like, I don't know if you were there when the crypto people,
Rodrigo Silva 50:15
they tried to do it the first
Desmond Fleming 50:17
time and the crypto industry was like,
Rodrigo Silva 50:19
what are you doing? How dare you.
Desmond Fleming 50:22
And now the second time is like, okay, people don't care. Because I think a lot of crypto people are now also an AI. But like, what, what's getting you excited in the industry right now?
Rodrigo Silva 50:31
I mean, to be frank, I think the industry has changed a lot and it's shifted.
Rodrigo Silva 50:39
Like when I got into it originally and a big part of my career, it was very early stage, like infrastructure and like, like consumer type apps.
Rodrigo Silva 50:52
Right. And a lot of the kind of speculation that we talked about earlier, the early stage for crypto has I think like gone off a cliff and like that activity has slowed down a lot.
Rodrigo Silva 51:06
I think part of it is a lot of the attention from founders and investors has gone to AI, right.
Rodrigo Silva 51:14
So we've never kind of had a crypto bear market coincide with another technological paradigm, kind of like really achieving product market fit.
Rodrigo Silva 51:23
So a lot of it has shifted to rails for capital markets and payments and to like bigger, like more tradfi looking businesses.
Rodrigo Silva 51:34
Right. So I think like the kind of sectors that are getting the most attention are stable coins, vaults and prediction markets, I think are probably the thing that.
Rodrigo Silva 51:47
And I guess perps, I would throw perps in there as well. Right. Which are all kind of like, you know, market primitives and businesses building around that.
Rodrigo Silva 51:57
In a way it feels like a capitulation of some of the cypherpunk ideals. But in other ways it feels like a maturation into kind of and like, you know, merging with the traditional finance world.
Rodrigo Silva 52:10
And again, like, I'm not to say that like that cypherpunk vision is dead or like that that'll go away. I think it's just not where the focus is right now.
Rodrigo Silva 52:18
But yeah, I think that that's what I'm seeing from kind of like the deals that are coming across my desk and the founders that are building new things.
Desmond Fleming 52:27
If I was in those early 2008, 2010 days, I'd be pumped. I'd be like, one, I'm set for life. Whether you mined bitcoin earlier in the eth ico, you're good.
Rodrigo Silva 52:39
You had to held it though.
Desmond Fleming 52:41
I hope they held it. But two, I'd be like, I think that when I think about the whole cypherpunk idea as I think it was about, you know, having this autonomy and using the Internet to expand access to these tools and this set of basically this digital money.
Desmond Fleming 52:56
And if I was going from you know, 2008 to now, I'd be like, it worked, cool. Like we might not have our own app ecosystem where everything flows smoothly.
Desmond Fleming 53:06
But again to the earlier point, like, yes, there are pain points with it. I know now at this point like it's kind of like, you know, you know the old like military people do this where it's like if you have a Rolex, that means you also have cash because someone's, someone in the world is always willing to like trade for it and can get you out of a tough spot.
Desmond Fleming 53:25
I personally kind of feel that same way with like Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever. And it's like, okay, like even if I can't get, it's going to be harder for me to get dollars out of my account, out of my bank of America account, US overseas than it is probably like Bitcoin.
Rodrigo Silva 53:39
Yeah.
Desmond Fleming 53:39
So it's like I would say there's elements of that. Yeah.
Rodrigo Silva 53:42
I mean some of the payment narrative I think has been like substantiated for sure. I mean like I was just saying like I bought a painting the other day from like an art dealer in Mexico. For me to have wired him money in Mexico would have been like, you know, six days, like on a, like if I got lucky. Right. And like a bunch of fees.
Desmond Fleming 53:59
Yeah.
Rodrigo Silva 54:00
And I just sent him like, you know, right then and there USDC for my wallet. And it took 30 seconds.
Desmond Fleming 54:05
Yeah, right, yeah. So I think, anyways, my last question for you, and I love asking it, I think you'll have an interesting perspective on it is you know, for people who see you, who hear this, who watch this, are like, man, that guy was cool.
Desmond Fleming 54:20
Like he buys art, he's a lawyer, he's in crypto. You know, what is your advice to them of kind of getting to where you are today?
Desmond Fleming 54:27
Most people, a lot of the people I interview are founders. So I actually ask them, you know, what's your advice on building a venture backed company?
Desmond Fleming 54:33
I would say what is, what is. The concrete question is, you know, what is your advice on building a career at the intersection of the legal field and crypto as an industry or just, you know, as a lawyer in general?
Rodrigo Silva 54:46
When you see a big regulatory change coming, I think that's a real opportunity for young lawyers because the old guard is not incentivized to kind of learn the new thing.
Rodrigo Silva 55:03
Right. They have their practice, and they just want to ride it out in a way so it can be equalizing.
Rodrigo Silva 55:13
And I started working in New York, and I was working with partners that had been partners for longer than I had been alive in the world.
Rodrigo Silva 55:23
And the knowledge gap and, like, experience gap just seemed, like, insurmountable. And I saw this, like, new crypto thing pop up, and I'm like, a random Mexican guy that doesn't have, like, a technical background, but I just thought it was interesting, and I kind of, like, dove head first, and now I'm somehow an expert in this.
Rodrigo Silva 55:41
So, like, that's pretty funny.
Desmond Fleming 55:42
But you followed your instincts and your interests, it sounds like.
Rodrigo Silva 55:46
Yeah. But it was also opportunistic, right? Like, I mean, I like other things, too, but I don't dedicate my career to it.
Rodrigo Silva 55:52
And I mean, like, it's a gamble, right? Like, at some points, I thought I was, like, a present genius that, like, saw this happening before everybody and, like.
Rodrigo Silva 56:00
Like, I, you know, was able to take advantage of it. At other times, I was like, man, like, I had a real job and what I do.
Desmond Fleming 56:08
Yeah.
Rodrigo Silva 56:08
And now I'm, like, talking about, like, you know, some crazy meme coin called, like, whatever, you know. Yeah.
Desmond Fleming 56:14
That's my life right now. Talking about meme coins.
Rodrigo Silva 56:16
Find the kind of dislocations and go at it and try to be helpful to people.
Rodrigo Silva 56:22
I think. I guess the other thing is play the long game and bet on yourself in a way.
Rodrigo Silva 56:29
Some of my closest friends and my closest business allies have been people that initially were in adverse positions to myself.
Rodrigo Silva 56:37
So, like, lawyers on the other side of a deal. And I think a lot of people kind of will take that initial, like, their initial situation and, like, just be very adversarial and, like, try to be like, like, how am I gonna screw this guy?
Rodrigo Silva 56:52
But I think kind of betting on yourself and trying to find common ground with people, you'll see that, like, over the long term, like, those people can actually, like, leave the other firm and they become your client.
Rodrigo Silva 57:04
Like, now you're working with them, and, like, now you're having dinner with, like, their family, you know?
Desmond Fleming 57:07
Yeah.
Rodrigo Silva 57:08
So I think that's also been something that has helped me a lot.
Desmond Fleming 57:11
Yeah. Relationships run the world, and it's always advantageous to take the longest view in the room. Rodrigo, this was awesome. Thanks for coming out.
Rodrigo Silva 57:20
Thanks for having me, man. This was fun.