Felix Mago is the self-styled “Grandpa” of the crypto space. The Dash Next and Dash Thailand co-founder was blogging for a German tech outlet when Bitcoin’s rise in 2014 - from $1, to $10, then $100 - prompted him to write Das Bitcoin-Handbuch: The Bitcoin Handbook.
Felix points out how, in just 10 years, the enthusiasm and belief in the sector has grown:
“I remember my first meetup. There were exactly six people in the room. Every single one of them wearing big glasses like me. And now we're in 2019, I see again around twenty to forty per cent of the people will wear a suit!”
He sees strong parallels between the Internet boom and the crypto hype period, where “everybody wanted to have a share of it”, and spoke about alternative solutions for crypto earning which go beyond speculative trading.
Felix discusses the “beautiful ecosystem” in Thai’s tourism industry, where restaurants, hotels, tour guides and even personal trainers come together to provide a perfect holiday experience -- and how 30 million annual tourists with varying currency needs provide a perfect use case for crypto payments.
While Felix waxes lyrical on the concept of DAOs, he suggests that companies could start decentralizing innovation on a smaller scale. One such example could be in the form of innovation platforms where ideas and projects are pushed through via a voting system, instead of bottlenecking at the management level.
He also shows us his Dash-branded card for South Korean national public transport, international transport in Hong Kong, Singapore and possibly Thailand, with Visa and Mastercard functionality built-in.
Further topics include chicken and egg problems in crypto payments, $20-dollar burgers, tapping into Thai tourism, gambling and cannabis. It’s an incredibly jam-packed Episode 12 of the Talkonomics Podcast!
“If you talk to your mom when you come home, probably she doesn't own Bitcoin right? She might not know what you do and what Bitcoin is.” -- Felix Mago, Co-founder Dash Next, Dash Thailand
“Personally, I would just remain in business because I'm German, but I'm generally skeptic, and at the end of the day it boils down to real business.”