Backstory

Thomas Pratter is from Vienna, Austria. While very young, he played professional level chess for his age group.

Academically, he studied Computer Science and got into Crypto when a teacher of his was doing some cloud mining. BTC was $10 at the time, but his parents didn’t allow him to buy it. I guess they are NoCoiners. It appears he was going to college quite early age-wise.

Education

Thomas studied programming and computing. He gets into the nuances and differences between the Austrian Education system and education in other places. He likes higher-level programming languages and discusses which ones he prefers and why.

Why he's in Crypto

Thomas originally go into it from the technical side of things. While he admits financial compensation is important, he also seems to have a passion for it...especially DeFi.

He questions whether market cap is the best way to value crypto projects. He's not a BTC maximalist or even a fan of the concept. I tend to agree and think that BTC and ETH maximalism can be negative for the community and even a little cult-like.

He's a big fan of Monero when it comes to a pure Cryptocurrency. When I mentioned Monero getting delisted off exchanges, he didn't seem worried about it. He thinks if the ban hammer gets thrown around in the major countries, a smaller country will take the freedom torch and thrive because of it.

While he is still a big fan of ERC-20 tokens, he doesn't see much promise for NFTs. I may tend to slightly disagree with him there as I see a few use cases for them. Darkside of the HODL Moon or BlocKade Artwork NFTs anyone?

Policies and Politics in the EU and the US

Thomas bluntly stated that "The EU in its current form isn't working." He thinks that perhaps a "United States of Europe" would be a better model. I get the impression he thinks Europe could be doing a lot more when it comes to the burgeoning industry we're a part of. He's heard of Crypto Valley but doesn't think much is going on there...at least not yet.

I asked him a little about his Twitter which retweets a lot of Americans and American politicians. He stated that it's important to be informed on the US even if you're not in the US. He gave some compelling reasons for this. Most importantly, he thinks European politics and regulation are down-wind from things that happen in the US.

He also mentioned Germany and Austria are tax-free on Crypto HODLs of a year or more.  Related to this:

"45, we need this rule here in the US…and a DeMinimus Exemption."

-BlocKade

BlocKade wants to p2p Crypto w/ Monero, BCH, and others to buy things with his non-confiscatable Cryptocurrency. HODL.

Table Tennis

I was going to put this in the intro but decided this needs its own section. Thomas was BEASTMODE at the table. He was a 2-time Austrian Champion in Table Tennis for his age level.

While he started playing pips-in with popular rubbers like Thriver and Tenergy, he's now rockin' super tacky Chinese rubber with a harder sponge. In between, he even played short pips on one side for a few years.

As for myself, I am/was rockin' this on the backhand and a top-secret rubber on the forehand.

I play leftie so I don't know if Thomas is ready for me. We plan to hold a match sometime soon. My spin game is next level. You've been warned.

AutoWhale

Thomas first explained the logo, which made a lot of sense, especially when you know what the logo looks like.

They focus on supporting smaller companies with their own coin and do market-making for them. Thomas said many market makers aren't transparent and that's where he's different. He also said that there's a conflict-of-interest when an exchange does market making on their own coin, and that's where AutoWhale or a third party should come in.

The three of us also discuss and explain why market making is actually a good thing. Then, we talk about the problems with wash trading. We discuss why it's so lucrative and why it's such a problem in the Crypto exchange space.

This led us to discuss his other project, U4.AI. It's a liquidity ranking platform that has a metric that excludes exchanges that do wash-trading to a substantial degree. I asked him about ranking the worst exchanges, but that doesn't seem to fit with his well-natured pips-in mentality.

In Conclusion

During Thomas' closing thoughts, he used his time to talk about some of the hyper political correctness he's seeing and why it's worrisome to him. I can't really do it justice, but I hope you listen to it, and the rest of the amazing episode, on your favorite podcasting platform or Bitchute. HODL.