Episode 191 - Tracking Big Trends with Ed McCormack
Today's guest is DChained Founder EdMcCormack, and we talk about some of the long term trends on the internet - social media, big data, privacy, blockchain, and business models.
About Ed McCormack and DChained
Episode 167 with Blockchain Applications
Episode 93 on Entrenched Industry Doctrines
Episode 69 on Content Distribution in the 21st Century
Transcript
Max Sklar: You're listening to The Local Maximum episode 191.
Time to expand your perspective. Welcome to The Local Maximum. Now here's your host, Max Sklar.
Max: Welcome, everyone. Welcome. You have reached another Local Maximum. I hope you enjoyed last week's show. It was kind of a quirky show, especially at the end when I went about the principle of inclusion and exclusion. If you're interested in that math stuff that might seem a little different, but actually, it's very useful stuff. Definitely check it out. Then, of course, all the latest news — what was that one? The smart toilet update. I think now, we have to look at how many updates we've done on smart toilets versus how many updates we've done on self-driving cars. I wonder if they're somehow equal at this point.
I hope you enjoy the work that's being done on the studio here. As you can see, we'll probably get to that in a future episode. If you've been listening to The Local Maximum for a while, this is episode 191. I've been doing this every single week. I've been putting out an episode. Nobody standing here making me do it. Nobody's forcing me. Every single week, I come up with a topic and we talk about it. I think we've learned a lot, and educated a lot of people, and definitely expanded our perspective.
If you have been getting a lot of value out of the show, if you've been listening for a while, please consider supporting us on Locals. The URL for that is maximum.locals.com. How much better can you get than that? You can talk directly to me on there very easily. You can have conversations with other people who listen to this show about the episodes, and about other topics that are interesting to them. Once again, maximum.local.com. Please consider supporting the show.
Alright, I'm always looking for the most knowledgeable people to talk about — the progression of technology here on The Local Maximum. Our conversation today that you're about to hear really covers the span, from the rise of social media giants — from when everybody loves them to everyone hates them. That's kind of the story of the 21st century so far. Then, of course, the emergence of blockchain technology, and the projects going on there. We even touched on some trillion-dollar questions like, “How should the internet support content if not from big data and ad targeting?” Because we tackle trillion-dollar questions here in Local Maximum.
My next guest experience ranges from startups to capital management, and his work includes — his work resume includes both Apple and MySpace, believe it or not. He's the founder of DChained, which provides educational resources to people interested in Crypto and the Bitcoin space, Ed McCormack. Ed McCormack, you've reached The Local Maximum. Welcome to the show.
Ed McCormack: Max, thanks for having me on.
Max: I'm looking forward to this conversation. I feel like I'm having trouble trying to figure out where to start. I feel like there's so much stuff we could talk about. I know you teach people about blockchain, and about all the different blockchain projects out there. I want to get into that. When I spoke to you on the phone the other day, I really want to talk — zoom out to the bigger picture, which is something we do all the time here on The Local Maximum like, “Where the tech industry has gone over the last 10 years, and whether we've made a wrong turn?” But tell me a little bit about your background, and where you got started in both the technology space and the crypto space.
Ed: And it's a great place to start — talking about making the wrong turn. Started out on, I guess, on the wrong foot 15 years ago. When I came into tech, I joined a little site at that point called MySpace. Wasn't little, it was fairly large. It was talking about sort of making wrong turns. I think you and I were talking prior to this podcast. I vividly remember the meeting where I was sitting in the room and one of the co-founders at that time — wasn't Tom.
Max: I always feel like if I worked at MySpace, I would love to have like Tom always at the front of the room saying, “Okay, guys! Here's what we're gonna do.” That's sort of —
Ed: Well, the saying goes, “Tom has more friends, but Craig from Craigslist has weirder friends.” I remember in that meeting, question was asked, “Are we worried about Facebook?” At that time, you needed an “edu” email address to get it. The co-founder, his name is Chris — won't say his last name — clearly said, “That's a niche college website. We're open to the public.” How quickly the tides turn very fast on that one. Ultimately, throughout this time though, it's been interesting to see sort of the common denominator is these undercurrents that happened either led by tech initially, or products that are rolling out to tie into things that are going on, you know, day to day life.
So, you know, I saw the rise of — with social media, and coincidentally, I went to school up in Boston. The college I went to was one of the first universities for Facebook at that point. Fascinating to see sort of that build-up. And social media. There was no social media prior to that. You have GeoCities, which I'd blow you away with my GIFs. And my count — my website count…
Max: I never had a GeoCities. I always — I could have but it was difficult. Like you had to really — I don't know. I guess that was before I put up websites and stuff. There was no Squarespace or anything like that. Put it that way.
Ed: You had to have thick skin because it's sort of like those photos of your preteen years where you're like, “Oh, I wish I never saw that. I wish that just disappeared from this existence.” But seeing some of that blend in with 4G connectivity — at the time to 3g into 4g. You started to see the smartphone devices that were actually smartphones, and not just glorified Palm Pilots, start to open up a whole another way of engaging with content. The app space built out around that time. I headed over to Apple.
As things progressed, you continue to see sort of things continued to evolve, not just in tech, but also in music and entertainment. Ultimately, sort of what got me to where we are now is privacy. About five years ago, coincidentally almost to the day, we had a little thing that happened — which was Cambridge Analytica. The public became aware of something that there are really only a select number of companies out there that collect an insane amount of data. While they use that to monetize their platform and provide your services, that data is susceptible to get into the hands of some bad actors. When that happens, things can ultimately turn bad. I’m going to leave it at that. Not going political.
Max: No, I want to get into that later. Before we start, actually want to go back to MySpace a little bit. When were you in MySpace and went to that meeting that you remember vividly take place?
Ed: 2007.
Max: 2007, okay. And that was — a lot of people who were in college at the time were already hooked by that point. It was almost — it feels like, I guess looking retroactively, as long as baked in. But what lesson did you take away from that whole episode?
Ed: Funny enough, whenever I say Myspace, people focusing on the product and ultimately what happened, but I probably learned more at that company than any other experience in my career. One terms of the team that is that was built, you didn't have [inaudible] that sold itself, like you needed a rockstar group. Those people went on to very successful careers at bigger platforms. The ultimate — the lesson was complacency. What is the result? What will happen when an internet-based or tech company becomes complacent? And that's ultimately what happened. They tried to be everything to everybody, but there really was no innovation going on on that platform. It opened the door for Facebook to just kick it in. From there, they never got the baton back.
Max: Fast forward to, I guess it was — when was Cambridge Analytical? Like 2017 or something?
Ed: 16.
Max: 16? I remember at the time, there was all this outraged, and I was just like, “Yeah, it's bad. But I know this happens.” This has been happening for a while. Facebook in 2005, we know would just give out people's data to whoever. In terms of politics, I was well aware that going back to 2012, there's there was tons of just data mining and stuff. They had no scruples and who they can get their hands on. Why all of a sudden wasn't coming to a head?
Ed: In the digital and tech world, it's a dirty little secret that's been known for since the start. It's pretty much out. It's even in people's pitch decks. We have all of this data on people. Then, you ask, “Do they? No, they dont.” I think what happened, and I recall even further back at the time, Eric Schmidt was the CEO of Google, and he was in an interview. The person giving the interview asked directly, “Google knows a lot of the dirty secrets that people are looking up and a lot of information on them, especially now that you have Gmail. What do you say to people who are concerned about you having information?” Eric Schmidt, in joking, just said, “Well, when someone turns 18 years old, they have the right in the US to change their name. If you're very concerned, I would advise you do so.” Which had a lot of truth in that joke.
Max: I mean, you could also kind of find out what someone's name used to be, though. So. I mean —
Ed: It’s hard to find. Yeah, hard to find
Max: Might be hard to find, but —
Ed: I mean, ultimately, this is something that a lot of people have known for a lot of time in the digital world, in the tech industry, but it needed sort of a jolt. It needed to be just displayed in people's faces for them to realize like, “Oh, wow! I can't believe that information is out there.” Truthfully, you didn't have to look any further. All you have to look at is that crazy uncle or aunt who just goes on daily rants on Facebook and say, “Oh, they could probably be malicious. They could probably become sort of used as a tool.” People saw that, and people saw sort of how people can be manipulated or taken advantage of, and how easy it is and unfettered it becomes if not checked.
Max: Okay, if we're going to talk about where we went wrong — and I hate to make that the theme because I think we're going to go to them some silver linings. Not just silver linings, I think we're going to end with some hopeful stuff, which is the stuff you're doing now. One of the ones is privacy — we talk about that a lot. I actually think another one is innovation. I feel like the time that you were at MySpace, for example, maybe 2008, all the way up to — well, going back to the 90s — and then all the way up to maybe 2013. The internet had so much momentum where there'd be all these cool new things that we can do. Every few months, something would come out.
Now, I feel like there's just far less — it's just a problem of maturity where there's just far less innovation happening. I don't know about you. I listened to the Apple event yesterday, and it was very just, “We're just adding a little bit more of what we already have to all our devices. Gone are the days or — Steve Jobs is standing up there, introducing the iPad or whatever. It's almost like they've gone from innovation to exploitation. Maybe that connects back to the privacy where it's now, we're not building new stuff and capturing the imagination. We're just trying to exploit what we have. That shift maybe became a lot more pronounced somewhere in the middle of the 2010s.
Ed: I think it also has to do with competition. If you look at how many of these websites operate, it's through advertising revenue. Around 2013, you saw most of the dollars become concentrated to two or three companies. Ultimately, what is then created is a scenario where you're operating. If you're not in those two or three — on much slimmer margins and an operating budgets — venture capitalists are starting to question sort of the vitality of these companies, and whether they'll actually ever produce a profit. There were years where it didn't matter. You just had growth potential, and you would just get these nine-finger checks. You saw that the tides turn slightly around that point.
Unfortunately, tying back into innovation, what happens is that either a private equity firm will bring in a CEO or a management team that is going to say, “Who's directly tied to revenue?” Those who are not, you start to see layoffs and you start to see the team starts to get thinned. Unfortunately, that's where you see. You see a lot of people who are in the data groups in the tech space — so product guys, engineers. That's where a lot of cuts happen, and it's mind-blowing because it's backwards. It's completely backwards in my opinion.
Maybe you don't need 100 sales reps. That's a wild thing to say. Maybe you’d only need 20. Use that money that you save and become a little more efficient on sales. Use that money to sort of invest in R&D. That sort of went away. You saw this emergence of websites who do one thing really well but really didn't have any type of note or differentiation around it, then all of a sudden, other sites started copying it.
Now, you have a situation where if you ask them on, “What's the real difference between TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and —” Clubhouse is where people who got arrested in your teen years for identity theft. That's where they go. Other than that, what is the difference between all those companies? At the end of the day, from a product standpoint, I don't really know because you could pretty much do any of that on any of those platforms if they really wanted to.
Max: So tell me about how you got into crypto to begin with. As I'm saying this, I realized Bitcoin was being invented, and the blockchain was being invented in 2007, 2008, 2009. When you were at MySpace, it's almost like it's — there's something funny about the fact that the height of Myspace, the invention of Bitcoin were actually around the same time. They don't really feel like contemporary technology. Let’s —
Ed: This is going to be sacrilegious. Bitcoin really wasn't really revolutionary in terms of the operating model in proof-of-work — which requires these miners to add transactions to the blockchain. That was actually getting research back in 2003, 2004, 2005. Cambridge University put out a white paper because they were exploring this as a means of trying to quell spam. They wanted spammers or potential people to show some type of work — proof-of-work. Ultimately got to the point where they realized that these individuals are going to just get better and better computing resources. Eventually, it was just going to hurt the regular end user. It was going to make mail just impossible.
Max: I remember reading about ideas where it was like, “Okay, if I want to send someone an email. I'd have to pay a little bit and then maybe —” I heard that would be one way to reduce spam. We were talking about this in the 2000s.
Ed: Think about that though, “How many business emails that someone sends out? Or how many — ?” At that point that, at least for me, I was sending out a lot more email compared to texts as a ratio a lot — significantly more email. It would have just absolutely just kneecapped, so had that technology at that point or adoption in general. Ultimately, Bitcoin, which came out back in ‘09, it was very unique because it sort of was operating in a — sort of in an anarchist kind of way where rather than — YouTube at that point, it just got acquired. I want to say 20 — is around that time.
Max: I think it was 2006.
Ed: 2006, yeah. You saw the workings of these mini conglomerates being created, and this was sort of the new platform out there that was kind of like a canary in the coal mine saying, “Hey, we should turn. Turn now, turn now, turn now! So it's very interesting. It was fascinating to see sort of how Bitcoin ultimately then sort of led a lot of the big tech companies to actually start piling in. There have been tech companies have been involved with it for almost since the start as these little R&D projects in the background, and —
Max: Could you give an example?
Ed: IBM has been part of blockchain technology for a very long time. Hyperledger is probably the most advanced blockchain for enterprise for business. That's certainly not something that they could have come up with in a 12 month period, especially the rate of adoption that it's gotten from other companies using Blockchain.
But it's funny to see how they sort of kept that in the closet and in the dark, and didn't really expose the investments that they were making at the time. It's been around. It's been something that I think the tech industry and specifically, the engineering teams and product teams have been looking at as a potential means of introducing new products and services, but it's not something that they came out with a consumer-facing announcement or product.
Max: Right, right! So what drives your interest in —? Would you say it's in crypto? In the blockchain space? Are you more like on the investing side or the using side? What do you like to talk about with kind of your the company your —?
Ed: I'm fascinated by the companies who are actually building on blockchain and using cryptocurrency — more so, I should say “tokens” as fundraising.
Max: Let's actually go to the difference between a cryptocurrency of token — I don't know if it's that — but there are probably people who are wondering. Why don't you give the definition?
Ed: For listening and just holding their fist in the air saying, “They're not the same! Cryptocurrency —? For many people, it's interchangeable. But by definition, cryptocurrency is a native digital currency that is associated with a blockchain. It’s like Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. Cardano is a cryptocurrency. Ethereum is a cryptocurrency. There are other ones out there as well. A token is basically a digital share. It's representative of some form of either equity or value for a specific project built on blockchain. That's where you'll see healthcare groups or shipping groups, data groups, will release tokens that ultimately people can then use for their service.
For me, I'm certainly interested in cryptocurrency because that's sort of the basis of all the economics of the space. But to see a lot of these startups opt to go down the path of raising capital and raising money to build on blockchain, rather than perhaps going down the venture capital route where they give up 30 40% of their business. To me, that's fascinating because you're seeing the barrier to entry significantly lowered for new innovation. To me, going back to the topic before, this is going to fuel innovation moving forward. Having these conglomerates is incredibly anti-competitive. That for me thrilling.
Max: Yeah. Are you worried about the SEC coming in and declaring these things — securities and sort of making it very difficult for companies to issue these tokens?
Ed: Sure, and I think you see a general — directionally companies are moving towards compliance, either being forthcoming and saying, “Look, we should be deemed a security” or “We're going to be doing all the different compliance checks like know your customer, anti-money laundering.” The SEC has a fight on their hands right now. For any listener who's sort of not familiar, the day before the former SEC chairman whose name was Jay Clayton. Before he stepped down, one day decided to file a lawsuit against Ripple Labs. Ripple Labs is known. They created the cryptocurrency, “Ripple”.
Max: It's XR—
Ed: Yeah. XRP. It's a Fintech company. XRP is just the currency that's used, but they license out their SAS platform. It's pretty awesome. It's a really awesome product to check out to ripple.net. Ultimately, in doing so, the whole new regime that came in with the Biden administration, that Gary Gensler, who was the former MIT professor. Lael Brainard, who's very familiar. She's the head of the Fed. She was on several Senate Committees regarding cryptocurrency. We had this pro-crypto regime step in — or I would say neutral. They're not anti like that the former.
What became interesting is that the Ripple case, which is really about its current CEO, and former CEO, really was a bad move on the SEC because Ripple didn't lay down. They actually subpoenaed the SEC to release some documents have been horrifically damning. There was a document that just got released that showed the SEC released an employee investing policy that said that their employees are permitted to buy hold and sell cryptocurrency because it's not deemed a security. My goal is because everything else that is security, you're an employee of the SEC, there are heavy heavy restrictions. Just like if you work it —
Max: Now you could be involved in playing the market and regulating them at the same time, is what you're saying?
Ed: At that time, this is back in 2018, they were disclosing to their employees that digital assets are not cryptocurrencies — they're not security.
Max: Not security. Okay.
Ed: They're not under the umbrella or so the oversight of the SEC. Very interesting. The other piece was —
Max: They contradicted themselves.
Ed: Contradicts everything. Then, the other piece was that there were two former commissioners within the SEC. High-ranking executives who came out as whistleblowers. Ripple got them to testify. They deposed and — but ultimately, they disclosed that the SEC has willingly acted in a very vague manner when defining whether digital assets are cryptocurrencies or not. They've been doing so for one, because they don't want to lose control and give over oversight to the there's another group called the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). They don't want to give control of crypto right away to the CFTC. There’s a little bit of an infighting going on.
But the other is they want to be able to hold these types of lawsuits knowing that most digital companies don't have the resources that Ripple does, and they're going to lay down and not fight back. That was backbreaking in my opinion. We're now sort of in the thick of things that two weeks ago was the deadline when the SEC had to hand over all these documents. They did not. We might see the judge — the SEC doesn't start cooperating. May dismiss the SEC's case at which point everything that the SEC has come out and said, “This is a security. You can't do this.” That's negated because the SEC didn't prove because the burden of proof is on the SEC, that digital assets break Securities Act of 1933 and 1934. It will be almost stack-breaking for them.
Max: Well, that's interesting. Let's move away from the regulation. I want to know, what blockchain projects have you found? Or what innovative ideas have you found that are really interesting to you in terms of companies coming out with new blockchains, or even like new applications of say, Bitcoin or Ethereum?
Ed: There's one. Again, I'm going to put a disclaimer that I'm not what's called showing. I'm not pitching. You guys are only the listeners any coins that I own. It's just my personal opinion. But there's a company called MILC — it's a German media company. What they did was they created a project on blockchain to assist with international licensing rights. Big issue in the last year with COVID is that while we were all locked down, so were the studios and actors. Ultimately, there was a scramble — this arms race that happened across many of the streaming platforms to go and secure licensing rights of international shows to bring over here. You saw Gomorrah get picked up by HBO Max, which is a phenomenal show.
There's another one. There's a French company — French show that I just saw get promoted. You saw many, many, many of these international dubbed shows come overseas to the US and filled a bit of a content gap. In saying that, it's a nightmare. Licensing in general for TV is an absolute nightmare. I was exposed at a very small capacity, that was enough for me. These guys are figuring out a way for both discovery for negotiation and standardizing terms, which I think is very cool, and could also probably be used when it comes to music as well. Streaming and royalties is a whole nother sort of pain in the neck. I'm very fascinated by that.
I think that there are applications with Blockchain that can help solve that based on sort of the current issues that exist today. There's also a number of other platforms in the data space that I think are revolutionary in my humble opinion, which sort of reinvented disrupt that whole data broker industry. Still, people realize it's a quarter of a trillion-dollar business. It's 250 billion annually, globally. Ultimately, this is sort of data brokers. Companies — Nielsen, Oracle — I mean, there's many around the world that secure customer data and then offer it up for companies to gain access to it and syndicate.
The problem is that with legislation with all those things that are happening now, self-imposed by tech companies, the quality of that data is starting to get compromised. Ultimately, the way that these companies can collect, store, and distribute is also getting compromised. A lot of these companies are focusing on addressing how do companies gain access to you quality first-party data, in a way where the data owner doesn't lose ownership, and also maintains privacy. There's a number of projects that I think are fascinating from that space, and we'll see where it goes. But the cool thing is you're seeing these teams are running these groups, these projects — these are all veterans from Silicon Valley, from Europe. These are people who would be running well-backed unicorns in any other sort of scenario. Certainly, bringing in a lot of talent along with the money.
Max: As you put out a lot of educational content for people. I'm sure you do a lot of research on different projects that are going on. One of the things about this space that — I think it annoys people, but it also is, to me, it's just part of the landscape too. But you run into a lot of people who have very strong ideology or opinion about what blockchain was supposed to be.
Just to give a couple of examples. You have like on one side, Bitcoin Maximalists — there could only be Bitcoin. On the other side, you have people who just for some reason, they want nothing to do with Bitcoin, but they're all in on blockchain. Then, of course, The Blocksize Wars and all that, and the splits. I feel like for someone new coming in, it's like I almost want to say, “Okay, you're going to run into people who are saying X, Y, and Z — not necessarily ignore them, but be aware of it. I don't know. How do you sort of help people navigate that? Because —
Ed: I think the only thing worse than speaking to a vegan or CrossFitter at a dinner party is a crypto investor. That's terrible. They'll just talk your ear off about it. Look, you're going to run into that. Almost the vast majority, if not all of those people, are generally investing in the speculation. The more people that buy into the story, that buy into this narrative, the more value that these projects are going to get.
For me, you need to look at it that lens. Their job is to get more people to buy it so that their holdings go up. For me, what I try to tell people is, “I want to invest in companies and I want to sort of devote my time looking into companies that, regardless of where the bull market, bear market goes, in the cycle, these are companies are going to still be around. They're still building on blockchain because they're building businesses. There's actually commercial value.” That's sort of the model that worked even during the “dotcom”.
Bust. You saw Veryone, AltaVista, and Dogpile and there's many — Pets.com. There were many of these strong, strong companies that sort of continued on and actually built up to where they are today because they built actual businesses and weren't sort of building hype and fluff. We see a lot of that today. All you need to do is ask question, “Why do you like that project? Why do you like that cryptocurrency?” And you can very quickly tell sort of what side they're on.
Max: I mean, a hard one. A hard one to defend. From my perspective is like the Doge stuff where it's just like — I don't know what they're doing. I know people have said, “I feel like I'm late to Bitcoin. I'm going to buy Doge” and I'm like, “Don't do that.” And they come back, “Oh, I made all this money.” And I'm like, “Oh, no!”
Ed: Then, they lost it.
Max: Well, maybe. Some people get lucky. They come in, and then they get out, and then they're like, “Alright!” I feel like it's a market that has — there's a big pile on effect, and it's almost multiplied in crypto. You could have big swings that are not necessarily rational — which if somebody's good at trading, they could ultimately maybe exploit. The short-run stuff doesn't always tell you what's going to work out in the long run, I guess.
Ed: I think I meme coins as the digital equivalent of scratch-off tickets. Scratch-off tickets are in your face at every single deli, every grocery store. People win. People get rich on them. But the odds are, you're not. The reason being is that the people that get rich are generally the people who are either involved in pumping it up, and they're very early. By the time it reaches the mass people — the mass public, profit’s already gone. They're already out of the market, waiting for the next one to pump up.
It's important to know that if you're not actively watching crypto and sort of keeping your finger on the pulse, I would not — my suggestion is sort of look at these meme coins as a way of sort of getting rich because odds are you're probably late. We see that time, and time, and time again. Unfortunately, it's been going on for almost since the start. Blockchain — we saw it with ICOs before. Previous to that, we saw it with all of these Litecoins of clones.
Max: They'll keep popping up.
Ed: I would say, my recommendation just — there's a reason that there's these pumps, and ultimately, there's got to be someone who buys them. So, don't be that person.
Max: I'm just thinking off the top of my head of a good analogy since you're coming up with analogies. Tell me if you think this works. I remember when I was an undergrad, Facebook came out. You already had MySpace. I remember other hot new social networks would come around that we always forgot the name of, and they would just circulate through the internet every once in a while. In the short run, they probably got a lot of funding. They probably got people to buy into their projects like, “Oh, I'm going to make a better Facebook. It’s 2005.” There's always like a “me too” — or I should call “me too” — also-ran that comes in. Again, sometimes, you could have been mistaken and thought Facebook was also around. It's hard to tell sometimes.
Ed: For every one Instagram, you get a digg.com, which turned down — the story of they turned down a billion, and then sell for 200,000, a few years later.
Max: Look at Tumblr too. Is another one I followed which — that's a fascinating one. Another question I want to ask you, and I also have kind of selfish reasons for asking this. But I know it's a problem that you thought a lot about, which is what's the best way of going about supporting content online? I'm not just talking about as an individual. I know, as individual, you could put up courses and stuff. I'm interested in doing it. Okay. Advice for that is good. But also as we look at the internet as a whole, how would you like to see people — how would you like to see that huge resource of information we have being funded? Because it feels like something's broken about it right as we've mentioned before.
Ed: There's a few sides to that question. You have one — if you look at the way that they monetize. Is it free? Is it premium? Is it fully paid? Ultimately, there's a responsibility for people to say, “I value certain type of journalism, and I'm going to support and I'll pay for their services.” If not, I'm willing to see advertising. There's that agreement that goes on. A dynamic is created. The other is looking at how these sites are built, and sort of how they run. There's so-known as on advertisers too. The fact is that many high-quality sites can't keep their doors open. Can't keep in editorial staff who's going to actually do journalism. They're going to do “Five great things. Five reasons this actor got fat.” Why? Because —
Max: I can't believe I keep clicking — I can't believe I keep clicking on them. I'm looking for the one that was advertised on Twitter. Then, I'm like, “Wait a minute! What am I doing? Why am I here?” Get me out of this.
Ed: I thought we're talking about on this podcast that we're just going to talk, “Actors in the 90s that got fat.” That's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about Chelsea Peretti’s brother, Jonah, creating some more lists for us.
Max: Then you have to go through all of the actors that got fat, but the one that was in the picture is never there.
Ed: Come on. Tell me what Tony Danza looks like. I wanted to look like him growing up. No! Ultimately, the onus falls on advertisers. If the advertisers are going to continue to run ads on low-quality sites because they want cheap, cheap media in, especially in digital, ultimately, it's going to be hard for a lot of these publications to maintain an editorial team — to invest in actual the product itself. It's complicated. It a little bit relies on the consumer and supporting those platforms that are doing the right things falls on the advertisers for ultimately funding and making sure that the money is coming in and helping them sort of keep the lights on.
Then, the last piece is it falls on platforms. I know this is extremely scandalous for some people, but I think that tech platforms should be responsible for the content that's on them. If you host hate speech, if you host what the definition of hate speech is — very obvious what definitions of hate speech are. If it's questionable — hate speech. Not allowing that crap to sort of continue on. Ultimately, what that's going to create is sort of a shift towards, “I'm going to go to xyz.com because the facts are correct versus other places where I don't know if it's entertainment or information. I hope that answered your question. It's a hard one. It's a rhetorical question I don't have an answer for.
Max: No, I know. I know. Do you think that — I want to ask the question on an individual basis too. Do you think there is a — obviously, to get these companies to change in the way you want, it's not going to happen automatically. Do you think some blockchain project might be part of the answer, or do you think maybe not? I don't know. Is there any connection there?
Ed: There's a number of platforms that are introducing sort of these new models where you are incentivized to do sharing or to distribute certain types of articles. If you take that, and you support their platform, even if you're not going to pay and open your wallet, you can then access certain levels of content. That's a way that is good for these publications because it generates greater branding and increases their user base, which helps them go back to the advertisers. Also from the consumer standpoint, you're not having to pay for every article or every publication that you want to read. It's something that is very doable — costs you no money.
Max: Someone who puts out some — you put out some free stuff, and you put out some stuff that people have to pay for. What's your strategy in terms of figuring out what's what? What you're going to put out for free?
Ed: It's always a dilemma that happens. We certainly want to make all the information that we can make for free, we do.
Max: I mean, that's my problem. I don't want to put anything behind a paywall.
Ed: Again, there's also the other dynamic, which is because we host content which could be deemed as financial advice. We want to cover ourselves from a legal standpoint as well so that if we're telling you “three cryptocurrencies that we think are going to be well-positioned for the next month.” By having that paid contract between us and the customer, we are then covered legally. If we're just putting that out in the ether, there's a lot of gray area there in terms of, “Are we acting in an advisory role? Are we not?” Ultimately, there's a lot of liability that you can take on as a platform hosting that content. That's why you'll see, if you go on Investopedia, if you go on Motley Fool, Zacks, Acorns, Gate — they're all investment advisor firms are registered either with the state or with the SEC. They usually have some type of monetary component. Either way, you're subscribing to them, or at least when you get to a certain level of content. We just bring that content a lot closer to the front.
Max: Alright. I think it's about time to wrap up. It's been great talking to you. Do you have any last thoughts about what we spoke about today, and where can people find you?
Ed: Going back to innovation because I think you encapsulate the conversation very well with that. Right now, we are seeing this new undercurrent of innovation that — speaking as a sample size of one, I have not seen in at least 10 years. It's exciting and it's certainly something that's worth checking out knowing that you're obviously listening to the show, you have an interest in tech, you have an interest in business. Come check it out. We have a lot of different great resources all made available for free. We certainly have more if you decide to pay. Come check us out — dchained.com. It's D-C-H-A-I-N-E-D. Or you can just go maximizeyourportfolio.com — something easier to remember. We'd love to have more people come check us out.
Max: dchained.com. That’ll also be available on the show notes page localmaxradio.com/191. Ed McCormack, thanks for coming on the show.
Ed: Max. Appreciate it. Wonderful time.
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