371: What Founders Still Get Wrong in Crypto with Guest speaker William Quigley from WAX + Tether
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello innovators, entrepreneurs and risk takers. Welcome to another episode of Web3 with Sam Kamani podcast. And today is a special episode because I am interviewing co-founder of Vax and co-founder of Tether. Who doesn't know Tether in our space? Everyone knows Tether. His name is William Quigley and he is going to be sharing about kind of you can call it like the state of the industry or the state of... web3 as things are happening so this podcast is absolutely essential for any founder because we talk about a lot of the things that founders should be paying attention to how they should be thinking how startups are built and what mistakes established companies make as well as so much more this conversation is nearly an hour long because there were just so many things in this that we had to cover as well as it felt like we could have talked for another two three hours because he just has so much knowledge and so many insights that were worth sharing about
so as always nothing that we talk about here should be taken as investment advice or financial advice and please like share subscribe and follow with all that out of the way let's get into it So William, welcome to the show.
How did William Quigley get involved in the crypto space?
Looking forward to talking with you and learning about your background as well as all your experience in this space. Especially I know how many years you have spent in this industry and all the skills, knowledge and experience you bring to this. So to get started, how did you first get involved to do all things with Web3, blockchain and crypto?
Well, I've never really understood what Web3 is, but regarding crypto, that came out of my partner and I's business in virtual item trading, video game virtual item trading. So a lot of people in the early days of crypto came from our industry. And for your audience, if they play video games and there's virtual items in those games, some minority of video game publishers allow people to trade the virtual items that they either buy or they earn. And so we ran platforms that allowed people to buy and sell those. And it's in many ways similar to how people use crypto because people would use video game virtual items as a, as a money substitute, particularly people who are in areas where it's hard to get banking or hard to get digital payments reliably.
And so that experience made us probably more open-minded to the idea of crypto than other people because we already understood that there was a need for a internet-based payment system.
Why do gaming platforms resist asset portability and user ownership?
So that's how we originally got excited about it or interested. And then once we were in it, we realized, okay, there's a lot to build. So we just started building all the things we thought would be...
Fantastic. I had a very, very civilian experience when I ran the esports platform where like PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, everyone had, and every game had their own currency points, everything. And they were like, okay, why can't people move? Why are people logged in? This doesn't make sense. You lose your assets. You lose your everything.
What problem did stablecoins like Tether aim to solve?
Once you move platforms, move games, this is your own asset that you should have control over. I mean, this was 2017, 18 era when I was in that industry. And that's what got me also interested in it. But at the same time, I didn't realize one very essential fact that the platforms wanted their consumers or their users or players to be logged in. It was in the interest of the end user, but not in the interest of the platform. They did everything. So it's like, why would they adopt? And that's why we have seen that, you know, This lag in the utility versus adoption. Yeah, what are your thoughts about that?
How does Tether's model differ from algorithmic stablecoins?
They're exactly what you just said. Yeah, the publishers don't like it. And I've made the arguments to publishers over the years why tradability is a good thing. They have valid points as well. Now, some of them worry about it. Some gamers think it degrades from the quality of the game. I never bought that argument. But I do buy the argument that if you are a very controlling oriented game publisher,
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:25
2
How did William Quigley get involved in the crypto space?
1:25–3:01
3
Why do gaming platforms resist asset portability and user ownership?
3:01–3:31
4
What problem did stablecoins like Tether aim to solve?
3:31–4:17
5
How does Tether's model differ from algorithmic stablecoins?
4:17–5:04
6
What is the future outlook for stablecoins in the next few years?
5:04–6:09
7
Why do most internal innovations fail in startups?
6:09–7:16
8
What insights does William have about starting a new business today?
7:16–59:23
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Web3 with Sam Kamani
376: Inside CMT Digital: 10 Years of Crypto VC Insights with Oliver Jaros
375: Building the Future of DeFi Yield: Mehdi Lebbar on Risk, Returns, and Freedom with Guest Speaker Mehdi from YO.xyz
372: The Security Mistakes Every Web3 Founder Makes (And How to Avoid Them) with Guest Speaker Johnathon Claudius from Asymmetric Research
369: Tezos, Etherlink & Tokenized Uranium: The Future of Blockchain Infrastructure with Guest Speaker Adebola Adeniran from Tezos
368: Why AI Agents Are Now Hiring Humans (And How You Can Get Paid) with Guest Speaker Sydney Huang from HumanAPI
367: From Verifiable Education to Stablecoin Compliance: Space and Time's Blueprint for Institutional Blockchain Adoption with guest speaker Cat Daly