Interview: Luke Belmar

Editor & Proofreader: Luccy, BlockBeats

One week before the official release of the JUP token, Capital Club founder Luke Belmar conducted an exclusive interview with Jupiter founder Meow.

Before developing Jupiter, Meow served as the chief advisor for Instadapp, Kyber, and Blockfolio. He is also a co-founder of the largest Wrapped token wBTC and one of the founding contributors to the Handshake project. Currently, Meow is the founder of Raccoons Labs, developing the Solana liquidity aggregator Jupiter, the Solana liquidity protocol Meteora, and conducting multi-chain research with a strong interest in social infrastructure.

Many people know that Luke Belmar is a successful entrepreneur, but his success is the result of a combination of digital advertising, e-commerce, direct sales, and investments in cryptocurrency and NFT. Luke Belmar once said, "Money often flees from those who chase it, but is easily attracted to those who realize that money is just a monopolistic currency."

The interview program "Money Talks" hosted by Luke Belmar focuses on exclusive conversations with some of the most outstanding thinkers in the business, entrepreneurship, and finance fields. In the latest episode, Luke Belmar and Meow discussed the "Monetary Consensus Theory". Meow provided unique insights into the operation of the crypto world and the role and impact of Jupiter in this process.

Meow believes that the traditional financial system has created a beautiful illusion for people, and living in this illusion is like being in an invisible prison. Cryptocurrency is the key to breaking this illusion. Meow realizes that consensus is a very powerful force that shapes currency, and consensus is the result of the collective efforts of everyone in the community. The development of the cryptocurrency world cannot be separated from consensus. Compared to the invisible prison, cryptocurrency is like a garden that is open to everyone and welcomes everyone to participate in its construction. Jupiter's goal is to become such a garden.

Therefore, Meow values the community ecology that participates in garden construction very much. He pointed out that each different community should have its own characteristics and charm. In describing the Jupiter community, Meow compares it to a "global decentralized securities exchange" that allows anyone to trade on it, and all processes and details can be seen by everyone in the community.

BlockBeats presents the compiled interview content below, with some parts omitted.

货币源自共识

translates to

The Currency Originates from Consensus

According to Meow's point of view, "currency consensus theory" refers to the need for corresponding consensus in the process of creating currency. This process involves a form of control, which can be said to be under your actual control. The purpose of this control is that if someone prints a large amount of virtual currency to a certain amount, the law will intervene and take compulsory measures to pursue and imprison them. This consensus is also strengthened through the entire network of governments, central banks, and all different banks, branches, etc.

In the "Currency Consensus Theory", the consensus of fiat currency comes from the ability to control and make people use this fiat currency. Meow takes the strong consensus of the Ethereum and Bitcoin communities as an example, pointing out that when there is enough consensus invested in it, the currency is real.

When explaining this theory, Meow introduced the concept of "Infinite Tsukuyomi", which is a ninjutsu in the Japanese anime "Naruto". It can make ninja practitioners fall into an eternal illusion, mistaking it for reality.

Traditional Financial Illusion

Luke Belmar: Please start from the beginning and tell us what led you to where you are today?

Meow: I work in many technology-related fields, including social networking and viral marketing. I believe that we were actually the first to create a recommendation system that uses social data. From a technological perspective, initial recommendations were based on semantics, using phrases like "if you are interested in computers and technology." However, we found that social data is more interesting than semantic data, so we built our recommendation engine on top of it. For example, if you follow someone, through social data recommendations, you can communicate with another person who also follows them.

I successfully promoted it through a series of viral marketing methods. Therefore, I believe that we have achieved a lot in this regard and have always adhered to this concept. We have tried various mechanisms and invented many new concepts, but it seems that there are still some missing parts and things that need to be improved. It's like if you try to build a fintech company, you are actually dealing with regulations. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just a fact of life in this world. I follow all these rules, but I don't really like doing it.

I have always been very interested in economics and finance. However, because of this, every time I approach this field, I realize that every financial technology company is not innovative. They are only building on the architecture level of the entire stack. The entire architecture is huge and the underlying layer is immutable, including banking, credit card systems, processing systems, and energy systems.

Basically, I have to follow these rules, but when I read all the economics books, I always feel like they don't make any sense. All these valid theories, even the new concepts I've read, such as behavioral economics, are wrong. These theories do not match what happens in the real world, almost as if economics is a pseudoscientific branch.

And I never understood why the whole world was living in the "Infinite Tsukuyomi" ninjutsu. I studied economics in Silicon Valley and after being exposed to various knowledge, economics was like "Infinite Tsukuyomi" to me because there was no corresponding financial market and all predictions were wrong. When everyone around you is in the "Infinite Tsukuyomi", how can you have the confidence to break through the inflationary society army? That's when cryptocurrency appeared, and for the first time, I realized, "This is the evidence that proves this audit is talking nonsense."

Luke Belmar: It's like taking a glimpse outside the prison cell and realizing there's freedom out there.

Meow: Exactly. For example, one of the most effective ways the British used to control their colonies was to instill the idea that "you are stupid, we are the best, your culture is inferior, and everything is inferior." People became submissive and believed this rhetoric.

I believe we have already rid ourselves of this mentality in many aspects, but when it comes to economics and other areas, we still adopt such coercive control methods. Because it is actually difficult to control specific individuals, the only way to control them is through education. This is also why governments around the world attach great importance to education and history, because what they tell people in the early stages of their lives can create an infinite economy. And cryptocurrency has made me realize that all of this is illusory.

Luke Belmar: What year did you first encounter cryptocurrency?

Meow: It was probably around 2013, maybe a little earlier than that. I had a very good friend who was one of the top experts in the cryptocurrency field, and I was lucky enough to meet him at a Dogecoin party, and later we started working together. At the time, I knew nothing about cryptocurrency, so I asked him, "Hey, how much do you know about cryptocurrency?" He said he didn't know anything. Then I asked him repeatedly, "How much do you know about cryptocurrency?" And he still said he didn't know anything. But we were very similar, he had a lot of ideas and was good at technical marketing, while I was good at coding. He also had a deep background in cryptography and financial systems, so we got along very well.

If you look at all academic textbooks, the most basic concept is price, regardless of whether it is left-wing or right-wing, everything is related to price. If you study economics textbooks, they will all emphasize the importance of price. And usually, the price is fiat currency. Therefore, the most important thing for economics majors is fiat currency, which can easily lead to problems. In addition to corruption, there is also a point that 99% of people in AEI (American Enterprise Institute) come from the same school. They live together, cook together, and despite their opposing views, they are all friends.

We are all forced to accept the concept of fiat currency system since birth. Until the introduction of Bitcoin, it told people that "you don't have to own something worth trillions of dollars or trillions of units, nor do you have to print something to introduce stimulus or achieve economic growth". So "disruptions" emerged, such as Bitcoin and decentralized finance, and people began to question the status quo. Today, the meme coins or new networks you see basically break our existing concepts.

This is a very good topic that delves into what true currency is. In the process of creating currency, corresponding consensus must be invested. This process involves a form of control, which can be said to actually hold the power. The purpose of control is that if someone prints a large amount of virtual currency to a certain amount, the law will intervene and take mandatory measures to pursue and imprison them.

Luke Belmar: Technically speaking, if you have a replica of the currency, coin, or denomination imposed by a ruler or king, you are counterfeiting their power.

Meow: This power is also reinforced through the government, central banks, and the entire network of other banks, branches, etc. So, the consensus of legal currency comes from the ability to control and actually make people use this legal currency. People have to accept legal currency, otherwise they will be locked up in jail or somewhere else, and most importantly, this is achieved through consensus.

Now let's take a look at cryptocurrency. In encryption, how to distinguish between real currency and fake currency? I hope to explain this through a series of more technical concepts, such as liquidity, digital, spread, number of holders, currency existence time, etc., but these are all superficial. When there is enough consensus to invest in it, the currency is real.

Meow: Yes, banks must follow procedures, this is the tradition we have established. But what is the difference between protection, freedom, and regulation? Who are you really protecting in this structure? Although some people say that encryption is used for money laundering and terrorism, the US dollar is also used in the same way.

Luke Belmar: Because of blockchain, I can track every transaction that occurs on Bitcoin, and even track fiat currency.

Meow: Those protective measures may have been agreed upon for some reason, accumulated over many years and other things. It has become a prison, and people always think that a prison is a place where they cannot get out, locking people inside. But they forget the other side of the prison, which is also very good at preventing external things from entering. You cannot bring toothpaste or money inside. The prison is like a secret box of currency, created by people.

Last week I felt very angry because everyone in the cryptocurrency industry was eagerly awaiting Gary Gensler's approval of the Bitcoin ETF. They had raised their expectations too high. When the SEC approves it, Larry Fink said it was the first step towards asset tokenization. Obviously, this means that BlackRock will build and own the Bitcoin ETF. Then Gary said, "We are actually violating Satoshi Nakamoto's vision because ETFs mean we are centralizing cryptocurrency." He was very happy about this, as if he was really breaking the illusion of cryptocurrency by centralizing Bitcoin.

I don't hate banks, I don't hate the government, I don't hate the SEC. I love them because they believe in what they do and they are doing their job. The world is simple, you fight for your own things, so we must also believe in what belongs to us. Therefore, I am angry about our industry.

Look at BlackRock, they want a Bitcoin ETF because they will make money. No problem, that's their job, and if I ran BlackRock, I would do the same thing, after all, I'm not a saint. But that's also why I never want to run the SEC, because I don't believe I can handle a billion dollars. I don't even believe I can have a hundred dollars in a casino, if you give me a thousand dollars in chips at a casino, I will spend it all, that's the fact, I love money, I can't help it.

You need to put yourself in a state of corruption, and today you launched Launchpad, and then tweeted to everyone that you will not invest in anything. One of the biggest problems with Launchpad is that it drives up the value of its own projects. So I believe that putting yourself in a position where you cannot be corrupted technically and showing the world what is better is what Jupiter does.

货币是行动的媒介

translates to

Currency is the medium of action

Based on the "Currency Consensus Theory", Meow elaborated that the important goal of JUP token is to truly create communities, workgroups, and DAOs. Compared to the prison of traditional financial regulations, this community is more like a garden, whose mission is to attract people and spread outwards. In this process, enough people have contributed enough consensus and ideas to make the token a medium of exchange.

Encryption Garden

Luke Belmar: You describe the concept of prison as a closed ecosystem, but due to technological advancements and the formation of digital tribes, people have the ability to create their own ecosystems to compete with it, and it returns to the essence of currency. Currency used to be personalized for individuals, villages, and different companies. Companies would issue their own currency, manufactured by the private sector rather than the public sector.

Meow: Do you know what's the craziest thing about encryption right now? We're criticizing them while still supporting them. Just like how everyone wants to approve ETFs, even Bitcoin geeks. Of course, you can do whatever you want, it's your choice, but we should focus on building a completely great and amazing parallel ecosystem, such as a decentralized economy, and then focus on developing that "garden." Take Jupiter for example, it's not like a prison, we have a lot of users, but we can't lock them in or exclude people, it's indescribably wonderful.

Luke Belmar: Not only that, looking back at the DeFi operating model in 2017, the first step was to prepare a MetaMask wallet. If you wanted to participate in an ICO, you needed to send your Ethereum to a random address to receive some funds. But today, pick up your phone and download any mainstream wallet, enter the small application area, click on Jupiter Exchange, and within two to five minutes, you can enter a highly optimized alternative financial ecosystem.

Meow: This is the main driving force behind the Jupiter and JUP tokens. An important goal of the JUP token is to truly create communities, workgroups, and DAOs, with its mission being to attract people and spread out. And you cannot build prisons because Jupiter's culture does not like prisons.

Luke Belmar: Just like those centralized exchanges, once heavy KYC or significant restrictions are introduced, users will leave.

Meow: It's as simple as this - users don't want their money locked up. Many people ask me if I'm interested in performing token locking operations, but I'm not. We live in a world that tends to build prisons, like Facebook, every company, every bank, etc. Every time people pay for subscriptions or buy printer consumables, they spend a lot of money and resources building prisons.

Luke Belmar: For example, Apple. Every time they change the official charging port, users have to buy their own cables and cannot purchase from third-party sellers. This is the concept of trapping people in a closed ecosystem.

Meow: Currently, there is an interesting turning point happening where we are returning to the ancient era of private currency. Why did we transition from an era of abundant private currency to virtual currency systems, only to return to that era again?

Let's first discuss the book "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Apple (which has the same name as the book written by Eric Steven Raymond), which is a fascinating work. The book mentions that small groups are very effective when executing strategies, but it is very difficult to coordinate the entire army to execute them. To achieve this, you need a very tight structure, just like TSMC, a very famous chip company, which has a complete hierarchy, processor, test performance, etc., all of which are to ensure that everything is orderly and has actually established a very rapid and efficient system.

On the other hand, the market is like an open network, where everyone is doing their own thing and forming their own system. For example, there are open source and cryptography scenes that existed long before the emergence of cryptocurrencies.

This type of network is often where many interesting things happen, and culture is formed here. Burning Man is a good example, as it encompasses both aspects. On one hand, it serves as a marketplace, bringing together 50,000 people to do their own thing. On the other hand, it serves as a church, with everything being very precisely regulated. In short, they are able to form a small community, implement extremely strict rules, and also have a crazy market. Both systems have their advantages.

Now, adopting this viewpoint, let's return to the previous topic. Today, we live in a world where a fiat system is enforced by the government, and the US dollar is enforced in various ways. In fact, before the formation of national currency systems, banks had their own systems, and each town had its own system.

Let "tokens" become "currency"

Luke Belmar: Every ecosystem, regardless of size, has its own currency system because currency is created by the private sector, not the public sector.

Just like sending a tweet on Twitter, building a large email community where people can trade emails, you will believe in that email. Now the coins in my hand can also be traded, but a big difference is that it can all be on the chain and trusted for circulation. I can know everything, such as how much can be exchanged, how much liquidity there is, because the numbers are there.

Literally speaking, anyone can create a coin by clicking a button, but its value is actually lower than a piece of toilet paper. A piece of toilet paper needs to go through the process of cutting trees, packaging, and recycling, and I can calculate how much it is worth. But by doing this, you are just creating some fancy graphics, constantly making people buy coins, and then getting some consensus from people who want the coin to rise in value and profit from it, but that is not real consensus and it is not sustainable.

Luke Belmar: People have waged wars over salt and it has been used as currency. This is also why the word "salary" comes from "salt" because people used to pay wages with salt. Therefore, there were enough people willing to put in the effort and consensus to maintain salt, package and distribute it. The existence of this demand makes people willing to use it as currency.

Meow: Although salt is no longer used as currency due to scarcity and other reasons, as you mentioned, it is a highly measurable and difficult to counterfeit substance that people could indeed use as real currency, even if it later became useless as a currency.

Luke Belmar: The premise of DeFi is to first have a currency standard. Due to technological advancements and developments, a new form of currency has emerged, allowing us to break free from standard limitations.

Meow: There are too many scams in the encryption industry, and Degen and Wall Street people are just as bad as I am. If you put me in a position of leverage and fees, I might do even worse things. But the important difference is that if I make a "Meow", I must show that there is real consensus, attention, and sustainability behind it, which may take 10 to 15 minutes to demonstrate that I am not just creating a "Meow". That's why community is important.

So you turned the token value into a tangible expression, and what's interesting is that you won't find this in any economics textbook. Every Wall Street textbook and technical analysis makes some nonsense statements, such as the P/E ratio. Look at Tesla, look at GameStop, look at anything, it's all obviously nonsense.

For example, take the Singapore dollar. Singapore is a small country that can print money at will. However, if they only print money, it will depreciate in comparison to the US dollar. The reason why the US dollar can do whatever it wants is because the narrative is the US dollar index, and the index cannot really depreciate against anything else. Therefore, once the US dollar depreciates, or when the index depreciates, everything will be in trouble.

This is interesting because everything is based on indices, and all economics textbooks are based on indices, so we don't even know what's happening. When women on TikTok start complaining about a certain group, it's because everything is based on indices, and indices have been severely abused, and the entire financial system operates on this index.

Embrace the uniqueness of the community

Meow: The most important thing is to understand what a community is, and you really need to have your own understanding of it. Because every community must be your unique and authentic vision, and every excellent community has its own atmosphere and characteristics, which are unique. Someone once said a great quote, every great idea is different. When you talk to special people, their way of speaking is different, and their ideas are different.

Similarly, in community building, you must embrace your uniqueness. Every successful community, such as Ethereum and Bitcoin, has its own atmosphere and characteristics, and Jupiter hopes to be the same. You cannot be afraid of this and need to face challenges. Although it may be more comfortable to not face challenges, after all, if you do things completely according to others' ways, you will not receive criticism.

If you were to launch a Meme coin today, you would follow the old routine of creating a group to sell it, recruiting followers, and telling everyone that it will rise. This approach is no different from the millions of others. I'm not exaggerating when I say that there are Meme coin teams that can create 30 to 40 coins a day and hope to attract investment, with almost no cost to them because Twitter and everything else is free. So if you haven't succeeded, it's just because you were a step behind and didn't scale up.

You need to know that today there are indeed some teams that are gradually copying Uniswap's code in some place and organizing some community activities. This has become an industry, but they can never be you, so being yourself is your only advantage. This is why Jupiter is successful, because everyone knows that Jupiter has always been here and will always be here.

Luke Belmar: You have been working in this field for three years. What are your prospects for the future in the medium and long term?

Meow: The mid-term is very simple. I am not an idealist, I focus very much on manifestation, which means I will manifest a certain future by turning an idea into reality through consensus. This is not a mysterious fairy tale. Because everyone is guided by a vision, and the easiest way to get a vision is to open ChatGPT and let it give me a vision about something. And our difference is that it is the user who lets us manifest the vision.

It is a beautiful vision statement that any third-grade student can write, but how many people can inspire a large group of people to share a common vision, a common idea? It is very rare. Ultimately, it takes true commitment and integrity to allow a certain number of people to embody specific ideas, specific spirits, and specific cultural needs.

So from a mid-term vision perspective, I want a lower entry barrier, first of all, it should be lightweight and frictionless. I have always tried to collaborate with everyone I need to work with, trying to build decentralized meta. Meta is like air that can freely enter and exit the prison without being blocked, and it is also difficult to obtain.

Jupiter is in a great position to become an excellent entry point for those who want to move their activities from centralized networks to decentralized networks, which is what we want to achieve. We are starting to migrate people over and show them that they can see all the cool things here and get involved.

Jupiter's Vision

Meow: My preferred way of saying it is that it will permeate among the crowd like oxygen. Once you have a group of people playing games, we can do some amazing things like remittances and operations. But what you need is a market. For example, a Singapore dollar/US dollar market, a Philippine peso/US dollar market, can complete the entire transaction between these two markets. The entire process of the transaction costs almost zero, and you don't have to go anywhere or do anything to complete it. I think we can do it now, and we are very close to achieving it.

Using remittance as an example, in many cryptocurrency companies today, we no longer pay with fiat currency, but with USDC or USDT. So when there is an exit from stablecoins to banks or wallets, all of these foreign exchange issues can be resolved. Jupiter will build these markets together with the ecosystem.

At that time, you could pay for anything you wanted, and the fees would be very low. Most importantly, the whole process was basically transparent. If you paid 1%, you could fully know where that 1% went. You could know how many security devices the platform had and how much providers would earn. To achieve this, the prerequisite is that Jupiter is the largest routing system, routing about 80% of the traffic.

Using the stock exchange as an example, when listed on the stock exchange, you cannot reach users or the media, and you only get a bunch of garbage. But if we have a listing process, a global decentralized securities exchange, which I call GDSE. Then when you go public, any investor can view your authenticity, including whether you are trading, the commercial nature and authenticity of your products, and the topics people are talking about. It is a whole, which is what Jupiter wants to establish.

If you are a medium-sized e-commerce company looking to raise funds and other resources, who would be a better evaluator of your product or company? Would it be some random auditors on Wall Street or someone else? It's the community, the people who use and interact with your product, so you have to get all users involved in the community to build real credibility. Once the community starts supporting you, they can also help you improve.

Luke Belmar: Now the entire stock exchange is operated by robots, Wall Street, and some actors. The only reason for the stock market to rise is because people keep pouring garbage into it. And the fact is, even if I buy $100,000 worth of meta stocks today, I am not part of the community. But in reality, small players do not seek the power to make rules, they just want to participate.

Meow: Once someone becomes part of the business, they become very committed and want to empower employees. While the community is the most important, it would be foolish to ignore money, and it would also be foolish to ignore people's desire to be part of interesting things. The reason we want to establish a global decentralized exchange is that anyone can try to go public, and the entire community can act as auditors, auditing and helping you. Decentralized initial public offerings and decentralized crowdfunding will occur.

You have a global decentralized market ecosystem and have access to all foreign exchange markets, including some junk coins and meme coins, etc. Whatever type of coin it is, it is in this market. You can use the recently acquired token income to purchase something and then transfer it to others. All of this will be done on one network.

Luke Belmar: You have a grand vision for Jupiter DAO. Can you tell us how you plan to build the Jupiter DAO ecosystem?

Meow: Given the potential for more possibilities in the current DAO landscape, I think DAOs are a bit foolish. Every DAO in the crypto ecosystem seems to be limited and has a very narrow agenda. For example, the Uniswap DAO's agenda is to manage Uniswap governance, token quantity, and so on, but the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will only choose the suppliers they want because they have voting rights. Even some great DAOs, such as MakerDAO, have turned the very cool concept of DAI into managing returns, managing finances, ensuring project growth, and paying large amounts of money, among other things.

I want to establish the most dynamic, forward-looking, and non-professional community in the field of encryption, with the agenda of building this metaverse, which is migration. This requires three elements. First, people need to stop using banks or Western Union remittances. Second, you need a large enough market, a truly ambitious entrepreneur who has the willingness and ability to prove that people are willing to cooperate with him. Now, if I ask any ecosystem if they are willing to cooperate with Jupiter, they will almost all say yes. Maybe we will mess it up after January, but for now, this is a cake in front of us.

Third, we need a single network to bring all markets together in one place, such as the GDSE I mentioned, which means providing real value to businesses. Because if you need to migrate with it, you need a bridge, and GDSE is that bridge.

These three things are not separate steps, but parallel ones. First, you need to attract users, then do marketing. Remember, you don't need tokens, you need a market, which is where people often get confused. For example, if you create a Philippine peso/US dollar market, but it is not discovered, whereas if you create a market on Solana or future networks, it will be discovered. It will be recorded in everyone's account, and everyone can transfer anything they want to that market.

No matter how many different types of markets exist, they are all connected in one network. This has not yet been achieved, but it is the way to break the illusion. In fact, for those in first world countries like the United States or Singapore, they may think that prison is comfortable. But what about people in Africa, Central America, and South America? Those people cannot access banking services and traditional tools.

We need to open the ledger and prove ourselves to the community, so that the community welcomes us and then begins the migration. My goal is IPO, but few can IPO because it must go through a bank. But imagine there is enough capital on the chain, when you want to support a business, you only need to buy a token, open Jupiter and buy it. For example, if you have a certain number of tokens to shop at an ice cream shop, you will get ice cream. Whenever I share this idea, people always think it's far away, but it's not. It depends only on the consensus and the number of people committed to building it. If you want to change, you must become the change itself. You cannot simply expect change to happen to you, but you need to participate, roll up your sleeves, and invest in the necessary consensus.

You need to find evidence to prove this point, which is something that people cannot ignore and is also something that I hate the most. Nowadays, people just want to satisfy themselves, and they are willing to look for anything except evidence to get that satisfaction. For example, people are willing to look for celebrity effects, Microsoft or Google. If Microsoft and Google approve of this company, they feel satisfied, but if Microsoft and Google do not invest, they do not consider it a great company. Microsoft and Google are great companies, but they have not proven anything in the blockchain field.

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia