Travis John (00:01.4)
Welcome back to another episode of the Real World Asset Show. Today we have Bill Lee from Dual Mint. He's the CTO and co -founder. And Dual Mint's driving the ownership economy. They're redefining how brands connect with their loyal fans and quite a few incentives and appreciations, how they can earn tangible rewards. And Bill, welcome to the show. I know we have a lot of things to talk about. You're working with several exciting brands, but I wanted to first just say, welcome, and we'll get into

Bill Lee (00:29.681)
Thanks, Travis. It was really great to be here on your show. We met each other in Austin and it was pretty exciting to actually find people with the same type of passion, real assets. Even though it's such a narrative during this cycle, it's actually not very easy to find people echoing your thoughts and your beliefs.

Travis John (00:57.835)
Thank you and the feeling is mutual and I hear that a lot and I say that a lot. It's surprising. Like you said, you see these charts and stats or things on Twitter like, hey, RWAs are second to meme coins in the sense of narratives and interest and demand. in the real, again, just the pun intended, the real world aspect of it and the real world adoption of it is still a lot of us in the trenches and really sorting through a lot of the noise.

So I agree. was great to meet you at Consensus in Austin and one of your partners as well. I know we spent about a day trying to kind of connect, and I was really thankful that we were able to have a sit -down meeting and chat more.

Bill Lee (01:43.431)
Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Travis John (01:44.971)
Yeah, so thanks for coming. I know you've shared quite a bit of things over some discussions we've had offline, but let's talk a little bit about how you got into this, even before Dual Mint. I know that you're the CTO. You're coming at this from a technical aspect and also like an entrepreneur, but I'd love to know more.

Bill Lee (02:03.547)
Yeah, as you can tell with all my gray hair, I'm a Gen X. So I'm quite a bit older than the people who are doing this stuff right now. I do have a technology background. I study computer science and then I have a pretty much a full career in different tech companies, large and small.

startups. I used to live in the US, so I've worked in many companies in Silicon Valley, or actually back in the East Coast in the field offices. So I have a tech background. And then for a couple of years, I moved back to Hong Kong. was transferred back by one of the tech company at the time, it was an enterprise search company that eventually got bought out by Microsoft. And then I

took a few years off from tech and actually helped my family because my dad's health wasn't doing too well. So I was doing the bra business. Our family is in the bra business. So I went from one type of software to the other kind of software. And now I'm back into the original type of software that I'm doing. So I mean, to kind of this, you know.

So at the time I was doing a startup in data privacy, data privacy. And I had a customer at the time, which was a legal document framework solution company, similar to what DocuSign is at the time. So when they were kind of like having a beer and chit chatting, and that was really during the first

Travis John (03:46.311)
Mm -hmm.

Bill Lee (03:55.133)
craze of the whole NFT boom, right? So people were paying like, you know, I don't know, $2 million for a JPEG. So, you know, we're looking at each other. We're, I'm a bit older. He's, he's not young either. Do you understand this, you know, NFT thing? You know, I mean, why is, why are people like paying so much for these like, you know, pixelated, you know, pictures? have no idea. Right.

we look at each other as like, no, we don't understand, but maybe we can use it for something else. Because I mean, when we looked at the technology, it's actually kind of interesting. It's great for, obviously it's blockchain, the whole distributed architecture and all that stuff. But it's really great for proving ownership and proving scarcity, for example. So we thought, hey, you have a tech...

You have a legal document management framework. Why don't we see if we can leverage the legal side of things and sort of do something together? So that's kind of how it all got started. Like, obviously, many businesses started a bar with a few drinks, right? And the back of a napkin. So that was about two and a half years ago, two and a half years ago. And then we sat down and said,

you know, hey, you know, if we look at the legal side of things, maybe we can sort of apply this thing, marry it together and work with like real world assets. That was actually what we're actually talking about. Like how do we, you know, tie that into actual real world assets? originally we saw very early on that the problem with NFT

Well, it's great for digital assets, right? But if you want to translate that into the real world, the first thing that is a limitation is that there's no fallback into the real world. know, like if something hits a fan, you know, you have nothing to protect you in the real world. Like all this stuff is great, you know, it's on the blockchain, but what are you going to do if, you know, somebody

Bill Lee (06:10.853)
scams you or run away with your money, which actually it did happen from the crash, right? So we decided to of frame this thing, how to leverage the legal framework, document management framework to do this. That's why we sort of named the project Dual Mint. We kind of sat down and decided if we wanted to apply both

Profitance on the on chain with the profitance off chain. What is a good name? You know do mint, know you you mint but it's you know applying to both real world as well as on chain, right? So we came up with do mint and then we came up with this whole idea of the dual provenance Which is essentially the core of what we're trying to trying to build right? So dual provenance is an idea where we can

have two -way linkage between an online provenance with a real -world provenance. And the real -world provenance can be, you know, it can be simple like a GIS certificate, you know, for diamond. Or it could be as complex as, you know, any legal, you know, contracts that you work with, with the underlying parties, right? So with the

what we call ecosystem partner in place, we have a way to basically import legal documents or what have you and have a workflow to include all the stakeholders that might be interested in shaping this real world provenance, what it should look like. And at the end, can basically digital sign it and then using it as a metadata.

on chain and then taking the actual hash and putting it back into the actual provenance. So now you have a two -way linkage. So that was sort of the first step. But we thought, hey, but then the problem is if we're looking at real world asset, it's not just about taking a picture of it and putting it on some glorified, what we call distributed web3

Bill Lee (08:30.843)
marketplace, right? Because that's not really, to me, at least it's not really supporting real assets, because there are a lot of different things that real world assets needs, needs, needs touch points to be supported on, right? Like, for example, like it might need need logistics, it might need authentication, anti anti counterfeiting, you know, it may be even insurance appraisers, what have you, any anything, right?

So the second thing we looked at is how do we address this being a startup, right? Obviously, we have limited resources, like, you know, don't wanna spend too much of our own nest egg into this thing, right? So we thought of, hey, instead of building it ourselves, you know, since we already have using this ecosystem framework might as well

recruit other ecosystem partners. So we went out and looked for a few more partners, right? So we found a logistics partner. We found a lifestyle and entertainment investment partner. And we found the anti -counterfeiting solution partner. That is actually a very interesting story in itself because it's a passport grade anti -counterfeiting solution that is being used in many

Passports around the world. It's based on hologram holographic Well, I can't really do it justice because I mean I you know that it's it's a it's a passport grade holographic and the kind of solution So with that we we basically have the first Ecosystem partnership that we can sort of you know Really put in place and support a very

amount of real world assets out there because we have logistics, have anti -counterfeiting, we have legal. Obviously, we're continuing to want to recruit other ecosystem partners. So if any listeners out there who have solutions and want to join our ecosystem, feel free to contact us and we're very happy to speak to you guys.

Bill Lee (10:55.557)
So that's essentially a very quick, few minutes overview of how we sort of got started here in the RWA space.

Travis John (11:06.397)
I love that. I think, well, first off, just to the end of what you mentioned, I mean, partnerships...

in RWA is critical. and I believe that any business, mean, it's not my first rodeo either, so businesses I've been involved with, it's been very clear that partnerships, tight relationships are key. But also in RWA, as you know, this is very unique time and a very unique place. And I think to our point at the beginning about how it's nice to find people that are passionate about this and are building, it's also one of the most giving and most, you know, just non -competitive

spaces because even if people are building similar things or they're involved in some similar things or there's some overlap, everyone seems to have a very giving first type mentality, which is great. So I love that. I will say, you know, and I think that was a perfect origin story of understanding where you are, you know, where you're going, how you, you know, we'll get into what accomplishments you've had and even some of the pivots. that's one of the nice things is you're building is you kind of learn these things as we're early in this adoption phase. And, you know, there's,

pivots that will happen. But I will say just one funny aside, you went from the bra business to the back of a napkin to blockchain. Yeah, I love that. And also, I have to at least call out that there's two holes in a bra. It's a Dual Mint. I guess, I don't know, you might still be able to bring that into an RWA ownership.

Bill Lee (12:19.165)
Everybody finds that free.

Bill Lee (12:31.911)
Yeah.

Travis John (12:38.832)
profile and rewards at some point, so who knows? But you never know how these backgrounds we have turn into other things. Anyway, I'm digressing, but I like to call that out. But let's talk a little bit about some of the projects. We've talked quite a bit about some of the brands that you're working with, some of the projects. I know some you're not able to kind get into full details about, but let's really talk about some of the specific things you're doing at Dual Mint now. know with the technology, you're calling these real -world asset

Bill Lee (12:39.367)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Travis John (13:09.505)
and you have several brands and stages you're working with them. But I'll kind of give the floor to you to which direction you want to go first with that, but I know that I'm super excited about all the brands that you've talked to me about.

Bill Lee (13:21.339)
Yeah, I think, you know, I maybe touch base on a little bit on the pivot side that you mentioned. You know, originally we started and we wanted to focus on just collectibles, right? So, you know, like art, you know, like maybe about a whiskey, rare whiskey, maybe rare watches, you know, things like that, antiques and something that is very easy to understand. Now we...

We started doing that and that's kind of interesting. But then we also started brainstorming. Obviously, we wanted to expand the horizon because with the framework, we can basically apply it with a lot of stuff. So we see ourselves not like a product -specific platform. We aspire to be sort of the blueprint

for people to actually bring on board real world assets onto Web3. So we want to not only work with the physical collectibles. now we're seeing ourselves as a real world asset tokenization platform that supports both tangible and intangible products. So tangible product is easy to understand. It's kind of like the stuff I just kind of mentioned.

Intangible could be like things like IP rights. could be like future earnings. It could be, you know, project financing. And then it becomes very, it becomes a lot more interesting because you can actually structure many different things very differently because it's not just a piece of product that you put on top, right? It could be like a membership. could be, you know, a lot of, a lot of different things. So we find that it's becoming, you know, more

of what we are as a project focusing on. And you mentioned actually a bunch of, so we have like actually now dabbling into like many different areas. We are doing a lot of projects in the ESG related areas. So, you know, we're working with different local governments around the world, smaller,

Bill Lee (15:47.611)
obviously smaller countries with which we have connections to. To do things like so, know, tokenizing solar panels, tokenizing one interesting project is actually on our site is called Eco Wash, where a company is trying to, is that not trying to, they're actually doing it. They're replacing all the energy in the efficient washing machines around universities. You know, when you go to school, you have to wash

you have to wash your clothes and then usually you have to put in quarters or in the US and then you do a 45 minute wash and a 45 minute drying. But a lot of these machines are outdated, they're not energy efficient. So this company is going around and replacing these and then they wanna tokenize them so that they can, the token holders actually earn.

a good portion of the return that is generated by these washing machines. So the washing machine is obviously energy efficient. It actually has a self dispenser for the detergent. So the students don't need to carry around these plastic bottles and throw it away. So it's very eco -friendly. we're working with like, so this is a very interesting project. I think it's about,

It's guaranteed 25 % yield a year. And you're doing something good. We want to work on projects that has a lot of interesting stories behind it, plus yield generating. So you're buying into this or into this community. Not buying, but you're part of a community where you want to contribute to green energy or whatever it is, something meaningful.

Travis John (17:18.223)
Nice. Yeah.

Bill Lee (17:44.391)
but you also get some return on the things that you're working on. There are actually a bunch of other projects that are very different and interesting. this is kind of like, I gave you some examples on ESG related projects. We also working with an immersive opportunity in one of the Southeast Asian government.

where we will be bringing in immersive experience for the whole country with this artist called Gustav Klimt. And we are putting out a product called Advertise and Earn, where the advertisers essentially earn a return for advertising plus free tickets.

for the duration of the show. So it's kind of like project financing type structure that we're doing. Another one that is really interesting, know, US bound is we're working with a Napa Valley Cult Wine that has already, like, you know, it's a very young brand that I think just formed, I think 10, 15 years ago, 10 years ago.

And it's now has already won a lot of awards. They are selected to be one of the eight ports in Davos next January. So, you know, it's very high profile. Elon Musk is doing something with them as well. So we're using our they're using our technology, the anti -counterfeiting technology plus our blockchain to solve a whole bunch of, you know,

address a whole bunch of things in, I can't really be going into too much details because it hasn't been released, but it's gonna be very exciting once it does. And this solution is going to, I think they will be presenting this in Davos to a lot of the leaders over there. So, that's just a very high level, I

Bill Lee (20:11.353)
overview of some of the projects that we're involved with because with our framework, we're attracting a lot of these interesting projects around plus, know, know, the founders actually have pretty pretty good like network of businesses. So that's how we can also source some of these interesting projects as

Travis John (20:32.343)
Yeah, I think to your point,

The type of people that you're going to attract to typically are forward thinking, open to do, you're not going to always attract a winery. Although I've seen really strong blockchain use with just more the transparency of wine production, for example, like the QR code type of idea on blockchains. you won't find maybe wineries have been around for 100 years as interested always in immediately going to blockchain. You might, but it's nice to cult -like newer brands

Bill Lee (20:52.849)
Yep.

Travis John (21:05.301)
that are open to this and adopting early is great. mean, because it aligns really well with your ethos as well. And I think to your point, where this is going is just the ownership economy, as you guys labeled so well on the beginning of the slide. This really is the future. In Web2, we had points and reward systems and apps that you get a few points here and there. And it's argued that 90 % of people don't take

of their rewards, but I'm completely on board with Web3 is a complete game changer when it comes to incentives. Aligned incentives, whether it's tokens, whether it's ownership, whether it's specific rewards, they're significantly more aligned because as you mentioned, not only the way you're aligning with projects based on your ethos and based on exciting opportunities and kind of like the public good aspect of some of these, is that that's

investors, the average investor in the future, not a credit investor type of idea necessarily,

regular investors that are looking to align with what they want to see in the world. They want an energy efficient world. want a more green. Sustainability might be their biggest area that they want to focus on. So yeah, I like how you're tying these together and the fact that they're being asset agnostic and I've talked to lot of projects this way and I think you're building the tech, you're figuring out how the tech, you're making the tech work, you're meeting projects where they are in their Web2 world and you're providing

Bill Lee (22:25.895)
Yep.

Travis John (22:43.396)
that bridge. You're providing that API connection, so to speak.

Bill Lee (22:46.481)
Yeah, I think this is very important. think the first wave of RWA is obviously being led by all the financial assets, which is pretty natural because the dollar value is a lot higher, the transactions are a lot more. But collectively speaking, actual real asset obviously is much bigger market.

You know, it's great that, you know, people like Black Rock, companies like Black Rock is actually leading the charge and putting this whole concept of RWA into market, right? But then, like, you know, I really strongly believe in order to sort of, in order for Web3 to become like mainstream, you know, actual real assets, like the stuff that we're working on, has to eventually participate. Because a lot of times right now it's still

you know, the, I guess the complaint is still a zero sum game, right? Because basically it's all, you know, crypto money going from left pocket to the right pocket, right? In order to sort of attract new capital into the ecosystem, you really need to start, you know, having business use case that applies to the rest of, you know, the rest of the, you know, the industry, like all the other.

things and we're trying to do our part in bringing on interesting projects with interesting stories and whatnot.

Travis John (24:25.333)
Yeah, it's all a story. It's all about the storyline. know, I mean, just like this conversation we have on the podcast, I mean, it's really about having these stories and presenting that, you know, getting the word out. And a lot of it, it's way more interesting if there's a great backstory and a great application. And to your point, I think the unlock, you know, there's a lot of it. We're in the education phase. We're early and projects are figuring it out.

you know, retail so to speak, you know, I use that term with air quotes, but...

They're learning and they're getting educated, but I think where the unlock still lies I mean we see stable coins or the or the original state RWA token as more and more people realize that stable coins are a significantly better Place to put their money, know Obviously there's people that are already putting most of their money in the Treasury bills and things as you mentioned You know just very stable returns getting that 5 % from from something that's guaranteed but if you're looking at just kind of

Bill Lee (25:10.481)
Yeah.

Travis John (25:29.459)
leading inflation, so to speak, settling in stables, getting a certain percentage of the population into stables, I think is the, you know, there's multiple things that are going to unlock this, but I think that's one of the biggest unlocks because...

Bill Lee (25:30.653)
Yeah.

Travis John (25:44.16)
it becomes less of a zero -sum game because you don't feel like you're trading from left to right pocket and you don't feel like it's speculative crypto because you're in stables. You might be, in the U .S., it's arguable right now, like the dollar might be worth 89 cents, not a dollar. So if you're settling in stables or getting paid in stables to begin with, you're theoretically starting off in a much better spot. I think that's where you can apply that to projects like Dual Mint where

want to take those stables and you want them working for you and getting a yield.

Bill Lee (26:17.341)
Yep, exactly. Like instead of doing like, you know, yield farming and, you know, with impermanent loss and all that stuff, you know, you know, DeFi 1 .0 brought a lot of interesting ideas, but I think, you know, with real world asset backed type projects and with the actual real world provenance associated with it, which, you know, the very important thing, you have a lot, I believe,

there's a higher level of trust in these type of projects than just something that is kind of completely

Travis John (26:56.743)
It is. Yeah, you're right. mean it's very important to emphasize your focus on the dual provenance. know, and think that's because having a token to say that this is wine...

Bill Lee (26:57.787)
Thank

Travis John (27:09.852)
As you know, we've seen it not work plenty of times before. So if you don't have that dual provenance and you don't have the technology figured out and that tie to the real world asset, which requires work, which is why you guys have been busy doing that and figuring it out. And I do like that you've, because as you mentioned, you're asset agnostic, but I think you've found a little bit of your stride in these unique projects that also align with typically a very passionate

Bill Lee (27:11.655)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Travis John (27:40.225)
whether that be sustainable, whether that be the wine side of things, I very specific things where there's a cult -like following, that sustainability is massive. Wine following is also massive. there's really quite a few things that, as you mentioned, a just immediate attraction to the real world already, which I think...

gets lost sometimes because some people just get too excited about the technology and the opportunity and the revolution of the new financial markets and they forget just psychology 101, that people are going to be attracted to things that they actually already do and already love.

Bill Lee (28:20.829)
Yeah, I mean, I was looking at some posts, you know, in Twitter and this guy's listed like, you know, the most boring business is what brings you the most cash, you know, the cash flow. And some of these things like, you know, washing machines, some of these, you know, like really boring things, right? Basically, you know, it's cash business, you know, you just get the cash flow in. This is kind of like, you know, what we kind of trying to do, but with a ESG related angle

or what have you, finding these type of boring assets that bring you yield, right? And make it available across different jurisdictions.

Travis John (28:59.496)
You know,

You need to package that because I totally agree with that. I follow a lot of those same things. I'm a huge fan of, I mean, it's just in my DNA. typically take very complex things and that's why I like having these podcasts and kind of try to distill them down in simple form. I think I have a pretty good knack for that. And generally speaking, that's why I've been in sales and different things because it's easy to, when you're talking to people, you don't want to be talking at a technical level or at a level where it doesn't make sense.

Bill Lee (29:17.393)
Yeah.

Travis John (29:30.366)
So think that's where, even with this, I boring businesses and revolutionizing that with tech is such a great model. It really is.

Bill Lee (29:39.953)
Yep. Yep.

Travis John (29:42.941)
Yeah, so kudos. I like that. I've always loved, you know, even like going back to what you were talking about, just reframing the idea of NFT technology is amazing and it keeps advancing, but framing... Yeah.

Bill Lee (29:43.581)
Totally agree.

Bill Lee (29:53.239)
Yes, that's a peave of mine, right? Like it's such a bad connotation. I decided, so I send you the blog that I bought, posted, I write. So I'm deciding basically we're just gonna drop the whole NFT thing. First of all, it's not really any NFT anymore, right? Because NFT really is designed for digital only, assets only, right? So when you start looking at marrying it to like real assets, like the stuff that we're talking about,

Travis John (30:16.082)
Right. Yep.

Bill Lee (30:22.577)
you know, like the real world profit on it's like, you know, and that kind of fitting solution, like, you know, logistics, whatever, like, you you building into this whole protocol, it's no longer NFT. So we have decided to call it real world asset token, right? I mean, it's so like obvious. I don't know why, you know, not more people are, you know, using this for real world asset, right? Just, you know, just get rid of the whole NFT stigma and just move on.

Travis John (30:50.54)
I brought this up on a Twitter space. I retweeted and I think I shared it on LinkedIn too about the same thing.

I'm screaming from the mountaintops as well because I think it's a brilliant positioning and as you mentioned, it is really just the evolution of technology. I you're not just rebranding something because it's cute. You're rebranding it because it obviously makes sense and the technology has moved and you don't want to be stuck with this stigma. Again, this is early so these are the kind of things. Four years ago, they were calling RWA's security tokens as you know and

Bill Lee (31:25.821)
Right.

Travis John (31:27.942)
to RWA, it seems like that's gonna stick. mean, we never know. But I think overall, I certainly commend you and the team for, you know, continuing being innovative, being out there. You know, you're at conferences, you're in the trenches, you're constantly pivoting and finding what's working. you know, you're finding unique brands as you describe some of them. I mean, I know you have a...

bit more coming up and I'm excited to kind of continue sharing that and continue talking with you about it.

DualMint is definitely moving in the right direction for Web 3, I think, and it's aligning incentives. and I love how you guys are doing that with aligning the incentives, aligning yield. You know, it's a perfect marriage. anything else you want to chat about as we're wrapping up? I know we're riffing here on different topics, but I think we covered quite a bit and really exciting.

Bill Lee (32:22.705)
No, think that's a good start. I would love to come back on the show, maybe later and discuss more in detail on some of these projects. We're not going to share more. Or just have a conversation.

Travis John (32:36.475)
Yeah, we definitely need to report back because your deal flow and your new brands are coming through regularly and as we continue to do that, I know that that's a popular segment because again, this really ties into whether it's boring businesses or it's where there's a cult -like following, these are the kind of brands that people want to hear about and they want to get involved with. I this is the way that drives growth for them and investing and also for Dual Mint.

It's been a great conversation, Bill. I appreciate it and we will definitely have you back. I will put everything in the show notes, but dualmint .com is a website. Bill, CTO and co -founder, amazing team. Love what you're doing and we'll talk again soon.

Bill Lee (33:06.887)
Yeah.

Bill Lee (33:24.679)
Hey, thanks, Travis, for having us.