Ep 203: Meta & ScaleAI, Guest: Deni Ellis Béchard on Waymo Fires, Guest: Bryce Ferguson on Crypto Wallet Infrastructure, Apple's WWDC Media Strategy, Labubus, Lowballing on Facebook Marketplace

[00:00] Dumb Shower is a weekly live chat on all things tech, crypto and pop culture news brought to you by Boys Club, a New York based media and creative studio. DBH is hosted by myself, Tina Burke and Natasha Hoskins. Hi. Co-founders, marketers and entrepreneurs that have built our careers in new tech and startups. We're also proudly the dumbest in the room and we love to learn in public. DBH is recorded live and best consumed as a video podcast. Here's this week's show. [00:30] you [00:32] Hi. Hi. [00:34] How's it going? How you doing? I am truly like genuinely over caffeinated. [00:41] Oh, nice. In like a kind of... [00:44] Do you feel scared? I feel, yeah, like really not well. I feel really unwell. I love that feeling where you're like, wait, now I have some sort of unnamed fear that's sitting in the pit of my stomach. And like I find that I get really like really irritable. Like where I'm just like, cool. [01:03] jittery and and and stressed out like whoa what's going on you know yeah cool way to start the podcast incredible stuff to be annoyed before we even begin [01:16] um yeah whoa whoa too much way too much caffeine uh like a little cafe au lait a cappuccino just oh you don't really do that you'll do like a americano [01:27] I do an Americano. Today I went and got a cold brew. I was feeling very sleepy before I started my work day. I find that cold brews have more of that chittery caffeine. I totally agree. And I haven't been doing that. I've been doing like cappuccino or like, yeah, Americano, a cup of, a black Americano is usually my order. But I went for a little walk and went and got, there's a really great coffee shop right around the corner. There's a few, but there's this one

[01:57] So... [01:58] Check it out if you're around. [02:01] If you're in this third. [02:05] But anyway, they're actually a Spaniard coffee shop and they have a really good cold brew. And I got a cold brew and wow, I'm feeling it. [02:16] Anyway, that's what's up with me. What's up with you? Not much. I'm starting to plan out my under one minute meals content plan. Oh my God. My new TikTok account. I'm going to start. I'm so excited about this. Okay. Do you want to give the... No, I mean, it was really your... It was divine inspiration that came from you. I guess the background is that I'm a profoundly lazy... [02:40] cook for my kids. Well, it's not even just the problem. It's not even for your kids. It's just like, it's deeper. It's a layer deeper. It's actually a care for yourself around food. Yeah. It's I'm profoundly lazy. Actually, I'm profoundly lazy to cook any at all. Exactly. At all. And so, [03:00] When it comes to my kids who don't care about food at all, [03:04] And even it's, it's a multiplier where I care. So it's like a exponentially less about, obviously I want them to eat good food and that's what I think about it, but when it comes to [03:17] how the food is prepared, [03:20] what they're getting every night. I'm putting the, what the minimum viable effort. Truly. It's, it's incredible to witness. So anyway, the idea that you had today was, uh,

[03:33] you have been following an account that's a mom that does these like elaborate, she's Korean and she does these elaborate Korean meals for her children. And, [03:42] we that you had the idea that I should I should do a version of that for what I do, which is like basically under one minute meals. Yes. [03:49] Yes. Under one minute. This is your opening catch. What's the hook? Okay. Tell me. It's like, watch me feed my family four in under one minute. And then there's a timer. I think you should have a timer that's going. Nice. Nice. Nice. I'm getting the can opener out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're under the clock. I think it would be really, I think it would really hit. Okay. Well, I'm going to try one and then we'll see where we go from there. Because this woman, this Korean woman who's so lovely. I can't remember her name. I don't actually follow her. I just get fed her [04:19] and then watch every single video after that. [04:23] She'll be like, [04:25] um have to be out the door in 30 minutes like here watch me you know like watch me cook my meal for my family or whatever yeah and like this I can't express to you the elaborate like it's like slow roasted like pork belly and like short rib I'm just like [04:43] What is this? This is wild. So I really want to see like a, your version of that really do. [04:49] sauteed cabbage [04:51] refried beans [04:52] on the table corn corn on the table um a quesadilla would make it yeah i i yeah the fear is that it's just it's a lot of repeated um menu items but we'll we'll cross that bridge when we come to it let's jump into today's show shall we let's do it okay um dina what's boys club uh

[05:14] Well, first of all, welcome to DBH. We're so happy that you're here with us. We have a really fun show today. Boys Club is... [05:22] one part community of people who like to hang out online together and talk about technology and other things. And one part, [05:31] media company, I guess, indie media company, where we talk about crypto, we talk about tech, we talk about how that these things [05:39] influence our lives. And we do that through this podcast or this live stream. And we have a couple newsletters and we do events as well. [05:48] I love it. I love it. Great. We're getting somewhere four years in. Before we get to the rest of the show, quick love, shout out to Polygon, the sponsor of this live stream. Thank you so much for your support. If you've touched crypto in any way, chances are you've already used Polygon. It's the chain of [06:09] quietly powering a bunch of the stuff that actually works, that people actually use, like Stripes crypto payments, betting on PolyMarkets prediction markets, and a bunch more. We love Polygon so much. Thank you so much for being such a great partner to DBH. [06:23] They're so great. Okay, let's get into it. We have a bunch of stuff we want to get through. We're going to talk about Meta. We're going to talk about Waymo Fires. We have a couple guests that are going to come on. Denny Ellis-Bachard from Scientific American and Bryce from Turnkey is going to come on. We're going to chat about the Apple's media strategy for their developer conference. And then we have some

[06:47] great quick hits that we'll get to as well. But let's start with meta and scale AI. Okay, I'm gonna take this one and pretty crazy stuff here. So, [07:01] It was announced this week that Meta is going to be majorly investing in a company called Scale AI. They are investing around $15 billion, almost $15 billion for a 49% stake in Scale AI and is hiring the co-founder of the business, Alexander Wang. [07:21] to help Meta better execute on their AI ambitions. So this company was founded in 2016 by Alexander Wang and a woman named Lucy Goh. [07:34] Um, and you have some personal history with, I have some personal history with, well, not personal history, a professional history with, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, yeah. I don't know her very well at all, but she was an investor in my previous business, which is crazy. Cause she's had. [07:52] quite the year she has. Yeah. Just a little disclosure there for the year. Yeah. General, journalistic integrity. [08:01] And so that company Scale AI launched in 2016. [08:07] Essentially what I've always, I've heard about them because of Lucy Go and like how valuable this business has been and [08:14] I've never understood what they've done. I've always been like, what is this company? And why do people constantly talk about scale AI? Essentially, they are like...

[08:22] what organized my understanding of it is what they are, what organizes like the data of AI. So I, [08:30] It's the models that like clean and accurately label data in order for... [08:36] Thank you. [08:37] Uh, [08:38] Oh, I thought you were going to say something. I'm just thinking that sounds important. That sounds worth many billions of dollars. I'm not quite sure. Exactly. It's 15, but that sounds like a... [08:48] critical piece of the supply chain there. [08:52] Yes, exactly. So they're like a major infrastructure layer for most of the AI space. Okay. And they've worked with a ton of different companies. They've worked with all the big guys essentially for all of these models. [09:04] Um, and the structure of this deal is really interesting because, um, you know, [09:11] Because it's similar to the approach like Zuck basically had the same has a similar approach to like what Microsoft and Google has been doing, where essentially they are buying a majority or not a majority, but they're buying a major stake in one of these AI companies and then bringing on senior leadership into their org to help build out AI initiatives. [09:41] and, um, [09:43] continue to develop those that program within meta and then they're going to hire an outside ceo to run scale ai so the operations of it will continue um to run that way um there's some talk about essentially how

[09:58] Part of this acquisition is an indicator that Zuck is frustrated with the development, how far that how far Meta has gotten along in AI development in comparison to some of the competitors that are much further along like OpenAI and Google. And this is like a way for him to make a major investment and sort of move exponentially faster for them at Meta. So crazy stuff. [10:27] crazy stuff because these people are very young. Yeah, he looks very young. Good for them. I think he's 28. This tweet on the side is the take that I saw a lot on [10:40] social, which is that they didn't want to have to go through regulatory approval for an acquisition. So they did this like little... [10:48] loophole-y, take a big stake of it, but effectively acquire the company by bringing in the guy. [10:55] that's one that's yeah that's one of the um takes on twitter and then the other take on twitter is that [11:01] that Zuck is doing what Microsoft and Google did. Uh-huh. [11:05] So I think it's probably both. He must be a really impressive dude. Can you imagine someone being like, you know what, 14, 15 billion dollars? I feel like that's you should come work here. [11:17] Oh my gosh. Wow. Cool. That's that. Yeah. Interesting stuff. Um, okay. Should we bring on our first guest here? Let's bring on our first guest. [11:27] Okay. Hi. Hey, how are you?

[11:31] Good. How's it going? [11:33] Great. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. We're so excited to have you. So, Denny Ellis-Bouchard, Senior Tech Reporter from Scientific American. You're also an author, as I was doing my research, 10 books. Oh, my gosh. Fiction and nonfiction and a lot of very prestigious awards. Your most recent book, We Are Dreams in the Eternal Machine, is a novel, like science fiction book about science. [11:59] AI. [12:00] Did I get that all right? Yep, that's correct. That's right. We are dreams in the eternal machine. Yeah, it's a sci-fi book. It's a speculative fiction kind of imagining a future in which AI decides that the only way to protect humanity is to separate us from each other forever. So everyone wakes up alone in a blue room and is immortalized and has to figure out what to do with themselves. [12:19] Wow, cool. There's a lot of backstory. You need backstory for something like that because otherwise everyone's just isolated for all eternity. But yeah, that's the most recent novel. [12:30] Cool. Nice. That's awesome. That's yeah. I, I, um, that I want to read it. I can't wait to check it out. Um, welcome to the show. So excited to have you. Uh, we, I'm going to pull up this article here that you, um, [12:45] published a couple days ago inside different American. So the headline for listeners is thermal runaway explains why Waymo cars burned so completely in the recent LA protests. So [12:58] The what's going on here is basically there was the protests are happening in LA and the imagery that's coming out of it is is really, really striking. And I'd say there's a lot that we can talk about there. But in particular, the imagery around the Waymos and the.

[13:13] how completely in your words that they are burning is like, it's crazy. The cars are basically gone. Gone. [13:21] Yeah. Obliterate. So to give us a science lesson here on, and basically your article sort of explains why and how, and it's so interesting. So everyone should read it, but tell us what's going on here roughly. [13:32] Well, what's interesting here for me was that I was talking to a friend and he said, you know, he's seen the Waymo fires. And I pulled up the pictures and I thought, these cars are gone. There's nothing left. And two things went through my mind at that moment. One was that I grew up on a farm. And you know, like the grown man who likes to play with fire and thinks fire is the coolest thing in the world? That was my father. [14:02] it you know and i remember watching him burn this thing and standing there and kind of going okay you know like what are we gonna do now with this burnt out hulk of a camper van and you know i saw other people try to burn their vehicles as a means of disposal and it didn't work right and so i'm thinking i've seen burned vehicles and [14:20] they don't look like this. And I have a speculative fiction novel, another one coming out next year, in which I had researched... [14:30] lithium ion battery thermal runaway for a destruction of a futuristic city, because cities are planning these super grids of batteries where they can receive [14:39] wind energy or solar energy and store it and then use it when demand is highest. So it's sort of a environmental measure that makes the cities more sustainable.

[14:48] So I've been researching that. So I thought, okay, this has to be what it is. And I began reading about exactly what that would look like in a car. And there have been plenty of studies on this and how it unfolds. But really, you know, this particular car, the Jaguars, electric Jaguars, they have 400 cells in the battery packs. And if one of those cells is damaged or overheated or deformed, it begins to vent out its electrolyte fluid. And then what remains gets even hotter. [15:18] I can go up to a thousand degrees Celsius, around 1,800 Fahrenheit in less than a minute, probably, I would say. And... [15:26] So it then can go to the next cell and the next cell and the next cell. So each cell begins burning. And it's very hard to get them to stop burning until you extinguish every single cell. Usually you have to plunge them in water. Firefighting foams don't work. So I began researching what this process would look like and how quickly the metal around it would melt, the floor plates would melt. The entire body of the car, which is different composite alloys, which is vaporized, would burn and vaporize. So there would be nothing left at all. [15:56] Mm-hmm. [15:56] But yeah, that was, you know, the tires would be gone. There'd be very little remaining once that was finished. Wow. Okay. So just to make sure I'm understanding that some of the core differences between maybe a gas vehicle and this model of a Jaguar. So your dad burning the camper van or other people, you know, burning a Ford or something like that. You still sort of have the shell of the car usually is what you'll see. And then with this, it was just basically nothing. It was just absolute like ash.

[16:26] reason for that is those cells that you're talking about are getting so much exponentially higher that they can burn like rubber and metal and all of these components of the car in a way that a gas car wouldn't. Is that correct? Yeah, absolutely. A gas car could not, but there are two differences. One is that a lot of, even the earlier Waymos had metal shells. So these ones, these ones don't have metal shells. It's different composite materials. So the material [16:56] reach that level of heat. It requires to put out, when I was researching this, I saw that it requires 40 times more water to put out a fire in electric vehicle than it does in a gas-powered vehicle. Although fires and gas-powered vehicles are more common. But, and I should also say there's a lot of work being done to prevent this, you know, to create batteries that have different chemistries that are more protected, that vent differently. But yes, so slow down. [17:26] You have these 400 cells and say someone smashes the window of a car and, [17:31] as appears to have been the case, aims a makeshift flamethrower inside the car and sets fire to the side of the car, those cells are going to overheat very quickly. And as they begin venting, they're [17:44] So, [17:45] fluid within the cells. [17:48] that is flammable itself, so that catches fire. And then what remains of the-- so the lithium that remains inside the cell and the other materials,

[17:57] all are then in greater contact as they melt down and the fire will then jump from one cell to the next. And the temperature, like I said, can reach a thousand degrees Celsius and most of the car, even the aluminum will melt. So yeah, it's pretty dramatic. Is it fair to call this chain reaction? Can we say that it's a chain reaction? Yeah, I think so. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So one of the [18:27] you call it a skateboard architecture where I think it's that the battery pack is on the bottom of the car. And so the flames are just like going up and burning the whole thing. Can you say more about that? Did I capture that correctly? Yeah, that's correct. They're different designs for the cars. And [18:42] In this particular case, the battery is set in the floorboard and it's protected. Part of this is to separate, to create a stable foundation for the battery. There's a lot of reasons for the placement. Car companies have approached that differently. [19:04] What's important in this situation is that once that fire starts on the floor plate of the car, you have the heat radiating up and outward from the floor of the car. So everything above and around it gets incinerated. [19:16] Well, it's the way that you're describing it sounds like it's like the perfect storm of things for these things to just completely disappear. I'm curious if. [19:27] this. Okay. So when you're watching a movie or your kid or whatever, there's like, as soon as a car lights on fire, it's like, everybody's like,

[19:34] waiting for it to hit the gas tank and explode. And everybody's like, get, you know, whatever, get away from the car. Um, and those types of situations, um, and is, um, [19:46] So you wouldn't have the same experience with these cars because there's not like the same moment of like, [19:53] of explosion i guess correct the early evs when they were experimenting with the early evs yeah they would explode they would they would and they would explode more dramatically than i believe a full thing i guess a lot of the explosions we see of cars and movies are very exaggerated right you know a half tank of gas is not going to blow up a car to that degree okay so there's a lot of dramatization there but the early evs that was an issue and there was a lot of discussion around um [20:23] from what i've read with tesla where they said look this is not good publicity you know we can't we can't have one of these things blow up ever um and so there's a lot of work done to mitigate that and in the current evs are in tesla's um battery packs are much are very well designed to prevent this sort of thing so and they're also using a different chemistry now um so that the the electrolyte solution itself is less likely to catch fire so there's been a lot of innovations to prevent this [20:53] And the other thing we should mention, I think, is the hydrogen fluoride that comes out of these things. So, you know, when this is burning, the gas that's coming out of this is extraordinarily toxic. And it can hover around 50 parts per million in the air around the car. And exposure, based on a number of studies, at that level for half an hour to an hour, it can kill a person. So when I was seeing the protesters standing around the burning cars, I was thinking, this is really bad.

[21:23] fluoride so this is you know they're just the chemistry of the battery the lithium in the battery is bonded to i think six fluoride molecules and when that begins to burn those separate and the fluoride molecules attach to the hydrogen from vaporized water molecules and these are really small molecules and if you inhale them they get into the lining of your lungs and they bind with the calcium the calcium is very important for the membrane so it brings to break down the membranes [21:53] quickly. It's [21:55] extraordinarily lethal. I mean, that's why I was watching this. I was thinking, well, I really hope these people are okay. This is pretty scary. Wow. That's awful. Is there, let's say you have that exposure. Is there any recourse like [22:10] Is it just you got to let the body do its thing? Or is there something that you then need to take to basically... [22:16] like reverse that. [22:18] um that's a great question yeah there are treatments i believe to you know to um to hydrate people and to help them through that but i i'm not familiar with all those treatments that's crazy that all these people have that exposure and first responders are often the people at the greatest risk historically because they don't know often that there's a lithium ion battery fire and they can arrive now they usually have their own air sources to protect them if there's any suspicion [22:48] the past, many first responders have been injured in these situations. Damn. Wow. Okay. So Waymo is having a terrible week for many reasons. And I think there's a lot of reputational and issues that are coming up right now for Waymo and really just like their place in these cities. I think just more broadly, that's a conversation now.

[23:10] But I think just speaking specifically to the fire hazard that you're talking through [23:18] new perceived fire hazard is a reputational setback for autonomous fleets more generally? Do you think that this would like... [23:25] These pictures are hard to forget. You see a picture of a decimated... New Fear Unlocked. Totally. Burning in a Waymo alone. Yeah, exactly. You can't unsee it. And so I'm just like... [23:39] setting aside all the other stuff which is like totally worthy of a very long conversation like [23:44] if you're a municipality and you're considering an autonomous fleet and you're considering like bringing this into your city to test out like does this do you think that there's gonna be setbacks now [23:53] I think there are a lot of reasons for there to be setbacks that are maybe more political, you know, around public opinion. But I think, you know, this is really people setting fire to cars. And so these cars generally don't have this problem. [24:08] I should point out this particular model of Jaguar did have this problem because they had some manufactured defects in the batteries. So they had some car fires that happened when people were charging and those cars did catch fire. And then they changed the software to regulate the batteries better to prevent overloading so the batteries wouldn't catch fire. And so these batteries, based on what I've read, don't seem to be the safest ones. [24:31] Thank you. [24:31] But... [24:32] I think that, yeah, this will definitely unlock a new fear for a lot of people. But I really should highlight that EV fires are pretty rare and that EV companies are doing a lot to to make better batteries that won't do this. So I think, I think that the fear,

[24:50] I, it's very, like you said, it's hard to forget, but I think we should emphasize that there's a lot of work being done. So this could be a setback. I think the greater setback in this situation is just this general public perception that tech is evil. And, you know, the Waymo cars have been used, the police can access, they have 360 camera footage, and the police have access to that footage in the past to, for example, catch someone who did a hit and run or something. [25:20] And so there's a perception of them as surveillance vehicles that the police can use. That's why they were set on fire, supposedly. But I think there's also just this bigger question of, you know, [25:30] I mean, what surprised me, let me say this, what surprised me is when I published the article, I got messages from people saying these things are evil, even in death, you know, like, really, they just hate, they just hate EVs, they hate autonomous vehicles. And I think that perception comes from [25:45] or that comes from the perception that [25:49] Tech is soaking up all the all the all the resources in the country and public education and public health and all these things are being neglected while tech is soaking up in a small group of people are benefiting from that. Totally. [26:00] And it's really unfortunate because really, you know, there's a lot of benefits to this technology to a lot of different groups of people. But, you know, the politics around it sort of are polarizing and watching them. [26:15] be incinerated so quickly and violently does not help. It certainly does not help.

[26:21] Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's it's so interesting to hear you talk about it and the response that you've gotten. And yeah, it's like a really it's strangely like a very. [26:31] like emotional, like there's a, there's an emotive reaction to all of these images and it's loaded with so much, uh, in the current state of where the U S is at and, and politics, um, in a larger conversation at the moment. So, uh, it's interesting to have something so vis visually representative of that, I think. Um, okay. So final question here for you, you, [26:54] as we talked about, write a lot about fiction, nonfiction and technology and futurism. What is sort of your perspective of autonomous transportation of sort of the future of transportation? I'd love to sort of hear you've obviously thought a lot about it. So we'd love to hear. [27:10] what you think. [27:11] I actually have a piece coming out that's sort of reflecting on this. [27:17] probably on the week or so on sort of you know the American myth of the highway and this idea that you know you set out for freedom and you were the driver and you were in control and you could kind of escape your past and find a new future and you know shape your destiny you know you think about all these classic American road movies right where you're on the road or you think like Thelma and Louise you know like sort of you know this feminist road movie where it's sort of escaping all the problems in their culture and and kind of trying to create a new future and that's a very powerful [27:47] And I think it's interesting to see where autonomous vehicles are going to fit. And there's sort of this national identity that is built around cars. It's built around autonomy. But I think what we should mention is that a lot of those narratives were very privileged narratives, right? It's like often King of the Road. It's the white man who's usually, I mean, usually the one out there on the highway getting freedom. And so Thelma and Louise was very radical as a film because it wasn't. It was a different expression of that. So I think that autonomous vehicles can...

[28:16] you know, elderly people, people who don't have access to public transportation. Public transportation is terrible in America. People who are not able to drive cars for whatever reason, it can offer a lot of freedom to those people. And I think there are benefits to that. There's certainly benefits to that. And I think the technology is better than people give it credit for. I think there's it's much, much better than people give it credit for. And I think that, you know, one [28:42] autonomous vehicle accident will get so much media attention. And, and, but you know, you know, all the people who are drinking and driving and all the just the human, you know, stupid texting and driving. Also, I'm just like, everyone, I look around, everyone's on their phone. It's crazy. It's so absolutely. So I personally, I think once once the tech, I mean, the technology is almost there. I [29:07] I'm not opposed to autonomous vehicles. I think they could be a real benefit to society. But I think that, you know, the politics around them is quite unfortunate. And I think I understand it. I can sympathize with it. But I would like to see it not be such a clear division. You know, I think people should try to look at the benefits of these things as well. [29:26] Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on. This is so interesting. Yeah. So interesting. Loved having you as a guest. I can't wait to read your piece next week and the book that you're working on. So keep us posted on when those things come out. And thank you so much for taking the time with us. [29:40] Thank you. [29:41] All right. Bye. [29:43] um we had a delightful waymo ride when we were in san francisco we did we were just taken with that little car we loved it we loved it all four of us were just losing our mind over over um

[29:58] being driven around by that incinerated... [30:04] um what a lovely guy death death cab um really lovely man very smart i uh what that was such a treat i learned so much yeah a real treat um that was your idea so great great call thanks you know um okay who do we have on next here rice ferguson uh let me add you to the stage here how you doing [30:27] Hey, folks. [30:28] Very fun to come in after the dumpster fire of Waymo. Yeah, hard act to follow. But Bryce Ferguson, welcome to the show. Founder of Turnkey. We're excited to have you. It's some big news this week. Welcome to DBH. [30:46] Awesome to be here. [30:47] Um, you had a big week, big announcement. Um, do you, I feel like you should share the news on what turnkey is up to and what you guys announced this week. [30:58] Yeah, so we just announced our series B, $30 million series B led by Bain Capital Crypto. [31:05] We've been building for about three years now. We're secure, low-level, flexible wallet infrastructure for folks that are doing at-scale transaction automation or building wallets into their applications for users. So we have folks that are using us like Bridge on the payment side, Polymarket for smart contract deployment, Moonshot and Axiom for trading experiences. [31:28] Really everything across the board that you could imagine. Turnkey has infrastructure that powers some of the biggest apps in crypto.

[31:36] Okay. And so just to clarify, my understanding is like when it says login with wallet, that is what Turnkey is powering essentially is that moment from a user perspective. [31:49] Exactly. So from a user perspective, you can use your email, you can use a social login, and you have that under the hood. We also have people that are just using us as a business, so very B2B product to automate crypto transactions behind the scenes. So Bridge, for example, developer tool, they do a ton of payments flows, and they're using Turnkey to generate wallets, sign transactions with those wallets and manage all these back end payment flows. Wait, what do you mean by automatic? [32:14] transaction [32:15] batching or what was the word you use? [32:18] Transaction automation. This is just the idea of they have their back-end services that are signing transactions for the product that they have. Oh, I see. Okay. I got you. [32:29] Okay, so the consumer doesn't have to sign all these transactions whenever they're doing anything on-chain. [32:35] Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Well, congratulations. That's super exciting. I'd love to hear from you. Like, what are some of the trends inflection points that you're seeing right now that are sort of like informing the growth and traction that you've had this far? [32:51] Yeah, it honestly is one of the craziest moments in crypto. I think we are about to enter into the biggest bull market we've ever seen. Oh, let's go. Let's go. Love to hear it. I'm not sure if you guys saw the news, but Stripe actually just announced that they've acquired Privy.

[33:09] Yeah. Web3Auth was just acquired by ConsenSys. There's a ton of attention on the wallet space more broadly because people are realizing that this wallet infrastructure is what's necessary to create mass market consumer products and actually bring on billions and billions of users to crypto. [33:27] That's across the board. We see this for prediction markets where X is working with Polymarket. We see this with trading where Robinhood just acquired Bitstamp and now Stripe Payments is really leaning hard into crypto. So I think [33:44] Those are generally some of the areas we're excited about. There's the payments stuff where stablecoins have grown faster than almost any other trend in history. And I think over the next five years, the majority of payments are going to be on stablecoins. It's just such an obvious angle because it's cheaper, it's cross border, it's more programmable. [34:05] Trading as well, way more interesting as you start to plug into these crypto protocols underneath the hood. And if you try apps like Moonshot and Axiom, which are built on Turnkey, you realize you can actually have this centralized feel to a DeFi app where the user is still fully in control of their wallet. [34:23] And then maybe last trend that I'm really excited about, but is like a little bit more nascent. AI is coming very, very fast and there are tons of dollars being poured into that. [34:34] Um, [34:34] With that, [34:36] Again, it feels very obvious that AI agents, they're not going to use credit cards. It's too clunky. It's not cross-border. There's too many fees and middlemen in the middle there. And so using programmable crypto rails, which again are just going to be cheaper, faster, easier.

[34:51] It's how... [34:52] crypto agents are going to interact with the world. So we've seen a lot of interesting use cases built on turnkey here as well, where folks like Wayfinder has built an easy crypto AI agent to help manage their wallet. [35:05] I have what I'm sure is a profoundly stupid thought to add into this, but what I always think about with AI agents and payments is, and this may not be true, but [35:16] Thank you. [35:16] That an AI agent, like, I don't know that, like, legally they could sign terms and conditions. Like, I don't know that. [35:22] that that that I don't know and maybe they can but that always feels like to me I'm like well an agent can't like [35:29] They can't. [35:30] like consent to a lot of the stuff that like as humans we need to do in the daily movement of our money and like how we set up stuff. So that's just like something I think about a lot, but that might not be true. Maybe they can. Yeah, I think it's kind of like a brave new world where a lot of this works and there are even questions. [35:51] about, hey, is an AI agent right now an unregulated money transmitter? Because ultimately, the developer has control of that AI agent. And with that control, they probably should be regulated. If the developer can just bug you and take all of the funds. So using tools like Turnkey allows you to limit access to that AI agent, make sure that you're doing this in kind of a compliant way. Nice. Another new fear unlocked. Okay. So one thing that I think about a lot when I'm [36:21] wallet or when I'm thinking about a company like Turnkey is that there's this idea of embedded wallets. A lot of what you're doing is, at least from a user perspective, removing a lot of the friction of setting up a wallet and going through that very painful process to do that. But within the friction of setting up a wallet, there's also a little bit of an education on, okay.

[36:42] What what this is a different world that has different responsibilities as a user and like and different things can go wrong and there's that sort of learning curve happens when you're setting up a wallet for the first time. [36:56] And part of what you're doing is like abstracting that away, which I think is beautiful and amazing and I think should definitely happen. But I do sometimes wonder about one, a world where [37:06] I have like a million embedded wallets and I can't, [37:09] I can barely manage the wallets that I have now, that I have full control over. But I have all these embedded wallets and all these token dusts scattered all over all these different wallets and how I manage that. And then two, it's like from a user perspective, [37:22] how... [37:24] we educate people [37:26] not in a heavy handed way and educate is definitely the wrong word, but like how people come to realize that like, [37:31] working and dealing in crypto does come with a [37:35] slightly different set of like personal responsibility when it comes to managing your funds. Those are kind of two different questions, but we'd be curious your thoughts on either or both. Yeah, so I think first question here of what happens when you have all these different wallets and how do you kind of manage those across the board? [37:52] Crypto is really unbundling and bundling and unbundling and bundling until you die. That has been the innovation cycle in crypto. And I think we've gone from these external wallets like a MetaMask and Phantom, which are trying to be these super apps, to an unbundled view of what is the single application with a really clear job to be done that is just going to resonate more with consumers, abstract crypto way more, and actually bring on people that don't necessarily know that they're using crypto under the hood.

[38:22] So I think that fragmentation right now is something that people are used to. They have like 18 different finance apps on their phone and it's okay because it's bringing on the right people. [38:37] Over time, though, I do think that there needs to be some connective tissue. And there's a lot of different paths that this could go down of, hey, do you just allow your user to export that wallet and plug it in elsewhere? Do you allow kind of connections at a smart contract level to have all those accounts connected? [38:56] Ultimately, I don't have the answer here. It's a really, really tough problem because there are big security considerations. There's a big UX considerations. But I think right now the market is pushing people towards, hey, we want these vertically integrated apps. [39:08] I don't know. [39:09] What was the second part of your question then? Just people coming into like being in [39:18] a crypto environment, not knowing it's a crypto environment, and then not like taking the precautions or having the responsibility to know like, [39:25] how crypto is different than regular money. [39:27] Yeah, no, that's also a very tough one. I think one of the interesting trends that we've noticed is a lot of folks have been really prescriptive with wallet experiences. And I think that's broken down because a wallet is not one size fits all. The wallet that you have for a social app where you have a three dollar NFT on it should be very different from your primary financial account. Totally. $100,000. Yeah. [39:52] And so,

[39:53] We at Turnkey have really focused on how do we provide these low level tools that allow folks to customize that experience and have different security policies, authentication policies, and really make sure that they're catered towards their specific user type and use case. [40:10] Nice. I really, I think that's a great point. I, I have, I, [40:17] a lot of thoughts around like, uh, [40:20] just the experience of using a wallet, creating accounts within the wallet, having exactly as you're saying, like there's all of these, [40:28] uh nfts collectibles whatever things that have no value that like i still want and hold and make sure you know i have access to um but yeah that having any relationship to what i consider to be like [40:42] assets that I'm going to hold for a very, very long time, the experience for holding both of those essentially the same. And that's crazy. And so- Natasha has some notes. I have notes. I have notes and I have very publicly shit the bed on some Opsac. So yeah, anyway. Okay. So you guys have [41:07] Power 50 million wallets, which is insane. And I'd love to hear from you. Like one of the things people always talk about is, okay, there's all this data and all these wallets that will provide sort of, um, whether it be a more personalized experience for the consumer or, uh, business, uh, reveals some sort of new aspects of businesses that, um, commercial opportunities that weren't possible before with the data that we're seeing. I'd love to hear like, what are some, um,

[41:34] behavioral [41:36] data that you are surprised by that have been revealing about how people interact with these different on-chain apps. [41:43] Mm. [41:44] I feel like I... [41:47] Um, [41:48] maybe said a couple of these things already, but the diversity of use cases across these embedded wallets is interesting to me. [41:59] In the very early days of Turnkey, I kind of expected embedded wallets to be more of a consumer social type experience. And people have really put trust in Turnkey and other embedded wallet providers to hold large amounts of crypto now. You know, we work really closely with Infinex and they have users with over $10 million on a single Infinex wallet, which would be unheard of, you know, three years ago to put that on an embedded wallet. [42:29] that's one piece. [42:31] I think... [42:33] the [42:34] Go ahead. Did you have? No, I'm just like, wow, that's crazy. That's a crazy thing to do. But it speaks to, yeah, how much trust people have in your product, which is amazing. Yeah. And ultimately, there's this aspect of like, hey, the security posture that Infinix took using the primitives of turnkey using the toolkit is very geared towards that. It's geared towards. [42:57] Right. [42:58] Um, [42:59] I think some other stuff that we have seen [43:02] Um, [43:03] There...

[43:05] are a lot of... [43:08] more interesting kind of approaches to abstracting away crypto that folks have been doing. It's always fun to see surprising ways that people use turnkey. So one of the things that Axiom does is they leverage our policy engine to have non-custodial limit orders. So typically if you were connecting a phantom or a metamask, you have to be at your computer to sign a transaction. [43:38] order and that's executed even when you're going to grab your coffee and you're not at your computer. You can always be in the trenches. Always on trenches. Put some stop losses in. There you go. [43:52] So that's been cool. [43:54] And then, yeah, I think... [43:57] The last thing I would say is [43:59] Um, [44:00] it actually feels like a lot of the UX challenges that we've been talking about for the past five years have been solved. And so now it's not so much of a question of do we have enough block space? Do we have easy ways for users to sign up? Do we have easy ways to automate things behind the scenes? It's how do you actually combine those into a compelling product? And so we are kind of on the bleeding edge of a lot of this innovation where we just see new approaches to wallets left and right, [44:30] information. [44:30] Nice. Okay, last question, Bryce. Should we all pivot to stable coins? I'm just like, at this point, it feels like that's kind of what the business is. Do you know what's going on to watch a stable coin? I know, I'm watching a stable.

[44:44] I'll join with you guys. Okay, nice. [44:52] It's the beginning of the onboarding of mass market folks. Most people, they don't want to have super high volatility assets that they're holding [45:02] huge amounts of. And so stablecoins [45:05] it's the tip of the spear for how we get people into crypto. I think stablecoins [45:10] plug into everything though. And yes, the first use case that people are using is just simple payments with those stable coins. But longer term, it's like, how do you earn yield? How do you trade, and you know, trade for crypto assets, but tokenized equities are becoming a huge thing. So another one of our clients, SuperState is starting to tokenize equities using turnkey to power some of those obstacles under the hood. And so I actually think [45:36] over the next [45:37] five years, like the puzzle pieces fit together and stable coins are just the onboarding of that. [45:43] Okay. So not now. [45:45] Yes, we should all pivot to the same one. You're great. On that note, Bryce, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us a little bit about embedded wallets. And congratulations again on the news and best of luck. Thank you so much. Awesome, guys. Take care. [45:59] Bye. [46:01] Some great guests. Nice guys today. Really nice guys. Really nice guys today. Okay, I'm trying to figure out how to get my... [46:10] the deck back on great okay next story here before we get kate on i'm so excited we're going to talk about apple's media strategy for their developer conference so if you i don't know how you could have missed this news but apple had um their developer conference on the

[46:32] earlier this week. And I, [46:34] everyone, [46:35] can't stop talking about it because it was, [46:39] I think to put it like kindly... [46:42] fairly lackluster in its updates not well received not well received would be yeah would be one way to put it and um [46:52] Thank you. [46:52] I'm not going to talk about the Apple update specifically because there's a lot of other tech podcasts that are doing that and doing really well. What I am going to talk about and what I would love your take on is their media strategy for WWDC. [47:04] And specifically relating to their influencer strategy, which is new, which felt, which felt new. So what you're seeing on the screen here is, um, Tim Cook in the, in taking a selfie with these two beautiful brunettes who are, are, um, [47:22] like basically like business personnel they're on the business beat so um who has what's that sub stackers sub stackers yeah sub stackers and writers or and john [47:33] is another one. I don't know that he's a sub-snacker, but they're definitely like a new crop. And so the two people are Rachel Carton. She has a social media, really successful social media newsletter. And then Emily Suddenberg, who is more sort of business-y. And she's [47:50] And what's funny with this two photos side by side is it's the same, like Tim Cook is in this. Someone told him to take a selfie with these two ladies and he took the same picture with, with both of them. And I think what it reveals is that,

[48:04] Um, so there's a, there's a tweet here in the middle that from Michael mirror floor, who always has great takes. He says your favorite sub stackers being invited to meet and greets at big tech events in 2025 has the same energy as your favorite fashion bloggers being invited to sit in the front row at major fashion shows in 2009. So this is the exact, exactly what I thought was [48:22] do you remember when Tabby Gevinson came from front row to fashion show? Yeah. And everyone lost their mind. Cause it was like, she was this, I mean, she was also a child. She was like 14 or some ridiculous age, maybe even younger. And she was sitting front row and she was a blogger and everyone was like aghast that the blogger would be getting into this coveted seat front row at a fashion show. And it's kind of the same thing where it's like, no, actually like they're really influential voices and it's totally appropriate that they're, [48:51] there and they're covering it. And I saw some bad takes about it, which I want to talk about, but let me just pause here and get your initial, your initial read. [48:58] Um, [48:59] I really love this tweet because I thought it was it brought it home for me in a way that I hadn't [49:05] like put language to what I was seeing in a way that I hadn't thought before. And I, and one of the things that he says in this tweet was like, there's no turning back. Like we're here now. This is what influence looks like. This is how influence is. [49:18] the distribution of information [49:21] what we've moved to. [49:24] far beyond just like, um, [49:27] socialite influencers to like actual tech driven information and, uh, features and all these sorts of things that like would have been considered, uh,

[49:37] too boring. [49:38] for like internet personalities to cover maybe even four years or five years ago. I really like it. I think it's exciting. I think that having fresh [49:48] voices who are great writers who have a way of speaking to their audience that is very personalized is a [49:55] is a great thing for the tech industry. I think that it will provide a much more interesting conversation around technology. I'm hoping that it'll provide a bit more of optimism around these types of events. That has not happened with this one, but maybe that's why they did it. Totally. I [50:15] I think that ultimate, like, [50:17] Ultimately... [50:19] I have one more note though. Okay. Go ahead. Um, I, I, the selfie looking exactly the same. Yeah. That was a miss. That was a miss. Like someone should have taken their sunglasses. Like it, it just, that made it look, it, it was a miss. It made it look like, um, more like contrived than it probably felt at the time. Like it probably felt totally natural, but it just is. Yeah. It's like you said, Tim did a selfie line. Like it looked like there was like a line of [50:49] So that was a little more calculated, I think, than they probably wanted to feel. One thing I'll say, one more thing I'll say about this, and then we'll bring Kate on, is that there was a piece in Puck that was like... [50:58] Um, [51:00] like a dig on them that was basically like if you want to on apple or the sub stackers on the sub stackers it was like if you want to entice gen z you need to get gen z influencers like they need to be younger basically and both of these oh my gosh are you serious or like i'm i like that's a crazy thing to say now what i will say ages it was total ageism what i will say to that is that i actually don't

[51:22] think [51:23] necessarily that it was that this is a strategy to get a younger demographic though maybe I think what [51:31] these types of voices bring to a thing like WWDC is like, [51:36] it's a texture, it's a human texture and human takes that a publication like the Washington Post can never [51:42] post the type of thing that like an individual human and individual writer can post and [51:48] I think that like that's, [51:49] that's what Apple was trying to do here. And I think they were successful in many ways. It's not like an age thing necessarily. And I think to categorize it as an age thing, totally misses the point of like, no, it's just a human texture that, that these people bring. And I think we're going to see a lot more of it. And I think that's good. Like, I think we want, like, we don't want a sterile, like, [52:08] take on what's happening. We want like real ideas and real takes on it. And I think that that's what this type of thing can bring. I agree. So cool. That is that quick hits. Kate, welcome to the show. Come on up. Where is she? [52:26] I'm here. I'm ready to take my selfie. That'd be great. With Tim Cook? Yeah, with Tim Cook. I want to cook with Tim Cook. I would die. I would absolutely die. Okay. We don't have a ton of time. I do want to say, ask you how you're doing and see what's up, but I also know that. I know you're doing fine, so we can skip the pleasantries. Get out of here. Okay. What's going on with La Boo Boo? Tell me everything.

[52:52] Um, Labubu, it's a collectible plush toy we're seeing all over the timeline. Um, for the listener, they look like furry monsters. So think the old, uh, where the wild things are. [53:06] and they're designed by a Hong Kong-born artist named Ka Sing Leung, and he sold the exclusive rights to this illustration, this character that used to be in, like, storybooks and animations, and he sold it exclusively to Pop Mart. [53:23] Now, this has been Pop Mart's exclusive podcast. [53:29] licensed property since 2015, but since K-pop star Lisa from Blackpink, [53:36] started sporting it in like 2024. [53:38] Wow. Okay. Other celebrities followed suit like Rihanna, David Beckham, like just an insane amount of, the spectrum is wide with the LaMoubu. And can you, can you explain how people are wearing them? Yes. Um, [53:53] they're pretty much just like keychains, like charms on a bag mainly. Big. Okay. Or like... [54:00] Big. Well... [54:02] Big as in like the size of your palm. Right. Yeah. Not like a charm, like a little charm. No, not like a tiny little keychain. Like a full stuffed animal. They're the size of like the palm of your hand or your whole hand like stretched out. Okay. Do they have face, little face tattoos? [54:17] um so that's the new trend is getting your labubu tatted and people are like lining up to pay like

[54:25] 20 plus to get tattoos on their labubu and then there's contests being held to see who has the best like tatted up labubu okay but they're not they don't cut this is a modification they're not they're not aftermarket modification come in what's called blind boxes and this is a very popular like collector item where they're like mystery but now you can kind of buy them one off because they're so popular but those are even more expensive oh okay so it has like a pokemon experience where you're on absolutely it is i have my beanie babies here in the corner um it's [54:55] You don't own a labubu, do you? No. Oh. I have thoughts. I have thoughts. I feel like stuff like this is just like a – there's no – [55:05] originality to it. Give me give me a bag charm. Give me something cute that like is a personal interest of yours that you like. Don't just jump on some random thing because you think you're going to get clout for a bag charm. That's lame. [55:16] Okay. And so the reason why Labubu is making headlines this week is why? [55:22] Well, I don't. [55:23] I would say larger... [55:25] The past six months since said celebrities are taking the popularity [55:31] hugely beyond what we thought it would be. The stock prices rise like 158% in the last six months. And then yesterday, in a Beijing auction, [55:46] A four foot tall, uh, Lububu figurine sold for $150,000. This thing that's in the picture here, the actual, the large version of it? Initially when I saw the headline, I thought it was one of the tiny ones, like the plush keychain size. Um, but no, it's like 131 centimeters, which is a little over four feet.

[56:06] sold and it was sold for 150 000 us dollars correct yes [56:10] This LaBubu. This LaBubu, which, I mean, imagine this in, like, your living room or in your bedroom. I don't want that. Wouldn't it be me? They're creepy looking. If you can't see them, I mean, I'd be surprised if you haven't seen them yet. Little, like, weird furry monsters. But creepy. Wow. Really crazy. Very bizarre interest. Very bizarre interest. Wow. To each their own, I guess. To each their own, truly. Okay, that's LaBubu. [56:40] um okay facebook marketplace manipulation tell us what's going on here this is one of my favorite things to happen over the weekend so incredible so funny i i just felt like this was very a dina and natasha's story because you both love well dina specifically loves finding furniture on facebook marketplace uh-huh and natasha loves to love all there you go a beautiful marriage i do [57:10] happen um i don't know how to say this uh woman's last name but megan niv n y v o l d so we can give her her credit i love her i almost asked her to come on [57:22] She's fantastic. Um, posted a tweet that says, Hey, well, someone messaged me. If you have Facebook question mark, I need a bunch of you to low ball this lady on Facebook marketplace to make my low ball offer look the best. [57:35] Great strategy. This has been done in the past. But what's so funny is this table that she was wanting retails at a little over $10,000.

[57:45] Insane. And, [57:47] So I guess... [57:48] She followed up. [57:50] And she's like, hey, guys, it worked. And then she showed a picture of it her at clearly like her home. [57:55] So got 10 million views this post. And I tried to go digging to see if I could find... [58:03] like the actual interactions and maybe it's on Facebook, but I couldn't find any. I just saw comments that were agreeing and saying that they've used this strategy as well. So this one guy says, uh, I made 15 Facebook profiles to buy my truck. And so other people were like, imagine you having to ask for like, this is obviously a known strategy. People were commenting on her post saying like, girl, you ain't got extra accounts for this. That is so funny. Okay. So [58:33] I also saw like, [58:35] And Megan was interacting with these people, which I loved. Like people were like upset with her. This is like market manipulation. Like if like, there's like laws against this. And then people were talking about like, if you did this in a stock with like stock prices and in the stock market, like you would go to jail. And she's like, it's not that stupid. It's like the stupidest thing ever. Those comments are so fucking dumb. Anyway, I loved this story. 145,000 likes on this [59:05] was such a big brain move and she's utilizing her audience. She's getting, she's got hers, you know? And I love that for her. I love it. I will say one note on this is that you do need to be careful though of things that you put on the internet getting, like you think, right. Things on the internet getting back to the original person that you posted about. For example, the Airbnb that I stayed at,

[59:26] over Thanksgiving, I posted a photo of in the Airbnb that was like gently roasting the Airbnb host because he, I mean, frankly, like put up some stupid art and one of the framed photos, framed photos. And one of the framed photos was of Tim Ferriss. And so I posted about this and I was like, why is Tim Ferriss framed above my bed in the Airbnb I'm staying on? I would... [59:51] I never thought it would have... [59:53] gotten past my little circle of people that of course [59:58] Not only did it get out of my circle, it got to Tim Ferriss. And then I got a message from the Airbnb host being like, "Hey, [1:00:05] is it did you tweet this and like so all i'm saying is that megan needs to be a little bit careful that things don't go wait were they upset um i think it's like a little weirded out okay he shouldn't be upset this person loves tim ferris so much so that he framed a photo of the man and then tim ferris tweeted about it like the the best case scenario when that man was hanging up the tim ferris photo above his bed i think the best case scenario that he probably could have imagined is [1:00:35] Harris would know that he had done that. So you, that was a gift. That was a gift to him. In my opinion. For them. One other thing that I have to say about Facebook Marketplace News is that there's an incredible, like, I don't know if it's like a TED, it feels TEDx. [1:00:51] esque, but there's this woman, there's this video that's going around. That's also going viral of this woman who's performing at something. It's not TEDx, but like, she's got a screen behind her and she's performing her Facebook marketplace interaction as yes. As like a short play. And it, have you seen it? Dina?

[1:01:12] I have. Yeah. It's really funny. It's unreal. I like, I'll, we'll put it in the, we'll put it in the show notes here, but it's, um, I love a Facebook marketplace story. [1:01:23] I live for it. Is singing the comments make even better? Even better. Okay, Kate, thank you so much. Great quick hits here. My pleasure. Okay, that's all we have. See you guys next week. [1:01:38] Okay, that was DBH. Join us live on Twitter every Wednesday at noon. Or here, I guess.