Expert: Ishan Haque – Finding opportunities in new worlds | Metaverse, Crypto and NFT

Bryce: [00:00:53] Welcome to another episode of Equity Mates, a podcast that follows our journey of investing, whether you're an absolute beginner or approaching Warren Buffett status. Our aim is to help break down your barriers from beginning to dividend. My name is Bryce, and as always, I'm joined by my equity buddy Ren. How are you going?

Alec: [00:01:08] I'm very good. Bryce I'm excited for this interview. There is no more exciting space at the moment than crypto NFT, the metaverse, Web3. A lot of buzzwords, a lot of big ideas that we're trying to get our head around, and we're joined by an expert today who is really going to be able to help us and has a pretty amazing story in terms of how he's been getting around this space. So I'm excited for this interview. 

Bryce: [00:01:33] Absolutely. It is our pleasure to welcome to the studio, Ishan Haque. Welcome. 

Ishan Haque: [00:01:38] So glad to be here. Thank you so much. 

Bryce: [00:01:40] So Ishan is the co-founder of Geminio, a $50 million Australia based fund targeting crypto, NFT and metaverse investments. So we thought it was a great opportunity to sit down with Ishan and unpack everything that's going on in the space. Get an idea of what's attracting his attention and hopefully get a few tips along the way. 

Alec: [00:02:02] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And figure out how we can build something in the metaverse. Yeah, yeah. But Ishan, when we were researching for this interview, we read about your backstory and how you got into this space, which is, we think, a really interesting story. So we'd love to start there. What was your first introduction into the Metaverse and and all of the space, I guess? 

Ishan Haque: [00:02:28] If we go back to like high school, yeah, I built what many would consider is like a metaverse like business. And so I've been a gamer sort of my entire life. And if you guys know a game by the name of Minecraft for anyone listening that doesn't know that the kids probably play it or grandkids, you know, just this was a game where you can like, sort of design and create these virtual worlds and then monetise them by selling virtual items to players. And it wasn't on the blockchain, so this is what you would call like a web to metaverse. You know, in many ways when I did this business, it was great exposure into like running a proper business. You know, I figured out how to code, how to market distribution, hiring people. My introduction in the space was really running. This business gave me the insight for when I explored other digital technologies like crypto. An NFT is yeah, to me, it just made complete sense. The Metaverse wasn't like an if, but a when I was just thinking, Hey, yeah, if my players in the Minecraft game, if they own the items that they were buying from me and they were trading and swapping it in, I earned this fee from from creating these items. There would be a lot more engagement, probably a lot more, and the average revenue per user would be a lot more. And so to me, I was like, Hey, yeah, this is going to happen soon. And so, yeah, during this time, like I guess any other churches that I'm making on my businesses, I kind of got addicted to the rush of making money online, like out of nowhere. I think I was just very curious to do business and investing was very fascinating. And now that I had like money coming in from a small business, you know, I tied to the markets and, you know, loved the concept of your money making money, as everyone does. And so, yeah, I went pretty hanneman investing during the high school phase, I was one of the top prices on copper. I am like, I'm in physics class. I was like reading through all the forces of all the small caps and looking at all three BS things actually now, but calculating fully diluted market cap of all of these companies. And I was tired of all the rallies in the past, like five years of friendship, getswift, the weed, the milk firm, all of it. And so, yeah, all that stuff I was doing, you know, just just got me introduced into sort of investing in business. 

Bryce: [00:04:38] I guess making money out of nowhere. Must be nice. So Ishan, you were an investor in Animoca Brands. They're a company that were focussed on the crypto gaming space, but they were booted off the ASX in 2020. So can you tell us about this investment 

Ishan Haque: [00:04:56] to add to the back story. Because I was doing or doing all that stuff, I guess I was like involved in commerce and code. That's what I was primarily doing. It's only made sense. I would go study like finance and science and university. And then during uni, I was trying to find like the next big investment everyone wants to find, like the one that goes 100x. And so during that time, while I was looking for that, I need to, you know, I need to like work for people to learn. I need to like, I've never done any of this stuff before. So let me find some people that can sort of help me and some alts doing pretty well professionally. You know, I worked for a guy named Sean Connery, who sold his company to Amazon. He was in Silicon Valley and I started as like a glorified intern. But I ended up becoming a VP for his family office, investing in building some of the companies under his Amazon winnings. And I did the podcast stuff my first million and you know, we had a lot of investor. Sisters and entrepreneurs come on that, and, you know, when you kind of I was editing all the episodes, so when I'm hearing thousands of hours of advice, I kind of start applying that to every single investment I see on my day with this guy and this guy and this girl, and they all sort of apply the same sort of thinking to this investment. And so that ended up being sold to HubSpot's, which is a public listed company in the states. I was head of growth for Wes Blundy, who's based in Sydney and also shines like eight figure deep sea brands. Yeah, had a bit of dry powder at this time. This is probably like in 2020. I was doing pretty well and you tie all of that together, plus my insight from those Minecraft days when I came across Animoca that that was a no brainer for me. I had some money now, and initially I came across Animoca, probably, and when I was 18 years old and I put like $2500 into the stock is publicly listed on the ASX, like you guys mentioned, and it quadrupled until it delisted. And I was pretty sad day for everyone that was in the stock. And although although it was technically worth $0, Animoca still represented to me singlehandedly the best asymmetric upside bets to NFTs and metaverse when I was late 2020. So it's not too long ago. I think crypto hasn't had it made like the new highs yet and NFTs and Metaverse. It's only like almost a year like a year ago, but NFT and metaverse weren't really a thing at all in terms of the mainstream. But animoca itself, you know, it was Hong Kong based company dealing in blockchain and crypto assets at the time was worth nothing. And so this was not a company sort of or a market that was on the up and up. So it didn't make sense to buy then and so many wanted out of the sort of past experience I had. I was like, No, this is what this company is ticking the boxes I want in more than ever. My conviction for others, that's come bit frail. This was no longer a public company, so I couldn't just market buy the stock to go out and find shareholders as I ended up coordinating a block of shares with seven shareholders to buy it at a significant discount. I guess in a way, they thought they were shovelling dirt onto me, but I thought I was buying a gold mine essentially for free, right? And so that was at the end of 2020, but the block of shares I didn't know was going to happen so fast. But NFT volumes started skyrocketing immensely, and shortly after I bought the shares, those funds reaching out to me saying, Hey, they want to buy up all my shares for a million bucks. So I was like, Oh yeah, wow, this is like I'm twenty one. I never had like any money before, so I was a little bit crazy. But I said no, because a they were super aggressive in wanting my shares. So I thought something's around the corner. And so my hunch was right. A few weeks later, they raised a billion dollar valuation. And so for context, I bought the shares for about 50 million valuation. And yeah, 12 months after that, they raised like an $8 billion valuation. So that's like sort of Animoca story in a nutshell, I'd say, and how I sort of got into it and to know about. 

Alec: [00:08:53] It's a pretty phenomenal, I guess, story. You know, you had a metaverse business while you're in high school. Most, most people wouldn't know the term metaverse when they're in high school. Then you had this serious conviction for a company that was booted off the ASX and was was seriously sort of unloved and unappreciated. And, you know, starting and I guess having such a big win at such an early age, you know, a lot of people would take a break, maybe buy a house. I think Mark Cuban, when he when he had his big windfall, just bought a round the world ticket and went travelling for a while. But you're doubling down on this space, you're raising a fund to invest in crypto. Web3 Metaverse. Why doubled down and raised the fund rather than enjoy the windfall? 

Ishan Haque: [00:09:43] I'm not like, really special in terms of there's plenty of young people who have been beneficiaries of this bull market, and so I've met some of them. And let's say that they're much cooler than me. They've got the cars the houses bottle service every weekend type thing, and that's what crypto is kind of known for. Unfortunately, I'm just a massive nerd, and because of that, you know, I truly see what's in front of me while I was a part of these projects and investing in them early on. Just run up in crypto. Recently, I was just crypto as a whole, going from one trillion to three trillion, and that's like in two years. And although that's a lot like you own one to three trillion, I believe that this is going to 100 trillion over the next few decades. And so that's what excites me. The long game excites me. Yeah, even just in a five year timeframe, I think there's probably going to be many instances of companies starting from zero zero to a billion dollars and lightning speed. I can't take a break. I feel like I don't want to. I feel like missing a few months could mean you miss out on some of these generational outcomes. And so, yeah, I don't get distracted by the paper wealth because although my animoca i. So hold all that sorry. It's on paper that's the investment, but even the liquid investments are going well for me because I've done a bunch of these metaverse investments. Yeah, I'm just putting that all back into the fund. And, you know, although I'm extremely grateful for the position and the sort of investments going well, the so-called windfall is relatively insignificant compared to, I think, the trillions of dollars of value that's going to come over the next five, 10, 20, 30, 50 years. And I like that because I guess Warren Buffett, he had like a claw back and forth, like in or something where it's like, I don't care about a company's quarter results. I think that's right. Yeah. don't get bogged down and take a break, then I think this is just kind of starting and what a great time to sort of raise a fund and double down, especially when things are like 80 percent off discount. So that's I feel like it just makes sense to, you know, I'm a bargain hunter in nature. I bought the Animoca shares that, you know, basically dirt cheap for free. I'd love to do those sort of investments again. So, yeah, 

Bryce: [00:11:57] yeah, nice. So let's turn our attention to Geminio. You're partnering with Jack Teo, the son of TPG founder David Teo, and you've launched. So how did this partnership come about? Yeah. 

Ishan Haque: [00:12:10] So I guess people started hearing hearing about the investment and Jack Teo, he sort of and his family started TPG and the merger with Vodafone. He sort of ran Tier Capital builds Oscar Wylie. So he did all these things, or he had all these accolades. And he called, emailed me after reading like an article about my own micro investment. And he said he was very impressed with the investment and that we should tap is literally just like those bonds is very short. And so we just started chatting every day about projects that were like involved in. We're exchanging deals later. And I think after a while he was like, Look, everything it touches on a tiny goal is just to start a fund and I'll back you. Yeah, that's kind of the story. It's it's pretty simple, but clear. It's pretty random. You know, I never really wanted to sort of I just start to find I was like, Hey, I think about a part of the reason why I'm doubling down now is like, I said Animoca stuff. It's still like, I hold all that. I'm doubling down. I don't have more money to deploy into all the great products I'm saying. So why not raise a fund to keep doing what I'm doing and to do with him? 

Alec: [00:13:15] So you're raising money from high net worth individuals, many of whom probably, well, I'm assuming, most of whom didn't make their money in this space. So crypto, NFT metaverse, Web3, I'm sure you get a lot of confused look from investors when you're speaking to them. Yeah, how do you describe it? Give us the elevator pitch for this whole area of the market and why it's so exciting. 

Ishan Haque: [00:13:40] Yeah, I guess the pitch here is like, you're right. A lot of the the road show I did to raise the money is an education lesson for most people. And the first thing I'd say is at its core is the world going to be more digitally immersive or less, right? Are we going to go from these like cool electric cars or give Tesla its nice, futuristic, simple? Or are we going to go from Dollars and then go back to like horses and carriages? But probably not, right? And so, yeah, if that's the case, then as the digital world starts to eat the physical. Yeah, I hope you agree with me that digital assets that live within those digital worlds are going to be deeply rerated and to reflect that. So, you know, I think attention is a derivative layer of what forms GDP in the physical world if more of your attention switches from the physical and to digital. I think your Dollars are going to be spent in a digital world on digital items and less on the physical world of physical items. And so a lot of people are coming to the conclusion that these digital worlds are providing an entirely new layer of GDP and it's up for grabs. Yeah, a lot of these investors, like the pretty old dudes that don't know much about the digital world and have never played these games. And so I said to them like, Look, if you don't care one day your children or your grandchildren might care the same, if not more lives than their real one. Even just today, like people care about, you know, they don't really care about how they look in real life so much and they take a photo on Instagram and they put a filter on it. They care so much about how it's going to be perceived online in the feed. You know, some of that stuff is going to transcribe and just get more and more sort of towards towards the massiveness in the future. And so even when some of the guys don't agree with me and don't agree with that, I'm sustaining. I say it's fine because, you know, trillion dollar Facebook does, right? It's why they've made like this initial $10 billion bet that the world is getting more immersive. So and then when you just look at that, you know that 10 billion dollars that was in 2021, the spending more year after year to have a minimum budget of $50 billion over the next five years. That's one fourth of their earnings. And then you take that, you take one companies, you know, one company. His annual year, one year budgets of R&D and compare it to the market caps and the valuations of some of these targets and assets is trading less than that. You know, something's something's off here. Either Big Tech is over investing or, you know, some of these assets in a digital world are probably undervalued. That's that's the thesis and the elevator pitch of, Hey, this might be where everything's at. 

Bryce: [00:16:16] It's a fascinating space, one that we're constantly sort of trying to get our head around and offers a lot of discussion in the office. What assets are you targeting for the fund and then how do you think about investing in the assets themselves? You know, NFTs, cryptos tokens that you just mentioned versus the companies that are making these assets? You know, the Decentraland is the sandboxes, the roadblocks of the world. Where do you sit there? 

Ishan Haque: [00:16:43] Explain that, and you have to look at like, where does the investable opportunities like if I can say about once again, where do we where do we invest? And I think it's highly fragmented, right? It's not just this venture equity. You were really driven away to live in these worlds to take advantage of all the asymmetric upside. That's like the virtual hosting environments that maybe equity or token based, but then within those walls as NFTs as well. And so whether it's an asset in the form of utility or display or digital real estate or like these art collectables, it's all pretty. It's pretty fragmented. And so the our our core investment thesis, it goes from page, hey, in 1999, which is, you know, the I was born there was like a boom happening, kind of like the one happening right now. And it wasn't for like crypto or NFTs by us or something we're very familiar with today, which is the internet. It's the ultimate case study for what's about to happen again. Back then, when the internet wasn't so familiar, there was about a hundred and fifty million people on it. And I bet the one hundred and fifty million people didn't think they were so early. But having five billion people on the internet today, 150 million sounds pretty old to me. And so that's roughly the same amount of people that have crypto was today. I think we're very, very early. Biggest gains are yet to be realised. And so I look at, OK, what were those one hundred and fifty million people doing back then to sort of help? Where where should I invest the money? Back then I was a baby, so I don't really know. But I actually like reading on the internet, and what people are doing is it's pretty boring, right from what I've heard. The internet was a way for people to access and read information, mostly news and research. And but the innovation there was like the cost of transport for content became essentially free. And so as time goes on, structural changes happen allows. Like the second wave of the internet, Web 2.0 people had more access, faster internet speeds, cameras in their pockets, websites and apps that created a social life online. And then that sort of dawn the era of everyone becoming a content creator, whether it's music, videos, games, art, whatever selfies. If you guys are taking a selfie and put it online, your content creator. And so the internet gets more vibrant and richer, community starts forming. We start spending more time and digital lives than our real ones. And so that's when I say to investors like, Look, metaverse has already been a thing like this isn't something that's new. Habits haven't been just forming now. They've been forming over the past two decades. Your Twitter feed is a metaverse. Facebook's a metaverse. Going through Tik-tok. The Metaverse like Fortnite, is metaverse. When you're at home, when you're on a couch and on your phone and just scrolling through your feed, what are you doing in real life? You're just static in the real life not moving. You're like your mind is being consumed by the star and you're living in a digital world. If we sort of clear up what the metaverse is, then within them, what's like the sort of the next step? What more is there to be done? That's sort of where we come in like, OK, this metaverse is being built. The next wave of this is people. If they live in it, they're going to want to start owning things. That's why I like the investment thesis is we're going to invest in anything that enables that ownership mechanism in these digital worlds that that's going through these billions of people that come on board. They're going to want to start owning their existing those existing metaverse. Is that just talked about whether it's Tik-tok, Facebook, whatever, they've already proven that people will buy items in digital and digital worlds like we've already. This is not like a I don't have to. I don't have to argue with any investors about this. Like if you look at a fortnights or roadblocks that entire industry is generating 100 billion dollars a year in revenue. That's that's people that are willing to spend money on something that's physically intangible because they are living in another world where it means something to them or to their friends or to the inhabitants of that world. And so we agreed to do items can have real world value because people are already spending money on it. And the interesting part is like how much more money would you spend if you truly own these items? It was my platform, but you actually own them, and you could take these items to other platforms where you could sell for some money less or more than what you paid for it. Maybe you'd be willing to convert more to purchase something that wouldn't immediately go to zero. You'd punch that because I can actually make some money here that encompasses that that world encompasses a the companies that are building those type of experiences sort of like what you mentioned, the sandbox, which we're investors and before the fund. Should Decentraland, those are the people that are creating these bases, using software to create these virtual worlds. And then later, they'll couple it with hardware, where right now it's maybe on the PC or on your phone. But later we have some integration with maybe an Oculus or some some augmented reality headset to make it more immersive. And in the protocol is the NFTs, and that lets you earn the actual creations that you're building in those worlds. And so that's that's one way, like you mentioned. Second layer would be the actual tokens themselves that that drive the economies of these world, which I think a lot of people don't really realise. I think it's very interesting for your listeners to understand is I think a lot of investors will miss out on these new age assets because they apply old age investing principles to them. You can't value these, you know, worlds like stocks. You have to value them like nations, like countries. You can't really use value investing frameworks for blockchains because you come up with these like ridiculous ratios like 5000 and 7000 X or whatnot. And so, you know, when you look at some of these tokens, if you want to value it like a country, you have to prove that there's a one to one relationship between how much price of the token goes up and the growth rate of that token to GDP, a.k.a. probably like the, you know, the aggregate output of that economy. I think the value of of the chain comes from from the economic activity that it supports. So if you're trying to, like, relate with real life and in the physical world, the economic output could be transaction growth of the chain of the blockchain. So as transactions go up, you will see price should go up. If there's more growth, while the growth is kind of like the working population of like a real life real world economy, while growth goes up, prices go up. And then there's the stuff like TVL growth, which just like the amount of tokens on a locked in state in one of these projects. And so that can be like the financial sector of the economy. These are also new age assets. When you when you're valuing this tokens, that's kind of a way to look at them and to invest in and under the direction of teas, which you could do a million things with these NFTs. Right now, they're useful like flexing, and people are buying apps for like a million dollars. That's looks absolutely insane. But yeah, in the future, a lot of these NFTs won't be like worth a hundred thousand dollars per NFT to just be regular, you know, under $10, you buy them, you use them, you sell them, even if the price of these NFTs go down as a whole. I think what's really important to look at is the transaction volume and the actual use case behind them. You know, that's what we're looking at those is the projects in the three areas, the venture equity, which is the companies that are building these environments and host these virtual hosting environments in the token space with looking at investing in any tokens that are powering entire economies and there's actual use case behind them and kind of powering an entire nation or a country. And in terms of the NFT space, we're not looking to, we're not investing in the sort of cones and the skulls for like two thousand dollars. We're elected to invest in the actual utility behind them, whether it's a piece of land in one of these worlds that you can own and then you build experiences on those lands that generate income. His grandmother is the first time that you can have a digital asset that's yield generating, which is like insane. I've got a friend that bought a piece of land in the sandbox, and it's like getting some design and patent design in like 300 bucks to make an actual tower on it. And it's just to charge people like five thousand to come and just look at the Eiffel Tower and come generating. He bought the land for like 35 bucks. He's already made a couple of hundred dollars and this is the kind of world we're heading into, where there's unlimited possibilities and a great one is probably get people to understand why I'm interested in the game five space. Sort of like the F1 delta time or anything like the Racing Metaverse is where you own the racetrack. That's the that's the piece of land. And then you can host these races that have a prise pool and then people will pay an entry fee to sort of race on that for the prise pool. And then that's how your land becomes income generating. There's so many opportunities to go through, say three main assets NFTs tokens and the equity in the companies are building them and then within them. Probably the stuff that excites me most is the game five stuff, because that's what I that's my background. I've been in gaming. That's what I understand. But it can encompass everything does. DeFi does the on ramps and off ramps, from going from fiat into tokens that there's a lot of space. I just gave you guys like massive brands. It's it is just I think it's pretty important. Understands, yeah, really fragmented. 

Alec: [00:25:45] It's fascinating. And just some of those examples and what you're talking about, it's just it just boils. Blows the mind in terms of this whole world is sort of being created before our eyes and there's a there's a real gold rush there, I guess, in terms of people trying to figure it out and trying to see the opportunities. We're going to take a quick break and then we'd really love to get into, I guess, what the future could look like and some of the different players vying for space in this gold rush. But before then, we can take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. So, Sean, before the break, we spoke about your background, how you got into the Metaverse, Web3 crypto space and a little bit about the fund that you're raising. But now would really love to get into, I guess, the space itself and what the future looks like. So let's stop fraud because I need stop fraud before we get specific just to get my head around it. Give us an idea of what the future could look like as digital worlds and digital assets start to take precedence over physical worlds and physical assets. 

Ishan Haque: [00:26:50] There's pros and cons to the, you know, the future that we're heading into. I think a lot of people are very scared when I say, Hey, look, a large portion of your 24 hours right now that you're living in the physical world will be slowly converting into a digital world and people think, Oh great, we're going to be. It's like a dystopian type world where we have like these, you know, headsets on our heads or like half the day. And, you know, we sort of become it's like that Wally type world that we're living in. I get super fat. So, you know, in a way, like, I personally don't advocate for that. I think that the world that I'm most excited about is this is beyond entertainment. I think when you when you're allowed to earn on digital worlds, that gives ownership means like you can earn. And that's that's that's the magical thing with this whole metaverse stuff is that we will soon live in a world. And we've already had this actually occurred in the past year where anyone from anywhere to start earning money digitally online and the barriers to entry will just get lower and lower. And I guess to give you an example of that is there was a metaverse called Axie Infinity that some people know of where it caught a lot of attention in the Philippines and these developing nations where there's people that were in poverty, they heard about this game. If you guys know what this game is, it's basically like the Angry Birds of the Metaverse. It's like a little phone game. You buy these cute creatures, you can train them up to Candace other people with their teams of creatures and you win. You get the token with that tradition. So some real money does this dawn like this new era of what they call play to earn these games? The outcome of that has been pretty inspiring to see, and this is like the very first layer of what could happen in the future, where right now, you know, people were playing these games on their phones and earning some money, and some of them were supplementing that the lost Covid income, some of them created fortunes that there's plenty of case studies in this. I urge people to watch the documentary on Axie Infinity and that sort of action being watched on YouTube. And that was the first case of this. Like this really does. Does I think the biggest thing that excites me is a lot of the time. In the past it was usually like nerdy kids like me playing these games. But now this the metaverse eats everyone. And that is in the Philippines Dollars, an 80 year old couple playing this game to pay for medicine. This is no longer just like nerdy kids in the bedroom. This is like, Hey, if there's some real working opportunities you know from you bed like we had, we had Covid unfortunately happen and plenty of people resulted to, you know, your work and working from online. I think that's the sort of future we're heading in. If people want to and and some people need to write, don't have any other opportunities elsewhere, a lot more people beyond just the gaming stuff are going to find either these opportunities online and work from online. And it's not so much the sort of world that we luckily live in. This sort of first world countries along these developing nations are going to sort of fast track a lot of growth through tapping into the metaverse. I think that's that's that's the future that I like and I want to see, and I want to help build. But in terms of what our lives would be like, I feel like, you know, a lot of it will be. It's kind of like the Ready Player One or if you guys have read snow crash, it's a world where for the first time, magic can start to seem real. You know, we've got a combination of technologies. You know, if you just put like an Oculus headset on you with your grandma or something like that, it is insane. Yeah, it is insane. Like how fast some of this technology is progressing to make digital more massive. And I met a previously known as Facebook are working on like the finger haptics to make it so you can actually touch things in a digital environment. The way it looks like is you will either access, you know, digital worlds, probably through a headset or glasses, and it's it's going to most likely meld with the physical worlds or some form of augmented reality. You'll either work from it, you will game in it, you'll be educated through it. You can hang out with your friends in it and then through that, the world will be pretty magical, right? This is no longer restricted by, you know, physical space or. Physical constraints, yeah, you could see dragons flying along in the sky like you can't do that in real life, you know, the world gets a bit more colourful in that way. And on top of that, since you're living in it, you probably start wanting to own some stuff. So just like how you'd go out, you'd buy new apartments, you'll go to like a furniture store and and you'd buy a table for your homes you want to decorate. This is your place where you live. This is so proud of it. You get to feel the same about your digital home, where you're going to have friends from other countries and your friends. Or maybe like in different cities that want to come visit your home. You don't want to spend real money to have a cool looking table because like, this is now where you hide out and then where you want to impress your friends and say, Yeah, I think that's kind of the idea of where this is going. And, you know, it's been developing over the past two decades. We're carrying more and more about what we look like, and our digital presence substantially sort of manifests itself more as we go along. 

Alec: [00:32:07] Oh, I think when you say your digital home is, that's another house price that will get out of reach and we won't be able 

Bryce: [00:32:14] to get in, get in now. I remember coming across an NFT that was a replica replica of an apartment in the Burj Khalifa. I said, Yeah, yeah, not bad level 30 or something like that.

Alec: [00:32:27] Did it come with like a light? It was your place in the metaverse. 

Bryce: [00:32:33] I think it was your place in the metaverse. Yeah, that that was like a. Just like that, you're buying off the plan here. They said they were going to build like a full replica and you could buy one of the apartments in there and eventually take your mates and go, hang out. 

Ishan Haque: [00:32:46] Yeah, I think, you know, like guys listening. If you think house prices in the middle of a pretty expensive down just way the metaverse, they're going to get expensive soon enough. So I recommend, yeah, get to live in a tiny house in the real world and put the headset on and live in a mansion in the metaverse. 

Alec: [00:33:04] Just wait until the banks start realising they can offer mortgages in the metaverse, she opens up a whole other website. 

Ishan Haque: [00:33:11] Yeah, it was going to get pretty, pretty exciting.

Alec: [00:33:14] So when we when we talk about metaverse, one thing that we often try and get our heads around is the different visions of the Metaverse. So like Facebook, obviously changed their name to Metta, and they're building their version of the metaverse in. Videla has been speaking a lot about the Omniverse. Then we've heard from a number of people in the crypto space about the decentralised metaverse. How do you think about these different visions for the Metaverse? And I guess the key question is, are they compatible with each other or is a some of them going to have to lose as this whole vision gets built out?

Ishan Haque: [00:33:54] You know, I think for the most part, you're not a big fan of Facebook and the Big Tech guys coming in and what they're doing. I think a lot of the building this walled gardens, right where they're going to want you to play, they want you to live in their world and use their services and the whole, I think the crypto community was born out of, Hey, this is decentralised and we want to use whatever we want. We want to work together. We want we want all these projects to sort of mended and work together. We don't want to go to a centralised authority and start building adjacent to them. So can they be are they compatible with each other? So I think this is not like a winner. Take all type market you'll be talking about when you're building a new world. Anyone that's living on the physical earth is it. That's the term. So I feel like when you have like billions and billions of people ready to on board, I don't think one world is going to be the there. It's just not a winner. Take all here. The just like in went to, I think people a lot of people have this question as well with like, Hey, is Facebook going to be the and there'll be when when I saw that, is MySpace going to be the end, they'll be all or is Twitter or Snapchat Tik-tok like all of these new ones come up and about. And you know, it's got a bunch of people flock to each one and use them how they will and they use it and synchronicity, right? Like I will still, you know, message people on Messenger are going tik-tok and watch a few things or go on Twitter like to talk to different people. So I think it's going to be very similar. It's just a pattern. It's going to be very similar to Wimp 2 Warrior. This is just the next iteration of the internet. This isn't like an entirely new thing. Metaverse is a massive password. We won't be saying it hopefully soon. A. Bit crazy. It's a bit lame. So, you know, I think that after a while. Yeah, it's it's going to be like how we have to play it out. We will be transporting important links to all these different type of devices and and they will work with each other. And I think Big Tech just has like the sort of innovator's dilemma issue that's too big to a too slow to sort of create this new and exciting experiences that that the people really want. That's what I'm most excited about. Otherwise, people say, Hey, why don't I just buy Facebook stock or minister if I want to be bullish on the metaverse, that might really work. I feel like because I have a hunch they're not going to be the big winner here. 

Bryce: [00:36:11] But Ishan, before we just move to chatting about investing in the space a little further and close out the interview. Love to get your thoughts on your assessment of the Australian crypto industry. We've seen success with immutable, digital x and a number of other big players starting to emerge as well. So how how does Australia compare to some other countries around the world? 

Ishan Haque: [00:36:30] I think so far, I think immutable guys doing the best job so far of putting Australia on the map. I think I assess the state of the state of everything by talking to the people on the ground. I forget the stat. Forget the stats for a second, you have to see like the enthusiasm through the eyes of the people in the trenches. Building these projects, I do a lot of talks. I guarantee you these. I would help run these like Web3 programmes and seeing, you know, students being so excited that like like, you're right, yet you're part of like the gold rush. You feel like, Hey, this is my chance to sort of live like what it was like to be in a dot com bubble like the social media era. So in terms of companies being built out of here, I think there's a lot of great talent and a lot of projects a little practise in the early stage. And I'm saying being sent to me a lot, and it's usually, you know, the young people jumping on the bandwagon first. But you know, obviously there could be things like that could help more like, you know, it wasn't the best idea for them to breed off Animoca. Like that was essentially that was there were Australian stocks listed here that that could have been a really great Australian story. But you know, now that back and sort of Hong Kong and yeah, versus the other countries, I think Australia is still a little bit behind in terms of support. I think Singapore is a great place and where a lot of activities happening in America, this obviously America still has a lot of stuff happening in Miami and L.A. and New York, a little bit less than San Francisco, which when you think where all the stuff is happening there. But yeah, like I think Australia could do still do a lot more, just sort of get faster and even just are starting like the this metaverse fund. Yeah, it's been a been a bit of a journey. I'm legally in structure and in the structure way, you know, basing it out here in Australia, it's something that I've had to do a lot of education and a lot of talk and building relationships with people sort of get on board. It just was. It could have had a much easier time doing it elsewhere. I truly think, yes, this is the next iteration of the internet. The next Atlassian is going to be born out of Web3. And yeah, and it's just going to be great Australian start-ups. And I think Australia, I think it's up for grabs. Like I said before and someone and people in Australia, I think multiple startups in Australia will shine and Webster. And yeah, hopefully I can find them and invest in them to do that. 

Alec: [00:38:50] Speaking of investment, it's really easy to get excited about this space and you know, everything that's going on and you hear some of these stories and you're just like, you get you get really excited and really bullish and you want to have get in there. But as with any sort of new technology, there's a lot of hype. And you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of projects are real and then there are a lot of projects that may burst with a bubble if it if it does burst. So how do you separate, I guess, the signal from the noise? How do you what are some of the things that you look for to really know that this is a real project?

Ishan Haque: [00:39:27] I think the biggest thing so far is community engagement. People actually active in talking in like the Discord and Twitter, and a lot of people, a lot of projects these days, like you said, there's a lot of hype and it's a lot of like bonding of community, and they'll buy fake followers and buy fake activities and the discord and stuff that. So you really need to go in and, you know, talk to people. I actually go into projects and I'll see the people in the discord and I'll let DM the people just go and see if they're real. Plus, I'm like, Hey, where are you from? Know, like, how old are you, blah blah blah? How did you find this project? I'll see if that actually taught. Yeah, you can tell if that you know a real person, but I have a good chat with them and even maybe in a voice call and getting a group of them. So I think that's number one. I think transparency is huge. Getting access in terms of like right to that GitHub and seeing the repo and actually looking and auditing the smart contracts so they can't run huge, which if people are familiar with that term, there's a lot of these scammy projects that will build all the hype and then liquidate all their tokens on you so they can sort of run off with the wind. So you have to assess the governance design and see the incentivisation of that. And the economics really sets that see what the network effect is and how strong it is. And you know, it'd be the same as web, too in terms of assessing the team like, you know, what's their background and what's the looking period, I guess, is it's pretty good one or for that, you know how they're going to invest their tokens. And it's just, yeah, is this not a sort of run for that's the biggest thing in crypto. I think you have to look out for is, yeah, it is the Wild West. It's yeah, like you said, it's the gold rush. And so a lot of the people are trying to get rich quick and run off with a buck. Yeah, there's a lot of things you can do in terms of under the mercy. And so. Qualitative side, hey, look, is this what you're building real people gravitate towards? Is this traction in your product? Is everyone equally aligned for the first time? And this is the beauty of Web three? All stakeholders have incentive and they're all aligned. So your users, your investors, the builders you developers are building on top everyone's alliance because you know you have this token. And I think it's it's really important to assess all of that to try and distinguish the yeah, that the fake from the real, well action. 

Bryce: [00:41:50] Speaking of hype and to close out the interview today, recent data from Nonfungible has suggested that the average selling price for an NFT has dropped 70 per cent from the second of Jan.. How are you thinking about this market fall? Will we be talking about NFTs in six months time or is it a thing of the past?

Ishan Haque: [00:42:10] Yeah. So yeah, obviously me doing the fund and being fully invested. But, you know, I think the average selling prices is irrelevant in terms of in the future. NFTs individually shouldn't be worth millions of dollars. Most will be like under ten bucks. The actual participation of people in volume, you can see that through the volume of the trading of trading volumes should be the actual indicator of the activity. I think once the speculation dies down, real activity starts building. That's what we've just been through. The first phase of NFTs was like these sort of art collectables that you buy them and you flex them and blah blah blah. That is just pure speculation for the most part. And yeah, that was that was really the case because, hey, look, it's really easy to spin up, you know, like it's pretty easy to draw stuff and computer generated art and to sell it off, it's really fast, you know, that's naturally going to be the first thing. This isn't my quote, but anything great that has impact, someone said has is starts off as a plaything for the rich. And that's what NFT is. Were a bunch of people made. These millionaires and billionaires were minted because crypto was going up and what are they going to do? But I have all this money and they're going to go buy the stuff that this web to millionaires and billionaires did. Some of it. Yeah, but you know, some of the people want to allocate some of their winnings back into the ecosystem that made it that that was their wealth creation vehicle. And so that's why you've seen like all these sort of crazy NFTs going for millions of dollars and whatnot. But this is still from a pretty small sample space of a few million people. Although the average selling price based on a few million people is probably going to drop because most of them were speculating once. Yeah, a lot of these projects that takes time to build that are great projects, especially in the gamify area, which is which I'm from. To build like a great Triple-A title game, you can't build in a month or 30 days if it tastes like a long time. A lot of those will start to come out that are true and real projects that people want to play first, and the NFT is a secondary. It's not that the NFT is a first, and they want to play second, that they really need to be hooked on that and want to play and be in these worlds first. Yeah, that's just what I think about sort of the market for in terms of the selling price. I think that, yeah, speculation dies down, the real activity starts building. Mm hmm. [00:44:30][140.8]

Alec: [00:44:31] Yeah. There's a mental model that we talk about a lot on the show from Carlota Perez talks about how whenever there's new technology, capital flow floods to that sort of new, exciting technology, that capital forms a bubble that bubble burst. And then out of that, the sort of real projects real companies are real use cases of that technology emerge. And in the dot com bubble we saw out of the ashes of the 2001 market crash, we saw Facebook. So not Facebook, Amazon and Google and Microsoft really merge and have the two decades of dominance since. So, you know, Bryce and I talk about that in the crypto, an NFT space. We don't know enough to start assessing what those projects and what those tokens are, but it feels like you do wish on. So I'm sure this won't be the last time we spoke to you. We're very excited to understand this more and get our heads around this space. But today we have run out of time. So until we next get you on the show, if people want to follow you online and learn more about the fund and what you're looking at, is there anywhere in particular they should go?

Ishan Haque: [00:45:38] Yeah, I'm mostly on Instagram and Twitter. So on on Instagram, it'll just be. My name Ishan Haque And then on Twitter, it will be Ishan just with the UAE because I wasn't in already and I couldn't get my own Twitter. So I'm going to see things. Yeah, really. Thanks for having me, guys. My girlfriend's a huge fan actually of of YouTube and listen to shot a lot. So shout out to my girlfriend, Nicole. Yeah, thanks, guys. It's really awesome being on here and I could talk about the smell of that stuff for hours. I just so much to talk about. And so the investor roadshow was actually goes for like a couple of hours. So, yeah, I'd love to come back on again. And yeah, I'd love to get the feedback from the viewers. So yeah, let me. Message me on Instagram, Twitter and let me know what you guys ask me, questions or whatever we will. 

Bryce: [00:46:21] One of my New Year's resolutions that I wrote down at the start of the year was to buy a property in the Metaverse. So this is this is very, yeah, reignited. 

Ishan Haque: [00:46:31] Hold you accountable to it. Yeah. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time. Thank you, us.

Bryce: [00:46:36] Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of Equity Mates, we love hearing from you, so drop us a line at contact@equitymates.com or even better, go to your podcast player and leave a five star review. Also, a reminder that the Equity Mates content train doesn't stop when you've run out of episodes to binge. We've got a brand new website, a Facebook discussion group where on Instagram, YouTube and slowly making our way as an influencer on Tik-tok. That's Ren. So come and say hello and join the community. We'd love to welcome you until next time.