Ep 65: The Crazy Story of Ethereum and the $55 Million Heist that Almost Destroyed It All with Matt Leising

Ethereum is the world's most used blockchain - resilient, adaptable and always innovating.

Matt Leising is a reporter and author who has been covering the crypto space since 2015. He is one of the foremost experts on the Ethereum blockchain and has written extensively on the intersection of Wall Street and decentralized finance. His 2020 book, "Out of the Ether: The Amazing Story of Ethereum and the $55 Million Heist That Almost Destroyed It All" tells the story of the early days of Ethereum and the 2016 hack that nearly destroyed the project.

Matt Leising, a Bloomberg reporter since 2001, was one of the first mainstream journalists to understand the implications of blockchain technology. He wrote extensively on the intersection of Wall Street and decentralized finance and the events that led to his 2020 book, Out of the Ether. Matt interviewed people involved in the Ethereum project and learned that it was a network of computers that could be used to increase efficiency and save money. The Ethereum blockchain was hacked in 2016, resulting in a $55 million heist, and the ICO craze of 2017 further popularized the blockchain. Matt held some Ethereum to understand how it works, but did not invest in it to avoid any conflicts of interest. After a contentious meeting in Switzerland, the core team reshaped the leadership and pushed forward with the project, even in the face of chaos

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. How did Matt Leising get interested in covering crypto and blockchain technology?

2. What is the story behind the Ethereum blockchain and the $55 million heist that almost destroyed it?

3. What is the future of Ethereum and how is it positioned for the future?

Connect with Matt:

Website: https://www.decential.io/

Out of Ether Book: https://outoftheether.net/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattleising

Free Download:

The Words of Web3 - A comprehensive glossary of terms used in the space https://mailchi.mp/9d043022b5a0/words-of-web3

Connect with me:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbrooksheehan

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DrBrookSheehan

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drbrooksheehan

Transcript

[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Hey, hey. Dr. Brook here with another epic, amazing interview with a copilot, Matt Leising for Dr. Brook on the Block. Welcome. Matt has been a reporter since 2001 and for the past 17 years has been with Bloomberg News. He's been covering crypto in 2015 as one of the first mainstream journalists to understand what the breakthrough of blockchain technology could mean for finance, culture, and industry in general. His expertise lies in the Ethereum blockchain, where he knows the people who invented and then built the world's most used blockchain. I want to get into that a little bit more through this episode, but we'll talk about that. He's written extensively on the intersection of Wall Street and Decentialized finance and how new peer to peer systems can change the way the current Internet works. He's one of the foremost experts on the Dow, which, if you've listened to past episodes, dow Decentialized Autonomous Organization, I defined that for you. We went into depth about that. The early and ill fated DFI experiment in Ethereum that was hacked to the tune of $55 million in 2016. This all culminated into his 2020 book out of the Ether the Amazing Story of Ethereum and the $55 million heist that almost destroyed it all. Welcome to the show, Matt. So excited you're here.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah, thank you for having me.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Brook.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 It's a pleasure.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Absolutely. So, for my listeners, you know, the first question I always ask is what your intro story is into the Web3 World. We got a little bit of the background. But from being a reporter in Bloomberg for 17 years, how did you get to the point in which you were in the crypto space?
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah, I was reporting on Wall Street, and I knew that the banking system pretty well. I was covering a beat that we called market structure. So it's like, how do markets work? How do they not work? What's the regulation going on? How are people trying to update things? Are there scams or frauds or who are regulators going after you? All that stuff. And so I had a pretty good sense of it. I went through the financial crisis at Bloomberg and Walks. All of that happened and then covered the Dodd Frank'act. That was the legislation put in place afterwards to regulate things like the overcounter derivatives markets and do a whole bunch of other changes to the US. Financial system. So all that was my background. And in 2015, Bitcoin had already been around for a few years, but I just couldn't wrap my head around it. But I finally read something in The Economist that explained the blockchain part of the equation. And then once I realized, oh, it's a network of computers and they just happen to be spread all over the world and it's unstoppable, I realized that Wall Street is kind of the same way. It's just a big network as well. I mean, everyone knows each other because you're counterparties and you're trading trillions of dollars every day amongst all these different parts of the financial world, like banks and asset managers and hedge funds and all that stuff. So it kind of, like, clicked for me that if the blockchain was just a network of computers, wall street was also the network. And maybe Wall Street could kind of import some of these ideas and start experimenting with what the blockchain had proven to be so good at. So I went to my editor and I said, hey, I want to COVID blockchain. And he said, Cool, what's blockchain? It was a little bit early. I wasn't by no means the first or anything like that. Wall street and it was also wall street was kind of already kicking the tires and trying to figure out what they could do here because it had the potential to really increase in efficiency and save them, like, lots of money. So there's always going to be a real drive when money is on the line. So that was it, and I just started covering it. And pretty soon after that, I got into Ethereum, and then the Dow got hacked in 2016, and it was just like, off to the races. And 2017 came around with the ICO craze. And by then, Bloomberg kind of was forced into the story, and we started covering it in a lot more depth. So I've already been there for a couple of years, and then it really never stopped, and it just kind of overtook my beat after a while. And that's really all I was doing until I left to start Essential Media last year with my partner, Neil Berkeley.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 That's incredible. So how did out of the Ether come about? Or did that come about as you were covering this whole story of the Dow being hacked, the ICO, like what you just spoke about.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah. So it started as a magazine story for Bloomberg Markets Magazine. The editors that are every year they do a Heist issue, and they asked me, like, hey, we know you're covering crypto. You must know a good heist story. And I said, oh, yeah, I got one, of course. Yeah, that was the doubt. I got to dive into it for a couple of months and do some really great reporting. I got to know a lot of the hackers and developers who were kind of working behind the scenes to help mitigate the hack and make it not worse story. It came out, and everyone involved really liked it. So I think I built up a little bit of trust with them.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Yes.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 And I realized, okay, because it's a complicated story and there's a lot of stuff, so it's not like a super simple thing to do. And I've never met many of these people before, so trust is always a really key factor when you're a reporter. So once that was out, I kind of realized, oh, I could use this story of the Dow hack in a larger context as a kind of narrative tension throughout the book. And then I could also write different chapters about the talibeater and the inventor of the theorem and how he came to invent it, and then how he came to bring people around him to build the thing and what happened next. And so that was kind of the structure that kind of came to me. I put that in a book proposal and eventually got a deal.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Wow.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 That's how it came about. So it all started about High Story in 2016.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Wow. So I do have to ask, are you holding some Ethereum or you just kind of more from a reporter perspective, like really intrigued by the story? Or do you have any of the Ethereum's token or coin?
 
 [Matt Leising]
 No, I'm not an investor in it. I own some Ethereum just so that I can do things and figure out how a reporter that would have been a conflict of interest. Yeah, kind of strict like that. It's sort of like if you're covering Microsoft for Bloomberg News, you can't own Microsoft shares. Right. Because it's possible that you're going to move the market price on that or you're going to get information that no one else knows. So that's the conflict. Something like a theory. I think it's a little less it's a little harder to make that case. I don't think I'm going to move the price of a theory or I'm not going to find out some information that's going to I don't know, it's kind of like holding US. Dollars, in my opinion. So, yeah, that's the gist of it. But I do have some theory or not, I always have, just so that I understand how well it works and metaphor and all that stuff. Because I'm writing about it, I just kind of know how it needs to all kind of work.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Yeah, absolutely. So for those listening who may not be familiar, so Bitcoin is basically number one in terms of market cap. In the crypto markets, Ethereum sits at number two. They're the two big dogs. Aetherium has basically built a blockchain that allows people to write smart contracts and create all these different derivatives, so to speak, off of. It, like, really built out this extensive blockchain. And that's what Matt was covering, is the story of Ethereum and their starting point. They have a really interesting task in terms of and we'll get into the central in just a second, but I'm curious what your thoughts are because Vital yes. Started it. Charles I can't even pronounce hopkinson yeah. From Cardano, who is now with Cardano, started Cardano blockchain, but was part of the core eco, part of the core team for Aetherium. I'm interested in this and you seem to have a lot of background in Ethereum, so I'm interested in your thoughts on how that whole thing kind of dispersed because there's another guy too, another guy that was on the core Ethereum team that started another chain.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah. Gavin wood started polka dot.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Right.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 And parody.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Right.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah. So it is a fascinating story, and that's one of the things that really drew me to it, because I knew the characters were so rich and it was all true and it was like real life stuff. But it does kind of have some soap opera moments where Metallic he created and he invented a theory. He wrote a white paper. He sent it out to a bunch of people that he knew because he had been covering bitcoin for bitcoin magazine, which he covered or, sorry, co founded. So he had a pretty good contact list at that point. He sends it out and everybody's like, wow, this is amazing. Let's do this. Let's build this thing. Because I think at this point in sort of in 2013, I think some people were kind of coming up to the limits of bitcoin. It does one thing which does it really well. You can send value. It's a permissionless global payment system. So that's amazing. But some people wanted to do more on blockchain now that the kind of cat was out of the bag. They're like, hey, let's see what else we can do. So that was Metallic's idea, basically, kind of randomly. He just started gathering people around him who were very interested and wanted to help him build this thing because he knew he couldn't do it alone. So he needed people who had money, obviously, to fund startup. So there was cohesive like that. There was Anthony Diorio, who had a lot of money from early bitcoin investing and other businesses that he had. There was Joe Lubin, who had been a software designer at Goldman Sachs and had run a hedge fund. And he came in, but Joe was also very technical and good on the protocol kind of level stuff. Then Gavin Wood came in and he was a great developer and coder. There was Jeff Wilkie, who was another coder that came in, meha, Lisa. I mentioned him. He was the co founder of bitcoin magazine. He was the tale's friend. He came on and forgetting Elliott Charles Hoskinson, who was there, who Anthony Diorio had known, that they were both kind of in the bitcoin and blockchain circles in Canada. And so Hoskinson came in. So at first it all seemed great. Everyone was getting along. There was this excitement, and they were really, like, thinking that they were onto something because they were, strangely enough, that within six months, like, actions had formed. And people were, like, getting upset that there were, like, Gavin Wood and was upset that there were non technical people in the leadership roles. He wanted, like, the leadership to be the folks who are actually doing the coding. Charles Hoskinson appointed himself CEO of Ethereal, and he started telling tall tales. And people told me stories about him. A lot of it's in the book but he tried to pass himself off office at Tashi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. He said that he was in Afghanistan jumping out of Black Hawk helicopters. And, you know, he just kind of had this habit of just really kind of just telling tall tales, and it kind of started rubbing people the wrong way. And so within six months, they had to have a whole hand on deck meeting in their headquarters in Zoo, Switzerland, and Metallic and firing Charles. And so they oh, that's what I missed. It was Amir Chetrip. He was somebody that Tallah got to know in Israel when he was on doing some traveling before he kind of came up with the theory of idea. So those guys got fired. It was a really contentious meeting. One of my favorite details in the book was that night everyone's in this big house in Zoo, but there's like 2030 people there, so they're all kind of doubling up in rooms to go to bed. Italic and Gavin Wood were in one room with me, highly see, and his girlfriend Noxanna, at the time. They're now married. So there's four of them in there. They're about to go to bed, and Gavin gets up and locks the door because it's like he doesn't know what's going on because there was just such a contentious meeting that they had. So he felt kind of a little bit unsafe.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Right.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 So within six months, the leadership kind of had been reshaped and they were running out of money, and it was just a really tough time. But everyone was also full speed ahead on a theory of what they were trying to do. I like to say that when you really get into it and, you know, the back story, the theorem, kind of exists in spite of itself. I think it was such a good idea that I thought that all this kind of personal drama and a lot of the dead ends and fits and starts that I went through wasn't enough to stop it because this was just a brilliant idea, and I think the game is ready for it.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Do you think that them having a lot of the fallout that they did in the early stages has helped get them on a solid foundation or solid trajectory? Because for some people who might be coming in very new to the crypto space, it can sound very chaotic and very crazy. And there'd be a lot of fear in terms of investing. And these podcasts don't come out right at the time the current events happen. But at the time of recording that, Matt and I are talking, we're a week out from the whole FTX collapse and crazy things in the market. I'm interested to know what you feel in terms of the future of Ethereum. Do you think that it has a really solid base now that it's already gone through a lot of trials and tribulations in the early days.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah, the short answer is yes, I do. It's always been crazy. Like crypto has always been crazy. You go back to the very beginning, Malcolm, that was a shit show.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 I don't know if I could say.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 We'Ll say it good because it was a shit show.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Yeah, it was.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 And you had all sorts of other stuff going on with all coins and things and people getting scammed. It's always been crazy, I think. It's always well, I hope it's not always crazy, but that is definitely part of the course here. And like you mentioned, FTX, it just went out of business overnight and everyone no one saw that coming. And it really shocked a lot of people because they were basically seen as like the poster boy for good management, it turns out. That was completely untrue, I think. Yes, theorem is going to continue. And what you see failing around you one of two things. It's centralized institutions like FTX or like Three Arrows Capital or Luna Terra, where there's not a lot of transparency and then things are being like the books are being cooked and then that's why they got out of business. Where you're seeing things that are on top of the theater, like the smart contracts that have bugs in them and have problems. And so hackers are always looking for ways to exploit things like that. You know, we've seen bridge hacks this year, like, you know, $600 million in Ronan, right, was taken because it's trying to bridge from the Ronin from blockchain to Ethereum. And those bridges right now sometimes are the weakest link and yeah, so but that's not the Ethereum blockchain, you know, that's the underlying protocol is sound. And I think that was really a great example of this is when Ethereum changed from proof of work to proof of stake in September. And that was a combination of years of really difficult, complicated research and development and they pulled it off so well that it was boring. And it just like switched over in real time to a completely new consensus mechanism, which in my opinion is one of the most amazing technological things I've seen in my lifetime. And I think that's the kind of underlying community that theorem has and I think that's why it's really well positioned for the future. And I don't think theorem itself is going to have trouble. It's always the things around that tend to blow up.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Right, interesting. Yeah. I know that some people and I see their viewpoint in terms of they see Ethereum kind of like a centralized not in a centralized exchange, but a centralized unit, because where Bitcoin is very Decentialized, there's nobody at the helm running Bitcoin. For Bitcoin to go down, it would have to have like the 51% attack where 51% of the miners decide, hey, we're going to take this whole thing, which the likelihood of that happening is almost zero. Where Ethereum does have that centralized core team that's kind of building, and should they decide, hey, we're taking this down or we're going sideways? I guess from my perspective, I see where people see those things and I'm like, yeah, there's a lot of truth to that. But I also do see how other blockchains are built in very similar fashions with like, Ethereum, where they do have their core development team.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 I think Bitcoin is the standard for Decentialization and there's absolutely nobody running it. The protocol is just kind of maintaining itself, basically.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Right.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Aetherium, though, you know, let's not forget they have now seven, seven different clients that run Aetherium. So there's seven different languages there that you can use or that they've used to build a theorem. So if you wanted to take down a theory, you'd have to take down all seven of those clients. And they've done this on purpose because let's say one or two of those or three get attacked or they just fail, the theorem keeps going. So it's still like running on different so it's got a lot of backups in a sense. So I think that's an important thing to keep in mind.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Yeah, I didn't know that. Thank you for sharing that.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah. Now it's on a validator system, so it's no longer minors because it's proof of stake. But no, these validators are spread around all around the world. One thing that is concerning is that some staking services have come out. Like, Coinbase has one, and there's a couple of others where you need 32 E to become a validator on a new system. So if you have 32 ETH, you can do it on your home computer, basically. If you don't, but you still want to get involved, you can join a staking pool. And so you've got five E, so you join it. Yeah, you just put it in and you get a share of the rewards commensurate to how much you put in, minus fees, of course. And those are sort of concentrating a little bit. Like, I think they're somewhere around 40% of the validators are coming from pools. So that is a little bit concerning to folks because, you know, say the Department of justice comes and says, hey, we don't, you know, or we need all these transaction records, you know, for we think, like tornado cash is being used to launder North Korean money. When you have a centralized place like that, like Coinbase, all that information is there. So it kind of presents a way of it's not as Decentialized Decentialized as it could be. So that's something that people are a little concerned about. But I think folks are trying to encourage people as much as possible to just run the validator on your own computer. And let's say the faithful might look like, let's keep this Decentialized and out of the reach of governments or corporations that might want to have some kind of ill will towards the network. So I think that's something that's being worked on.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Right. Very fascinating. I know when you say 32 east, for those of you who may not know, so east price, I think if I looked at it last, was like 1200. So it could be like to start to become a validator would be about, like 35 kwh. Don't call me on those numbers. The price fluctuations come out. But that could be a substantial investment for a single person. So I understand why people do the pools, but I could see where they could be problematic in that sense.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah. As we've seen, like, with FTX, everything that's centralized seems to be kind of a danger point. The whole ethos here for why we're so fascinated by this is that it's a Decentialized way of doing things and it's more democratic in a sense. It's more like the barriers to entry are very low and everyone can get involved with this. So I think that's what people should always try to keep in mind. And that's always hopefully the goal here.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Absolutely. Okay, so tell us about Decential. It's a media company. I checked out the website. I was like, wow, this is really cool. I want to just say this. This is what on their website. It says, telling the stories of founders, builders and visionaries who are creating a new Decentialized economy and Internet experience. And you guys are doing this through films, documentary series journalism, that kind of stuff? Like, tell us more about that. It's so awesome.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, this sort of came out of my book. So the book had come out and several months later, filmmaker named Neil Berkeley got in touch and he wanted to option the book to turn it into your documentary series. And so I was like, great. Finally somebody who actually has connections and not my mom saying, no, this should.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Be leading to a movie. Right? Thanks, mom. You're my biggest supporter.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Unfortunately, you don't have an agent or anything about movie making, so we just kind of hit it off. And you and I, we understood, like, pretty soon that we like to tell stories in a similar way. He's doing it in the film, I'm doing it with the written word. And we thought we just got to talking and we didn't think that we thought there was a kind of a gap in some of the ways that this stuff was being recorded and sorry, Brook, I'm hearing an echo.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Are you still there?
 
 [Matt Leising]
 When I talk, I can hear myself again. Just started, which is weird.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Yeah. Now it looks like the Internet. I'll edit this, but it looks like the Internet connection connection is let me check the WiFi really quick. Okay. Is it back when I talked?
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Let me see. No, now it's gone.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 It's gone. Okay. Yeah, it looks like the Internet connection went down for a second. I apologize for that.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah. No, I'm just glad. I didn't want to be bad if it wasn't usable, but I can just restart from what you're asking about central. Yeah. Okay. So it kind of came from my book. So my book had come out, and then several months later, this guy, Neil Berkeley, got in touch with me, and he's a filmmaker, and he wanted to option the book to turn it into a documentary. And so I was like, yeah, finally somebody from Hollywood, not my mom, saying, oh, this should be a movie, right? So that was nice to hear. And so Neil and I just kind of figured out quickly that we both like to tell stories in the same sort of way he does it in the film. I do it with writing, but we really like to. It's all character driven. And that's the way I really approached my book, because I knew this is a complicated story, and it's, like, got a lot of posts and turns, and I really need to tell this story through the characters and make them human and so that you can kind of relate to them and follow along. I take that same approach, whether he's doing film, on doing it in writing. We were kind of looking around, and we thought that with all the coverage that's out there about crypto and Web3, we didn't feel that the people were getting enough attention. There's so many fascinating, crazy, smart, weird people, and they come from all walks of life. And these are the folks that I got to know writing the book. I got to know them writing for it about Bloomberg, but it didn't give me much license to get into their profiles and stuff. Bloomberg is sort of, like, really kind of straight and narrow, like, what's the breaking news? Or what's the story here? So I just wanted to really start writing about these people. And so that's the whole kind of genesis of essential, and we're just telling the stories. The backstory is like, Where did you come from? Tell me about your childhood. What were you doing before you found crypto? It's kind of like your first question, how did you get into Web3? That's been our approach, and I think it's getting well received. I think we're trying to add a little more news to it, and we're trying to add things that people want more on a daily basis. But I think we've really laid the groundwork for just really kind of highlighting the folks that are behind the scenes here a lot of the time. I think a lot of the reporting on this area is kind of technical, and it usually tends to be about the technology or prices or what's the latest NFT thing, and it's not necessarily about the people behind that are making it all happen. That's what we're really trying to do. And we've got podcasts, and we're working on film stuff and the writing side. So that's all kind of the general direction that we're heading in.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 That's fascinating and awesome. So are you guys looking to create almost kind of like a subscription model where someone subscribes to like, Bloomberg and then they get the articles and the access to the films and those kind of things? Or how are you guys creating like a business model around, telling these stories and building readership or viewership?
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah, right now it's all free. We're out there just trying to build an audience and get people to get eyeballs and ears, listen and watch and read and then down the line. Yeah, I think that's kind of one of the options that we're exploring. There's going to be a revenue as well coming in, but we're not there yet still. We celebrated our one year anniversary in October.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Congratulations.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah, thank you. Luckily we got a seed round of investment in the summer, so we've got some money in the bank and we're just kind of trying to build it slowly but surely and see where it takes us. But I think especially on the film side, I don't feel like a lot of people are doing that. And if we can kind of get that going and break out into there, I think that's really have a lot of potential.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 I agree.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah. And that would be a lot of fun to do. That's kind of the business plan at the moment. It's not too complicated.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 No, not at all. From my standpoint, I'm listening to it and I'm like, okay, it's really interesting. I'm curious if you guys are going to do a Web3 type business model with it obviously subscription based. If someone is using Fiat dollars to buy into their monthly subscription, are you guys going to do it to where maybe you build on chain something to where people can pay in Aetherium for that?
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah, we definitely want to use all of the tools and all of the availability that Web3 gives us. We've toyed with the idea like should we be a Dow, should we try to raise money that way or should we do some kind of NFP drop? But we're just kind of taking it slowly but surely because first and foremost we see ourselves as a kind of journalism operation on documentary, film and in the writing and podcasting.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Right?
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah. But that's one thing I love about this is like in my book, I have a special edition printed and there's only 1000 copies that ever came out and those can be make those into an app tee. So I like experimenting with this stuff and using it as well as writing about it, which I think is really fun.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Totally. That's so cool. That's so cool. I see just a lot of potential there even people being able to, as you do, transition more into taking payment via the Web3 blockchain world where people can have these are your first founders edition people and they get Lifetime. Access to the central because they're the NFT holder, and then they can sell it on the secondary market if they don't want to get the information anymore. And someone else can have that pass. But very cool. There's a lot of different options and ideas and things that can happen as a result.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah, and it's kind of like we're putting our money where our mouth is. You might as well just dive into this and not just write about it, but be a participant in it as well. It's much possible.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Right. Very cool. And education in this space and having people be able to connect with the characters. You said the characters. It really starts to create a sense of trust and understanding of different aspects of blockchain technology or different aspects of Web3 that, like you said, a lot of what is being reported, YouTube, other podcast episodes and things like that are all just about, okay, what do you think the price is going to be? It's a lot of trading jargon, and unless you're like an experienced trader, it means nothing to you. So you don't really learn about this space in the way that you would through your method, through your yeah, I.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Was interviewing somebody the other day, and they put it really well in terms of, like they said, the people who tend to like crypto, first of all don't know much about risk and risk management, and they've all got dollar signs in their eyes. Right. So a lot of fast money. So you put those two things together. I think that's pretty accurate because a lot of people come to this and think they're going to get rich.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 That's why I'm laughing. It's so accurate.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah, I thought so, too. So that's why people get rugged all the time and that's why there's so many ongoing scams and people are global because they think they're just on the cusp of making those millions of dollars. And you really got to slow down. You really got to do your own research and figure this stuff out. Because the people who are scamming, you know, that's the audience. It's the people with dollar signs in their eyes with no idea of risk management. And that's like shooting a fish in a barrel. Yeah, I agree. I think education and just trying to do as much as possible to tell people these are the great things out here that are now possible, that have never been possible before. But you have to be careful because there's real money at stake here. FTX, I've been saying this for years to people, do not leave your money on an exchange because why are you trusting that exchange? You need to get your own wallet, you need to put it on the blockchain, and you need to have that private key yourself. If you're not able to do that, maybe you shouldn't be in this space right now. That's the thing you see, FTX, go bankrupt overnight, but if you had money there, it's gone. You're probably going to be tied up in bankruptcy proceedings for years. And you got to take care of your own stuff here. Don't trust anybody else to do it, right?
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 No. We live in a culture right now with the Internet where people can easily click, like, forgot password and get a recovery code and whatever. And so there is this lack of understanding of not your keys, not your coins. And I've talked extensively about this on so many different episodes, about, hey, I've done short YouTube reels and things like that to help educate people. And now, in the aftermath of all this FTX, I've had so many people messaging me, going, Are you okay? Are you okay? I'm like, first off, I've never transacted with FTX. And second of all, I use an exchange to purchase my tokens or my coins, and then I get out of there like, I'm not in there for a long time. And so I appreciate you guys being worried, but I'm okay.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah, of course. Exchanges definitely have a place. They're absolutely vital to the system. But don't leave your money there. Don't leave your coins there.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 I just have this a random analogy pop up into my mind. But it would be like as if you go to Target and you purchase all these things for your home or clothing or whatever. You buy at Target and you just leave your bag. You pay for everything, but you just leave it there sitting in the store. Why would you do that? You want to bring that stuff home with you. Same thing you buy at the exchange. You bring it home with you.
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Absolutely.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Very cool. Matt, it's been such a fun conversation. I love what you're doing. You said it's free right now. Do they just go to the Decential website and subscribe to getting the weekly newsletter? What does it look like for somebody who wants to continue and learn and get more from what you're doing?
 
 [Matt Leising]
 Yeah, absolutely. So the website is a great place. It's Decential IO. So D-E-C-E-N-T-I-A-L IO. You can subscribe to our newsletter. We've got two we do, like, a weekly Web3 roundup where we're taking stories from around the web and different publications. Just kind of like, people missed this. Here it is. And then we do a weekly we send out everything we published that week on Saturday. So if you just want to check it out, that way you can we're on Twitter at Decential Media. I'm on Twitter at Matt Leising. We're on LinkedIn. I mentioned the special edition of my book. You can find my book pretty much anywhere online, Amazon, all that stuff. If you want to look at the special edition, it's out of the Ethereum net. And so you can buy one through there if that's your jam. And, yeah, I'd love to see some subscribers and stuff and just have a better rate listening, check us out.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Absolutely. And I'll be sure to link all those places that you are at. I'll put those in a show notes, making it easy for you as a listener to really connect and be engaged. Because, hey, if you're new to this space and you're listening to these episodes and you're just like, I can't figure this all out. This is a great place to really be able to figure it all out without a lot of the jargon that a lot of these newsletters. I'm part of tons of newsletters and I understand the word, so it's not necessarily jargon to me, but I can see how a newbie would be. So definitely connect with Matt. Definitely connect with essential. Any final words that you want to say before we bring the train into the station?
 
 [Matt Leising]
 No. This has been a pleasure, Brook. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Absolutely. It's been so fun. Great. Well, thank you so much for being here. For those of you who are riding the ride with us today, as we pull up into the station, be sure to exit to your right and we will see you on the next one.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 You made it. Congratulations. That wasn't so bad, was it? I hope you laughed and learned a little bit more about this Web3 universe and how simple and fun it can really be. Would you be so kind as to leave us a review and share it with your friends and family? It would mean so much to get this out to more people as we embark on the greatest transfer of wealth that has ever happened in human history. Can't wait to see you on the next one.