Canadian builders are shovel ready. @CMCC_Global Co-founder @BlockchainRI Author: Web3, Blockchain Revolution Host: @DeFiDecodedpod
Toronto
Joined January 2012
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Shared my thoughts on the Binance hack for @CTVNews
Crypto hacks are the canary in the coal mine and a harbinger of what’s to come for banks and other institutions.
The risks only grow with AI
New @defidecodedpod is out!
I've been looking forward to this conversation with @ddebow for a long time.
Dan is one of Canada's most prolific entrepreneurs, investors and thinkers, with a hand in some of the country's biggest tech success stories.
He's been called the "Forrest Gump" of Canadian tech because whenever something big happens, he seems to be in the room.
But I think he's more like Quincy Jones: bringing the right people together and helping them create something none could have built alone.
Dan co-founded Workbrain, Rypple (acquired by Salesforce) and Helpful (acquired by Shopify, where he spent six years).
He's also one of Canada's most active angel investors, with early cheques in more than 50 companies, including Wealthsimple, Clio, SkipTheDishes and Dominion Dynamics.
Today, as founder and chair of @buildcanada where he's helping shape the debate about Canada's economic future with a pro-growth agenda focused on backing builders and unlocking our country's potential.
And his latest venture, Debow Musical Instruments, brings together his talent for building businesses and his lifelong love of music. Its first product, Torch, is a new electronic instrument designed to make playing music more accessible and bring families together.
A fascinating, wide-ranging conversation.
Don't miss it!
Episode 253: Born to Build: Companies, Canada, and a New Musical Instrument with Serial Entrepreneur Daniel Debow
@alextapscott @ddebow @CMCC_Global
0:00 Introduction
3:12 Daniel as a “company producer”
4:30 What he looks for in founders: Ambitious Adventurers
6:08 Canada’s history of bold adventurers and naming after Leo Fender
8:20 How he became an entrepreneur at Workbrain
10:27 Six years scaling at Shopify
14:11 Shopify’s ecosystem and agentic commerce
16:12 His first instrument and his band, the Screenagers
20:16 Why most people quit music
23:00 Introducing Torch: a first song in seven minutes
26:19 The first prototype and how Torch makes sound
28:15 Building hardware vs. software
32:31 The market opportunity and the subscription model
37:54 Why applications build platforms
43:45 Why Daniel started Build Canada
49:32 Build Canada’s polls, surveys and growing influence
53:06 How AI will change the way people govern themselves
57:19 Growth, GDP and why Canada should aim for number one
1:00:28 Closing message: optimism and opportunity in Canada
Exponential times lead to exponential crimes.
Crazy…
BREAKING: Binance has been hacked with wallets across the Ethereum, Bitcoin, and TRON networks seeing outflows of -$5.7 billion.
The hack includes $1.45 billion worth of Bitcoin and $875 million worth of ETH.
If confirmed, this would mark the biggest hack in crypto history.
We expect more information shortly.
Damn. This hits hard.
Patrick Stewart, who gained international fame as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in the “Star Trek” franchise, has died. He was 86.
Read more: on.wsj.com/4eakW3o
Incredibly impressive!
Canada basically invented AI.
These guys are making sure it will get built here too.
Incumbents better wake up and realize they're standing on a burning platform.
Tokenization of all financial assets is happening.
This will upend many functions of finance—custody, settlement, payments, wealth management—as assets increasingly move onchain.
The risk of disintermediation is real. But so is the opportunity for reintermediation.
By leaning into these innovations, legacy Wall Street firms can streamline operations and tap into a global, always-on marketplace.
Issuers can broaden distribution, improving liquidity and and access to growth capital.
But to do that, they may first need to disrupt themselves, something they have so far been loathe to do.
trade[XYZ] and ICE, owner of the New York Stock Exchange, are joining forces to bring 24/7 perpetual futures on Hyperliquid to the United States.
In just over a year, our markets on Hyperliquid have surpassed $650 billion in volume. They provide continuous price discovery for stocks, indices, and commodities, and have become trusted reference points for retail and institutions alike when traditional markets are closed. Much of the world trades them. Until now, Americans could only watch.
We intend to change that. Subject to CFTC approval, trade[XYZ] and ICE plan to establish a new, dedicated U.S. market, with novel exchange and clearing infrastructure built on Hyperliquid. Planned contracts span equities, indices, commodities, FX, and crypto, with access through participating brokers and platforms. We’ll share more on products, eligibility, and timing as approvals progress.
ICE brings more than 25 years of experience operating regulated markets, clearing, and managing risk. trade[XYZ] brings the product development, market design, and technology behind the most liquid and robust markets on Hyperliquid.
Innovation and the protections of U.S. regulation shouldn’t be a trade-off. Together, we plan to prove it.
ICE is making a strategic investment in trade[XYZ] and joins us in building towards the future of Hyperliquid. A small group of market luminaries is joining as well, beginning with Stan Druckenmiller. For more than four decades, few investors have anticipated the great turns in markets as often as Stan. We’re proud to have him with us for the next one.
We’re building the U.S. market in parallel with our existing HIP-3 markets, which we’ll continue to expand and innovate on. We expect both to flourish. They each have a long road map ahead, from new asset classes to new ways to trade them.
To the Hyperliquid community, whether you were here before us or came because of us, thank you. You took a chance on new markets and you made them matter. You’ll forever be a part of this story.
Anything. Anytime. On ICE[XYZ].
I was all set to buy this Toyota Sequoia family hauler, but now I’m eyeing the Mac Studio 512GB instead. Monitor and keyboard sold separately.
Same price. Which would you choose?
In just 15 years, Liberal Arts has gone from the most popular to the least popular university major in Canada.
University enrolment is a lagging indicator.
For years, young people were told to “learn to code.” So it's not surprising CompSci and engineering enrolments surged.
Now AI is automating much of what those students were preparing to do.
As AI steamrolls knowledge work, I think the best way for young people to navigate whatever comes next is to learn how to think critically, defend an argument, and understand context.
That means knowing something about history, philosophy, and political economy among other things.
I also think knowing about art, culture, history etc, make you more interesting, and a 'good hang' may be the hardest thing for AI to automate away.
That's not to say STEM graduates can't do all of the above.
But a Liberal Arts education provides a basic intellectual toolkit that can be repurposed as things change.
I'll bet we've reached peak STEM and the pendulum is about to swing back to the humanities.
Curious what others think.
Data c/o the @globeandmail
Data point?
It’s an ungodly amount of reading and no easy A. So why are freshmen lining up to get into Humanities 10? on.wsj.com/4iIxhOF
Struck by how similar this anti-tokenization ad is to the anti-piracy ads of the 80s and 90s in their extreme imagery and fear-mongering language.
Makes sense, though.
Back then, the internet of information was democratizing access to information. Legacy IP owners and gatekeepers felt threatened.
Today, the internet of value is democratizing access to assets and ownership, and many incumbents feel the same way.
When you have a new paradigm like this, vested interests fight change and react with hostility, threats and legal challenges.
In the 90s, record labels were threatening kids with jail time just for burning a CD or using Limewire.
Today, Wall Street lobby groups are portraying tokenization as a biological WMD, complete with exploding poison and radioactive signs.
Are there challenges to implementing tokenization, and should it be regulated? Of course.
But public company CEOs should also recognize the glaring opportunity: tokenization can open their stock to new investors, just as the internet opened creators and artists to new audiences.
"Don't take your favourite composer for a ride"
Upper class gentlemen who wear driving gloves and listen to classical music...beware!
