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Cryptonomix
Two Worlds Collided: Exploring Real Estate on the Blockchain With Seth Priebatsch of Groma
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In this episode of Cryptonomix, Mark Eckerle sits down with Seth Priebatsch, President at Groma, a full-service real estate development and management firm with a blockchain twist. The two start with a deep dive into Seth’s background and beginnings in the crypto world then transition the discussion to Groma and its innovative two-sided vision, where real estate and crypto meet. They then delve into the functionality of GromaCoins, the impact of the ETF approvals on the company, and other noteworthy projects Seth is excited about.
Hello, listeners, welcome to this episode of Cryptonomics. Before we jump into today's discussion, please keep in mind this recording is for general education and is not intended to constitute investment advice. Any opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not necessarily represent those of Witham . Hey folks, welcome back to another episode of cryptonomics. Brought to you by with as always, I'm your host, mark Eckley , and today I welcome to the show Seth Pry , batch President at Grma . Welcome to the show today, Seth.
Speaker 2Uh , great to be here. Thanks for having me, mark .
Speaker 1Awesome. So what I, what I like to start with, with all of our guests is basically your crypto journey, right? Your rabbit hole experience. Everyone's got one, they're all unique and different, and they all have a different journey as to how we all ended up here in this space. So I always like to get a sense of, tell us , uh, how you ended up in crypto in the first place.
Speaker 2Absolutely. Uh , great , great question. And , and , uh, uh, my, my crypto , uh, story, the , at least the beginning of it probably is one of , uh, of lessons learned , uh, you know, and, and , and missed opportunities potentially though hopefully getting into the, into the right place. Eventually, I, you know, have been doing the entrepreneur thing for, for, for well over a decade now. I've got my start , uh, back at Princeton, was doing math and computer science there. Uh , won , won the business plan competition freshman year and went into , uh, more traditional technology , uh, a restaurant technology play called Level Up, where we , uh, helped restaurants digitize and eventually had a, a great , uh, a great exit. Sold that business for, for just around $400 million to GrubHub. And, and then , uh, brought the team over to GrubHub, and we eventually sold that business for , for just north of $7 billion , uh, in kind of late 2020, early 2021. Uh , all of which has nothing to do with crypto. But while I was doing that , uh, many of my , um, you know, really smart , uh, teammates , uh, you know, back in like oh 9, 10, 11 , uh, brought this thing Bitcoin to my attention and said, Hey, we're doing payment processing for restaurants. We should, you know, we should, we should probably add a cryptocurrency, which we, we did not end up doing. And I, I took a deep dive into the Bitcoin White paper and , um, being completely honest, decided it was not for me. Uh , I , I was not sold. Uh, I was like, this is , uh, this is clever and I , I really appreciate the technology behind it, but , um, I had not done my full deep dive into what makes a good currency, a bad currency, a good financial system, a bad financial system. And I , um, I sort of opted out and many of my colleagues opted in and, and , uh, uh, they have done very well, and were , and were smarter than me. And , and every once in a while remind me of that , uh, uh, you know, over, over a , uh, over a get together, then post the GrubHub sale to, we ended up selling to a , a European firm , just eat takeaway . Um, some friends and I , uh, colleagues got back together and we started digging deeper , uh, into what we were gonna do next. And, and , uh, many of us got fascinated by the evolution that blockchain had taken, the, the , the things that Ethereum was doing, some of the other , uh, l ones and , uh, uh, we got sort of re reignited in , you know, 2022 , uh, not that long ago. I, I dove back in headfirst and , uh, you know, I'm only a few years full-time in the crypto space, but doing my best to, you know, build interesting things in the, in the broader blockchain ecosystem.
Speaker 1Yeah. A few years in crypto is 10 to 15 years in many other industries. Yes . So you're definitely not late to the game. I mean, we're all, we're all still early, right? Bitcoin's only been around for 15 years, so it's still Right . Very new and the nascent asset, but no , it's exciting. So, so tell us a little bit about what you're working on, what products , um, in the crypto space the last two years and , and kind of break down what ultimately is Roma at its heart and soul?
Speaker 2Yeah, so , so the , the long-term vision for Grma , and I'll start with the long-term vision and then pull back to how we're gonna try and make that happen more pragmatically. But our long-term vision is we are building a real estate backed cryptocurrency. Uh, we spent a lot of time, and when I say we, my co-founders and and myself spent a lot of time thinking about what would be the ideal currency if you were gonna start , uh, from the ground up. And we , um, looked all the way back in ancient history, like literally back to ancient Samaria where , uh, you know, they had , uh, the shekel, the Sumerian shekel , um, and that was a metal coin, sure , but was actually a grain based currency. You could bring your metal coins to the king's grainery and trade them in for, for , for wheat, which was critical at that time and agrarian economy, all the way to, you know , uh, modern monetary theory, fiat currency , uh, you know, bism, everything else. And we got fascinated by both ends of the spectrum. Uh , we love the digital , uh, permissionless, interoperable, composable nature of, of blockchain assets, you know, Bitcoin specifically, but also Ethereum and a number of others. But we also really loved this idea and felt very drawn to this idea of an asset backed currency of , of , of a tangible asset backed currency. Uh, in this case, we evaluated everything from gold to oil to grain as well , uh, you know, food, other commodities, and settled on in some ways this kind of elegant idea that because land is functionally the layer one of the economy, every economic activity takes place both metaphorically and literally on land. That it is a core input to every bit of economic activity. And if you could imbue land real estate, really with the digital and composable nature of a blockchain, then you might have something that would have all the facets of a , of a great currency inherently limited in supply, inherently valuable as in worth something, and capable of being valued composable in the way that blockchain assets are anti inflationary and could of course be rules driven . And so we set down this path of building a real estate backed cryptocurrency, which doesn't start with the end goal, starts with building a platform to acquire and, and , and run, well, a lot of real estate, putting that real estate on chain , what's now referred to as sort of RWA real world assets on chain , and maybe over the next five or 10 years , uh, having enough people own that, that there is useful interoperability , uh, within the network. And it can transition bit by bit from being an asset worth holding , you know, real estate on chain to also being a currency like object worth, worth using.
Speaker 1I think that idea, right, that this is really starting to come fruition in other mainstream adoptions for digital assets, right? I think the idea of tokenization is an easier idea to comprehend for the mainstream user when it comes to digital assets, right? And understanding why do I need a digital dollar or some new asset like a Bitcoin? And it's the idea of the underlying technology with blockchain technology and tokenizing real world assets. I think that's what helps paint the picture to bring it full circle to the everyday person that doesn't understand some of the nuances of digital assets and blockchain technology. I think that helps paint the picture to them of like, Hey, here's what this technology can ultimately do. You , you're hitting the nail on the head on a key problem that I think blockchain technology and real world assets can solve.
Speaker 2Uh , absolutely. I mean, I , I think back to sort of my own , uh, uh, intro story on how I got connected with crypto and , and the thing that dissuaded me, you know , back in 10 11 , uh, 20 10, 20 11, and again, I'll fully admit I was , I was wrong to be dissuaded, but the , the emotional thing that dissuaded me was that it wasn't quote unquote real, right? Like, my concern about fiat currencies is they're not quote unquote real. And now of course they are real, they're backed by tax revenue and, and land and military might, and all sorts of other things. And Bitcoin, of course, is real, right? It is backed by the network and, and the network gives it strength and security. And, and , and that is a very real thing, but it is also somewhat ethereal, right? You have to really think hard about why that network effect creates value. And we all know network effects create value, but they are hard for our primitive human brains to, to, you know, to , to , to think through. Whereas something like real estate, I think there's also why gold has such enduring value, something like gold, the tangibility of it works well for how we view the world. And so, you know, from , from, from a Oma perspective, what gets us so excited and , and why we've been able to scale this business from, we're not a big scale business yet, but from $0 in assets when we founded it to now just north of $200 million of real, real estate assets , uh, uh, in the OMA ecosystem , uh, owned and, and managed by Grma and owned on behalf of our, of our holders, is because there is something naturally compelling to, yes, I want it to be digital, and I want it to be permissionless that we're not fully permissionless, and I want it to be portable, but I also want to know that at the end of the day, if I punch through to what the actual underlying value is, I can point to something as simple to understand as a building that earns rent and generates income and appreciates or , or maybe depreciates in value. And that's sort of the, the core union of Roma, the physicality of real estate and the digital nature of, of the blockchain.
Speaker 1And , and that's been the ongoing debate for many trade five people is like gold versus Bitcoin, right? Where's the underlying value? One is invisible and intangible, the other is physically in my, my hand. So I know there's certain value to that and that people will pay that, but you're, you're bringing both worlds together, which is great. That's, that's what I wanted to dive into. So let's start with the real estate side of things. Where is gr a sweet spot when it comes to real estate? So you said you have $200 million in real world assets of real estate. What makes up that real estate? Is there, is it commercial? Is it
Speaker 2Retail? Yeah . Great . Yeah , great question. It , it , so , so here is where we, we, we, and again, the founding team benefits a lot from our experience at , uh, at Level Up and GrubHub and , and existing in this world of real world delivery logistics, working with physical, small, often , uh, restaurants and bringing efficiency to them by grouping them together at scale to provide valuable services, delivery, loyalty , uh, whatever it happened to be, digital ordering. When we were looking at a real estate asset class to back the gro ecosystem, conceptually, it could have been anything, right? It could have been lab space or Timberland or office space. I'm glad we didn't pick office space, but could have theoretically been , been , been anything. We picked this very narrow asset class , uh, that we call , uh, MU Modern Urban Rentals. Basically small cap multifamily assets from two to 20 units. We picked that because it mirrored in many ways the fragmented ecosystem that GrubHub stepped into. There were 300,000 small restaurants all doing delivery slowly and efficiently, inexpensively . And by grouping them together, we could build a very efficient logistics harness and, and, and provide better, better delivery, better returns, better margins to everybody in the two to 20 unit multifamily space. There are about 2 million of these buildings in the us . They're grouped, highly concentrated in about 40 cities, and they are highly fragmented and highly inefficient. And we thought, Hey, that is a thing that we know how to do. Uh, uh, and so we built the Oma platform to efficiently auto model and acquire upgrade to the same standard, the grom grade standard. So all of our buildings on the inside and sometimes on the outside end up looking the same and operate them very efficiently on our platform. We, our most average building, so there's 200 million , uh, dollars worth of assets, it's about 50 buildings, the most average one can see them all on our, on our website and on chain on , on the Ethereum test net . It looks like a triple decker. It is a triple decker simple building. Uh, we own it, we rent it out, we provide a great resident experience, it produces distributions, dividends, it either appreciates or sometimes assets go down in value as well. But we record all that on chain , uh, as we get new appraisals. And that is our real estate focus seems incredibly narrow. But again, I wanna highlight that just in that, you know, small cap multifamily asset just in the US there's about 2 million of these buildings that's worth about two and a half trillion dollars, which is about a currency level ecosystem, right? The Swiss Franc is maybe $600 billion in value. Bitcoin, you know, plus or minus hovers in, in , in , in that range , uh, a bit bigger these days. Um , but that is an asset class that could be big enough to begin to have currency like characteristics that we think is, you know, in a , in , in a very exciting position to be , uh, optimized through a platform like, like Romas.
Speaker 1So, on, on the token side that you touched on, is that your vision to have a grow a coin acting as a currency? Or are you trying to envision it as something else? And I, I want , I wanna dive into that to see kind of what are the features, right? You mentioned distributions, dividends as a token holder, not , not saying I , yeah . If I were right, playing the devil's advocate fair as a token holder, what would be the benefits to me, the user of owning gro a coins?
Speaker 2Yeah, so a , a great question. And you know, I'll start with kind of the long-term vision. The long-term vision is absolutely, we want a gro a coin to be, for all intents and purposes, a currency, a currency backed by real estate, but something that you or anyone else , uh, would be comfortable holding 'cause it's worth holding. And also be able to use , uh, to spend, to lend, to borrow against , uh, to do all the things you might do with a currency. But that is, you know, let's be optimistic five or 10 years away, right? There's a , there's a lot of work to , you can't just build a currency. Uh , currencies require network effects. They require all kinds of things. So today, the value of a grow a coin is truly in its asset. Um, it is an easy way for large investors, small investors, our renters, it's quite exciting. Uh, some people live in our buildings and own part of the ecosystem. They are a renter and an owner at the same time, which we think is , uh, an incredibly powerful way to democratize access to owning the city around you. Why would they hold a grow a coin ? Well, it represents fractional interest in a diversified real estate portfolio that we think we do a good job of acquiring the right assets and adding value to them. Again, everyone can judge themselves 'cause they can see all the, all the data. It produces dividends and distributions in a passive way. Why does a currency always have to decline in value and an asset always, not always, you know, have the potential to appreciate in value and produce distributions. There's no reason you can't merge those concepts and have a, a yield bearing , uh, steadily appreciating currency. That would be ideal. Of course, there's lots of risks involved in anything. And over time, because our real estate backed token has this value of distributions, this value of appreciation, but is built on chain , there are other things that we can add functionality around bit by bit. Uh, we will add some consumer friendly features. Like when you renew in agro apartment, maybe instead of getting a thousand dollars renewal bonus, you get a thousand grma coins, right? You are getting value, but now you own part of the ecosystem with US security deposits, huge pain in the for everybody involved. We would never charge someone a security deposit to live in their own apartment. If you own some gramma coins, maybe we don't need to charge you a security deposit because are you a renter or are you the owner? And the answer is yes, right? You , you are actually both in a, in a , in a , in a cool and novel way over time, you know, you could obviously imagine all of the defi functionality, lending, borrowing, spending, maybe eventually ways for renters to transmute their monthly rent into ownership. All of that is stuff that years three, four, and five will add. But today, the value is an asset worth holding 10 years from now, hopefully the value is an asset worth holding and a currency worth spending, and there will be lots of grade aided additions between, between now and then.
Speaker 1And , and on that piece to kind of go hand in hand with right, the name of our show, Cryptonomics, can you d dive into what are the tokens of the grma coin ? I know you , you touched on that it's built on the Ethereum network, but what is the either current infrastructure or the expected infrastructure of where you guys are trying to go with the vision?
Speaker 2Yeah, so , so probably the best way to think about the, the , the ons here is to, is to draw the analogy to our, our our tradify , uh, equivalent , uh, uh, which is , uh, a reit and, and in fact, a gro a coin is a share in the gro a reit, which is a real reit a a traditionally, you know, a structured corporate reit. And, and , uh, I haven't mentioned it yet in , in this discussion, but important to highlight that , uh, a gro a coin is a security, it , it is a security token. Uh , what 100%. Uh, we follow all the securities regulations. And today, if you took away all the, the blockchain infrastructure that we're building that we think extends this functionality, you could describe the Grma REIT as a private net asset value nav , uh, reit . And when you give us a dollar, you get a share in the reit. Uh , now we do that on chain and we, and we provide a lot of flexibility and functionality, but on a, on a, on a traditional legal infrastructure, that is what it is. That also I think helps explain the token ons. The groa reit , uh, grow a coin supply is unlimited, but we can't just print them, right? People invest with us, they purchase them, they give us dollars or euros or, or , or Bitcoin or whatever they happen to give us. And we hold that temporarily and then use that to buy plus or minus triple deckers, right? And then, and then put them on our platform and , and improve their value and generate yield. They generate distributions. And those go back in the form of distributions to our, our token holders. Much like, in fact, exactly like a traditional reach would run. This is interesting from a token omics perspective in that it is rules driven . It is predictable, but it can also scale to, you know, not infinite. The planet is only so big, but, but a theoretically very, very large supply. But it can only scale as there is demand for holders to invest in the protocol, invest in the REIT with us. And at a , at a high level. I think that's how the, the token omics work today. And we don't see any change to that going forward . Uh , that's sort of the, the game plan to build value for our token holders and build a scalable infrastructure , uh, over the next , uh, the next decade or so.
Speaker 1You touched on the regulatory side. I want to put that on the back burner, 'cause I definitely want to address that and pick your brain. But one question I had on from the, the token issuance perspective, right? That you can't just print unlimited number of omo coins, you can't just dilute the current token holders. Is there a fixed amount per, I guess, per property of token issuers or, or , or I should say, number of tokens per property? Or what does that look like from a, I'm trying to think, as the company grows and expands and adds real estate to the portfolio, what does the additional issuance of tokens look like? Is there a set release schedule? Like from a technical point of view, what does that look like? If I were a holder trying to see the value, whether it goes up or down, try to paint that picture for me.
Speaker 2Yeah, so , so , uh, an important thing to highlight is , uh, the , the way our process works is we're not issuing tokens directly against properties. Uh, it's actually easier to think about it sort of in the inverse, right? 'cause it's all one amalgamated , uh, uh, pool. I tend to think of it easiest as there is a supply of grower coins. Call it, you know, a hundred million , uh, maybe they're at the moment worth a dollar a piece . This is just example numbers. There's a supply of buildings, call it a hundred buildings , uh, each worth a million dollars. Um, and so you know that you've got a hundred million tokens and a hundred million dollars worth of buildings. Uh, and therefore the price of the token is, is a dollar. If the buildings appreciate, appreciate in the real world, the price might go up. If they depreciate, go down in value, price might go down. That's a very simplistic model. I , in reality, what is actually happening is we've got, you know, the a hundred million , uh, uh, uh, gro a coins , and then you come along and you say, you know, I like gro a coin . I'd like a thousand of them, please. Uh, so you give us a thousand dollars, or maybe you give us an equivalent amount to value in , in Bitcoin or , or Ethereum, and now you've got 100 million and 1000 gro a coins and $100 million of buildings and $1,000, right? So the value is still the same. Over time, we're gonna build up enough of a capital buffer. Maybe we've now got a million dollars , uh, uh, in , in , in , in , in actual dollars in the gro mares value, and we're gonna go buy another building, add that to the, to the pool. So issuance happens when there is demand for the asset, based on its current value, that builds up a capital buffer. And that capital by, by mandate, by smart contract, by , um, a lot of legal restrictions, given our REIT structure gets deployed into the type of real estate assets we buy. The inverse can also be true, right? Uh , today, chroma coin is, it's a security, but it's not a public security. Uh, if it were, and there were, you know , uh, it were trading on exchanges, there might be people who want to sell them, right? And that would lower the value. And, and , and that would create perhaps the need for us to discard assets, to dispose , dispose is the technical term, but sell really, you know , uh, liquidate them for, for actual dollars to keep the market , uh, uh, stable and , and provide liquidity. Uh , and that is essentially the, you know, the security token and the asset ballast that gives the Roma ecosystem , uh, its value on chain . Uh , this is even simpler. There are ERC 20 security laws compatible smart contracts that are grma coins, and there are NFTs that are actually our buildings with title deed and ongoing performance. And so whether you look at it tradify or, or in the blockchain , uh, uh, ecosystem, you can see exactly the coins and exactly the value, the assets that give them value.
Speaker 1That makes perfect sense. Now, I understand, thank you for, for clarifying that. 'cause I was just, I think to connect the dots to our listeners, I think that helps paint the picture, right? As a token holder, what is the underlying asset supporting that? So right, it's the entire portfolio. It's the entire balance sheet and capital that is expected to be deployed will be , will be deployed to add future assets. So that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2And , and I think this is a , a core difference between Roma as a, as a blockchain project and , and many other projects out there that we are productive asset backed, right? It , it , a building is different than gold. Uh , right? Gold is a commodity. It absolutely has value, but its value is the commodity. Uh, our assets are productive assets. Um, and that's not meant to be like a value judgment in any way. Uh, they're productive in that they produce things, they produce rent , uh, they produce appreciation. Uh , I guess commodities can also produce appreciation. So I'll stick with, they produce rent , uh, and, and a value service, a place to, to live and, and , uh, uh, you know , uh, con consume space over time. And that is a core part of what we think gives the ecosystem value, but also makes our token omics somewhat novel in that we literally cannot print them, right? There's no way to just smart contract to building into existence. Uh, we actually have to sell the tokens as sort of a forward looking value, build up the capital and buy the productive asset. And, and that is how the ecosystem , uh, over time, if there's demand, can, can grow .
Speaker 1Now you mentioned the grow a coin being a security. Where does the company currently stand with the regulatory process, right? Where is , you said the tokens aren't currently available to traders, right? On the open exchange. On the open market, correct. What is the time horizon? Is that the expected future? Where's the, the path forward on the token side of things and what do you guys , where do you stand today?
Speaker 2Yeah, so , so today , uh, it , it is absolutely a security and it is available for direct purchase by accredited investors. Uh, and we've started to broaden the pool a little bit , uh, and on a , on a , on a technical basis , uh, we are what's called a 5 0 6 C private , uh, securities offering. Um , that means we can generally solicit, I can, I can come on your podcast and, and talk about it. We've partnered with groups like Republic , uh, a crowdfunding platform to , uh, tell the story of what Grom is doing and introduce us to accredited investors. But it also comes with significant restrictions, right? We are not permissionless , uh, we have to KYC know your customer and a ML anti-money laundering, every single holder of a, of , of agro a token. We can't sell to non-accredited investors , uh, yet. But there are steps that we can take slowly expensively , uh, uh, you know, from a regulatory perspective, a very complex but, but well trod path to do. And our next step , uh, is we're currently testing the waters for a Reg CF offering , uh, regulation crowdfunding , uh, which would enable us to offer a limited amount of drama coins to non-accredited investors , uh, which is exciting , uh, would broaden the pool. Still lots of restrictions. We have to make sure that, you know, they , they meet certain , uh, uh, uh, criteria, but it does mean that we could, in a very passive way, invite our renters to many of whom are accredited, many of whom are not accredited to be part owners of the ecosystem with us. And we'll take that step. And then there are other kind of logical steps on the pathway to expanding access over time , um, that we will over the next, it's hard to give a timeline, but number of years , uh, this will take years , uh, take those steps and ideally make Oma coin accessible to , uh, more people in more places , uh, over, over time.
Speaker 1Yeah. And I think when you're talking about on the regulatory front, it can be very difficult to figure out what that time horizon's gonna look like, because a lot of it's out of your hands, right? You can only do so much. It's an expensive process. And I think looking at present day, right, last month we had the ETF approvals,
Speaker 2Right? So exciting .
Speaker 1Yeah . So I think from a, we're we're starting to move in the right direction from a regulatory front. Do you see, I guess, with that shining a light on the crypto industry, do you seeing that have having any impact on your efforts on where the company stands and kind of your path forward?
Speaker 2Absolutely. I , I , I think the launch of the Bitcoin ETFs is, and I'm , I'm gonna borrow a phrase from our , our mutual friend , uh, Matt Walsh of Castle Island Ventures. Uh, uh, it's, it's the , uh, it's the end of the beginning of the crypto story, right? This is the moment where , uh, the large banks , uh, the large institutions now have a product that they can step into. Uh, and, you know, if you want to take the, the somewhat fun and and cynical view, they can, they can make money off of it. And that really aligns incentives. And if you want to take, you know, what I think is a , a deeply held and genuine , uh, uh, positive view, they are now unblocked to engage in something that they know has real revolutionary potential. But they are, they have big existing businesses, and they, they can't take thing , they can't take risks that would, would endanger, you know, the , the , the mothership. So now they have a path to dip their toes in the water. Um, I think the launch of the Bitcoin ETFs is, you know, phase one of three , uh, from a OMA perspective, first people will focus on Bitcoin ETFs and, and , and, and that will put Bitcoin in the retirement accounts of, of, of tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions of people across the globe. And what a fantastic way to build exposure and excitement or awareness. Then I think there will be a moment where, you know , brokers, investment advisors look a bit beyond that. Uh , and that's probably assets like Ethereum and Solana , um, and we'll have to get regulatory clarity there, but I think those are sort of the, you know, okay , Bitcoin is digital gold. Now there are these platforms that can also add value. You know, what , what are those about? And I think that is phase two, and that might take another year or two. And then I think a thing like Romaco sits in phase three e even further out, which is, okay, well now we understand that there's digital gold and there's platforms in which you can build things. What are some of those things? And I think real estate on chain is the next most natural thing. It is the biggest market, the biggest asset class in, in , in the world. I mean, it is, it's almost immeasurable, right? It is the world, but people try to put numbers to this from time to time, and it's like four or $500 trillion worth of real estate value, you know, across the globe. And the ability to make that fungible and portable and liquid and tokenized is an exciting opportunity that as the big groups and the small groups follow that path, I think we'll see more and more interest of, of real world assets on chain in the, in the coming years.
Speaker 1Yeah. And, and as I mentioned at the beginning, right? I think the tokenization of world, world assets is the way of the future. It's gonna take time to get there, but I think that is how you get the mainstream users to understand what this technology can offer, right? I think that was, for the longest time I've been in this space personally for , uh, nine to 10 years, trying to decipher two people that are not in the crypto industry. What can digital assets, what can blockchain technology do, right? It's always trying to parlay examples into real world assets. And I think we're starting to see the fruit of our labors. I think that's the, the, you mentioned the long term vision . I think that's like our vision to get the short term right. It's gonna take time, but I think that's where we're, we're trending to go. Uh , one question I like to ask everyone right before the end, before we finish up, I don't do price predictions, I don't do any of that, but I , I'm curious, in 2024, right, we're , we're sitting here in February, what are you most excited for this year, right? Is there any particular crypto projects? Is there any particular areas in this space that are being built out? I know we have the ETF approval, which is a big one, and you , and you just mentioned kind of the , the L twos now that , and moving towards what that third level be, where Groomes sits in comfortably. Is there anything in the , I guess the short term , 2024 that you're particularly excited for or interested in? Um, totally on a personal level, but I'm just, I , I always like to pick everyone's brain on, I guess, what's on the, what's on the horizon for this year and what do we have to look forward to?
Speaker 2Yeah. Well, I , I'll share one project that I'm, I'm particularly excited about, just on, on a personal level , uh, which is a , a , a , an effort called agro token. And pulling the conversation all the way back to the beginning, the sort of, you know, fact that the ancient Sumerian shekel was sort of a grain-based currency, and that is one of the assets on which you could base a currency. Uh , agro token is bringing , uh, grain and agricultural futures and commodities on chain . Um, and it's an incredibly interesting, incredibly exciting , uh, project. Um, I think they're doing a great job. They've been, they've been , uh, uh, scaling and, and , uh, and raising some serious capital to build it out. And so, you know, for, for academic and personal reasons, that's what I'm really excited to see grow and, and , and flourish and more broadly within the ecosystem. I'm like a lot of people looking forward to continued regulatory clarity. Uh, I think the Bitcoin, ETF was just the beginning. There are good rules and there are bad rules , uh, but a lack of clear rules is, is the worst case. Uh, and I think we're slowly but surely moving towards a world where , uh, we get regulatory clarity. Uh, and that will enable many great projects , uh, from a agro token, you know, millions of others, thousands of others, to, to really build value in the ecosystem for , uh, people here in the states and, and, and all over the globe.
Speaker 1Awesome. Awesome. Well, Seth, I appreciate you taking the time today. Where can listeners go to learn more about yourself as well as the company Grma ?
Speaker 2Yeah, if you wanna learn more about Grma , uh, go to www.grma.com. And if you're interested in reading our white paper , uh, it's not , uh, publicly available yet. Not quite ready for prime time , but , uh, if you email us at, at white paper@grma.com , uh, realistically you'll probably get that right to me, and I will happily share you a , a preview copy and would love your, your thoughts and uh, and feedback.
Speaker 1Awesome. Well , with that, we wrap up another episode of cryptonomics. Thank you. Thank
Speaker 2You so much, mark.
Speaker 1All views expressed in this podcast by Mark Eckley or his guests are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinion of rhythm . This podcast is for informational purposes only .
