Into... the MetaVerse with Andrew Kiguel

My guest today is my friend Andrew Kiguel, CEO and co-founder of Tokens.com. Tokens.com Corp is a publicly traded company that owns an inventory of DeFi and NFT based cryptocurrencies. Through a process called staking, Tokens.com’s inventory of cryptocurrencies is used to earn additional tokens. In addition, Tokens.com co-owns Metaverse Group, one of the world’s first NFT based, virtual real estate blockchain companies. Through its growing digital asset inventory, Tokens.com provides public market investors with a simple and secure way to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies linked to DeFi and NFTs. Andrew is an accomplished executive with leadership experience in Canadian capital markets, corporate governance and entrepreneurship. He was the co-founder and CEO of Hut 8 Mining, one of the largest publicly listed bitcoin miners in the world. Prior to that, Andrew spent over 18 years at GMP Securities (now Stifel Canada) in investment banking, with his most recent title as a Managing Director and Head of Real Estate Banking. Andrew has extensive experience in providing investment banking services to numerous public and private entities, including raising equity and debt capital in excess of C$3 billion over the last five years. He has also worked in an advisory role on numerous marquee M&A transactions. In our discussion we cover the MetaVerse, Web3, Tokens.com, Proof-of-Stake, and the mindset of traditional investors. We begin our conversation by diving deep into the MetaVerse. Andrew does an excellent job at explaining the value proposition of the MetaVerse and the broader societal impacts he believes will result from our evolution to a more digitally native society. We discuss the recent purchase of $2.5M for a plot of virtual land in Decentraland by the MetaVerse Group. Andrew explains the reasoning behind his company's purchase and why traditional brands will need to have a MetaVerse strategy within the next 24 months. The conversations transitioned to Web3.0 and the evolution of social media. Andrew discusses ho