Intersection of Blockchain and Metaverse, with gCC’s Miko Matsumara and PunjaVC’s Manmeet Singh Bhasin

In the following discussion that took place on Silicon Dreams, blockchain investors Miko Matsumara and Manmeet Singh Bhasin were gracious enough to sit down and talk about their opinions and ambitions on the revolutionary potential of Web3. The host Soniya Ahuja, the CEO and founder of Orbis86, helps mediate the discussion to touch upon one of the most fascinating areas of Web3’s vast potential— the marriage between blockchain and AI.

With 30 years of experience in the tech industry, Miko Matsumara is the managing partner at gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC), a venture capitalist fund for blockchain, Web3, and cryptocurrencies. Over the past 5-6 years, they have invested in many early-stage startups that are now unicorns. Their most significant investment is OpenSea— the world’s first and largest NFT marketplace.

Manmeet Singh Bhasin is another elite name in the tech industry with 30-year experience, who is the founder and managing partner of Punja Global Ventures (PunjaVC), a VC fund focussing on blockchain and AI startups. He himself was an entrepreneur who founded two companies and then sold both of them— Dataguise, a data security and compliance provider to tech firms, and PKWARE, a tech consultancy firm. PKWARE was bought by Thompson Street Capital Partners, a renowned US-based tech VC and consultancy firm.

The focus of PunjaVC is AI, VR, and metaverse projects on Web3 and blockchain. Their target market is businesses and enterprises, rather than consumers directly.

On-chain Virtual Reality: Utility and Future

VR and metaverse are often subject to skepticism, whether they have any real-life benefits or not. A lot of the metaverse is going to be built upon digital items, that can also be collectibles, that can be owned.

Matsumara then makes a great point about how being on-chain and existing as NFTs gives so much more meaning to the utility of the metaverse. He says, “The idea that we can manifest these visions in front of our eyes, (such as with) Apple Vision Pro headset or the Quest 3 of Meta, really gives a lot of promise. But the question then comes, what about things like ownership? What about things like currencies and money? What about these digitally permanent assets?

I think NFT is the base layer of metaverse, which is really ownership and belonging… People haven’t reasoned well about the metaverse. The first versions of metaverse have been very boring because people go there and they’re like oh, I look cool. And then a week later, they’re like, okay, I’m done.”

Bhasin explains how NFTs bring immutability and ownership to digital assets, art pieces, patents etc., where there have been issues of stealing and scamming. He says, “NFTs give a unique identification. Artists are the most benefited, because they could make their art and sell it directly without going through the intermediaries… That was making it a numbered way, a digital way to tell you that this is the unique one, this is yours.

And now with ChatGPT and prompt engineering, you can generate so many (plagiarized) images. But your unique image will still stay unique.”

Matsumara expands on this idea— “To me, gaming and the metaverse are deeply interconnected. For example, Microsoft is buying Activision, Blizzard. They created a headset called HoloLens. They are serious about AI, but their metaverse is actually a game.

So how did we get involved in OpenSea— my partner in Japan published a game called My Crypto Heroes. We discovered through them that the best and only place to sell NFTs of any kind is OpenSea. We used this game as a way of getting into OpenSea.

Gaming is entertainment, and entertainment is AI resistant. Microsoft is the deepest investor in OpenAI. So you can be scared and think, oh, AI is going to take people’s jobs. But what’s going to happen is that there’s going to be more people spending more of their time in digital entertainment, including gaming…”

Bhasin agrees, “Yes, there will be a certain percentage of jobs that will go away. But think about how many other jobs will be created? How much new assistance you will have, without creating your own stuff from scratch? So it’s going to be completely revolutionary…”

Matsumara also presents an example— “We came across a company which was trying to solve a health care problem, where they were going to have a metaverse with doctors. But it wasn’t just doctors in the metaverse. They will have a hand feeling on one side, and these guys can get the same feeling, they take heartbeat… So they were working on something like that.

But the power, the GPU and all, needed on both sides, was difficult, but they were going to create it… Yes, there are going to be so many things in between; so many things need to be done. But that’s really an enterprise solution. It is a consumer as well as business solution.”

There are companies working on sensory devices for the VR space. For example, reading is a problem for kids with dyslexia and other learning disabilities. But an immersive experience with AR tools activating multiple senses, will help create a more equitable learning environment for everyone.

Matsumara concludes with an insightful lesson— “Everything meaningful is, at some point in time, imaginary. The idea of AI plus virtual reality can make the imaginary things, which are the future, come to life, very quickly and very powerfully. Because the AIs can generate in three dimensions the things that we can just try to express… It means that the future will arrive faster.”

Regulatory Compliance in the Era of Decentralization

Bhasin talks about the possible compliance regarding privacy and security levels, “With all these new things happening, privacy is not going to go away. There will be regulation… Gamers will have their privacy, healthcare will have different level of privacy, identification… Identification in this zero-trust is becoming very important. All these things are being built.

When it’s decentralized, one person’s privacy is even more important than, (for example) when a bunch of credit cards were stolen from American Express.”

Matsumara talks about his compliance policies, “We advise founders to be compliant and safe, but not get too crazy. Because there is a tension between innovation and regulation. Ultimately the end game is that things will just move to where they are wanted. So if the US decides to crack down on cryptocurrency, then they’ll just move to other countries.

There isn’t a monolithic way to eliminate these things because innovation is faster, smarter and always ahead of regulation. Being decentralized, it’s (Web3) in every country. There isn’t a way to really stop something like open-source software. Innovation is just going to continue.”

Bhasin adds, “Innovation is important till it starts misusing or misguiding people. That’s when the regulations should be looked at. They should be used as a guard rail. They should be there to help, not to stop innovation. People do comply. There are some bad actors. But generally, if there is a regulation, at least 90% will comply.”

Matsumara believes “There are certain regulations that are wanted (because) we want to keep people safe.” He explained with the example of Japan, “Japan is the largest global economy of crypto with the highest amount of fair regulatory clarity. When FTX crashed, Japan was the only country where all the exchange customers got all their money back, because Japan had already created a regulation to separate the custody of the asset from the exchange. So this wise regulation protected people.”

He also praised the US SEC commissioner, Hester M Pierce who “has great policies and great ideas”.

Bhasin gives a similar example in the AI space, “Recently, ChatGPT was completely banned in Italy. And it feels like what governments do is if they don’t understand something, they try to just stop it right there. The problem is regulators don’t get the best brains. They should give more money and hire the right people…

(Even if) people do comply, but if they are not in your regulation area, if they leave the country, how are they going to comply? So you have to keep them here (with) a positive regulation.”

Web3 is a trillion-dollar industry. Governments need to understand it is not just coins and tokens. It’s about solving real world problems. The intersection of all these technologies of blockchain, AI and metaverse will present a cutting-edge future for humanity. All things said, it is going to weave a fantastic ecosystem for the entire civilization.

Disclaimer: The article is a transcription of the interview conducted by RJ Soniya Ahuja. No statement or comment in the article is a direct or indirect portrayal of the writer’s views or opinions. The interview does not intend to promote, demote or demean any organization or community. It also does not intend to give the readers any financial or investment advice.

Soniya Ahuja, a respected leader in the Web3 and crypto community, empowers through Orbis86. With a background at Deloitte and Broadcom, her expertise spans two decades. Through initiatives like the 1111 Orbisons NFT collection, Soniya promotes diversity and community engagement. As host of “The Silicon Dreams,” she shares insights on AI, ML, and Web3, inspiring worldwide innovators. Passionate about educating and onboarding one million individuals into Web3, Soniya fosters adoption and understanding.