#citizencosmos

  • Episode link: https://www.citizencosmos.space/epicentertv

  • Episode name: Sébastien Couture, blockchain journalism, podcasting & summits

Transcript of the Episode:

[00:01:29] Сitizen Сosmos: Welcome everybody to a new episode of Citizen Cosmos, and today we have a very special guest, his name is Sebastien, he's the host of two podcasts: Epicenter.tv and Interop. It’s remarkable to me because I’m a fan, and I started Citizen Cosmos because I was listening to Epicenter. Hi! Let’s start with Epicenter.tv. When it began, it was a huge event. I still love and enjoy it and listen to most of the episodes, but in my opinion, it has become smaller. Do you want to comment on that?

[00:03:25] Sébastien Couture: Hi! It’s nice to be on here, and I'm not often on this side of the river. Considering your question, this is something that I've come to terms with, and I think a lot of us, hosts, have come to terms with it. I co-founded Epicenter with Brian Crane in late 2013, and back then, there weren't a lot of crypto podcasts. There was Let’s talk Bitcoin, which is why we started Epicenter because we were in their contest. So, there weren't a lot of podcasts back then, and certainly, there weren't a lot of podcasts that covered a wide range of cryptal projects. There were a lot of Bitcoin podcasts, and many of those don't exist anymore, but we've been through several cycles, and I think Epicenter grew to its peak around 2017-2018. Then, things have flattened out, and I think every cycle also has its new entrance to the space, including podcasters. So there's been a ton of new podcasters coming into the space that perhaps feels more native to the people who enter a specific point in the space. So you have guys like Bankless and Peter McCormick, who are great media people. They've built massive media empires. Epicenter is unique because there have always been many hosts, and we've tried to bring a lot of different viewpoints to the show, so none of us have full-time on the show anymore. It’s not our main gig anymore. Epicenter remains an institution for many people, and we will keep it that way.

[00:05:33] Сitizen Сosmos: Now, when you’re answering the question, I realized I got a little bit excited with you being on, and I didn't ask you to introduce yourself, and I was starting the conversation as everybody knows you. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about what you do?

[00:05:55] Sébastien Couture: My name is Sebastien, I've been in crypto for about ten years. I found this podcast called Epicenter, I’m sure you are familiar with it because of our proximity to Cosmos. I've done a couple of other things. In 2015 I founded a company in France, it was one of the first companies here to raise funds for building blockchain projects. Since then, I've also been on the policy side of things here in Europe, co-founding an organization called Adan, which advises and helps promote good sound blockchain and crypto policy in France and the broader European space. I've been working on a new Interop ventures project for a couple of months. It's a fund that will help back teams in the Cosmos ecosystem that are building protocols and projects that adhere to the interchange vision of interoperable modular sovereign proof of the state of blockchains. In that same way, I’ve started a new podcast called Interop which isn't its eighth episode now. It is more focused on the Cosmos ecosystem. I'm organizing a conference next month which we could also talk about.

[00:07:09] Сitizen Сosmos: Thank you for the introduction! Before we move from Epicenter, I still have another couple of questions about it. Was it on purpose that you have Brian, Sunny? It seems that half of the Cosmos OGs were started from Epicenter. How did it happen?

[00:07:37] Sébastien Couture: I think it's just a confluence of people with like-minded individuals meeting. So Brian and I met in a Skype call which was a very chance meeting, and we met on this skype call organized by Adam Levine, former host of Let’s Talk Bitcoin, he's now at Coindesk. So we started Epicenter together, and the space used to be small. You could fit all the blockchain and crypto people in Europe into a big conference room. We had been closely following this guy named Roy, who had at that time written a paper called “The Internet of money,” and we had done a podcast episode about this guy and later brought him on as a host. So for a while, it was the three of us, and then after some time, Brian worked at Tendermint for some time in Berlin and helped co-found Full Node. Then, Sunny was also at Tendermint, and we hung out at events. At some point, we thought, why not invite him. The same thing was with Friederike. You’ll notice that most hosts are in Europe, and that’s not an accident. We move around fast and thus meet often.

[00:09:15] Сitizen Сosmos: I have to claim that the first episode of Citizen Cosmos was recorded in Full Node with Sebastien in the studio. So, the last question about Epicenter. I guess, considering you just mentioned all the hosts have their projects, what is the future for an Epicenter? Are you still planning to run it, or is it a sidekick?

[00:10:33] Sébastien Couture: We all sort of run it together. In the last, Friederike has taken a more critical role in the operating inside of things, but we still produce episodes, and as long as we all want to do it and there's enough of us that want to do it, we're going to keep doing it.

[00:10:52] Сitizen Сosmos: That's good to hear because it provides a lot of insights, and we cross a lot of guests, which I like because I like to hand-pick the guests, but I’ve noticed we have a lot of expected guests. You mentioned France and that you’re on a policy side now. I read about France's policy regulations and wanted to discuss them. In your opinion, how is it developing in France?

[00:11:30] Sébastien Couture: I'm not so involved in that world anymore, but for about a year and a half, I was customer director of a non-profit called Adan that helps promote sound crypto policy and represents the industry towards policy makers in France, and it has taken a vital role also advising a lot of the EU policymakers in the drafting of Mika. So this European market and crypto assets regulation is coming. Much of the work in terms of regulation and how to adapt that Adan made regulation in proportionality to the risks. I was there for the beginning, and we overgrew that team to five or six people, and Adan is now an organization with about 150 members.

[00:12:37] Сitizen Сosmos: What's your take on regulations in crypto in general? Do you think it's something that should be regulated?

[00:12:46] Sébastien Couture: My view here is a little bit nuanced. I think some regulation in the space would be beneficial, but the amount of regulation and the speed at which they come is frustrating. Mika was passed faster than some of the other financial regulations we know in Europe. There's a feeling that European regulators want this to go quickly. Things like this are not conducive to creating positive narratives around this technology, so I think a certain amount of things need to be regulated. Still, the amount of regulation and scrutiny being put on crypto is just out of this world compared to other financial services. In France, for instance, the amount of KYC and AML is far beyond what is required for any bank account. It's just making things harder for a lot of people, and I think what the regulation misses as well is that a lot of regulation in the existing financial space is meant to create protections and systems in place to protect people and to create transparency around a certain number of things like where transactions go and so on. A lot of that stuff is built-in into crypto, so if you have self-custody, you don't need to have a custodian. Some of the regulations miss what the inherent properties of crypto provide as a base layer and add these unnecessary rules that make users’ lives harder and service providers and all the companies being regulated.

[00:14:31] Сitizen Сosmos: My biggest question here is, in a way, exactly what you said - transactions. So all of us remember the origins of crypto, and one of the main things you always hear is that every transaction should be routed with regulation that puts a big nail into it. We always hear that financial freedom is one of the most important things and that every transaction should be routed no matter the purpose. So if somebody sends a transaction from point A to B, it should go from point A to B and not be stopped at point C. It doesn't matter what the purpose of the transaction is, but if you put regulation, we’re getting the question of should it arrive at point B or should we first regulate the transaction?

[00:16:05] Sébastien Couture: TCP IP doesn't care what goes through the packets. Those considerations are held at higher levels in the stack. With crypto, I don't know if regulators are trying to control what transactions are going through the chain. A lot of the regulation is happening at the edges. There's a risk regarding exchanges, on-off ramps, and things like that. It becomes harder for people to move in and out of off-ramps, so regulation would create barriers where certain types of assets wouldn't be welcome at a centralized or regulated exchange. Things like traceability of funds would make it prohibitive for people to send transactions because they would have to tag each transaction with providence, including their information. There are also privacy concerns that the regulation brings to light. In a traditional world, if you want privacy for whatever reason, you always have cash, and you can always go back to that means of payment. But as we've moved to more digital forms of payment, what ends up happening is that all of the means of transacting are now, by definition, not private. Crypto allows you a form of payment that is anonymous. It’s this globally coordinated attempt by the financial sector to have KYC on every transaction.

[00:18:03] Сitizen Сosmos: I agree. By the way, I'm sorry to go into a different topic here, but how did you end up in France? I don't know if you were born in France. Can you tell your story?

[00:18:15] Sébastien Couture: No, I wasn't. I was born in Canada, I grew up in the province of New Brunswick, it’s on the East Coast. When I was 21, I decided to study abroad for six months, then came to France, and 16 years later, I'm still here.

[00:18:33] Сitizen Сosmos: Where did crypto happen in these 16 years?

[00:18:37] Sébastien Couture: I worked as a web development project manager after my studies in the North of France, doing responsive email design and stuff like that. I was always a bit technical, although I didn't study computer science. I’ve been coding for as long as I can remember, so I did HTML, CSS, and some PHP web development. Then, I stumbled upon bitcoin and started looking into that. Here's one thing I will say about crypto origin stories. I've interviewed enough people and have asked this question so many times, and the one thing you rarely hear is, “I got it in the crypto because I wanted to make money.” Most people will tell you they got in the crypto because it resonated with them, etc. On the contrary, I thought I wanted to make some money, and then later, all these philosophical and ideological things that people were talking about started to resonate with me.

[00:19:50] Сitizen Сosmos: By the way, talking about making money. You mentioned that you have a company that does some funding for Cosmos. So let's talk about that.

[00:20:32] Sébastien Couture: Yeah. I think a lot of folks that have entered the space in the last couple of years. We’re investing in some projects in France because of my proximity to the ecosystem here. There's a vast Etherium community here in France and many high-quality engineers and people working on exciting projects. I invested in a few of those, and I made a few investments also in Cosmos space. At the moment, I am in the process of raising a fund that will invest in pre-seed and seed rounds in the Cosmos and entertain ecosystem, and that fund is called Interop ventures so at the moment I haven't talked about this publicly because I think people know about it. I’m getting a structure, talking to investors speaking with teams, and aligning up all the decks here to start making my first investments in a couple of months. It's my first time creating a fund. Maybe it’s a little late to enter the game, but I feel it's a good time for the Cosmos ecosystem. My goal is to back teams building excellent protocols, products, and primitives as provided. The value that I bring is the network that I have and my media expertise. Then we will also have several advisors who can provide expertise on other things like tokenomics, operations, and some technical things.

[00:22:23] Сitizen Сosmos: For anyone listening out there, what's your focus at the beginning going to be? What type of project specifically?

[00:22:28] Sébastien Couture: The focus is quite broad within interchain. I know interchain is also becoming a bit nebulous because as the interchain starts to connect with another system through bridging or through interoperability protocols, that kind of grows. Still, I think my focus stems from the interchain vision. The focus right from the get-go you will be investing in protocols and some d5 primitives that are coming up in the space right now. Our main driver is that this project embraces the interchain vision of sovereign interoperable modular proof of state blockchains. The team aligns with that philosophy over the long term and how much value they can bring to the ecosystem.

[00:23:14] Сitizen Сosmos: So if dock one comes around in a year and says, “I have an idea for a project idea for luna 3.0.” Yes or no?

[00:23:25] Sébastien Couture: My opinion is not yet formed but let's just put it that way.

[00:23:33] Сitizen Сosmos: That was a joke, of course. What's the worst investment that you can think about? Considering you’ve been in crypto for a long time.

[00:23:46] Sébastien Couture: Here's the thing. For a long time, I wasn't actively investing in crypto. I held a handful of layer1 tokens for a long time and wasn't investing too much. During the ICO craze, I did Adan and Tazos. I didn't do all the ICO and fell into this craze. And also, maybe to my demise, I was focused on building a company. At the time, I was building a company called Stratum. We had investors, and I was also running a media company. I felt that I needed to hold a certain amount of integrity to continue doing the podcast and do it well. That meant not being all-in on all the projects we had on the show. I should have a spreadsheet with all the episodes we've had on all the l1s we had tokens. I think I've taken a step back and have a little more maturity about all that and realize that it's possible to invest but also have intelligent conversations, and that’s where I’m focusing my time now.

[00:25:11] Сitizen Сosmos: It's funny what you said. We did one of the project managers I had worked on before the war in Eastern Europe started. He did that a couple of times, took all the projects he mentioned, deposited about $1000, and even though there was a market fall in the summer, he had like x50, x60, or something. So it’s nice to hear that the focus is not on that rather intelligent conversations because one of the scariest things crypto has created is terrible journalism I’m happy to hear there are more people out there who are focused on creating good media intellectual based good media rather than go and sell this token and that’s really bad home journalism and I'm happy to hear that there are more people out there who are focused on creating good media rather than go buy and sell this token and that's I think what Epicenter has done at the beginning, and I'm sure that's what draws a lot of other people. As I said, I don't have a financial background, so investing for me came sometime. This passion I've cultivated on a personal level is now meeting this business I'm starting, Interop Ventures. So hopefully, if L1s will give me money, we’ll enter a new level.

[00:26:44] Сitizen Сosmos: Let’s talk a bit about Interop.

[00:28:02] Sébastien Couture: The Interop podcast started a couple of months ago, and it's all about understanding the decentralized economic networks that make up the inner chain. My goal here is to have deep and technical conversations with folks in the interchange ecosystem. We've interviewed a couple of folks by now. The website is https://theinterop.show/. You can also find it on YouTube and SoundCloud. We also have live streams on YouTube. Usually, I upload the video first and later post it as a podcast, which is the opposite of Epicenter. We did an episode last week with Ishmael Kofi of Celestia. We've done Christopher Goes. We had Joe Bowman, Jack Sampling, and other representatives of creme de la creme of the Cosmos ecosystem. Hopefully, we'll keep doing these at a rate of twice a month or something.

[00:29:30] Сitizen Сosmos: I'm sorry if I'm wrong here but is Interop also a validator?

[00:29:35] Sébastien Couture: It’s not a validator, but there's probably going to be a validator, so this is something I've been struggling with, and if there's anybody out there who wants to help me set up some validators, I'd love to get some help.

[00:30:00] Сitizen Сosmos: I would take credit for this, but I will a little bit. Many people who came on the podcast, including, for example, Cryptocito, and many others, did go through here. And I was always telling them to start their validators because they’re ecosystem developers and building the whole community. So I would love to see if in a month's time you also start some validators. I wouldn’t say we were the first to do that, but the way that Citizen Cosmos has built is ecosystem development. If there are networks that we can support, we give them the instruments. And then say we also run validators, we don’t want to work with contracts, and that’s our model.

[00:30:52] Sébastien Couture: That’s cool. I talked to a lawyer who also had a similar model, so instead of bolling you for counsel, he would ask you to delegate to his validator, which I thought was cool. By the way, do you run it yourself, or do you have people who help you run the validation?

[00:31:13] Сitizen Сosmos: I have a guy who helps me on the technical side of the course. I’m like you technical, but I can start up a validator. I would prefer somebody who's professional would help me. There is a couple of more people who helped me with project management. I hope to grow.

[00:31:48] Sébastien Couture: I think I'm sort of similar to you. I can spin up a validator like I've done it before, and that's not the issue it's more like running it in production is another thing.

[00:32:50] Сitizen Сosmos: Let's talk about the Nebular event you're doing, which is a Cosmos-based event.

[00:32:59] Sébastien Couture: I’m so excited about this event. So it's called Nebular summit, and the website is https://nebular.paris/. This is a conference that is about celebrating the Cosmos ecosystem. So we're going to be having talks and panels and even technical workshops, so there could be a ton of developers and researchers and entrepreneurs there. They'll be discussing all the challenges facing the interchain and also thinking about the future and where the ecosystem is going. Before we started this, I was getting ready to push the schedule online, so I’m sure the plan will be online by the time you release this. Anyway, the list of speakers is there, so we've got about 40 speakers. I'm not going to list them all, but, for example, Sunny Agarwal and Julian Butler and many others. Tickets are $35. The venue is an old fire station. It is a beautiful building with a massive courtyard, and there's a rooftop terrace like this fashion incubator, but they've got some rooms for events, so the venue is super cool. So if you’re in Paris or in Europe, get yourself a ticket and join us!

[00:34:33] Сitizen Сosmos: While you were saying that, I just thought I would love to see the first conference that starts to accept the ticket in the old USD. That would be fantastic.

[00:34:50] Sébastien Couture: Yeah, that would be great, but we only accept euros for now.

[00:36:07] Сitizen Сosmos: Are you going to Cosmoverse this year? What’s your plan? Are you going as Sebastien or as Interop?

[00:36:12] Sébastien Couture: Yeah, I think so. I always go as Sebastien. I’m unsure if I will go for Cosmoverse plus Devcon because that means staying in Colombia for three weeks. Are you going to BuildAsia?

[00:36:41] Сitizen Сosmos: I can’t because I’m stuck in Madeira for bureaucratic stuff for now.

[00:37:28] Sébastien Couture: I’ll also have to skip.

[00:37:28] Сitizen Сosmos: It will be lovely. There are so many big conferences now; I think that’s great because most of them were terrible several years ago. Another question, Sebastien. You’ve been in crypto for 10 years and recorded so many episodes. What keeps you motivated? What would you suggest to our listeners? It could be reading or meditating, dog walking, whatever.

[00:38:41] Sébastien Couture: When you've been through so many ups and downs in the space, that's it's a good sign I think that the space is super resilient, and the people who are dedicated to building meaningful value of this technology are like in it for the right reasons, and I was talking about this with someone this morning. The correction we've seen recently has brought a lot of sanity to the space. It's brought valuations for everything down to sane levels. A lot of people left in 2017-2018, people who are passionate about building meaningful products and creating value. To me, what's been motivating all this time was creating amazing content with Epicenter and the other podcast I'm doing. The next chapter for me is creating value by helping teams with capital, marketing support, operational support, and security, hopefully by having a validator. I think it’s also helpful to take some time off and disconnect for several weeks. That's what I did a couple of weeks ago when I was in Bali, and it felt great, and I feel recharged.

[00:40:12] Сitizen Сosmos: That’s a good answer. I'm planning something like this next month. Is there anything else you would like to mention that I haven't asked you?

[00:40:29] Sébastien Couture: Anybody interested in building some cool stuff, please reach out, whether that's you having a chat on the podcast or having an investment from Interop, or setting up a validator. I’m looking for cool and interesting people to collaborate with. And please don’t forget about the Nebular conference and come check it out!

[00:41:25] Сitizen Сosmos: Sebastien, thank you very much for coming. It’s been a great pleasure!

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