The Pilot Who Quit His Job And Went Into Crypto Full-time (With Nicholas Chew)

Hey hey, what’s up my friend!

In today’s episode, we have Nicholas Chew.

He left his comfortable paying job as an airforce pilot to go into crypto full-time without any safety net.

I believe it’s something that most of the population will never do because it’s “risky”, but still, Nicholas took the leap of faith and I respect him for that.

So in today’s episode, we talk about…

• How he became an Air Force pilot (the interview process, the training, the life, etc.)
• Why he quit being a pilot to go into crypto full-time without any experience
• Trends that are happening in the crypto space
• The 3 tokens he’s willing to hold for the next 10 years
• And much more…
  
  

Sounds good?

Then let’s get started…

Twitter: https://twitter.com/giraffe0x

Rayner (00:00)

Hey, what's up, my friends?

So in today's episode, we have Nicholas Chu.

So Nicholas left his comfortable paying job as an Air Force pilot to go into crypto full time.

By the way, he did this right without having any skillset or experience in crypto.

He just dives head in with no safety net and  I believe it's something that most of the population will never do because it's too risky.

But still, Nicholas took that leap of faith and I respect him for that.

So in today's episode, we talk about how he became an Air Force pilot.

We talk about the interview process, the training, the life, etc.

Then moving on, we talk about why he quit being a pilot.

Imagine, in Singapore, when you're a pilot, it's a high-paying job, right?

It's definitely above the median income.

Why did he quit being a pilot to go into crypto full-time without any safety net?

Then we talk about the trends that are happening in the crypto space and also three tokens that he's willing to hold for the next 10 years.

All this and more in today's episode.

Sounds good?

Then let's get started.

Rayner (01:19)

Okay, Nicholas, so happy to have you on the show.

Welcome.

Nicholas (01:22)

Thanks, thanks for having me. My first time being on a podcast.

Rayner (01:27)

I think I must say, having no you personally, I no respect what you're doing, having to leave, being a pilot full time with the Air Force to do what they're doing right now with no background and experience.

I think it takes tremendous courage to do what you're doing.

So huge respect for that.

I'm just calculating my hands.

How many percent of the population will do that?

So out of 100, I think less than 5% would do what you've done.

It takes bloody love guts to do what you're doing.

So fantastic.

Nicholas (01:45)

Thanks. Yeah, it's pretty, I mean, it wasn't an easy decision.

It was pretty crazy.

I mean, I'm also surprised myself.

But I'm glad I did it.

Rayner (02:07)

Maybe before we get to that, maybe I just want, for the audience to learn what were your growing-up years like.

Nicholas (02:12)

Growing up years? Uh, uh. Hmm.

Rayner (02:17)

How were you like in school and stuff like that?

Nicholas (02:18)

Oh, Ok. Like, I think just an average typical Singaporean.

Went to secondary school, JC.

But I think after JC was, that was when it deviated.

But yeah, I mean, just an average kid in school.

Playful, and enjoy playing computer games.

We used to go and play, and learn together.

Did above average in school, I think.

Just managed to somehow manage to pull that off.

But overall, I think just an average Singaporean kid going through the usual path.

Rayner (02:56)

I know you went through the JC route.

I'm curious why JC instead of poly?

I mean, sometimes it's...

I just want to hear your thoughts.

Nicholas (03:06)

Hmm. To be honest, I think it was really, especially maybe in our early years, there was a very fixed route that you were supposed to go by.

At least that was how I was brought up or conditioned to think.

Like, if you did well, you go to JC, you don't do so well, or you wanted something more practical, more hands-on, you go to poly.

I think that was the old way of thinking.

It probably has changed right now, but for me, it's always been as long as my grades for my grades to go to JC, that should be the default and obvious route, which I just followed.

I guess, blindly and without thinking too much.

Rayner (03:42)

So back then, if you do naturally well, just go for JC, if not so well then go for poly.

That was the mindset back then.

Nicholas (03:50)

I think so, yeah. Okay,

Rayner (03:53)

How have things changed now, do you feel?

Nicholas (03:56)

I haven't kept up with the latest changes in the education system. I think it's changed a bit.

But I think there is a growing acceptance of taking different paths.

And I think there's also a shift in thinking that not everyone should just go through the JC route, you need to get a degree.

Especially when we compare ourselves to other more developed European countries where there's a lot more emphasis on technical roles going out into the job market to figure out what it is you're good at, what it is you want to do.

And I think the poly route right now offers that if I'm not wrong.

Again, I might be ignorant here, but I understand that there was a push to allow people to go out to the job market, you know, get some experience, which I think is very important.

Then you know what you're good at, what you're not good at, and then you come back and refine the skills or you pursue a path that you are interested in.

I think actually in hindsight, that is a better model because I think a lot of people, especially myself included, coming out of JC, have no clue what we wanted to do, right?

We are just shaped by what our parents told us to do.

For example, my parents told me to be a doctor, but you know, that was not what I was interested in or, and without seeing what's out in the world, you don't know, yeah.

Rayner (05:21)

How then from JC, you got a career in the Air Force?

Because I believe that's your first job, right?

Nicholas (05:27)

Yeah, that was my first job.

Rayner (05:29)

So how did that happen?

Nicholas (05:33)

So after JC, I was clueless about what I wanted to study in uni and applied for a business administration course.

Not sure what I wanted to do, saw that the Air Force was open for applications, so I just submitted my application there.

Then it was only a year later into into NS that I received a call from the Air Force to come and try.

Yeah, so I just went through their process, their medical checkups, their basic examinations, interviews, and somehow or other just made it through the process and then was offered a contract with the Air Force eventually to start a career with them.

But involved signing a pretty long bond but because I was not very sure, rather clueless about what to do, I felt there was a good opportunity.

Everyone around me told me to go for it.

So, yeah, I signed on the line and started my career in the Air Force.

Rayner (06:48)

So you mentioned it took you like one year before you knew you got accepted.

Is that a normal time to wait a year to hear from them?

Nicholas (06:54)

Um, no. I've heard of people getting it at the start of their NS.

How what I understand it's a bit of an administrative process, Luckily of the draw, it's when they process your application.

Those who go through youth flying clubs in their early days, in their school days, probably process a lot faster, because the Air Force has more interest in these because they have a higher chance of success.

But for everyone else, I've heard of peers who got processed very quickly.

But for me, it took a year.

So I had to go through a year in NS before I started my Air Force journey.

Rayner (07:42)

So what was the interview process like?

Because I know it's very challenging actually to pass the interview and get a confirmed place.

So how was the interview?

What was the process like?

Nicholas (07:52)

It was my first interview in my being interviewed for the first time in my life.

I remember being quite intimidated.

Don't recall too much, but I recall as I was waiting outside the interview room, I heard the previous applicant go in, there was a lot of laughter, there was a lot of talking, and they seemed very relaxed and very comfortable with the applicant, and I felt a bit pressured because mine was very different.

It was tense.

They were asking me questions about how I'd handle stress, and how I react under certain situations and I left the interview.

I remember leaving the interview thinking…

“Um, no I didn't do, I didn't do so well”

But after going through the entire Air Force, an entire Air Force career, I realized I think the interview is small, doesn't play too big a role in the selection process, they are looking at a lot of other things.

Most, I mean, bigger factors would be things like your medical, because not everyone can pass the bars that they set.

There are also psychometry tests.

There's also your grades.

Yeah, your grades matter.

After that, there's the actual flying process that when they maybe screen 70% out, as only 30% make it through the cohort.

So I think the initial interview process is just a small part to play in the overall process of training a pilot.

Rayner (09:41)

Okay, so if they call you up for an interview, there's a high chance many will just get accepted, but the cutoff point is after which, through the pilot training, not many will be left.

Nicholas (09:49)

I can't say for sure what they're looking out for in the interview.

So I thought I didn't do well, but maybe they were looking for other traits.

Maybe I was too hard on myself.

Maybe I performed better despite thinking I didn't do so well.

So I really can't say for sure.

Rayner (10:08)

What are some of the questions they asked you?

You mentioned to see how you handle stress.

Any other questions that come to mind?

Nicholas (10:13)

I think they asked, initially they asked like why do you want to be a pilot?

I didn't have a very inspirational story about dreaming of flying when I was young so I don't think I did well there I remember them asking me some because I was in the armored infantry during my NS, so I remember them asking something along the lines of…

How will you handle stress in a tank compared to in a plane?

Something along those lines.

Yeah, and I tried to answer it to the best of my abilities.

Rayner (10:57)

Did they like ask you those technical questions like which is the fastest aircraft, which aircraft can fit the most people, and stuff like that?

Nicholas (11:02)

Oh no, no, no, they didn't ask.

Rayner (11:06)

They didn't care too much about how much you know or how little you know about the flying itself.

Nicholas (11:09)

Yeah, for me at least.

Rayner (11:10)

How many stages of the interview are there?

Nicholas (11:12)

Just one.

Rayner (11:13)

Just one?

If you pass mean you're getting ready to train?

Nicholas (11:17)

I think there are three parts.

There's the medical, there is the psychometry test, like a computer test, and then there's the interview.

Rayner (11:30)

Okay, so you pass the first two and then you get to the interview.

Nicholas (11:31)

I can't recall the sequence. It might be the whole recruitment process.

I don't think one comes before the other.

Rayner (11:43)

What's a psychometry test?

Nicholas (11:47)

It's like a computer game where you go and you sit in front of a computer there's a joystick, there's a mouse they put you through some...

They give you a computer game to play against.

Move the dot to a certain point.

The interesting one was when they reversed the controls so your joystick, you push up, you go forward, but now you push up, you go backward.

It shows how good your psychomotor skills are because I think that's very important.

You need a basic decent standard of psychomotor skills.

Playing copier games since young helped a lot with that.

There's also like sort of an IQ test as part of that.

So memory tests, I think just basic tests to test for intelligence, memory, psychomotor skills.

Rayner (12:53)

Are they looking for maybe the top 10, 20% of people with such skills or average, they're also okay with it?

Nicholas (13:00)

I don't think they're looking for the top 10%.

As of late, with our declining birth rate the pool of talent that they can source from is shrinking.

I wouldn't say they're lowering standards, but I guess they will have to set more people into the program and give them a shot.

I think as long as you don't end up wasting the Air Force money, which is taxpayers' money by being a non-quality candidate.

So as long as you try your best, and you meet certain basic standards, they'll let you through, and then they will try and assess you at the flying stage.

Rayner (13:51)

Okay, that's the most critical, like assessing you.

Nicholas (13:57)

Yeah.

Rayner (13:58)

So how long does it take before you get to be assessed on that flying stage?

Nicholas (13:59)

I would say it took about half a year or a few months.

Rayner (14:10)

Before you fly a plane.

Nicholas (14:11)

Yeah, that's where before you go for this initial phase called air grading, that is the first stage we all go through.

But yeah, that's it actually in recent development there's another test before you go and fly in the plane.

I think it's a new project.

It's meant to let you play around with actual flying simulators in the Air Force.

So they build these simulators where you go in and you fly a flight simulator.

That's where they will do more assessments of people before they go for air grading, which is to fly the plane.

Rayner (15:20)

So how does it feel like, for the first time to fly a plane?

Because I think 90% of the population will never fly a plane in their life or more than that.

Nicholas (15:37)

I would say for me at least it was quite intimidating at first.

Especially because in the basic training, after a certain stage they let you fly solo.

To me that was initially very intimidating because you know that you're all alone once you're up there.

If anything goes wrong you are supposed to be able to handle it.

There was also at the later stage of the basic training, there is also close formation flying where you fly close to another plane and for that phase, you also go solo at some point.

Being that close to another plane, it's like 10 feet.

I think what you should do is not keep thinking about the disaster scenarios, right?

Block those thoughts out.

But when you think about it, you realize, shit, this is how close you are to danger, catastrophe.

The training is rigorous.

They get you to a point where you are ready to handle that.

You just have to trust the training, be comfortable, be courageous.

And after a while, you start to learn to enjoy the process.

I remember when I was in Australia, and you were just flying over the landscape, flying over the sea, diving in and out of the clouds.

There's that sense of freedom.

There's a sense of like…

“Wow, this is pretty cool”

Especially when you're flying solo, you're completely free.

We practice our aerobatic maneuvers solo so you're doing loops in the sky.

Rayner (17:43)

The movie Top Gun how similar is it like to what they're doing?

How many percent resonances can you relate to it?

Nicholas (17:53)

I ended up being a helicopter pilot.

I have never sat in a fighter jet.

I'm not qualified to say.

I don't think it's too similar.

I mean, Top Gun, is very dramatic, but maybe 50%.

I would say…

For me, helicopters, the other thrills, other challenges.

Because the challenge of helicopters is flying very close to the ground.

When you fly that close to the ground, other challenges present itself.

I mean you watch Black Hawk down, things like that.

Equally exciting, are different challenges.

Rayner (18:46)

Earlier you said that when you fly solo, so does it mean that...

You are alone in the sky and then is there anybody watching you?

You're flying solo, but is there like some senior watching you, making sure you don't do anything funny or just on your own and on time, on target, come back to wherever you need to be back.

Nicholas (19:00)

Sometimes they send an instructor and another aircraft to fly, to shadow you.

But I don't think that's always the case.

Yeah, at some point they do trust you because eventually, they have to train you to a point where you go out, do your mission, and come back.

No one's watching over you.

So at some stage in the training, yeah, they let you go.

You're tracked on radar by the aircraft, the air traffic controller.

Right. But yeah, I mean you can't do things that would be illegal, like you know pushing the plane past the G boundary.

Rayner (19:43)

What's the G boundary?

Nicholas (19:44)

So G is like G force.

This goes back to Top Gun, when you do a sudden maneuver, like a hard turn, you sustain G forces.

That is the force of gravity.

The plane has a certain G limit.

You can't yank it too hard or pull past a certain G limit.

Otherwise, you might compromise the systems on the plane.

Rayner (20:17)

So what's the limit of the G that you are constrained to?

Nicholas (20:18)

Well, it's been a while since I flew that plane.

If I'm not wrong, it's about seven Gs.

Rayner (20:26)

So layman, I mean, I can never understand what is seven Gs.

How does Seven G feel like?

Nicholas (20:30)

It's just seven times the weight of gravity on you.

There's a lot of force, your skin gets pulled down, and your blood rushes down to your legs.

Even F1 drivers feel that when you do a hard turn at high speed, you feel that force.

That was another aspect of Air Force training that was interesting.

We had G-Force training on the ground, where we had to sustain up to 9 Gs without blacking out.

Rayner (21:06)

How does it work?

Nicholas (21:10)

So there's a machine in the aeromedical center that spins.

When it spins, it recreates this force, this G force.

They can calibrate it such that it slowly increases up to 9 Gs.

We are taught in training how to…it's like tensing of muscles.

There are NTG maneuvers to help you to survive in the G-force.

Because if you don't do those things, what happens is you black out, and many people black out.

So we watch in the machine, there's a video that's looking at your face.

We can watch our other coursemates go in and try.

When they black out, it's always a very hilarious image.

It's not fun for them, but we all go through it so we can laugh at each other.

You're supposed to be able to stay awake and not blackout because the idea is that if you go up in the plane and if you cannot sustain the G-force you blackout and you crash.

Rayner (22:12)

What was the biological reason why you blackout when the G is too high?

Nicholas (22:19)

Yeah, because of the force, the blood rushes away from your brain down to your legs, and without that blood.

What you experience is your vision starts to constrain, like a shrink.

Then if you don't fight it enough, you lose, and you black out.

Rayner (22:41)

How do you fight it?

Nicholas (22:46)

You fight it by tensing your muscles. So actually they do prescribe a lot of gym work.

So while we were trainees, we went to the gym almost every other day.

Staying fit, and having muscles help.

You wear an anti-G suit also.

The suit is like a pants and it inflates when the G force increases.

So it helps you to further tense your muscles because when you tense your muscles, you force the blood back up into your head.

Then there are breathing techniques as well.

Rayner (23:24)

Got it. Yeah.

Nicholas (23:25)

Not everyone passes this.

So you don't make it past this like you always blackout.

Then that's another stage where you can get accreted.

Rayner (23:33)

What's the percentage that will can't make it through this stage?

Nicholas (23:37)

I don't have statistics, but I would say maybe one in 50.

Rayner (23:44)

Okay, it's quite a small percentage. Yeah.

So let's say from the day you start your Air Force after you pass the interview, you start your training, then to the day you graduate to become a full-fledged pilot, what's the percentage that do make it?

Nicholas (23:55)

Hmm. Yeah, I would say maybe 30%.

Rayner (24:03)

Wow. Then 70% don't make it at all. That is brutal.

How long is that entire process?

Nicholas (24:09)

About two, two and a half years.

Rayner (24:12)

Are these statistics very consistent, like throughout the world, if I get a private plane license, I have a 70% chance that I won't be able to get a license?

Is it just the Air Force itself because they are more stringent?

Nicholas (24:23)

Oh, very different.

Air Force is a lot more stringent than commercial or private flying.

Like commercial planes, you don't have to worry too much about G-forces.

The other part about being an Air Force pilot is also being an officer.

So we go through OCS like any other officer and that's also a stage where you may not make it and this is not true for private commercial airlines.

So the Air Force has a lot stricter criteria to get through and more rigorous training.

Not the same.

Rayner (25:14)

Once you become a pilot, I think many are curious, what's the day of your life like when you're a pilot?

Nicholas (25:27)

So once you become a fully operational pilot in the flying squadrons, a day in the life, you show up to work.

Everyone has to show up to work at the same time to make this thing called a morning ops brief.

It's where we all gather together and we get any important notifications.

We do a mini test for the junior pilots where we talk through some kind of everyone on certain knowledge about the aircraft that you're flying.

This is to make sure that everyone is not slacking, the standards are being maintained and we keep people on their toes.

It's quite an intimidating process.

For example, you get singled out in the whole squadron of 50 people, you stand up and they throw you an emergency scenario.

You're flying over the South China Sea; something happens to your aircraft and boom!!!

What are you going to do?

You talk it through. In front of 50 people.

The idea is that you can't do it there.

Then if you're on a plane, you're not going to be able to do it.

Many people stumble on this, but it's a learning process.

Sometimes it's painful.

I won't say ridiculous, but like you get critiqued.

You get sarcastic remarks, but it's always done to ensure that good standards are being maintained.

You can imagine over time, your basic knowledge gets forgotten, the day-to-day things get in the way and you forget things.

A lot of lying is about being very certain about what you're going to do next.

I mean in Top Gun, Tom Cruise said…

“Don't think, just do”

It's true to quite a certain extent.

Like when shit happens, you shouldn't have to like…

“Oh, what do I do next?”

It has to be fast, it has to be quick.

That's what we are trained to do all the time.

I don't think that any other jobs like these are out there where every morning you get quizzed on what your basic professional skills are to that extent.

So it's quite challenging, it's quite rigorous.

Rayner (28:28)

The ones that ask the questions, it seems like these types of questions are very situational.

So you can't prepare for all these questions or is there, or you can?

Nicholas (28:29)

You can try and prepare. I mean there’s an emergency book of all the common emergencies, you should study those.

Any instructors will be the ones that ask you.

You asked me what is a day like.

That's just the first hour of our day.

Rayner (29:02)

Oh, your brain screwed (Laughs) yeah.

Nicholas (29:03)

You go in, if you haven't woken you can't be late for work.

If you're late for that brief, even one minute late, you buy the entire squadron breakfast.

Rayner (29:14)

Wow, that's like $500.

Nicholas (29:18)

Maybe not there are not always so many people but you know it's meant to keep certain discipline because like I said…

Any other day you're an officer and then you end up a pilot.

That brief, if you don't do well in it, it can influence whether you fly or not in the later part of the day.

Rayner (29:34)

Oh, so you fly every day?

Nicholas (29:35)

No, not every day.

But if you're scheduled to fly, if you don't do well in that brief, and the instructors think you're not prepared, or you're slacking, they may cancel the flight that you're supposed to fly later in the day

Rayner (29:54)

Okay.

Nicholas (29:55)

So you make it through that morning brief, then comes preparation for the flight.

Paperwork, and briefings to be done.

Eventually, you do a pre-flight brief to your crew because for helicopters you fly with a set of people.

After the brief, you can fly your mission.

The mission may take about two to three hours.

Come down, and debrief.

Then after that, you have time to go through your emails and your other work.

Rayner (30:32)

I thought that would be the end of the day. Still got emails to another work. Okay.

Nicholas (30:36)

Yeah. So if you're flying today, actually a big part of the day is taken up.

Maybe you're done like, 3-5 PM If it could take longer, if there are other things.

Then after that, you have your other work.

A misconception is that pilots only fly. That's not true.

A lot of us, I think everyone has secondary duties, secondary appointments in the Squadron.

Everyone plays a part in supporting the operations of the Squadron.

The junior guys, we have junior roles from simple things like you know stocking up the pantry.

Sounds simple but very critical job to the CEO of the Squadron who you know is in charge of many other things dealing with external agencies, setting goals, managing operations, managing manpower, HR, and R&D.

Everyone has a secondary role and that's why emails come in, that's why meetings come in.

So apart from flying, we have all the other kinds of jobs that I guess a regular job would entail.

Rayner (31:46)

Seems like you all wear a lot of hats, the flying hat, and the officer hat, and making and making operations run smoothly.

Nicholas (31:56)

A lot goes into getting flying operations done well in the squadron.

The least envious role is the, they call a planner or programmer, the one that plans the flying program.

Yeah, that person has a horrible job because it's firstly so tough to schedule the day's plan.

Different people need different flights.

Going to different areas at different times.

Then he has the curve balls where suddenly just before flying, it rains, thunderstorm, you can't fly.

So all flights are delayed by an hour or two hours.

We call that phase like mahjong where flights get shifted around.

Then the programmer is the one that has to handle all these.

Or if it's not weather, maybe one of the planes breaks down

So went up for a flight, and didn't do well, as I broke down, came back, need servicing.

Then the later flights can't fly the aircraft.

So the programmer again is involved in figuring out just this plan.

Very dynamic the day.

You might go to work thinking you're gonna fly, then you don't fly, then you fly, and you always have to be prepared and ready to do the mission.

Rayner (33:20)

So what exactly does a mission entail?

Nicholas (33:24)

I flew the Seahawk helicopter.

A typical mission would be flying out to the South China Sea, which is our training area because we are a naval-based helicopter, so we need to operate over the sea.

We would be just practicing our basic maneuvers, so the Seahawk, one of its missions is anti-submarine.

You will be practicing maneuvers about how to position the aircraft, and how to search.

The other role is anti-surface, so you learn maneuvers on how to escort a ship.

So you'll be over there simulating, practicing, rehearsing, just to hone your skills.

Sometimes it could be preparing for a big exercise that's coming.

Other times it's just maintaining your proficiency because with flying, if you don't do something frequently, if you don't practice frequently, you lose the skill very fast.

Rayner (34:34)

It's not like a bicycle, once you get it, it's different.

Nicholas (34:39)

Yeah, it's not like that.

You need to keep practicing.

Otherwise, they say it gets cold.

Once it's cold, you're not as quick, you're not as sharp.

That's where accidents can happen.

Rayner (34:54)

You mentioned that you don't fly every other day.

So what's like the frequency that you fly?

Nicholas (35:02)

Maybe three, four times a week.

Rayner (35:06)

That's like a bare minimum for everybody to fly three, or four times a week.

Then the rest of the time is wearing your other hats, whatever duties you need to fulfill you do it.

What's your favorite part of your job since you wear so many hats, curious.

Nicholas (34:22)

Favorite part of flying as a pilot?

Rayner (35:23)

Yes.

Because you said you have to, I guess the planner has a tough job.

I guess the planner is also a pilot.

So not only did he have to fly the plane and all that.

Nicholas (35:53)

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Favorite part.

I would say…

I think the satisfaction of executing a maneuver to pinpoint accuracy does give me quite a bit of satisfaction.

Knowing that I've done it to the standards and firstly obviously practicing very hard for it, training hard for it, and knowing that it will come in useful for one of my operations or exercises one day.

Yeah, I think that's the best part about flying.

Being able to control the machine, such an intricate and complex machine, and maneuvering it to what you want to achieve out of it.

That takes skill, that takes practice, and when you can do it, it's a very rewarding feeling.

Rayner (36:40)

Can you give you an example of what is a maneuver?

To me, it's like maybe we just turn left and right.

I guess there’s more to it than that.

Nicholas (36:49)

As I said, we hunt submarines.

There are SOPs that we have on how to hunt a submarine.

Because submarines are underwater, you can't see them. How do you catch it?

Very broadly, how we do it is we lower this thing called a sonar into the water which sends sound waves out, pings, and tries to find a submarine.

If you pick up on a faint signal, that's when you know you might have a credible submarine in the vicinity.

So the maneuver then is actually how do you efficiently and successfully get to the submarine.

It relies on working with your crew because you have a crew behind that operates the sonar.

He'll tell you which direction it is, and how credible it is.

Maybe you have two different sources of signals.

You have to assess which one is more credible because you only can choose one.

When getting to that place, the submarine will have moved by then because of the time it takes for you to move there.

So it's about flying fast enough, being very quick in your maneuvers, and getting to where you think he is next.

He would have moved.

Then after that, it's a continued process.

Hopefully, you find him closer than you previously found him.

After a certain iteration, you will be very close to him and close enough to launch your torpedoes to kill the submarine.

Rayner (38:33)

Also, helicopters can launch torpedoes to kill the submarine.

I have no idea. So there's a torpedo on your helicopter, and you can shoot it down to hit a submarine?

Nicholas (38:41)

You don't shoot it down.

The concept of torpedoes is different from missiles.

Torpedoes you just release them in the water and they will find the submarine.

But you have to bring it close enough.

Otherwise, the torpedo is useless.

Rayner (38:54)

Okay, so the torpedo is like a heat-seeking detected, you can sense where the submarine is and then find it.

Nicholas (39:00)

Everything underwater is sound detection.

So yeah, it will use sound detection to find the submarine.

Rayner (39:05)

Wow, nice, nice. And of course, if it’s the wrong target, they just probably hit into a bunch of rocks and just really explode.

Nicholas (39:11)

Yeah. Yeah.

Rayner (39:14)

Have you ever launched a life torpedo before?

Nicholas (39:15)

Yes. Once in an exercise.

Rayner (39:19)

So what was your target then? Submarine?

Nicholas (39:25)

Oh, I think this was in the U S where they planted an old ship into the water as a target for people to practice

That was for the ship firing.

But yeah, we have dummy targets that are released in the water.

The idea is that you launch your torpedoes to try and hit those.

Rayner (39:53)

Also, I see, I don't know how true it is, in movies, helicopters have those huge ass machine guns. Do you happen to use that as well?

Nicholas (40:00)

The Seahawk has been deployed for missions like that to the Gulf of Aden for anti-piracy missions and when we do that we have a gun like that on board but it's not the pilots who are the ones operating it.

It's your crew because it's mounted at the side of the helicopter out of the door and that's where they use the gun.

Rayner (40:19)

So in a helicopter how many crew members do you have with you?

Nicholas (40:24)

So there's a pilot, co-pilot, and two more crew behind

One's the sonar operator and the other one is like a tactical officer who handles and manages the mission.

Rayner (40:38)

The pilot and co-pilot will be in charge of just flying the plane and two of them will just do anything else related to the mission Correct?

Okay cool.

What's the strangest or maybe the funniest thing right that you've ever experienced being a pilot?

Any encounter that comes to mind?

Nicholas (41:00)

Strangest...

I wouldn't say strange, but maybe the most challenging thing I've experienced is because of the Seahawk, we land our aircraft, and we land the helicopter on the back of a ship.

So that's one of the most challenging maneuvers.

You can imagine being in a rough sea, the ship is rocking left and right, strong winds, and the ship is moving forward.

So different forces from different angles and you have to land the helicopter in a small spot.

Now imagine doing that when it's in a thunderstorm and if it's at night.

Yeah so I've done that before, it's not fun.

Especially at night, you're wearing your night vision goggles, it's pitch black out in the middle of a sea and you're supposed to put the helicopter down there.

Not fun.

Every time I get out of the helicopter after doing that, I'm always thankful to live another day.

Rayner (42:15)

There's quite a high probability that the landing doesn't go as planned and then what happens next?

Nicholas (42:20)

No, I wouldn't say high.

We're all very well trained.

There's a very low probability that something should go wrong.

If you do your job well.

Rayner (42:40)

Because this reminds me of the Top-Gun scene where they need to land the damn plane on the ship.

I think it was a helicopter but it gives similar stress to aim that thing and just...

Nicholas (42:49)

Yeah, it's different.

But similar concept, I mean the ship is a small spot where you have very little margin for error and sometimes it requires you to do it fast you could be running out of fuel.

I think that's what happened in Top Gun.

You may not have unlimited tries to do it so yeah you have to be confident in everything your whole training leads up to that point by getting you confident getting you proficient getting you ready and then just doing your job.

Rayner (43:31)

Being a pilot in the Air Force, before we move on around, I like to know if there are some things that people outside of your industry will not know, so kind of like insider information that only the insiders will know?

Nicholas (43:46)

I mean I shared earlier about how intense our brief meetings are in the morning.

I think that's one for sure.

Two is how people think that, like I said, pilots only fly because I can tell people that I have other work to do.

They're always like…

What other work?

The other work is a big part of our day-to-day.

The other works are a big part of what influences promotion within the Air Force.

I guess the idea is that everyone is expected to be able to fly.

You can't judge a pilot by his being better at flying.

It's very subjective and it's very hard to measure.

There's a standard that you can't fall below.

Otherwise, you get into trouble.

But you're generally not rewarded for flying better because how do you even define what's lying better?

As long as it's a safe mission, the mission's accomplished, that's the job done.

A lot of assessment for promotion, for bonus, is on the other work that you do because that's a much less subjective way to assess someone's performance.

I don't think, I wouldn't say this is only...Isolated to the Air Force.

I think in other jobs as well where your target is not just a sales target?

Then a lot of things, now I'm in the Tech industry, I know for a fact that when you're in Google, the side projects that you do, the other things that you do, they call it, I mean the Singapore term is CCA, those are the things that differentiate you.

It's true in the Air Force, your CCAs.

Your secondary requirements play a big part in how you get promoted.

Rayner (45:46)

Is this like this concept in the Air Force you wear multiple hats?

Is it all over, all around the world, other Air Force as well?

They don't just fly, they do other things as well, besides flying.

Nicholas (45:55)

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Rayner (45:56)

Okay, okay, got it.

So moving on…

I mean, how long were you in the Air Force, how many years is it?

Nicholas (46:03)

Since 2007.

16 years.

Rayner (46:10)

Time flies.

Okay, so then, as we both know, you left the Air Force, right, well-paying job, senior down there, and to go into crypto full-time.

You have no experience in crypto, you have no background, education, or whatever.

So what made you make that huge leap of faith that, not many people would do?

Nicholas (46:30)  

I wouldn't say my initial thought was to go into crypto.

It was more of a move into software engineering coding. That was my initial plan.

It started when, I think during COVID, for a few years by then, I already had a little bit of restlessness in me.

Feeling a little bit bored and not challenged in my work.

I felt like I didn't want my entire career to be in the Air Force.

I felt like there were more things out there in the world and more things I wanted to achieve and I had to make a decision.

I think many people feel this way too like they're not too happy in where their job is and it's not because the job is bad on anything, either they've just outgrown it or life circumstances change.

There’s always a question then like what else do you want to do?

I went through many iterations of what I wanted to do.

As a pilot, you don't have many.

I would say, directly transferable skills.

You're not like a consultant where you can go and work for a bank, you can work for any other company or a lawyer.

They can go in-house to get a lawyer for some other corporate firms.

I struggle with a lack of alternative transferable skills.

COVID was the time when I decided to pick up some coding, took on a few courses, those online courses, and realized…

“Hey, I pretty much enjoy it”

Thereafter, I went to take a software engineering boot camp.

This was a six-month part-time boot camp.

Then after that, after learning how to code, that was when I decided…

“Hey”

Since I was also interested in crypto, because at the point it was in the peaks of the bull market, and I was very interested in crypto, and I realized there's a big software or coding aspect to crypto.

I said…

“Why not marry these two interests together?”

That's how it brought me into crypto as a software engineer.

Rayner (49:06)

I see. Maybe just to backtrack a little bit, earlier you mentioned that as Air Force, your skill is non-transferable.

Because my train of thought would be, I think Singapore, not sure if it's the AC 45 or the 55, you can't fly in the Air Force, then many will just go to commercial flying.

So would that not be transferable since just flying in the private sector instead of the government?

Nicholas (49:26)

Oh yeah, I mean, that's true.

So that's the only, I would say, probably one of the only transferable areas where you can use your skills.

So most pilots, once they leave the Air Force, do go on to become commercial pilots.

But for me, that didn't make sense because I was restless.

I wanted something different.

I didn't want to go hop into another aviation flying career.

Rayner (49:57)

Still doing the same thing but under a different umbrella of corporation.

Nicholas (50:00)

Correct. And I think generally, yes.

I would say, yeah, airlines flying, it's more of the same thing.

A lot of people go there and eventually retire.

So it's not an upward trajectory kind of career. It's more, yeah, I wouldn't say you're like cruising or whatever, but obviously, it's challenging initially, but after a while, steady state, you're just like a bus driver, flying, ferrying people from one place to another.

I wanted something more challenging. 

Rayner (50:35)

After you go into crypto, you pick up some programming skills.

How do you then find your first job in it?

Because you're, after all, someone who has very little experience, right?

And I think many people are wondering, how do they even get started getting hired?

Nicholas (50:55)

I was lucky I think.

I offered to help a friend with his crypto project startup for a few months and after that, he offered me a full-time role because he had seen the work that I've done and it was of good quality.

Even though I didn't have a lot of experience, I think being older, being more mature, and being in the Air Force for so long, you develop soft skills.

Things like good communication, presentation skills, and high-level thinking.

All those are three very soft skills that apply to software engineering but are not easily, not tangible, and not easily communicated across.

Someone who does not know you will not be able to see those skills.

But when you do work part-time, if you become an intern, actually those are some of the best ways to land a job in a good company.

For me, it was just my friend's startup.

He saw that I could bring those things to the table on top of coding, which initially wasn't my strongest point.

Thereafter, yeah.

She decided to hire me full-time.

I was worried, that there are software engineers all over the world in your developing countries that charge, that are paid much lower. How do you compete with them?

That's something that my dad previously asked. I didn't have a good answer.

But after going through this and realizing the soft skills that I had, that not everyone has, especially, if English isn't your first language, you can't write well, you can't express your thoughts well.

There is value in those things and I guess that's what helped to set me apart.

Rayner (53:05)

So specifically, what are you doing now in the crypto space?

Nicholas (53:12)

While I initially took a general coding software engineering boot camp,

Eventually, because I decided to marry my two interests, I decided to be very focused and specialized in the programming language of the blockchain.

So specifically the blockchain Ethereum, a lot of smart contracts, and a lot of code in Ethereum is written in this language called Solidity.

I learned that by myself after the boot camp and now my job is to write smart contracts and write code for a startup that's involved in DeFi.

DeFi is decentralized finance.

It's a finance product.

I handle the smart contracts that receive your tokens, receive money, handle the business logic, and handle the transactions on the blockchain.

It's the call to product.

Yeah, so that's my rule.

Rayner (54:18)

For those of you listening who don't understand what he just said.

So I'm guessing to simplify it.

It's kind of like maybe an app, a finance app on the app store.

You're the one helping the app write the code for how the money comes into the app and manage how it flows within the app itself.

Did I get that right?

Just to simplify things.

Nicholas (54:35)

Yeah, more or less. So yeah, you're right. It's an app.

I think a lot of crypto apps these days are things where you can put tokens in, you can earn yield, can borrow, and can do all kinds of financial activities on there.

At the core of these apps are things called smart contracts that allow these tokens to be sent in and out.

That's what I'm responsible for, for taking care of.

Rayner (55:08)

Got it. Yeah.

What's the biggest challenge that you've encountered so far?

Nicholas (55:15)

In my job.

Rayner (55:20)

Maybe flight.

To get to where you are in crypto right now, you have to learn how to program, you have to have some element of luck to have a friend who works in the startup to hire you.

So were there any major challenges that you had to overcome or obstacles that you found that weren't easy but you could let pull through?

Nicholas (55:41)

I would say of course the technical hurdle is there and is still there.

Coming from someone without a computer science background, you always feel like you are lagging behind other software engineers.

So you have to work twice as hard to figure out things that don't come as naturally.

But the best part about software engineering is there's a lot of resources out there.

You can always find an answer, you can always ask someone, you can always test something.

If you put in enough effort, you get the answer.

So that was initially an uphill climb.

I would say.

Yeah, other challenges.

Right now, the market is not doing so well and I have been on the lookout for other job opportunities.

It's been quite bad.

I get many rejection emails.

I think it is quite challenging without the necessary skills, a strong background in computer science, and many years of experience.

A lot of them are looking for like what?

Engineers with five years of experience.

So this is that's the challenge I'm going through right now.

Being able to prove my worth, and communicate my worth to other employers out there that I bring value to the table.

Rayner (57:48)

Yeah, I see.

Also, because I think in a bear market, they are not actively hiring.

I mean, that's from a business standpoint, everybody's just cutting costs.

That's why I guess things are difficult, I think for a lot of people.

Hopefully, the bull markets are on the corner and things get better.

Nicholas (58:02)

Exactly, yeah. So people are not hiring and if they want to hire, there's a lot of people who are looking for jobs with much more qualified resumes.

Yeah, but I am finding other ways to overcome this challenge.

Rayner (58:21)

I believe you have shared that, cause I think in the crypto space, they have a lot of those audit checks where people can money for spotting certain errors or mistakes in the code, right?

How's that working out for you?

Nicholas (58:32)

Yeah, so that's the other thing I'm pursuing in parallel.

I'm training or trying to become a security auditor in the space. It has a lot of overlap with being a software engineer.

Basically, instead of writing code, you are the one that audits or inspects other people's code for things like bugs, and potential vulnerabilities, for just making sure that it's safe and secure.

If you find something, you get paid money for finding those things.

I found this quite interesting and quite challenging for many reasons.

One obvious one is it helps my regular job.

I see how other people write code.

I learned what are the best practices, where I am not doing as well, and I learned from that.

That's the learning aspect.

But also, it's a very critical service in the crypto space, because the crypto space is subject to a lot of hacks, and a lot of money involved, because the code is money compared to Web2,

The chance for loss of funds is a lot less.

So yeah it's a critical service and so there are these things called like audit competitions that are launched where companies or protocols that want their code audited put up a bounty.

The bounty can range from anywhere between 30,000 US dollars to 1 million dollars and it's open for you know anyone can come in, take a look at the code, and submit what they find.

If you find something and it turns out to be a valid finding, you get paid.

So that's the other thing that I've been trying my hand on.

It's been very, very exciting.

Yeah

That's an area that I hope to develop my career in as well.

Rayner (1:00:50)

So how do they determine how much you get paid since like, a million dollars?

I'm pretty sure not just going to one person, right?

It is split among other 10, 20, 30.

Nicholas (1:01:01)

They have built an interesting algorithm and incentive system, where they categorize issues based on severity, high, medium, and low.

High obviously gets paid out more.

If there are more high findings, the money gets split into the different.

So if you found, five out of 10, you get half the amount of money allocated to those pools.

They've also developed an algorithm incentive system where you...

The other challenge is anyone can come and submit If I found something, why don't I just submit 10 times of those findings and get all the money?

But the incentives are designed such that you're not rewarded, you're hurting yourself by submitting a duplicate finding.

It discourages people from doing that.

Overall, has created a pretty successful system of just an open permissionless platform that anyone can come in, provide value, and make money off that.

Rayner (1:02:12)

I see.

Because of the crypto space, everything is open source, I believe.

Like the code is for anyone else to see, to even steal.

So compared to companies like Facebook, their code is all like closed source.

There's no more edge in the sense that anybody can just steal your work.

So your work is not necessarily just the best code, but also there are other aspects to consider and not just your code now.

Nicholas (1:02:42)

Yeah, that's an interesting point.

What differentiates crypto from Web3 to Web2 is this concept of being very open and permissionless.

You have to make your code open and public because otherwise, people might not trust your code to put money in.

But once you make it public, anyone can see it, anyone can copy it.

So in the earlier days of crypto, there were these things called vampire attacks, where after a successful company releases its code, the competitor takes their code and in a sense leeches on the successful company users.

By incentivizing them to come over and maybe giving them an extra token, extra money, and stealing their users.

So there are cases of these, but there's a lot of good that comes out of this model.

When your code is open, it creates a very competitive environment.

So it never allows you to rest on your laurels.

Once you release something, you have to be iterating or innovating on something new, something better.

That's how you stay ahead of the competition and that drives innovation, that drives good technology in the space, because everyone's worried about getting their lunch stolen.

It's also not that easy to steal users because the saying in technology is that the best tech doesn't always win.

There's also that soft aspect about building a community, building a loyal following of users.

So if you've done that and you have a huge follower base, people, people trust you, trust is a very important thing, right?

Takes a while to build up, you can't just steal trust.

So once you build trust over months and years, a competitor might come and offer the same code, and same product, but you know, users won't just move there because they've already been so familiar and comfortable with where they are.

Unless you're not doing a good job or their needs are not being served, then they move.

But otherwise, despite being open, you still can keep your customers.

You're not forcing them to stay.

That's the best part, right?

Compared to web2, like Instagram, people are forced to stay on the app because if they move they don't get the same value.

My followers don't come with me.

The network is not as big and not as wide, but in crypto, everything is open and, it’s a very interesting concept.

Rayner (1:06:39)

Got it.

Because of the crypto space, It's so large.

There are so many things moving around in it.

Which aspect of crypto are you most bullish on?

Nicholas (1:05:51)

Most bullish on.

Rayner (1:05:54)

What are you excited about this piece?

Nicholas (1:05:56)

I'm generally excited.

I am quite passionate about the Ethereum blockchain.

From a very high level because of what it enables.

I write smart contracts.

I think smart contracts are just a very powerful tool that can enable many things, many forms of innovation.

So just as a base layer, just as infrastructure, Ethereum to me, or smart contracts is very exciting.

In the early stages of crypto or Ethereum, you have your shit and dude coins.

That is just one manifestation of what smart contracts can do.

Issuing a token. I mean, how else in the past could you create something like that where you can distribute it, you can track ownership, you can airdrop it, you can reward, you can speculate on it?

So it's a natural man's frustration because humans like to gamble like to make money like to punt.

That's the first iteration.

Then came NFTs, also built on smart contracts.

The idea is that now it's not money but it's collectibles.

Again, with the same properties of being able to track who owns it, you know, who created it, trade it, same logic, but opens up so many possible use cases and business cases.

I feel that's very exciting.

The next iteration that people are talking about is bringing real-world assets into the blockchain.

Challenging, no doubt, but lots of people are working on it.

So what are real-world assets?

Maybe that's a poor term for it.

Those are real, so things like real estate, things like Pokemon cards, things like US treasury bills, those are what I refer to as real-world assets, but so the name definitely shouldn't be proved, but the idea is that, bring those kinds of things that exist in the physical world that may be very inefficient.

For example, the liquidity of real estate, or verificity of Pokemon cards, or how difficult it is for a regular person to go and buy T-wheels in the US.

So if those things can be brought on the blockchain, that could open up another realm of innovation.

 I wouldn't say it's not possible.

What the crypto space has already done is bring a real-world asset called the US dollar into crypto in the form of stablecoins.

Some people argue that that is one of our biggest use cases in real life.

The fact that now you have something that represents a dollar, but is in a cryptocurrency that can be traded freely, can exchange value, and can do everything a dollar does, but better.

So we've proven that with the US dollar.

Let's see what's next.

Rayner (1:09:20)

Got it.

What's the thing that you dislike about crypto there?

Nicholas (01:09:28)

Oh, so many things.

It's still a very wild, wild, wild west, I must say.

The idea that you have to self-custody your funds, the idea that your funds are held in a wallet that is secured by a private key, that is based on a set of 12 words that you write down on a piece of paper, and losing that...

It means all your funds are lost.

That to me is a little... I don't think that will appeal to the masses so I don't like the aspect about that. It's a double-edged sword.

Because self-custody of funds means also that no one has control or can touch or influence the way your assets, the way they are but at the same time it's also exposed to so much risk and hacks.

I have gone through an episode where I've lost some money, quite a big deal of money because I was careless with my private keys and I learned a hard lesson and from the through that I've been more careful since.

The user experience is still not great yet.

There's a lot of work for the industry to do.

Rayner (1:11:08)

When you say user experience, you're referring to like the platform, the UI when they log in, and how they look and feel compared to Web2, which is more seamless in a sense, Web3 is a bit more intimidating, is that the word?

Nicholas (1:11:23)

Correct, yeah, but not just the website, everything from the way you interact on the website, all the way to what I mentioned earlier about self-custody of funds, every step is to me, a pretty poor user experience.

When there's a problem with my bank account, I can call a bank, right?

But for crypto, there's no one you can call.

On a website, you can generally, there are things that you can do to assure yourself, although this may maybe coming lesser case today with a lot of hacks and stuff like that, but generally, you feel safe interacting with a website.

You don't have to watch your every action, but in crypto, if you click on the wrong thing on a website or a malicious website, you sign the wrong message, that could be it, and you could lose all your funds.

That part of it is something that everyone's trying to solve.

Rayner (1:12:19)

Because in crypto, if I'm not wrong, it's like, there's like no like support hotline, a DBS bank, where…

Hey, you know something happened, please look into it for me”

Because no one at the end's going to look into it for you.

I mean it’s a company, they have their staff of developers, but there's nothing much they can do to help you.

Nicholas (1:12:33)

Exactly.

It is a double-edged sword, it is designed to be like that because if there's someone you could call, it means that someone could touch your funds, they can shift around things, they can reverse transactions.

That is exactly what the blockchain is designed to fight against, right?

Because you want self-custody of funds.

In the past people would say…

“Why the hell would you want to self-custody your funds? Just trust the bank, trust the platform, the trusted exchange”

But we all saw what happened with FTX, where when you trust private entities with your money, it's a black box after you transfer your funds to them, and you don't know what happens after.

But with crypto, if it's designed correctly, you can trace all your funds down to the dollar, where it went, where it's sitting because everything on the blockchain is recorded.

So...Love it or hate it, you know what I mean?

That is something that the individual has to answer.

I find it fascinating.

I think there's more good than bad because eventually, we will mitigate the bad.

We will come up with solutions.

The good is the principles, and the ideologies behind it.

To me, that part has a lot more potential.

Yeah, and I think with time, we will solve the issues that are plaguing the industry.

Rayner (1:14:00)

So I'm curious to hear your thoughts because, like crypto, you said…

“You're not seeing yet mass adoption because it's quite intimidating. You need to memorize your seed face of 12 words, 24 words”

You need to make sure you don't get hacked.

But at the same time, if we want to make it more friendly for the user, it would lean more towards centralization, which again, is kind of against what the crypto ideology is about.

How do you foresee this playing out?

Will they eventually strike a balance or is it going to be...

Nicholas (1:14:31)

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question.

I would say there are different ways to solve it.

There is this concept in crypto right now that's called account abstraction, where you don't have to fully hold custody of your funds, but you trust a smart contract to do it for you against smart contracts.

Users can do things like setting limits on how much money can flow out of the wallet at any time.

User can set up ways to recover their account if it's ever lost.

Without a centralized entity.

For example, you could say I trust three of my other close friend's addresses, which are my close friends.

If ever I want to recover my account, three of them must give the green light.

That's one way I can recover my account without the need for a seed phrase.

There are developments in this space to come up with things like this.

I think we're not too far away from bringing a better experience.

The other solution is actually to have more trusted centralized entities.

For example, after the whole episode that crypto went through in 2022, the fall of FTX, Luna, you know all the BlockFi and all the other companies, you start to see the bad eggs fall, and the ones that remain, the ones that rise.

For example, I think Coinbase is a pretty good company. They become more and more respected and more and more trusted.

Maybe they will become an in-between solution.

Where they have got enough trust, they have enough regulatory oversight, enough audits are being conducted on them, and you can reasonably say…

“Yeah, we can trust those”

Then people would put custody of their funds with them.

Rayner (1:17:00)

I guess there's a good chance that in future Unix 5 or 10 years, Crypto Space will have their decentralized aspect of it.

But at the same time, there's also a centralized party, a few big parties that also co-exist together within the Crypto Space.

Which is kind of what we are seeing right now.

Nicholas (1:17:16)

I agree.

Yeah, I wouldn't bet on a completely decentralized world.

You still need a blend of some form of centralized entities to onboard those people who are not so comfortable.

Hopefully, in a few months ahead, we will have Bitcoin or Ethereum ETF.

That's another way for people to participate in the industry without having to self-custody their funds without having to worry about their funds.

Rayner (1:17:49)

Yes.

One finance-related question.

I'm thinking…

Oh yeah, so Coinbase.

Well, recently I was just looking at a website and I realized that to buy crypto I'm going to pay 8% GST, my jaw dropped.

What the hell?

Why would I pay 8% GST to buy on Coinbase?

I don't know if I interpreted it wrongly, but I saw GST.

Do you have to pay GST for buying and selling crypto on Singapore's Coinbase?

Previously I'd done it on other exchanges that weren't like a GST charge and GST in Singapore now is like 8%.

Nicholas (1:18:14)

You're trying to buy with your credit card?

Rayner (1:18:17)

I've not tried, just looking through Coinbase funding and I saw that 8% GST pop out.

I just wanted to bring them out because I was very shocked to see a GST being charged to a crypto transaction.

Nicholas (1:18:27)

Yeah, maybe if you buy it with a credit card, you might get that.

I never encountered that before.

I mean, on the same point, Coinbase is working very closely with government agencies all around the world, Singapore included.

Singapore kicked out Binance, but Coinbase is getting more and more hit-nots and regulatory approval.

I wouldn't be surprised that eventually something like a tax or some form of tax would be implemented and Coinbase would be very willing to apply that.

Rayner (1:19:07)

Earlier, we mentioned the ETF.

This reminds me like, maybe I'm still ignorant here, but if institutions, want to buy Bitcoin, it can just be like micro strategies, go out there and buy it outright.

Why do they want to wait for the ETF to be up first before they buy the Bitcoin via the ETF Instrument?

Do you have any take on that?

Nicholas (1:19:27)

Yeah, I've been listening to quite a few podcasts on that recently.

What I learned was that the entire finance market, or rather people who invest in crypto, finance markets may split into three big markets.

That is your institutions like banks and there's also the retail crowd.

So they say the retail crowd makes up 20% of this entire thing.

They are the primary ones that are buying into crypto.

Then you have 40% which are the banks, which are dipping their toes, talking about it, doing experiments.

But there's a huge other market of the remaining 40% which is actually like, I don't know if I'm using the right term here, but like your financial advisors, your family offices, your private fund managers who invest for their clients and they have to invest at the behest of their clients.

Their clients may want certain exposure to certain markets and I think as part of building a complete diversified portfolio, you have to see where the opportunities are in the market.

It could be anything from, it could be regular stock and bond equities, but also it could involve going to emerging markets, going to real estate, going to gold, and maybe, especially since crypto does perform well, the best-performing asset year to date.

Maybe the clients want crypto exposure but these money managers or fund managers can't go and buy Bitcoin for their clients.

It's just a weird situation now.

You can't just go out and buy.

They would probably have to gain exposure in an indirect sense.

But having something like a Bitcoin ETF makes it a lot easier for them to get that exposure.

You can do so in a way that there's no worry or headache or self-custody.

It's exactly like buying any other ETF out there.

You go out there, put money, get some shares in you, you have the exposure, Boom!!!

Done…

I feel that people saying that this new ETF will allow a lot of these, this huge part of the market, let's say 40% to come in and do that, and if every portfolio needs 1 -5 percent which people say is exposure to crypto which people say is healthy which is recommended.

Then you could see a lot of money coming in.

Rayner (1:22:18)

All right let's hope that's the case.

Fingers crossed.

Nicholas (1:22:18)

Yeah I mean I'm always a perpetual optimist about the space so I tend to believe in the good.

Rayner (1:22:29)

Correct me if I'm wrong.

If a fund wants to buy a billion-dollar worth of Bitcoin.

Then the ETF itself has to buy a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin on a spot market.

So that's how their ETF can show that…

“Hey, we're holding this billion-dollar worth of Bitcoin”

Nicholas (1:22:47)

I think that's how it works.

But I think day to day they'll net off the buyers and sellers.

So it may not be an outright billion dollars, but eventually, they will have to hold.

Rayner (1:22:57)

Yeah. That amount of Bitcoin.

They have to figure out how to store their seed phrase.

It's all on the ETF side, they have to figure that out.

Nicholas (1:23:03)

Yeah, I think there are a lot of solutions out there.

People are building a lot of solutions.

Companies are being built around this, handling things like this, you know, corporates in a way that is...

But yeah, I mean a good alternative to consider is the gold ETF.

That's how it started and how it's doing so well today.

I think it would play out pretty similarly.

Gold didn't used to be a thing that was in everyone's portfolio.

Rayner (1:23:35)

Because you had to buy the physical gold store somewhere, hassle.

Nicholas (1:23:37)

Exactly. What I heard was, you know, all those years ago in the early 2000s or before the 2000s, gold was a thing that only the hardcore doomsayers or a very small part of the population believed in it.

It was just this, yeah. But after the ETF came out people say…

“Hey, I want exposure”

It's so easy to get the exposure.

It does play a role in my portfolio being negatively correlated to other assets, being very stable, very, yeah.

So hope something similar could happen with crypto.

Rayner (1:24:17)

It's actually what we're seeing right now.

I mean, like in earlier years, when markets go up, crypto also goes up.

Right now we're seeing a divergent, right?

Crypto is up when the stock markets are going down.

I think it's a good thing, at least from that point of view.

Nicholas (1:24:29)

Yeah, to be fair, it's such a short-span timeframe, so I wouldn't judge it yet.

There were times when it was moving in step with other risk assets, but hopefully, I can play this other role of being a hedge in your portfolio.

Rayner (1:24:51)

Yes, and I believe like years ago, interest rates although many were saying that crypto is doing so well because interest rates were low.

But it's pretty high, but it's still holding up not too bad.

It’s gone down quite a bit, but at the same time, the radio was pretty healthy over the last few months despite these higher interest rate levels.

So, yeah, fingers crossed over here.

Okay. So, the next thing I'd like to ask you is, what are some coming trends that you're seeing in this space?

Earlier you mentioned tokenizing real-world assets. Any other trends that you're seeing?

Nicholas Chew (1:25:31)

I would say...

I mean there are little experiments here and there.

I wouldn't call it... I'm not convinced myself so I struggle to bring them up.

I do think the space in the NFT space, although it's been shunned and it's gotten quite a bad name, there are opportunities there for it to be used in businesses, the concept of loyalty points, the concept of royalties, the concept of rewarding a fan base.

I think that's an area that people are trying to...

The thing that some people have been talking about is music NFTs.

Still very nascent, still no product market fit but people are people I mean just wanted curious people yeah people are trying to bring some of these things to represent these things as NFTs.

An interesting project that was launched recently that did well is this project called Friend Tech where you can also build I mean sort of NFT related but basically, the idea that people can buy access to your content.

That means, you have a platform to share your thoughts, your words, your insights, or whatever, and people buy your shares to gain access to that content.

The shares that they buy off you can be traded.

So if you spot, for example, someone who analyzes crypto, someone who gives good commentary and you spot him early you buy his shares cheap you know every 10 dollars, and over time he gains popularity and he grows more followers the price to buy his share increases.

The shares can be traded and the creator himself gets a cut of it so you know it's an incentive system.

To incentivize the creator to continue value for his followers and for his followers to be rewarded for being loyal and for being smart enough to spot this trend early on.

So there are projects like that that pop out.

It's a little bit, some people might say it's Ponzi, and some people might say it's just gambling.

Sure, there are always some aspects of that in crypto.

That's actually what makes the space exciting, but I'm not sure how successful it will be.

Oftentimes, these are just early iterations of a final product that will come many years later.

Rayner (1:28:47)

Let's say you could hold three 3 tokens for the next 10 years in crypto, so which are the three tokens that you want to be holding?

Let's say aside from Bitcoin and Ethereum, you can choose three.

Nicholas (1:28:57)

Aside from Bitcoin and Ethereum, Ethereum is a big part of my portfolio.

So I'll cop out by saying there's a token called staked Ether.

It's issued by a company called Lido.

It's Ethereum that is staked and it earns you a yield on Ethereum.

That'll be my number one.

It's obvious.

It's keen to hold Ethereum, but you get a 4-5% yield just by doing nothing.

Rayner (1:29:29)

Just by staking it on?

Nicholas (1:29:30)

Just by holding the token. It's quite interesting.

The token will slowly yield and your balance will over time just keep growing.

It keeps adjusting upwards.

Rayner (01:29:42)

But the price is stacked to Ethereum?

Nicholas (1:29:46)

After Ethereum moved from proof of work to proof of stake and withdrawals were enabled the prices are very close, almost identical any difference in it will be arbitraged away.

Rayner (1:29:59)

Then how do you get the reward?

You mentioned the staking reward Is it in USDT or something like that?

Nicholas (1:30:03)

As I said, your balance continually increases because it is adding more stake Ether.

As I said, the daily reward is 100 ETH.

Your staked ETH just keeps increasing in number.

So your rewards are received in ETH.

Rayner (1:30:28)

Okay, so it's like collecting interest every day by just sticking it.

Nicholas (1:30:32)

Yeah, exactly. So that's a no-brainer.

Another interesting one is a company called Chainlink.

It builds infrastructure for the for the space.

Its first product is called Price Oracles.

When you're on a blockchain, you're in a smart contract, and the contract doesn't have any idea what the price is.

Because price is a concept that is outside the blockchain, when people trade, that's when you ascribe a price to something.

But oftentimes on chain, on smart contracts, you need to know what the price is and you need a trusted source of price feeds.

So Chainlink has developed a system that allows the price to be fed into the blockchain in a way that is decentralized unbiased and trustworthy.

But that's just their first iteration.

They're building a lot of many other things and I think it's one of the more exciting projects out there.

I generally choose tokens or investments that will have a broad impact rather than trying to take a very narrow bet on something.

So infrastructure is always a good way to play this because you benefit from all kinds of innovation that is built on top of it rather than being too narrow.  

Third token I would say…

This one is a personal favorite of mine. It's called Rocketpool.

Also infrastructure.

So I mentioned Staked Ether as one of my top tokens that I would hold.

Rocketpool is another platform where people can stake their Ether.

You stake Ether, you get RocketEther.

The Rocketpool token or the RPL token is the token that is needed for people to run Ethereum nodes to stake ETH.

So basically there's a demand for RPL because people need it to stake ETH and so as more people stake their ETH, this demand for Rocketpool will go up.

It's again an infrastructure play.

Rayner (1:33:35)

So earlier you mentioned that the staked Ether by Lido.

Do you need the Lido token as well to have that stake Ether?

Nicholas (1:33:40)

No, that's a good question.

Because Lido they approach staking differently.

There are a lot of comparisons between Lido and Rocketpool.

Lido curates their own set of validators.

That means they pick and choose who they allow to stake Ether.

The LIDO token just doesn't do anything at this point.

The LIDO treasury is supposed to be what the token holders have, but that's not the case currently.

It might be true sometime in the future.

So the LIDL token has voting rights but it doesn't influence how staking is done.

Whereas Rocketpool's a more decentralized approach.

Anyone can run a Rocketpool node to stake Ether.

I do so myself at home.

Because anyone can come and run a node there needs to be some sort of a bond that's put up so that you don't behave maliciously and that's where the RPL tokens come in.

You also need to stake Rocketpool tokens to be able to run a node.

Rayner (1:35:20)

It sounds more cumbersome compared to the stake ether from LIDAR where you just see interest every day.

Am I right to say that?

Nicholas (1:35:29)

It's true, it's a more fast free approach, but you do pay a fee out of the yield that you earn.

So if there's a 10% fee.

Rayner (1:35:41)

So LIDO takes that 10%?

Nicholas (1:35:42)

LIDO takes that 10%, half of which they use to pay their node operators, and the other half, the other 5% goes into the treasury that LIDO tokens are supposed to be responsible for.

But if you run your node, like I do with Rocket Pool, you don't pay the fee.

You get a fee from other people who don't want to directly run a validator because it's troublesome, you need hardware and all that.

But they chose to buy the stick version of ETH, which is RETH for Rocket Pool.

Rayner (01:36:24)

How does the interest payment work?

So let's say I go and buy this stick ether from Lido, I put it in my, let's say my wallet.

So every day the money just goes to my wallet, just like that.

So they know what's my wallet address and they just drop in a bit of interest every day.

Nicholas (1:36:40)

Yeah, that's the other aspect of crypto that some people misunderstand.

They think that your wallet is like an account that money flows, but it's not the case.

How do I explain it in a more easy-to-understand way?

Let's say I have 10 Stake Ether.

The 10 Stake Ether is not in my wallet.

It's just the Stake Ether contract that does an accounting to say.

Nick's wallet has how many?

Nick's address has how many?

So actually everything is on the Stake ether contract.

You can imagine if they want to distribute, they just have to increase the number on their contract and after that, the MAF will just attribute a bit more to every single address that is stored on that contract.

It doesn't have to send you anything.

It's when you check your, the irony is when you check your wallet, it's reading the contract of the stick eater.

It's saying this is my address, how much do I have?

Based on the accounting there.

Therefore, it will show you an increased number because yield is accrued to the token.

Rayner (1:38:06)

Let me just paraphrase it.

So the stakeholder, let's say, every day, they want to pay out their interest payments to, let's say…

100 people who are holding it.

On their end, they just say, OK…

These 100 people, let's increase it by 1% for today.

Boom!!! All increase.

Because you have your wallet, your wallet reads how many you left.

It reads the so-called database that's owned by Lido, sees how many you have left and it's reflected in your wallet.

Nicholas (1:38:30)

Exactly.

Rayner (1:38:34)

Right, okay, that makes a lot of sense.

Okay, cool, thanks for sharing.

What is one of the biggest myths about the crypto markets that many people just get way wrong?

Nicholas (1:38:48)

I would say...

When I talk to people for the first time about crypto, I always have to first source out their knowledge because there are different levels right?

There are those people who think that crypto is just about mining Bitcoin.

It's about running expensive hardware, consuming electricity and then you mine a coin that somehow is value.

To me that's one of the biggest myths that it's not just about mining Bitcoin because for example I have talked so much about Ethereum and about how you can build apps, can build financial products, you can build useful things on top of the blockchain.

So it has a lot more use cases than just mining something from nothing.

The other myth, I think it's that crypto is just about stupid dot coins that are just for speculative use cases and it's just a global casino and that's all it will ever be.

I think that's a big myth because it's true, that part is true but I shared earlier, that it's just an early manifestation of the technology.

You build a technology like that and it's very natural for the use case to be speculative because it was designed to be that way.

Rayner (1:40:25)

The advantages of the speculation come in first.

Nicholas (1:40:26)

Exactly.

I mean, it's like, you see a spade and you think your first initial reaction is to just, scoop things.

It's what people naturally gravitate to.

It's unavoidable.

But the other use cases are not so obvious and people choose not to go and learn about them and they always just focus on how it's just so speculative, it's just funny coins.

But there are so many hidden or underlying principles and concepts to it that I think the general market doesn't know about.

It's quite sad because now our biggest competitor is AI.

It's stealing a lot of mindshare, a lot of attention, and VC money away from it, from crypto.

AI is very easy to explain to people because the use case is so obvious.

It's very, you can touch, you can feel.

It's something that I feel that crypto doesn't do very well.

The negative things like FTX and all that, get blown up in the news.

The other one I would say, people just say…

“Oh, crypto is just used to enable money laundering”

That's another one that I hate a lot.

Again, many arguments for it.

One, I would say cash is still the biggest way that people launder money.

Is cash bad?

With any technological product, there's no clear good or bad.

The funny thing is if you don't build something useful, no one will use it.

But when you build something that can be used well like the internet, people will immediately use it for all sorts of wrong things first.

That proves that it has a use case.

Then it's just about building the right use cases and regulating it and making sure that it's used for good.

Rayner (1:42:45)

Do you foresee a future where you know crypto and AI be merged and work concurrently hand in hand?

Nicholas (1:42:54)

Wow, this one is a stretch I would say, but I've heard some possible scenarios where that will happen.

One line of reasoning goes like this. I'm a big fan of AI.

So I feel that in the future, in the world, there will be these things called AI agents.

Just like your Siri, Amazon Alexa, where you can ask it to do things.

Because it's getting to a point where it's so smart that it can talk to you like a human, like a regular human being.

You can reason with it.

It understands nuances.

So you can ask it to go and do tasks for you, go and research this topic.

The way AI agents work is, that there could be just, it could be one agent that you talk to and it will have many sub-agents underneath it.

Each agent specializes in different things.

One agent could be a math expert, another one could be a real estate expert.

The reason why they are subagents is because they are trained in that specific set of data.

So for example, a real estate subagent would have ingested all kinds of real estate data that might be expensive to procure and they have fed it to this agent so that it becomes an expert in analyzing, giving you data, giving you info, analyzing trends on real estate.

You can imagine many of these subagents.

Eventually, people will monetize these sub-agents.

That means you want to get something from my sub-agent, you pay a fee.

Because the data to train that AI is not cheap.

So can you imagine your sub-agent, your main agent, call it your butler, call it your intern,

Goes out and tries and does things.

It will need to procure services from different places. 

Rayner (1:45:00)

How is it gonna pay for it?

Nicholas (1:45:06)

It would be very cumbersome to transfer cash and give it access to a bank account.

It's just odd, I don't think banks will ever allow an AI agent to have a bank account.

That's just strange.

A very natural way that these agents can have access to some form of money, it's crypto.

They understand it's very seamless, it's all code.

So you can imagine a case where you just assign a small amount of petty funds to your AI agent.

Don't spend above $100 so you don't accidentally lose the money.

Then it will go out and do all these errands for you, do research, order groceries online, make an appointment, make a reservation.

If there's money that needs to be paid, it will pay.

Then it will send you a receipt, and email you a receipt of all the things it has spent on.

he levers you can tweak, settings you can set that manage these things.

I think that will make life a lot more simple.

For example, day to day, how much time do you spend checking your credit card bill for that sneaky NO fee charge or an odd fee that's paid or making sure your regular groceries come in time or booking a flight?

I mean there are a lot of these things that I feel can be optimized and with the rise of AI, I think that those things will be changed and hopefully crypto can enable a big part of that.

Rayner (01:46:55)

Wow, that'd be amazing.

Speaking of AI, this reminds me, maybe back to the Air Force.

Did you ever maybe see a future where maybe it's really in the pipe work where AI will just take over the helicopter, you don't need a human pilot anymore?

Nicholas (01:47:09)

Yes, it's already...

I wouldn't say I wouldn't call it AI, but when I was flying the Seahawk, we already had a lot of automatic flight controls.

Flying from Singapore to the South China Sea to hover over a spot 10 feet over the water can be done with the flight computer.

So a helicopter can hover stationary over water, which hovering did in the past, if you were to fly manually, it takes a lot of hand-eye coordination.

But no, now we press a button, it stays in that spot freeing up capacity for the pilot to do other tasks.

So definitely, the commercial planes that you take, I would say 99% of your flight is done by a computer.

Rayner (01:48:07)

But we still have the pilot and the co-pilot even though a lot of the work is still done by computer.

Nicholas (1:48:11)

Yeah and people still don't fully trust it but I think in our lifetime or the next 10 years, we will see more and more people trusting the technology rather than saying yeah we need a human.

Rayner (1:48:25)

Okay, so why not fly a plane?

Is the technology already there to operate without a human or still certain parts of humans still coming?

Nicholas (01:48:35)

I think the technology is there.

Rayner (1:48:36)

But just that we don't trust it entirely.

We want someone there too just in case.

Nicholas (1:48:42)

You always worry about the 1%.

The 0.1%. It's like self-driving cars.

We do the technology for cars to drive by themselves.

We can accept when a human makes an accident, accidents happen every day.

But if a self-driving car causes an accident, a fatal accident, even if the percentage is way lower than average statistics.

It's unacceptable.

So that bar is set so much higher for technology.

Unfortunately, that's something that we have to work towards.

Rayner (1:49:22)

Why do you think that's the case?

Nicholas (1:49:25)

It's very human, It's very natural.

If a driverless car killed someone I love, I'll sue the company.

It's somehow less acceptable.

I think we accept that humans make mistakes.

Rayner (1:49:51)

But we cannot accept that robots make such mistakes.

Nicholas (1:49:52)

Rather we'll be like, why let the robot drive if it makes any mistake?

We just stick to humans. But that's not optimal in the grand scheme of things.

You can say I can lower accident rates by a factor of 10 but some people will still be killed by robots.

In the grand scheme, I think that should be better overall for humans.

But for the person, the emotional side may not be acceptable.

Rayner (1:50:25)

Maybe just going back to crypto, one last question. I saved this quote, which I saw on Twitter.

It says that…

“Always make sure that the crypto that you're investing right has a clear use case type to value”

We're not buying company shares.

We are buying a token that might be useless right even if the project is a massive success.

So not all projects need a token.

What's your take on it?

Nicholas (01:50:59)

Hmm, that's a tricky one.

I mean it's about the ownership rights, the legal rights of a token right.

I'm not super informed on this but the way I think about this is…

I think of this from two angles.

One of them is like, now when you hold a regular company share, let's say a share of DBS or whatever, technically you have legal rights over the company.

You own some percentage of their assets.

But, how realistically can you enforce this right over the asset?

Because for one, you hope they never go bankrupt and then you have to split the assets.

A lot of times, your right as a shareholder is insignificant.

You're affected by other forces, bigger players, things like that.

So at the end of the day, for most people, myself at least, when I hold a share, I'm just hoping I get dividends from it.

I'm hoping I can eventually sell it to someone at a higher price.

I'm hoping that I feel like I'm vested in the success of the company.

If it doesn't pay a dividend, that's even more tricky.

Because I'm not getting immediate value from it.

I'm just hoping I can sell it to someone at a higher price.

I feel that for a token, that does almost the same thing.

A lot of crypto companies, issue tokens, they don't issue any form of equity.

There are no shares like Uniswap trading on the stock exchange.

Uniswap might be a bad example.

They have another class of shares to it, but other companies like Lido, don't have equity.

It serves its purpose of being a form of value because it trades, there's a lot of volume.

I know that this token will be worth it, and you see it rise in value, the better the company does.

It serves the need for me to be able to speculate on something and derive value from it.

If you talk about dividends, some tokens receive yield from the protocol.

That's the same thing to me as dividends.

So I'm not too fast about the legal or the extreme case scenarios.

I think tokens in their form, in a sense, do the job.

Rayner (1:54:16)

We need just to share it with you.

So in my early days, I thought about buying tokens because maybe the project or protocol was generating good revenue.

What that means is it's a good buy.

Then when I wanted, but in hindsight, I didn't buy the token because right now I see that the price continues to drop.

From what I've researched is due to tokenomics. So for example, I think DYDX is one of the decentralized exchange tokens.

I think generates pretty good fees, but the token price is just, it's not doing well.

So it's like, there's a divergent.

The fundamentals of the company are good, but the share price and the token price are not doing well.

So I think someone coming from a traditional finance background, wonders why this is the case.

So what's your take on that?

Nicholas (01:55:58)

This happens in traditional markets, there's a divergence between price and value.

So I wouldn't say it's always...

I wouldn't say that's always the case.

You've got to look at the time horizon.

Maybe it was overvalued in the initial stages because we had a bull market.

If you compare prices maybe it was overvalued.

I think you can value some of these crypto companies similarly you do to traditional companies you can look at their earnings, their fees earned and the issuance of the tokens are diluting your share and you can probably calculate some form of PE ratio on that.

Some of them were overvalued.

I mean it was hyped up for a while.

But…

I would say over a long enough time horizon, I do think value will accrue to the token.

You can compare the top 50-10 market cap coins over the last year and it changes quite quite drastically.

So yeah, the bad ones do get pushed out.

People lose interest.

People realize it's not a good investment then the price will correct to reflect that over time.

Rayner (1:56:29)

Okay, so you do believe how much the project or protocol revenue earns, the token price will eventually reflect the amount of money they are making.

Nicholas (1:56:41)

Not just revenue, like I said…

Maybe, tokenomics plays a big part.

Because if you are constantly issuing out tokens, that's like, you're just diluting shareholder, just issuing.

So the sum of that should be reflected in price over time.

Rayner (1:56:57)

So tokenomics would be another topic for another day.

It would probably be a three or four-hour forecast if you talk about tokenomics.

So before we wrap up, maybe just a question to ask you.

So what advice would you give to someone who is, let's say starting in the crypto space after you've done it yourself from nothing to where you are right now?

What advice would you give to someone?

Nicholas (1:57:19)

The person looking for a job or looking to trade or looking to invest.

Rayner (1:57:25)

Let's go with looking for a career job.

Nicholas (1:57:26)

I would say come and join us.

It's a very exciting space.

Nothing like I've ever seen before.

It has its challenges.

It's like in the last year or so, you'll be embarrassed to tell people you work in crypto.

Hopefully, they'll change soon.

But if you're in a space, you realize the vibes are pretty good.

Everyone's, there's a sense of solidarity that we're all in this strange new place that is not accepted by everyone.

But innovation happens at breakneck speed here.

There's always something happening, never a dull moment.

So, yeah, I think it's a wonderful industry to be in the opportunities are endless.

I would start by getting your hands dirty.

You've got to get your wallet, your hardware wallet.

You've got to trade on the decentralized exchange.

You've got to buy an NFT.

You've got to join a community, join a DAO.

Participate in voting.

There's a lot of things to do.

Try and, you know, earn yield. Try and position yourself for an airdrop.

There are so many activities.

Once you do that, you get a better understanding of the space.

Then you can see where your other skills and talents bring you.

There are all kinds of roles from being a community manager to being a business, doing BD work.

To being an analyst, to being a software engineer, to being a founder, to being a writer.

There are so many things that you can do, but I think that would depend on what your innate skills are.

But yeah, you need to have that.

You got to get your hands dirty.

Then this is what we call in the space, crypto natives.

These are people who are on the inside.

They're not just like, you know, buying coins on centralized exchanges.

They're already inside and they know about the space deeply.

Rayner (1:59:56)

If you could go back in time and give advice to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself?

Nicholas (2:00:04)

Oh, 20-year-old self. I would have just started pilot training then.

I would have told myself...

I mean there are some regrets I've had in my Air Force career.

Maybe we didn't touch on that, but that is good.

It's a tough thing to talk about.

But I would have probably given myself more advice to do better in my Air Force career.

Things like speaking up more, realizing that it's not what you do, but how you position yourself, and how you present yourself, that matters more.

I think as a young, maybe more immature person, I didn't realize that.

Demonstrating yourself, and your worth is more important.

It's very important.

I mean, I won't say it's more important than actually having worth.

It's very important to demonstrate to bosses, to demonstrate to your network that you bring value.

Yeah, that's something I struggled with for a bit.

It's something I'll advise my younger self to put more focus on.

Rayner (2:01:28)

Learning how to sell yourself.

Nicholas (2:01:29)

Yeah, learning how to sell yourself, learning how to get opportunities and seize opportunities because opportunities don't just come to you.

I used to think…

“Oh, if I just do my job well, I should be rewarded”

But that's not the case in a big organization.

You have to position yourself correctly.

Know the right people, talk to the right bosses and fight for limited opportunities, then you will be successful.

Everything else is already expected of everyone else.

Learning how to differentiate yourself, that's important. Yeah.

Rayner (2:02:15)

To those listening to this show right now, where would they, how could they connect with you or find you?

Do you want to be found?

Nicholas (02:02:22)

You can follow me on Twitter.

Rayner (2:02:32)

What's the handle?

Nicholas (2:02:33)

My handle is 0xGiraffe. 0x is a crypto thing.

Giraffe was my call sign when I was in the Air Force.

So I blend the two.

Rayner (02:02:46)

So if they just search 0xGiraffe, something should pop up?

Nicholas (2:02:47)

Yeah, yeah.

That's where I share my thoughts on crypto.

Sometimes it's a bit technical, but yeah, it can reach me there.

Rayner (02:02:50)

Awesome.

Thank you so much for your time, Nicholas.

I appreciate it.

Nicholas (2:02:54)

Okay, thanks, Rayner.

Nice talking to you.