Nader Al-Naji
Founder and Leader, Decentralized Social. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderengineer@nadertheory ↗deso.com ↗
Nader Al-Naji is the creator of the decentralized social media platform BitClout and the underlying Layer-1 blockchain DeSo, as well as the algorithmic stablecoin Basis. In 2024, he faced federal fraud and SEC charges related to the sale of BitClout tokens, which were dismissed in 2025 and 2026.
1shows
1appearances
18statements
7resolved
4supported
0contradicted
57%fully supported
2said about them ↓ Everything Nader Al-Naji said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Al-Naji: DeSo raised 5,000 BTC via 44,000 automated transactions before incorporating
“You know, that 5000 Bitcoin I mentioned all that money actually came in before there was any corporate entity set up to do anything. And so essentially the way it worked was the blockchain was running, and if you sent Bitcoin to this treasury wallet the blockc…”
Al-Naji: The next crypto wave will be creator coins after NFTs
“This wave was about NFTs. I think the next wave is going to be about creator coins, also known as social tokens.”
Al-Naji: Open content gives decentralized social platforms an asymmetric advantage over incumbents
“I won't say the word it's inevitable, but I think it's actually very asymmetric, like in favor of decentralized platforms actually winning. The main reason being that I think when all the content is open and anyone can build on it, I think that the speed of it…”
Al-Naji: DeSo is the only blockchain solving post storage and indexing
“The biggest one is like the storage and the indexing of posts, which is a very hard problem for blockchains to solve. And I don't think anyone Other than Deeso really has had a good solution to that.”
Al-Naji: Open social protocols will shift value accrual to creators
“I think we might see you know, basically a splitting of the market by a bunch of different apps that kind of charge small fees to allow the creators to do what they do, but that's competitive as opposed to monopolistic and will hopefully result in a lot more o…”
Al-Naji: Top VCs bought ~$30M of DeSo, none owning >5%
“I think about thirty million dollars worth was that which is, I think, not, not a huge percent, and no one has, no one owns more than five percent of the supply from that.”
Al-Naji: Early VCs own no equity, only DESO tokens
“All of them actually don't own, importantly, they don't own equity in anything. All of their interest is in the same Asset that you or I hold, which is DSO.”
Al-Naji: DeSo NFT artist coins are underpriced relative to royalty cash flows
“Really the thing that I you know, like my, the hedge fund side of me really likes is NFT artists, because for NFT artists even today, not theoretical all of them set royalties that go to their coins. And so there's real cash flows there that are often like tot…”
Al-Naji: Over 100 apps are being built on DeSo
“Now they're actually over a hundred apps being built on the actual blockchain itself, which we call decentralized social or DSO.”
Al-Naji: Diamond App is already more popular than BitClout
“Diamondapp.com is actually more popular than BitCloud already now. So I think it just passed it, even though it launched like a week ago.”
Al-Naji: DeSo's core strategy is to avoid building end-user products
“But really, like, Sean, you're touching on our strategy, which is, we actually don't want to build any products at all. I didn't even want to launch BitClout, ideally.”
Al-Naji: Next social wave will separate blockchain backends from apps
“I think that with this kind of next wave of social, I think what we're going to see is kind of a separation of concerns where you have this blockchain, which is the diesel blockchain that powers, you know, kind of the back end of all of these things. And then …”
Al-Naji: Ad business models force platforms to keep content databases closed
“Today, you know, Facebook, Twitter you know, they're really about monopolizing content. Like you said, keeping it under lock and key so that they can show ads on it. And if they allow anyone else to build an app, like if they allow another company to build an …”
Al-Naji: About $80 million is currently invested in DeSo creator coins
“I think right now there's about eighty million dollars invested in people's coins, which to me is actually really low.”
Al-Naji: I told celebrity investors to hold off using BitClout early
“No, no, that's actually mostly me. So we have a lot of people who are, like, really big names, not just in VC, but also, like, in Hollywood and all that stuff who bought DSO. And they asked me, like, Natter, like, is now the time, like, to really, like, bring …”
Al-Naji: Basis raised $140M and returned all capital to investors
“My last company, which was called basis, you know, where I raised a hundred and forty million dollars and then it didn't work wound up giving, you know, deciding to kind of do what I think is the right thing, give all the money back.”
Al-Naji: A creator coin generated over $100K in royalties on DeSo
“NFTs are already there and creators have made hundreds of thousands of dollars off of that, like tens of thousands. I think for one of them, they had over a 100,000 dollars flow to their coin already through the creator coin royalties.”
Returning $140 million to Basis investors depleted Al-Naji's personal savings
“With Basis my last company where I raised a hundred forty million and returned it I actually had less money after that in, in my bank account than when I started it, which is basically about three years of runway from my, like, Google and D.D. Shaw savings, ri…”
The other half of the tape: Nader Al-Naji's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Sam Parr 1
Statements about Nader Al-Naji, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
My First Million 1
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Nader's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY FIRST MILLIONLEDGER | Founder and Leader, Decentralized Social | 1 | 18 | 57% 4/7 | full record on My First Million → |