SPEAKER_00 0:00

How people should prepare if they're starting a career now. What kind of opportunities do you see the AI preach? I love this quote.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

There is this guy who is uh called Sergei Nazarov, is the the person behind Chainlink, the co-founder of Chain Link. And and he said one in a once in a podcast if he wants to send a message to the to the youth to say, okay, if you're really smart, you're gonna make it anyways. If you're not, you're screwed anyways. And the thing is, it doesn't matter. I mean, we we have various things that could happen in life. You have to be open to the sense, okay, you you have lots of technology. For us was the internet, but you have to have at least is the intuition to choose something that motivates you and makes you passionate about it. Because there is no limits on that.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Yeah, it's great to talk with you today, Angel. So uh what is Casper?

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Thank you for having me. Okay, Caspa is a complete rabbit hole in itself. So imagine Caspa is like Bitcoin with internet speed, is the centralized, fair launch, open source project which which launched as the let's say it was launched as following the Bitcoin ethos, is is an is an asset without an issue. So what made Bitcoin great was there was no company behind, there was no entity behind, right? So people start mining Bitcoin, and Bitcoin became relevant, and there is no one center of one entity that manages all you know 90%, 10%, 20% of Bitcoin. So it's it's decentralized and is spread among society, let's say. Caspa as a project is an infrastructure carrier. So it's uh instead of a block DAC having one block after the other, Caspa will be as a next generation technology which has block confirmations in parallel. So it is formed, it forms like a graph, a direct acyclic graph. And this makes possible to have confirmation, the same security of Bitcoin, but just on a much faster pace, if that makes sense. So it is basically internet speed Bitcoin, but you can also build programmability on on top of Caspa. So just to put the I don't know, the background on this, think okay. So if you look at Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, it was the first cryptocurrency and largest in size, and it was the use case was to make digital payments, right? That's if you look at the Satoshi white paper, Bitcoin vision was to make a peer-to-peer payment system, which is not. It's a terrible payment system. So that's that's really sad in a way. And so it didn't fulfill the the expectations for what Bitcoin was created, which it was peer-to-peer payments. You have systems that have been built on top of Bitcoin, like protocols, L2s or Lightning Network and all these solutions to make payments possible, but those are centralized servers, are protocols that they don't inherit the hash rate or the mining protection, the energy wall of protection that Bitcoin should present. Payment system is not a good payment system in itself because if I send you a payment for a coffee, it will cost you more than the coffee and it will take more than 10 minutes to send and maybe a couple of hours or even days to confirm. Then you have Ethereum, which was made by Ditalik Buterin. And Ethereum made programmability possible. So they scale Bitcoin in the sense, okay, you don't have just cryptography and payments, but you have also programmability. You can build applications, decentralized systems, mirror finance, what is called decentralized finance, and so on, and they opened this new gate of possibilities. Interestingly enough, the Ethereum white paper, if you look at the Ethereum white paper, Vitalik, in order for him to build Ethereum more than 10 years ago, he took an open source protocol that was called Ghost. And this protocol was published by Dr. Jonathan Sempolinsky and Abiv Sohar. Dr. Jonathan Sempolinsky is the originator of Caspa. So Caspa is the the works for more than a decade of one of the most renowned scholars on blockchain technology and cryptography, is one of the most cited scholars in Google Scholars as well. And Dr. Jonas Sempolinsky, during his research, he came up with different protocols and solutions and finally gave birth to CASPA, what the new consensus of Caspa is. And the new consensus of Caspa was fairly launched. So it was launched to the public, to the world, as Bitcoin was launched, with no intermediaries, no pre-allocation, no pre-mining. Just for you to have an idea, Ethereum at the beginning was proof of work as as Bitcoin is, before changing it to proof of stake. But when Ethereum launched, 40% of the circulation was pre-mined. Why is this relevant? Because then most of the crypto projects, like 90, 90, 95% of pre-crypto projects, if you look at the allocation, which is like a pie chart and they call it economics, you will see that there is a massive pre-allocation for marketing team, various VCs and people that basically bought earlier or go tokens for free, and they just dump into the market. So that didn't happen with Bitcoin. Bitcoin just was mined organically until, you know, with different sorts of equipment. So at the beginning you have like PCUs, then GPUs, then FPGAs. Then when ASICs hit the market, like this designated hardware, right? The mining chips, the distribution of Bitcoin was around 58%. Meaning all the Bitcoin in perpetuity will be mined by just ASICs, like big hardware, which is this mostly larger corporations mining Bitcoin now. And those will mine Bitcoin in perpetuity. Caspa had a fair launch model. They modified the algo, so it would be fair from day one. So if you have a bigger hardware, you couldn't just start mining from day one from Genesis. So they came up with the ASIC-friendly algorithm because ASICs will come anyways to the market if you have a valuable project to mine this uh this coin, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:00

So what yes. What is the benefit of Casper compared to the other ones? Like you can use it for faster payments, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 6:07

You can use it for faster payments, you can use it for programmability just uh today, Wednesday 25. I don't know when this will be published, but the L2 on Caspa just came live. It's called Egra Labs. So Egra Labs brings programmability for the first time to a DAC, which is Caspa, and you have the same capabilities that you could have on any virtual machine as Ethereum with lower fees with the same security as Bitcoin and with soft second confirmation. So Caspa produces instead of Bitcoin one block every 10 minutes, produces 10 blocks per second. So today it's 6,000 times faster than Bitcoin with the same security primitives. And and I got engaged into the Casper community community because of my brother, actually. I came up to realize about the project that the most I was looking into it, the most I thought, okay, this there is no way this is real. This is absolutely rubbish, there's no way whatsoever that something like this could be feasible. And it reminded me for me on the internet early days. I don't know. Uh how old are you, Richard? I'm 38 now. So yeah, we're the same age. I'm 39. So basically, you remember calling the internet with you know you know the cable, Ethernet cable and all these brands and all. The dialogue, right? Yeah. Yeah. And and at the beginning the search engines were like Yahoo and others, and and no one saw Google coming, no one saw all these, you know, massive companies that they were built. But they were built the format was better. So I think Caspa currency, more as a Caspa infrastructure layer, is just a powerhouse of innovation and and it's open source, it's very launched. There is no company behind or team, you know, controlling the uh the network. And that was uh made me think about you know, this is something of value, and I just started doing research about it. Now I'm coordinating some efforts to ideally open a vehicle to access digital assets on a regulated basis in in the UAE, but that's we will submit this week for the in principle approval, so it will take a couple of months yet. But it has to be fully compliant with of course regulation and so on, which is another another stuff. And that's pretty much my background. My background is law, as you know. Yeah. Yeah. I end up in this tech rabbit hole out of uh somehow interest, but then uh it turned out something that it blew my mind completely.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

It's it's a massive change, isn't it? From some of the because I your career path seems really interesting, how you've gone from Ecuador to China studying law now in Lithuania and now yeah, really interested. But we we can come on to more of that in the in the future. I just want to also ask a few questions about it because this coin that you were mentioning, what is the actual like what are your thoughts about the faster versions of Bitcoin? Because there's then Bitcoin has like a is it called Bitcoin Lite? I forget the name.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Bitcoin had different forks during during all this all these couple of years. You had people that just fork Bitcoin, copy Bitcoin, and then just increment the block size or try to push the throughput to make it faster. The result is gonna be lack of security because you have what is called the crypto trilemma, right? Which is you have from one side you have security, you have fast transactions and scalability and decentralization. So basically, if if a system is decentralized, completely decentralized as Bitcoin is, and completely secure, technically, it cannot be scalable. So then you have, for example, Zolana. So it's less decentralized, it's more secure and more scalable, right? But it cannot is not completely decentralized. Or systems like hyperledger, so it's super, super secure, super fast, incredible technology, but it's centralized in one entity, 25 nodes. Then Caspa for the first time broke this solve, particularly this trilemma with the best trade-offs because it made possible to push throughput with a different consensus mechanism. So instead of having a blockchain one block after the other, you have this DAC which produces 10 blocks per second, and you can just Google Caspa Visualizer and you will see in live and production what Kaspa Visualizer looks like, and it's absolutely mind-blowing. And I think that's that's the first way to understand how like a different layer of technology is. Apparently, when the internet was created, you had different layers of the internet that actually happened to be what the internet is now. So engines have been become more sophisticated and so on. This is no exception, it's how technology works. In my perspective, this is something that has proprietary value proposition, as opposed to just you know forking a Bitcoin code and try to push for different block rates and so on.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

So there's something fundamentally different, like a big advantage over this to previous versions, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Yeah, I mean it takes a bit consensus, but basically extrapolates this in the sense that it's the same Nakamoto consensus, the same principles, but just the the mechanics are different. So so that's that's that's pretty much the the situation. There are more nuances to this, but yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Yeah, sure. How do you see it developing in the future? Do you think it will kind of take eat into some of the Bitcoin adoption if there is for this? Will it take some of a share away from that?

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Okay, I mean I I have this, and this is not a particular theory, this is just me, you know, team foil talking about things. It's not nothing about like I think that Casper could become one of the biggest rotations on crypto. Not necessarily Bitcoin or Ethereum will be relevant, but I think they're fundamentally Casper is fundamentally superior. So markets will decide. I think that's that's one of the big situations here.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

And so would are you kind of investing in Casper compared to the other Bitcoins? And how do you see the price in terms of where to put assets in the future?

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Yeah, I mean Casper has four years since its launch. So obviously it's very difficult to draw a comparison. But if you look at growth, Casper grew to the first asset to to win Bitcoin on the first billion dollar mark in the lower time possible, which was Bitcoin's record on any any sort of uh commodity or any like asset overall, even even compared to any other commodity in the world, was Bitcoin. So Bitcoin reached the first billion dollars in the in the in the lowest time frame possible. And the the only cryptocurrency who beat that mark was was Pepe, which like this mean coin, right? But it was it was just he he he beat the mark of a billion dollars and then fell off a cliff immediately, obviously, for these reasons. But Casper has uh surpassed that that time frame. Yeah, now it's you imagine it it came to be 20 uh top 20 cryptocurrency by market capitalization during the bear market, and no one knows about it. And it's for lunch. That's kind of interesting. Now is it still holding up on the top 100 because you know, after October 10th, last year, 2025, this trigger event that that happened and happened to clean up tons of liquidations in a very historical cascade of um events. Yeah, apart from that, you you can see that there is something of value, but that's another reasoning, obviously. You have to look into it properly.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

And do you see uh what do you think of the current bit Bitcoin price? Do you think it will continue going up? Do you have any predictions?

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Crypto has uh tons of volatility. On one side, you have regulation has been trying to be pushed for the last couple of years, and and that that actually is my my PhD research about compliance on digital assets. So I've been looking at this very closely in various in various countries. But then apart from those efforts, those efforts try to replicate what happened on traditional finance or in fintech in the fintech industry. And you try to apply those same manuals or criteria to crypto. And crypto is a completely different animal, it's a completely different category, which has their own mechanisms, and they are situations in which just lack of reporting could exploit major events. So, for example, what happened in when trying to explain what happened in October 10th and last year, more than 20 billion dollars were just wiped out of the market just in in less than a weekend. And then on the following days, you have this sense of fear of okay, one is geopolitical situation is very strange. So people are going to hard assets. So now Bitcoin was supposed to be the digital, the digital gold, but if you want to be objective, Bitcoin did not play out as digital gold. Gold is trading above$5,000, Bitcoin is on his yearly low. So it's definitely not difficult, not digital gold. There is a lot of speculations in terms of how people enter the market around the US presidential campaign. There is funds that they obviously enter with uh you know 40,000, 30,000, 60,000 Bitcoin, and Bitcoin reached 150,000. So obviously those folks are out of the market yet uh still. And then you have this narrative of the four-year cycle. So the big test for the four-year cycle was okay, if Bitcoin goes up to 115,000 during this first quarter, okay, the four the fourth cycle is finished, and you can see you know lots of upside. But I think the situation of Bitcoin is not just accumulation of all these geopolitical problems that we have occurred and the current situations around you know, left in files in the US and geopolitical historical issues that now are somehow being framed. So I think the asset class will become relevant still, but there is a lot of things on the controlling and regulator side of things that have to be taken care of. And for example, one of those things is just the compliance reporting. I mean, you have tons of companies that they are issuing assets and they are leveraging themselves, and there is lots of things that are public and loans that are on the private side of things. So you say, okay, no, cryptocurrencies, everything is transparent about cryptocurrencies. And the reports that you know some exchanges present to regulators are just a snapshot of reserves once a month or once every quarter, and that's it. So it's very static. But then what whatever they do in in their inside infrastructure, which is kind of like an iron curtain, and then whatever they do on the private, like on the private loan kind of things could actually impact their balance sheets. So the moment all of any of those folks have some sort of issue, the whole market gets gets you know triggered. And that's the very hard thing of putting the proper controls to avoid the situation. And that's why I believe that the only system that is possible to be implemented in that end is live data reporting. Like you should have as a as an oxygen, an oxygen tank, you should have awareness of how much is left. So, for example, if there is an institution issuing, just say, let's put the case the case of Circle, let's say they issue USDC and you want to see that if there is back one-to-one, you should know what's behind those vacuums. I mean, obviously it's like short-term treasury bills and and and some jurisdictions you don't know what it is. They just report every quarter or every once in a month now, and in some other jurisdictions, but you know life, what what could happen if that's not the case. And yeah, I think that's the biggest risk. Systemic risk is a problem. So I think as an asset class, if this uncertainty happens to be resolved, also new capital will come in a better format because cryptocurrency is not just you know Bitcoin and Ethereum and speculating into a price to go up. Is is about how that technology designed from infrastructure perspective, could make markets more efficient. So you see, for example, the likes of Isda now. They have what is called the CDM, like the the common domain model. So this ISDA, the International Securities and Directors Association, have more than 40 years of standing, and those folks are standardizing financial instruments and swaps and OTC markets for over decades, and they want to establish standards. They're exploring pilots and tokenization, for example, but just as an infrastructure or make things on a better format. So, for example, you have to post-collateral, I don't have to liquidate a position and then you know go to a bank and lose time and money doing this. I could just do this instantaneously or settle or net in some obligations or contractual disputes instantaneously in a better format. And that's where the future on cryptocurrency and tokenization will go on a more compliant manner, but that has to be fully regulated and it has to be not just the speculation around, you know, I want a coin to go up and there is like this pumps and dumb market because that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about pure infrastructure and try to, you know, build up systems that last. And for uh compliance, I believe that real-time data, real-time decentralization is the only key, is the only way to track and trace not just liquidity, but any change of collateral that could trigger events and damage to the market and prevent that damage from happening. And if if that happens even on a second basis or on a weekend, you know, you have a regulator that can impose a fine to some company for that lack of compliance. So, yeah, I mean, this is just what what I have been looking for the last couple of years on my on my on my PhD now and on this digitizing compliance. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

But uh Yeah, it's fascinating. And does it very much because it there's so many different jurisdictions. Some jurisdictions are less, maybe they they don't need to have that transparency compared to other ones. Do you see that there's going to be how how do you see that playing out? Do you think there's going to be a standardization of it? Or do you think that maybe the market will reward certain jurisdictions? How do you see that?

SPEAKER_01 20:02

That is precisely that is precisely the most important aspects of this. And it's not everyone is looking at this with the same lens. And that could be a good thing for in some countries, could be just an opportunity to get capital in, but also it could be really bad in the sense that there is no standardization. As of today, there is a lack of consistency or standardization in the digital asset space. So different countries and blocks have done some sort of approach for regulating crypto, but there is the lack of technical implementation and tooling that could make this as as as it should be in the future. I mean, things will line up eventually. People will cut up, will catch up with this and needs, and that will happen anyways. But for now, you have even even in Europe. I mean, you have the Maica regulation, Europe trying to come up as a block with certain provisions. But if you look at the European Union Mica regulation, even for stable coins, you have quarterly reportings, which is something that is, you know, bring out of the stone age. In in crypto, quarterly reportings is a lifetime. So if if someone has to present quarterly reports on their reserves and they can't do anything unlawful, they might do it anyways, because they won't get caught and they just have to present you know reports every every quarter. And the UAE is pushing for monthly reports on stable coins, at least uh the AFC new rules coming up on in January, which is kind of interesting. And and those those are the things we need. I mean, we we we need uh regulators that are open to understand this new technology, but also they are willing to protect the public and not just by means of, you know, you have some small countries in Europe now licensing for uh virtual asset service providers on a on a European level because they want to catch the market, they want to catch the companies, the market share that that implies for the countries, and they don't understand if they fail, the financial impact that that could have is just unprecedented, so it's hundreds of billions of damage. could be done.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Yeah. So do you think it could work as like live data? So they just publish it somewhere or they they connect with an API to the to something like that.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

That's how the future should look like. So so you should be able to either the regulator should have access to those that that information. And now in cryptocurrency there are systems that you don't have to disclose certain information. So for example, I don't have to disclose my traits because that could be proprietary information. I can use zero knowledge proof for that, which is this CK code to say, okay, I can publish certain information to be compliant or not, but I don't have to disclose my whole investment strategy or so on and so forth. There are mechanisms to this I think the next 10 years this this will be the the standard like live data reporting. And I was what I was interested about Casper for example in a sense is like the only system that you have proof of work, the centralized ledger that is permissionless, that could have a set a subsecond confirmation basis is something like Casper. But that's just my my way of looking at things and and maybe just one use case of you know 60 potential industrial use cases that you could find in Casper.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

And how do you see the because there are so many different jurisdictions, do you see the smaller jurisdictions having some kind of advantage over other ones? Maybe they don't need to have they they're more incentivized to attract capital, attract people like how do you see the jurisdiction different jurisdictions developing which do you think will be the most the best jurisdictions in the future?

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Yeah again I I mean for you to have certain global that's a that's a that's a big question on crypto, right? So you usually have multiple jurisdictions, multiple markets, and there are companies that are serving different markets and they have different standards for different markets. For example, if you look at US exchanges certain exchanges in the US might be different from you know the global market that is being served with you know a Cyprus company or some company in some in some jurisdiction like that. So those are the things that you have to you have to look into. As a country yes it's an opportunity to catch the interest of international corporations going to you know to the battle of services in your region but also you have to be cautious because this could come with a very high price a very high mark and that not is not just market damage of of your name or reputation it could be much worse than that. So it could be actual damage to to to retail and or some sort of financial distress due to some cascade of events.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah cool.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

So you can you tell me a bit about the current work you're doing at the moment oh yeah okay so I'm coordinating some efforts now to open a license 3C license fund manager in the UAE I cannot disclose more in the in in detail that lead until I get this in principle approval but we will be submitting the formal application this week it will take 30 to 45 days to get this in principle approval and then we'll try our best to incorporate the vehicle in in the couple of months before May or so to have our our fund set up for digital asset strategy. So it's like a long-term initiative is like three to five year initiative as a qualified investment fund, like a closed fund, not to buy and sell cryptos is just invest in Caspa as as a carrier as an asset and try to build infrastructure solutions around that. That's one part of my work I do consulting as well on on compliance and investment and cross-border payments I did for more than 15 years traditional energy infrastructure oil and gas most mostly mining and oil infrastructure deals between Latin America and Asia most for Chinese state own companies that's why I I study in China and my China trip started in a way this one-way ticket to China.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Your China your China experience your China journey oh yes so yeah how so how how was the work you were helping them to do cross-border projects in in Latin America and other countries?

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Yeah mostly initially mostly Ecuador because obviously I'm I'm I'm I'm Ecuadorian but I I advised to a number of global 14500 Chinese companies to do business abroad with this in my country for example as in most Latin American jurisdictions China work with either preferential lines of credit or some debt agreements which will finally feed local procurement procedures. So what is cool about the the relationship with China and me as a lawyer anyways is like in Ecuador if you if you want to establish your own business and you want to look at certain deals or certain sector you will turn up 40 50 60 and maybe something will go you know on your desk and so on. Working closely with with Chinese companies gave me the opportunity to to have access to to energy markets, energy trading bunkering like all these very niche specialized services and somehow support Chinese on on the market access on on on this front. Also technology and that was also part of it.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

But yeah that was my my work as and and also doing the market access compliance and investment guidelines for for those sorts of companies yeah so you how was your journey so you went to you studied in law in China and what what was your pathway after that how did you come to Lithuania?

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Oh yes I I did my master's degree in China University of Political Science and Law and COPL. It was in comparative law Chinese and foreign comparative law I went to China and lived there for three years. The first year was fully Chinese and then I studied the degree in English I I realized I came to the realization that it was very hard for me to study in Chinese that degree. Like the law degree has a lot of weight on on the language. So if you do two years of Chinese maybe you're good to go. But otherwise it's yeah it is quite challenging but I I I took the I I I think I took the right decision and by the time I I was in China the first year I had to struggle a lot because I had to study first the Chinese language then I had to to study English because I've never that was the first time I had proper classes on English and and it was quite intense. Then I came back to my country keep working with Chinese companies went back and forth then I started my my doctoral degree in UIB University of International Business Economics and the major is international law. So I took the first semester I killed myself I think I took 80% of the courses or something like that. I was like absolutely crazy about the courses and do as much workload as I can because I wanted to focus more on the research and that luckily enough happened because when I went for Christmas to Ecuador to visit my parents just for Christmas COVID can came in. So basically that was like a year off which I I I took the rest of the courses online and I I started working with my supervisor on on okay what what's going to be the topic of your research and I said I would like to write about digital assets. And in most countries okay digital assets was not a thing back in 2020 at all. Any supervisor in any other traditional university will tell you okay there's no much substance about this what are you talking what what you will your views confront with you know state of the art there is no enough state of the art things and so on. It will be quite challenging I mean it's nothing that it will be impossible but it will be quite challenging. And even though in China for example cryptocurrency is not accepted as accepted to Hong Kong which is there's some pilots around cryptocurrency that doesn't mean that China doesn't have their eye their eyes on on the market. I mean if you look at the research to RB right oh my god yes but not just the the the the CDCs but mostly and I will say the research aspect of blockchain technology on Chinese universities you know Jiang University and all like they are they're constantly public publishing peer peer review index papers on on on on the on on the matter they're quite advanced and they're quite sophisticated. Even initially back in 2008 2010 to the international conference where Bitcoin conference there was there was a lot of big conferences in Beijing. I remember some of those yeah yeah yeah I I met I met uh during during my C Opa the C OPL days I I met uh uh Latvian lawyer she's uh now head of compliance and at Bitcoin Swiss and she was she studied in China and you know back in the day.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

So yeah there is a lot of crypto events in Beijing right in China and then and I remember I think there's a lot of leading companies that came from China and then they went to other countries. Oh yes and then it it just stopped no more.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

But yeah I mean one one thing is okay the government views uh on certain topics but the the research universities have some sort of freedom what I'm trying to say is like I had the opportunity that my professor gave me the chance to write something that I wanted and we did our best to to get and put together something that now that I just defended my my pre-defense two months ago when I finished my my my full paper and I'm presenting the the final defense a month from now to get my degree on May that was just unthinkable. All this very incredible turns on on on on legislation will happen. At least if you look at what what happened in the US just in the last administration is massive how how things are standardized in in the US and they have been doing for a while in Europe and and you see the likes of Singapore and the UAE which are the four main jurisdictions I took which are making a fascinating work around it.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Yeah that's that's cool how do you see are you using AI much in your in your work at the moment and and also I'm curious to see how do you how do you think AI might you know are you using AI much in your work as a in in compliance or in your general I'm a guest to be super open about technology overall and I think I've been like this my whole life even though I'm not a technical person.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

No I I have some notions on coding on the logic side of things. I don't quote any particular languages I I I tried my best to follow up on things uh on that sort uh I started playing around like by coding with Claude a couple months ago and what happened to be the case now is just mind blowing. I mean you could orchestrate these agents with the API and try to come up with different things you know pulling out data from one side put it regulatory requirements for others you can build automated manuals in in in a in a window that pretty much will take you months even so yeah I mean it is in super interesting what's happening around not just anthropic also this open claw and and um but but apart from the market distress or what people might think human interaction is fundamental. I think what what what happened to me at least what what I learned from China is I I speak of this in Chinese I will say intermediary a little bit more than intermediate is not perfect. But again the thing is yeah you could communicate in different languages it which is kind of cool but obviously when you when you talk to someone in in your native language everything changed and that's why encourage me to study Chinese at least then under understand the culture around it I mean in in China you have all these interactions with Chinese friends and and you learn how to behave or you know you have these different cultural settings that helps you to do different things and you understand you know business etiquette, dining etiquette and things like you you present yourself, you show up you go to different places you open your network of people and somehow this has an impact on on your life. I mean the reason why I I end up living in Latvia at the beginning was because there was Latvian person I I I I was talking with in WeChat about the you know potential tech hops in in in in in in the European Union if you suggested Latvia because of a friend of mine my one of the closest friends I ended up having what they are now my Latvian friends so there are these uh China expats who lived in in in Beijing and and so on so we gathered together to have hot pods and and they introduced me the university that I did some project on on research before and and and things like this. So yeah fundamentally human interactions are super important. Now even around the Casp ecosystem I I've met people from the desert energy network of people that are super valuable with tremendous ethics and and when you show up you go around and you you put yourself out of the comfort zone that opens you up possibilities and and I guess that that's the message for most I don't know what's the age range or your audience Richard but for example not being not being afraid to make big changes I think it's is a big part of it. First time I went to China I put my life into suitcases and I said okay no idea what will happen I was super broke. I was like so broke oh my god I was so painful the master's degree then but yeah it it taught me a lot I mean it opened the options to go to Germany to the Max Planck Institute while while studying in in Beijing and that that would never happen to me coming from South America I had the head of the institute he was my direct supervisor during that uh research uh short term stay in uh Germany and even now back in my PhD when I went back to to Freiburg to use the library I was uh I was received as a as a guest not not as a common person in common schedules but I I was even giving a a key because you know you you stay here you were a researcher vas and so on. And yeah that that's like that's I think that's the best thing. So you you have this thing of technology going crazy in a way but then human interactions and networking and taking the chances opportunities I think that's fundamental.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Because yeah that's it's really key to have the I mean there's lots of people who are kind of concerned how is it going to impact jobs and how is it going to impact people's careers and how how would you from where you're seeing do you have any insights or ideas about how people should prepare if they're starting a career now how what kind of opportunities do you see that are AI proof?

SPEAKER_01 36:02

I love this quote is is really definite but maybe it is is is is funny in in itself. There is this guy who is uh called Sergei Nazarov is the the person behind Chainlink the co-founder of Chainlink which is a a project a blockchain project one of the top 15 infrastructure projects and and he said one in a once in a podcast if he wants to send a message to the to the youth he will say okay if you're really smart you're gonna make it anyways if you're not you're screwed anyways and the thing is just is that just a joke to say okay it doesn't matter I mean we we have various things that could happen in life you have to be open to the sense okay you you'll have lots of technology for us was the internet and for next generations will be other sorts of layers but somehow what you have to have at least is the intuition to choose something that motivates you and makes you passionate about it. Because that there is no limits on that. And and why why is the reason okay you can you can maybe you are an incredible coder now you have all these clots and you know payments for developers might be go to zero. We we never know. Or maybe developers will be more doing agency work on an orchestration stage or more niche kind of jobs. We don't never know maybe people have to repurpose in certain areas to to do something else. But having this open mind and say okay I I have to be adventurous enough to choose something that might give you you know the freedom to move from different areas or just to understand that in some point in time you have to transition to one very hard area to transition from to something different. In my case was for example law if if you're if you come from Ecuador and you study law in South America that absolutely ties you with your home country and your local price because very c very few people will give up their bar practice in their home country because they took them six six stages to get there. Some people might say okay no you have those skills and here you have something that you can just repurpose and do something else. So I think that's that's the beauty of of any change or or just how you can move from one area to another but it is is about passion I guess that's my way of looking at things.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Yeah that's really interesting and also something that I'm seeing is that you often need to stop something that's working in order to do something that's what will work in the future better right so there's some kind of pain and there's some kind of also confidence in in saying no this isn't the right path I'm going to choose another one that I'm that's not certain yet but it's there's something about that that is worth following. And there's also something powerful in following your passion as a kind of guide isn't it because for your interest or your purpose in terms of it gives you some extra drive if it rather than just kind of the logical pathway of what to do there's something powerful in following a a purpose that has some higher meaning maybe that becomes more and more important some interesting ideas.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

I mean for me is is an asymmetric bet always that's for for the upside. But then also I mean there are things that happening and you and you have to be brave enough to go out of your comfortable zone. You know instead of watching Netflix look at those free courses from from Anthropic and maybe you know just to have an idea just as as an example. But then yeah it it depends what what are your views I mean people like other things are things that eventually will never be or will very unlikely be taken by by AI anytime soon.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

But again those are different situations for different people obviously yeah yeah there's I think a lot of going to be a lot of change and there's there's a new everyone is going to have to need to kind of switch or there's but there's also an advantage in having multiple jurisdictions and also multiple so if you now you know China, you know Lithuania, you know Ecuador so it gives you a huge advantage right because you can then choose or you can like coordinate between the between them and then you also are multi-disciplined so you know law you know finance and crypto so you can at the intersection of those so you have that's I think that's a trend that gives people a huge advantage in the future is having these kind of multi these frameworks or like having these multi jurisdiction and multi-subjects having that is a huge advantage. So yeah what would you say yeah is there anything else you would like to discuss that we haven't discussed?

SPEAKER_01 40:28

I want to ask what what's your biggest market?

SPEAKER_00 40:31

I mean without disclosing more proprietary data but what where where most of applicants come from what are the the top of their concerns usually whether you have come across so for studying in China or just in general yeah it's really diverse we actually have a a lot from the US even though there aren't as many there aren't I mean like the biggest countries for studying in China is uh Thailand, Vietnam and uh there's like a bunch of Asian countries but we are kind of more English speaking and English speaking countries are more independent students who are searching to apply to university. I think yeah you usually like English speaking countries and then it's just extremely diverse like there's just students from every country and it tends to be the students that are more independent and likely to search online so they seem to be very high like high quality of students.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

Oh great yeah it's I was I was wondering yeah and and usually age range is is that something that comes very often as as a question?

SPEAKER_00 41:36

For for studying in China right?

SPEAKER_01 41:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

Yeah the age is usually like the majority is bachelors and then there's some for masters. So yeah most well most students who study abroad is it they do it for bachelors but then probably another percentage for masters and then some for Chinese learning Chinese.

SPEAKER_01 41:53

Yeah because I I mean my my only my only message on from the top of my head will be like I went to China when I was around I don't know 27 or so. So for me was doing my master's degree at that age was a little bit late comparing to my peers or comparing to other colleagues and and the PhD also because I waited a number of years to go back. And then yeah I mean the the I guess the the message will be if they're staying this long to to listen to us will be yeah I mean don't don't don't be afraid. I mean there is a point that you can catch up or even if your grades are not good enough I mean eventually you can adjust by consoling you can go get there I guess and that's with the proper direction. For me, you guys and my doctoral degree that was really huge thanks and huge shout out to China Nations for that because it made it made my process very very very clear very quickly. It was very hard to do on my own. I wouldn't have made managed maybe so that was something that it was it was of high value and appreciate it. Very happy to to see where your work leads you as well. And yeah lovely to connect and thank you for having me again.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

Yeah thanks for that Ancho it's good to chat.