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The last time I had interviewed Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman was in 2019 on the Paris Blockchain Week Summit. It coincided with the fire of Notre Dame, and I can still hear the panting of a dumbstruck-mixture collected opposite the cathedral as the angry orange flames that gathered the Spire of Paris “and the thick black smoke in the evening in the evening.
Despite the historical tragedy in the medieval cathedral, the energy at the conference was high. They were still early days when most ideas exceeded the technology, and there was a gap between engineering and marketing.
Defi wasn’t something yet. Decentralized exchanges were mocked due to their lack of speed and waffle-dunne liquidity, and Idex dominated the charts with a monthly volume of 400k ETH, trade for the knockdown price of ~ $ 150 per coin.
Privacy coins were not prosecuted. You could crypto on and off-disaster without KYC, and John McAfee was still on a boat in the Bahamas, which the Irs defied (God, peace of his soul).
Most projects were replications of Web2 apps that are linked to a blockchain that could have functioned perfectly without these.
- ‘Tell me about [insert novel name here]”I would ask.
- “It’s Salesforce on the blockchain.”
- “It’s Uber on Neo.”
- “It’s a decentralized travelocity.”
- “It’s transparent space travel …”
You get the idea: a flashy website, a chic white paper and an opportunistic leader who would probably end in a battle with the SEC.
Even in the depths of the bear, these events still pulled a considerable crowd, debate about blockchain scalability, the road to massive adoption, winning the hearts and spirits of traditional financial institutions, and when they expect a clearly regulatory framework for crypto … Some things have not changed. Others feel like a life ago as a life ago.
The event was opened by Bruno Le Maire, the French Minister of the Economy, who would like to sing the virtues of the newly released Pact Law for digital assets of the country and emphasize the seriousness of the Blockchain bet of France. In a bizarre strong contrast, it became through Bad cryptoA coarse American podcast duo whose frat boy humor and misplaced jokes about the French fall as well as you could imagine.
Six years ago Crypto was the border and everything was possible. At a time when the Battle of the Layer 1’s was intensifying, Tezos, the self-connecting blockchain was launched in response to the lack of innovation and programmability of Bitcoin, a competitor as an ‘Ethereum murderer’.
Fast-Forward until 2025, and Tezos has a new aspiration: conquering the RWA sector by token Uranium. And Notre Dame has a new striker.
Tezos, the blockchain designed to evolve
As the ‘blockchain designed to evolve’, Tezos has moved with the stories, from money to defi, NFTs to memes and rwas. It has avoided the waste container of fallen cryptos thanks to its ‘adaptability’, ‘resilience as a value’ and ‘careful management’ of his important treasury (Tezos obtained $ 232 million in Bitcoin in his 2017 raise).
Arthur Breitman exchanges today and is candid and relaxed. He has lost part of the Bravoure of 2019 and speaks with the humility of a man who has endured the turbulent cycles of Crypto. I remind him that we have met earlier, and although I doubt that he remembers it, he nods friendly and smiles while I remember his ambitions for Tezos as the most used blockchain and his predictions of a consolidation of space.
“I had a few statements that were wrong,” he says. “A thesis was that at some point people would be tired to buy new coins, because they would continue to dilute everything, and you could not easily earn money by just launching a new coin … This was clearly wrong!”
He grins sadly while his eyes travel to the exhibition hall below with his loud cabins and colorful merchan.
“There is still a playbook where you collect a number of money for VCs. You launch a currency. You have 90% of the tokens and you flood the market with them.”
At a time when Pump.Fun spits out the second, Fartcoin scores higher than TEZOS per market capitalization, and the president of the United States has his own meme Munt; Does Arthur still have the same passion and drive for what he does? He sighs:
“I am disappointed about how the rest of the ecosystem went on – not the Tezos -Ecosystem, which is brilliant – but there is a lot of nihilism that took over in crypto, and I don’t like nihilism.
Arthur and his wife Kathleen launched in the first place Tezos to be a breeding ground for innovation and a place to try experiments that are not possible on Bitcoin, with a self -assured blockchain that removed the need for controversial forks and prioritizing chain gutter. He explains:
“It is a core possession of Tezos; the fact that the blockchain can evolve. We have seen many blockchains evolve now with violence, so it is not as if every blockchain is stuck. It is as if most of them accept the centralization that is accompanied by having a DEV team that says:” Time to fork. “
Arthur, on the other hand, says that Tezos has never compromised in decentralization. The entire network can be performed on a Raspberry Pi, which reduces the barriers to become a ‘baker’ (the equivalent of the Tezos of a Validator) and can expand the network in a meaningfully decentralized way. It is also demonstrably safe, without major incidents or problems over the years.
A culture of real things
Like every project in the web3 world, the Tezos journey has not been linear. It has recorded a debilitating battle with the SEC, somewhat high-profile internal shuffles and a tumbling of his status as a top 10 coin to the second page of Coetecko.
From changing the way people think about money to embracing NFTs and memes, Tezos has played several times, which emphasizes the ‘adaptability’ that Arthur describes as one of the core strengths.
“We have a flourishing art community with real artists who make real NFTs. It is not economically solid – we are not talking about $ 100 million elevations or something similar – but it is real.”
I wonder whether often changing course results in a kind of identity loss. But although you can find meme coins on Tezos, Arthur insists that they are not part of the core culture.
“It’s not about whether it is there. It looks more like, is this seen as your culture? Is this seen as what you are mainly about?”
And what is Tezos mainly about? How would Arthur describe his core culture?
“If I had to define it, it really does things, it is real. When we did the Etherlink -Rollup, it was really decentralized for real. Almost every role is the custody there. If you are based, Coinbase has the keys.
Optimism, when it was launched, had no fraud tickets. It was entirely based on trust. So we really did it. We do a blockchain governance for real. So I would say that if there is a culture, it is a culture to really do things. “
Tokenized uranium and arthur’s newest position
TEZOS’s most recent company is located in the RWA sector, with the launch of uranium.ioA new platform that sells tokens that represent physical ownership of the element. It is an industry-first and it brought him to Token2049 today.
“Why would people want to invest in uranium?” I ask. “I wanted it, and that’s why I thought it was interesting,” he replies. I tell him that I read somewhere that Uranium had surpassed the S&P 500, with a superior return to Bitcoin of Gold. “I don’t like that statistics,” he says, wrinkles his nose. “I do not consider the performance of the past as an indicator for future performance.”
Instead, he says that his thesis for investing in uranium is based on three core pillars: changing attitude towards nuclear energy, the scrambling of Western governments for energy breach and the continuous process of AI.
Uranium is a critical raw material for nuclear energy, and its market has been historically opaque and complex for most investors to gain access. By bringing uranium to the chain, Uranium.io democratizes exposure to an activa class that is previously reserved for a handful of investors.
“The younger generation is much more concerned with global warming than on the Nuclear War … If you look at the polls in the US, the Republicans are generally in favor of nuclear energy, with Democrats the majority is still against, but it is a huge generation gorge … If you look at the trend, it looks like it looks like the trend, it looks like it looks like the trend, it looks like the trend, it looks like the trend, it looks like the trend, it looks like the trend, it looks like the trend,
What makes Tezos a suitable platform for Tokenized Rwas?
“There is a reputation, you know? It is elusive, but there is a reputation for Ernst. In the same way that a luxury product does not want to sit next to a non-luxury product.”
Will Tezos’ betting on uranium bear fruit?
I look out, what is the next step for Tezos, and what does Arthur see it in the next five years? “The next five years?” He laughs.
“That is very difficult to predict, especially given the timelines in Crypto, where everything is very fast. I don’t even know where the world will be with AI in five years. But I can tell you in which direction we are going, and the direction is enormous scalability with Tezos X.”
TEZOS X strives to be a large, developer -friendly role that supports popular programming languages such as JavaScript and Python and attracts projects with real utility and liquidity.
“We try to push applications that we regard as resilient and make sense to the space. There is a tendency for many companies to just tell stories.”
He rolls with his eyes and stares back to the exhibition hall. What looks like a whale in an astronaut suit is posing for photos.
If Arthur is right about long uranium and demand continues to rise, inzos can be something big, perhaps even his name again to the forefront of the industry. If not, well, Tezos will adjust again and evolve over time again.
