Letters of Intent

Pankaj Raval (00:00)
Welcome back to another episode of Letters of Intent. I am your co-host, Pankaj Raval, and I'm joined today by my co-host. And we have got a special returning guest as well. But I don't want to spoil the secret yet. So, Sahil, tell us a little bit more about what we're going to be talking about today and who's returning to the show.

Sahil (00:15)
That's right, Pankaj. All right, so for our audience, you are joined by me, Sahil Chaudry, corporate attorney here at Carbon Law Group, and we have a special guest today, Dilveer Vahali, my longtime childhood friend, also known as Captain Vahali. DV, welcome.

Dilveer Vahali (00:29)
Thank you, great to be back.

Sahil (00:31)
So for all of our listeners who don't know, DV is a multi-hyphenate. He started off in traditional finance at Kirkland and today he's on the cutting edge of crypto at CoinFund. He's a pilot, a sailor, a wine entrepreneur. DV, I've known you as a person who lives life on the edge, so it does make sense that you would be drawn to an emerging technology like crypto. But in your words, what draws you to this world of cryptocurrency?

Dilveer Vahali (00:57)
Sahil, you've always, like we were talking about, been a great hype man and always great to kind of see some of the things I'm doing through your eyes because it doesn't sound, it doesn't feel that exciting, on a day to day basis. you're right, it is. So what drew me to crypto? It's a lot more boring than it sounds, but I guess, sometimes you have these things, innately in you. I've always loved technology. Like since a young age, I was, doing the puzzle computers on my own. Like, hey, I've

I'm always an annoying guy who has Alexa connected to everything in our house. And so I think it's that same kind of love of tech. it's mixed with finance, it's a easy segue into crypto. The actual story was, after leaving Kirkland, I went to the Chernin Group, which was a growth equity fund, and they were in the consumer space.

Chernin group decided to raise a crypto fund, right? To invest in startups that were essentially doing consumer things on blockchain. And so we were looking at like NFT startups and digital art galleries and stuff like that. And going from this like very traditional Kirkland, to LBOs

It was kind

of a very interesting path. But what I liked about it is that it really felt like a maturing industry that needed professionals and seasoned professionals to kind of bring that traditional finance into this. And attorneys are, as you guys know, usually very risk averse. And so the folks who were kind of, I guess, trickling in here

of had this sense of adventure, And of like this new industry. And I really liked that. I thought there was like these new rules we were creating. You're literally creating new markets. You're figuring things out on the fly. It was a little different than traditional finance where, these things have been in play for decades, right? And while you make impacts on the edges, crypto to me seemed like a place, especially as a deal attorney, where

you could really make big deals upfront and really precedent setting deals. And so I really liked that opportunity. think in crypto, we really make the market for how you do things.

Sahil (02:54)
So why do you think that a company like Chernin, which is in traditional media, was interested in diving into something like crypto?

Dilveer Vahali (03:02)
I good at type businesses, right?

So I think crypto in 2021 was all the rage. And there was a lot of interest back then in creating consumer businesses and brands rails. there was things like buying property in the you had literal real estate brokers who would broker property sales in like these virtual worlds and things like that. And these were getting

really big following And it was almost like a perfect fit for TCG because they really understood branding, consumer type businesses. I think that's why a very logical step for them to make that move. When I think things hit the fan in also was the first to go. And that's what I like about my current position at CoinFund is like we

are much broader in crypto and blockchain, looking at everything from consumer to also fundamentals, infrastructure type companies. Anything that has an access to crypto and blockchain. first taste and the reason I got into it was at TCG and TCG's into crypto. And that's how started thinking about this whole world.

Pankaj Raval (04:16)
So, yeah, DV, I want to jump into like deal making a little bit. But before I do that, I'm actually just personally fascinated by the crypto world and kind of the rise and fall and perhaps ebbs and flows of this world. Because, yeah, like you said, you couldn't go anywhere without hearing about NFTs Bitcoin in 2001 or 2002. you couldn't go anywhere really in 2020 anyways. you I mean, online.

Dilveer Vahali (04:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

No. Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say

think you meant 2021, not 2001. 2001. If you're investing in Bitcoin in 2001, you're like. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Pankaj Raval (04:41)
Yeah.

Sahil (04:41)
Yeah.

Pankaj Raval (04:44)
Oh yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I'd have my own island right now. But no, know, in

Sahil (04:46)
You wouldn't be talking to us.

Yeah.

Pankaj Raval (04:55)
all the rage. Everyone was talking about Gary Vee, was known for promoting whatever he feels like. But like with the loudest voice, NFTs. But, like, now we it's not, AI is kind of replaced as the hot term today. But I'm wondering,

Dilveer Vahali (04:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Pankaj Raval (05:07)
Do you still see that market growing or do you see it's going to be leveling out? Like what do you think the future looks like for your Bitcoin blockchain crypto?

Dilveer Vahali (05:15)
Yeah. So as somebody in the industry, my answer is 100%. I see it going to them to the moon, you not promoting any single company or anything like that here. this is not financial advice. I should say financial or legal advice. Right. Yeah. This is not financial or legal advice. Yeah, exactly.

Pankaj Raval (05:19)
yes.

Sahil (05:21)
Yeah.

Pankaj Raval (05:24)
course.

Sahil (05:27)
Yeah. This is not legal advice, right? This isn't any kind of advice. Why are you even listening? Yeah. There's no education. This is just entertainment.

Pankaj Raval (05:32)
This is this is entertainment. This entertainment. Take it for what you will.

Dilveer Vahali (05:40)
I sometimes, and this is a personal thing, have an issue with the word crypto because nowadays when you say crypto, people think of gambling. They think of these currencies and meme coins. What I think of this industry, I think of a very powerful technology and that's I think what will happen is that blockchain will underlie a lot of different things in our lives.

And I'll give you a few examples of those. And it'll just make things easier. And folks will be is cool. Like this got simpler. But they won't necessarily understand that it's on crypto or blockchain rails. We can get deeper into other examples, but like one of my favorite, for example, is real estate, right? Imagine if you were able to buy and sell real estate or your own home with a few clicks, right?

Pankaj Raval (06:21)
Mm-hmm.

Dilveer Vahali (06:29)
Like right now, if I think about the process, I think of, want to sell my house. I then list it with a real estate broker. then find a buyer for the house. And then we sign a purchase agreement. And then I have an escrow company and then a title company for them kind of telling the chain of title is correct and ensuring that whole process. then

When we come to I say all the conditions are met and escrow company is physically taking the cash, it's paying out the bank and then we're going to the city with microfiche film and getting a title and then very manual. Let's say 50 years in the future, hopefully sooner than that, let's say that our home titles exist on blockchain.

which is this immutable ledger. That's spread of different computers worldwide. So now we have a verified chain of title digitally. And let's say I want to sell my home to Sahil for 10 bucks. We come up with the pricing. that is still probably pretty traditional. But instead of signing a paper and then your broker saying, you didn't sign this part or this part, it's all digital.

a smart contract. And then Sahil comes in, he has an inspection requirement, he has loan contingencies. But when he checks all those boxes, this smart contract itself, it's just computer programming, is taking the capital from Sahil's wallet and taking the title from wallet, And it's exchanging them. And what's kind of amazing about it is cut out all those middlemen, you cut out

Pankaj Raval (07:55)
Hmm.

Dilveer Vahali (07:59)
your title insurance and your escrow, the transaction costs are less. The timing is quicker. And look, I understand there's, are probably real estate professionals who are like, well, there's this, this, and this, and there's things that you're missing. And I, and I get that. But at the end of the day, you can understand how this type of technology can really be, beneficial in making things quicker and more accurate and cheaper to do. And so.

Pankaj Raval (08:12)
You

Mm.

Dilveer Vahali (08:22)
Those are the types of things I love these kind of real world examples because I think when we talk about crypto, we talk and Ethereum and meme coins and things like that, which is also a huge part of it. But these real use cases, I think, are great.

Pankaj Raval (08:37)
Absolutely.

So, ⁓ DV, that's really fascinating, you and I appreciate you kind of explaining that to us because, I think it is, it's a complex I tried reading a white paper on Bitcoin once and I think I fell asleep, halfway through. So it not like...

Dilveer Vahali (08:38)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Pankaj Raval (08:50)
claim to fame, but I want to understand this and it is a fascinating And now I want to shift a little bit to I think, financing, we work with lot of startups, and you've worked with startups, we're working on startups, and startup world, but I know, like, we hear a lot about VC firms startups raising money through VC. But cryptos, I think, approach it a little bit different way. Can you tell us a little bit more about how cryptos approach finance and raising money versus, a traditional SaaS startup?

Dilveer Vahali (09:11)
Yeah.

Yeah. So I think there's a lot of overlap, But deal making, I think in crypto, is about people as much as it's about the documents. So when I'm sitting across from a founder in crypto, they're not, thinking totally in terms of securities laws or LP returns, they're building something that can actually run without them, on blockchain. So a lot of my work is almost like translation work and trying to bridge this gap between this.

DeFi kind of ethos and the discipline that comes with institutional capital without kind of sacrificing us being founder friendly. So what that kind of means, right, is in traditional finance, we all kind of know the game, right? It's you have pure equity. You have like, do I want a board seat? What's the option pool like? And there's certain, checklists.

Add to that in crypto, this whole thing of tokens, And what are tokens and is that a way for the company to gain additional revenue? Do I need a piece of that? As an attorney, I'm thinking where else can revenue accrue to? Where can profits come have kind of gone in and out of vogue, to be honest. In the beginning, I think companies, every company wanted a token for

sometimes not for a realistic reason. And I think the way that we view it now is that we absolutely understand that tokens are a novel financial instrument. But we definitely want some critical thinking around why a founder or why a company needs a token before they launch one. So we might ask for things in our deals, which you wouldn't have in traditional finance, like, hey, we a retail right over your ability to launch a token.

Pankaj Raval (10:36)
Mm-hmm.

Dilveer Vahali (10:44)
right? Because we want to make sure there's reasoning for it. We want to make sure it's done right. want to make sure that securities laws are being followed because this is an evolving technology and we want to make sure investors are still covered. So things like that would be very different, right? And then the biggest part of it is, do we just want tokens? Do we just want equity? That's going to be the biggest difference, I think, between traditional finance deals. Often, most often where we end up is we have an equity deal with a token

Pankaj Raval (10:44)
Mm.

Dilveer Vahali (11:10)
side letter token warrant saying if you ever launch a token, we get a part of that, right? And that's kind of where we usually up. We look at like that torrent token, structure as sometimes it can be a path to earlier liquidity, right? Because they're, these liquid instruments that are, are trading because there's a lot of

interesting that folks are doing with tokens and there's a need for them as well.

Pankaj Raval (11:33)
Yeah, it's interesting. I would love to like, ask your opinion on this real world situation where, the hawk tuah coin, the hawk tuah that woman that became famous, and then she issued a coin. I don't know if you're familiar with it. But I know she got in some trouble. If you were advising her, what would you have said to her early on with this?

Dilveer Vahali (11:39)
Yeah, That's cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, those are examples of meme coins. There's nothing backing them. It's more like a collectible. And so I don't know the details of why she got in trouble, it probably had to do with the way that they were promoting it and things like that. there are steps you can take, even if you're issuing a meme coin, of making sure you do the promotions correctly, the way that you issue it is correct.

Pankaj Raval (12:02)
Yeah, I believe so.

Dilveer Vahali (12:12)
Basically, there was frankly like this detente, I think in the industry of like, if you do it this way, this is going to be like the gold standard. We still don't know what's going to happen. that is changing now, I think with the current laws that are coming into place.

Sahil (12:24)
So it does feel like we're in the wild west right now. The regulatory landscape is not black and white. You're in a gray area. at the same time, if we look at, let's say, American history, that's when fortunes are made, is when there is some kind of gray area.

How do you think about, we, being M&A attorneys working in traditional finance, we are familiar with an equity stack. We're familiar with options, equities. familiar with what looks like a security and what isn't a security. And in this case, you're talking about, I guess, a new technology, a new infrastructure. But when we're talking about crypto, we're talking about, for example, tokens.

What is the regulatory landscape right now? What is regulated by the SEC? What is outside of those current regulations? How do you think about that as an attorney since you're the one who's navigating the risk?

Dilveer Vahali (13:12)
it's a great question, right? And I think it's one that we like, we constantly evolve, which is different than traditional finance where you have, court opinions, you have very clear laws, you have SEC guidance. This is constantly evolving. I think we're in a different regulatory environment today than we were even two or three years ago. You have a much friendlier CFTC and SEC.

The current head of the CFTC was somebody we even used to work with at a law firm. It's folks that know the industry lot better. We have always, the attorneys in the industry, I'm pretty sure I speak for everyone when I say we've never thought that we don't need any regulation. The issue was that we were being forced into this securities laws box, which would have severely curtailed

I think a lot of the crypto could bring. So now you see that changing, right? The first, I think earlier last year you had the Genius Act The Genius Act was called the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins. So US stablecoins you can think of as like digital dollars, right? And we started getting some clarity around using stablecoins, right? And

Recently, you have the CFTC and SEC issuing a guidance on tokens, right, where they've created five token categories. Three of them, that they lay out like meme coins, for example, they say are not securities, right, specifically. One of the categories around stable coins, they say it's fact specific. And then last category around kind of like digitized versions of stocks will always be a security.

So this is the first time we're getting clarity kind of like that from the SEC. There's still, I think, questions that remain around the interpretation and the framework, which we think will be resolved by further rulemaking and things like that. But it removes a lot of meaningful uncertainty those of us in the ecosystem. And then we are really looking forward to legislation that's currently kind of working its way through, which is called the Clarity Act.

which will add to these designations even foundation to some of the token concepts.

Sahil (15:14)
So you've mentioned stable coins. What are stable coins and what's the difference between stable coins and the other coins?

Dilveer Vahali (15:20)
So stable coins generally are backed by actual what we call like fiat currency. So you have a hundred million US dollars, then you have a hundred million USDT or USDC, our famous ones, right? And what it's saying is like, look, we have an actual treasury of this stuff. These stable coins or like digital dollars are actually backed.

by dollars that we're holding. So it's not something that should really fluctuate. It's usually pegged to a fiat currency. And it's becoming a great way to transact because the rails that stablecoins use, cheaper to send people money and quicker, especially doing international deals and things like that.

Sahil (16:00)
I know we were having a conversation about tether and circle. And I mean, these are companies now that have huge market caps. circle is now a publicly traded company that is issuing a stable coin.

Dilveer Vahali (16:07)
Yeah.

Sahil (16:13)
And you're talking about, I think, a market cap north of $18 billion. I was really floored. I actually, I feel like such a Luddite so behind on what's happening. But a company that commands that kind of market power is something we definitely need to understand. I mean, it's changing the face of currency.

Dilveer Vahali (16:13)
Yes.

100%. And as you're talking, this isn't something we have prepared, but we're just kind of Googling, who are the largest stablecoin issuers? So you can see here, Tether, of April 2026, had $180 billion worth of supply. is the second largest issuer. Let's see how big they are. Or here, let's look at this chart.

Sahil (16:43)
Wow. Wow.

Dilveer Vahali (16:51)
I mean, these are saying fiat backstable coins. So fiat currency backstable coins, like we're saying, which are backed by real world

Sahil (16:58)
But this feels like a total financial revolution. This is the next era of a creation of new currencies.

Dilveer Vahali (17:05)
Yeah, and this is I think what was happening with Bitcoin and Ethereum. They're kind of their own currencies, right? They're backed by essentially the work and the users and the trust that folks have in those currencies. Stablecoins are by actual dollars, Not all stablecoins, the dollar-based stablecoins are backed by actual dollars. So you can see here it says like issuers of fiat-backed stablecoins have a reserve funding of real world assets.

So an issuer might hold them $100 million to support 100 million stablecoins And that peg is supported. So of course the dollar can go up and down, just like that, this USDC or USDT would go up and down. But the, like we were talking market is massive. Let's USDC market cap. So this is the second largest issuer, right?

the market capitalization of the company. So just the issuer is almost $80 billion. And it has this one-to-one USD PEG.

Sahil (17:51)
Wow.

Pankaj Raval (17:54)
Wow.

Wow, that's incredible.

Dilveer Vahali (17:57)
So

just as like an interesting thing, right? Because we don't realize the scale of some of this stuff.

Pankaj Raval (18:04)
as opposed to to sell my Bitcoin, I would sell it on exchange, but then there has to be a buyer of that. Is that right? At that price?

Dilveer Vahali (18:03)
in

Yeah. Yeah.

yes, exactly. Right. again, it's based on what the market is for Bitcoin. It's not being backed by real world assets in the same way. Yeah.

Pankaj Raval (18:18)
Right, right. This

is interesting. It's fascinating. Yeah.

Sahil (18:22)
So one thing,

DV, that we were talking about kind of offline was how frictionless these coins are in terms of, for example, if you have to make an international payment. Currently, you might have to wait three to five days. It could take more than a week sometimes to see the funds actually in your account. There are SWIFT codes. There's all kind of friction. So is the valuation that we're seeing, are these massive valuations because there's speculation that these coins are

Dilveer Vahali (18:31)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Sahil (18:47)
going to fundamentally change finance and make it frictionless? Is the value related to the kind of railroads you mentioned there are blockchain railroads that are being built as kind of financial infrastructure? Like what accounts for these massive valuations?

Dilveer Vahali (19:01)
I think usage, right? You're not getting market caps like these if they don't have users actually using this stuff day in and day out. What we were chatting about, I think at some point was, we were trying to make an investment in the UK in a European company. And it almost took us like three weeks to get the funds where they needed to be.

And it's sending it, this bank is talking to that bank, they're making sure this other bank whole process just took forever. Whereas if you're using USDC, you send me your wallet address. To get the wallet and things like that, there is a KYC process generally. Because that is part of the larger issue, I think some folks have with At this point, you have those KYC regulations to get the wallet.

And so once you're KYC and you have the wallet, it's me taking your wallet address, I'll make a test transaction. Let's say want to send $10 million. I test it first by saying, hey, I sent you a dollar. Did you get it? You confirm you got the dollar or the amount. And then I send the rest of the money and it's over blockchain rails. And it's a much quicker, frankly, an easier process that way than we felt like sending a wire and having to deal with all these various issues.

I think the reason you're seeing market caps like this is frankly, it is the way of the future. I think it is the way that folks will finance things in the future.

Sahil (20:13)
Yeah, I watched

this ⁓ documentary by Neil Ferguson called The Ascent of Money, where he talks about how the original paper notes were IOUs so that merchants in different cities could exchange goods. And they were able to

the banks were actually benches of merchants who had relationships where they would honor a certain IOU and also that the original bonds were war bonds. So like Florence, when they needed to go to war and they needed to raise money, they were issuing bonds to the public. And then that set the floor on interest rates because that's the, you have to beat that for it to be worth it because the government is willing to pay you that amount.

if you are willing to loan your money to it. that the bond market kind of set the floor there. And that financial innovation of like, Florence and other Italian city states that set the tone for currency

even to today. So is this kind of the next revolution we'll one day talk about paper notes as a thing of the past, but this is all happening, this is going to start happening through wallets and will governments start issuing tokens? Where do we go from here? What does the future hold for crypto?

Dilveer Vahali (21:24)
Again, like my personal take is that, currency is powerful of a lever for like governments to let go of, right? I don't think that and I think that's why there's been some of this, let's say, regulatory hostility towards some of these like currencies popping up because currency regulation a massive

function of the government, right? And we entrust them to do that. So there are these things called like Govcoins, which are like government issued, again, like digital dollars that are backed by like, it doesn't exist in the US, but like, that would be backed by like the Treasury. I mean, I could see that being a thing. I could see stable coins where the US continues to issue fiat currency, and then you have these other issuers that convert them into these digital dollars.

I can see those definitely being, I mean, we're already seeing it look at the market and more relied upon as forms of value transfer.

Sahil (22:16)
And mean, there's another major transformation happening right now with AI. How is AI affecting cryptocurrency and the market?

Dilveer Vahali (22:26)
So, it's an interesting I think that when folks are allocating investment dollars, emerging technologies is like a bucket for them. And rightfully so, has the attention and it's the new hot thing now.

So a lot of the dollars that I think emerging is taking, they're going to AI. So crypto has taken a little bit of a backseat, I think, in terms of where a lot of the investment dollars are flowing. For us, though, I think that's a good thing, right? Because I think what it's done is it's kind of shed this FOMO and crazy valuations of a few years ago. I think the industry itself is kind of maturing, right? A few years ago, I think

valuations were the chain. I think people were asking for really off-market terms. But now you're seeing a much more thoughtful approach, especially to taking in institutional capital that founders one of those things where you see that the industry has come a long AI is having its moment, right? The valuations are crazy. frankly, people throwing money

that has like a dot AI or kind of an AI nexus. And so, happens there. I think it's an amazing technology and it's something, I use almost, on a daily basis.

Sahil (23:26)
Yeah.

As part I was hoping you could describe without getting into anything confidential, I was hoping you could describe your work at CoinFund and what your day-to-day looks and what kind of deals and broad strokes you're looking at and how the regulatory landscape affects how you think about.

risk and investments as well as technological landscape. I mean, we're talking about AI and other technologies, and media. For example, we're seeing this merging of worlds like OpenAI buying a live show, a Twitter stream show called TBPN. And you're seeing this merging of AI, media,

How does that play a role when you're looking at these deals? Are you seeing the ground shift beneath your feet? What is your kind of basic philosophy when you're looking at deals?

Dilveer Vahali (24:21)
think of myself here at CoinFund is like the deal execution department. So have an investment team that goes out and sources deals and like they're experts in the industry. They are the ones that kind of figure out what direction we want to make investments in. And then they'll come back and

tell me about it and they'll say like, we want through X amount of dollars at X valuation. And I say, that's great, but let's think about all the other things that we can ask for or that we thinking through. Like, do we want a board seat? Do we want information rights? Do we want pro rata rights? Do we want a token warrant?

Are there any kind of sister or brother companies, right? Or tokens that like the company's intellectual property will be used for. So we kind of sit down and have this big conversation, right? And then through that, I end up like crafting a term sheet, right? And saying, all right, this is high level, an investment we want to make and here are kind of the terms that we want to make the investment on. And so that term sheet goes over and we spend a little bit of time

talking about it with the founders. And this is where some of that translation work comes in, we were talking about of the most interesting thing in crypto, it's like that translation between founders who this very genuinely new thing investors who need that framework of returns then this legal system that's still trying to catch up. a lot of my day to is that. And then

Once we have a term sheet that's signed, it's shepherding that into actual investment and kind of closing the investment and the deal. So I take it from that term sheet stage all the way through like our dollars going in, which can be a lot more complicated than it sounds sometimes. On the flip side, I also help with kind of our portfolio company day-to-day management. We have over, I think, a hundred PortCos at this point and,

People have legal just want a common sense take on things. They want introductions. So I do a lot of that when we're thinking about next steps with a lot of the portfolio companies. We'll have those conversations with the investment team. So all of that stuff kind of comes into my lap day to day.

Sahil (26:27)
Did you have

to pull some concepts from traditional finance invent new ideas with your work with crypto? I mean, for a lot of this, there probably aren't precedents.

Dilveer Vahali (26:34)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Absolutely. And that's what I kind of loved about it. But as you guys, I'm sure know like, we really have the ability to be creative. And I think as a deal attorney, that is where our power lies. Because the more creative you are, the more you can have both sides achieve the goals that they need to achieve. So like these very customized solutions.

Pankaj Raval (26:55)
Thank

Dilveer Vahali (27:00)
that's one thing I like about crypto. I'm not going to say I'm the first person to think about some of these things, but they are very novel concept. For example, when we're thinking about tokens, if I'm talking to my team members and we're like, where's the revenue going to flow? A lot of times with startups, we don't know. Is it going to be a token company? Is it going to be an equity company? And so we'll draft these agreements. We're like, okay, they have a C Corp right now, right? So we'll invest in the C Corp. We'll get traditional equity protections. And then we'll have this document called a token warrant, right? Which it says,

that if you ever launch a token, we get the same percentage in that token supply as we do the equity supply. And then there's these negotiations over, but should you get the percentage that you own of the company at the time of the investment or at the time we launched the token? Because maybe you've sold down, right? So maybe you sold down. Maybe there's been other investors that came in. So your 10 % is now worth 8%.

Sahil (27:42)
Mmm.

Can you dilute a warning? Right.

Pankaj Raval (27:49)
Mm-hmm.

Dilveer Vahali (27:56)
And then these are conversations we have with the company. Now, the other interesting thing is tokens typically, once they're launched, you can't be diluted because there's a fine, unlike shares, there's not, there's a token supply generally, right? So you can't expand and contract the supply. there's, you know, so when you have 10 % of the token supply, that means I have 10%, you know, usually forever, right? Like there's, there are certain cases where you can inflate things.

And so then there's this debate of, okay, but like equity, you're going to keep getting diluted. like, now let's say the values and the tokens, but tokens, you're never going to get diluted. So should you have to put in more money? you know, when we launched the token, like these are the types of conversations and negotiations like we're having, like you should, should it be a dilutable or non dilutable token warrant, you know, for example.

Pankaj Raval (28:44)
so, you know, I'm fascinated about the future. I don't know if you guys chatted too much about like what the next maybe five, 10, 15 years looks like, but like in crypto, you know, where do you see the most opportunity for, I know we talked a little about real estate, where else do you see the disruption happening?

And maybe you order some insights for people maybe to look out for as also we kind of see this marrying of marriage of like AI and crypto and how are those going to work together?

Dilveer Vahali (29:07)
Yeah.

It's really interesting. Like the AI crypto stuff. I mean, the things that are being developed at this point in time. Like I think there's this famous quote of like, there's no, there's no knowns, there's known unknowns, and then there's unknown unknowns. Right. And that's the coolest thing I think about like all of these technologies is like, you can provide the framework and then people are just creating, right? A lot of the like crypto X AI stuff we're seeing right now are like,

Pankaj Raval (29:28)
Yeah.

Dilveer Vahali (29:33)
people are creating these AI agents, right, to go do things for them like calendar calls to, do some of their work and things like that. So you're also at some point going to be giving these agents access to, some of your finances, right.

I even think about, like we were talking about in the beginning, we have a small winery, I can imagine there being a world in which instead of selling bottles of wine, you're selling wine NFTs, like pictures of wine bottles. And I know that I own the wine because I have a verified ownership on the blockchain. And I know that the wine came from the winery and there's wine fraud out there, right? Again, just as an example.

Pankaj Raval (29:57)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dilveer Vahali (30:10)
I can trace the ownership back to the winery on the blockchain. And now like you have collectors who buy and sell big portfolios of wine, rather than actually selling, physical bottles, they're selling NFTs, which are redeemable from the winery itself for the bottle whenever you want to drink it. ⁓ So now you have verified ownership, you have a wine being stored correctly by the winery itself. And then the other part of that is,

Pankaj Raval (30:13)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Dilveer Vahali (30:36)
you have the winery that gets the profit along the way. traditionally you sell a bottle of wine, you don't know how it's going to taste in 10 years from now. now suddenly you have the same bottle of wine you sold for a hundred bucks is selling for But because these transfers are happening on the blockchain, you can have a smart contract that says, Hey, every time there's a transfer, like 2 % goes back to the winery. Right. So the winery also profits like the royalty, like as it goes up. And by the way, the same thing exists for like digital art.

Pankaj Raval (30:55)
Mm.

Sahil (30:55)
Wow.

It's like a royalty.

Pankaj Raval (31:03)
Yeah.

Dilveer Vahali (31:03)
And this

was one of the big benefits why you should use digital art or NFTs or smart contracts versus traditional methods. ⁓

Sahil (31:11)
Wow.

Just imagine that, I mean, you could, if you invent something or you've created some kind of art, I mean, you're talking about that's generational wealth where through the blockchain, you could have a royalty that just automatically gets passed down into a wallet.

Dilveer Vahali (31:21)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But I mean, look, these things don't change hands a lot. don't know. mean, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But at the end of the day, like, it would be great if the original artist or the original winemaker, whoever they are, like could, you know, profit off of, creation becoming bigger and bigger in the future. Yeah.

Pankaj Raval (31:42)
Yeah.

Sahil (31:42)
I also

love that you said I have a small winery. You can just say winery. That's like when people say I went to school in Boston. Okay, we know it's Harvard. But speaking of which, let's give a shout out to your winery. Let's hear a little bit about that brand and that concept, yeah.

Dilveer Vahali (31:46)
Exactly. I wish. ⁓

Pankaj Raval (31:47)
Hehehehehe

Hehehehehe

Dilveer Vahali (32:00)
Yeah. yeah, sure.

Pankaj Raval (32:03)
Yeah.

And where can we the NFT? Where can we buy the NFT for your winery? Yes.

Dilveer Vahali (32:04)
Yeah, I'm not, you know, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Sahil (32:08)
We're, I mean, we're big wine fans. mean, D.V.,

I think you know that about me. I love sitting down and drinking some Vahali vines.

Dilveer Vahali (32:13)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Pankaj Raval (32:17)
Next podcast, we got to do some tasting notes on podcasts of wine. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Dilveer Vahali (32:18)
Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I mean, look, it was one of those things total like serendipity. we started going to Paso Robles, which is halfway between here and SF because my older sister had kids and my parents were going up to see them a lot. So they'd stop there. they love the area. They love the wine that comes out of there. And so

Sahil (32:20)
That's a great, we should do the next one as a tasting. Yeah.

Dilveer Vahali (32:43)
you know, they ended up purchasing some land and starting Vahali, Vahali vineyards, right? Which is my last name. The first batch that we planted, we kind of were thinking through varietal we wanted to plant, And my mom was like, look, in Indian cooking, you always have this, this concept of the Tharga, right? Which is like that onion garlic type of base.

she said, look, Petit Syrah is the base of a lot of great wines that I like because it gives this like complexity and heft. She's like, why don't we plant Petit Syrah? So it's like the Tharke of any good wine blend. And so we planted all Petit Syrah, which has done great for us. the goal was just to kind of sell it, right? And it essentially pay for itself. And we'd have this beautiful home and vineyard up in Paso. And I think 2020 or 2021,

came around and there's a big glut of grapes in the market we decided that we would actually produce some of them and we had a second vineyard by then. We'd actually produce some of the wines and the wine got great results. I think we got like 93 points on wine enthusiasts for our Petite Syrah. We started producing a cab and a Grenache and now we even have ⁓ a ⁓ Rosé, a Grenache Rosé.

Called Gullabo and so we've kind of and then we leaned into the South Asian heritage. So my mom paints all the labels And we have about seven or eight different varietals and we have a lot of fun with it It's definitely a family thing and you know, we sit together during Thanksgiving and we we have like the great The straight-up varietals and we kind of blend and do a blind tasting and choose which one's our favorite And then kind of produce that the next year. And so Yeah, it's been fun

Pankaj Raval (34:17)
Amazing. Amazing.

Sahil (34:18)
DV,

next time we need to do this over some Vahali vineyards. I think we could do an episode on each of the things that you do. I think for today, we're gonna let our audience digest all of this information about crypto. I know I feel like I learned a little bit more.

Pankaj Raval (34:23)
We're gonna do that. Yes. Yes.

Dilveer Vahali (34:23)
100%. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sahil (34:38)
I'm a little bit more knowledgeable about this industry. mean, it's something very important. It's affecting all of our lives. I mean, you have multi-billion dollar market caps now for publicly traded companies that are

issuing these coins. So it's critical to understand, you know, we can't run from change, we need to understand it. And I know that's what this conversation has done for me, I ready to explore this topic and subject ⁓ in much more detail now. So thank you so much for joining us. Do you have any kind of

comments or thoughts, anything that you feel like we missed about this industry or anything that you want our audience to know about crypto as they kind of venture off and learn more about the industry?

Dilveer Vahali (35:14)
Yeah, the only thing I'd say is, look I think we scratched the surface and some of the bigger things today. I think people are often intimidated by it. And I think the industry needs to do a much better job of being ⁓ user friendly. And I think we're getting there. And it's absolutely not an overwhelming thing. It's one of those where you start with, you know, making a small investment in coins or, looking at some NFTs. And definitely

believe that, given the volatility, even over the last decade, you know, you can see that the industry is here to stay. So it's not, it's not going anywhere.

Pankaj Raval (35:48)
Yeah, that sounds

fantastic. And I really want to thank you again for sharing all your insight. you you have a wealth of insight on the legal side and as well as on the on the operational side looking at this kind of new and emerging industry.

Other people, believe, I mean, like it or not, this is going to be the future of trade, just because we're going to be working in a digital world more and more. And I think people need to be ready for that and learn about it and educate themselves. And thank you again for providing some of that education and really great insights on this ⁓ new and emerging industry.

Sahil (36:22)
For everyone out there listening in our carbon community, thank you so much for joining us again on another episode of Letters of Intent. We look forward to seeing you next week. Stay tuned and keep on making your deals.