First Year Of a Decentralized Internet (& Experiences as a CEO of the Top Marketplace) with Tieshun Roquerre

In our show today, we are still talking about decentralized internet. It is a great show we have the Founder and CEO of Namebase.io – Tieshun Roquerre and we are into this 3-part series handshake and dweb in the global major show. Let’s tune in.

√ Tieshun’s VIP Page
√ Tieshun’s Linkedin Page
√ Namer News
√ HDNS – Handshake DNS solution
√ SkyInclude HDNS Guide
√ Handshake Mercenary
√ HandyCon
√ JP Sears “apology” to facebook
√ Register a .mastermind domain today

Thanks a lot Tieshun, I’m really happy, this has been awesome and fascinating. I’ll see you at the conference – handycon.promote.

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[00:00:00] So 346 of globalfromasia.com. We’re still a.com, but we’re still talking about the decentralized internet. We got the CEO of namebase.io, Tieshun. It’s a great one. Honestly, I just finished it. We’re jamming us into this three part series of handshake and dWeb in the Global from Asia show. And let’s tune in.

[00:00:27] Welcome to the Global from Asia podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down, into straight up actionable advice. And now your host, Michael Michelini. Thank you everybody for choosing to download and listen or stream. You know, I still do these interviews and the guests always say, is this audio or video?

[00:00:49] I’m like, well, we’re kind of audio, but video looking at myself here in the same desk and I don’t know how many. I barely left the city block in like at least a half a year, whatever. But I mean, I think, like I say, in the interview today, maybe it has been a positive for the decentralized web, the internet, the crypto space, you know, and this is part, I would say part three of a three-part series.

[00:01:17] Maybe we’ll do more, but we got this kind of weekly roll of handshake or decentralized web or dWeb or the new web or web3, or make the internet great. Again, it’s kind of what I’ve been saying. But we have the CEO of name base Tieshun, and this show will be on globalfromasia.com/namebase /namebase.

[00:01:40] They are a private company. A lot of people think they are handshake themselves. They’ve been holding the torch though, for sure. I mean, they deserved that. They work really hard. I mean, that’s how I got into Handshake and HNS. And most of us have I talk about that also, an interview is a fascinating discussion.

[00:01:58] I know some of you, Amazon sellers or B2B traders might not totally understand this. You know, I know gods here and our GFAVIP memberships like, Oh, Mike getting into crypto again, but I believe it’s bigger than crypto. You know, it’s the, it’s the internet. It’s not about getting your Amazon account shut down, your Facebook page, your ad account, you know, your Google deranking, you know, all this stuff.

[00:02:20] And this is about giving the individual, giving the creator the power, not these small group of internet companies, giving them the power over us. You know, I’m afraid of being scared and waking up if my Amazon accounts can get shut down. And if my Google account is going to get adsense account, my associates account, my seller account, my Facebook page, my profile. Like, I’m tired of this fear, you know, and I know a lot of you have it and that’s kind of, what’s gotten me into this.

[00:02:47] So let’s go into the interview after that I’ll rant some more, but I don’t want to take over this whole introduction. I want to get into our amazing interview with the founder, a co-founder and CEO of namebase.io, 

[00:03:00] how they got, how he got in what’s the story, what’s the future. And, and some other insights stories. Let’s tune in.

[00:03:06] We have a membership. We have a paid membership. You guys know that our team is doing some, a little bit of promotion. We’re actually kind of including some of our internet marketing services or content creation services with our GFAVIP membership. If you enjoy what you see and you want to support us and you want to get inside, getting some mastermind calls, we have some private access to our forum, which is not too active, honestly. But, we have courses and we have amazing people in here that really want to help you succeed in your global business.

[00:03:33] Hope to see you there gfavip.com. All right, thanks everybody. For another Global from Asia podcast. This is the third part of a three-part mini series about handshake and the decentralized internet. And he’s been on my list for awhile. We have the CEO and co-founder of Namebase . Thank you so much for coming on the show.

[00:03:54] Thanks for making it. Thanks for having me, Mike. Yeah, it’s a pleasure. And I know you’ve been super busy. I mean, like a yes, we passed one year for the handshake, blockchain and, and things have been really picking up. Name base has been growing by leaps and bounds. So appreciate your time here

[00:04:13] Today. So I just, before we get into it, I just want to give a little bit of an intro to some of your story. Honestly, when I first heard about, you know, handshake and namebase, you were one of the first people that was mentioned to me, about it. And you’d been doing amazing things. In 2014, you left Boston to San Francisco to join Teespring as an engineer while you were a junior in high school, and then you dropped out.

[00:04:36] And then you basically started another company called strong intro for helping engineer engineering teams growth through referrals. We went through Y Combinator for strong intro. And then in 2016, you were an undergrad at MIT doing math and computer science, but then 2018, you dropped that at MIT to start Namebase and, and.

[00:04:56] Couple of years ago now, 2019, you’ve got a grant from the Thiel foundation for Namebase. So man, that’s an amazing, amazing little intro background. You’ve been really making moves the last few years and it’s amazing. Thanks Mike. Yeah, it’s been a, it’s been a fun ride. For sure, dude, for sure, man.

[00:05:16] So I guess, I guess there’s a lot in that we can do a whole interview on with that story, but I guess we’re going to focus more on the decentralized internet and handshake and namebase today. I guess, where in that timeframe, did you hear about handshake? You know? Yeah. It was about 2018, early 2018, maybe around May, but.

[00:05:39] It was Eric Meltzer who goes by wheatpond online. He shared the Handshake white paper with Anthony and myself. And, you know, Anthony and I both come from engineering backgrounds. We met at MIT and just based on kind of our technical background, we got very, very excited about handshake because we are familiar with DNS.

[00:05:59] We’ve interacted with it and use it. And we kind of just realized that it could provide us a step function improvement in terms of just the underlying infrastructure. You know, it makes the names more secure and more censorship is ascent, truly honorable by end users. And it really makes an entire system just permission.

[00:06:14] That’s what I think is really important for unlocking innovation. And then on top of that, we also looked at some of the mechanics around the tokens and the distribution. You know, for example, they limited the name rollout. So that early adopter is going to just squat, all the good names, right. That’s why a lot go, how to wait to bid on some of the names that they wanted to get.

[00:06:34] They did airdrop to developers that was really clever. And so, you know, from our perspective, both the technical infrastructure and also the go to market was very well thought out. You know, of course there are things that could have been improved and in retrospect, things that maybe should’ve been done differently, but overall it was very well done.

[00:06:53] And so we kind of built conviction around it. And we also realized just in terms of adoption, it would need to have an easy way to go and use it. At the end of the day. Right? Cause even developers don’t really like clunky software and command line interfaces. So that’s why we ended up building Namebase to make it really easy to use handshake, but it all started with us kind of building conviction around it after reading a white paper for. Exciting.

[00:07:15] I didn’t know it. So yeah. Wheatpond, I’ve chatted to him a little bit on Twitter and yeah, he, I think he has the name, Eric E R I C I believe. And he changed his Twitter name, like a lot of us to our handshake names, which is, which is great. And I think that’s a, that’s an amazing story. I mean, I feel similar to how I heard.

[00:07:34] I mean, I’ve only heard about October 2020 so much later than that, but when I heard about it I feel the same, you know. That is the people that started handshake really did think about it very strategically and long-term and the squatter problem has been at least solved by breaking it out over that first year.

[00:07:53] Like even me, I was, October, it wasn’t yet all released and those names I wanted, I couldn’t get. And even after the one year, I mean, people still have to do this five-day auction. If they find a name, right. It can’t just squat by them. All they have to, to, to let them sit there for five days and let other people see them in and bid on them too.

[00:08:11] So it’s really, it’s really great. And yeah. Mike. I mean, I, I don’t think I’ve actually heard your personal story in terms of how you discovered handshake. So your idea otherwise. Sure. I guess I haven’t shared it. I haven’t really shared it in these, in the show. I mean, basically a friend of mine, Chris, Chris Moore.

[00:08:30] He’s not as high profile as, as, as we are, you know. He’s American and Hong Kong and he’s in the internet space and the market are like, kinda like me. And he’s like, Hey, check this thing. You know, I think it was maybe even September, October, and he heard about it, he’s in a domain space. So I think he heard about it from namescan.

[00:08:48] And then he heard about it another time from some podcasts. And then honestly, I was a little bit, I’ll have to say I was a little bit hesitant. He’s like, Oh, because there are other projects, like you said, eh, you know, that. There’s others that have tried to solve this problem of, of names on the internet and there’s other ones.

[00:09:06] So I was like, Oh, another one. And then I’m going to have to start to spend money and hope that these things are worth something or I can use them someday, but then he was really cute. Stayed on me. He gifted me a name actually he’s he gifted me sky include. That’s my first name. Oh, no way. Oh, I love that.

[00:09:21] Yeah. He gifted it to me. So, and then I was like, you know what, I’m going to try to, not by any other names, but I did, but at the beginning I was like, I don’t want to, I’m just going to build this one. You know, that was the idea. It’s just build one. And that’s why I started making the videos. Like I think the first YouTube with Skyinclude was like October and like, I think Halloween, and then I was kind of shy to put it out and then I didn’t want to confuse it with global from Asia, this podcast.

[00:09:44] Cause I felt like it wasn’t exactly related. So I was like, starting this new channel. And yeah, I mean, Johnny, I connected with Johnny on a call, Johnny Wu. You’re so blessed to have him. And he, you know, he’s amazing, a community guy at namebase and he’s super welcoming to the community and me. And I had a call with them and then I got hooked on.

[00:10:05] Yeah. And then I’m like, okay, maybe this other name would be a good one. And then, you know, I think I picked up mastermind. I picked up like a bartender, cause I do the bar products on it. Oh wow. Those are great names. Those are valuable names. That’s awesome. I mean, and I’ve been thinking about how to integrate those into the, into the Amazon space for some of the listeners today that are in Amazon or e-commerce for, for that.

[00:10:26] But that’s my quick story. Basically, a friend told me, and then I got sucked in and then I felt like there’s gotta be more content about it. You know, that’s why, that’s why I started making these videos. I was like, all these developers tell me these complicated things and there’s this amazing stuff in these discourse and amazing stuff.

[00:10:42] And he’s telegram groups, but I’m like, I can’t, I can’t really find it and make it an easy way, but that’s my quick, quicker story. So yeah, I love that. I love that you first got your name through gifts. You know, it’s so funny because when we, when we released that feature, we were always like, Oh, you know, like I wonder, are people going to use this?

[00:11:02] Like how, how valuable will that actually be? And then now there is this entire, you know, gifting culture from the community. And I think that’s, that’s actually so important because a lot of people, they see this decentralization space and they’re like, Oh, like the first thing people think about is like, Oh, like smarts, right?

[00:11:16] Like that’s kind of like our main complaint. And it’s like, Oh no, actually. And the handshake community, there’s a huge gifting culture. And a lot of people actually, you know, Jesus I’ve been going on and don’t use it. Yeah. So I think that’s like, it’s so lovely to see that that feature is taken and being used actually in such a healthy way.

[00:11:36] It’s, it ultimately will increase the pie for everyone. So, that’s been amazing. Yeah, I totally agree. And then I literally just helped gift one to Paris. I’m on Twitter. I’m blanking on her name. I’m sorry, but somebody in a discourse like Kickstarter. Not Paris Hilton. That’d be pretty cool.

[00:11:56] Paris, she’s an, she’s an angel investor in, in NFTs. Let me, I have to get it now while I talk. But yeah, Terry, Terry Crews was just saying that he’ll, he’s gonna accept his gift. So I think the author of that just finished. I don’t know if you saw all that on Twitter. So it seems like some celebrities are getting there.

[00:12:13] Awesome. Well, yeah, Paris Rouzati, R O U Z A T I. So I comment on one of her tweets, I think she’s talking about handshake. And then I said, Hey, did you know, we have Paris Rouzati and Rouzati her last, her family name for free. We can give to you. We want to make sure you get it. And she, she didn’t believe it.

[00:12:33] She’s like really like emoji kind of confused emoji or something, you know. Talk about and then I was like, yeah, totally. She’s like, what’s the catch or what’s the scam or what’s, you know, especially obviously there’s some scammers out there, you know? So I went to DM, but I just said, give me your email, which is a little bit of an ass though, right?

[00:12:54] A stranger has to get your email. That’s the one kind of permission, but by then she already had anybody’s account and then she’s so happy. I mean, it felt really good too. I was just like, You know, like, wow, thank you. But it’s definitely helped us for sure. But that’s how I got my first sky include and is also, is like, it was only a two HNS I think something like that.

[00:13:16] If you look it up. Oh, wow. That’s amazing. Yeah. So, but yeah. That’s what’s really, I it’s definitely helped for sure. It’s helped the community with the gifting. I mean, I think that also gets people over the hump of like, Oh, you’re going to make me buy some kind of token that’s new. You’re going to try to make me like open an account and, and start auctioning.

[00:13:32] But the gift definitely helps cause then he just sent it to me. I get an email, you know, we created an account and then I could use it. Right. No coin needed no, no, no requirements. So it’s definitely the, my story. And I think a lot of others, so. Let’s just look at my little outline, kind of covered a few in there, but yeah, honestly, I really appreciate namebase.

[00:13:54] I know you guys get a lot of pressure because you kind of there’s others, there’s other options. Some people even think you are Handshake, which almost you kind of deserve it. Cause you the handshake founders, you know, they, they started it, but then they kind of did another, a Satoshi or they, they, they dare not involved.

[00:14:10] Right. So. Like you had said in your last response, you know, if I had to use like one of these CLI clients or some kind of a cold wallet at the beginning and like yeah. Name based makes it so easy. Right? So a lot of people say in the community, or you’re doing what like Coinbase is doing and kind of like a GoDaddy and one for people.

[00:14:32] Like I bought my first domain on GoDaddy in 1999. I had no idea how to buy a domain name. Yeah. I bought my full name, actually. Michael Michelina, somebody. Somebody is like, you gotta get your name, you gotta get your name, you know? And then I was literally working@a.com cosmo.com in New York city. And I was like, where?

[00:14:49] And they’re like, just go to godaddy.com. And then I went there and I searched my name, my full name, Michael Michelini. And I just registered it, summer of 1999. And I was like, just holding, you know, I didn’t know how to use it. And, but anyways, similar story. I think a lot of people register their names to start whether it’s traditional domains or, or, you know, this decentralized internet.

[00:15:08] I love that story because you know, a lot of, a lot of the handshake committee members are people who kind of have experience with, you know, have experienced the growth of the original internet. And they were really early. And Brad like, even like Andrew Rosner or some of these other domainers. And they kind of saw this story play out before, right.

[00:15:28] Where it’s like, they kind of got in and they heard about it early. They just like got a few names and then they just saw some grew up around them. So that’s why a lot of the community members were basically people who have that backup because they kind of see it happening, you know, history repeating itself and then kind of getting into it because they have that knowledge and history.

[00:15:45] It was really funny that you kind of also have that experience, just getting to a.com back in 1999. Yeah, it’s true. I mean, Eh, everybody was, was, I’m not really sure what to expect, but we felt like you need your name, you know, make a homepage, put your like, resume, put, you know, put your contact information.

[00:16:05] So that was, it was going around in the office. You know, I was sitting in my cubicle and got on my computer at work in the office and just registered. But yeah, I mean, so, so namebase is totally, should be commended for allowing, cause I could, I was thinking about that over the last few months, I mean, if, if there wasn’t a name base, I think, you know, you talk about squatters.

[00:16:27] There would have been just a few really smart developers that got in early. Even if it was over a year, they would have just waited every week and picked them up for like a few HNS each probably, you know, I mean, I feel like if most people had to figure out all those other tools, that it would be just much smaller, smaller, you know, ecosystem and, and bidding auctions, you know, Yeah, definitely.

[00:16:48] Definitely. You know, I think what I’m seeing from our position at name base is really, really early on when the humidity was so small and fragile, you know, people would really wouldn’t have gotten into handshake if they didn’t have some sort of interface that made it easy for them. And you would have exactly had that problem of, you know, just a one or two developer is able to get all the good names because they can just go and bid on anything.

[00:17:11] And you’re not going to have like normal people with, there are a lot of people who have a lot of money that can go and bid on names, but they’re not setting a goal. Right? So like they wouldn’t just have to do this way in handshake at all, without some sort of convenient interface. Students have very little competition and the names have been spotted up.

[00:17:26] And then now there’s literally zero reason for anyone to go and adopt handshake and use it. And that’s, that’s a, that’s a problem. That’s plagued name Klein, and some of these other, uh, previous attempts as you kind of have that spar problem. So that’s only the case in the initial, you know, like first year now, as we grow the, really the thing that’s really exciting to me is.

[00:17:45] The community is growing up around us and it’s growing so fast. I was like getting to the point where we can’t even keep pace yet. I would say it’s not quite there. It still feels like we’re pushing and we’re pushing, but it’s starting to feel like now that the wind’s kind of catching at the sales and you know, what I’m excited for is for the entire ecosystem to grow so big.

[00:18:05] It’s just like, wow. There’s like literally no single company or organization or individual can just keep track of it all. That’s really, when we know that can change. You know, going to win for a shirt. Like at that point, it’s just like, it’s an unstoppable force right now. It’s like almost there. And it’s just like it being our community pushes like a little bit more.

[00:18:22] It’ll just. Kind of fall further, so much and get so much momentum that we’re not even going to be able to keep up and like, that’s really what we want to do, but like, you know, ultimately we want this thing to grow so much that we are just like a small player and a massive pond. That’s not quite the case yet, but it will be the case that the momentum continues and the community keeps on pushing.

[00:18:40] It’s like stuff that you’re doing as incredible handicaps with heritable. You know, all this work from the community members is, is incredible. It’s ultimately going to be what results in handshake succeeding. Agreed, you know, in some other signals, there’s the developer community. Like I mentioned before, the recording, there’s like two search engines now that I know of, at least.

[00:18:56] And there HNS search guy, he’s social friendly guy, Andy and he’s in Switzerland. And I don’t know if you know how he started. He got in, I was talking to him. Actually, I don’t know how he found out about handshake, but I talked to him privately. I said, how do you fund this? You know, is there something, you know, cause there’s so more investment groups or funds or agent trying to support this.

[00:19:17] I know there’s a foundation that you’re, you’re, you’re involved, then that will be announced more soon. But I said, you know, maybe I can help. Cause that’s why I like to do it. Maybe I can introduce you to somebody, help you get some funding. He’s like, yeah, he’s doing all by himself. And he says, you know, how is some funds?

[00:19:30] Flipping names. He buys names and he sells them. So he says he makes enough buying and selling to, to fund it, which kind of almost goes against what a lot of these, the critics of, you know, like squatting or flipping cars, but he’s flipping and doing it, but he’s doing it to fund building. You know what I mean?

[00:19:50] Like he’s building from that. It’s not like he’s just collecting money building you, you know, the thing that I’ve also realized. In running the days and getting the secret. So many people like the domainers like Andrew Roslyn as well. And other ones like Mike and what not is, you know, also I come from an engineering background, so.

[00:20:10] When we started Namebase, we were really like anti squat, squatter. We’re really anti collector. And like, Oh, that’s why is terrible? Like that’s, you know, like we hit that. Right. Cause we’ve all dealt with that in the traditional domain role. But the thing is it’s domain lepers are not the issue. It’s it’s squatters that are the issue, right.

[00:20:26] When people will get a name and it’s like, Oh, like, squatting on Global from Asia. Right. We’re getting to that and I’m not going to sell it. And like there’s only one person in the world who wants that. And it’s Mike  like that, that sucks. Right? It’s like, we hate that. And, you know, I think great, is a great thing in the community that we have this gifting culture, because that’s really important.

[00:20:48] However, The domain flippers are actually super important because those people bring money and liquidity and you know, someone who’s selling a lot of domains. That’s a great thing because that means that they’re getting domains into the hands of people will actually go and do something with those names.

[00:21:06] Right. It actually matters now for them, for them to pay out and do something with it. The issue you want to avoid is people will be able to get a name. That’s valuable as such a low cost basis that they can just hold onto that forever and not do anything with it. And with cash, that’s a little bit easier, right?

[00:21:22] Because you have to submit a heartbeat transaction every two years, but the transact, but you don’t even need a mind. You can totally do zero, but you can, you know, even if you want to do it at the current, like traditional mining rate is 0.9, eight, eight ness. That’s like literally 3 cents or a few cents.

[00:21:37] So. You actually have this issue where people are just being able to get names and hold onto them forever and they don’t care about them and they’re not signing them. That’s bad for that. You can assist. So you want more and more people to be getting these names and building things on top of the names and the domain lovers are, uh, people who bring liquidity into the ecosystem.

[00:21:55] So they’re, they’re actually, it’s kind of a, there’s a difference between flippers and the spotters and people kind of confuse the two together. And it is kind of an unfortunate misconception because the, you know, Like, like you said, like this guy doing internet search, great work. He’s putting his name to find himself.

[00:22:11] And that actually improves ecosystem along many dimensions. So I recommend, I don’t know if you would agree with me, but I almost feel like that’s like, almost like another level of mining. Cause there’s the mining, there’s traditional, which people could rock, mine HNS but this is a, it’s almost like another level because I’ve noticed there’s this ecosystem already of people that don’t want to bother with auctions.

[00:22:32] And there’s people that just buy full price. Eve I’ve seen it where even it recently just came out of reveal, but they pay like a massive premium on top of the price. I just feel like maybe this person doesn’t want to be bothered with auctions. Maybe they just, so in a way it’s almost like they’re a mind in my mind, at least they’re like a minor because they’re spending time bidding, opening the following, you know, whereas I think there’s another level of person it’s just like, I’ll pay a premium and I’ll just buy it for like, you know, aftermarket price.

[00:23:03] Yeah. Yeah, totally like there’s I completely agree with you. It’s like a proof of work almost. If you go and put in the effort and get a name and spend the two weeks to get a name, and then you sell it at like a premium, the person buying that values that time. Right. It’s like, you know, people value their time and think about how much time and effort it actually takes to get some of these names.

[00:23:24] It’s like paying you know, if you value something like $50 an hour, it can take like a few hours to actually go and get the naming of just like focused effort. So you just like value that, that alone accounts for like a really heavy, premium promoted most of these names. So I think it’s a really great practice.

[00:23:39] You have people who have time on their hands, they can go and get the names quickly over a period of time, and then they can sell the names to someone who wants to purchase it quickly. And that’s very healthy for the ecosystem. Yeah, agreed. There’s one point I kind of would like to hear the insights. I mean, we’re in COVID we’re still, I don’t, I don’t know how it is in San Francisco, but it’s still somewhat locked down and we’re not total lockdown, but basically still most of us are like, kind of like locked down or not, definitely not traveling as much as before.

[00:24:05] So. Honestly, I was talking to actually my friend, Chris, and some others. We think that actually was a positive for handshake or even in the crypto space because people had time to study and learn and, and I feel like it was somewhat, I don’t know if you’d agree or thought of that, but. You guys, the blockchain opened, like right as the world’s shut down.

[00:24:26] Right. I, I think what was the time? Every 2020 is when it launched. Yeah. We launched the same day that we launched. So it was actually really funny to see, because that first month it was just insane growth because you know, the first month of benefit their friends, see that launches, you just get a lot of speculation.

[00:24:41] And then when Bitcoin drunks I’m like. Usage across the border, was it, it was speculation across the board, just dropped as well with it. And then we slowly built up from there. And then now you’re seeing, you know, like the marketplace activity grow exponentially and the users growing and everything like that.

[00:24:58] So we kind of got to see that like initial speculator phase and then like the, the trial sorrow, and then the actual utility growing grow. I would agree with you though. I do think that ultimately COVID made the internet. A lot more, the digital world, it’s like a lot more important in everyone’s lives. You know, probably accelerated that trend by a decade.

[00:25:17] Right. That’s kind of the consensus is that it started, if you just look at like, e-commerce that accelerated e-commerce has share of all commerce, if you’d like, like other past years of growth and there were just like jumps 10 years, which is just insane for that to happen in one year. So I do think that ultimately it was a good thing

[00:25:32] for handshake. And then also if you’re just looking at everything else happening in the internet today, you know, all the issues with censorship, right? Trump getting the platform farther, getting the platforms to get wall street, best game to platform. You know, not now as like a going concern, but like normal people three years ago.

[00:25:47] No one really, no one cared other than some cyberpunks and you know, tech journalists, maybe, and committee Takis. When we started working on the base, like really no one cared about these issues. And then now it’s like, it’s starting to seem like everyone’s caring. So I do think that ultimately COVID was good for handshake, which is kind of a weird word to say, just because, you know, we all hate Covid.

[00:26:09] Yeah. Nobody likes it, but I’ve talked to some other people, I mean, here in Mesa where all these, you know, like e-commerce sellers and online business owners and. Yeah. Some people may, they said they made more money this last year than a neuron their whole life by a lot. So, yeah, it’s definitely accelerated a whole online e-commerce world, which is, which is definitely this, this community.

[00:26:31] All right. Well, what was I going to say him? I’m blinking. Oh, I was going to say like, I keep getting these alerts from Facebook. I need to, because I don’t use Facebook on my phone anymore. And I don’t use WhatsApp because they keep sending me notices that I need to track my location and send data back to Facebook.

[00:26:47] And so I got a pop up on my Facebook that says you need to download the app and prove your location or else you can’t publish on your page anymore. Because you have a lot of fans on your page. If you don’t log into the mobile app and turn on location, sharing and improve your location, I was like, mad then

[00:27:07] This is literally like a couple of hours ago. They’re like, Oh man, it’s just unbelievable to me this the way that things are going, you know? So that’s, that’s true. And I think, I think the reason why that becomes such an issue is, you know, the internet was able to grow for the last 20 years. Without any sort of regulation or oversight, because it was considered a toy, right.

[00:27:29] By like the world for, for the majority of people. And now it’s like that twice suddenly becomes like your entire life. And it’s only the things that are, you know, Big within the internet, like Facebook and Twitter and you know, these other popcorns it’s like suddenly they actually have a lot of power over your life.

[00:27:46] And also is like, now they, because they’re so big and powerful and important, they are on the hook for a lot of moderation that is going to upset a lot of people. So now it’s just like, okay, now everyone’s living online. The tech platforms are super powerful. They also need a moderate and just take like really unpopular stances.

[00:28:04] So you just get this really terrible situation where, you know, people are just walking towards decentralized alternatives. They don’t exist yet. Right. It’s now it’s only in the last really 12 months that has been possible to build up a actual Bible decentralized alternatives, but it is possible now, especially with handshake and Stein, net, those were these saying it’s like, you can actually build like a decentralized sweater decentralized.

[00:28:25] Facebook decentralized Reddit. So I think as we start to see that that’s when we really see handshake growing, it’s not, not before that. Like we’re going to see some growth before that, but once those types of applications come out, then we’re going to see like, you know, people coming in in the millions and it’s just going to be an insane amount of growth for the entire space.

[00:28:42] Yeah, I think I want to add it to the show notes. JP Sears, I think awaken with JP. I don’t know if you know that comedian or he’s he’s I don’t follow him too much, but some reason he’s recommended on YouTube because they stock everything. I do, you know, and they showed me a video of him, his apology to Facebook.

[00:28:58] I’ll send you the link. I’ll add a note, but he’s like, I’m sorry, Facebook. I didn’t mean to say something you didn’t like. I apologize for violating your terms of service. And I promise to never say anything you don’t like again, it’s like, it’s a, it’s like a 10 minute thing where he’s like, It’s pretty, it’s like apologizing.

[00:29:20] And he says, I know that in the United States of America, there’s a first amendment, but I know that your terms of service supersede the first amendment of the United States of America. And that I can only say what you let me say. And then he closes his Facebook account on the video. Like he goes into B roll and then at the end, he’s sitting on his bed with his laptop and he’s like, Confirm closed page Don.

[00:29:43] And then he’s like closing. He’s like goodbye, Facebook. Like that’s seriously. It was an amazing video. I hadn’t notes, but this is a, this is the issue, right? It’s just the issue, man. Like, yeah, this is a problem. Like they say, you can’t, this is not true. This what you are saying is not true. Like, we don’t let you say false information, but how do they know what.

[00:30:06] It’s crazy. Right. It’s really, but yeah. And there’s even examples of like, you know, like actual content from doctors and health officials getting taken down by YouTube. And not only is that scary, but also for a lot of these creators, right? It’s like, if this is how you’re making your living and then an algorithm texts, like some copyright notice, that’s not even valid and a lot of these cases.

[00:30:28] And then they just like automatically shut down your account. And then literally like, Your, your sorts of living is gone. That’s just completely unacceptable. So it’s scary stuff, but also it creates the cultural zeitgeist in which ultimately your handshake needs that in order to succeed is for people to realize the issues with these centralized platforms and wants to shift towards decentralized platforms.

[00:30:48] So it’s, it’s a weird, like unfortunate thing that’s happening, but it’s also like the thing that will ultimately make Kanji win. Yeah. So it’s also a positive in some ways. So the other thing is the last couple of episodes of Global From Asia have not been approved to be published on Wechat. Are we have a Chinese, we put, put this on Chinese.

[00:31:08] They, you upload the video or even the audio. We use all these different platforms. Himalaya. We use the, Wechat video. We use the different, you know, they don’t, they always, they have, I believe it’s a human that watches it. You know, cause it’s like uploading and pending for like time. So somebody like a bot or a person, but they didn’t approve Johann’s I think it’s because NFT, I, they don’t it’s crypto, they don’t, they ban Bitcoin.

[00:31:35] So it’s origin of that. And that’s, that’s also my interest with it in the community at global, from Asia is we’re in a cross border. We deal with this filtering all the time. And the other thing is, of course, we’ve talked about Facebook and Google and Twitter, but also Amazon. I mean, as an e-commerce seller, the most scary thing is your Amazon account gets shut down.

[00:31:55] You know, and I had a really good friend. He’s a South American, I believe from Ecuador. He lives in Thailand, you know, digital nomad, really smart, hardworking guy, father of kids, his Amazon account got shut down in January of this year, 2021, a lawyer sends a copyright violation to Amazon on one picture of one product out of a whole portfolio of products.

[00:32:18] And he think he doesn’t know. He says maybe it was truly a copyright problem with a picture on the, it was like a handbag and it had a picture of a person. They said that you can use a picture. So it’s a woman that died, died in like the 1950s is famous. I won’t say who. So it’s, it’s, it’s not copyrighted to use her photo, but that specific photo is owned by someone.

[00:32:43] And then that lawyer said that photo on that product is copyrighted. So his whole account got shut down. All his money’s locked out and anybody listening today has an Amazon account and knows this is a problem. And you know, that’s what Europe is trying to regulate Amazon. Cause they just shut you down.

[00:32:58] They just say you know, they don’t even need to really give you a reason. They just shut you down and just take your money and then maybe send your products back to an interest that you give them. You know, something like this. It’s just so, I mean, that’s another issue, you know, honestly, that’s what I’m also studying about.

[00:33:13] There’s gotta be some more because Amazon has gotten too big, you know? And we don’t talk about that much in handshake community, but I feel like as a similar one is social media is e-commerce marketplaces. You know, it’s really scary to get, you know, like you said, a creator on Facebook or, or, or these platforms, they make their income from that.

[00:33:30] And it gets shut down the same with e-commerce, you know, it’s a web too, so. So, this has been a really fascinating conversation. I know you’re super busy and it’s super late. I, and we’re actually really happy to have, you’re going to be doing one of the earlier speeches at handicap, which we’ll talk about where you can talk a little bit more about the vision of, of handshake and what you’ve seen.

[00:33:51] So maybe we’ll save some of that insights for that. I think today’s more about the story of, of name base and handshake. So. You got some new products coming out. I know some is like early stage and I have, I’m lucky enough to kind of be an early user. What are some of the things coming in the pipeline that you can see can share with us from, from name base or, or, or other, other things in the handshake community?

[00:34:16] Yeah, totally. So to the immediate things that are coming out are namer renews, which is a forums that news on namebase at IO as a forum that uses handshake names for login. And this is really powerful as a permitted because the handshake names as a separate component from new renews, basically any website can use handshake names for decentralized authentication and imaging is just the first site that supports it.

[00:34:43] So I would love to get, you know, handshake, mercenary, I guess, enhancement log-in as well. Yeah, yeah. Not rely on this at all. It’s just, just use your hands with name. You can authenticate. So that’s, that’s really saying, and there were also really saying hds.io, which is a public DNS was all red for handshake.

[00:34:58] This is actually something that we, funny, sorry. We thought it was impossible to create because it’s really. Operationally difficult to run a public DNS resolver, and you need to run it 24 seven. It needs to be replicated all across the globe for it to be speed performing. And you also need to offend off a ton of different DNS based attacks.

[00:35:16] Associate’s like really, really difficult to do. Unfortunately, some of the community members were also the community members who like built up DNS infrastructure that like millions of consumers are using. And so we were able to partner with them to actually set this up. So if you go to hds.io, now anyone can go and search on their computer, you know, in brave in Chrome and Firefox and opera Safari, they can start using handshake.

[00:35:39] You can use it on your computer. You can use on your phone. That really seem bad. And then in terms of the name base part itself, we’re also investing really heavily into the registry. You know, I think you mentioned earlier, so like Hollins has Dossie through the name based registry and it’s really cool.

[00:35:54] That’s a dot C as a TLD is now a top 500 TLD, even when ranked against, I can see all these. And so to get that within, you know, basically within the first year of handshake is super exciting. And what we’re doing now is basically really working hard to open up their name based registry to everyone, because there’s a big waiting list and we’re just operationalizing that so that anyone can go and start listing their TLD and started selling to domains.

[00:36:16] Mike, I know you’re an internet marketer. I think that’d be like an opportunity for you. Definitely want to get you on board and it’s cool because it’s like, you don’t need that many sales Sasha have a really good business, right? Like you only have only a thousand sales, you have a $10,000 a year business because if you do a $10 per domain per year, and that’s recurring revenue, and so you have $10,000 per domain per year, the value of your TLD, right?

[00:36:44] If you just use like a 10 X, multiple, it’s just like, as like a baseline. So a hundred thousand dollars and you know, there’s no hand GTLD, that’s where the a hundred thousand dollars, even though dot C for example, is already worth a hundred thousand dollars. If you, if you value it based on the actual revenue that it generates.

[00:37:00] So I’m really excited about that just because I think not only will it be, will it be a great monetization potential, but it’ll also just increase the value of all the angio, these across the entire ecosystem. So we’re going to be investing into that along with the marketplace and the on-ramp really just improving the sources of pressure and just removing them across the board.

[00:37:17] So those are some of the things that we’re working on on the room. Yeah. I mean, we’ll link, I’m taking some notes and we’ll, we’ll try our best to make sure we cleared all this on the show notes. A lot of amazing things. I think we talked about clay Collins and before the recording, just to make sure I include that for everybody.

[00:37:31] Clay Collins, actually I followed him before a handshake. He he’s founded lead pages, which he later, I don’t know if he’s active. They still own owner or part of it. That’s so funny. I didn’t realize that. Yeah. He’s the founder of lead pages. I heard him on the us more passive income podcast with Pat Flynn in like 2013 or 14.

[00:37:51] And I was a customer for a while on there, but yet he founded lead pages. I actually know his co-founder is my friend, Simon Pane. And then I didn’t even know he was in handshake when I heard about an October. Cause some of these people were not so high profile. He started to tweet about it more. But yeah, clay Collins is great and he’s, he’s a founder of Nomics now and hardcore into crypto, but it’s great.

[00:38:14] He’s been really starting to be more high profile about Dotsie and handshake on his Twitter account. He’s a great influencer, a really smart guy. Also, we’re lucky to have him also sharing at the handy con this later, uh, Right when the show was out and the true Rosner will be sharing too. And drew he’s also been really, really a low profile about handshake.

[00:38:33] Right? I don’t know if he’s not as much. What was that? Sorry. He’s accumulating. Yeah. He’s buying. Right. I even think I said it to you in a director call. Like even me, I have to say, I didn’t, you don’t want to have too much people going in, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s a tricky one because you want to get adoption, but you also want to try to, you know, like we also got dot GFA.

[00:38:56] That was the last one that was, or February 4th. That was the last of the 52. The GFA one, it was like one of the top ones on my list dot GFA, which we’re actually using for the community. We’re building out like Rose that GFA. We’re probably won’t do that in your registrar program. Cause I just want to do that for members only we’ll get a teal SLD, but actually I forgot to tell you, I got a request for a dot mastermind SLD literally.

[00:39:23] Yes. I don’t know if you get that into the record. He asked for he’s a, he does, uh, He does he could I have a form. I built out a site, dot.dotmastermind.com, D O T. And he filled out the form and I he’s the first, second one, but the other one was more like a friend, but he says he, I actually have a question.

[00:39:45] Why do you want a dot mastermind? Because I said it’s not, it’s a premium. Extension, and it’s still early stage and he says he wants to use it because he wants to do like a, a small group of musicians or some, some, I can’t remember some of them.

[00:40:03] Yeah. I’m so sorry for the delay on that. We’ve been really, cause you know, the past, like two months of growth, it’s just been. Putting out fires, making sure that these are going to base and everything’s working really setting up the registry and you’re going to be able to start selling the mastermind.

[00:40:19] Yeah, I’m really excited for that. I think that that can definitely be like a, like a hundred thousand dollars per year TLD. It wasn’t like one of the top on my, on my list and you could see the bid, but we bid 10,000 HNS on it. And I was scared that somebody to come up above it, but, but it’s almost, I dunno, you can look yourself, but it was, we only pay 200 HNS.

[00:40:41] Of that there was a crazy move with these blinds. I don’t understand. They put huge blinds, but we were a bid, but yeah, I’m totally excited for that one, but there’s so much more that can be done, you know? I mean, there’s, of course it can be a domain, but it’s also can have, you can, you can have crypto payments.

[00:40:57] I hope in a future may not exactly right now, but hopefully there’ll be like crypt, maybe even right now, but there are, there’s so much more power. So even more powerful of a domain than a normal domain once we get fully optimized. Cause you can yeah. You can do so much more with it. I believe then traditional DNS domain once.

[00:41:14] I mean, we’re still a little early stage, but it’s, there’s so much power with these. I can’t wait until more people get into this. Yes. It was a point I want to go back and make sure. But yeah, like you guys have been really doing good. I mean, I can imagine how overwhelming. You know, I noticed some people come, you know, well, let’s just put it out there.

[00:41:32] Some people kind of do complain about name base. I mean, I defend you guys like others. Do it’s, your guys are doing an amazing job. And you know, you’re like pretty much the only one it’s not because I mean, anybody can make. Try to make it, you guys are doing it right. You Anthony, and a team and Johnny are doing amazing, amazing stuff.

[00:41:50] But I mean, yeah. I mean, I think there’s just so much growth, right? Like you said, I know we’ve had some calls. We do, I joined some director calls with you and others and I mean, it’s what you want to share some of the growth or some of the, you know, there’s been some huge scaling, right? I mean, it’s, it’s unbelievable.

[00:42:08] So just on the, on the one hand, just on the, like the, the bid volume, you know, there’ve been more and more people bidding on the names. I forget how many was it Beverly, but he’s like a few hundred thousand bids. It’s like a lot. And the, the handshake while the infrastructure was not built to handle that kind of scale.

[00:42:26] So we had to just do a lot of infrastructure res. To handle that. And then the marketplace volume, you know, that’s been growing 70% month over month for the past seven months now, you know, now I think it’s probably actually been growing at an even higher rate just because in February. We had a monster month of 2.6 million HNS.

[00:42:44] So that worked out it’s about $800,000 in terms of the names being traded. And honestly, I’ll tell you, I think all the names being sold today, they they’re basically selling at a discount. So what they will be in like six months just after people realize that you can like start selling the SLDS on them.

[00:42:59] And the more use cases that are possible, but still even, even backlog has been amazing. Right. It’s just like you, you want to see that exponential growth in any. Sort of new technology and the fact that a handwritten has that has, is incredible. And I’m really looking forward to that, just growing more and more as the use cases come out.

[00:43:16] Because if you think about just like word of mouth, it’s really hard to explain handshake, just if you’re only using words, but if I can just go and, you know, go to sky include and just go and visit that in your browser or go to neighboring reviews and just log in with your style, include games, demonstrate where you can actually use it, that they can actually go and show someone, Oh, I can actually go and buy.

[00:43:35] Dusty domains on one-on-one domain or in Serco or gateway. And now you just start to make it really easy for be able to go on, to explain handshake to their friends. And then that means that the ecosystem can grow that much faster. Right? If you shorten the explanation time from 30 minutes to. Three minutes.

[00:43:51] You’re going to have 10 X, you know, more than 10 X growth. So I’m really excited. There’s going to be a lot of stock company is that many great time to be in the ecosystem. And it’s still very early days. Yeah. It’s totally early. I know the first year and you know, it’s passed and there’s a little bit, people don’t know what that totally means, but there’s so much opportunity.

[00:44:07] And then, you know, some people say, Oh, it’s getting more expensive now. But like you said, like compared us to an ICANN TLD, which. I dunno, I don’t want to be like shooting myself down, but I don’t know if I would ever either be able to, or wants to be able to afford the cost of a traditional TLD on I can write.

[00:44:23] I mean, it’s like a million dollar. Yeah. You’d be, you’d be spending millions of dollars and then you don’t even have the power of the, you know, the crypto kind of powers I would call to it. And I think the last part. We should probably add that. I think, I don’t know. There’s so many clubhouses lately in here, like hours and hours long, but somebody says that we should, we should put into it that it’s a cash flow investments.

[00:44:45] It’s not, you know, you can. You know, like clay Collins, he’s going to be sharing at the handicap too. And he’s, he’s sharing screenshots of income coming from all this TLD or SLD sales, right. It goes directly into his name base account. I think it’s like 30 or 40 HNS per se. And of course he can set your own price, but I think he’s getting allowed 30th and he’s showing same day’s game, multiple sales coming in.

[00:45:08] So it’s like a, it’s a cashflow investment, like you said earlier, just to reiterate, but. You invest in this name, if it’s a course dot C is probably one of the, obviously better, better ones, but I mean, there’s still plenty out there that exists that people will read stuff. I mean, there, there are infinite niches on the internet, which means that there are going to be infinite TLDs that are good.

[00:45:30] TLDs because you don’t, you don’t need a million dollar niche like you do, and an icon space, right? So an icon you need, you need or needs to be at least a million dollars, way more than that, actually, for, to justify the investment. But in handshake, you can have a niece that only has like a thousand people that are going to pay $10 per year.

[00:45:49] Now that’s a $10,000 per year cashflow business. That’s impossible in the ICANN space. That’s very possible in Handshake because you know, the names don’t cost don’t have that same, you know, bureaucratic costs. So if you just think about like, what’s possible, it’s like, I, I envisioned there’s going to be.

[00:46:03] Thousands of TLDs that are actually very good businesses to own. And they’re just going to have their own little niches and, and, you know, target markets and give are going to be using them. And it’ll be just really, really amazing to see that. And then just the last, you know, of course I’m plugging my, of course I have this membership, but the idea is I have to jot the GFA TLD, global from Asia GFA, because these shows are like GFA, right?

[00:46:25] Of course, global from Asia is long. So I have GFA, so I was lucky enough to get the TLD. And the idea is. You know, we could set up a SLD for members rather than just selling it as a domain extension. You know, you could have a member and a member, it gets, it’s their identification. Right. Maybe we could have a forum like using a decentralized Reddit that only people at the .GFA.

[00:46:51] Name could log in and post, right? And then it have a profile page. They use us to come. We have these events in the future. Like in old days we had like a cross-border summit in person. Maybe we could use this. You say I’m Rose.gfa. Right. And then he could show it. That could be your like, Entry into an event or a workshop or a online or offline, like that’s your identity in this community.

[00:47:18] Right. That’s, it’s so much amazing thing. So, all right. I mean, this has been fascinating. I think we get back. I can go. I mean, it seems like, obviously you’re super passionate. I’m addicted. It’s been like just a. You know, three, four, five months for me, I’m totally addicted to, but I see the future and, you know, you’re super, super smart as so many super smart people in this.

[00:47:38] Right. And there are other, you know, people always say at first thing, people say to me is like, Oh Mike, but there’s others that have tried to do this. And there’s others that are in trying to do this even now, you know, maybe we’ll end with that. Like what, what you’ve kind of hinted towards maybe like, why, why are you so down on handshake and you know, w what’s the difference.

[00:47:58] Totally. So the there’s a few. So this one is why now. And then two is, if, why now, why handshake and the why now question is really important because one is before blockchain technologies. There have been alternative route projects in the past, but they don’t provide any tangible benefit other than expanding the new space.

[00:48:20] So at that point you don’t actually have enough of a draw to that alternative route for it to succeed. And then just within the blockchain, namespaces, you know, the main one is, is named coin. The name distribution of that was basically not done in a way that would ensure its success. What happened is named coin would sell the adopted domains for a set price.

[00:48:46] As soon as the name point product protocol launched, right. Anyone want to go by any name? And what that created was in an environment where the early domainers basically early squatters, just all the good names. Cause they could just buy up. A lot of the handshake committee members actually came and told me like, Oh yeah, like I was early in any point, bought up all the good names that basically makes it so that the ecosystem can never grow and hit a breakout trajectory because you have the squatter issue that we alluded to our discussed earlier.

[00:49:13] And then past that, you also just have to look at the ecosystem that handshake is growing up in now, which is now we have all the DOF technologies basically maturing at the same time, a Skynet IPFS file coin, you know, AirWeave. Plus handshake has a naming system, right? Because the naming system, you still need the names to point to some thing and do something.

[00:49:35] So just for the traditional internet like that, that’s pointing a handshake name to a traditional website, like that’s internet. That’s interesting on its own, but it’s really interesting when you pair Handshake with these other decentralized web. Protocols. And then at the same time, you know, it’s really only within the last 12 months that we see this massive cultural Zeit Geist towards decentralization, and you need those two ingredients for something like handshake for new technology to succeed, you need the technological maturity and the cultural zeitgeist.

[00:50:04] It’s the same thing with Bitcoin, right? There have been numerous Bitcoin attempts, you know, digital currency attempts in the past big gold. A decade prior and they all failed. It wasn’t until Bitcoin figured out the right mechanics to actually make the technology work. And then also the 2008 financial crisis.

[00:50:20] So then Bitcoin launched in the wake of that, that basically created the cultural poll for big points of succeed. So you need the technology and you need the cultural whole in order for it to find product market fit. So that’s, you know, that’s really the reason why, why now for handshake is you have the technology and you have the cultural poll.

[00:50:36] And then also just if you evaluate the other protocols, so there’s, there’s no one actually attacking decentralized DNS. There are naming protocols for wallet naming, for wallet naming is really their primary focus, but for decentralized DNS, it’s actually a really, really hard problem. There’s a lot of infrastructure that you need to create, you know, and I, and I can tell you just in creating issue and I said, IO, There’s like a lot of random things that you need to deal with in terms of the infrastructure to make a protocol usable for DNS.

[00:51:05] And the only protocol that’s actually fully focused on that there are other protocols that have the wallet naming, but, you know, tacking on DNS as an afterthought is not going to create an actual functional, decentralized DNS solution. And they’re also. You know, if you think about the motivation for handshake it’s, it’s decentralizing the root of the domain name system, which is what needs to decentralizing.

[00:51:27] The rest of the system is actually fairly decentralized already. So it’s like it’s really attacking the source of the centralization that needs to be decentralized. So that’s why handshake. And if you just look at the growth. Regardless of like how you feel about, you know, handshake itself. You just look at the growth of that.

[00:51:40] Cause it’s some, it’s like, okay, there’s, there’s a lot of momentum behind it. So I, that, that, I’m very, I’m very bullish on handshake. I’m very excited. I think we’re going to continue to see more and more issues with the centralized internet and as those issues pop up, you know, as we seem to be slash. A few months, as it continued to exacerbate, we’re going to see more of a pull towards handshake and handshake.

[00:51:59] It is really the best decentralized DNS solution out there. So it was just all that attention is going to fall into handshake. So it’s just gonna be, uh, it’s gonna be a crazy time. Awesome, man. Yeah, I can feel it. I feel it I’m on board, man. So I think we’ll wrap up with that. You’re you’re going to be, we’re so lucky to have, you know, we put together as community event, a handicap promote.

[00:52:18] And with Jehan, which was talked about on two podcasts earlier, and we’re making it happen already, this coming week, you’re going to be sharing on a panel and also a session. And of course, people can find, you know, I think your, your company is the first place people go to get in, right? We’ve talked name base.io and create free accounts.

[00:52:37] Of course the hardest part is of course, getting the, you know, buying the agent, buying HNS right. I mean, we’re buying, getting it right. We’re going to, we’re going to make that easier for sure. Like the debit card payments and wires are on the way. Awesome. That’ll be a huge one. Okay. Any, any last things I think I spent, I think, I can’t remember.

[00:52:54] I lost track of time. I think it was longer than usual, but it was a fascinating conversation and I really, really appreciate you sharing with us today. Yeah, totally. I would say just final parting thought is a lot of people. Feel FOMO when they join a growing ecosystem, that’s growing really fast and they see all the other people are like, Oh man, I’m getting on late, but we’re still very, very early, right?

[00:53:15] Like Bitcoin is still early. Like I think Bitcoin is still going to keep on going up. I have a lot of conviction around Bitcoin. Bitcoin is still early and that’s 10 years in Hendrix. Only one year in, whereas. Still super early into everything. So if you’re just considering jumping in, just, just jump in now, you know, you’re, you’re so very, very early and that’s what that’s, what I would say is it’s really easy to feel FOMO, but you’re not too late.

[00:53:36] It’s incredibly early. And now’s the best time to kind of enter the space. Yeah, I would agree. And I guess my last point on that is there’s people. They. They got an earlier, maybe than somebody just getting in now, but they’re still like underselling their names, you know, even the AF of course there’s some that are like crazy high squatter price, millions maybe, but there are some, I’ve bought a lot on the aftermarket and I look, I know they, they got it for like five, you know, or 10, they got lucky or they were really early, they bought the name, but you could still buy it so cheap.

[00:54:05] And then. Comparing at least I believe so cheap in any compared even $10 and a hundred thousand HNS which sounds like a lot, but compare if it’s a real TLD that can make cashflow. And like you said, you can, when a registrar program is open, I mean, when people start to realize that you can actually buy this TLD and make.

[00:54:25] 1,002 thousand, 10,000, a hundred thousand a year with this name, then people are going to be like, man, I wish I got in now. Right? It’s the same with like Bitcoin, like you said, even now, like probably we’ll say few years, like 50,000 Bitcoin is so cheap, it’s like 500,000, right. Or whatever it will be in the future.

[00:54:41] You know? I mean, that is the hard part though. People feel like they’re late, you know, with crypto or any kind of project, but. You know, I think of course I have to say like, course don’t invest your house or your mortgage, but yeah. I mean, people should try and get some exposure to projects that they believe in and, and are willing to invest in the long-term, but okay.

[00:55:01] I’m really, really happy. Again, this has been awesome. And I’ll see you at the conference handy con dot promote. Awesome. All right. Thanks Mike. Thanks Tisha. You know, we had them on the show recently, mercury.com. They support our show, their age partner, Tara. They sign up for our package. They support what we do here, and they are aligned with what we are.

[00:55:24] They’re a company that helps make baking in the U S easy without needing to go there for businesses, for e-commerce sellers. They have a special little bonus for you and me. If you sign up with our link at globalfromasia.com/mercury by their psycho. Totally. Totally no brainer. If you do business in the U S and you either even have a bank account, it’s one, I get a second one, but a lot of you don’t have one.

[00:55:50] So why not check it out if you want to read the review. And I made a little video myself globalfromasia.com/reviews/mercury. You can see that as well. Thank you mercury for supporting us and thank you for creating services for people around the world, trying to do business online and to do business and e-commerce to earn money just for their life, for themselves, or a family for their friends, for their legacy.

[00:56:14] Check them out. Thank you so much. Thank you Tisha. And that was fascinating. I know. And he, this guy is a hard worker. I mean, I don’t think they sleep dare him, Johnny. We were talked to quite a bit too. And the community manager at named base. I mean, I feel like when, when did they sleep? You know, I’m over here in China on the other side of the world, these days they dated and they never seen a sleep.

[00:56:32] So I’ll do amazing things. Thanks. Once you do, you can check out the show notes. We put a full transcript too at globalfromasia.com/namebase. And we’re trying to put this into the dweb where we have .gfa. We’re looking at home.gfa. Yeah. I don’t know if it will be ready right now, manly on the team, our IT department, our amazing web managers helping get this exported into handshake and the decentralized internet where you don’t have to be as afraid that your site will get taken away, hosting, you know, things like that.

[00:57:07] So, Stay tuned. We’re working on that. And a lot of times, my problem is I’m sometimes too early. I’m too early. You know, I sold a Bitcoin thousand dollars a coin in 2000 and I can’t remember 16 or something, but, you know, A lot of us are too early. You know, we got a huddle, we got a huddle. You got to get in, you don’t get the FOMO.

[00:57:30] You got to think long-term. And, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe it doesn’t work. You know, Tieshun is a really smart dude, as you could tell, you know, I’m somewhat smart. Moving to China. Was that right? All right. Yeah. I’m a pioneer with arrows in my back, you know, go into the battlegrounds, try to be early on everything, but I, I believe in it and I’m getting people around me convinced.

[00:57:52] And thanks, Chris Moore. I appreciate you listening. He got me into this cuts off and I’m wearing a handshake hat here. We got our handycon conference. Just a couple of days after the show goes, live handy, conduct, promote, promote TLD might not work for you or handy con.org. For those that don’t, haven’t converted to the resistance.

[00:58:13] I don’t want to say dark side. We’re the good side, but I’m just tired of being afraid. You know, I don’t want to admit it, but I’m afraid. And I know a lot of other Amazon sellers, e-commerce marketers, internet marketers were afraid of getting an email. I’ve gotten these emails. I’ve got, my friends gotten these emails.

[00:58:30] Dear seller, dear associate’s partner, dear AdSense publisher, dear pump, Facebook page order, Dear, it’s not dear, man. Don’t see deer. I feel like they all say, dear, they’re not dear. Dear means you care. They do not care, man. Don’t care. You are just a sheep in their farm. You know, it’s just another widget.

[00:58:56] Just another lab rat in their market and their ecosystem, they just toss you away and let somebody else come up in your spot. Tired of getting those scary emails, your account’s been terminated or your account has been frozen, your page has been unpublished. You know, I’m just tired of this, man. I don’t think I’m a shady marketer.

[00:59:17] I don’t think I am, but I do a lot of web marketing. I have a lot of friends and I’m just tired of all these stories. I mentioned some of them, but I’m just tired of these stories. You checked the box. When you signed up for Facebook, you checked the box. When you signed up for Amazon seller central, you check the box, you check the box.

[00:59:38] That means you accept our terms of service. That means that you live, live in our world and you have no power and we can do anything we want to you. And we can throw you in a garbage when we want to, we can delete your content, products, delete your store. We can do anything we want to you for any reason.

[00:59:55] And we don’t need to tell you why and you can’t eat. You usually can’t even get an answer or you can pay an Amazon seller lawyer, $10,000 to write us a letter. You know, I don’t want to pay $10,000 to a lawyer to talk to you, Amazon. I don’t want to pay $10,000 to fight for my AdSense account back, to fight, to fight for my account back, you know, and my Wechat account.

[01:00:15] I don’t, I’m afraid, man. I am so. Care man. I am scared. My wechat account will just get locked. You know, I won’t be able to log in one day to say your password doesn’t work. That’s what they do to you, man. That’s even worse. Right? You’re like my password works, failed login. My face is still on my Facebook.

[01:00:37] People messaging me still there. They think I’m there. Why are you not responding to Mike? I sent you a message. Did you get my message? Did you get my message? You know, I don’t want that fear that my account is shut down, man. I don’t know. Maybe I’m a extreme case, but I am a hyper user of the internet. And that’s why I stopped really caring about social media.

[01:00:57] Cause I’m just too paranoid. Scared, man. I am too scared. I have no power. I have no authority. I have no control over those. Walled garden platforms that can do anything they want to meet for any reason and no recourse to them. I spend so much time building content. That’s why I like websites. That’s why I like blogs.

[01:01:20] That’s why I have Mikesblog.com, globalfromasia.com. That’s why I don’t really like to push traffic to Facebook. I don’t like to push traffic to these third party platforms that I have no control over. That’s why I do internet marketing. And I drive that traffic to my Amazon listings. And I boost up my Amazon listing from my website because at least then I can change the link if they delete my product or lock me out of my account, at least I can update my page, but I mean, it hasn’t happened to me.

[01:01:45] I have had domains taken away from me. I have gotten GoDaddy taken domains away from me. I don’t know. You know, I’ve been in this too long. I’m an old man. I’m an old man. You know, I’m gonna be 40 years old in April, April 2nd, 1981. Don’t delete anything. Don’t do some kind of identity theft on me, but I’m going to be 40 years old and just a couple of weeks,

[01:02:10] You know, do I want my kids to grow up in this world of fear? Screw up in this world, what the new governments of Facebook and the new governments of Google and the new government of Amazon can tell them if they can make a living or not. If they can continue to earn your income. You know, I don’t want to embarrass my friends, but I told you in the interview with Tieshun and like my friend he’s in Chiang Mai earned some money selling Amazon’s whole account shutdown, because there was a picture on one of his products that was copyrighted because some kind of, I think they use these bots or something that scrapes all these images on Facebook looking for copyright.

[01:02:51] I mean, maybe he made a mistake maybe, or maybe even purposely did, or maybe, maybe the freelancer we work with didn’t, didn’t check into it enough,

[01:03:04] but to close your whole account, man, I mean, it had more like 10 or 15, 20, 30 products. It was one product. Yeah. I understand. You know, there is some issues of copyright infringement, but I feel like it’s gone the other way sometimes. And. This is why I’m in love with handshake. This is why it’s been consuming my mind.

[01:03:28] I mean, it does take you over to oxygen. Get a little bit crazy. I’ll be honest, you know, but the core fundamental of handshake is you own your name and you own your content, desk to fundamental. There’s some real extremists in the community larger than me. And they won’t even use clubhouse, man. They won’t even use clubhouse.

[01:03:49] We have this event in handicap. They won’t even use clubhouse because they’re like it’s too centralized. You know, I, I don’t want to have my profile there. I don’t want, they don’t even, won’t even log in. I won’t even create an account and I’m getting like this. I’m getting to be old Facebook. I don’t want to log in anymore.

[01:04:03] I don’t, it stalks my browser. It tracks all the websites. It serves ads to me. You know, it locks me out. It punishes me at D you know, it makes me send one, my 10 years ago, I was like, get people to like your Facebook page, send traffic to Facebook, and then you’ll boost your page, but they didn’t know what.

[01:04:21] If you don’t pay their advertising, nobody sees it. The likes don’t mean nothing anymore. Maybe they look cool, but you got to pay money to Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg needs that money, man. He needs that money in his pockets and he needs that money you don’t pay. You don’t play. I’m tired of these platforms to me.

[01:04:36] And then they just shut you down, throwing the garbage, you know, that’s what I want to spend money boosting Global from asia posts, you know, it’s like unbelievable. So. If any of this sounds Elyse a little bit interesting. You can own your own name, own your identity and own your content on the internet.

[01:04:54] And I call it the new internet. Yes. Sean says, I should say, as the decentralized internet dWeb phases, it sounds interesting. You should join this handy con dot promote or handy con.org. It’s only in a few days. So it’s super short notice. There was literally born from two podcasts ago with. Jehan and we’re making it happen.

[01:05:16] So we’re at one gigabyte. My internet is so slow in China because they control me here. Like they got my hand on my throat, so it’s going to take hours to upload this and it’s the last minute show. So I’m going to kind of cut my blah, blah, blah session here, but let’s make the internet great again, man. I kind of missed the old bulletin boards.

[01:05:37] I missed the old internet, you know, I’m tired of this, like planned, highly regulated, boring internet, where I can put my profile photo. I can change the text on my page and so boring, man, let’s make a real creative internet again. I hope to see you on a new, on a new world, globalfromasia.com/namebase third part of a three-part series. But it’s a core part of what we do at global from Asia and a fundamental point.

[01:06:03] And that’s why we’re supporting this. Thank you. To get more info about running an international business. Please visit our website at www.globalfromasia.com. That’s www.globalfromasia.com. Also be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.