SPEAKER_02 0:03

Welcome to the Future Ventures podcast on Scaling McClelly. Today's guest is Grant Blazedl, the co-founder and CEO of Copernic Space, a company building the financial infrastructure for the space economy. Grant is a serial entrepreneur and a blockchain pioneer. He previously co-founded CoinForm, a leading analytics and compliance platform in crypto. Now he's focused on something far bigger, transforming space from a government-dominated domain into a liquid investable asset class. Through tokenization and fractional ownership, Copernic space is enabling investors, brands, and individuals to participate in everything from lunar payloads to satellite data, thus unlocking what could become the largest new market in human history. Welcome to the podcast. So why don't we just start with kind of like how did you end it? Like, what was your journey into where you are today and how did you end up starting uh Copernic?

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Sorry, I cut out there real quick. I don't know from from whose end it was. So I think I I think I got the gist of the question as as far as my journey of how I got into that. That's right. Yeah. Uh yeah, well, I you know, we can start on on kind of both ends, the the blockchain and the space end. Uh I've been doing startups since my late teens and was originally focused on digital media platforms. I'm out of the LA ecosystem originally. And uh I always viewed blockchain inherently as kind of like economic infrastructure tech. Um so uh, you know, I started with the digital media aspect, putting music on it, etc. Um, and on the flip side, um my journey in space is I'm third generation space. So my grandfather built the original space program in Poland and was partially responsible for shooting what was then what would be the fourth country up into space, shooting an astronaut up who was originally his student. So these kind of two worlds combined also because this is the first time in blockchain's history where we can implement it as economic infrastructure from the beginning point from its foundation into a new asset class and market. I think the big challenge with blockchain has been it's like, okay, how do I uh penetrate and in scale become infrastructure for markets and asset classes that have decades of legacy systems, their own standards and processes, et cetera, whereas space doesn't really have that yet. And uh I think it's actually one of the biggest opportunities of this century overall, uh, but especially for blockchain technology to have what's going to be, in my opinion, the largest asset class of the future be inherently uh on-chain and take advantage of all of the benefits and kind of solution offer that this technology provides. So it's not something where I'm kind of abstractly trying to shove crypto up into space because they're both kind of these, you know, frontier hyped sort of markets, but it's a very pragmatic uh approach towards it, actually. Who owns space? Uh it's a good question. I think actually one of the standards that's pretty revolutionary that we're bringing to the table is just the standard of what represents like verified ownership of space assets, assets in space. You know, the biggest question I get around that is the moon, which is a little bit more complex. So, for example, you can own private infrastructure assets on the moon. You can't own the moon itself yet. Whereas we have partners that are working, for example, on like mining rights for the moon. So this is something that's very exciting, and again, it's something that doesn't even come once in a lifetime, it comes once every few centuries, just like I compare what we're doing at Copernic space to kind of the first era of exploration, um, which you know, new ship technology, the physical infrastructure, of course, made going to the Americas and Asia much you know faster, safer, more possible, but really it was financial innovation and creating standards in the marketplace for the assets out of those voyages, which is like the Dutch East India Company, which became the most valuable company ever, that more of what we represent on this end of things.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

Understood. And so are we bound to see like a bit of a rash in terms of people venturing to space, people or or companies and people venturing uh to the moon claiming assets? Is it is it a matter of like putting a claim uh or staking a claim on the moon and saying, well, this is my plot of land?

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Uh I we're we're quickly heading to that. And and remember, like the US is obviously the biggest player when it comes to it, especially from the private market. But then on the flip side, you have China, who you know, the state is able to make very aggressive centralized decisions a lot easier, you know, kind of behave a little bit more like we did in the 60s, which is like, screw it, we're gonna put 3% of our GDP into doing this, right? Uh, and that's what goes. And as you know, they don't have much thought consideration for like some sort of international law standard or something for that. Uh, and a lot of people are missing that they're already, in some ways, even more advanced than the US is in what they're trying to do in orbit or on the moon itself.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

Uh like in the beginning of the conversation, you mentioned that uh this could become the largest asset class. Yeah, what would have to be true? What would have to happen for this to actually become the reality?

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Uh, I to be honest, I think it's a matter of time. You can even look at it in comparison to terrestrial assets. It's like, okay, well, you know, there's already companies that are focused on, you know, landing on asteroids, mining, etc. You know, what the timeline is is we is arguable, right? Um, but you know, just imagine, and I'm sure you've seen the things where it's like there's enough gold or platinum or diamonds on this singular body to, you know, then there's more than we know of on Earth, right? Uh so um really it's it's a matter of time, and again, what kind of economic model and system we we put around it. So, how fast we get there is partially reliant on companies like us uh to turn it into a more accessible, scalable, and liquid market and asset class.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

So you talked about payload, and and and I'm actually originally from Bulgaria, didn't realize that Poland was the fourth nation in space in terms of their capabilities. Um, at the moment, we're at the precipice of the largest IPO in history. Like SpaceX is wildly speculated to uh be listed or go public this year at a 1.5 trillion valuation. I believe 90% of all payload capacity is via SpaceX. Kind of like how do you how do you see like I'd love to get your perspective on SpaceX, and then I would love to get your perspective on payload capacity.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Well, remember, SpaceX is you know, now they're re I would have told you that I would have told you this years ago if you asked me that the focus of SpaceX is gonna change from Mars to the Moon. Moon is the launch pad, like we prove everything on the moon and and the rest comes after it. But remember, they're mainly focused on actually just putting things into orbit. So, for example, when the moon missions land, the private moon missions landed last year, which which we had a payload on one of them. Um, you know, they're just taking these other private companies, whether it's Firefly, Astrobotic, you know, into orbit, and these countries have these companies have to figure out how to actually get to the moon. So, um, but as you know, any market, you probably don't want 90% of capacity sitting within one company, right? So I think again, kind of we don't, you know, a core part of what we're doing, and it's goes all the way back to my grandfather's early works around this concept is kind of like, okay, how do we democratize as much the access, the liquidity, the movement of capital in this market? And it's it's not to, you know, uh to go against SpaceX or anything like that, it's just to empower other companies, entrepreneurs to have uh better access to the commercial market, more scalable access, uh, better access to liquidity, and create also secondary markets for the liquidity providers because that's a big bottleneck in space. It's like, okay, if I even have the privilege of investing into space, which is still very privilege-focused, you know, usually they're not tiny tickets either. Um, like what's my liquidity event timeline? Right. So you can focus on investing in equity in the companies, or which of course we're gonna be doing as well is through the tokenization end. But I think what's the most fascinating thing is investing on the asset infrastructure level, which we tested out with our moon mission one, which is like, okay, how do I invest into an asset, you know, this pay group of payloads versus into a company itself, and that way you can create much more kind of result-based, dynamic secondary markets for investments. But back to your your thing around SpaceX, listen, you know, Bezos getting involved is good, you know, Rocket Lab, all these companies um need to, you know, really compete in the market. I think the big thing people miss around uh Musk in general is that if you take the collection of all his companies together, uh the end goal is a combination of them together that is a full space stack, right? So, you know, you saw SpaceX acquired XAI, right? Okay, so you have intelligence there, right? You have you have the AI element, then you have um Tesla, which is um you know the robotic and the automated transportation, etc. Then you have boring company human settlements on other bodies are not all of them are gonna be above the ground. It's actually protection against radiation, it's a lot better underground. So when you combine all of this, it actually creates a full uh space stack. I think that's kind of the hidden big picture that's behind all this.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Yeah, yeah. I I think I I think a lot of people have covered that ground, but to your point, I don't I don't know how well understood is that what he's trying to create, it's it's intentional and in and is this virtual integration stack of technology. Correct. Um, who it from your perspective, who who's gonna make the money? Is it is if if I if you was to compare this to the California gold rush, is it the people that are prospecting? Is it the people that are selling the picks and shovels?

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Uh kind of like yeah, I you know, I compare it less to like the gold rush. Uh I when when we were creating coin from that gold rush thing came in, and we were the picks and shovels because we were like that, you know, the AML layer, you know, etc. Again, I compare this more to like completely transformative things, first era of exploration, railroads, etc. Um, hard for me to answer that, uh to be honest. Um, all I know is that there's a massive, there's also cultural change that's happening in space where it's moving from you know government reliance, strictly engineer reliance, and it's becoming much more of a dynamic entrepreneurial um sort of uh sort of market. Then you have you know new players coming in that are focused on things that aren't even happening yet, like you know, the data centers and and space sort of aspect. The the big failure, I think, of of space communication-wise over the decades has been is that it has been responsible for a lot of the most important scientific and technological advancements that affect life on Earth, and now that market's scaling. So it's even more so it's gonna be like, okay, the problems we have on Earth are gonna be made by pushing the space economy forward. If is it's is it gonna be the mining company, or is it gonna be the company who's you know selling the parts for the mining thing? Like that's that's to be seen, I think.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

Interesting, interesting. Um so when at least from my perspective, when most foreigners think space, they think hardware, at least kind of like to your point, like we have to build out the infrastructure. Um, but you're building markets. Um like am I understanding correctly that infrastructure is the real bottleneck, and then we need to build out the infrastructure before we can uh uh advance everything else, like you were talking about kind of like to your example, like we gotta lay down the rail tracks before we can do anything else.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Yeah, and it's also the speed of things and who who at the end has uh access and becomes a stakeholder in benefits, right? Like, do we want this to be extremely centralized, high barriers to entry? You know, it's it's almost like look what fintech has done to finance, it's completely changed how how that looks. And we we saw that like with the GameStop, I think it was GameStop, where it's like, oh well, the collective, the collective hive mind of people were just like, hey, we're gonna do this and we'll eat the biggest hedge fund in the day, right? So um, and with space again, we have a unique opportunity in a moment in time to build that infrastructure, the models, the standards completely from zero, pretty much, which changes how it, you know, how the future uh really looks. So I think it's vitally important that people um space communicates better because a lot of people think that space is just like it's Musk, it's Bezos, it's a couple billionaires, and it's governments, whereas there's over 10,000 companies in the space market, but that you, even someone who's watching right now, it's like you can become a stakeholder, a player in space pretty much today. So, like when the space X IPO happens, like there's gonna be loads of capital that wants to get into space. Again, as of right now, it's pretty much I go through selective VCs, which is an extremely privileged thing to become an LP or something like that. Although, you know, through Angel List, there's some things happening around that, or it's uh publicly traded equity, which is what a 10-year event timeline for space companies. What's what's that timeline?

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Um, so I think it definitely takes uh patient capital to build this out.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

It's not like yeah, yeah, and it's it's like um, you know, it's like with quantum. Like I know guys that have been, you know, talking about investing in quantum for you know five, ten years, and just now is like quantum kind of picking up steam to where like is this even a viable uh sort of market around around things. So I think I think it's important to get as many people involved in this as possible because that equals more capital, but it also I don't like the whole, you know, it makes it a more equitable environment in the sense of it's healthier for the market that way as well.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

So let me put this into context. Um, in in the context of Copernic space, is Copernic more like NASDAQ for space, or is it something completely new? Kind of like how would you best describe it in real simple terms?

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Yeah, that's that's a big challenge. You know, I don't the Nasdaq thing as far as like standard setting infrastructure, but we're not playing on just like public, it's not just like public traded equity, etc. It's an inter entire economic stack from the financing end to the commercialization end. Like, for example, right now we're uh this is our second sale with this rocket company. They're um one of the top 10 European rocket companies called Space Forest, where we're tokenizing uh payload space inside as well as certain parts of the outside of the rocket and enabling people to acquire rights to whether it's put their sticker on it, put something inside, and then we authenticate and tokenize the payload assets themselves, and then open up a secondary market for them to trade rights and ownership of those payloads themselves. So we're like full stack circular economy sort of model, uh, versus uh a Nasdaq. So, you know, it's more like you know, Amazon meets Coinbase. I don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

So if you're if you're tokenizing the payload or I guess the the billboard of uh of the external surfers, um the external, uh I think it's easier for people to understand it's like well I'm I'm buying kind of like ad spaces if it's a F1 uh car, like I'm buying a space on on the external side, on the internal side, on the payload capacity, like so you you buying, I don't know, as like I don't know, let's say it's a hundred kilos of payload. Um who then buys from you?

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Well, that's where the fractionalization comes in, right? Which is I think a big thing with space is taking big assets, fractionalizing them down into more accessible ones. Um, so we've had the full range from other space companies to startups to brands, all the way down to you know, individuals sitting in their living room that just always dreamed of putting something in space. And then on top of it, we have the standard of oh, this is your verified ownership of that you did this, right? And is there a secondary market for it? A lot of assets, probably not. Some assets, yes, and that whole sort of standard and and market dynamics need to need to be built.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

Why the need to tokenize, like for example, the the um the the payload? Why couldn't a company or let's say it's a startup go directly to uh space forest and say, hey, I'm looking for this much capacity?

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Yeah, uh business and there's two ends to that. Business in space is extremely archaic, like you wouldn't believe how archaic it is. It's still spreadsheets, emails, it's very hard to do. Uh, and you're also still dealing with engineers a lot of the time. Um, so I think there's just the pure multi-multi-billion dollar need and opportunity into like digitizing and streamlining the business and finance processes uh of space. When it comes to the tokenization end, is like you know, NFTs get a really bad rap, unfairly. I understand why they do, but it's actually the most amazing technology, in my opinion, that that blockchains come out with because I can take assets, make them programmable, I can make them fractionalizable, and I can create secondary markets for it that are work 24-7 and are dynamics. The same reason that whether it's BlackRock or whoever it is are wanting to get into this game is because you can create a completely different sort of market reality around it. Does everything technically would it need to be technology uh tokenizable for them to be able to sell their payload? No, but you're also creating a singular system of trust, asset management, programmability, secondary markets all with within one stack, versus you know, just like what's the big issue in banking? These are all you know, these are all data silos and segmented, fragmented sort of platforms and standards, and yeah it just it doesn't move the way that it should move.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Got it, got it. Um, what um uh kind of like a two-folded question, what prompted you to move into space? I know you're a third generation um um uh I I guess space. Um and and what did you learn from crypto? Um, like I mean, you were one of the founders of Corn Farm, and and how did that shape Copernic?

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Uh well Copernic as an idea is uh pretty much as Old as CoinFrom was so it's from like you know early 2010s, uh if not older. Because my mother and I, my mother's my co-founder as well. She's known as Lady Rocket, she like has her own brand and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 22:13

She's known as Lady What?

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Lady Rocket.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

So a lot of people more people know her than they know me. She's a very bombastic visionary type person.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Um, you know, we were kind of early participants, like on the ground in you know, this new space economy that was privatizing in California. We were going to rocket launches at what was then Vanderburgh Air Force Base, now Space Force Base. Um, so that's you know, this is something that's been accumulating. Really, it was a matter of timing, right? It's like, okay, is blockchain tech mature enough to do something like this? You know, is the space market, you know, mature enough privately to where we can, you know, create actual demand or or or purpose around it. Um, and I would say we were still very early, right? And just now it's you know really starting to you know to snowball. Um, and and to be honest, it's like I'm I'm a partner shareholder um of a sizable music company here in Europe, and I'm co-founder of Tipsy, which is a uh ticketing payments data platform for live events and concerts. And I kind of had this fork in the road where I was like, all right, do I go do this thing that is really fun? You know, I'm very passionate about music. It's what I've done since I was a child. It's a market that's well understood, you know, it's not like I have to convince somebody of ticketing or or anything like that, or do I take on the bigger challenge that is the bigger opportunity and is, I think, quite obviously more important for humanity earth and the future overall. Um so it's you know, it's kind of my personality. My dad told me when I was young, he's like, son, you don't seem to take the easiest routes. So, and and that's the big difference, I think, between like, you know, like the whole startup thing is kind of like convince most people. It's like, yeah, you can be, you know, startup founder, big entrepreneur, and stuff like that. And it's like, I think there's certain just character sets and personalities and types that just have the perseverance and the tolerance to just be abused for years at a time, you know, to get to your get to your end goal, you know. So take you know, take big risks, take big swings. Um, and and again, I just think it's it's like it's not even once in a lifetime this moment that we have a resource basis once every couple centuries to do something like this, and I'm not gonna be alive again to take on something like that, I don't think.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

Yeah, yeah, no, I hear you. Um, I mean, you it you talked about uh um the speed um and that uh space assets are inherently illiquid. How do you create trust? How do you drive pricing, liquidity where um it where non-existor, I mean, we mean not exist is maybe unfair, but it's it's still very much in its nascency.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Uh yeah, for sure. I mean you brought up pricing, like uh a lot of space, a lot of space companies even struggle with like pricing, you know, it's still like a very much government cost plus sort of attitude towards pricing. Yeah, so you know, for us, it's like you need to create a market in the first place to even determine what actual pricing is.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Uh so we're sometimes, you know, most of the time we're a little less focused, worried on creating the supply end. The supply is there, it's building, right? It's more about start and approved demand end outside of the very traditional, you know, select few prime corporations, space or space, but even space companies sometime reach out to me and they're like, Hey, can you help me find this sort of allocation? Um, so uh, you know, again, it's not it's not the smallest challenge in the world, but any industrialist, so to say, right, over time had had this moment, you know, the car, the train, you know, the biggest, the biggest industry. Uh you know what the biggest industry was uh in like 19 in like 1900?

SPEAKER_02 26:31

Uh I don't know. I'm guessing looms, uh textile, no idea, uh print. Whaling. Whaling, okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

For the oil oil was used for kerosene lamps and and all these other other sort of things. Overnight, boom, that disappeared because somebody spent 10 years building up to that sort of moment, right? So I I you know I think that any opportunity of this size takes uh proving over a certain time span. So yeah, I think again back to community. I'm a former CMO, right? So like uh and one of the first jobs I ever had was doing pre-development for NBC Universal and Fox for a project that eventually became Hulu. It wasn't even called Hulu.

SPEAKER_02 27:23

Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Uh kind of the mentor for me during that was a guy called Frank Lunz. He was working um for for both the the studios then. And Frank was known, is known for working with in politics. And I remember always what he says, like it's it's not what you say, it's how you say it. So I think a lot of the work we have is communicating to the market like the value of space, the accessibility of space and what they can do. Sometimes people are like, I'd really like to do something, but I'm not exactly sure what to do. And sometimes it becomes art, sometimes it becomes a brand, sometimes it becomes uh, you know, a company that will start doing research in space because research in space provides results that nothing else on earth can can provide. So it's it's what I call an umbrella market, it's gonna touch everything, and it's already touching everything. I mean, we're using tech that's most of it comes out of space applications originally.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

That's awesome. Um on on the pricing, I'm I'm curiosity here. Um, you talked about it that we have to be over the market. I I completely agree. I mean, it's like price is really a byproduct or the the in-between supply and demand. Um, what's the equivalent of price discovery for what are we talking about? Loader payloads or satellite compute time, or we're talking about uh manufacturing drugs in space. Like what uh like g give me a sense as to how you're thinking about you know getting to price discovery or figuring out what the pricing is.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

All right. Uh so I I think right now, since it's so early in the market, uh for those entities that can, you charge them a premium. Okay. I think space companies undervalue what they're doing most of the time. Okay. Okay. Uh but when it comes to smaller players, you try to adjust it for smaller players, right? I think that's what's happening right now or should be happening. And as our platform grows, because, like, for example, we have on our platform, we have two processes. It's like the buy now or what we call the deal process. The space company can choose to make uh to tokenize it, put them in minimum units, and then set a price per unit and have that public. That's encoded in a smart contract, or they can do what we call a deal process, or it's like, hey, here's this opportunity, here's the smallest divisible, you know, sort of unit. Okay, uh, put your request in. We can share agreements between, come to some sort of pricing, and then that gets embedded in the smart contract and and means the asset uh accordingly. So, but price discovery is obviously important for any market to be scalable, I think, right? Um, but even if you go on eBay, we're looking at my my kids found uh we rented a book from the library, we found found a Pokemon card for some reason within one of these books. Yeah, yeah. And uh we're just curious, we're like, what's this Pokemon card worth? Yeah, yeah, and we we went into you know, the we started looking it up. One person posted it for like $300, the other person posted it for five dollars. So it's like, you know, I think you know, value is also always in the eye of the beholder, like is absolutely and that's why it's like you know, for like what we're doing around like authenticating and tokenizing the payloads themselves, is like, okay, well, if it's Coca-Cola that's putting or Gucci is putting an exclusive brand product into it that they're then they're gonna resell for a hundred thousand dollars versus a guy who's just putting a family photo up in there, like, should I charge the fam the the family guy the same thing as I charge Coca-Cola for Gucci? No, right? That wouldn't be realistic. So um, you know, I'm kind of throwing out right now very transparently and organically how I see it. But eventually, you know, it's it's gonna be like, for example, with us, why you asked the tokenization thing around like payload spaces, because for example, I could be a company that's a little bit, you know, I'm thinking financially, and I could buy a hundred kilos just because I think the value of that as demand increases is gonna grow over time, and I'll be able to fractionalize and then sell it for way more. And we prove that, like in Moon Mission One, where we had a liquidity provider put capital in for a percentage of the revenue that the commercial payload generates, basically X in five months, right? So those sort of dynamics again, take it out of the equity, put it into the asset sort of level, and and and that way you can again build more dynamic secondary markets and and more uh liquidity and more velocity.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Couple of questions that come come out based on what you just said. I mean, typically what we see uh in terms of terrestrial models, you will see demand-based pricing, right? Like the more demand, the higher the price. Like you see, it is like what it's with accommodations, what is with travel hotels, uh flights. But here you're trying to democratize it. It's kind of based on you the ability to pay. The it's a sliding scale. The the the higher the ability to pay, the higher the price, the lower the ability to pay, the lower price. It's it's kind of unusual. Um, what's driving you to to move into that direction?

SPEAKER_00 32:55

That's just how the market's currently behaving, I would say. It's gonna get to what you're talking about uh uh eventually, right? But again, you need to have a system where you can even determine what's the supply and demand in its totality, and then you know, those things have to communicate together as as well. So, again, you're coming back to like what's the value of building like the infrastructure, yeah, horizontal layer versus just like I'm gonna focus on a singular vertical. It's like, no, it has to be a horizontal thing to even uh get to that point, you know, to the Nasdaq thing or whatever it is, it's like that's a horizontal layer. That's that's not you know, so uh I'm I'm just telling you, kind of being very transparent about like what we're seeing happening in the market and how I think also space companies should kind of behave, you know. It's like you know, if you have something that's really unique and rare, you don't you shouldn't undersell it unless you you have to, you know.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Okay, now um uh on to the question to on the example that you just gave around like uh a company buying the the payload capacity and then reselling it uh uh at a period later. I mean, it in many ways this is like a forward contract, kind of like what are the regulations in space? Uh is it because we're talking to terrestrial companies, terrestrial rules apply, uh like the iFress standards.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

Our biggest regulatory concern, you know, we're not launching things, okay, so we're not dealing with all that regulatory end, yeah. Like us as a company, our our only you know, real worry, obviously you have the AML KYCN, right? Like that's standard, standard, yeah. Um, is it's just the securities aspect, which especially around tokenization, uh you know, the US hasn't been very clear about um right now that's improving. We of course want to take advantage of the Trump administration being in because they're setting some sort of clarity, but there's also so much going on that it's like kind of setting bars in a way that it's like, okay, as long as you're within this realm, like we're not gonna uh go after you. But you know, like we're defining a whole new asset class, right? We actually separated into two categories what we call real world space assets. So those are that's the payload space, the payloads, the data, the IP, the computation capacity, the unique commercially viable things that have utility. And then there's financial space assets, which majority of those are gonna be securities. You can get away with uh if we're gonna get on camera, go around, don't block it. Sorry, my son, my son's right here. You can see his hair. I see his hair, yeah, yeah. Hey, um, so um, so most of those are gonna be securities. You can get away with certain utility models uh around it. Um, but you know, we're not here to run away from that. Again, we want to set standards that sit here for decades and decades to come. Hi, say what's up. Sorry, I'm I'm very close. My kids are very close to my work, they're well known to be on conference calls and podcasts at this point. But keep going. I can I can do this in a hurricane, don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_02 36:20

Um, well, my my question then becomes um, who wins in space? Are we talking like is it going to be the retail customers? Is it going to be uh government, is gonna be institution, it's gonna be like the ultra-rich, and and then um do we have the the the structured infrastructure at the moment to allow for retail customers to actually win?

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Retail customers will usually be the last to win, right? Yeah, you know, that's that's just kind of the way of the game. But what we want to do is set up a system that whether you're a fund with a billion dollars of assets under management, or you're a guy with a thousand dollars on your couch, yeah, you have the same access point and barrier, yeah. So that's uh the you know, the the X amount of your return can be the same. Obviously, if I put in a hundred million, my return this reminds me of that viral thing where the kid runs in during the interview, and I know, I know, and and mom is trying to crawl and get him out like this.

SPEAKER_02 37:30

I think it was the first one when COVID started when he was working from home. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

Um, so you know, the the multipliers should be relatively the same, okay, right? And again, we get to build a whole new market and asset class on more of that sort of capability or standard versus what it was before, where it's really like who you know in backroom sort of relationships, which I would I would say that obviously the venture market, the VC market is very much like that in reality, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

Yeah, yeah. Um wanted to kind of better understand from you like what's the the quantum of the market in the moment, and how does Copernic actually make money? Is it on the issue or is it on transaction? I'm assuming it's some kind of like a percentage of. Um, but walk me through um how do you make money?

SPEAKER_00 38:25

Yeah, so uh we have a few rev streams around it. Obviously, we want everything to be tied to smart contracts, okay, so that there's an automated percentage of each transaction, and that percentage will vary across different sorts of yields, and then it'll probably standardize strongly as it just scales and everything can be kind of automated in that way. Um, so that's like the main core baseline. It's the Amazon model marketplace, you know, model exchange model, whatever you wanna you want to look at. Then we have what we call strap strategic acquisition. So that's where we see opportunities to just acquire assets, fractionalize and resell them ourselves. And that has a much uh sort of um higher margin um around it. Uh then eventually we're gonna develop something we called SAI, which means space asset intelligence. So even data insights into what's kind of financially happening in the space market, the asset value, et cetera, is also extremely archaic. So this think of it as like a like proprietary AI-powered Bloomberg terminal for space. And then the agentic economy is going to come into that as well. So it's gonna create portfolio construction, you know, uh itself, and you know, then they trade it on our secondary market. So that will be, you know, either like a per data set call, API call, or a subscription um sort of uh model around it. So those are like the main the main ones, uh main ones that that we really look at uh when it comes to that aspect.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

And and what's the quantum of the market? I mean, I know that it's massive, and and you talked about like it holding uh holding the potential to be the largest asset class. What is that now? And where do you see it in maybe like three years to five years?

SPEAKER_00 40:33

Well, right now it's over 600 billion dollars, so that kind of goes back to what I was saying is like people think that the market is just like Musk and you know, a few uh entities that are you know actually sort of doing things, but it's it's much bigger than that. So it's already, you know, like I I've been around all types of startups throughout my you know my life. Oh, I forgot to the revenue thing also as well. I forgot. So the the emission sort of aspect, depending on you know what it is, we will probably take fees from that. And also we're built to be dual use in the sense of right now, we're building a public slash you know, the private end of the marketplace, but we are gonna extend our infrastructure out so that governments and enterprises can build their own trusted environments, right? So that bring on trusted players, etc. So I I forgot to mention that. Uh, as far as the market, most you know, most TAMs you'll see, it'll be like, oh, well, it's a $30 billion market, it's a $50 billion market, right? This is already over $600 billion. Yeah, and the interesting thing is that around 78% of it is actually like private commercial activity. Of course, the governments are pumping money in their clients, but it's actually private companies is 78% of the value. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 41:58

Where's the biggest opportunity from an economics perspective versus vis-a-vis terrestrial? Like, like you, I think I think you'd have mentioned a thousand or ten thousand companies already playing in space, kind of like ten thousand, and and so that six hundred billion dollars current markets. Like, where what what are the the biggest opportunities at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 42:21

Well, when we when we were starting, like the first real-world space assets we really wanted to do things around, uh, and we'll be doing this hopefully by the end of the year. Is so we built like what we call the payload standard, right? And we built one for both physical as what we call the digital payload standard. So that's digital storage, right? Versus physical space, digital storage, right? Yep. Um, and we've proved both of those on the market to you know some scale. Uh, then the one we really wanted to focus on initially, but is more challenging for right now, is what we call the data standard. So I think the most scalable things are gonna be around data, computation capacity, etc., right? Because just you don't have the physical realities that create complications, you know, limitations as much as that. That's one reason why, you know, I think people are looking at you know the data centers in space and all that so strongly. It's like, yeah, it's a massive, expensive, complicated physical infrastructure, but what does that physical infrastructure enable and open up? Right? It enables a digital economy to be to be built around it. Uh, I obviously, you know, SpaceX isn't isn't disappearing, but even they're looking into uh you know the data center out element, being a little bit more digital driven around it. So I think it's gonna develop, you know, uh as a lot of markets have when it comes to that.

SPEAKER_02 43:53

So you you're talking about the data standard. Um, I mean, for any standard to become a standard. Requires that there's a broad-based consensus and there's a number of the interested or different stakeholders that come together. And so if it was to draw upon the example you gave around data centers, the the the maybe the misunderstood fact is that we have uh quite a bit of capacity, at least from an energy perspective, to power up data centers. The problem is that we don't have the capacity at a peaking level. So um if we have a coordinated uh uh workforce or a coordinated state in terms of when can data status come on, when can data status come off, and kind of like to make sure that we we don't roll into blackouts and things like that, we have a lot more capacity than we have, but no, we have to build everything to that kind of like peaking. Who are what are the companies, the organizations, stakeholders that they're actually helping you to define what that data standard is?

SPEAKER_00 44:55

Uh so the way that we build standards is by working directly with a space, we don't create it in a vacuum, okay? Of course, so so we work with some sort of uh player uh that is in that field. So, like with the computation thing, and usually we don't go like super big right away because if you prove something, you know, at this thing, like it applies again, it applies horizontally. Yeah, like my lesson from CoinFirm was you know, one of them was like the private market's gonna lead, it's gonna push the boundaries and create the standards that then the regulators, the governments, etc. will have to verify and implement, adjust to. So even you know, even when I brought up the China thing, it's like, okay, well, if China pushes the ball, is the US just gonna you know block itself from you know matching that and lose in the long run because it's just not being as aggressive around it. So, you know, the the you know, the the world is for the brave, the world is for the bold. Uh and somebody has to do it. Like, you know, what we're doing is whether you whether or not you think it's too early or not, uh is it doesn't it doesn't change the fact that it has to happen, right? So um I think for each vertical or each standard, you know, it will it will depend. Right now we're working with uh, for example, a satellite company and a company that's focused on edge computing, and we want to set the standard on okay, how can people easily acquire taking an image from space? How can someone easily acquire rights to utilize this much computation capacity or launch and test an application in space without having to launch their own infrastructure to do it?

SPEAKER_02 46:55

Makes sense now. Um, from a market map position perspective, who do you worry the most? Um, and and what I mean, like and and how do you build a mode around comparing space? Is like, are you most worried about the SpaceX type space players, financial institution, web three native platforms, kind of like what like and and how do you build defensibility around the things that you're doing?

SPEAKER_00 47:19

Yeah, I think I think that's a really you know it's a strong question. Um I think one thing is that SAI thing is gonna be interesting, uh the social asset intelligence aspect. So if tell me more, yeah. So if if you're just like with CoinFirm, like what we did is we built the largest database that existed.

SPEAKER_02 47:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

So to really compete with that, you're either gonna have to, you know, really invest a lot to go around that, which is possible, but there's also a speed to how you can do things, or do you just try to acquire the the data sets, right? So uh I think that's an interesting one. Uh obviously, you know, people are important. There's a reason why the aqua hire uh model exists, right? Is how many people, and it's not to like toot my own horn as an individual, it's just like how many people have an actual experience set from a that they're really entrepreneurial characters, they're not some guy that hey, I'm an executive at a traditional space company uh or I'm uh Ernst and Young consultant, right? But I entrepreneurial background understands the kind of crypto, digital asset, new models of financing, commercialization, digital economy play, and then have enough legitimacy or capability to know how to move throughout the space economy. How many people is that? Like five, ten in the world, potentially. Um so you know it's it's the same thing. It's like, okay, why is this is an interesting thing about marketplaces in history. It's like a lot of the original guys, whether it's eBay, whether it's Amazon, these are some of the first players that kind of set standards in how e-commerce is gonna work, are still here and and are the dominant players, right? And obviously that's proliferated into all these little different types of verticals that exist, yeah, but still it's it's no comparison. Why? Because they built a standard, there's the logistics arm around all of it. Um, so it's you know, we're focused on proving the market right now, and the good news is that there's a few competitors that have come out within the past year, month, year or so. That of course I know pretty much personally, they've been observing us for you know X amount of time. Uh, but but that's good news, you know. If you don't have like someone trying to do what you're doing, then you're probably not doing something right, you know.

SPEAKER_02 50:03

So uh or too early, or like you're not focusing a problem worth solving. Got it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

Yeah, yeah. So I I can't fully answer that, you know. Uh and and one thing that like entrepreneurs or startup guys that have big success don't like to admit is that there's a certain element of luck in things.

SPEAKER_02 50:24

Yeah, for sure. Um I mean I I can't help think about like you know, the the the saying that the early bird catch the the the worm, and uh in many ways this is a category creation play because it's like you you're building a market where you you're building uh things that didn't exist before. So from that perspective, what were the hardest moments for you to this point? And where did um where this almost didn't work, or is it still like you are still very much in the process of proving things working?

SPEAKER_00 51:01

Yeah, you know, when you're doing something that's truly transformative, there's no precedent, yeah, right? And most people, you know, no matter how smart they are, most people don't kind of have, let's say, the creative vision to kind of connect the dots a lot of times, right? And it's you know, it's the same reason, like you know, if I said I'm building an AI company, you know, eight years ago, they'd be like, We're not interested or whatever, we don't, you know, get it. Whereas if I said two years ago, three years ago, I'm building an AI company that just would have thrown money at me, right?

SPEAKER_02 51:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:36

So I, you know, a lot of our work is quasi-education. It's like, you know, just talking to people, educating the market, and some people get it, some people don't. The those that don't are gonna be late to the game, which um, you know, even that has its benefits sometimes because at least you're not investing into discovery, right?

SPEAKER_02 51:58

Um, but I mean famously Apple is a fast follower, right? And they're one of the, if not the most valuable company, but a lot of the technology that they have, they didn't invent.

SPEAKER_00 52:08

Well, and and on top of it, look, now they're totally behind when it comes to AI.

SPEAKER_02 52:13

True, very much true. Yeah, they missed the point theory, even though they were the first one, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:18

Yeah, they they have a big issue around that. So I think the early bird gets the worm. I'm for better, for worse, I'm ahead, right? Always have been. You know, we built coin from 2015. People that was interesting because on one end, you had the traditional finance people that go AML for crypto, but crypto's all about money laundering. Then you had like the crypto, you know, mass sort of guys, and they're like AML for crypto, crypto's never gonna need AML because we are building this totally outside the system. And the truth was, you know, in in the middle. So this isn't my first rodeo kind of being looked at as like a little blessing the path, yeah. But but as time goes along, the less crazy uh I look for sure.

SPEAKER_02 52:59

Oh, for sure. I mean, I remember like we in 2018 we were launching a loyalty rewards company, and uh it was based on um uh tokens, uh, and so at that time, again, we were based out of Canada, we could not get a single bank in Canada to work with us, and and and and now it's it's standard, you can move from fiat into crypto like it any way that you want with any bank.

SPEAKER_00 53:25

Yeah, I I remember those times, they were kind of fun though.

SPEAKER_02 53:30

Wow, like and crazy.

SPEAKER_00 53:32

I mean, the ICO the initial coin offering craziness in 2018, and uh yeah, we we built the first AML, so we were the first who could analyze ERC tokens. So we were like the first who enabled AML for ICO so that then they could bank the liquidity that they got from it. And I had they're like, I would talk, we would be talking to like someone who's about to do an ICO, or like, listen, you're gonna have an issue here soon because you're gonna have 10 million in capital or whatever, yeah, and you're gonna have to only be able to utilize it in a crypto sort of way, you're gonna have a very hard time banking it, utilizing it in the traditional business sense, and they're like, ah da-da-da-da. And then they would come back later and like, can you AML the funds that we've already collected because the bank is asking for it. So, um, so you know, history uh Mark Twain said, you know, history doesn't repeat but it rhymes, you know.

SPEAKER_01 54:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 54:25

So, and I'm a big history guy, so you know what we're doing is revolutionary, but it's not that revolutionary if you look at things through a long time period.

SPEAKER_02 54:36

Yeah, yeah, I know that makes sense. Um fast forward 10 years, what does Copernic space become?

SPEAKER_00 54:44

We are the de facto de facto uh financial infrastructure and marketplace for uh the space economy, um that is also providing an uh an infrastructure layer that can be extended into micro or private marketplaces. Got it, got it.

SPEAKER_02 55:06

And and if you're right, and space becomes the largest economy ever created. What's the one thing people they're completely underestimating?

SPEAKER_00 55:19

You know, I'm an internet child. Uh and you know, there's there's still X millions of people that you know don't believe that we're even doing things in space, they don't understand the value of space itself. So my biggest thing is like space is gonna is the most important market to benefit life on Earth. I think that's what people are missing in the big game. They view it as like musk or whoever they want to escape. Yeah, that's not the game. The game is we run forward to improve where we are, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:54

Yeah, for sure. What is like pharmaceuticals, what is energy, what is data, what is compute, like just you name it, name it, name it. Yeah. Makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 56:03

Uh satellite imagery for agriculture.

SPEAKER_02 56:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:07

Maybe not the sexiest thing, but is gonna completely change how we do things.

SPEAKER_02 56:11

Oh, I mean, we're working with uh um with a uh uh uh fire prevention company that's using satellite imagery to kind of understand what could be flare zones and how do we mitigate it.

SPEAKER_00 56:23

Partially the inspiration behind Copernic Space. My mom went through the Wolsey fires in Malibu, and she realized like this this is completely archaic how we're approaching this thing because there's nothing that's even now nowadays. Prevention for it is like we're gonna run drones over mass areas and hopefully it catches something, right? So uh, you know, this is just the beginning. We're we're starting to talk to wineries, you know, yeah. Whether it's sending a bottle in the space and making it objectively more rare, unique, and valuable, or it's you know, how do we optimize your your operations and efficiencies on Earth?

SPEAKER_02 56:56

No, I mean it makes sense. I mean, for me, it's like like the whole we are in in a in in an era where we're moving from after to before. And so, I mean, I remember we were in Sicily two or three years ago, and we were constantly on the Copernicus satellite just watching where the the fire zones are, like you know. Um, but this is after the fact, like, okay, well, there's firehead, it's firehead, it's firehead, that's great, and and it's moving in this direction. But like, I'd love to be able to like kind of like like for critical infrastructure, what is like uh the in the states or in Canada, we have the vegetation management, we have different standards in place to prevent this from happening, anyways. This has been uh a fabulous conversation, really enjoyed the the conversation, Grant. Uh that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 57:44

And and I would love to continue it. I just got to jump to present at Phoenix Space Week right now, so I'd happily you know consider the uh continue this privately as well.

SPEAKER_02 57:54

Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 57:55

Okay, thanks. Pleasure. I'll be in contact, buddy, and thank you for the opportunity. Great questions, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 58:01

Thanks. Okay, bye.

SPEAKER_00 58:03

See ya.