In an exclusive interview with cryptonews.com, Nick Saponaro, CEO of Divi Project & Wallet, talks about what happened in 2022, areas of opportunity in 2023, CBDCs, Bitcoin, and altcoins.
About Nick Saponaro
Nick Saponaro is the CEO of Divi Project and its Fintech Innovation Centre, Divi Labs. Nick is also an entrepreneur, crypto enthusiast, investor and keynote speaker who is regularly featured in the media talking about crypto related issues.
Nick started investing in cryptocurrencies in 2013, however, his crypto career really began straight out of high school when he started a custom PC business that built rigs for gaming and Bitcoin mining.
He joined the Divi Project in 2017 as a full-stack developer and was invited to become a co-founder of the fledgling business. Soon after, he took on responsibility for building and maintaining all of Divi’s web services, client-facing apps, and protocol development for Divi Core.
Nick Saponaro gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview which you can see below, and we are happy for you to use it for publication provided there is a credit to www.cryptonews.com.
Highlights Of The Interview
- Review of 2022 with a focus on the centralized exchange calamity
- Looking forward to 2023 and the opportunity for DeFi to fill the void
- The challenges that dog DEXs and the Divi solution – deep dive into the new platform
- Predictions for what will happen to the industry in 2023
- CBDCs, Bitcoin and altcoins
Full Transcript Of The Interview
Matt Zahab
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Cryptonews Podcast. We’re buzzing as always, and today we have Nick Saponaro on for round three. Nick’s always been dropping absolute heat when he comes on the show. Nick is the Co-Founder of The Divi Project and the CEO of Divi Wallet on for round three. We love to see it, Nick, always a pleasure man. Welcome back to the show, how you doing?
Nick Saponaro
Always a pleasure for myself as well, man. Thanks for having me.
Matt Zahab
Last time you were on. I want to say you were in I think you were in Madrid. And that’s when the La Liga announcement just popped off. That was pretty cool. But now you are in Dubai. Correct?
Nick Saponaro
Yeah. Moved here, full time about four months ago now. Yeah.
Matt Zahab
What a city man, too much fun.
Nick Saponaro
Yeah, it can consume you with how fun it is. But you got to hunker down at some point, which is something I’ve had to learn over the past couple of months. But yeah, it’s an amazing place.
Matt Zahab
And I’d say besides Miami, probably the best Crypto ecosystem on the planet.
Nick Saponaro
Yeah, I mean, everybody’s moving here. It’s like here Puerto Rico, Miami, Singapore, the hotspots. So there’s always somebody to meet with meetups happening, conferences, etc. You’re never without, you know, someone to talk Crypto.
Matt Zahab
And your hop, skip and a jump away from Europe, which is just such a treat. Like you can’t even put a price on that.
Nick Saponaro
No you can’t I mean, being in the true middle of the of the world. Middle of the map, so to speak is a blessing. So it’s been great being able to travel way more than I would have in the US.
Matt Zahab
I love that man. So let’s do a little recap here. So you first came on in 2021. Obviously that was the year of money printing, we were all having a blast and life was good back then. And life is still good. Don’t get me wrong. But from a financial perspective, it’s definitely not as good as it was back in the 2021 heyday. Last year, you come on drop some big news. I think Cryptonews actually broke the news, which I love about DirecTV in La Liga partnership, and present to you and the team are still shipping as expected. And you guys are dabbling in the DeFi Space. I know, you are very passionate towards DeFi and I to my understanding you are one of the believers that DeFi and 2023 will be a huge synergy. That could be the big thing for 2023. Obviously, with the shitshow and all the shenanigans of the centralized exchanges from last year, it seems like that will be incredible. And it seems like that will happen. But let’s start with sort of a recap of 2022. From you guys from the market. What are your biggest takeaways from 2022?
Nick Saponaro
Yeah, I mean, the probably the biggest shakeout of all time since I’ve been in this space. I mean, it’s not like even the biggest drawdown necessarily in prices. It’s close to what happened in 2018. But I think the impact, of course, on the macro scale, which we can talk about if you want, but it’s been said, ad nauseam, obviously, you know, global recession impending, and all these things have affected the market. And it’s held up pretty well, I think, comparatively. But I think the most interesting thing is that all of this fraud was just exposed, like in a domino effect, one after the other. And a lot of the stuff didn’t even come as much of a shock. I mean, it hurt people. And it was very difficult to watch it go down. But I mean, it’s the expected outcome of relying on centralized points of failure. It’s kind of why we built this industry, right. And, and we’re seeing it propagate in real time. Again, it’s not something I relish being vindicated on. You know, it’s not fun to be right about bad things, but it was a necessary step. And I don’t even think it’s over yet. You know, 2022 ended, but I think there’s some things that still need to go down. You know, we’re seeing what’s going on with Genesis and DCG, and Gemini and all that.
Matt Zahab
And we’re going out.
Nick Saponaro
Exactly, publicly as well, which is wild. So yeah, the biggest news of all time.
Matt Zahab
Nick, who’s next? What do you think’s the next domino to fall?
Nick Saponaro
Yeah, I mean, I have my concerns about DCG for sure. Barry Silbert being the head. Obviously Genesis is in a really rough spot, which puts some Gemini users in a rough spot. And it’s like who where does the buck stop? So is it going to be the Winklevoss guys? Is it going to be Barry you know, who ends up having to bear the burden for these creditors that are basically out this money that’s been owed for several months? I think Barry has until is it March or May to basically pay out some of the loans that were granted to him I think by Gemini. So.
Matt Zahab
Isn’t it a billion?
Nick Saponaro
It’s over a billion so 1.05 or something like that. Then guys like where where’s that money coming from? All these guys were literally just lending each other billions of like air. What did they think was gonna happen? It’s wild.
Matt Zahab
So let’s talk about the network effects of that if DCG goes under and for those that don’t DCG, Digital Currency Group, massive one of the gotta be what top 10 in the space up there, huge conglomerate, they own a shit ton of companies and up equity stakes and most companies in the space, if they go wonder, like, there must be some second order effects that we’re going to be seeing not just like the price of Bitcoin, the price of ETH, which I know they have a I think they own like 3% of Bitcoin, 2, I don’t know, they own a pretty solid chunk of Bitcoin but like, besides the obvious ones, what else will fall like? What else will come from that?
Nick Saponaro
Yeah, I mean, they obviously the biggest things are, you know, GBTC, which is the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust and the ETH and all the other trusts. I’m actually just trying to pull up all the ones that they’re in on, that they hold. And they you’re right, they hold enormous balances of a lot of these. So yeah, I mean, like, they hold 8.5 roughly percent of the Ethereum classic market.
Matt Zahab
Good Lord.
Nick Saponaro
Yeah, so anyway, it’s definitely a scary thing. Assuming that those balances still exist, you know, at least the coins are there, unlike in some of the other scenarios where, you know, basically paper Bitcoin had been lent around, and there wasn’t enough to actually cover the balances. So yeah, I mean, but again, like these things happen, it shakes out. And then we kind of move on into the next phase of rebuilding. So I think 2023 is going to be a big rebuilding year. And it’s going to take some time, but I think these things just have to happen. These dominoes have to fall.
Matt Zahab
So you’re a big 2023 year of DeFi. Obviously, Divi has jumped into the space as well, any reasons for 2023 being the year of DeFi, besides the bluntly obvious ones, which obviously, you know, centralized finance did not work and has not worked. So we need it. Anything else besides that? And then for a little segue, part two with the question, tell us about what you and the team at Divi are doing to move and groove into the DeFi space?
Nick Saponaro
Yeah, I mean, obviously, you said it, right. You know, obviously, the centralized exchanges have been a big fail. And the CFi platforms like, you know, Celsius and BlockFi. But beyond that, you know, things have moved a lot faster than I expected with CBDCs. I thought we’d be, you know, three to five years away from real serious discussions, entering the conversation. But it looks like even the US is moving at breakneck pace. Also, as a result of, you know, the FTX collapse at all, that I think will encourage a lot of DeFi action, because people will start to truly understand that the dangers of a Central Bank Digital Currency that can be censored and clipped, and, you know, your social credit score can be affected, can affect other things like getting credit. So those things are, in my opinion, going to be a huge catalyst for people to be like, okay, hold on, wait, how do I make sure that this does not touch me, or at least mitigate my, you know, relationship with that stuff. But the problem that is, and this is my segue into what we’re doing, the problem is DeFi up until this point is really complicated, like overly complex in a lot of ways. And it deters a lot of people from jumping in. It’s the same thing that we saw in the early days, when we started Divi back in 2017. You know, a lot of the aspects of Crypto are really complicated. So we’re working toward fixing or solving a lot of the usability issues in DeFi and offering a platform that brings some new features to light as well, which we can talk about if you want.
Matt Zahab
Well, like your app is just it’s so easy to use, you know, they get a toddler could use it. I mean, you’ve really got to be 18 to use it, but that’s for those at home and that Nick for you like how many people have you on boarded to DeFi without your app? It’s literally nightmare fuel. Like you’re hooked? Yes. Alright, so first you got to get a centralized exchange and you need to onboard your Fiat to Crypto then you need to send it to Metamask then you need to send it to whatever DeFi platform you’re using. And then to withdraw you have to repeat like it’s just it’s nightmare fuel one on one, it’s no one oh and the solution like yours needed to be had.
Nick Saponaro
It’s funny because I’ve obviously done it several times showed people how to use Metamask and Yield Farms and all that stuff. And within the scope of doing that with each person. I end up just laughing and stepping back and being like, I can’t even believe I know what I’m doing. Oh But it’s so convoluted with the bridging and everything else. So, yeah, I mean, I think the coolest thing, though, you know, obviously, we’re implementing a lot of the ease-of-use features that you see in our wallet. And one of the coolest things is actually, you’ll be able to sign up with just your email and use the DeFi. We use a software called Magic Link, which we didn’t invent. But it’s a really cool thing you should check out that basically uses zero knowledge proofs to establish a wallet for you. So you don’t need to use Metamask or anything, really, just your email address or your phone number. We’re just using email for the time being. But so just starting right there, like you eliminate, what five, six steps done. And then moving from there, you know, we actually created what I think is, correct me if I’m wrong, the first truly cross-chain staking bridge. So our layer one Blockchain basically accumulates a pool of tokens in its bridge, and continues to stake them using our patented state involved technology. So anybody who’s actually participating in our DeFi pools is earning additional yield from that one, which again, I don’t think has been done yet. But I’m happy to be wrong. If that’s the case.
Matt Zahab
And this is all done within the app. Like once you sign up via email in the app, there’s nothing else you got to do.
Nick Saponaro
Yeah, it’s very simple. So it’ll start on a website. And yeah, it’ll quickly be integrated with the mobile app, but Magic Link kind of makes all that really seamless, and secure. Which is, of course, paramount.
Matt Zahab
Why haven’t I heard a Magic Link before? Like, obviously, that’s a me problem, but like it? I don’t think that’s a big brand name in the space. Perhaps I’m wrong. But are they big?
Nick Saponaro
I honestly haven’t seen a ton of wallets using them yet. Although I think they will grow in popularity as they should. It’s a great technology, you should definitely throw a paper. It’s really sound. Yeah, it really is. And it’s I mean ZKProofs, Zero-knowledge proofs, predate Crypto by like a decade, right? So this is sound secure technology that they’re just applying to something that we use, which is signing on to a Crypto wallet, which is great.
Matt Zahab
That’s another big trend that all the OGs like yourself have been saying for a while. 2023 2024 will be the year of ZKProofs, ZK-Rollups. And this is of all the aspects of Crypto, I think, Nick, I think this is the one I have the most trouble explaining to my non Crypto native friends. If you could take a stab at it, I’d love it. But it is pretty hard to explain, like, at least without a graph in front of you. But for those who will not be watching and just listening at home, I’d love if you could take a stab and pretend we were all three year olds and try to explain ZKProofs to us.
Nick Saponaro
Yes, I mean, probably the best way to do this is to give like a tangible example. So I think the big one of the biggest things it’s going to be spoken on in 2023 is what they’re calling zkEVMs, zero-knowledge EVMs which are the layer twos that we’re used to like Polygon, Arbitrum, etc. Actually, I don’t remember Arbitrum, zk. But anyway, we’ll use Polygon as the example. Right now, if you want to bridge to Polygon from Ethereum, right, you have to go to Polygons bridge, it uses a smart contract. And like basically, you know, holds the tokens from Ethereum, Blockchain, and puts them on mince them on the Polygon Chain. And vice versa. When you leave polygon, it burns those tokens and gives you back your coins. That’s how it’s done now with bridges. It’s a problem because as we’ve seen bridges get hacked all the time. With zero-knowledge proofs and zkEVMs as they come to fruition, you’ll be able to bridge between Blockchains seamlessly without having to lock the coins. In a way it becomes a centralized point of failure right in the bridge, that it does this essentially by creating a relationship between the data. So it’s basically it’s like if I want to sign into a website, and I want to use my phone to do it, I know my phone is secure, because it’s in my hand, I know my computer’s secure because it’s in front of me. There’s nothing in between it. So that’s basically what a ZKProof is doing. Sort of it’s creating a relationship between two things that are only known to each other and can only be verified by one another. So that’s kind of extremely reductive, but it’s my best sell.
Matt Zahab
It’s that’s pretty friggin well done. And the thing that really intrigues and interests me with ZKProofs and ZK-Rollups just ZK tech is to be more specific, is the multitude of use cases like this isn’t just Crypto specific. This is you know, privacy and data is at the paramount of, you know, people’s minds right now. It’s just everyone’s aware of how you know, big Web2 companies have been farming our data and making trillions of dollars off of it and the gen pop is finally being cognizant Hey, you know, that should probably stop and ZK tech is sort of the catalyst and is the literal technology that can allow our data to be shared with only the party that it needs to be shared with without anyone else getting access to it. And again, like when he explained like that he did a great job and it’s pretty easy, but when you sort of, you know, pop open the hood and look at the tech, I’m just like, that’s a lot of my paygrade you know, it’s pretty bananas.
Nick Saponaro
It is crazy. I mean, it’s high-level Cryptography, a lot of math, people that are way better at math than me, Yeah, I could probably explain it better but it is wonderful that it’s finally being used and I actually seeing like even Apple and Microsoft, and some other Web2 companies are looking at it for simple things like logins. I think Apple is pretty far ahead with it. So yeah, it’s definitely you know, the UX of everything will get easier. And then in the near future.
Matt Zahab
Hundred percent. Love that Nick, gotta take quick break. Huge shout out to our sponsor the show that is PrimeXBT. I think this is Nick’s third rip around the clock with PrimeXBT is a sponsor huge shout out to that we’d love them as they offer a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders. Doesn’t matter if you’re a rookie or vet, you can easily design and customize your layouts and widgets to best fit your trading style. PrimeXBT is also running an exclusive promo for listeners of the Cryptonews Podcast, you have 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. Again, the promo code is CRYPTONEWS50, that’s CRYPTONEWS50, to receive 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. And now back to the show with Nick. Before we get into more Crypto stuff, we got to talk about the trendiest topic in the world right now. And that is AI, everyone is drooling over AI. I know most of our guests over most of the Cryptonews’ guests over the last couple of weeks. Everyone’s been mucking around with ChatGPT. I’ve been fucking out with DALL-E for months now. I think it’s so much fun. What’s your take on that? Yeah, have you implemented that into Divi at all, or just personal writing blog, and whatever uncovered it.
Nick Saponaro
It’s really fun to play with. I haven’t personally used anything commercially, yet. I have played around with some of the, I love the DALL-E, of course, is amazing. And the other one, static diffusion, or whatever it’s called.
Matt Zahab
Stable Diffusion.
Nick Saponaro
Stable Diffusion, thank you, which is really sweet. And just like playing around with the outcomes of that ChatGPT is really cool. Especially just like having it write, simple, you know, things that I would have to do early on in my like dev career, like, write a quick server and express, you know, or write a quick like NFT, smart contract, things like that. And it can do pretty good pretty quickly. But obviously, there’s still concerns around like, whether or not everything that is being produced is ethically produced. Or if it’s completely, you know, unbiased. Those told it’s definitely interesting to me.
Matt Zahab
It’s definitely I know that I feel like you and I probably lean the same way politically. And the bias is definitely very apparent. Like, what’s the solution to that though? Like, if the company, if open AI, the company behind ChatGPT is more left leaning? What do you do? Like, what is the solution of that?
Nick Saponaro
Yeah, because you end up basically creating another Google right? Where the results can be manipulated to, to your algorithm, you know, to show you what you want to see or what you shouldn’t see, whatever. I mean that debate is going to take a long time. Even Elon Musk, you know, has been involved in the ethical AI debate. But I think the real the real answer is like AGI, right, and Actual Intelligence down something that just like, basically rip something from general knowledge and regurgitates it. But that gets into a whole other swath of issues. Like, what happens if it totally becomes sanctioned, and that kind of stuff. So.
Matt Zahab
That’s scary shit, though, AGI is like, and the scary thing with that is, we’re what, two three years away from like a legitimate model being out.
Nick Saponaro
Right? It’s really, it’s gotten so much further than I expected it would. And all of these things have quantum computing as well is way further ahead than I thought it would be at this point, and all these things start to interconnect, right? If you do an AGI gets access to quantum computing, it can learn faster than work anything right? Which could be really troublesome so yeah, I mean, people are gonna be on this much better than I can. I’m not smart enough to be honest to solve that problem. That’s like solving the world’s problems all in one but it is fun to watch.
Matt Zahab
It’d be it’d be pretty sick if AGI could like come up with a cure for cancer or our any big four diseases that killed you know, 80% of humans like that, like imagine, you know, I’m a big believer in that what I’m about to say is a little controversial but I do wholeheartedly believe in from my experience happiness is a choice. When I’m feeling down, I can you know, fake a smile and call a friend or family to make me laugh and feel better. And when I think about AGI and I’m like, Jesus, you know, they’re gonna help us all with the word done the world’s toast once you know the robots get control, and like, think of the good that can happen, though. Think about the perhaps billions of lives that can be saved. Think about the billions or the hundreds of millions of lives, billions that can be taken out of poverty. Like, who knows what this thing can do that’s infinitely smarter than you and I, it’s cool.
Nick Saponaro
It is. I like that outlook. I like that perspective. That’s cool. Definitely.
Matt Zahab
It’s a choice like I’m not going to be a Negative Nancy and just let AI run my show. But very interesting to talk about. You’ve been in Bitcoin for a minute, we heck I don’t even think I’ve discussed Bitcoin. It’s probably been a month since it’s even been brought up on the pod. There’s been so many other trendy subjects, and especially the FTX followed and then AI and of course, a bunch of different other things. And then 2023 you know, recaps? What’s been going on with Bitcoin recently. What’s new? I see a lot of the Bitcoin devs have had been hacked recently. It’s like, guys, that’s your spokesperson for the friggin community. You probably shouldn’t be getting hacked should probably not have your you know, your Bitcoin on a friggin hot wallet. But what’s the recent news there any price predictions? Any hot takes? What do you got for us in regards to Bitcoin?
Nick Saponaro
Yes, obviously, that one dev recently lost his PGP key or if PGP key became compromised, which is awful. But yeah, you’re right. I mean, you’re like a self-custody maxi, right. You’re an expert in this should definitely be on hardware wallet, or paper wallet. These amount is something that’s completely air gapped and accessible. Anyway, tragedy, obviously never like to see that happen. Bitcoin, though I mean, it’s just been flat. And which is to put a positive spin on it. Pretty remarkable. Considering the markets outlook, I was actually just before this call reading through some of the big banks, Macro Outlooks for 2023. And, you know, they all basically spout the same thing, you know, recession is pretty much imminent in the most of the world, maybe not the US, but probably, maybe we’ll start to see some recovery, you know, toward the end of the year, but no fed cuts or anything, you know, rate cuts or anything are predicted. So the Macro Outlook is grim-ish. And yet, Bitcoin is just holding strong, even if it’s flat, like he will kick in price actions boring. Like, what why? No, it’s crazy. But I think that’s a lot of that is, it’s hard money, right? It’s owed a debt of gratitude from the Crypto community for how strong it is, for its mathematical, you know, strength and prowess, and in Satoshi’s deployment, so. And I know there are some institutions buying at the moment. But yeah, I mean, it’s just, it’s proven a lot. So I think we will start to see a bit of an uptick toward the end of the year, I’d say like, November-ish, around maybe this time, even next year. But yeah, I think this is gonna be a relatively boring year for Bitcoin.
Matt Zahab
Yeah, you and I are in the same. It’s all the non-maxis. Pretty much everyone in this in the space just deserves, not deserves, needs to give it huge thanks to Bitcoin. When Bitcoin goes up and down, the whole market goes up and down, you know, and like Bitcoins held very friggin strong. And if it didn’t, everything else would be beyond hope, like 90% drop downs, we’ve already seen 50%, almost across the board for everything, but like, it would be 90 plus percent on every single coin. It’s huge. And it’s really not talked about enough. The one thing that I’m curious about, you know, a whole lot more than this than me is like, the new tech or new updates, you know, what’s been shipped from the core team, not even perhaps the core team, the devs like, it just seems like nothing new is ever coming out on the Bitcoin sphere things.
Nick Saponaro
It’s really difficult for Bitcoin to become updated, because of the way that it’s basically product managed. There’s no central authority over it, which is it’s kind of its best feature and it’s worse flow in that sense. Obviously, we had taproot recently that was a big deal, but it’s not going to like that’s not a price impact improvement. Lightning, I’m starting to see some adoption. I think some Australian ATMs added Lightning to their network. So it’s little things like that, but it doesn’t need to be Money Legos, right? It doesn’t need to be basically much more than it is right now. A workhorse that’s tried and true and proven and tested over 14 years, 15 years is now.
Matt Zahab
14. Yep.
Nick Saponaro
So That’s great. I mean, it is what it is. But I think the fallacy in Maximalism is like that, that’s all Crypto needs to be. It doesn’t need to just be like super sound hard money. Ethereum is just as valuable in a lot of ways, because it enables this really expressive development language to be built on top of it. So I think that’s the most important thing to take away is like, yes, Bitcoin can just do what it does, don’t doesn’t have to do much more. Let’s let it do. You know.
Matt Zahab
Well said, Noo it’s true. A couple more things here. Nick, we got to talk about the patent on Twitter. I saw you posting a bit about the patent. I was like, Is this for the name, is this for the tech also, that is so cool. I’ve never seen what a patent actually looks like, in person. It’s pretty freakin sweet. I love how that like Patent Director, Deputy, person, whatever her name was, she signed it to it was awesome. But what was that for?
Nick Saponaro
Yeah, it’s really cool. And a long process. It’s been over two years, since we filed that patent.
Matt Zahab
Like a lot of back and forth.
Nick Saponaro
Well, you have to you basically file like a provisional patent. And then they review it forever. And then eventually, they’re like, Okay, we can approve this, do you want to go forward with it, you basically have like a year to make a little updates and stuff like that, because obviously your technology may have changed over a year’s time, then you resubmit it. And it’s kind of a process like that, yeah, back and forth. But finally, it was officially issued with its final, you know, information. What it covers is technically the name of it as the remote broadcast Master Node patent, which, of course, we’re known for the one click Master Node. That’s kind of our claim to fame. What we were able to do, though, and probably this, maybe again, you’re breaking this for the first time, we were able to wrap basically our staking vault technology into this patent. So the ability to using a proprietary third key remotely sign and deploy nodes infrastructure for Cryptocurrencies or other Blockchain products, which is pretty broad scope, considering what that could apply to. So yeah, obviously, we’re already using it in our wallet, we’ll use it for the DeFi protocol for the cross-chain staking, but we are hoping that other chains may want to use it as well. And we didn’t build this to like go around suing people who are using similar things. Yeah, we built it so that Microsoft can do it and take it from us course unity, right. Yeah. So yeah, hopefully, it’s something that people gain some interest in. And we can apply to other cool stuff. Yeah.
Matt Zahab
Well, congrats on that. And if, if Microsoft and Bill gates wants to swing by and use it, I mean, that’s what couple 1000 bucks per note. I don’t know how it works, but for sure. Yes. Similar. Pretty nice residuals. Yeah. That’d be too fun. What about last couple of questions here Nicky, we’re getting a little tight for time here but any old points on the radar any besides Divi? Anything it’s got your eyes and ears peeled.
Nick Saponaro
Yeah, so obviously I’m always big on the main ones Ethereum and then Bitcoin but that Polygon is really heating up I think it’s obviously it’s well known MATIC is well known, but I think it’s kind of it has kind of flown under the radar with the amount of stuff that’s actually being done there. I’m not I don’t own any currently, I don’t I don’t really many all coins at the moment. But definitely watching that. The other one I’m really interested in is Adam ecosystem is incredible. It’s been growing. And like the Cosmos Hub is really a great step toward interoperability, which I’m huge on anything that’s like interoperability or infrastructure focus. That’s what I’m looking at. Outside that yeah, I’m not I don’t really dig too deep into a lot of them. Those are those are like the main ones I’m focused on at the moment.
Matt Zahab
I love that he comes on the show and pumps my bags I’m a decent holder on both of those so thank you.
Nick Saponaro
Either but I love the projects I’m a nerd man I just I love this stuff.
Matt Zahab
And I just I find that funny like you and I you know just sort of caught up personally before we started going live here and then didn’t even mention either those and you bring up to my biggest bag so a we’d love to see that. Nick, what a treat man last question, before you go give me some hot takes 2023 doesn’t have to be Crypto related, can be you know health, wealth, happiness, politics, food, space, you name it any weird shit you got. Give me some hot takes for 2023. A couple things that only Nick believes in that most other people don’t.
Nick Saponaro
Oh, man. Well, I mean, jeez. I do think the US is going to come out with a CBDC this year, which I know a lot of people will probably.
Matt Zahab
2023?
Nick Saponaro
Yeah, I think it’s going to at least be in pilot mode this year.
Matt Zahab
Wow.
Nick Saponaro
I think that.
Matt Zahab
Hold up. Do you have like a inside scoop on that or something?
Nick Saponaro
I have nothing that would obviously be confirmable or corroborate can never corroborate these things, but just based on some of the activities and motions that have been made across the US and some of the other, like globalist, so to speak countries, it seems like something that they want and may have to do to keep up with the trends. And after the in the wake of FTX, which is like the perfect setting for them to just ship this off, you know, they’re in a good spot to do it. So and Powell has been talking about it, Yellen has been talking about like they’re talking about it a lot more than they should be if it was just an idea. So it’s true. It’s just the phone.
Matt Zahab
I follow a couple guys on Twitter who give transcripts of every Fed meeting and that is one of the top 10 words that they use this year that they literally have never used before. They often talk about that which is interesting. And then that’s usually a pretty good precursor for what they will do moving forward right. Like there’s a lot of algos that like take the words they use and depict whether you know the Fed moving forward is Hawkish or Dovish and that’s one of the words they use so pretty interesting stuff Nick you’re the man appreciate you coming on as always, bro. Before we let you go, can you please let our listeners know where they can find you? Divi project, Divi wallet on Twitter online and on socials.
Nick Saponaro
Yeah, man, and thank you for having me on as always, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you man. Yeah, so @diviproject across all the socials, @diviwallet on Twitter, and you can find me on Twitter @NSapProductions. Come hang out and talk. We always answer.
Matt Zahab
Appreciate you man, can’t wait for round four man.
Nick Saponaro
Thank you.
Matt Zahab
Folks want an episode with Nick Saponaro the CEO and Founder of Divi Wallet and Divi Project really hope you guys enjoyed this one Nick always comes on and drops bombs can’t wait to have him on for round four. If you guys really enjoyed this and I hope you did please do subscribe. It would mean the world to my team and I speaking of the team love you guys and to the listeners you were the GOAT. Keep on going your bags and keep on staying healthy, wealthy and happy. Bye for now and we’ll talk soon.
