E162: CoinGecko CEO: The Truth About Getting Rich in Crypto (you won't like it)

**Bobby Ong** (0:00)
I think the easiest and fastest way to make money is to grieve in crypto. Yes, of course, you can make this much money. A lot of companies are one cycle company in crypto. But to survive multiple cycles and to play long-term games with long-term people, it's very rare. If I wanted to make easy, short-term money, I would have done it a long time ago.

**Kevin Follonier** (0:14)
What would I have done?

**Bobby Ong** (0:15)
Why would I do it? Like, I mean...

**SPEAKER_3** (0:16)
Bobby Ong, the co-founder and CEO of CoinGecko, a leading crypto data platform tracking thousands of digital assets across global exchanges. He's a longtime entrepreneur shaping the industry since 2014

**Kevin Follonier** (0:29)
What was the tipping point for CoinGecko?

**Bobby Ong** (0:31)
In 2001, we tracked the DeFi market. So I think that was the shift from an entirely centralized exchange economy to decentralized exchanges playing a bigger role in our crypto ecosystem. That made a big difference to suddenly everybody in crypto.

**Kevin Follonier** (0:42)
Integrity is expensive in the short term. When did you realize that it pays in the long term?

**Bobby Ong** (0:45)
It goes back to your upbringing. When you're young, you know, what is the right thing to do, what is the wrong thing to do? When you grow older, that's when the black and white start getting grayer. I think the hard part is, how do you not start taking one wrong step? Because once you move down, then it's very easy to say, okay, I make an exception for this one case. And then I make a second exception. And before you know it, it's a hole that's too big to be covered.

**Kevin Follonier** (1:03)
CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko, what do I need to understand in terms of the gain that both companies are playing and how it impacts me as a user?

**Bobby Ong** (1:09)
They're not owned by any exchange right now. We have no VCs as well. We do what we think is the right thing for the community. I think a lot of users say stumble point on a care from SEO. And then eventually they spend enough time, they realize that CoinGecko has that slight edge in terms of data accuracy.

**Kevin Follonier** (1:24)
Let's address the elephant in the room. There was a recent speculation about CoinGecko being potentially sold for 500 million dollars. What do you want to tell us about that?

**Bobby Ong** (1:34)
Yeah, I mean, CoinGecko is an...

**Kevin Follonier** (1:40)
Hi, everyone. This is the little bit that I know none of you like that can help us make a huge difference for this show. And we want to take it next. Seventy one percent of the people who regularly watch When Shift Happens have not subscribed. And so all I'd ask you if you want to make a huge difference is the following. If you've seen this show before and you like it, help me, help my team. Hit the subscribe button and we'll continue to build this show for you.

**Bobby Ong** (2:03)
Thank you.
Yeah, I'm excited to be here talking to you. I met you two, three years ago.

**Kevin Follonier** (2:12)
I think I was trying to raise money from you. I don't remember, but we were building this NFT platform, right?

**Bobby Ong** (2:20)
Yeah, you met me, we had coffee in KL, I suppose.

**Kevin Follonier** (2:23)
I don't remember if I asked you for a podcast that day.

**Bobby Ong** (2:26)
Oh, I don't ask you to ask me for a podcast.
You were building Nia back then. Yeah, exactly. You came to be a co-founder and you ran to raise some money.

**Kevin Follonier** (2:33)
Exactly.

**Bobby Ong** (2:34)
Because I was on-chain indexing data, if I recall correctly, something wrong.

**Kevin Follonier** (2:37)
Yeah. So, I mean, shortly after I just decided to go on the podcast.

**Bobby Ong** (2:41)
Oh, okay.

**Kevin Follonier** (2:43)
Actually, I was after FTX and after Luna, where I got massively wrecked. I was like, okay, what the do I do? Shit, shit. I lost like $7 million in like two days in the Luna thing. Then I took two, three months and I was like, what the do I do now? I have this data analytics company since 10 years that is not related to crypto. So I was like, what do I do? Do I double down on that? Do I build a new company? And what I decided was, Luna was in May, something like that. So in September, August, I said from September onwards, I'm going to double down on the data business that had been running for a long time. And I'm going to build another two businesses at the same time. Podcast, because I feel like that's the calling and that something needs to be done in that space. And then there was these guys who were like, hey, let's build this NFT kind of platform, data platform. And they wanted me as a co-founder.