Hi my name is Bryan Jun and I've had a decently interesting career, here's my story. After growing up as a Korean American in Southern California, I went to Washington and Lee University, which at the time was 87% Caucasian and had Robert E. Lee buried at the school. It has the highest concentration of Greek life affiliated students in the country and while not a target target school, is a hack for people trying to enter investment banking. I didn't know IB existed until I was 20 years old and had no problem getting a job. I learned southern hospitality and cocktail parties. Shoutout W&L! One of my fraternity brothers (of course many years above me) was the founder of an investment bank, whom through networking thought highly of me. I interned there the summer of junior year. During that summer one of my fellow interns passed away on the job (due to unrelated-to-work health issues) and I called the ambulance. It changed how I viewed life forever. 7 months into investment banking I started a Youtube channel when micro-influencers barely started becoming a concept, recognizing that a normal dude in a hoodie telling you the realities of professional services would be enticing. I knew the rawness of the content would do well day 1. After 9 months of the hottest M&A market to date, COVID hit and Youtube-viewership and searches for jobs surged. I posted every single Saturday for four years without missing a week. My videos became curriculum at some investment banking programs in universities and I advised (and continue to!) hundreds of students and young professionals over the years. After 2 years of misery, I left to go work for @travisk for a "stealth company" which recently became ATOMS, funded by @a16z. I worked specifically for the virtual restaurants division where I met two of the smartest people in my life. 9 months later, those guys asked me to join them in starting an NFT marketplace, at the time known as Solanalysis, which became Hyperspace. During the peak of the platform, I became the "#1 Web3 influencer" according to a plugin called NFTInspect in the "which influencer is followed by the most influential people" category. I do accredit much of that "fame" to our back and forth with @MagicEden - no hard feelings now. Around that time, @thebrianlee found me on Youtube and advised me to start a TikTok channel explaining Korea to people, cutting out the BS. My first video was about the grandson of a president/dictator (depending on who you ask) exposing himself and his family few days after I attended a church retreat with him. It hit over a million views in 24 hours. That platform has grown immensely, often liked and commented on by Korean and non-Korean celebrities. Unrelatedly, I was recruited to serve as a translator/local manager for the top KPOP group in the world when they come to NYC. They never asked me to sign an NDA for some reason - but the only hint I'll drop is this Behind-The-Scenes image of one of their solo concerts, which I'm probably one of 10 people on earth that wasn't on stage to have a picture of in Times Square. After the downfall of NFTs (and building the platform across 3 major L1s) our team pivoted to creating on-chain synthetic perps for pre-IPO companies. That's a fancy way of saying, we allowed people to buy and sell OpenAI and SpaceX before they became public. It was a perfect culmination of my finance, content, and blockchain background as well as a hyper-focus on how to market startups properly in this saturated market. As I enter the next phase of career, it's crazy to see how I've been fortunate enough to always be early to entire industries which at the time were just trends. Being somewhat successful across multiple niches shouldn't be a coincidence, but I still have massive imposter syndrome. All glory to God!

Hosting another @cryptocom event, this time in Rome!🇮🇹 Sign up here here👇

Korean American girl version - Grow up in Southern California / NJ - Pre-contact lenses chopped phase - Become token Asian girl in white group - "You're basically one of us but smart" - Go to second tier Ivy and immediately choose finance route or pre-law - Identity crisis in college as friend group naturally becomes more Asian - Realize you don't have a lake house - Graduate and date white guy off Hinge or Korean guy at church - If identity crisis was too strong, reject capitalism and become nurse instead - Blame parents even though they tried their best - Open Instagram account for your Wasian or Korean baby

So many similarities between AI and Crypto industries - Constant narrative switching between need regulation vs free enterprise - Paid off KOLs - Moral high ground claims by founders - Led by nerds who feel cool / have money for the first time that don't know how to control wealth - Non-technical greedy business people who suddenly become experts and sit on panels - A good thing turned bad because of urgency to IPO/ICO - Same exact service funded over and over again becauce of VC ego - Normies can't capitalize until insiders already cashed out - Handful of folks made rich with everyone else facing the pump and dump consequences - Less utility than originally promised - US vs China - Ultimately can't function without leaning on government

Relaunch hyperspace 🤌🤌🤣

Reminds me of that time when Magic Eden and Metaplex came together to say we need a new system for creator royalties and then stabbed each other in the back for profit and we ended up with no more NFTs

I'll be the first to admit being an adult in 2026 is exhausting. Having one job doesn't feel enough. AI is going to make us extinct. You need to be an influencer. The people our parents told us are "one time gimmicks" are making more money than we ever will seemingly putting in no work. We should be building revenue generating AI agents. 14 year olds have their own business. Our career should give us purpose but shouldn't be our everything. Religious leaders tell us to dedicate ourselves to their beliefs (but easy for them to say because that's aligned with how they get paid). Celebrities make money by filming themselves going on vacation. Weddings seem to be more important than marriages. If you're conservative you're a bigot, if you're a progressive you're weak. Everyone has a different way of becoming happy or successful except you, apparently. What do we do?

Seriously? What’s the concern you ask, @vladtenev? The list of concerns is almost existential. U.S. securities laws are in place to protect investors. For good reason, we spend millions and millions of dollars every year to comply with U.S. securities laws. In good. conscience, how can Robinhood as a U.S. company set up an operation in far offshore Jersey, an island 3000 miles away, and market a security sort of posing as AMC in some shape or fashion, and not comply with U.S. securities laws. That is shocking and shameful. Our past issuance of equity to strengthen our balance sheet was vital to our success. Your setting up some kind of fictitious synthetic equity market decouples stock token ownership from a company’s ability to control its own capital raising efforts. Share ownership gives shareholders various rights, including the right to vote their shares. Your stock token pretend to be some form of stock ownership, but disclosures to the contrary notwithstanding, they are not ownership and they deprive investors of their rights. This quasi-fake market you are creating on the island of Jersey sows distrust amongst the public about financial markets in general. There already is distrust in financial institutions, you are potentially making it far worse. These are but a few of my concerns about your actions. I hereby call on you and Robinhood to voluntarily CEASE AND DECIST the trading of AMC stock tokens. If you don’t, our high priced securities counsel has been asked to see whether we can force you to stop. I also wonder how can the SEC possibly support your sham ignoring of U.S. securities laws. You can be sure we will be asking them.

Do my eyes deceive me? Is it…..@thebryanjun ?

does it support creator royalties tho

the type of crypto people I genuinely feel the worst for: You lived through multiple cycles being "principles-first" sticking to things like decentralization, creator royalties, 1-chain loyalty, etc. People root for you publicly but it doesn't convert to $. Whatever chain you stuck by doesn't support you in any way and they keep announcing partnerships with builders you've never heard of. You are too ethical so people don't add you to any alpha chats or give you a heads up on memecoin trades etc. Kids half your age made millions. You tell yourself you are still a principled person but deep inside you wish you made the bag. It's almost like boomers looking at streamers/influencers and wondering why they worked their 9-5 work hard pension plan job. It's probably a significant majority of people left in the industry and probably something that will never be addressed.

Better when @thebryanjun was building here

I turned 29 today.  I suddenly feel the urge to talk about boring B2B SaaS on LinkedIn, repost political videos on Instagram, get an MBA, tell people my back hurts, settle down in a suburb, tell the next generation they should've worked harder instead of going to Coachella, post on social median in perfect grammar, and feel accomplished from Duolingo daily challenges. Not looking forward to my 30s, which I've always looked at as the end of my life.

A big concern of mine at 28 years old is that I'm trying things "on my own" but everyone around me is saying the same thing. I'm worried there's a high chance we've all bought into this entrepreneur/startup narrative and happened to be lucky with a couple things here and there (i.e. content) where we all feel like we can do great things but in reality we're pretty capped. Maybe we'd be a lot happier back at the stable six figure jobs that we all left and 10 years later when our professional services peers are hitting 7 figures, we'll be sucking our thumbs saying "aT lEAsT wE chASEd oUR dReAMs"

why are we still fighting over kingmaking in 2026 lol