In November 2023, Steven Nerayoff dumped a multi-hour recording of a private conversations between himself and Vitalik Buterin, which he described in the following way:

ETHEREUM RESCUE & RESTRUCTURE PLAN:

In late 2014 Ethereum was in trouble. Vitalik Buterin asked Steven Nerayoff to do a full diagnostic assessment and recommendations on how to save Ethereum and restructure it for long term success. Over the early months of 2015 Steven and Vitalik spoke many times. These are five of those conversations that happened to be recorded.

Thank you to @AlturaNFT for their support in bringing this piece of history to life. Available to mint below

https://real-truth.marketplace.alturanft.com/item/137/0x9a5bacd18be44a214515519238c728faec1468e0/1

Putting the ethics of these recordings aside, they give a fascinating insight into the dynamics within the Ethereum Foundation at the time, and expose the fact that Steven was not somebody who Vitalik later claimed to hardly know.

The link above does not work any longer, but one which somebody made on Cardano is still functional and has a downlink link for the audio. It is around 250Mb so too large to copy here.

• Rough Outline
• Full Transcript

Here is the tweet:

Transcript

[0:02] Steven: Hello?

[0:05] Vitalik: Hello, there you are, I can hear you.

[0:07] Steven: Okay, I have my headset on, but I guess my headset's not working. Can you hear me? Now you can hear me?

Okay. Oh, okay. How are you?

[0:21] Vitalik: I'm good.

[0:24] Steven: Tired? How are you? I'm doing well, thanks.

[0:32] Vitalik: Less tired than I looked, as well.

[0:34] Steven: Yeah?

[0:36] Vitalik: That's good.

[0:38] Steven: So, you tell me where you want to go. How I can be helpful.

[0:46] Vitalik: This is why I paused it, because I don't want to… I don't want to… I know you've been working with Anthony and I the last couple of weeks, so you probably know some of where, at least, we are in service of Ethereum.

As far as where we are on the development side, things are actually going quite well on that front. We're about maybe six or seven weeks away from launch. So, hopefully, at the end of March, we'll finally be able to get it out.

And it's looking quite good. So… Okay.

Yeah, the issues that still remain are probably much more on the organizational side, at least for us. So, we have… So, we're planning on having a meeting at the end of this month in Switzerland, where we're going to…

Where, theoretically, everyone from Foundation Leadership is going to be there. And… Everyone…

Well, including myself, Gavin, Beth, Anthony, Mihai, Taylor, and so forth. Some kind of arrangements that will make sure things go well on that front. So, one of the ideas that we've had is that we really basically lack…

I mean, first of all, we kind of lack boots on the ground in Switzerland that are able to help us… that are able to help with things like window issues, things like maintaining a team in Switzerland, which we're supposed to do, and so forth. And…

Part of the reason behind that is… Basically, no one's particularly interested in being in Switzerland at this point. And it seems as…

And also, no one really… There's no one who's currently on the leadership right now that really has exactly the right skills to do stuff like bookkeeping, accounting, interfacing with lawyers, and so forth. So, it just seems like the sort of task where we just need to find one or two good people, either one full-time, several part-time, that would be able to take over something like this.

But… The issue is that none of us are particularly well-connected in Switzerland, and so I know Anthony and Mihai have been trying to get people. We've been trying a bit on our…

I've been trying a bit. And… Haven't had that much success yet.

Yeah, so that's basically how things are for us on the Ethereum side.

[3:49] Steven: Well, I… Okay, so… Yeah, I've been speaking to Anthony.

I've gotten some kind of tidbits here and there. Not 100% sure what's correct and not, so I'll… You know, I'm very straight, so I'll just…

I'll come to you with it. And Anthony asked me… The discussion with him was a little broader, I think.

And he said, you know, do something… He was pretty clear that he's, you know, if this thing isn't fixed, I don't think he wants to hang around. And…

So I kind of made a list of what I thought… What I think the issues are. And he asked me, because he asked me, he said, how would you restructure this?

I said, okay. So I said, I had an idea of how I would have done this from the initial, but this is different, so you're in a different ballgame now. And I, you know, first and foremost, I think everybody's kind of looking at…

I think… Do you want me to just give you, just tell you my thoughts on it? Okay, all right, so I'm just going to just hit you straight with it.

And you may like it, you may not. I don't know, but… It's the reality as I see it.

The… A lot of people are looking at this as… Whether or not…

Their ether is going to be valuable or not. And I'm…

[5:32] Vitalik: By a lot of people, do you mean internal or external?

[5:35] Steven: Both. Right. Now, on the external side, you've got…

To my understanding, about 9,000 people that participated. A lot in the States. If you don't…

You raised… 30,000 or so Bitcoin. And you made a lot of promises.

Both… In terms of condition, in terms of sales, rather, whatever. Also, publicly, there was a lot of…

Rhetoric, so to speak. That was, you know, I think was done with good intention. But I'm not sure if you're going to be able to live up to them.

And there were also a lot of issues. Some other issues, but so there's those people. And then there's some issues surrounding the ether price that are pretty vital around that.

Those issues… I broke it down, by the way, here, let me just tell you how I broke it down. I broke it down into the Swissorg.

I broke it down into funding. And then I broke it down into Reorg. And then I broke it down into a final topic of…

Legal. But this was… The not pleasant legal.

The rest of legal is kind of… Mixed into all the other stuff. And when I say the not pleasant legal, I mean…

Tripping over the securities regulations. Tax regulations. Money transfer regulations.

Transfer pricing regulations. Personnel conduct regulations. So there's all these different stuff.

Okay, so my take on it from a broad scope… Is that, first of all, the way that folks are looking at it… Because when I've talked, I've talked to quite a number of people…

Over the past number of months. And everybody's kind of just, like I said, internally very focused on what their ether is going to be worth. And really at this point in time, that was all well and good at the beginning.

Right now, at this point in time, the focus should not be on the ether at all. Really it should be on whether or not the organization is going to be able to survive. And it actually shouldn't be…

There was a lot of fear and greed that drove it early on. Right now, I don't see a lot of fear. And I thought a lot of it was unnecessary early on, if the right structures.

And right now, I actually think there is reason to be concerned. And so these people shouldn't be looking up their upside. They should be looking down.

You know, what are the potential downsides right now of everything that's occurred. So I'll go through these in general. My take is that…

I don't know how much… I don't know how much is left. In terms of the…

By rough calculations, I'm guessing there's, you know, at current prices, 3, 4, 5 million dollars left worth of ether. I'm sorry, worth of Bitcoin.

[9:08] Vitalik: Of Bitcoin and fiat together. Hold on, I think we have about somewhere from 11 to 12,000 BTC. Which is roughly in the 2.7 to 3 million range. And then we have, I think, somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million fiat on top of that.

[9:28] Steven: Okay, so…

[9:30] Vitalik: About 4.5 would be my guess.

[9:33] Steven: Okay. Okay. Alright, so I'm…

I mean, I can send this to you after, but let me just kind of go in some… First of all, I want to kind of just go over some things that are personally very disturbing to me. That I want to just bring to your attention.

The fact that the position wasn't hedged, in my opinion, is inexcusable. Absolutely inexcusable. I don't care, by the way, I don't care if BTC went to 2,000.

The point of this wasn't to ride BTC. It was to make sure you had enough money to see this thing through 1.0 and then do development on 2.0 as well. While you maintain 1.0. And then also be able to develop some of your own dApps. Be able to encourage other people doing their dApps. And you don't want to launch this, you know, it's like Xbox launching without any games. I mean, that's great.

And from my take on the marketplace also, is that the lead that was once had out there, you know, isn't that same lead. And there's a lot of questions out there. Now, don't get me wrong.

I'm not… I'm saying… I mean, if I thought this was a completely lost cause, I wouldn't bother going into this.

There's really nothing you can do. But I am… I'm not going to sugar coat this.

I'm telling you, I think you guys are in… I think it's crisis time. And I'll go over the reasons why.

I think… it's hard for me to imagine that there haven't been a lot of wires tripped on the legal side. You should be particularly concerned because of two reasons.

Number one, and I told you point blank, I had heard from on the inside that they wanted to send all of those letters out to the Ethereum guys. But because of the opinion, they weren't able to. Specifically, they wanted also to hit you.

And, you know, it's nothing personal, but you're the face of the company. And Charles isn't around anymore. So, that would be issue one.

The issue two is that there were decisions that were made that you were put in a position to make. So, I think it's still baffling that people had the wherewithal to put you in that situation. But nevertheless, they did and you made the decisions.

And so, those decisions… they looked to see who made the decisions where things went. So, again, that points not only to you.

I think some of it is going to point, obviously, probably to Joe. And you put together the terms and conditions and had a lot of dealings with the money and what have you. But anybody who's made the decisions has got trouble.

And so, you have a COO. I'm trying not to talk about individual people too much. Because I don't think your issues are as simple as hiring a person or two.

So, I mean, if you want me to talk to you about that, that's fine. I think it's a waste of your time and mine. Because I think…

Go ahead.

[13:27] Vitalik: So, I mean, the issue is, if they're solvable at all, it's three ways of doing it. One way is to tell the existing people to act in a very different way. The other way is to add people.

The third way is to remove people. So…

[13:41] Steven: Right. I think there's only one. And that's number three.

In conjunction with a complete, I mean, a total restructure of the entire org. And I can go into what that is.

[14:00] Vitalik: That would be helpful.

[14:01] Steven: But that's the only… I mean, at this point, I think you need to view this as Apple. When Steve Jobs came back.

The problem with the handicap and the fact that you don't have some of the goodwill. And that Apple did have success at one point. You didn't have that.

You had the promise of success and a lot of excitement. And I still see a lot of excitement out there. It's just, there's also a lot of other competition out there.

And well-heeled competition that you didn't have before. And a lot of big-name players getting involved into the game. And so…

And a lot of people, frankly, I think you turned them on to a lot of this stuff. So, that's great. But you don't want to be known as the guy who turned on to people whose organization went under and then you got into legal issues.

And you sure as hell… And again, I'm not trying to yell fire in a theater. But there's a fire.

As far as I see it, there's really a fire here. It's a systemic issue. This is not…

So, you can't tip-tans around this. I've seen it too many times. Frankly, I feel like the people that are on board right now are, for the most part, tend to be very self-serving.

They tend to be… Now, I'm not going to talk about the tech… I'm going to ask questions on the technical side.

So, I'm not really talking about people's technical expertise. So, I'm not getting to Gavin or Jeff's technical expertise and what they're doing. Nor do I question your technical expertise.

But I will question people on that side. But that's really… You have to give me some more information.

But on the others, the rest of it, I have a pretty decent understanding of it, I think, at this point from talking to everybody. And they are incompetent at best. And that's the good end of it.

The bad end of it is they've been… Well, to some extent it's been malicious. Self-serving.

They're looking for their own gains. They really don't give a damn about Ethereum per se. It's great that it takes off or not.

But they're just going along for the ride. You can go through specific examples. And the rest of it…

Like I've told you, when I came there and I saw the people, I didn't… On one hand, I was very impressed about how you handled it in terms of being so egalitarian and giving everybody ownership and what have you. But the problem is that I think your heart was really in the right place.

But you just gave it to the wrong people. And then the structure that was set up was not a sustainable structure. Plus the reorganization into a non-profit.

Actually, it not only doesn't give people incentive for Ethereum to succeed. Ethereum proper to succeed, so to speak. It actually incentivizes them now.

The Ether is some incentive, but it's really a minor incentive. That's not a long-term incentive. It's like saying, I own some Bitcoin, but I need to see Bitcoin succeed.

Rather than saying, I have a Bitcoin business. That's a much different thing. And so that's really where you've got them all.

So that's why you see everybody's off doing their own thing. Nobody's really stuck around. They come in, they chime in from time to time.

And the bottom line is what I'm seeing from an insider-outsider perspective. So I've got this kind of unusual view. I'm seeing people just utilizing the Ethereum name and your name.

And still Charles' name to a certain extent. I don't know if you're aware, but Charles was here recently. He was in New York?

Yeah, he was in New York. He was just on his way to Asia. And Jonathan sent out, he was having one of his meetups.

And in there he mentioned Charles Hoskinson. He didn't say Ethereum. And I went to the meetup and there was a mob around him.

A little mob. The same thing that you experience. And I just kind of chimed in to listen to what he was talking about.

And a lot of people were asking about Ethereum. I saw him punt on those questions. He was very good about it.

He was not derogatory to the company at all. He handled it with class. And did the best that he could.

Because I think he still cares about… I think a lot of these people had bought Ether. You have to remember, a lot of these people, and I've talked to some of them.

They're not wealthy people. They're people that have come in. These are young people that have sold their Bitcoin and put their savings into this.

Thinking this is the next best thing. These people are not going to be happy if this thing goes below par, so to speak. So one issue is, you must not only keep the organization going, you must keep Ether above par.

That's really important. That doesn't mean that you didn't trip. I'm fairly convinced that securities laws and these other laws have been tripped.

So the question though is, is anybody going to come after you? And the likelihood of that diminishes greatly if the price of Ether stays above par. And people don't lose money.

Now that's a tough thing to do. Unless you deliver some really astounding products. I'm going to talk about Swiss centralization.

So with that being everything that I just said. First of all, I think because you're stuck with certain structures. Now I do think you need to re-look and turn this into, you have to decide first of all whether or not you're willing to do what it takes here.

You have to decide whether or not the organization is more important than any individual. When Steve Jobs came back, it's really instructive. When he came back, there were 15 different divisions in Apple doing 15 different things.

And a lot of them were really interesting and fun. And there were a lot of really smart people. But at some point he just said, look we can focus on this, this and this and that's it.

That's all the cash we have. And then he had to go and get outside resources. And Bill Gates in particular to fund the company.

And then he had to laser focus. And it was bloody. And a lot of people were really angry at him.

But he was right and he saved the company. And it was a Hail Mary. Don't make me wrong.

It was a Hail Mary. And I think you're almost at a Hail Mary standpoint. Part of the fact that you're at a Hail Mary standpoint is the structure.

Part of it is the fact that nobody hedged this position. I mean I was floored when I heard that. When I spoke to Anthony and I said, well the position has been hedged.

And the reason I asked him that was that when Joe and Charles were here, they had told me that they had a couple of different agreements negotiated. I remember there was one in Israel. And I think one in Germany or Netherlands or something like that.

Where they, you know, somewhere between half a million to a few hundred thousand fiat in order to hedge the position at like five something. And so I assumed you guys were all hedged at five something. And Anthony said no, none of the position has been hedged.

Frankly, I'm not 100% sure who made those decisions. Whoever made those decisions.

[22:49] Vitalik: There was never a decision made not to hedge. It was just really, I mean, basically a really huge amount of inertia. That's probably the only way you could describe it.

[23:00] Steven: Well no, somebody was in charge of that. Who was in charge of handling the money? Whoever was in charge of that, I mean that's inexcusable.

That's really, they put the entire organization in jeopardy.

[23:14] Vitalik: So in terms of who handled the money, so I will try to answer that question. So the cold wallet is in charge of, is under the control of basically four centers. One in Switzerland, one myself, one Gavin, one in Toronto.

We had, we were talking about hedging all the way starting. Well, it wouldn't be hedging really so much as selling. Because, you know, we want to have exposure to USD instead of BTC.

And a lot of our payment is in fiat. So in the simplest approach, we would just get the fiat. So we ended up, I kind of ended up trying to entrust Joe to the task of managing selling BTC.

And he started doing it, but he was just doing it sort of 50, you know, 100 BTC here, 100 BTC next week, 100 BTC the week after that. And basically what happened was that he continued with his approach where he was really insistent that Bitcoin would go way up after some period of time. So it would be smart for us to hold on to BTC.

And a large part of the blame probably is on myself for just not being nearly pushy enough to resist him.

[24:43] Steven: I don't know. Okay, so here's my thought on that. Again, you know, if I didn't care about you as much as I do and what you're trying to achieve, but you as a person, I really like you.

I mean, I really do. And I think, you know, I consider you a friend at this point. I wouldn't be hitting you so straight.

I'd be talking a lot more politely and whatever. But I'm doing that to take it in that vein, understand that that's where it's coming from. So ultimately speaking, yeah, you're to blame for all of this.

On the other hand, you've never done this before. And for all the brilliance that you've come up with, running a company is not something that comes natural to anybody. It's something that you learn.

[25:32] Vitalik: Right, I think that probably, yeah, if I had to describe my faults, it would be that I was basically trying to abdicate responsibility the whole time. And I think there, because I didn't really want it. And I guess there's no one else, first of all, there was no one else who was clearly taking it from me.

[25:56] Steven: Yeah, well, you know, and I only say that because, and in a way I'm giving you a little bit of a door out, because you brought on some people that were supposedly, that claimed they had the expertise. Now, you know, Joe ran a goddamn hedge fund. There was a word in the fund called hedge.

You had a guy who was handling this that ran a hedge fund for eight years and didn't hedge your position. I mean, I just, you had your upside. That was the beauty of the hedge.

The hedge was just a putt. So you had all the upside with none of the downside. And you guys, the beauty of it is everybody else right now is in pain, and so are you guys.

But nobody else, you would have been able to clean up, and who knows what kind of talent you would have been able to scoop up. Instead of four and a half million, you'd probably be at 12 million right now. And, you know, then if Ether went to a thousand, you guys would, you know, it actually would have been better for it to go down, because you guys would have been stronger amongst a bunch of weak players, as opposed to being strong with a bunch of strong players.

But, in either way, you would have been protected. So to me, that is just beyond inexcusable. And the people didn't give you the money.

They gave you enough money. Now you don't have, frankly, you don't have enough money. Four and a half million is not enough to accomplish what you need to accomplish.

So you have to, you see, nobody wants to move to Switzerland. So I think right now hiring, having people what they want, I think is irrelevant. So I'm going to just go through some steps.

First of all, I would probably strip everybody of their Ether. The Ether was supposed to, I know, because I know things that were told to me, and then I know what showed up in various documents, that Ether was supposed to vest. I remember that clearly.

That was supposed to vest over like three or four years. And just giving, if you notice, I don't know if you do notice or not, I never took my Ether. You know, I just didn't feel like it was the right thing to do.

And I think anybody that was part of this, and I think I pulled my weight and did what I was supposed to do. And you did. I mean, it was, frankly, some of the Ether that was given to some people was almost, you should have rather, I think it was better not to have given them, rather than give them like $3,000 or $2,000 or $1,000 worth.

You know, it almost was like, it's better to just say thank you, we appreciated what you were doing. Or give them something substantial, one or the other. But, you know, I was, whatever.

But I would strip everybody of their Ether right now. Because that's a protection for the company, it's a protection for the people themselves. Like I said, people looking at the value of their Ether, they should be more concerned about staying out of prison at this point in time.

Because the Ether goes down, and it's also better if people don't have that Ether. At least they can say, I didn't profit from this in any way. Because there are people that are trying to sell their Ether on the third market.

You know, there's that one guy that created that little, you know, coin. And so, there's a lot of people that want to just dump the Ether within the organization.

[29:30] Vitalik: Yeah.

[29:31] Steven: So, you know, don't, by the way, I'm also going to say, I believe the restructuring was a huge mistake. I know Charles has his downside. I'm very aware of Charles' strengths and weaknesses, and I'm aware that he has both.

But he was the closest thing you had to both a strategic person, and you don't have an asshole. You know, you don't have one, you know, jerk on board that can be the jerk and that can actually make the tough decisions, and then it gets thrown to you. And you really shouldn't be put in that position, because you need to be able to galvanize people around you.

And so, the other thing I would do, is I would terminate virtually everybody on, I would basically come with deals and get rid of everybody on the founding team. With the exception of you, I would keep Anthony on a board level. I would figure out a way to turn this back into a new entity, a new for-profit Swiss entity.

You made a lot of promises, you made a lot of promises, is that some people in the background? I'm just having a little hard time hearing.

[30:55] Vitalik: There's people like back in the room.

[30:57] Steven: Oh, okay. So, you guys made promises to the Swiss. The Swiss didn't do this out of the goodness of their hearts.

I don't know all the promises that were, I don't know, I haven't seen all the docs. I do remember, so I'm going on stuff that was told to me many, many, many months ago. But I do remember there was something about like 10 jobs being created.

There shouldn't be any nexus really, everything should be centered in Switzerland. I would create a new for-profit, I would eliminate your entities, you'd have to work with Jeff and Bert. I could help you do all of this, everything that I'm telling you is doable.

It's going to be painful as hell. But what's more painful, and I've lived through this, is to see the whole thing go under. And I'm making a mistake about it, that's where I see this going.

I don't see it surviving. And I don't really care what you launch, I just don't see it surviving. Because the structure is, the foundation is corroded.

It's a corrosive foundation. So, I would create a new for-profit entity in Switzerland. I would eliminate nexus with every place else, and then I would center everybody in Switzerland.

For now, over time we can find a broader structure. Anybody who doesn't want to go to Switzerland, that still is part of the organization, like part of the dev team, would need to move to Switzerland if they want to be part of this, it's as simple as that. He says, look, we're going to move to Switzerland for the next 6-12 months, and then we'll reevaluate at that point.

But you've got to make good, and we have to really look at what was promised to the Swiss. You need a CFO. I happen to like Heye a lot, I think Heye is bright.

So this is not a knock on Heye, it was a really generous thing, and really good that Anthony sent him around to try to clean up the books. But really, you need an internal CFO, it can't be some guy coming in and cleaning up the books. You need a guy that would have been on top of, and you need to cut your burn rate.

I don't know what it is right now, but you need to get it down to under $100,000 fiat per month right now. You need to cut out all, whatever is in development that is not part of the core product, you need to get back to an MVP, 1.0. I do remember there was talk a while back about varying browsers, and I don't understand all of it, but varying standards and different languages and what have you, and you just don't have the luxury of doing all that. You're not Google, and you can't do it because somebody likes a particular technology versus somebody else.

Somebody has to make a call and say, this is the one we're going with. I'd have to get more granular on that. I'm happy to send you, for example, my CTO, or I would get, for example, Eric Anderson or somebody like that.

Between us, we know enough people that we could get somebody to really come in and do a full evaluation of the technology. Really slice and dice and get rid of everything that's not essential. I can't imagine there isn't a lot of that out there.

This organization is in five continents right now. That's craziness. It needs to be in one country.

Everybody needs to be in one room. You're not going to be able to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish. There's too many regulatory and legal hurdles that you can't overcome by doing it that way.

I would renegotiate all. I don't know what agreements you have with other parties, with third parties that have come about. They all probably need to get renegotiated between the Swiss entity and those parties.

I would hire a new CTO that handles 2.0. Take your best programmers and put them on that. Then you can have an offshore development team that's low cost. For example, I have a development team.

They're not low cost. The one I have in Canada is in Vancouver. They're not necessarily low cost.

I have another one, for example, personally for Cloud Park. I have a Serbian development team. They're just as good as anybody out there for one-fifth of the price.

They work their tails off. They're loyal and they're amazing. I just have an amazing experience.

Serbia is one example of that. It doesn't have to be Serbia. That's the one I happen to find.

I have contacts there. That's one possibility. You may want to even contract with an independent development company and pay them.

They don't have a lot of overhead. They don't charge a lot. If it's $23, they'll charge $25 for that person.

They're in charge of those people. You can get those people to just do maintenance on 1.0 until you can get 2.0 out.

[36:45] Vitalik: You get a really low cost team on 1.0. At this point, it's probably not worth it to restructure 1.0 too much given that it's two months away?

[36:57] Steven: I'm talking about maintenance on it. I don't know what kind of maintenance is involved in maintaining it. I don't know how long it takes to get 2.0 out. That's all I was talking about. In other words, maintenance on 1.0 is as low as possible.

[37:12] Vitalik: The idea of getting developers in Serbia cheaply, that's actually a really great thing. That's something that we could do completely separate from everything else we're discussing. If you want to try to help GAV on that somehow, that would be really appreciated.

[37:30] Steven: Sure. I'm going to throw all these out. Sure.

Then we can go through which ones we want to do, which ones we don't want to do. I'd like to keep the conversation between me and you. Then decide how you want to attack it.

Then we can make a plan to attack that. I think Ethereum needs a total rebrand. It's really clear.

You saw the article on Coindesk a couple of weeks ago. There was nothing even in the article which was fascinating. But on the top it says, what happened to Ethereum?

That in and of itself is telling you… I've looked at the boards and I've been to some of the meetups. People don't know what the hell is going on.

Your community outreach sucks. It's terrible. I'm speaking from real experience.

I built some of the largest marketplaces in the world. Community outreach was a very big part of what we did. Think eBay.

I offer community outreach. It's vital to the reason we became the third largest marketplace. It was one of the core components of it.

Our community was evangelized and really was very aware of what was going on. What we said, they weren't in a vacuum. Plus our partners were aware of what was going on.

That was part of our community also. We had some very large sellers that were hooked into our API. These people were treated with kid gloves.

I've heard about… I don't know the details of what happened with Ares. Frankly, I don't care about what the details were.

All I know is I had heard about these guys a year ago. Almost a year ago. Maybe 8 months ago.

How excited they were. How strong they were. I heard it from 4 different sources.

Now they're forking you guys. Something went really wrong for that to happen. I don't know what it was.

I don't really care what it was. Whoever did it should not be talking to any partners in the future. You had a company that really could have been your Microsoft building your Microsoft office, so to speak.

Instead, now they're trying to compete with you. I don't know if that's probably too far gone. Maybe, maybe not.

I don't know. I think you need a total rebrand. I know there was a talk about doing a DAO for a not-for-profit for 2.0. I don't know whatever happened to that. I think that needs to get back on there. You need to bring in a consultant to evaluate the entire entity. This I should have set up front.

You need to bring on somebody. Potentially, I could work with somebody and we could do a full evaluation of the entire company. I can do a lot of it, but there's some of it that you need some technical expertise.

You need somebody that has some financial expertise. You need a really small team to come in and do a real quick sweep through the entire company. He's going to make some recommendations.

He's going to look for certain skill sets that the CFO, and then you need to hire a real COO. Bottom line is you don't have a COO. You don't have a CFO.

The COO would have… Forget about who has the label of COO or CFO. I know nobody has CFO or who has the label of COO.

The bottom line is you've never had one. Nobody there has the skill set to do either one of those. If I was building a company, there's nobody there that I would hire to do either one of those jobs.

Those are actually more important for you right now than the CEO. Because it's really operations right now. The CEO is very much about evangelizing externally and going around the world, and doing partnerships, and working with a biz dev person, and doing a lot of other things, and looking at strategic vision, and those kinds of stuff.

While the CFO and the COO are really the guys… I can tell you at Cloud Park, the CFO and the COO, they're more or less one person, and then my CTO are more or less doing the guts of the organization. Right now, just for what it's worth, I can just tell you that we're negotiating another round.

We haven't even done our beta. We're negotiating somewhere in the $300 million to $500 million range. I can't take any of the credit for that.

I'm telling you, it's because of those people running those roles that have built the entity. The folks that we're talking to are really blown away by it. We're pound for pound.

We match up against anybody, but we're not a large organization. We're like 20 some odd people. I don't think you can do anything until…

I think you do all of this stuff now, but I don't think you do in terms of doing the evaluation. I don't think you actually cut people until… You want to get 1.0 out the door. That's vital. Once 1.0 is out the door, and when I say once, I mean the day after, I would do the following. I would do a full independent audit of every account.

You bring in a firm that has credibility. This is for several reasons. It's one because you want to figure out really what's happened with the money.

Number two, you want to figure out… There's a protection clause. There's a protection ability here.

I'm giving you… One of the things I'm trying to do in giving you this advice is save Ethereum. I look at it as saving it.

Two, is keep you, literally you, out of prison. Personally, at this point, I don't really give a damn about anybody else. There's a couple of guys because I just think that they acted…

It feels to me like they've acted… I can't say it about everybody. I really don't know.

I've spoken to Mihai twice. He seems like a great guy. He seems like a really fun guy you'd want to have drinks with.

I don't really know him beyond that. You know him much better than I do. I have nothing good or bad to say.

He seems very pleasant. Nothing bad to say about him. Jeff and Gavin, let's put into a separate pot for a second.

Taylor, I really don't know what he's doing or not doing. Stefan, to me, seems like an interesting character. I've never had any personal issues with him.

He's always worked really well with me. When we were talking about what needed from a legal standpoint to be said, he did come to me and he really took the advice. The problem I have with it is that I see that this community is not galvanized and that kind of falls on his shoulders.

At this point, it's not about who you like or who you don't like. It's like, this was your job. It wasn't done and that's it.

We've got to find somebody that can do it. I'm just looking at it from an outside. None of this is personal to anybody.

Including Joe. It's just whatever. It was what it was.

Personally, this is off the records between me and you. The reason I was hesitant to get into business with Joe, and you know he was in my office, I didn't kick him out. I paid for his rent all those months.

It was more his issue with Jonathan. It was really just horribly done by him. We talked about it.

I said, look, I have no problem if you stay. It's just there's this issue with Jonathan. Jonathan's been with me for two years and I'm very loyal to him.

Personally, this is the off the record thing between me and you. When I looked at him, I said, this guy, he's never run a business and he doesn't have business skills. And he's very much feeding off the Ethereum name.

That doesn't mean he can't turn a business into success. I'd be surprised if in three years he's still in this space. That's my personal opinion on it.

I saw everybody at the beginning of the internet and I just see a lot of the same character. People that flocked, opportunists, smart or not on an IQ standpoint is irrelevant. Do you have the skill sets?

Do you have the lasting power? I see you. If you can keep your nose clean, you should be one of the luminaries of this industry in 10 years.

You should leave a legacy of infamy. You have that ability. Very few people have that.

I think it would be a horrible thing if your mind is not in this industry. I think you'd add a lot to it. These other players, it's a different story.

We'll get to Gavin and Jeff after. So you need a full independent audit. I think you need to ask every employee.

By the way, when I say you're going to cut all these people, you're going to do it in a pleasant way. Almost virtually everybody needs to go. They just do.

[48:15] Vitalik: So when you say virtually everyone, and then you said Gavin, Jeff are in a separate bucket. I don't have that strong an opinion on Misha.

[48:27] Steven: I'm not going to say Misha should go, Stefan should go, Taylor should go. I think everybody should go. I think you need a whole new group of people.

The reason I'm not putting Gavin and Jeff into a separate bucket is because I need to ask you some questions about them. I'm kind of hearing you as well now. Oh, the reason I'm putting Gavin and Jeff, I'm talking about everybody.

I'm not talking about Anthony, because I think Anthony should just bump up to the board level or something. Your relationship with Anthony I think is important.

[49:38] Vitalik: Hey Steve. Hey. Yeah, you were adding Gavin and Jeff into a separate bucket.

[49:44] Steven: Right, just because I have questions about them to ask you. So that's why I wanted to leave them for the end. Sure.

So I'm not, again none of this is personal. So that's why it's really, but it's going to be tough, because I know you work side by side with a lot of these people. But frankly you're going to be saving them, because you're going to be saving a lot of people from potential massive legal problems.

So when you look at that, can you just give me one second? I just wanted to do one thing. Sorry.

I'm going to get Charlotte. I'm going to go get Charlotte. Do you have the Audi key?

Okay.

[50:38] Vitalik: Do you have the Audi key?

[50:42] Steven: Okay, sorry. Okay, so then I would have every employee write down what their job description is and a detailed history of all the work that they've done. You're going to want that.

Right. So right now you're really in cover your ass mode. I would draft a month to month history of the venture from December of when it started, go back to Miami, and do a very detailed analysis of the entire venture.

Can those people? Can you ask them to? Thank you.

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you.

[51:32] Vitalik: You're in my headphones, so don't worry.

[51:36] Steven: Okay. The point of this is you really want to know what everybody was doing, and you want to know what the venture was doing throughout this whole time frame. So you have this.

My opinion is at some point authorities are going to call. The question is, remember I said to you, you've got a shield. Somebody said to me, does that mean we can't get hurt?

I said no. In Roman times people died when they had a shield. I said, but it's highly unlikely if you use a shield properly.

Now the problem is the shield was not utilized properly. You did not follow, when I say you, the organization did not follow. The opinion letter is only as good.

I was very clear with everybody on this. The opinion letter is only as good as far as the organization follows it. If you realize it's basically a series of if-then questions, statements rather.

Essentially that's what they are. They're giving you this. Where did I lose you?

The Swiss entity is what I was talking about. Yeah. The issue there is that you, I talked to you about the opinion and the shield, right?

You heard that? Right. So then the Swiss issue is the same thing.

You had a shield against tax liability.

[53:09] Vitalik: Yes. We have to follow the business plan and eventually hire 11 people there.

[53:16] Steven: I don't know what eventually means. I'm not sure that those are the only two requirements. I think there are more than that.

But again, I don't have all these documents. Once I look at them, I can say okay, here are the things that you need to do. Then I can ask you and we can compare notes and be like what was done, what wasn't done.

The point is that you clearly have violated the agreement so far. Does that mean you can't fix it? No, it doesn't mean you can't fix it because the Swiss, fortunately, will be willing to play ball.

You just need somebody that knows, has that relationship. That's what I was saying. Unfortunately, Charles is the one who had the relationship, but I had some really good talks with those guys over there.

I think it could probably be rekindled. By the way, Charles put into a separate bucket too and I'll explain what I mean. The reason I'm putting these two buckets of Gavin and Jeff in one bucket and Charles in another bucket is because all the stuff that I'm talking about has to be done regardless of those two buckets.

Those are the only exceptions, potentially. The history of the venture from the beginning until now will also give you a timeline and will give you something to back you up when the authorities … Basically, right now, this is all cover your ass stuff.

When they come and they want to know exactly everything that happened, you have all of this entire timeline down. People's memories get faded and trust me, I told you … I said to Charles and Joe when they were leaving to go to Switzerland, I said, guys, I'm feeling Lord of the Flies coming on.

Charles looked at me and he's like, yeah, really? Joe said, come on Steve, you're just trying to scare everybody. I said, no, this doesn't sound good.

You can ask them. You're still in the middle of the book. At the end of the book, Piggy got killed and he's going to be pointing fingers at everybody else and mostly they're going to be pointing fingers at you.

You want to be able to cover your ass. Having this will be really important. You need to get a tax expert in there, an international tax expert to review the history that the consultant does or if he hires a CFO quickly enough he does or that he has an accountant that does it, you need a tax expert to go over that again and review the audited books for all of your compliance issues.

Transfer pricing, the Swiss ruling pricing, whether or not, I heard through the grapevine that people getting paid, the BTC was getting converted into literal fiat, like physical fiat and that people were getting paid in paper bags. I don't think there's any instance of that happening.

[56:44] Vitalik: I haven't heard of it.

[56:46] Steven: Okay. The point is this, I don't know whether or not employment taxes were paid to everybody that needed to get paid.

[56:54] Vitalik: On the foundation side, I am aware that we are taking off withholding taxes for every single employee. I know that because I'm the one handling the payroll.

[57:03] Steven: Okay. The other issue is, as I see it, is transfer pricing. Money transferring from a not-for-profit, you've got money going to a for-profit?

[57:19] Vitalik: Actually, ETH DEFCIC is a not-for-profit.

[57:22] Steven: So is that the one that you and Jeff and Gavin are in? Yes. Okay, so that's a not-for-profit.

So Gavin doesn't have any for-profit entity?

[57:38] Vitalik: No, not for-profit, but if there is, it's a legal construction that's owned fully by ETH DEFCIC.

[57:44] Steven: Okay, you have to be careful because I'm not sure that under your terms and conditions, I'm throwing out, by the way, since I don't have all the facts, I'm throwing out things that are kind of on the surface. These are just surface stuff. I mean, there's probably a lot more, but I don't really know.

So these are possible issues, but Joe threw this out. I kind of got furious, and I said, Joe, what are you doing? Why don't you have Pryor do this?

Now I understand why it was done the way it was done because there were certain things that were taken out of that, like the vesting agreement and what have you.

[58:29] Vitalik: Wasn't there a legal argument against having vesting? The legal argument basically being that unless, if you actually have that vesting, you can make a strong case that it's basically just equivalent to giving people money and letting them buy ether?

[58:45] Steven: Well, yes, there is an argument for that, but I mean, there's nothing, if you're handing somebody a product, there's nothing wrong, and the product is in increments, and you give them the increments over time, there's nothing wrong with doing that because if this is a fuel, as we're talking about it, I don't think it's, yes, is that an argument that somebody would make in a prosecution? Yes. Do I think it's a really strong argument?

No, not if all the other aspects are being handled because you're just saying, look, we're giving them this fuel except we're giving it to them over a period of time. Right. I don't see the timing issue so long as everything else is being handled.

The issue is that I think all the hard work we did in classifying it as a fuel has gotten pierced. You know, I told and I'm not so sure it's the right thing or the wrong thing to do, it's tough to say, but I saw his YouTube video and I said, look, I know you were trying to do the right thing, and I think he was because he called me for two hours and we talked about it, so I knew he really was confused with what he said. The problem was you needed one person.

So I was at a conference where Chris Larson was there, okay, and somebody else from Ripple was there too. I can't remember now, it's fuzzy in my head. They asked one of them about XRP and the other one punted to the other one and he said, well, listen, all questions about XRP, please ask, I don't remember if it was Chris punting it to him or the other one punting it to him.

The point was that they have one person in the organization, he's the only person in that organization that's allowed to discuss it. And that was supposed to be the situation here. Nobody else was supposed to mention it and I don't think that was done.

And so that, and when you have people there are no co-founders here, okay, you founded the company and you decided to give equity to a bunch of employees. Okay, and that's really what ended it. That's really the reality and everybody wanted this title co-founder.

It's a bunch of garbage. I mean, it's not true. And it's going to come back and haunt them because co-founder sounds like you've got authority.

That's why I had Richard back then, I ripped up all of his job descriptions because he had authority in almost all of them. So they could be like the Nazi soldiers and say, look, I was just following orders. I said, other than the two or three people, there's no way to get around it for you.

There was no way to get around it for Charles. There was no way to get around it for Joe. I said, other than these three, why does anybody else need to have authority in their job description, per se?

I said, because we're dealing with a very sensitive area here and we came up with a very custom, you have to remember, the job description was very custom-made. So it wasn't a cookie cutter. So you had to be really, really careful about how you handled it.

It was custom-wrapped. First, Charles on the Swiss side and then me on this side. These were never done before.

Now everybody is getting sent to prior cashmen and prior cashmen are churning out these opinions like Tamar. One of the things we talked about, some of this stuff does infuriate me. We were really clear to everybody nobody talk about which law firm did this.

This is our trade secret. Nobody mention it.

[1:02:40] Vitalik: Not mention it. That was actually something I didn't hear.

[1:02:44] Steven: Okay, I was very clear. I don't know if you heard it or didn't. That's possible that you didn't hear it.

But again, those days, and I told you, I do regret not having spoken to you more often at the time. I know, but I was very clear with Joe. I was very clear with Charles.

And I do remember discussing it on one of the calls. I think Mihai and all you guys were on. I remember talking about it and saying, look this is a trade secret.

But there was a secondary reason for this. This was a very custom-wrapped product, so to speak. The whole thing.

It was a house of cards that was very delicate. You can collapse it very easily. And also if too many other people start using it, then the authorities start looking at it.

[1:03:33] Vitalik: And if one of them ends up collapsing.

[1:03:36] Steven: Exactly. Thank you. Exactly, you got it.

And frankly, I talked to somebody. I found out about this by accident. I was talking to somebody in the space.

And he said, oh, we're doing crowdfunding. And I said, well, you guys need to be really careful. He seemed like a real good guy.

I said, you need to be careful. There's a lot of pitfalls in that area. And he asked me what they were.

And I discussed them. I did not go into what law firm to go to and all of that. And he said, yeah, no, no, no, we're good.

We've got a law firm handling this. I said, well, be careful. Most of the law firms out there will promise you.

He goes, no, no, no, these guys have done it. He goes, these guys did Ethereum. And I was like, oh, shit.

I was like, and who told you about this? Okay, you can guess who told him about it. You know, the New York-based guy on your team, so to speak.

[1:04:36] Vitalik: Which project was this? Was this Permacredits?

[1:04:40] Steven: No, this was… Right. He knew you.

So don't say anything to him. He was telling me off the record. So I don't want him…

[1:04:49] Vitalik: Yeah, I know what I'm going to do.

[1:04:52] Steven: Yeah, they really, really, really liked you. They had a lot of really nice things to say. And they're good people.

So it's not like I don't want to not help them. The problem is that you're not really helping them. You're just hurting yourself.

And so from my understanding, there's been somewhere at least four or five different companies I know have gone to prior where they've cookie-cuttered this thing. That's the last thing you want, really. And so, next thing.

I think you need to get an operations consultant in there. An HR consultant to aid in restructuring the job roles and the duties. So this part falls underneath the consultant.

So the consultant will probably need some sub-consultants, depending on how broad his skill sets are. And really figure out what roles and what are the duties for those roles. And you're really trying to get down to a very skinny organization.

Because right now, cash is king. BTC, cash, whatever. But you need to preserve it as much as possible.

So you really need to be very efficient with the roles and responsibilities. And that also plays into what's your strategy moving forward. And that'll get to the technical discussion.

I would… I don't personally understand what the point of ETH dev is.

[1:06:24] Vitalik: The point, so ETH dev was basically something that Gav started pushing for around July or so. The purpose of it is basically to create a buffer between Ethereum leadership and between Ethereum development. And basically allow Ethereum development to keep on going without the politics.

[1:06:46] Steven: And… Yeah, that's a problem. It's a problem, because first of all, I don't know that the terms of sale, I don't know whether or not that's in line with the terms of sale.

[1:06:55] Vitalik: I believe we did actually mention ETH dev somewhere in the organizational structure chart in one of the sale docs. Okay.

[1:07:05] Steven: The secondary point is that from another perspective, I… You see, the problem… You see, here's your situation.

You have a corroded structure. Okay. So I'm going to assume that Gavin was acting in the company's best interest for a moment.

Okay. I'm not going to assume anything nefarious on his behalf. I'm going to assume that he was like, alright, this is fucked up.

I want to make sure that we are able to deliver, and I don't want that to infringe upon us. Okay. So I hear that.

Okay. So then the way you do that is not by putting a buffer between it. Okay.

That you get, you know, you radiate the cancer. You know, you don't… So…

So you've got to fix the structure.

[1:07:54] Vitalik: Right. So I think, yeah, because he clearly did not have the power to fix the structure. And…

I mean, theoretically, I guess I did, but practically I had no idea what could have been done. And even still, you know, with all these restructurings, if we remove a bunch of people, there's still new people that we'd have to find and new people that we can trust and so forth.

[1:08:19] Steven: That's fine. They're out there. I…

Look, I've gone through this process before. It's painful, but everybody is being helped because, you know, it's… Again, what's the alternative?

You're looking at not surviving and you're looking at potential massive legal liabilities that are not just civil but potentially criminal. And so you've got to take this really seriously. I'm not trying, again, I am trying to, you know, get you on high alert because I think you need to be on high alert.

And… Archive all communications since December 2013 till now. I know, I think, Jonathan went and got everything off of Slack.

I think Joe asked him to do that. I remember I was in the room at the time and I think he did that. So he probably has all the old Slack stuff because I know a lot of that stuff was archived or maybe even deleted.

But you need to get that. You need to get any emails, communications, if you have an email server that hopefully doesn't dump every 90 days because I know that's typically what they do.

[1:09:37] Vitalik: Where are you using email?

[1:09:40] Steven: All right, well, I don't know how you do this but somebody can figure this out. Get all the communications that you can get including all board meetings, all everything, you've got to get it all into one location and in one place. And then kind of just, you've got to annotate them like what really happened and go through them and figure out where are their smoking guns?

Right. Where did people fuck up? So you're kind of prepared and so you can also maybe do some damage control.

And so I don't know what was said but I just can't imagine that things weren't said. As a side note, by the way, the way people have acted in one of my companies, I had people acting very irrationally and almost in a paranoid fashion that was just, I didn't quite understand. And it was very humbling for me because I brought in a consultant, by the way, and by the way, my company was growing and we had plenty of cash and everything and I owned 100% of the company so it wasn't like I was doing this and I brought in this consultant and he came to me and it was very sobering.

He said to me, he said, you've got a drug issue here. And I said, what? And he said, what are you talking about?

I was shocked. This is my healthcare company, by the way, so this is serious. You have a drug issue and we're in charge of people's lives, literally.

And he said, he just smelled it. He said, I can tell you that there's a drug issue and he even pinpointed, he said, I think it's coke. And it was the way some of the people were talking to him and now in hindsight, we found out, we set up a sting, by the way, a sting operation and we had cameras all over the place which everybody actually knew we had the cameras but they just didn't realize we were paying attention and it's, I'm just telling you, this is just a gut hunch of mine that this is not normal behavior and it feels like the same kind of thing and so, it's a hard charge to levy. I understand that but it's not normal with some of the stuff that's going on and you can't just say it's because somebody's a socialist or an anarchist or whatever. It goes beyond that.

There's something, they're either pathological, they're on drugs, there's something else going on. It doesn't make sense to me. You can't, dismiss it because of ideology.

Even what happened with Charles, with that whole, and it wasn't just Charles, by the way. Charles and Amir were the ones that were sacrificed, so to speak but from my understanding, Joe was going, they went after Joe too and I think one other person, I forgot who it was, and Joe did his thing to survive and whoever else it was did their thing to survive and obviously Amir and Charles didn't or couldn't but that whole thing was very, the way it was handled, whether or not it was necessary is not even the point. The way it was handled is really, indicates something else, something deeper, a problem.

So I would look at that. And I have heard little things about people going in the Netherlands. I've heard of little things about people in the Netherlands and what have you.

So I kind of dismissed it earlier on because look, I've been to the Netherlands and I saw what goes on over there. It personally wasn't my thing but I don't morally have, I actually don't have any moral issues with any of it. I just don't want them in my company.

So I didn't really take much of it but I have this sense, this is one of those just, I mean, when you've built enough companies to some things you just have a sixth sense for it. Seven out of ten times you're right and three times out of ten you're wrong and so this is one of those so I'm just throwing it out there. So again, I would get rid of everybody as co-founder.

Actually, nobody's name is co-founder anymore. And you know, you're a founder and I would, and Anthony I would probably keep as some kind of board member slash advisor because I think I can work with Anthony and he's the only one that's willing to be first in ass and he's the only one that has frankly he's the only one in the space that's actually, remember the question I asked, I said has anybody built, ran and sold a company through the whole process and I said unless you've done that you can't be in charge of running a company of this type of magnitude because what you're trying to accomplish is just, you know, is huge and you know, now I know it was a really small one but at least he's the only one in the space that's actually built and sold a company and I mean, you know, however small the transaction was, he did it and when I talked to him, I'm like the guy has some business understanding. He's the only one I've talked to that has some business understanding. You know, Charles does, Charles did and I really didn't talk to anybody else who did.

Now I didn't have in-depth discussions with everybody so I can't and I don't want to label everybody but I did have some in-depth discussions with some people and Anthony, Anthony I think should probably be retained but I think you should get him also out of the co-founder role, probably go to a board member slash advisor role and you know, I could work with him. I think you need to get DNO insurance policy and one of the things What is a DNO insurance policy? Director and Officer insurance policy so this is another thing that is just absolutely unforgivable that this normally would be a COO or a CFO role and since that person basically sounds like that's in one person is essentially acting in those two capacities in a lot of respects.

It's unforgivable that you don't have DNO insurance. Any company you know, I just had a the guy I told you about I think I mentioned to you the former CEO Pitney Bowes who joined my board recently one of the first questions I've known this guy for years he's a personal friend of mine he's much older he's approaching 70 but he said to me so what's your DNO policy? It's a standard question I always get and I know that a DNO I know a DNO policy was never obtained I know it because I told Charles and Joe you guys need to get a DNO policy and we should as soon as the sale is complete we're going to go do that and I said Joe didn't seem to be interested in it I don't know why because I was protecting him basically it says it protects the officers and the directors from personal liability within certain parameters if it's fraud you're outside the parameters now the reason I'm doing this is because you've got to figure out what the statute of limitations is on some of these civil issues and so let's say it's 48 months or whatever it is you get let's say $10 million and you cover all the founders because you're going to be getting rid of people so you're going to have to give them something to walk away and get rid of them in a nice way and you can say look you're going to get their Ether back you're going to the NDA will be more or less a gag order that unless it's authorities they're not to speak about what happens because what you don't want is as soon as they leave you guys in a way were lucky with Charles and Amir I think Amir is interested in his Ether going up and I don't know that it's in his personality to bad mouth and Charles obviously it's not in his personality because he has nothing to lose by bad mouthing at this point it actually says a lot about his character because he gave all of his Ether to Jeremy and he hasn't said anything negative about the company and from my understanding there was no NDAs and I don't agree with that I think it's vital because what's going to happen you can't count on everybody being a Joe or Amir because what will happen is these people will start talking and they'll be like these guys, these motherfuckers they screwed me over not even realizing that they're probably putting themselves in liability I don't think the overall team is bright enough to be the criminal that brags about the heist that they did from bravado or whatever and these guys maybe it could be as innocent as that it could be as innocent of them saying hey you got to see the things that we did and by the way they weren't even paying any attention and I was in wherever and I got hookers you know they may be drunk or whatever you don't know what it is as long as you have an NDA at least you can point the finger back to them and so that's really important so there's some gives and takes now Gavin and Jeff I don't know Gavin and Jeff that well they're the only two members of the team I haven't spoken to I don't have anything I don't I think from what I'm hearing through the grapevine a lot of the stuff that was brought up was brought up by them in terms of the organizational restructure I'm not saying whether or not you did tell me something that was very disturbing to me that you were given an ultimatum to me I would have you know listen my first company I don't know that I would have today I've had employees give me ultimatums they don't anymore because I make it really clear an ultimatum is basically don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out I make sure they don't have anything on me and then nobody had anything on you but I understand that they put you in a position and you thought they were vital but nobody here is expendable and you have to look at it that way so you have to really you have to really look and say how vital are they are they going to be on board with the total restructuring are they going to be on board with maybe ETH dev not existing as a London entity and everybody being in Switzerland because I think you need I think that's just kind of key you have to do that for profit so you have interests aligned I also think you probably and so there's question marks there and I think we have to have a separate discussion on that one on the two of them and on the ETH dev issue so we'll talk about that

[1:22:31] Vitalik: do you want to maybe have a chance to talk to Gav separately just to hear his side of the whole story

[1:22:36] Steven: yeah no I'm happy to again I'm trying my goal is to keep me out of prison like I said it's to keep you out of prison but by doing that it'll be keeping everybody out of prison because if you're not going to prison nobody's going to prison you're front line and so if we can protect you everybody else is getting protected also unless they did something just totally that you're not aware of that was just crazy and I don't put it past anybody and so that I think is really important but I do think that you know it's also I mean from a marketing perspective I saw the picture of ETH dev and I was kind of like huh that's interesting these guys have about the best well known name as well known as anybody in this space and they eliminate the name for the development team I'm like everything is Ethereum you know what I'm saying you eliminate the name that you galvanize the whole community around Charles galvanized the whole community around you know Joe probably did some of that too Gavin certainly did some of that even Stefan I mean everybody did that to create that hype that brought in 30,000 Bitcoin and then you go ahead and eliminate the name for the development team you know and this is so far much part of your community outreach to people like what's ETH dev and what's Ethereum people don't really understand it you need to be very transparency in putting things out on the blockchain and putting our expense statement and all of that that's all great and good but there's also transparency in terms of how the organization is operating and a lot of that is that it looks confusing you know okay so that's that that would go with the rebranding of Ethereum the brand at this point is damaged I don't think it's dead that's the good news the bad news is damaged the good news it's not dead the good news is I think your brand is still fairly healthy so that's an important thing you can't let your brand get hurt, your personal brand you can't let that get hurt because that's so integrally tied to the Ethereum brand and so you want to be able to rebrand it and to revive it your brand will help that and I think that would take a really a worldwide trip and probably centered around the launch of 1.0 where you go around you re-explain Ethereum you sell people your new vaporware but that's going to be developed for real a very clean cut story you know to the point get people excited the way you did with your white paper you know and maybe you write another white paper I don't know so you also get the academic community excited again too because at this point you know talking about things like smart contracts to the average guy and then getting more technical with the academic guy what you had a year and a half ago you know how fast the industry is moving you're not the new flavor of the month anymore you've got to become the new flavor of the month again so if you remember Steve Jobs is a great example he came out with the iPod and the iPhone this industry is moving too fast for you to have that a one year gap is probably four or five years in what that industry was and so you need to come up with what's the next thing that's going to galvanize people and another very important component of that is keeping Ether up again if you keep Ether up your chances of people coming after you get lowered I mean you have less pissed off people sure so let's just see if I have anything else you really need to look also at the conduct of the founders you really need to you need to personally get a notebook out and after you've gone through all of the communications and all the different things that you've archived and the slack and whatever other communications that you've had and all the other forums that you have both public and not I think you need to really look and see what are the things that the other founders the quote unquote co-founders have done and I think you personally need to keep a notebook of that and have that and then we can talk about what damage have those things done so YouTube interview the interview that went up on YouTube I should say and you know again I don't I spoke to him about it and I told him I said listen I was telling him really because I said look this is a concern I have for you and for the organization because of what was said and I know you didn't mean to say it because you called me and asked me for two hours what to say and so it just comes out the wrong way and that's why it's a very tricky thing and that's why you should only have one person answering it who really understands it but that's an innocent one I was innocent I didn't mean to do it there are other innocent ones that I'm sure are out there you still need to know about them and see what you can do in terms of damage control and on that one it's probably better you know like you would look at that one and you would say okay you've got a couple options you've got a few options one is you could take see if you could take down the video maybe that's not such a good option because you know maybe that would alert people to something being up and maybe people have already archived it themselves you could do some kind of retraction probably not such a good idea also because that probably just brings more attention to it you could probably just leave that alone and cross your fingers and hope for the best that's probably the best response in that particular situation there are other situations where maybe there's something out there that you know you really do want to take down it's just too damaging you know it just says you know ha ha ha we tricked everybody isn't that great you know maybe one guy said it to another guy in some public forum you know that you you know some I don't know you distance yourself from that person so that's the kind of thing I'm talking about you have to really look at the relationship you know from the venture to the employees to the advisors to the partners and all of these different relationships and see was there anything else that was funky that went on there then I would also start looking personally you're going to need to bring in a CEO and you know the person probably is Swiss based also but it's probably somebody that's going to be traveling the world and you're bringing in a strong you know bringing in a strong CEO I would also now you know I everybody thought I I think a lot of people were suspicious when I brought up you know Greylock and you know I know there was you guys had you know strong discussions with Google Ventures and what have you I brought it up for a reason though and you know the rationale was especially when I saw everybody I was like look there is not there's no adult supervision so to speak here this stuff would not be happening you wouldn't be in this situation had you had had let's say an intrusive horror which led around for 20 million dollars as opposed to doing it this way you know and it would have been better for everybody because you would have been a for profit yeah you would have given everybody's like well we don't have to give up equity but then it ended up becoming a not for profit anyway so who really cares so now everybody had to start these side businesses to make money because everybody was in this to make money you know I think you were the only one that was money was like not your primary focus to me it seems like everybody else was along for the ride and your and I look at people's actions I don't look at what they say you know your actions were clearly not about greed and everybody else's actions clearly were about greed or indifference which is maybe even worse sometimes so I would look at possibly you're going to need to recapitalize the company

[1:32:00] Vitalik: yeah

[1:32:01] Steven: and so first of all I'd get you know handle get the bitcoin relationship and have somebody else handle it moving forward and you know I'm happy to help if you want in that area or I can get you somebody that can help and but I think you need to be looking at once you get your burn rate I think you got to get it to under a hundred thousand a month and you have to you also have to slash salaries that's the other thing what I saw and I told you I got nauseous when I was listening to the salary discussion and one of the reasons I got nauseous this was amongst a whole bunch of reasons because it was just not the way salary discussions are handled professionally at real companies but one of them was the fact that I was listening to the actual numbers I happened to be aware of what salaries are in the greater tech space okay and people were basically getting aside from the fact that they were getting money for not doing anything just because they were a founder so that was one issue and I know Anthony said that some of that has been remedies to some extent there was a secondary issue they were getting big company salaries at the time remember this was a for profit at the time they were getting big company salaries with upside of becoming a gazillionaire no that's not the way it works it's not the way it works at my company I mean my guys kill themselves and they're getting a third of what's on the market but they have equity and their equity has already made them multi-millionaires on paper and so they're really happy with that trade off and if they really believe in it they're in it and so turning it back into a for profit will allow you to help keep the burn rate lower because you can say to people look you're not going to make 170,000 and listen the bottom line is this they don't like it sorry go you're not going to make 150,000 130,000 you're going to be making 80,000 and we need to do that in order to save the company and in exchange for that you're going to get .75% you're going to get 1.99 and I'm pretty I'm pretty confident I recently just had to reevaluate the whole market because I was doing a new round of stock options and so I have a pretty good handle in terms of what people's values are out there and you you know then you get people based on the market and so it's a it's a win-win for everybody right the thing works they're all going to become well off they're going to become you know hopefully rich you know anybody anybody that keep in mind something everybody that told was pissed at Steve Jobs when he did this and left and wasn't willing to play ball in order to save the company because the company is the only thing that matters right now and if everybody I mean obviously personal liability I mean you know that we talked about but that's kind of they're tied together in a lot of ways not every way but in a lot of ways but anybody who's left look at what they ended up missing out on you know I mean you know the bottom line was you know they ended up going to Hewlett-Packard or something and had some boring job where if they stayed at Apple every single anybody who stayed including secretaries are millionaires now you know Tim Cook was one of the guys that came in I think he's probably close to a billion dollars now and so these people have to be aware I'm not you're not Apple but you know that's an example to look at that if you can pull it off now I this is what will happen now you really need to sit back and do some soul searching yourself and say can we pull it off you know from a technical standpoint are you still ahead enough of the curve and can you get if you really slim down I think you really do need to slim down both the objectives on 2.0 and increase by the way I would put more resources into external development so people building dApps on the site and do you have a developers kit do you hello

[1:37:07] Vitalik: hi

[1:37:09] Steven: you there

[1:37:11] Vitalik: yeah you were talking about some kind of developer kit and I was asking you what you would need what kinds of things would you expect in a developer kit

[1:37:18] Steven: well I mean right now I want to build a dApp on Ethereum how do I do it I mean normally

[1:37:27] Vitalik: yeah so we have Stefan's team that's working on Stefan has a guy that's working on tutorials full time and we're developing various kinds of resources for that I guess right now there would just be there might be a couple of wiki articles and forum posts that I could point you to

[1:37:51] Steven: alright so you should have you know I was asking around and people were talking about KPIs and OKRs and different you know those I don't know in terms of also what kind of business development team you have so you need a business here's where I would put resources I'm talking cutting cutting cutting I'm saying here's where you do put resources Steve Jobs did the same thing cut everywhere but then he put resources in certain areas that he said alright this is my future and so one area that I would put that is in a business development team and get a developers kit out there that makes it really simple for people to create apps on the system so right now if I want to develop an Android app or I want to develop an iOS app there's a really simple developers kit for me to do that I don't need to see your code and it's just kind of you've seen them right we're looking at building one cloud park because I told you we're going to have an API where we turned ourselves into a platform company so we're going to have an API in and we're going to build a developers kit so people can build apps on our platform really simple we don't want them to have to worry about the complex language because we're going to be building custom languages for ourselves and we want them to be able to build one and put it out there in a week and it should be really simple for them to do and that's kind of one of your promises that galvanized and got people so excited that it would be so simple to do this stuff on ethereum is it? you really need to do soul searching and ask yourself would you be happy if this is what was given to you and you're an app company that has very little resources none of these guys have a lot of resources and originally the thinking was you guys were going to fund a lot of these little companies

[1:39:59] Vitalik: you know we do have a bursary program and there have been a couple of companies that have already been fit for that

[1:40:08] Steven: okay what i'm saying is that this probably needs to be a well-oiled machine because you're only as strong as your dApps really that's it otherwise it's xbox with two games i get bored after a while if i have to go figure out what language xbox is in i'm just going to screw it i'm going to go and do the ps4 the hell with that it's not worth it you know you have competition now and so you'll also want to have and by the way i know this is all kind of disorganized it's a lot more organized in my head but i'm throwing a lot of things out i think you're going to have to get a proper board for

[1:41:08] Vitalik: switzerland so the question is so we have this problem of having to find people and supposedly these people are out there and i'm going to agree they are but from the point of view of ourselves that's we do actually finding those people basically is a problem actually is a problem because you know we have been seeking hiring people since november but our efforts have basically mostly fallen flat because we've been using the wrong channels so i think that the way to do that is not so much asking us to try harder but actually finding the property through which we can find those kinds of people so well

[1:42:07] Steven: listen okay so let me take you back to 1999 and running a company in silicon valley it was murder getting talent i mean you had people that had just come over from india that five years earlier would have been worth 65,000 that were demanding a quarter of a million dollars and three quarters of a percent you know and this was one of 50 developers you're like what? and you needed them you know and so it was like okay so what i did was initially we had an outside recruiting firm and i was like this is it wasn't just a cost issue although we were paying you know a good third of each salary and we had to give them stock options they were demanding stock options if you can imagine it and finally i said this is stupid we had an HR person internally that was just doing HR i said no you know what?

we went out we found the best damn recruiter i could find i paid him well really well and i gave him incentive in the company and he went out and hired our next 50 people and so it saved us a tremendous amount of money it made us faster leaner and he went out and he actually because he was so motivated to do this because it affected his pocket and we actually structured his incentives both on the stock and on the cash side not only on who he hired how long they stayed on and the success of those people so we built in a whole matrix and so we wanted to make sure if they stayed on for 6 months if they stayed on for less than 6 months he didn't even get any incentive out of it he still got his salary and he had his basic stock option package but he got a little bit extra for each person that stayed up to 6 months got a little bit extra for each person that got a review from their supervisor that exceeded we were on a numerical system a certain numerical standard so they got above let's say it was 140 out of 200 which was a really good score it's not a C it was on a curb so to speak so that was that I think would be one area one way you could go by the way this person had 20 years of recruiting experience in Silicon Valley so I'm sure there is a recruiter in Switzerland there's tech resources in Switzerland they have excellent universities I mean I'm sure there are plenty of Swiss talent out there I know I've met Swiss programmers in the states so if they made their way here certainly they're over there and so it's not you know you shouldn't be able to not find them and you know one of the things that you're building is you're building one of your assets that you're building is a team of competent programmers and that's really an asset to have a bunch of programmers you know with diverse skills but you know both in cryptography and otherwise in this space there aren't a lot of people that have been able to build those teams there's maybe a dozen companies that have so far you know maybe and so that's something you have to focus on because that's one of your assets so I think it can be done why you haven't been able to find them I don't know and there are people that will look at what people see to do what is necessary and so maybe moving over them is one of them hold on one second so I guess I guess I kind of you have to look at it as let me just talk about Charles for a second you know in my opinion Charles had a lot of issues hold on one second I'm sorry I have a call in six minutes and I can be off again in an hour and I can

[1:47:53] Vitalik: continue

[1:47:58] Steven: I don't know who else in this space you have to really look around to see who else is in there you maybe want an interim CEO that can do all of this stuff you know there are people that can do that then you probably need a longer term CEO that's and then the interim CEO doesn't need to be you know I mean this stuff is not complicated for somebody who's been through it I can do this stuff in my sleep it's the longer term stuff gets a little bit more complicated you want somebody that's got certain level of skill sets within the industry and that's got some credibility within the industry although in some respects you offset that because of you personally offset that and having Gavin or somebody like Gavin on board there are others out there and offsets that also so you've you know it's a real shame that you had three or four great minds there that could have done that you know so I mean one thing to be considered is revisit that in your own mind was that the right move regarding Charles right

[1:49:26] Vitalik: if it wasn't is there a possibility of bringing him back or is that just an academic discussion

[1:49:31] Steven: well I think it's both I think you need to really look at it because I think it'll inform you whether or not it's Charles I think it'll inform your decision making because it'll really for the next guy and look at what was Charles' strengths and weaknesses why was it really the right move wasn't it the right move I personally don't think it was the right move I think it was the wrong move

[1:50:00] Vitalik: I'm skeptical as well I basically did it because everyone else was pretty much completely unwilling to work with him at all and it was weird the project wouldn't continue

[1:50:14] Steven: if he stuck around yeah but you see the problem was that wasn't the case you actually you see they they you held you had the full hand okay you had the full house rather you had the money okay you owned the brand you were the brand the sale you were having 20 million dollars coming your way nothing was going to stop if every single god damn person left but you and Charles okay it actually would have been a better thing in my opinion you would have been able to build this thing right back up because you had all the cards so what were those people bringing to you nothing I mean I'm not saying nothing in terms of like I'm not gonna knock some of the technical people but they're all everybody is replaceable you know you're hard to replace first of all because of your mind because you're the founder because you're the face of the company it was your idea you have the deepest understanding of it but all that being said look I mean let me tell you about myself for a second you know I like to fancy myself as knowing a thing or two in business by the way the more I know the more I know I don't know you know it's like with every field when you get deep into that field you become more humble because you realize how much there really is to know so anybody who's like I know everything in the field you know that he knows shit you know he's a novice I would assume with like cryptography and some of the computer sciences and things with you you realize how deep the field really is you know and even with your mind that you have right now I can imagine you would probably be thinking in your head you could go another 10 years and you still wouldn't know everything in the field you know it's just I know I mean I know those sciences I don't know the sciences but I know I've talked to enough people to know how deep those particular areas are that nobody really masters them after even 30 40 years you know mathematics you can win the field medal but there's so many freaking areas of mathematics and there's so many other disciplines that you need to know to really be able to understand mathematics and there was an interesting article on Steve Jobs recently who basically said the reason he was successful was because he had diverse experience in all these other areas and that's what led to all these different products so my thing on Charles is you need a Charles eventually you need an interim guy could you bring back Charles I think you could that's my gut telling you I think he would be able to he would need to be able to and I will tell you this by the way he probably hasn't told you but kind of between me and you he came to me for everybody who thinks that Charles is just completely arrogant and completely self-absorbed and there is aspects of that to him I'm not denying that and I also consider him a friend too but I've said this to his face just is that he came to me and said listen Steve I recognize I have deficits as being a CEO and he said can you help groom me and I said yeah sure it would be my pleasure it would be my honor to do that and I spoke to him and I spoke to everybody in my company they believe every single one of them believes they're building their company nobody thinks they're building Steve's company or a company for Steve you know they believe they're building and I said and that took a lot of work on my behalf and my job is to serve my team and I was saying simple things like he would say he's my CTO he's my secretary I said first of all Charles nobody since the 1960s uses the word secretary anymore and executive assistant maybe it sounds really that's the kind of person that gets you coffee and I said Jeremy's not and he respected Jeremy obviously I said secondly nobody's your anything nobody works for you your colleagues you work together I don't give a shit if he's the janitor you're the CEO you'll never catch me saying he works for me I don't even say that about Jonathan you know I said Jonathan and I are colleagues we work together nobody would know who's at what level the hierarchy and yeah we have an organization chart and I showed Charles my organization chart and I was at the top and he goes look you're at the top and I said now turn it around I turned it upside down I said that's the way it actually functions in reality and he got it you know and you know but I think he still needs some work and I think he recognizes that but I do think there's a chance to bring him back I can tell you he's still his reputation has gotten amazingly enough I don't know anybody more connected in this space I don't know anybody who's got a better strategic vision in this space I'm a big fan of his and that is with his deficits me me with him together I could round him out I could work with him to round him out but it would take some really tough decision making on your behalf and faith on your behalf to do that outside of him you know and he would need to be able to feel comfortable that he's not going to get that he's got autonomy to do what he needs to do that he's got a board that he has to respond to but that he doesn't have 10 people looking over his shoulders over minor decisions and I think and that you know that the people report they do report to him you know and so that you know he needs to be able to have input into that and you have to not worry about the CEO is more important because he's going to bring you those other people you know you wouldn't have had any problem getting your entire development team and everything if Charles had stayed he knows everybody in the space and he's still somehow now there are people that don't like him I've talked to people that don't like him but most people kind of do like him they respect him they respect his intellect and his capabilities even the ones that don't like him respect him you know his capabilities anyway and so that says something you know this is you know and this is a very immature field so there aren't a lot of people out there that you know Charles you know has a has a certain you know bird's eye view of things that I haven't really seen out there and I've talked to a lot of people out there and none of them have his view of things and strategy he's just he's something that's kind of he's worked really hard at learning how to do it and it's innate to him so that's something I think you should really be thinking about right but it would it would take some hard decision making and if it was me I would do it I would make every effort to do it if it was me I'd call him up and I'd say Charles I'm sorry for what happened I feel bad about it here's why it happened you know I'd apologize to him because you and you're saying you feel bad about it you know not groveling in that sense but just you know clearing it up and you know he's very he's being you know I talked to him he's had a a very interesting he's been very candid and honest about his strengths and weaknesses and so that's a little bit different than the Charles I knew before you know he was he was candid about it but he was still you know I think getting knocked that way twice in a row um uh I think you know that also does something and I think that could that could go to your benefit so I think you have a short window possibility of doing something with him you know um it sounds like he needs to get something going um but that's a possibility and I could if I would say sleep on it

[1:58:25] Vitalik: right

[1:58:26] Steven: and think about it um again I would I would go that route if it was me I would say okay look I a Steve doesn't have to be me um but if you wanted to hey Steve hey how are you

[1:58:44] Vitalik: I'm good how are you good

[1:58:46] Steven: your head spinning

[1:58:48] Vitalik: yeah

[1:58:49] Steven: kind of yeah

[1:58:51] Vitalik: that's a good guy um

[1:58:57] Steven: what did you what did you tell him

[1:58:59] Vitalik: um I I mean we've been talking about a lot of this same stuff internally actually for about the past uh uh for for the past month well for the past couple of weeks now so I've basically I mean at the most I think the two of you really should speak at some point

[1:59:24] Steven: sure okay so But did you did you go over specifics of what we talked about just so I'm prepared Okay I mean, what is his take on?

You know, I mean just tell me where his head's at so I know

[1:59:47] Vitalik: Okay, so he is General stance That first first of all, I mean he's He's actually pretty much in agreement with you that the whole that everyone on the foundation In the foundation leadership needs to be key needs to be removed and replaced in some sense He actually basically criminally personally advocated the same thing to me about a week ago I Mean his view on the whole thing is kind of a bit different because you know, he is basically ever since he's deaf Well, it was originally deaf, but then you know, we've kind of gone back. He kind of rides her but we all kind of realized that this is that the brand split was a bad idea and what sort and we've Turned it at the very least it's a it's definitely probably try to like further immersion back into a theory, but he's turned if deaf into a Basically a reason quite a reasonable software So, you know software development center with a whole bunch of people and internally there are things work quite well Things are working quite well so His chain his general view at this point is just to do what is he's looking to do What has to be done in order to preserve content preserve continued aetherium development and he also had his own plans of?

Basically coming up basically coming up with with a for-profit although mean his view is a bit different for it is kind of a bit different in the sense that he's done he's not really interested in doing doing all this sort of under the Under the same sort of under the same sort of umbrella as the foundation I guess like he'd like to see the foundation itself as a non as a nonprofit thing Basically it ideally spun off into a charity and an entity doing things that are things that similar to what the Bitcoin foundation does right now and put it and put it in the hands of People who are actually who would actually be are interested in are actually competent in managing yet and then basically certainly starting a new entity He's As far as far as Charles, I mean he personally is Sees the weaknesses in Charles that he sees and he sees the strengths and you know, he might be we kind of He might he might be willing to get bring to have Charles back on board inside in some in some fashion not necessarily at the Top of everything but at least as some back and an advisor That's You know, I mean aside from that right now he's Trying to bet trying to balance Dealing with all like he really does he really wants things on the foundation side to just work properly because it's really It's really just Back to all this from actually getting a theorem done

[2:02:49] Steven: Yeah, I think you see here's a fundamental Okay. No, I think where our fundamental differences are, you know, unreasonable people can differ.

I just Is that My take on it is this needs to be run as a company That there's that this whole there's a foundation and then there's a development It's like it's there to two different entities and it's there aren't two different entities. It's what it's a theorem Right, and it's not a project you know, it's a company, you know, and I Don't know of an example Where you know, maybe Wikipedia is the only example I can think of where this Like there's a foundation there are for-profit it And your red hat to do most of the benefit from one extension.

[2:03:47] Vitalik: Yeah Basically, you know the Linux foundation exists and it does some stuff but it's more background

[2:03:54] Steven: okay, I look at it more like all right, so I Had my cousin over here the other day and he works at MongoDB So that's a little bit more, you know They have this open source database and they're making money off the open source database But it's kind of like they really have a lot of control over this open source database I'm not first. I'm not a big huge believer in the open source in general other than for specific Projects, I think you need to have a little more control over it. This is not really an open source project You know and I mean it's in its traditional sense He's got a development team that's building it.

And so it's like I don't know Well It's different if it's for an industry standard You know you're whether or not you become an industry standard, I don't know I mean that's that still remains to be seen But you're building a platform For You are building the platform, right? So Linux, you know It's you what I guess what I'm saying is that if it's open source, it's open source And if it's not it's not, you know, if you're sponsoring an open source project, it's one thing but it's not what this is You're not sponsoring an open source project. This isn't an open source project But it's right.

It's got an open source Structure to it Those are two in conflict with one another You know a Google does sponsor a ton of open source projects and then it puts it out there You know whether or not they try to monetize that in some way later on. It's a different thing That's not what you guys are doing and you're not Google So I guess part of it is that you don't have the resources to be able to have that Luxury of taking the chance of a red hat or what have you And I have some differences in this whole area with a number of folks in the in the industry but not with some other folks in this like I Think you have to have NDA still, you know, I still think you need to there You know, there's this, you know, Joe always like oh, it's a new paradigm.

We don't need NDAs He actually said that to me and I was like, what the fuck does that mean? Like I don't even understand that like what does that mean? You don't use a new paradigm?

You don't need an NDA, but you're worried about legal liability and this jurisdiction just so it's not a new power I mean to the does the SEC think it's a new paradigm, you know, and if it is it's not here yet You know, you may be at the forefront of it, but you're a little too early to be doing that Yes, it's very much in conflict with other aspects of it. So what I'm saying is there's needs to be consistency So if this was an open source project, okay. Well, so let's say open bizarre That's an open source project, you know, if there's some people in the back of their minds I want to make money off of it one day.

That's fine But that's not what that's not what there was the very running that as an open source project Nobody's saying that there we're going to build a company that's going to make money off of it Although I'm sure eventually people will that's a very eventually the goal, but that's not their goal You know, that's not their stated goal per se And to say that it's your stated goal that we're gonna just have we're gonna we're gonna do this and then we're gonna Spin it out into the till, you know open domain and then we're just gonna build a company that you know, it's like It's not really what you're doing What you what you it's not how?

Okay, so you're building a platform so if you look at the other platforms Like let's just look at the app platforms they controlled that, you know, Google controlled Android, you know There was an open source element to it, but they really did control it and then they you know It was out there also, you know but they put the code out there and I know you guys are gonna do that too, but or it's In order to get developers on board Open source makes it more difficult You need to make it really custom and on the early days and very easy for these guys to get on board And the open source community it just takes a really long time and you don't have the time or resources to do it, right?

You know and besides which is like do you want to make money or not? And it sounds like he does but he wants to do it in a funky way Now I if he wants to run his own dev company then fine He run his own dev company, you know, like it's not you know It's it's kind of like there are a couple options there. It's like, okay So you run your own dev company you finish 1.0. The company has some deal with him, you know to maintain 1.0 and He has this great group of engineers now where he could actually go out and do a lot of stuff in the space Not just with aetherium and then aetherium gets a small group of programmers Maybe some from dev and then the rest of it they hire on their own and in Switzerland. That's actually just working on aetherium itself otherwise It just seems to me like you need to kind of just fold it all into one You know, otherwise it's a it's a personal thing versus a company thing. Does that make sense? Kind of I mean in other words, that's his personal Goal, and I'm not saying it's the nefarious about it.

He's being very open about it So that's fine, but it's it doesn't seem like that consistent with what's best for the company To have dev as a separate organization Because dev should be working in conjunction with business development with sales with all these other or you know All these other elements and dev shouldn't be doing anything, but aetherium

[2:09:33] Vitalik: Yeah, so well in practice right now dev is doing nothing but aetherium and to be honest dev is doing a lot of other things at this point Like it is also doing communications Yeah, it is a kind of weird setup in the sense that the foundation is basically they're just Look after the funds and look after legal issues and look after itself

[2:09:57] Steven: Yeah, I really can't they really can't do that, right? I mean, that's what I'm saying. You can't it's a That's why all of this.

There's too many holes In the foundation and you don't have the resources to pull this off Right So, I mean, yeah, I'm sure I sent him the request that you forwarded to me And I'd love to have a talk with him. I just you know, I don't want it's what I have to say I don't know that he's going to like and it's not about him at all It's about you know, what do I think is going to save the company, you know? And he's got you know, I don't know if he quite grasps the legal liability.

He personally has You know, I mean there's there you know, he's this he's the CTO and he's at a for-profit and they're gonna you know Things go bad. He's gonna be right up there He's got him, you know, he's gonna have a mark on it You know ether falls below par all hell's gonna be all hell is going to be raised Right so I Don't know what's more important right now, you know having another structure now Maybe he can have his cake and eat it too Maybe he can you know have dev you pay him a certain amount of money You know Maybe more than what we normally would pay and say run dev and that's fine But then eventually 2.0 is run by a different organization and maybe it's not him You know, I'm in a different, you know part of the theory improper. That's a new end to for-profit or He just folds into that at some point and he runs that and he can keep devil to do other things The Charles thing I don't think Charles I do think he really is an answer It's not the only answer out there But I don't know, you know at this point in time it's like you kind of need somebody that's intimately familiar with what you guys are doing and so it's not like really a lot of time to bring somebody up to speed especially with the You know, it's different if you had 15 or 20 million dollars.

So you don't and you had a real low burn rate But you need you know, you need somebody who's gonna be able to come in and just run right off the bat So, I don't I don't know who else who else could fit that bill, you know at this point Listen I have a lot of respect for his work, but this is this is you know, just between me and you you know Again, like I said, everybody is expendable You know, I'm expendable Charles expendable you're expendable. He's expendable. Everybody's expendable.

You know, what's not expendable is the company And that's that's the issue I don't know. Do you see can you see that working? How do you see that working?

[2:13:00] Vitalik: Right now right now with Eurium isn't really a company It's more of an idea coupled with the nonprofit organization that happens to have some quantity of money attached to it That'll last us another year. So it's If we do start a company that I don't think for example, I don't think it'll be possible for the For the nonprofit to sort of funnel all its money into the for-profit inside in some fashion. So that's I mean just because of stuff like that.

I think the foundation is still going to have to exist but It should be it should have some proper point it should be put in some proper place that's Where it can do the most good that it can I mean, I think so basically it sounds like I mean GAF basically is an agreement that there should be some kind of Unified some kind of company representing it's representing Eurium's development. I guess when I said Referring to it is like not trying to set it up as some kind of like continuation of the foundation or something else Something new that would be started that would be started from an organizational standpoint from scratch or at least from well Not quite from scratch from within what's it from with a lot of people from our core curly and he's deaf So like There is a lot that's plausible to the whole thing from that standpoint I mean, I yeah, I think it would be Yeah, I mean Yeah, to be honest, I think It's it sounds it sounds as though we have it sounds as though we're not too far but we have oh we have We have some different different ideas on what the details might be.

It's just You know, it's a matter of figuring out You know until until there is a plan like I'm not going to be able to say okay everyone in the world We're getting rid of everyone in the foundation until we have until we have an idea of how the foundation could theoretically be run or you know, what could What or what the future of that whole that whole lump of cash could plus an organization could be

[2:15:41] Steven: Well, I mean, okay, I think we could sit down and figure that out Again, like I said Charles is the best, you know, I mean he understands the legal structure I have to sit down and really figure that legal structure out and look because I don't know all the things that were promised So the Swiss and what-have-you, but I can't imagine that we can't Turn this into a dancing the end of the day. This is a for-profit entity Okay, it's a for-profit project before profit company.

It should you know, I don't care what you want to call it I don't care what the structure is currently But the intent is to put this out there and people are gonna make money And what's happening is because of the way it's structured people are finding funky ways to go about making money Rather than everybody just making money off of the etherium becoming very valuable So I'm basically saying you go back to the original thesis Right of you know, you know, you don't have a people, you know you maybe you have three or four people And you know Maybe you give some of the stock in that company to the foundation, you know, maybe that's somehow, you know That's one way to assure the foundation's, you know value You know and you know, this foundation has this, you know amount of equity in the company.

So If it needs to exist but Everything really needs to get centralized And I you need you can't Here's one thing you can't the CEO has to run the company You know The CEO has to run the company forget Charles for a second But the CEO needs to run the company see no needs to be able to make calls And if you have a CEO and this type of company You know, there can be an interim CEO that that we can find that doesn't necessarily need to be deep into the technology But I think your long-term CEO does And you know, I think down the road you could be that and you could do a Larry Sergei kind of thing where they have Eric Schmidt for a while and You know then at some point in time they've been groomed and they've learned, you know What they needed to learn to run, you know a large entity, you know, and then they You know, I think he was more pushed out. But you know, that's what I mean.

Don't get me wrong He's an MIT guy. I mean, he's pretty I think he's got his PhD from MIT, you know If I'm not mistaken, but I mean he's so he's no idiot. I mean, he's a technical guy himself But my point is that you eventually you need somebody that's got the technical expertise that can go head-to-head with the CTO But that also at the end of the day, it's not the CTO's call So I rarely actually overrule my CTO and it's not because I don't have the technical understanding Because I get whatever I don't understand I'll get somebody to explain it to me you know, and I'm dealing with an area that is Even with what we're doing a cloud park Has never been done before and it's got more disciplines than what you're dealing with. I don't know. I'm not saying it's more difficult It's just got more disciplines.

Maybe it is more difficult. Maybe it isn't but I've had very high level people You know a cam CEO CTO rather that's you know over thousands of people doing projects for NASA and for NSA and for all this stuff He looked at us and he said, you know You guys are trying to almost accomplish the impossible Nobody's ever tried this with all these disciplines that you've got and that being said There are times where I won't understand something So I'll have somebody explain it to me that I understand it enough to be able to decide whether or not it's I need to Overrule my CTO my CTO now my CTO happens to be very reasonable person.

He's very confident in his abilities, but he's very reasonable You know, he's like if there's a better way of doing it than his way He'll go with that But he doesn't get he doesn't get caught up So I'm giving you an example of a structure that really works that I've done five times now. He doesn't get involved in the management of the company he gets involved in building the damn product and You know, he's involved in to this to the extent of doing, you know Joint ventures and we're in the middle of doing a beta large-scale beta right now. And so that was biz dev Interfacing with him quite a bit, you know, but that's that's a necessary element But otherwise, he's not you know, there's a ton of issues that we're dealing with that there are corporate issues He doesn't get his he doesn't get busy with that stuff.

It's not you know, it's not his domain and it's not his expertise and I'm not sure, you know, it sounds like gab is doing a really good you if he delivers his product kudos. That's really good You know if he can really put out 1.0 with all of that was promised with it And I don't know if that's the case or not Well, then I then I give him his propers and he did and he did a really amazing job But that just says to me here's what here's let me let me I'm gonna put a real blunt to you What occurred said to me that whoever was in favor of whatever happened of what happened back however many months ago it was does not know how to run a company and The problem was the people that weren't in favor of it.

They also didn't know how to run a company I'm gonna put probably Anthony in a little bit of a separate boat than other people Because I think he's the only one that got it because I'm from what I heard He was like, wait a minute. We're not a profit. We're not a for-profit entity anymore He's like, what the hell are we doing?

You know, I think you know, I think he was kind of like shocked by the whole thing when it dawned on him and But the other people that were against that they would didn't know why they were against it other than we're not making money You know, I think he got it that this is not being run like a business what is this I Don't know so it's kind of it's you've got me you need to make some tough choices You it's really and I think I think you know what the right answers are I Know you don't want to I know you don't want to bump up against people

[2:21:57] Vitalik: but this is this is a time you've got if I have to bump up against people I will but the thing yeah To be honest to be honest the one issue I have is it's exactly the issue They've already said that I've kind of already said in our in our calls today a couple of times is basically You know, if not these people and who?

[2:22:16] Steven: That's I don't I don't see that as being an issue. I really don't Well, I mean, I know I I know I spoke to Charles about this a while back And I and I and we talked about this This was after everything had happened and we were doing kind of a post-mortem on everything and you know He was you know, he was venting a lot Okay, I was listening to him and I said well, you know, and I did ask him this I said well, I said, you know, I was playing the devil's advocate for a second and I said, okay, so Vitalik didn't do that.

Then what was the alternative? You know and you know, I said, you know the space, you know, what the what the capabilities of people out there are I said I said is Gavin good. He didn't not Gavin.

He really didn't For all of the upset that he was he said look Gavin smart. He said, you know, he's smart He said he said there are better guys out there. He said he's not the best in the field He says but he but he said he's very extremely solid and Charles doesn't say that about a lot of people from a tech you know, he's a He's a technical snob And You know, I mean he spent I had him talk to my CTO for a couple hours and then afterwards he came in I just wow, that's a really smart guy and What he what he did say though I said I said well, okay So I said the guy was put in a really tough position you I said so what was he supposed to do?

And I see you know He said well, there are other people out there and I asked him I said well Could he get another person that could do what Gavin does and he said yeah, he can get another person He said I could have gotten another person that does what Gavin does and he said that being said he says I believed in Gavin enough that he I And I guess this was the case because I came in at the tail end of this discussion This is when I started coming in He said when I heard that Gav was about to leave he says I did everything to save him To bring him back and I guess you were there for that Yeah, and he says so it's like not that he so he said it's not that I don't think he's valuables But he certainly didn't think he was a replaceable now I'm not suggesting you need to replace him or not replace him It's just but it's a matter of you know, are you on board or aren't you on board?

[2:24:43] Vitalik: I think I think Gavin used to make that decision And it's real shame because it's like Gavin can have his cake and eat it too Charles is a very practical guy You know, I think I mean He does not wants to be the CEO and he doesn't recognize the need for a strong business character in To compliment him in whatever he would in what he what he is going to be doing. So in Is the answer for that then that's something the world's have to talk about a lot more I Really think it is.

[2:25:19] Steven: I mean I I know I Know I I Can I'm confident this me working with Charles if he had a clear mandate and you and Like a clear mandate where he was given Where he was given basically Autonomy to do what he needed to do And that you trusted me enough that I would be watching over that To make sure that you know, he was doing everything Not that mistakes aren't gonna be made there will be made, you know Oh, there's always gonna be mistakes made, you know But at the end of the day will the company get saved, you know, and well and then prosper there from there on out and I believe that that's your that's your Not your only route, but that's your highest probability route is what that's what you're looking for at this point You're looking for high probability with low risk And and that will mean that you'll have to have a talk with Gavin and say look You know, we're all just have to pretend like we you know, we're all gonna have to Everybody's gonna have to swallow their pride And Charles is going to be able to have to do things and that means that Charles is gonna have to have Frank discussions with him about the technology because it affects the finances and it affects the direction So I mean, I'm not saying that Charles needs to get involved in the code But if you know, I do remember one of the issues that that was being discussed a while ago and I remember I think Amir was the one who was telling me about it, but I don't think he understood it well enough to explain it But he was saying that there was a discussion about multiple browsers and multiple You know and you know, one of the things that it was there was a discussion about multiple browsers But there's also discussion when you talk to Google about just going right into Chrome Right and I I looked I kind of like look sideways.

I said, well, I don't understand Why are they building their own browser if they could just go right into Chrome? You know, I'm being you know in the Android market, you know, like, you know, just be on your own What you know, it's the dominant browser now you just like why would you not want to be why would you not want to plug in? There, you know, that would be your your easiest.

I Mean, what does Microsoft do every time they want to proliferate a product? They just stick it into Windows, you know So, I mean, it's just it's the obvious. It's the dumb strategy, you know, I mean like dumb like meaning You don't have to think hard about it I don't under I didn't understand the arguments for having another browser let alone multiple browsers or having other languages let alone multiple languages It sounded to me and I could be off.

This is really I'm taking a real wild guess But I've been around enough development teams enough from to see this it sounded like there were a lot of people with personal preferences and That multiple personal preferences were being accommodated you just don't have that you don't have that luxury To do that. You don't have luxury to people. I like this language.

So I'm gonna do it in this language. I like this language I'm gonna do it in this language. I like this one is I'm gonna do this one and we're all really good at it We're all going to do it.

You know, it's like it's Just you need to take all the resources and make the lowest that go the path of least resistance In this case to me I'd not again I don't understand why the path of least resistance wouldn't have been to just go with Chrome It seems like that's the easiest one Okay, so I mean I don't know the I don't it doesn't I didn't understand it but like I said, but I admit that you know, I I'm enough. I know enough about technical to when something doesn't feel right I know to ask the questions, but I don't you know, but certainly I'm not, you know I don't know that the intricacies of why the decision was made.

It does sound to me like a lot of Extra development was a gone going that didn't need to be happened that it could have been streamlined a lot of projects internally probably should have been slashed and Right now you would you'll need to do that. You just don't have the luxury of maintaining that So, you know let him have his you know, let him have his dev Ethereum will contract with that dev to do certain things but ultimately the CTO Puts out his vision puts out his structure, but the CEO gets to vet it You know and the CTO needs to understand that, you know, that's why the CEO is the CEO You know, you know and everybody has to kind of it's not like he's the Lord I've already explained to you that you know, and I have long discussions with Charles about this that you know, you're the servant You know to everybody else, but with that being said the CEO needs to make tough decisions yeah, and it's and sometimes the decision is not because of development and maybe because of Understanding the marketplace and saying okay, you know The dApp developers are not going to you know, rather than going out with another browser we put those resources into creating a very easy to use development kit that you know, even a very underfunded or some guy That's you know half as good as a Roman Could come and build ten dApps and you know in a month, you know, that's what you want That's that's the you know, that's the Holy Grail.

That's that's your vision for this, you know You know, you're going in the face of you're flying in the face of your own vision, right? so Yeah, I I think I think yeah, so I think if you if he had a clear mandate I think there's a little bit of healing that needs to get done. But I think I can you know, I could broker that Everybody kind of needs to say okay I'm going to you know, because the The downside just see it gap just needs to understand his downside.

The downside is he's out of business and He's going to get sued and he's gonna get investigated and so I Know I know and he put it out there in the public domain That was for my for a parent money laundering was it? Right. Okay, so he's not in it.

He's not in a very good position right now And I'm off, you know, what I'm saying is this is offering him an ability to save his ass and potentially also You know still come out the hero But he has to everybody has to swallow their pride. It's not about pride. It's about it's about the organization So Charles comes in I could I could I could even come in if you needed somebody on an interim basis if Charles couldn't come in immediately or Something or I can work with Charles to create a new structure a new for-profit Where that's where the real and we rebuild rebuild the brand and everything under that new entity And I have to figure out the intricacies of that But you know I could do that in short and Charles and I worked I know The reason I'm saying is because I know when Charles and I work together. We worked really quickly Really fast and we got the impossible done.

He would pull the rabbit out of the hat there I pulled the one out of that here if you remember I said you I give you my word when I left Toronto that I will get you the opinion letter and You guys asked me how and I said I have no freaking idea how you know I said, but I'll get it, you know, and when I got it and Charles went out to Switzerland He had no idea how to do it. You know, you work hard enough, you know, you plug away and it's you know Like you eventually get it if you're persistent enough and we work very fast together So I think that can that can be done And then you know you figure out an equity structure that works and then you go I don't think your brand is damaged so much. So Because I think you're still at a place where you can say, okay You've got a little bit of you've got one benefit to you where right now you can turn around and say, okay You can go to an entries in Horowitz.

You could go to Greylock I have strong relationships there. No benefit personal benefit. I just you know, I just know the guys there But you could go to Google back to Google Ventures and you say look, you know and a couple of these guys already have their plays You know, I know I forgot who's behind ripple now Somebody put money into ripple and somebody put money into one of the other guys And so some of them have already placed their bets.

Maybe they're willing to place a second one I don't know but the point is that you go to these guys and say look We were young You know, we made a bunch of mistakes We've decided to restructure. We've also decided we need to bring in real institutional assistance people that have really been around the block And you know, you can also blame a lot of this like the price of ether fell And then they're gonna be like why the hell didn't you hedge your position? I mean like look we kind of trusted somebody and you know what?

You you you have to take the responsibility for that, but you can say look I trusted this guy This was his background Wouldn't you have trusted him to this wasn't my background and so, you know, they allow for that, you know They understand that but I think you've got a tie. You've got it. You've got a there's this is not an indefinite space

[2:34:37] Vitalik: right

[2:34:39] Steven: See, there's a there's some fortunate things and the unfortunate things that happened in the marketplace You can flip them around and use them as a defenses You know But I think you have a limited time to do that You know And then I would just literally clean everybody out right But you got yeah, and I what I would do is if you wanted to do it You know, we would come up with some kind of structure about how I fit into this But I would be watching over the whole thing and make sure that it went smoothly And I'm confident I can do that if I've got the right players and the right cooperation You have to make sure I get the right cooperation I can I can help get the right players I'm confident with with with Charles on board and his and his contact level and your name And the people that you know out there if the word got out that you guys were looking for any position You know people would cut you would you would get a ton of interest out there And we'd be proactive about it we very proactive about it, you know, we'd actually go into the you know into the community You know, I know last time I talked to Charles.

He started rattling off a whole bunch of people in this space that he thought could could do an amazing job at Building something we were talking about building something, you know, the more the new coast stuff Not the last time I talked to trouble when I talked to Charles one point and he you know I do remember I talked to him specifically about the cabin on that too. You know, I said I would keep saying I'll be a Gavin's all what they Gavin's level and he would say I know this one's better than Gavin This was not as strong as Gavin. This one's you know, so He was pretty you know, he was trying to be fair in his assessment That would be my suggestion Right.

[2:36:36] Vitalik: Okay.

[2:36:37] Steven: I think you need maybe we're gonna sleep on it. We can talk again tomorrow.

[2:36:40] Vitalik: Yeah, I think so Um Where is Gavin So we're sitting together in the office of deja vu. It's a security company based in Seattle.

[2:36:52] Steven: He's upstairs.

[2:36:53] Vitalik: I think in a meeting right now I'm downstairs working. Oh, you're in Seattle. Yeah, but why I'm sorry.

[2:36:58] Steven: Why are you sad?

[2:36:59] Vitalik: Because there's the company that's doing security audits for us as based there. Oh, I see I'm for let's work with them for a week.

[2:37:06] Steven: All right. I look I mean don't get me wrong. I am NOT advocating That's why I said from the beginning of this conversation I said, let's take Gavin and Jeff and put them in their own bucket.

Let's have a discussion Sands them first and let's put Charles at his own bucket as if because I think those need to be handled very gently and very differently And I do recognize the value that he brings especially if he pulls us off You know, he pulled a little rabbit out of his hat too if he pulls us off, you know And he really releases something impressive at one point. Oh, is it going to be impressive to the community? Do you think do you think the reviews are going to be?

[2:37:43] Vitalik: We said high expectations, but I know I think there's things that I think the kind of So I think the kind of excitement that we're seeing right now is different from what we from from what we've seen before like before It was oh my god. This is the fear. I am it's going to change the world and it's going and it's going to be Really big and my user is gonna go up a lot now Like yeah there's a lot more emphasis on the actual development platform and on how easy it is to be or it's a developed tools and write blockchain applications and I think that I

[2:38:28] Steven: Mean if I were you I would get a couple of industry people you trust Um to come in and really vet it and look at it and then Build a marketing machine around that for it for the launch. I mean, do you have a marketing plan for the launch?

[2:38:55] Vitalik: We were actually talking to someone this morning who looks like she might be interested But the plan basically is that we need to that we're planning to have some kind of events two or three weeks after the launch and that's Basically be a large conference get a lot of people Showcase yeah.

[2:39:22] Steven: Yeah, right. Yeah, I don't know. Okay, so I Think I think you need to reverse that We are a few weeks before lunch.

Yes Yeah, and the reason I mean just again look at It's it's nice that I can keep using Apple because this is just a really good example in so many respects here But look at what Steve Jobs would do. This is very similar to you know when he would launch a new product and You know, he would have the Macworld thing and he would you know do his thing and he would be sitting there and you know Nice and cool and calm and you know, he wasn't the only one that gave presentations by the way during those things You know, they would have their head of marketing. They would have Somebody else they would bring in one of the two of their partners and he would say oh look and he would show off You're not really showing off the platform the platform really look at the end of the day.

The platform is irrelevant I'm not saying what it does is in row zero, but nobody gives nobody gives a hoot about my my hardware of My Xbox right they care about they care about the games I can play on there You know and now all of the other things that the Xbox does

[2:40:35] Vitalik: I think we should be more so we should be be marketing to developers or to users and I think that the sort of Combination of highly technical users and developers is probably still the better thing to go for

[2:40:47] Steven: But you should be doing that all along is what I'm saying that you should be doing all along. Yeah, but I think you need I think This would be You know you look you can have it, you know a two-part thing Where you know you're having one part, you know, but it could all be bunched in the same because but you know Everybody here has got some level of sophistication Now there's a lot of people that bought either that don't That they bought it for whatever purposes. They bought it for it.

We're not gonna say but The the reality is you can you have that really like blow people away You know and have two or three dapps, you know, like for example when Apple Launched the iPhone. I don't remember was when the original I remember one of the launches they They actually even aside from their own maps tool. They were highlighting Google Maps Because Google Maps had a couple of functionalities that they didn't so they subvert even though they had their own map maps tool so they were actually showcasing somebody else's because it highlighted and the abilities of their system of their platform of what it can do and He so he took three or four apps and he said hey look and I remember he took some Picture app and he's like look at what you can do with this and look how amazing this is You know and you know he took it But the point was he was showing off the he was showing off the beauty of the system through the apps Now you also I think can have If you can really develop a really good Developers can especially before launch you know that you should have had all along But you can have that and then you could she maybe you release it then You know at the very least you should release it, you know, you know, or maybe you release it a few weeks before Yeah But I think that's that's key.

[2:42:45] Vitalik: I mean you can't yeah, I don't I don't see how you don't have one of those Red Is that helpful, yeah, yeah, I think so Yeah, I mean don't know what what else to say right now except that we should probably continue these conversations sure, you know You know Ross Albrecht was just convicted.

[2:43:13] Steven: Yeah, I saw yeah Look there are a lot of people that don't want to see this space succeed, you know that Yeah And you don't want to you just don't want to give them anything, you know, we put a lot of all these protections in place You know, don't worry. Don't get rid of them for no reason Do you have Brian Armstrong's email address by the way? Yes So I've been trying to connect with him Keep coming.

Oh, that's it. Okay. Never mind.

Thanks All right, I'm around tomorrow if you want to like Why don't you sit on the sleep think about it and then and then let me know what you want to do, okay, okay Thanks. Have a good night