Eva Beylin on eGirl Capital, The Graph, and Building Web3

Joe Weisenthal (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:17)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:19)

So Tracy, I guess it's kind of a cliche, like every time we do a crypto episode, we're like, oh, crypto markets have been pretty volatile lately, but actually right now, they have been extremely volatile, and it's not just a cliche right now.

Tracy Alloway (0:32)

Yeah, people are talking about crypto winter, so I guess a redux of what we saw back in 2018, where we had the big fall, and then it took a very, very long time for people to get excited and interested in crypto again.

But that said, I do feel like this period of time is, it feels a little bit different, because even though the spot prices of a bunch of different things are falling, it seems like there is still a ton of money flooding into the space. And maybe that'll change eventually, but for the time being, it feels like there's still a lot of interest.

Joe Weisenthal (1:06)

Yeah, I think that's 100% true. It also feels like there's 2018, 2019, it felt like it was the only thing that people really talked about with crypto was the price. And I still think the price of the coins is still the part that captures people's attention the most.

But I guess there is this idea of, okay, there's some new Web 3.0, Web 3 that's getting built out, and it's being built towards something. And I don't think anyone is that great at describing what it's going to look like or what this new version of the Internet is. But I guess that it's, I think it's sufficiently captured people's imagination enough that even if the price were to stay depressed, people want to keep building it out and turning it into something a little bit more tangible beyond speculation.

Tracy Alloway (1:53)

Well, this is one of the remarkable things about crypto I feel like. It's almost like every time you turn around, there's a new use case that gets invented. And you're right, it is weird to think that a few years ago, we weren't talking about Web 3.0, we weren't talking about DeFi at all, we were just talking about Bitcoin mostly as a unit of payment, maybe an inflation hedge, digital gold, that sort of thing. And already in the space of a few years, the narrative changes so quickly.

Joe Weisenthal (2:22)

The narrative changes super fast.

I sometimes go back and forth whether that's a good sign or whether it's just like, oh, here's our new thing because the last thing didn't materialize. But nonetheless, it's ongoing. You mentioned in the beginning, and I think this is really key is that, yes, there is this decline in prices that we've seen, but on the flip side, it feels like there's an intense amount of investment and building and money pouring into creating new things. And so I really want to explore this tension more by talking about what's really going on between the price and then the sort of actual activity in the space. Because they really are two different things.

Tracy Alloway (3:03)

Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it.

Joe Weisenthal (3:05)

Okay, I am very excited. Oh, wait, there's one more thing I wanted to say. You know what one thing that's really weird about talking about crypto is?

Tracy Alloway (3:11)

You're gonna have to narrow it down. One weird thing about talking about crypto.

Joe Weisenthal (3:17)

There are many weird things. There's one more thing, which is that so many of the best people in this space are pseudonymous. Like, I don't know who they are. There's like all these incredible experts that I've learned a ton from over the years. And I literally have no idea who they are. And unlike TREADFY, pseudonymous teams, pseudonymous founders, pseudonymous investors, people who are just an avatar, maybe a frog, maybe an anime character, maybe something like that, can be like these really important voices to listen to of the space.

Tracy Alloway (3:47)

Yeah, it's always interesting when you're getting really good crypto information from like a digital picture of an ape or something like that.

Joe Weisenthal (3:56)

Yeah, a drawing of a monkey.

Tracy Alloway (3:57)

Yeah.

Joe Weisenthal (3:58)

Exactly right. All right, well, today we are not going to be speaking to a frog, but we are going to be speaking to maybe a colleague of them. I am very excited. We are going to be speaking to Eva Beylin.

She is the director at The Graph Foundation and she is an eGirl at eGirl Capital, an amorphous crypto investment collective whose members include various handles that people might see at crypto Twitter, like at Loomdart and at Degen Spartan and at CryptoCat VC. I'm just looking at their website and Eva who is not a pseudonymous. So Eva, thank you very much for coming on Odd Lots.