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Crypto Web3 Marketing with Paul Phillips at Web Wednesday | Otter.ai

Crypto Web3 Marketing with Paul Phillips at Web Wednesday

Napoleon Biggs1h 11min

Napoleon Biggs

00:00

welcome to another exciting edition of web three Wednesday. Today we're at the unsensible studios, as you can see, sitting on very cozy sofas, and we're talking about web three marketing how to how to grow business in the web three world with Paul Phillips, who is the former head of digital for bullish, which is a hybrid crypto Exchange, which we'll learn more about later. He used to work there. So we're not here to talk about bullish, we're here to talk about the industry as a whole how it's evolved, and how marketers and people can get involved. Okay, so Paul, you started off a bit like me, you're in the PR world, right? And you were, I guess, the first wave of social media at Edelman. And then you evolve and somehow got involved in NF T's, which I'm curious to see what that was. Yeah. And then you leaped into the crypto exchange world. Maybe just share with us a little bit that journey of how you went from, you know, PR to exchange?

Paul Phillips

01:07

Yeah, so I did, as you say, I was kind of 10 years at elemental decade. And so I have a traditional kind of consulting marketing background, and, and we're here in Hong Kong, we had a lot of crypto exchanges and crypto clients at the time.

Napoleon Biggs

01:23

Even three years ago, there was there's a lot of yeah, this was the same PR agencies to do this. Yeah, they were

Paul Phillips

01:28

Yeah. Okay. And so I, you know, I saw a lot of clients with huge ambition, but not really the ability to execute, and then a headhunter called and said, you know, would you be interested having a chat? My initial reaction was a lot of people that Space Cowboys, I don't I don't want to get involved. But, you know, I had a couple of great conversations and realized, you know, people actually want to do some great work and great things. So, you know, you said a lot of PR agencies were very heavy in social, they've kind of grown that they've grown that that scope a lot recently. So, the promise, I mean, what, why, while I joined this kind of industry three years ago, was actually to set up what's quite a hot topic now. But a social media platform built on blockchain, which is its own network. Yeah. Okay. You know, which, you know, those days, it was Facebook libre doing the same thing. You know, they couldn't get government approval to do a lot of the work. I know that Twitter isn't alone in that space as well. And it's coming up again, as you hear it here, stat Sam from FTX. Talk about how, you know, he thinks that that's gonna be the next the next wave of innovation. So that was really an early NFT. Platform. Because all the conversation all the media on there was was it was brand has NF T's and actually that platforms now a complete NFT platform,

Napoleon Biggs

02:43

but it's a it's a network, full on social network you're going to share it is yeah, yeah. And what what do you do you socialize to earn? What was the concept? The more friends you have, the more money you make? Or, well, the more likes, the more money you make.

Paul Phillips

02:59

Those days, it was more about bringing trust and transparency to communication. That's what we're going because I think there was a massive reaction against paid advertising on social of which I made a lot of my career on

Napoleon Biggs

03:11

10 years ago, you were responsible for it. Yes. You wanted to clean up your act.

Paul Phillips

03:15

Yeah. Well, I think that the best thing about that is now it's bred a new intersection of social we were just talking about how as your socials become cool, again, the internet's become cool again, and like it was 10 years ago, because it's people with super speakers become super centralized. And marketers have really had a lot of control over what's what you read and what you say. And now we're seeing, you know, 400 million people in web three or crypto who are who are engaging in different ways with different infrastructure.

Napoleon Biggs

03:44

So you talked about the backlash, but then you're talking about people moving into the crypto world right? Where did you get this number? 400 million? Is that people or is that wallets or is it I think it's a Kryptos. It's bad actually, if you're wearing shorts wearing paper, where'd you get that?

Paul Phillips

03:59

I think that's that's, that's that's crypto wallets.

Napoleon Biggs

04:05

Individuals. Yeah, I

Paul Phillips

04:05

know, wallets out there. There's

Napoleon Biggs

04:07

a couple of billion. Yeah, things like payment and things like that. Right. So So then, so you're doing this NFT social network? Yes. And you go, I had enough of this, I want to get into trading into the exchange world, or how does that evolve? Well,

Paul Phillips

04:21

so you know, I was at that point, working with them over an incubator. That was one of the first projects we did in the second project we did was really building an exchange, right? And so the last few years have really been about building an exchange and as a result, like I can talk about the the, the market and also about some of the skills that are needed there and also kind of the future of what I think but you're

Napoleon Biggs

04:44

not a financial advisor. So I can ask you like a few people who who sent them questions, you know, what, what, what project should I invest in? Unfortunately, we're not here to talk about right now. But you know, the products well enough, we'll talk about that. But yeah, so the the evolution of exchanges obviously You know, I got involved. I think 2014 was the first time I'd heard about crypto and there was a group and Uncle xn Yes. And they were famous for having an ATM machine somewhere in Canada and I can't remember that you could spit out Bitcoin into Bitcoin. I don't know what happened. But I remember going to deposit money in their offices in Wanchai. And it was like going to the horse race as always all men with the newspapers and yeah, wads of cash. Yeah. And then kind of handy in and hoping they'd get something in exchange. Right. Yeah. And then they had a rather shoddy kind of trading floor that they rapidly closed down and converted into institutional trading. So tell me a bit about the kind of the way you see the exchange world evolving, right? Because in those early days, it was pretty messy. It was incredibly difficult to get on board. Yeah. Yeah. To know, somebody knew somebody had to send some money to a gift card company who then convert it into crypto, and then you felt very illicit in doing it.

Paul Phillips

06:01

Yeah. And I think what you're what you're really talking about is kind of first wave. And I think a lot of people have been been asking me, you know, I'm now in a new role, but it but in my, my previous role, what was I more about the industry and more about the market and scene because I think it's been very, very difficult to kind of miss the same 100 million dollars spent by crypto calm on the staples arena, or the the crypto bowl, they were calling it this year, rather than that, which is kind of reminiscent of the.com bubble that we saw in the 90s.

Napoleon Biggs

06:29

And I did an event with crypto to come here. They didn't pay me, you know, in nearly 3000, us, you should get them on again. Yeah. So well,

Paul Phillips

06:38

so I'll talk about that I kind of have the structure of a way to think about exchanges. And I think they actually, when you think looks with that lens, a lot of it makes a lot more sense, right. So the first wave what you were talking about before about being on the floor here in Hong Kong, and going to an ATM there three months ago, the first wave and I think you said 2000.

Napoleon Biggs

06:53

And we have a video or two to show these guys. Right? Yeah. So I

Paul Phillips

06:57

think a good example of that, as well, we'll get to that. And then and actually, that I think, you know, a good example of that, although the most prominent that space would be by Nance and Coinbase.

Napoleon Biggs

07:10

And your when you say first way, what we're talking about 2020 1920 12 to

Paul Phillips

07:15

2014 2012. Yeah, so that's when they kind of started changes. So by Nance by Nance and Coinbase, the two biggest in that space, still around today. They grew very, very organically. You know, they became product lead innovation led companies, right. And I think

Napoleon Biggs

07:32

we'll get by on organically. You mean they didn't spend any money advertising? It was grassroots? Yeah.

Paul Phillips

07:37

And it was was word of mouth kind of thing. Exactly. It was done with what I would call more like, actually, if you look at the way Coinbase grew quite quickly was actually by offering, you know, we'll give you $15 worth of crypto if you complete this educational course. Okay, so a lot, a lot of huge financial inclusion. So they were educating people how to trade in exchange for

Napoleon Biggs

08:00

what they now call, pay to earn, or underpaid or whatever, but learn to have learned to pay to learn. And we get to learn

Paul Phillips

08:07

that again, like that. I haven't had ended that one. But But no, I think a lot of these these businesses were product led, they're quite innovative LED. And I think if you look at, you look at say the Superbowl that we had in February, and you can see all three ways of exchanges will list the first two web exchanges quite clearly there. And you look at the Coinbase ad that they did for the Super Bowl with the QR codes. And so we have that to show how that we can show that okay. And that's a really good example of a product lead organization that's still focused on product right? You know, most of the the top top Adweek Ad Age, USA Today did not include the Coinbase ad and their top 10. Right, but in

Napoleon Biggs

08:50

crypto from a creative perspective, or just the

Paul Phillips

08:53

will I think USA today is I think add we can add age obviously more more creative focus, but the USA Today, it tends to be quite like watch what's your favorite ad, right? From a consumer perspective? So, you know, I think the crypto community love that because it was product focus. But actually, people that Superbowl want to brand experience, right? They want a minute where they go, Oh, wow, you make you move me I can, you know, I know, I feel like having a QR code bouncing across the screen doesn't do that move. Right. You know, and but you know, it reflects the culture of the organization, right? So that's the kind of first wave of organize of what we see there. And then our product lead organization, I think the second wave, they've been the noisiest, and the ones where I get most people asking me, Hey, does this make sense? What are people doing here? And I think the biggest player here is what we're just talking about four, which is crypto.com. Right? You know, they spent $700 million in the staples arena. They're spent more on that global campaign with Matt Damon. Which and then they've spent more again on on on Super Bowl and other things

Napoleon Biggs

09:51

because they were formerly I came across the you know, they had a big team in Hong Kong, right? Yeah, the Hong Kong Yeah, kind of born and then went to Singapore quickly because regulations. Yeah, but they It started off as Monaco. Remember a groovy name? Right? It kind of implies yachts and wealth, secret wealth racing cars. Yeah. And then they bought the crypto.com. Domain, apparently for 24 million US some huge amounts of money. Yeah. So that then became crypto Club, which is the big. Let's make a lot of advertising noise. Advertising noise, right?

Paul Phillips

10:21

Yeah. Yeah. And so they were Phase One focuses on early adopters. Yeah. Phase two is really about the early majority. Okay, so the number of people getting involved in crypto is doubling every six to 12 months prior to the winter prior to the winter. Very good point. So that's why the wave two strategy is really going a lot of the advertising the content, it's not necessarily come out of crypto, it's very much what I call kind of normally marketing, right? It's what marketing that people understand and yet who aren't in crypto yet. And you're another player that was also at the Super Bowl is FTX. Right? And then FTX ads very much kind of cashing in on that kind of FOMO. Right, which I think the early, early, early majority understand and get right, they probably have less less sense and sense of FOMO right now, though, given the winter.

Napoleon Biggs

11:09

But so you're saying they would you say it's the traditional kind of advertising, they're doing their marketing? It's more about brand? And yeah, so they're using kind of channel wise, they're not dipping into the community aspect of it? Are they very focused on buying ads? And, you know, sponsoring stadia and things like that? Yeah.

Paul Phillips

11:27

So in a way, crypto comms made it quite clear, they want to be the world's first major crypto brand, right. And they understand the importance that the brand has in kind of bringing in accelerate that adoption curve, right. Bringing trust. Bringing trust is probably the the key thing and financial services, right. So there, they do do all of it. But that's definitely the focus of it is, I think, when I look at their marketing, and I feel like other marketers look at the marketing, it's very, it looks a bit like programming. Right. And I think the secret sauce to marketing is really about culture, and relevance. Right. And I think coming from crypto, the most exciting thing about crypto is a hazardous unique culture. Right. And I think we'll talk more about that. And I think that that is going to be the the fuel that's really going to get to be in the third wave

Napoleon Biggs

12:16

of dirty things. Sorry, go back to that second wave. Don't you think the fact that they've built up a brand? And trust? Yeah, they're more likely to survive through kind of market machinations that going on now? Then people who are more product based? Or am I looking at it the wrong way?

Paul Phillips

12:32

I don't think so I'm looking at that as a cost, right. And I think as all marketers, we got to go, okay, that's an investment in getting return on that. But they build trust, right? They build trust, but they build trust for the industry as a whole because there are leaders on there as well. Right. And it's interesting approach, there's way to play as you can say, FTX is consistently going to kind of top five for exchanges.

Napoleon Biggs

12:56

And usually, in volume or in brand awareness,

Paul Phillips

12:59

volume. Okay. You know, and exchanges ultimately make money by you know, buying and selling and making money on the the spread. And then some exchanges. Some of them will retail ones also make money on the on and off ramps and credit cards, right. So when I when I look at the way that some of the wave to players, it really is marketing that you'd expect, say in financial services from the market leader. Right? So you usually get brought awareness and trust around the industry in the brand with coming from the market leader. Okay, because it elevates the whole industry. Right. So I think we will see a change in some of the marketing, from less brand led metal about the whole industry, it's more specific around products and offers,

Napoleon Biggs

13:39

trying to differentiate themselves around the product offering.

Paul Phillips

13:43

Yeah, for sure. And have more of the products involved in the there's always a always a challenge as marketers going, is it brand is a product? And actually, I think we've seen a really strong division on wave one and wave two, we've got Coinbase super, super product related and we've got crypto common ft FTX Super Bowl spot, specifically quite brand related. Okay, so are your brand related, and actually, they need to go together, particularly now when we're what I'd say in the third wave of exchanges, where the frost come out of the market. And people are going actually, I want to see the real innovation and what's really going on behind here. But at the same time people are going to your point, I want to make sure that that brand or that organization that I'm working with or going to put my money where there's actually trusted Yeah. All right. So tell

Napoleon Biggs

14:26

us more about this third wave because obviously, they were born more around. So I just got back to date to say in 2012 kind of first wave. Second wave is what 2016 2018 I would say later than that later. Okay, so the more recent wave is, I was last year,

Paul Phillips

14:45

I would say we're in the wave to really kind of hit its peak. I'd say November last year. We saw kind of, you know,

Napoleon Biggs

14:54

when we started taking our masks off in Hong Kong and getting to go out and party and drink. Yes, yeah.

Paul Phillips

14:59

And when we were all good Going out 100k laser eyes you know, and a lot of that early adopter thing made a lot more sense then right now, I think what we're seeing is we're seeing some really strong innovation and across the web three crypto space, you know, one area that I'm deeper on is the defy space specifically. Okay. Right. And I think when we look at defy we go, what's going on here? It's really sophisticated trading, and a lot more sophisticated than then what you would expect and just just break

Napoleon Biggs

15:29

down the defy like the term for not everybody will necessarily understand what you mean by define, right?

Paul Phillips

15:34

Yeah, that's right. Thank you for so. So I think when we think about defy, we think, you know, it literally means decentralized finance. Okay. But imagine

Napoleon Biggs

15:42

this as in, you know, going through a broker, as you're not going through to any specific you're not putting money with this specific bank ring like that you're,

Paul Phillips

15:49

you have stake in in that. So you're almost it's almost like you're buying a share on that bank as well. Okay, right.

Napoleon Biggs

15:55

So but there's still a custodian

Paul Phillips

15:58

there is still an organization which you may control, okay. Right, or we have part of control circuit, imagine it's, it's a bit like having Robin Hood and Citadel together, but you own a share on that business, all transparent. Okay. And so for example, like, dy dx, for example, they published their actual algorithm and the things that you're gonna get, and the return you're gonna get, so you know, what were the the hidden hidden money might be right, we also they show it's all completely completely transparent, right. And then often the people who, who used to get a token when you deposit into a defined liquidity pool that would represent your stake, right, but these days, you look at uniswap, v3, for example, which is, I think, super cool. And that's actually giving you an NF t that represents your, your, your stake in the liquidity pool, which is

Napoleon Biggs

16:47

Wait, so your let's just rewind a bit. So you're that these these, both of these uniswap, DY, DX are non centralized, non centrally defined? Right? So yeah, they don't have an organization. Is there a is there an entity there? Is there? Is it Tao? Is it is it,

Paul Phillips

17:05

there is a centralized entity was all of this. And there's, there's a governance piece to uniswap, for example, you can vote on and be part of, but it's not a decentralized autonomous organization. And actually, I think the downs are super hot, where particularly marketing people get very excited by

Napoleon Biggs

17:21

it. So how so how, what's the difference between that generation, the defy and sci fi decentralized generation before, right, in terms of how they operate? And what are the products they have? I mean, yeah, crypto is pretty versatile, right? crypto.com FTX, they have all kinds of interesting products that bring to market doesn't seem to be a differentiator in terms of the instruments that they launch.

Paul Phillips

17:47

Yeah, so that's, that's, uh, I think we we look at the Sci Fi environment, that's typically what you would expect on a normal exchange, you know, if you go to Interactive Brokers or Robin Hood, or if you're, if you have been on a crypto exchange, and you've got a central limit order book, right, where you can buy and sell at certain price points, right. And I think that the defy environment, yes, you can buy and sell with, with with, with more transparency on that side, but you can also deposit your liquidity into those liquidity pools.

Napoleon Biggs

18:15

So that's where the staking comes in. Yeah, so a lot of the scandals that have happened recently is is around staking. Right? Yeah, people staking risk taking over staking whatever it is, there seem to be a lot of you know, whether it's Celsius, or these three areas, capital or whatever. It's like people. Yeah, reusing money multiple times. Yes. Yeah. Right. So is that because of the defy the flexibility that so called? Visibility or the staking within that what's made that happen?

Paul Phillips

18:46

Well, I think there's there's a, there's it's actually quite complex, a number of different issues. Okay. But But I do think that, you know, there was one thing about stable coins, and they need to be kind of renamed and regulators are helping with that. Right. I think that's, that was

Napoleon Biggs

19:01

based on a promise of algorithms, you know, algorithms are here to solve the world's problems, right? Yeah. That was the concept that, you know, you can link it to US dollar is algorithm algorithm. I can't even say that word algo, programmed, algorithmic, algorithmic, saves you and then it all collapses. Yeah. So let's get back to the to the to that, yeah, the exchange, I'm just curious about what differentiates them. Because I mean, as far as I can see, dabbling around and FTX. In crypto.com stuff. They have all kinds of different products in launch, right. They're not all just by, you know, one particular stock as if using that metaphor, and they're all trying to use some of those those. They've got futures, they've got staking. They've got lending. They've got all these things that anybody who's going to start to dabble in starts to get curious and try out.

Paul Phillips

19:51

Yeah, and I think they're doing they're doing they're trying to give the benefits that you get in a different environment, which is people are mostly there because of control. All visibility, you know, and also the yields the yen high, right, which

Napoleon Biggs

20:04

is why when the defi defi environment. So then But then you come to the this kind of thing now that we're going through where it's all about, Do I trust you? Have you done your KYC and AML? Although in banking kind of what

Paul Phillips

20:17

what's holding, you know, defi has a huge amount of liquidity going through every single day. Still huge amounts. Yes.

Napoleon Biggs

20:23

That you know, what the numbers are in terms of I wouldn't I mean, all the reports I've seen, you know, there was the one that you shared on that LinkedIn post was like, was it by Nance did the was a Coinbase, or by Nance had their annual shareholders thing? And they were saying they were down 30? Or 40%? Yes. Right across the board, institutional individual. And that was pre there was, like, March. It was q1. Right. So where are we now? Just out of curiosity? Well, where are we? I

Paul Phillips

20:49

don't know if that's off my head. You know, the other weird thing about exchanges is they make money with volatility. Okay, so, you know, but ultimately, when so they like, they're like, what's going on? exchanges have good days when the market drops, but that's not good for business as a whole. Okay, right. Because it's not gonna bring more people the volume has gone down, but they're having good. Yeah. So. So, you know, I think, some early way one exchanges, you know, there was even things deployed like bots on the platform that would actually actively create, you know, the volatility exist anymore. Right, thank God, rather actively create volatility in the market, right. Which, you know, is undermining what we're all here, right, you know, but so it is in the interest of, of exchanges, you know, to have some volatility.

Napoleon Biggs

21:36

Okay, so let's go back to so we're in this third wave, right? And the unit swaps are out there, and they're kind of bringing you new ideas, new products. Yeah. What I'm curious about then is what happens with you as a marketer, right, you're going up, and you've been hired by bullish who is classified as a second wave, third wave, second and a half way, put them

Paul Phillips

21:57

in third wave. A great innovative product, I want to talk about bullish, but they're a great kind of product lead to innovative organization.

Napoleon Biggs

22:06

Okay. So in order to be an exchange, what do you hire these like genius mathematicians? Is it Is that what it's about? It's about the genius mathematicians who come up with these products, like I worked for, you know, in a bank, my first job in London, yeah, bag of token that is mad mathematicians in the corner, who are inventing options and futures and stuff. Yeah, nobody understood what they were doing. They just said sell this because it goes up, or that because it goes down. So is that the same scenario in the in the exchange? Well, but it's, it's algorithmic. So it's, it's mathematicians who know how to code and then they go, right, I've come up with a way of, you know, making more profit you've ever imagined, or I've come up with a way of getting a higher yield. What's the make? I'm just curious, what's the makeup of, of the people behind behind besides the marketer? What's the makeup of a successful exchange?

Paul Phillips

22:57

People? I think it looks like a lot of financial services firms. Okay, right. Because actually, a lot of financial services firms are just trying to offer difference or alpha, right, you know, in difference, it means alpha or alpha means a different way to trade. And depending on what type of investor you are, or what type of trader you are, and what you're trying to achieve. Alpha means difference on the market means a different way to trade and a potential to make money. Right. So that's why the even even before my previous role in other roles, when I was working in financial services firms, it's quite difficult to to communicate the products because they can get quite technical quite quickly, right. But actually, our role as marketers is to dive into that and give it really kind of simple explanations, right, that, that people can understand. You know, I think also when you target a more sophisticated audience, right, that actually they do want more sophisticated content information, and you're talking before about where the innovation and crypto is going. And I think people don't necessarily show investors don't necessarily shy away from or traders shy away from the technical, right, especially in crypto, you know, we have this doesn't need to look and feel like it's Robin Hood. Right? Particularly when we look at DNS or whatever antigens in a minute.

Napoleon Biggs

24:08

So, right, so go back to that. So you're the marketer and you're going, okay, you know, there's people out there, you're starting to look at the market and go, who do I Who do I pitch this to? So how do you decide who you know, it's such an early evolving industry? Yeah. How are you profiling and deciding who you're going to talk to? And what are the messages are going to send out because I guess you have a global market? Right? You're not just looking at Hong Kong or Southeast Asia? Yes. 100% What would you would you go out there and you look at okay, these are people in finance, who will understand that these there's a kind of crypto bros who are doing their kits. Here's the you know, where how you're deciding who's gonna be your target audience.

Paul Phillips

24:47

I love what you're saying there because what you're saying is you're talking about segmentation, identifying audiences. Yeah. Which a lot of crypto doesn't do. It doesn't do it doesn't do because wave one was will will will will build it and they will grow organically Yeah, with kind of growth marketing tactics. So it was all some kind of community led tactics,

Napoleon Biggs

25:05

but they must have had an audience in mind, right? Early Adopter kind of software gamers, whatever they must have found maybe didn't have an in mind. But suddenly they found oh my god, we're getting traction with the gaming community or a lot of this in you know, Puerto Rico suddenly love us,

Paul Phillips

25:20

or I think you'll find it was a lot less. The facility work that we do in marketing is around customer segmentation, the understanding the people were after, it doesn't exist at the level that it should do.

Napoleon Biggs

25:33

So you were brought in to do that, right? And they wouldn't hire a guy like you without saying you're a you're a marketer. Talk to me.

Paul Phillips

25:38

Yes. Yeah. So what I will add is one really interesting things about web three projects, or exchanges or any other players. A great source of data is wallet addresses. Okay, because well, let's,

Napoleon Biggs

25:50

let's just just go back a bit. Web three, like, you know, a lot of these terms right, now, they have a lot of mystic black box stuff. Yeah. You as a marketer, tell me in one fell swoop, what is web three, cocktail party line?

Paul Phillips

26:05

The next evolution the internet.

Napoleon Biggs

26:07

Okay. Next evolution, the

Paul Phillips

26:09

internet, a decentralized version? So

Napoleon Biggs

26:10

are we in it? Are we about to enter it? Or have we zoomed through? And we're already on web five, like somebody like, I think Dorsey claims are about to be there. Where are we?

Paul Phillips

26:21

I think it's 40 million people in it already. And if you want to get involved in it, you need to do what you said before a million wallets? Well, that's equal a few 100 million people, okay. So I think if you take a certain amount of people, and those are your audience segments, or they cross over the audience segment, then it makes sense to do marketing in that space. Okay, if your audience isn't in that 400 million or couple 100 million people, people, then you may want to think about how you prepare for when that that does reach a billion or 2 billion people, which I, which I do believe it will.

Napoleon Biggs

26:48

So okay, so let's go back to the kind of basics of marketing, you're sitting there. And your first month, you got ash, what am I going to do to make a marketing plan? You go right, I'm going to spend a million dollars on Facebook ads $2 million on search, you know, I'm going to buy these influencers, and they're gonna talk about me all over the internet, Twitter, wherever, but how do you? How do you decide it's such an evolving new industry? How do you decide where you're gonna spend your money? Or do you just go fuck it, I'm gonna go to every single conference and just talk a lot. And, you know, laser eyes and go nuts on Twitter? How do you decide how you're going to build out?

Paul Phillips

27:28

I think you need to do that. There's a couple things you need to do. First of all, you know, I think if you're kind of thinking about traditional png marketing plans, yeah, you know, like, I think I did those ages, and they go 12 months, every 12 months, you do your, your work, and then you go, okay, these are who were, you know, if you're not thinking, you know, if it's not going to last the next 12 months, then then it's not going to work, right. So if there's a high amount of flexibility, actually, I think it's not just crypto and finance, that there's doing this, but I think it's market as a whole is becoming far more agile in the way that we have to operate. Right. So you know, when it comes to comes to me, it is very much about combining the traditional marketing talents, but also looking at kind of what we're seeing in front of us. Right, and being prepared to go, this isn't working, we're okay to try something different. Right. Which, which, you know, I feel, you know, traditional marketing is very structured, right. So, yeah, I think I think that's

Napoleon Biggs

28:26

tell us what worked and what didn't work. What did work? Well, so what did you try? And what do you get away with?

Paul Phillips

28:32

Or do you get away with? Okay, well, we're talking about this event as an infrastructure, right. And channels. So one of the one of the reasons why we also going to have these kind of three phases is partly during the media environment. Yeah. Because the regulatory environment, okay, because regulators will say we can go into certain markets and do certain types of products and offers. Yeah, yeah. And it's actually really similar to how traditional financial services is done, right. A lot of thought leadership based work, a lot of trust related work, and call to action,

Napoleon Biggs

28:58

because you can't traditionally in some market sell an insurance product or an investment product. It's still quite strict, right? Yes,

Paul Phillips

29:05

exactly. Okay. So yeah, so yeah, the channels is quite as quite a different pace, because you've also had the publishers as well who are because it's such a new industry, they're not quite sure. You know, what, what we should we allow this company to do advertising? Shouldn't we allow this advertising company and and it's not a disparity in what's going on? And it changes every few months, the publisher side, now talking the major publishers like Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,

Napoleon Biggs

29:30

okay, I thought you're talking about like the, like the coin telegraph. And all I thought you're talking about publishers like as in niche industry publishers who just seem to be like, media hoarders, right? They'll just any, any any new coin, all over the place. It's so you're not talking about those publishers, you're talking about, you know, what traditional internet marketing publishes.

Paul Phillips

29:48

Exactly, yeah. So there's a as a result, because it's quite choppy on the publisher side. Yeah. And we've seen, I think during the last, at the end of the ICO phase, we saw a lot of 2018 you So a lot of publishers going right? No more crypto advertising. Yeah. Right. And then we saw slowly warming up of that. And then we saw, we saw more rules and more regulation come in from the publisher side and of last year, beginning of this year, some it's still been implemented, you know, what we are seeing, you know, on the regulatory side, and we're seeing the publisher side is actually quite similar. But on the publisher side, they're, they're still waiting for, for clarity around around what can be done, there's a lot of different roles and licenses and need, and they're not even clear on what what needs to get done just yet. So you know, what you said about kind of what you thought publishers, when I said, the coin, telegraph, coin coin, coin desk of the world, it has, as a result driven a lot of media, in the verdict, sorry, in the trade media, as well, right. So, you know, there's a lot of third party media platforms that have suddenly become quite large organizations, partly because it was quite difficult to run traditional advertising on say, Google YouTube, for example.

Napoleon Biggs

30:57

So they would restrict you because they thought you were in a, in a gray area. Yeah. So what what were some tricks? What did you get away with? What did you try out? What would you find?

Paul Phillips

31:07

Well, yeah, I came from AC background, too. So it was like you do as well. Right? So this may seem quite difficult from someone who's used to an industry that's not regulated. Yeah. But having worked on pharmaceuticals, for example. You know, I know that actually, pretty much everything in crypto is nothing compared to the the liberty to jump through when you're in a farm industry, right? farm industry, you've got to put a little tag next to every single display ad you have that says what code you've got approvals on, right, you can't mention the brand name and almost all advertising, you got to create foundations to to actually do that to the to the marketing or or sponsor foundation. So, you know, it is the tips here. I think a lot of people are spending a lot of money on the traditional going, Okay, well, there's only a few players I can spend money with. They're charging a lot, but they're the gatekeepers, I've got to spend money with them. I actually think there's a lot of value. And why these publishers, you're talking about other shows and influences too. Okay. Right. There's a lot of value in what I call the horizontal guys. So if you're going up to sophisticated investor, you may want to try art, or golf, or food or something I say so it's gonna tangential kind of, yeah, so you know, UBS, for example, does did a great content platform for a few years ago, it was last questions. Okay. Right. And their partner brands, their their major publishers were Vanity Fair. Vox. Who else my thinking, Tatler

Napoleon Biggs

32:35

says lifestyle? Okay, so you still haven't answered? What were you doing? We were doing all of it. Yeah. So you were forming partnerships? So you had one group, which was the high net worth? Yes. And you're going to the Vanity Fair.

Paul Phillips

32:49

So we were doing to look at the might be a good point making here about the value in the crypto segments. Okay, right, because Wave Two is very much focused on let's bring on, let's let's try to reach 100 million people and bring them to become customers. Like, I hope there's high value traders within that, although become high value. So just throwing out in that and hoping to catch Yeah, it's the Pareto principle of, you know, 2080 rule. Okay. But if you look at Coinbase, as you know, q2 2022, q1 data, you go, wow, like, it's like, oh, point oh, 1% of institutional investors who are making all the money? Yes, that's right. You know, 1/3 of the volumes are driven from their 100 million retail customer base, almost 100,000,090 8 million, to be clear, you know, and only the 13 14,000 institutional traders they have, are actually driving the vast majority of the volume, right. So, you know, and I think we will see a way through focus more on the segments that are making money. And that's where I were, I was looking at more on the institutional, sophisticated, high net worth investors.

Napoleon Biggs

33:46

So you were doing institutions. And so you weren't going around the world and kind of looking for that, because a lot of these exchanges seem to have gone down the route of, you know, financial inclusion, let's find all the disenfranchised, non banked people around the world and give them a crypto wallet, this is going to answer all their problems. So was this was this the it seems to be like a spiel that a lot of these exchanges give, which is, you know, we're here to save save you, you know, your your local currency is a complete mess. Do we have something for you?

Paul Phillips

34:17

Right? Yeah, I would say I see that more in projects that I do and say the biggest changes, there's definitely that kind of Financial Empowerment inclusion. But you know, we also saw that with Robin Hood, and we saw that with everyone, you know, ever in the financial space for quite a while. But But I think the you know, bringing bringing money and banking to to countries that don't necessarily have have that. I think that's coming from other projects that other players come into the market, not necessarily so

Napoleon Biggs

34:42

when you say projects, you mean individual apps or individual coins individual token. Yeah, that's what you mean by project using the nomenclature.

Paul Phillips

34:52

Yeah. So what was the completely escapes me now? SPR? Okay. They did a lot of work in that space

Napoleon Biggs

35:01

for what not Solana, whatever. So let's talk about. So you're doing this globally, right? Where did you start to see traction? Were there any, any things that happen? You go, Oh my God, there's an audience here or, you know, so you've you've got the kind of, there's the grassroots side of it, right. If you look at any web three world, this seems to be a lot about building up communities that people immediately they've dissed Facebook, not the generation. They've they've not that kind of Twitter seems to have come back to life because but it seems to be more about people just shilling. Yeah. And then it goes into discord and these kind of communities, but they're very loud. Very anonymous, very full of filth. Yeah. So where did you find, you know, with a new generation as new channels as new? You know, did you find new channels that worked for you?

Paul Phillips

35:52

Yeah, well, I think you can ask countries and then and then chapter two. So maybe I'll kind of talk about our channel. It's the country's first a little bit, right. You know, I think as digital marketing, we've got to, we've got to get on the digital marketing guy. And when I look at clicks don't necessarily mean customers and revenue. Right? You know, having run a lot of campaigns in Asia, we're always going to get a lot of clicks from some markets, but that doesn't necessarily mean mean that they're the right type of clicks and weights have occurred. So you've actually got to do some of the work there. See what the value, there's no surprises in terms of where you see a lot of lot of high value customers. A lot of it is eastern seaboard, the US, right. You know, interestingly, you've got a lot of companies headquartered in or have got offices and other parts so that they can do more and access more products that they couldn't access in the US. You've got the UK and Australia, particular strong markets. Here we are in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore. You know, so no surprise in terms of high value in terms of channels. You know,

Napoleon Biggs

36:56

but that's Asia. Right. What about Latin America, Middle East? Eastern Europe,

Paul Phillips

37:00

Brazil's a huge market, Brazil? Yes. You know why? Well, some of that's actually to do with the psychological side of Australia, for example, they haven't had or the UK, they haven't had very, very strong crypto regulation. Okay. Well, they they've allowed a lot more to go on without space. As a result, the crypto adoption is actually really, really high. Look at markets like Australia, you've got a super wealthy base, you know, relatively high average income, you don't have a lot of billionaires in Australia, but you've got a lot of mass affluent people per per the 25 million people have gotten Australia. And you've also got low, low barriers to entry and not a huge amount of regulation. But all these things are coming, right. And it's all just depending on where the country is around

Napoleon Biggs

37:45

Australia, UK, UK, Switzerland, Ukraine until they got invaded. We'll see. So Eastern Europe.

Paul Phillips

37:52

I you know, we none

Napoleon Biggs

37:55

of that these are like the early adopter. These are the wave one. Well, you can exactly

Paul Phillips

37:58

and I think you'll find that there was also you know, with way one initially with crypto, you saw some markets like, you know, Africa, yeah, had a huge amount of adoption of crypto, but there isn't a large those that are high value segments. Okay. At the moment. Actually, interestingly.

Napoleon Biggs

38:16

Okay. What about all the oil money and all that? And, yeah, okay. So let's so just in those exchanges in working in that in that field, what about you, you mentioned the influencers, right? Because, you know, both of us having worked in PR, the social media used to be this kind of free, lovey lovey W thing where people would do it for a favor, right? Because they just trusted you. And they wanted to be known. Yeah, that's show me the money. Right. Yeah. So I guess the evolution, what I'm seeing with web three, everything is paid. Everything is paid, you get paid to join, you get paid to participate. You get paid to share, you get paid to play, you get paid. It's all paid, right? Yeah. Anything you do? Fart and you get paid? Right? And you just paid? So how does that kind of extrapolate yourself into marketers mind when you're working with influencers? Right? Because there's a lot of a whole generation of people who've become, and this is, you know, my AOL is what do they call that they got they got a special acronym that you couldn't be a crypto? Well, I think there's

Paul Phillips

39:15

a bit of a Kol is more word that we use in this. Right. But But I think a lot of the work that we were doing is more on parchment integration. This is where traditional marketing toolset can actually do a lot of work. Because I think a lot of people engaging influencers, and the major trade publications like like Coinbase, for example, coin desk, and they're just buying display ads reservation by like the way you'd buy a newspaper ad Yeah. Right. So there's nothing particularly new in terms of no and you and I know that's not sophisticated marketing. Yeah. Right. And so actually, you know, integration with the product. So they're using the product, they're talking about the product in a natural way. You know, advocacy, that is actually true advocacy, rather than say do three things and then I'll give you This right and I think we need to remove the financialization around some of the the some of the pros in the NFT space and the crypto and the web three space specifically, I think when we look at a friend of mine here in Hong Kong runs an art gallery. And he said to me, one of the best things about the last two years is that people actually come to the art gallery now. And they go, can you tell me the story about the lake cage? I'd love to meet the artists or to hear more about this piece of work, because I really feel inspired. And I'd love to own this piece. As before they would go, Is this going to go up? Or is this going to go down?

Napoleon Biggs

40:35

That's probably directly basil. Art Fair? I changed the game. Yeah. It's only that maybe they've tried NF T's. They've lost the money and they've got shot, I just need to understand what I'm buying. Well, there's a lot of people who've bought stuff and had no clue what they're buying. Yeah. And so you walk in, you can lead to find out what it is, and you know, who's behind.

Paul Phillips

40:53

But a lot of you know, the way salon is often there's a story behind it. In the NFT. PSA,

Napoleon Biggs

40:58

is that what you were doing? Were you telling stories? I mean, how do you tell a story behind the, you know, a defy product? But how do we break it down and telling individual stories? What is one of the things I see with the exchange world is like, I have friends from the bank world who are analysts, the ones that I respect the most, the ones who have taken the analytical capability, they would go off into China and go and visit a factory or a battery thing and then come back, and they have know who the management team was, you know, what their factory line was like. And you can trust them when they said, We're going to put $10 million into this factory, because we've met the people, and we see what they're doing. And then they kind of take that knowledge and they go right, let's go into the defy world. And what they're actually seeing is it's another way to raise money for a clever business or so they become analysts of businesses. Yeah. But the vehicle they're asking you to pour money into is a token is a crypto, you know, vehicle. Yeah. As opposed to buying a share in that company. Is that Did you see that evolving? Because it an exchange has lots of roles, right? You have the come to us, because we can create liquidity come to us, because you can trust leaving your money with us come to us, because your institution, we have all the tools and we give you advance notice and we sell a deal flow, whatever it is. Right.

Paul Phillips

42:09

Yeah. Well, I think that the you know, the number one role of marketing is actually brand that translating that into product. Yeah. Right. You know, so because people were talking marketing and financial services about trust, right? And actually, that's if people know, people trust you to trust this person, because they've done the work. Yeah, right. And, and trust comes across a number different ways. The number the major reason why people don't trust a lot of what's going on here is because there's major, that there's not very good marketing out there. And it doesn't, doesn't doesn't look like it should don't feel like this is a financial services product I can trust because nutritional market is like you and I have not been involved. Right, and especially in wave one, for example. So you know, I do think it's about making sure that everything is is, is working towards that brand. Right. And that's, that's not an easy task, creating a brand. And I think that's pretty wicked, a quick little conference, um, it's been a lot of time trying to do that. The second one is translated into or translate that into products, right, and then telling stories about the products that actually people can understand. Right? Because these things are so new analogies, right. And b2b world, it's always about analogies, right? That make sense of things. But it's also not shying away from the hard data, like I think, especially in investment products, and financial services, you know, people want to see people want to have the ability to have a look at the information, understand more about the products. You know, and I think it's about providing that and really simple, easy ways to do it. I think one of the issues that we had was actually really taking complex things and trying to visualize them. Right, you know, and show how say, illiquidity poor, whatever. So you created lots of little graphics or not had anything? Because, let's be honest,

Napoleon Biggs

43:52

it must have been quite easy a year or two ago because there was this mad fervor almost like a religion. And it was fascinating to me as those religious converts are still there. That to them the this what's going on now is just like, you know, God's still there. God's coming tomorrow. Yeah, so there's that kind of religious fervor. So as a marketer, it must be emotionally quite easy to tap into, because there's, like a world 400 million whatever it is, people out there Yeah, who just like gagging to all they see is up, up up? Well, and they hear all these stories, and they go, Yeah, I want part of that. So you've got to me, it must be quite easy to market.

Paul Phillips

44:30

There's strange exchanges out there. Yeah, there's, there's certain exchanges out there. There's 152 At the moment, profile photo, and if there were 300, or there are three or 300. Now, I think maybe more. Okay, and more you're

Napoleon Biggs

44:44

including all around the world, even the ones that China stuff. Okay.

Paul Phillips

44:48

Yeah. So there's a lot of exchanges out there. There's a lot of choice. So, you know, I actually I think the, you know, if you're an industry that's growing, there's always going to be that's the way to go. Correct. Yeah. Now the industry is going to have a slower period. So there needs to be a change. But but it is exchange marketing is going to be more difficult in this way three than it wasn't wave two for sure. So but

Napoleon Biggs

45:12

now that seems to be like even FTX they're buying established like stock exchanges that Yeah, even sambangan. Fried said he was by like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange or something, do you? Do you see this happening, that kind of legitimate legitimacy comes from, you know, these crypto crowd, I would say, take off their shorts, putting on a suit and walk into NASDAQ, or whatever it was, it was, well, people might do that,

Paul Phillips

45:35

because they're buying, they're buying licenses. Licenses take a long time to get okay. So, you know, there's been a lot of shortcuts or licenses. Yeah, like a lot of exchanges have bought other companies to acquire license. Right. But But I actually think, you know, I think you and I is more sophisticated marketers and the consumer or institutional customer to that they look at that logo, or they look at that, that partnership, and they go, is this just a headline, a bit of PR? Is there something substantive to this? And I think actually, this is where marketing is a bit about art and creativity and culture, right? And actually, tapping into those things is what gives things relevance and resonance. Otherwise, it's just noise.

Napoleon Biggs

46:14

Right? It's interesting. You mentioned that because I like I've noticed now talking about the culture side, that every single exchange now seems to be launching an NF T platform, whether it's Coinbase, or I don't think FTX has yet but they all they all so is that because they're trying to tap into another they call it another financial instrument, another product? Or do you think this is them bringing the the the kind of cultural side into into the game?

Paul Phillips

46:42

Well, I think there's a lot of fragmentation in the space, but the NFC audience has not necessarily tied in with

Napoleon Biggs

46:49

the trading community. Alright. So you feel these two very different

Paul Phillips

46:53

they were there are some there is an overlap area like uniswap, for example, which is offering NF TS for staking in liquidity pool.

Napoleon Biggs

47:00

Okay, they have it as the NF t represents so just to explain that, how does that that then ft is not it's not like a profile picture, you're saying that NFT represents a financial instrument? Yeah,

Paul Phillips

47:09

it's like it's a card that shows you how much money or how much stake do you have in that that liquidity pool based on what ranges you decided to give liquidity? So you get that as a kind of hold on to it certificate? Yeah, it's kind of like, it's like a chess. But you've also got to, it's not just a, it's a share of actually the the liquidity pool.

Napoleon Biggs

47:31

And then can you go and lend it to somebody?

Paul Phillips

47:33

You can, you can only use it on the uniswap pool, you can't actually share it with other people. Okay.

Napoleon Biggs

47:38

So let's go back to the cultural side. So there's a yes, you know, there's a so the NFT the way I see the NFT world, you know, it's particularly Hong Kong, we've got like, NFT falling out of trees for a while, right. Yeah. latest, greatest thing. That's NFT associations. And if T WhatsApp groups NF T. They had like some art gallery thing, right? Yeah. What are in New York? Yeah. And ft New York. So where do you see that fit into the whole? The whole game? Is that is that? You said initially? It's a very different group?

Paul Phillips

48:05

Well, I think there's there's one other very big different group that people people heard about that people also don't look in the space, and that is the software developer side of things. Okay, these guys are just building stuff who like, you know, I'd prefer if eath went down. So the gas fees are cheaper. Like that, but But you know, they're they're just want to build stuff. Yeah. You know, and so the developers and software guys, sometimes they're a bit they're giving you the fundamentals. Right. There's some of the traders, but I don't know the traders don't necessarily fully understand that the software developer side, nor does the NFT. Community and the NFT. Committee, what's unique about that, that to your point, was these guys are really this started as collectibles. Right. You know, you mentioned gaming, right? Because gaming is obviously a huge area where there's a lot of people were, were doing this a World of Warcraft, what, 15 years ago? Yeah, so it's a natural kind of flow through to that, I think we're seeing a lot of different other industries jumping into that space that are not necessarily gaming, which is great to see. And I think what they want to tap into is this collectibles culture.

Napoleon Biggs

49:02

Yeah. We see sports brands doing you see whether it's, you know, the NBA or now football teams or whatever. Yeah, but so where do you see that? Do you think that NFT the Why would an exchange want to get involved in the NFT world?

Paul Phillips

49:16

Well, there's a couple a couple of things, you know, interestingly, they're looking for one more institutional traders are looking at they're only they're only trading Bitcoin and eath and they suddenly start trading NF T's like a coin for example. Okay. And that's because of

Napoleon Biggs

49:32

the extra due trees. They do try.

Paul Phillips

49:35

Okay, yeah. And there's there's some defi platforms out there that will help them do that. So if you look at the marketing arbitrage, as in there's different pricing across different marketplaces. So if you look at say one inch for example, which offers liquidity across the board in which one it's a platform called one inch, which one edge one inch. Literally the number one as a symbol, not not not word spelled out and then inch i and ch o one inch again and they offer the liquidity across various environments, interesting, their advertising is really like a coin and eath and BTC.

Napoleon Biggs

50:08

Also, they do the arbitrage between these.

Paul Phillips

50:11

So they will give you a better price because they will collate a lot of different changes together. Okay, this isn't a promise.

Napoleon Biggs

50:19

So I know some financial heads who are really like telling me there's a huge gap between all these exchanges, you can do arbitrage the real software analytics, guys. So there's an opportunity for that as well, Hong Kong that's launching very soon, really switched on finance people, right ex Goldman Sachs. But let's get back to the I'm just curious about the culture side, right? Because yeah, the we were talking before about is a uniform, but bullish for example, have a uniform is there? Is there an identity I mean, that the problem is, you know, you get it's quite hard as read the media, and it's the crypto bros or whatever it it's all it seems to be very specific type. You know, is there a culture that go that goes with that? Do you think there's an identity behind that? Is it like, you know, when I grew up in the UK, it was the punks and the rockers and get out of Chelsea and that was your identity was whether you had a pin through your nose or your nipple or torn jeans or brothel creepers. So is a Do you think there's a genuine kind of culture that's coming off the back of this? Find that in your, you know, in your marketing, do you come across this, there are actual sides to it? Like, there's the original kind of rebels were like, we're going to change the world. It's like, yeah, this needs to be broken down.

Paul Phillips

51:30

And I think that that's the most exciting things marketers for us, because culture is our secret sauce that makes everything go. Right. So when we look at DNS, you know, I think that the the term DNS, a few people have occasionally called me a DJ and and the first thing agents do will say, I'm not a DJ, but secretly

Napoleon Biggs

51:48

whether you're wearing a button down shirt. T shirt. Tell me what, okay, so let's, let's get some ease from the deep end officially as what?

Paul Phillips

51:58

Well, it started out as a term for you know, what someone might abusively call someone as a degenerate gambler, and like a lot of abuse envelopes. Yes.

Napoleon Biggs

52:07

So you're not just a runner, I grew up you're degenerate just means you can't socialize. You're screwed. Like you're on margin. Margin of society. Right?

Paul Phillips

52:16

But I so it says determined, determined people love that the people, it's like, it's a lot of cultures where you've often been called something that is derogatory. Initially, they've taken it and owned it.

Napoleon Biggs

52:26

Okay. So DGN and this particular to any particular country or this couldn't be a DGN across the world, an Arab DGN Eugen White's American DGN. Korean DGN is

Paul Phillips

52:41

definitely a part of it is, you know, not necessarily showing your identity. Right, like, so I think a lot of them are actually dogs anonymous. Yeah.

Napoleon Biggs

52:50

The dogs are not dogs. They are anonymous. Right. So so there's a DJ, does that come with a culture? Or is it just a name is a total culture?

Paul Phillips

52:58

So I think it started, you know, one of the one of the key drivers was this meme, you know, from the Planet of the Apes movie. Yeah. And we all ate together a strong, pretty bad English.

Napoleon Biggs

53:08

Ah, got a strong,

Paul Phillips

53:09

but But

Napoleon Biggs

53:11

you know, but that was nothing to do with a board a yacht club thing that was a separate ape.

Paul Phillips

53:15

I think this whole there's a lot of ape culture. And I think that's related why apes what monkeys got to do with because it's also they were they were people that behavior, I'll go into the behavior of DJ. So I think there's a couple of characteristics. Okay, the first of all that is we're all in it together. Right? Where this is kind of hashtag whack me, which is very much kind of coin basis.

Napoleon Biggs

53:34

Okay, so all in it together. We start with I love you all, actually was the G.

Paul Phillips

53:39

We're gonna talk, we're all going to make it. Okay. We're gonna make it Yeah. Which is actually Coinbase as a tagline, which I think is fantastic. Because it really speaks to the most influential group right now in crypto. Yeah. And so there is a sense of, we're all gonna make it.

Napoleon Biggs

53:56

We're even now you're talking about even now, okay.

Paul Phillips

53:59

And there's a community spirit. And one of the key things they'll do is they'll share their share last pot, right, which is essentially how much money they've lost. You know, you've made it when you've shared a disk, you've got head on something. And then the rest, but not in terms of percentages, just like I've lost a million, it's usually lots of red candles, and lots of screenshots of exchange accounts, showing that you've lost a lot of money. And that's when people will come together and go, and they kind of pat each other on the back. And I think that's a different type of financial

Napoleon Biggs

54:27

self help group, Alcoholics Anonymous. Crypto,

Paul Phillips

54:31

they think DJs would love that. Okay,

Napoleon Biggs

54:34

that one of the ways are they really genuinely helping each other or is it just like

Paul Phillips

54:37

they are and I think people think that they're, they have a misconception that they're actually not advanced, sophisticated traders. Yeah. And actually, they are okay. They have high risk, and it could

Napoleon Biggs

54:46

be institutional people who've gone into that as well. Can we be an institutional years ago that a company be a Dejan?

Paul Phillips

54:52

I think a lot of institutions want to be DNS, but they can't by their very nature. Okay, so that's the DJing crowd rather than using defi platforms which are very difficult For a institution to use KYC AML.

Napoleon Biggs

55:03

Okay, so you've got to Dejan, what's another another kind of cultural phenomenon that you're seeing?

Paul Phillips

55:08

Let me, let me let me finish up with it. Sorry, I didn't realize I want to talk about how just quickly about how they're they are very sophisticated traders with high risk appetites. Right. And I think that they do do a lot of their research. And actually, to your point before about institutional, there is some of the data out there that indicates there are people working in traditional investment banking, who want to trade markets 24/7 And got got a couple $100,000 with a bonus check and want to put it on a different liquidity pool. Because you know, I know that it's better. Yeah, exactly.

Napoleon Biggs

55:39

But this is interesting. There's those people could actually be the people that will move the whole industry forward, right, because there's this kind of Trad fi right now, in Hong Kong, we've got this invest. Hong Kong is doing some Yeah, FinTech week, right. There's gonna be a lot of talk between what's happening in the traditional world. And you know, the kind of defy world and how can we merge? And how can we learn from each other? Right, yeah, a lot of the things that I read or the podcasts I listened to, they're all talking about how we can learn from each other. Right? Yeah. So we got degenerates, right. What's the next give me we've got a couple of minutes left. So I think before we go into q&a, maybe we can just have a few. I just I'm curious about.

Paul Phillips

56:13

The other major thing is tribalism. Okay, across the space. And I think this is because the way crypto has evolved, we've got a huge amount of tribalism, get at the most obvious one. We're between Maxis and minimalists. So maximalists are the people that believe this Bitcoins, really where everything's out. Yeah. Minimize have a wider view on alts and other things like that. So, you know,

Napoleon Biggs

56:36

it's like that we just split the view on alt alt coins and senators to the established. Yeah. Okay.

Paul Phillips

56:43

So the tribalism can create, it's very great for creating advocacy. Yeah. And I think hopefully, in wave three, we'll see more true advocacy more on collectibles. Rather than then advocacy, just purely for financial

Napoleon Biggs

56:56

This is tribalism not around the NFT kind of tribalism, not like the board at Yacht Club or other stuff. But you're saying tribalism around what you invest in, I think

Paul Phillips

57:05

we see tribalism around the board of your club stuff. And we see around what you invest in as well.

Napoleon Biggs

57:10

Okay. And these are things that you think will lead it forward through this kind of tribe.

Paul Phillips

57:14

tribalism is kind of what we had 1015 years ago, when we started with social media, yeah, for which a lot of paid advertising we hit for advocacy. And it was great. But and it was really good for brands to create these, these these really amazing connections that would go everywhere, quite quickly. The only challenge is, is people get increasingly myopic. And if you get too myopic, then it's difficult to look out and see the wider industry of what everyone's trying to achieve. And then things become actually you get people not necessarily, you know, people, not been proponents of the whole industry, but actually trying to psych each other off. Right, which leads

Napoleon Biggs

57:53

to tribalism. What other one kind of looking ahead of it, right? Because at the moment, it's quite shaky. Right. It's really hard. I mean, yeah, I know, there's something going on, because all the kind of professional podcasters that I know have stopped doing their podcasts around defy and you go like, alright, something's going on. Yeah, even the believers are like leaving leaving the ship. So what where do you see this evolving? Well,

Paul Phillips

58:14

that's a great question. And I think for for traditional brands into into into crypto web three, there's a there's a big opportunity here for the infrastructure that we see today is not going to be the future of it. Yeah. Right. So brands getting involved today, not necessarily, you know, custody data issues. You know, all those things, the whether or not you can figure out if your issue and NFT. That's a security. Right, a major issues for brands and major hurdles. Yeah. And I think that's a bit of an issue.

Napoleon Biggs

58:45

And also the contracts don't actually give you ownership.

Paul Phillips

58:49

And also, what if you're selling a token right now for a million dollars, right. And it gives, in perpetuity, someone access to something and you as a brand deliver on that? Yeah. And was that going to be great for your brand long term, right? You saw Murakami artist come out two weeks ago and say, apologize, because it's NF T's have dropped in value, right. So so it's

Napoleon Biggs

59:10

a bit like airlines, right? The Cathay Pacific, they they give you add miles, and then they suddenly realize they're in debt to you forever, which is why they come up with kind of ways to get you to spend them on, you know, games or whatever they find partners for you to spend them

Paul Phillips

59:23

a bit, but I do think we'll see a lot a lot of brands enter it but culture is an easy way to enter partnerships is a great way to a lot of brands today are going let's create a random NFT. Right, and then they're listing an NF t that can't be sold. That doesn't really make sense has no real story behind it. And so actually, the real opportunity is it's probably more of a Nike approach, partnering with it with with artifact that gave them the distance as a brand. So I don't have to deal with things that necessarily securities Yeah, right. But also let them then play in that space as well. So that's

Napoleon Biggs

59:54

where you're tapping into the culture. Yeah. So before we go to q&a, because we've got what time we're doing now, which was six o'clock now. Yeah. If you have questions, please, if you're on the Vimeo website, not the live stream, you should be able to go into the chat and put some questions up there. I will check them in a moment. But whilst the comment with the questions I'm sure there's been a few whilst we're talking, what happens with you? You're no longer part of an exchange. I'm head of non bullish or ex bullish

Paul Phillips

01:00:25

on exploration. I'm now head of growth at the web through Market Association.

Napoleon Biggs

01:00:29

Yes, association, I'm gonna pay you anything. What would you Where would you parlay this kind of skill set? Well, do you think it's all about? I mean, is it in demand? Are you finding some demand? Or people going? Oh, my God, that's so unique. I don't know what to do with you. Is it? Where do you see?

Paul Phillips

01:00:44

Well, I think, you know, I'm talking to a lot of traditional marketers who are trying to get into the space. Yeah. You know, I think a lot of people in this space right now are building and looking at other projects. Yeah. So me, I have a background in traditional marketing. And I think that can really help the world through space. But I also think traditional marketers actually want to want to benefit from from that as well. So So yeah, I will be taking a new role in a few months time. And I will announce that when it when it's ready. It's sort of it already. I was so incentive, it's it's nice. Alright, let's,

Napoleon Biggs

01:01:16

let's see if we've got some questions. No, return. Brilliant. Okay. I've been asking all the questions. So I'm just, maybe we'll just leave over a little bit. Yeah. Because I'm still very curious about this, this cultural side of it, right? Because, obviously, if you're working globally, did you see what you're talking about the NFT NYC thing that's going on? Man hasn't been a center of Mad art and mad extreme, anything's accepted? Yeah. Culture. I don't know if you just see what's going on. But that was going on there. And what's going on in different markets? You've mentioned Australia, the UK. Yeah. Hong Kong. Do you see do you start to see very different cultures rising up from that? Or is it just tapping into existing cultures and just giving them a vehicle to what actually

Paul Phillips

01:02:06

so one of the most interesting things about this is it because I think this is part of the whole context of what we've gone through the last couple of years socially culturally, karmically? That it's actually really quite global? Yeah. Right. And so actually, as in people across the globe doing the same thing, and they're connecting in the same way, and they're all part of the same community. Okay. So there is there is still a, there are still some kind of pockets within that of differences. Right? You know, I would say that, and but there is there one of the best things about as this kind of global community, but what happens in New York reverberates everywhere. So remember, it's everywhere, and suddenly other markets as well.

Napoleon Biggs

01:02:44

So what about linguistically because I haven't spent that much time on bullish? I mean, what happens when it's your global, right? It's an exchange, does that mean it doesn't matter if you're using numbers, right people or does it? Where do you start bringing the cultural and local differences behind this?

Paul Phillips

01:02:58

I think interestingly, Twitter is crypto Twitter is almost entirely in English. Okay, because its financial services has been a default globally in English. Yeah, for a long period of time. It's the money of financial services. So the language of financial services that's kind of transferred over to crypto and then quite a big way there is in local markets, quite a large penetration of local language.

Napoleon Biggs

01:03:20

Like Korea and exactly Korea Japan, I'm in China for a while right but that got

Paul Phillips

01:03:24

and you see, you see a split off that other channels and platforms note most notably telegram you know, a lot of different projects and platforms will have discord will have threads and other languages as well at the bottom. But it will also have there's also a lot of telegram channels and other languages as well. But the the global language of all of us as an English

Napoleon Biggs

01:03:44

okay, I'm talking about discord. I see it becoming really crowded, do you think it's one of those things that just kind of disappeared like that amazing sound sharing platform currently at its core? Because Twitter starts doing spaces and it will start doing audio audio chats, right.

Paul Phillips

01:04:02

I think the best thing about Discord is it's very easy to assign roles and control.

Napoleon Biggs

01:04:06

Yes. Right that they get messy like all social media, they get messy very quickly.

Paul Phillips

01:04:10

They do. And it's you know, a turn off for some customers and some pa right and some brands right. So what I would say is you don't need to do a project or initiative and use discord. Like actually Discord is almost quite it's a great way to get really deep engagement on things but a lot of the activity I see in discord that looks quite alienating you know and creates exclusive culture right? Which which you know, tribalism can be good for advocacy, but it's not it's not why why people initially got into this they initially wanted a more decentralized,

Napoleon Biggs

01:04:43

right. Yeah. becomes very community led moderators. Yeah. Interesting. So

Paul Phillips

01:04:49

discord may not be the future may not be the future.

Napoleon Biggs

01:04:52

Yeah. What will be the future?

Paul Phillips

01:04:55

I don't know that we have to wait for Elon Musk right? It doesn't matter. Is it we have to wait see because is the deal right one last

Napoleon Biggs

01:05:01

question I want to ask you is that oh, we have a question that's coming in. But before we take this one do you believe that web three, there's all these people calling themselves web three marketers? Yeah. As far as I'm concerned, I think it's really naff. We need a bit of that. I don't think people never call themselves web two marketers or web one. Like they're just marketers, that may become a digital marketer. So what do you think? What would qualify you or me or anywhere as as a web three marks, I'm going to poke fun because it's Wednesday, just put it on the E around why? What why? What does it mean to you?

Paul Phillips

01:05:35

I have a lot of experience with web three marketing, but I wouldn't call myself a web three. So

Napoleon Biggs

01:05:38

So what is your experience in web three? Marketing? That's so different from what we were doing before? Edelman?

Paul Phillips

01:05:44

Well, I think that this is the channels have changed, the infrastructure has changed, right? Yeah, we're doing the same stuff. It's just the channel 100%. And actually, that's what we need. We need more of the traditional marketing skill set that people who are thinking things like you said before segmentation, understanding trust, how to do Polish communications and content, tell a story. Brand, right, these acquisition, that's pretty thought out, you know, these things, you know, actually, advocacy and understanding the, the risks long term that these things are not been been been done yet. Right. And I think that that's where traditional marking can add a lot of value to,

Napoleon Biggs

01:06:19

but I have one big challenges in the in the digital marketing world. It's all been based around an identity, right? Is it your telephone numbers, or email address? Is it your login? Whatever? Yeah, suddenly, along comes, you know, web three, particularly crypto and digital wallets. And nobody knows who you are. Yeah. Right. So how you going to know who to talk to is you're talking to a wallet. Okay. Granted, there's a history of purchases, and there's, you can go and like, look at all the kind of you can define wallets. Right. Yeah. And you get some kind of transaction history. You have no idea? Is it male or female? Is it a wombat? Where are they based? You know, how much money they have? Whatever. So what is that just a temporary thing? Or is that something that? I mean, I see movement where some wallets are trying to link you up to stuff right that to any email address? Exactly. And so is this something that you think that would have? If people are going to hold back and go, No, stay away? You've peppered me with ads the last 10 years Get the hell out of my hair. I just want to be anonymous, or do you think it was tough to get? Well? Yes, it's a big benefit. Why

Paul Phillips

01:07:24

not? Well, I think you're right, I think like ens addresses, for example. So people are taking their wallet address and giving them rather than that massive long code, yeah. And private study or something like that. Right? Are you are you fulfilling to have a CLI but, or something, I've got something like that I carry with us. But but you know, doing that Elon has talked about with Twitter, about actually making verified identity. So I think what we're coming up against is there's a couple things, what you're saying there, right? Will digital identities actually be verified. And I think one of the benefits of actually knowing who you're chatting to and someone actually, the reason why LinkedIn content is a little cleaner than Twitter on Twitter, is because people have to put down to verify who they are and the job and the rest of it. Right. And so I think once we do that, we will create more positive conversation and community.

Napoleon Biggs

01:08:14

Right? Do you think you'll naturally tend towards that or get regulated towards that? Or just the I think

Paul Phillips

01:08:19

it would tend the industry is moving that way? And also, it'll, it'll tend to go that way anyway, that the reason why people love you look at Japan, for example, Japan loves Twitter, because I love that, and I'm gonna do it. Right. And it's because they can play with something. Right?

Napoleon Biggs

01:08:31

Japan, I lived in Japan for two years in Japanese culture. You've got to follow the rules, right? Yeah. So I can understand why that took off.

Paul Phillips

01:08:40

And so I don't know how far we'll swing, I think there'll always be will always be an outlet where you can can be slightly anonymous.

Napoleon Biggs

01:08:47

Yeah. Okay. Well, let's take we've got one question here. Let me see the Oh, Andrew Lupton, the Catholic Cathy, man. Okay. As a marketer, do you have any concerns about any local regulatory changes and restrictions on horizon for Hong Kong?

Paul Phillips

01:09:04

Well, I think there's I haven't I haven't read too much of the material recently. But I know there's something coming in July. I think we're all hopeful that it will be the you

Napoleon Biggs

01:09:15

mean, you mean, crypto related or data related or not specific, related. Crypto related.

Paul Phillips

01:09:22

I think what we'll see from Hong Kong, Hong Kong is talking about putting some regulation together in July. Right. And, and I think as in

Napoleon Biggs

01:09:28

selling the product marketing, or just, as you said, there's a lot of restrictions and financial and insurance and pharmaceutical

Paul Phillips

01:09:36

they said it's crypto and they've also I think someone said it's mentioned about NF T's as well. Okay. I think everyone is generally most players in the market are actually surprisingly, pro regulation. Because regulation means Transparency means easy to run businesses, right? And generally, everyone thinks, you know, this, this whole thing is about creating a change in a movement, right? And so if we understand that the guardrails and where to operate We can operate right? So I think, if anything, most players are excited to see what happens in July, you know, there was Singapore rolled out something and then kind of added more, some kind of changes around that as well. So, so I think there will be a bit of a Hong Kong, Singapore Dubai play at the moment, and there's a lot of people have moved from Hong Kong to Singapore and then gone Singapore to Dubai by right.

Napoleon Biggs

01:10:24

I mean, in the crypto crowd. Yeah. Why Dubai?

Paul Phillips

01:10:28

Dubai, as you know, a lot of lot of places are actually actively encouraging investment from tech companies.

Napoleon Biggs

01:10:34

And they had the regulation to go with it or the lack lack of,

Paul Phillips

01:10:37

I think a lot of these players. I think Dubai are still working on regulation. Okay. Right. Singapore is rolled out some regulation. Hong Kong is about to roll out some regulation.

Napoleon Biggs

01:10:45

Very cool. Do we have any more?

Paul Phillips

01:10:47

I think there was a last question. Good. Great. Well, thank

Napoleon Biggs

01:10:49

you. Good thing, where can people find me on LinkedIn? Paul Phillips, they just go paulphillips.eth. Is that where they find you?

Paul Phillips

01:11:02

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Good chat. Cheers.

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