Updated on:11/29/2025 05:00 PM 
CryptoSlate recently had the opportunity to speak with Mitch Liu — the co-founder and CEO of Theta Labs and THETA.tv.
In 2010, Mr. Liu co-founded Gameview Studios, best known for its Touch Pet mobile game series with nearly 100 million downloads. The company was acquired by DeNA, a leading Asian mobile gaming company, within 6 months of launch. Prior to that, he co-founded Tapjoy in 2007, a pioneer of rewarded social and mobile video advertising, and grew that company to $100 million in revenues. He holds a BS in Computer Science & Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
This interview was featured in collaboration with the premier virtual conference BlockDown. The highly anticipated third edition of the conference, BlockDown 3.0, will take place on October 22-23 featuring some of the crypto industry's top names.
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Why Theta? What made you create Theta, what problem or service were you hoping to improve upon and why?
Theta Network was created as we aimed to solve our own problems with video delivery for the streaming platform THETA.tv (known at the time as SLIVER.tv). As a startup with significant CDN (content delivery network) costs to Akamai and AWS, we looked to a peer-to-peer solution that would help reduce those costs as users could relay video streams among themselves. The Theta blockchain was created to incentivize users to contribute their resources to this p2p network via the THETA and TFUEL tokens.
How does Theta work, and how can users earn TFuel? What can you use Tfuel for?
Theta Network works by allowing users on Theta-enabled platforms to relay video streams they are watching to other viewers in their local area. In return for sharing video with their peers and contributing their bandwidth to the network, they earn TFUEL tokens. TFUEL can be used on sites like THETA.tv to donate to streamers or exchange for items, and is also traded on major crypto exchanges like Binance and Huobi.
What are the biggest challenges faced by blockchain businesses today?
The biggest challenges remain regulatory uncertainty and a lack of mainstream adoption of most blockchain use cases. Regulations are becoming clearer in most major economies though, and at least in the U.S. where we are based, the regulators have shown they are not out to kill crypto, they just want it to be secure for consumers. As far as adoption goes, it's been slower than we expected back in 2018, but as regulations improve that allows businesses more opportunity to trust blockchain solutions, which in turn should lead to more user adoption.
Can you tell us about the big projects Theta has coming up in the next six months?
The most important project we've announced for the next 6 months is our "Anycast" Edge Node platform that permits local processing and transcoding of streams, end-to-end decentralized streaming, decentralized chat and event notifications. This functions completely over the decentralized Theta Network and allows completely permissionless streaming, which is becoming more important than ever as streamers are de-platformed on YouTube, and entire video and social media platforms are subject to censorship and bans. We also have a few other key initiatives we're working on but we can't discuss these publicly just yet.
What kind of response has your platform received from influencers, streamers and partners?
We have seen an incredible response from streamers and partners on THETA.tv, as they benefit from a highly-engaged userbase that is earning crypto and donating tokens as they watch streams. This has allowed us to bring numerous high profile streams to THETA.tv including NASA TV, Coindesk Consensus, and crypto streamers like Chico Crypto and Crypto Lark.
What segment do you expect to grow the most on Theta.TV in the next 12 months, esports, VR, cryptocurrency or something else? Do you have any specific area that you want to bring to the platform?
The two segments that are growing fastest on THETA.tv are crypto and IRL (in real life) content. We have seen a huge expansion in both content side (streamers from these segments choosing to stream to THETA.tv) and also the user response to this content. There tends to be a great synergy between these segments and the esports content that THETA.tv built a userbase with.
Has the pandemic led to an upspike in use of your platform, in terms of streamers that broadcast on your platform and daily users?
Yes, we've seen a marked increase in streaming on THETA.tv since January, with 40% more data being streamed over Theta Network per month in GB terms. We believe this effect will last beyond the pandemic period as these users are often introduced to earning crypto and Theta Network for the first time.
Globally, are there any markets in particular that interest you and that you will be targeting for growth in the next 12 months? If so, which regions interest you and why?
Yes, we are really focused on Korea, Japan, and SE Asia right now. In Korea we've launched THETA.tv in partnership with Klaytn, a Kakao company. We are in the process of integrating Theta Network into two more video platforms in Korea as well. In Japan we are working with our investor gumi Cryptos to get THETA and TFUEL compliant with the FSA (Japanese financial regulators), which will pave the way for work with Japanese video platforms and Japanese exchange listings. In SE Asia we recently listed THETA and TFUEL on Indodax exchange in Indonesia and are targeting several prominent regional video platforms.
What is your biggest complaint about the current state of video delivery networks and services, what areas need to be improved?
The biggest issue for us was the huge costs for video delivery we faced as a startup. This issue will only become greater, for both small and large platforms, as we move into 4k, 8k, and data-heavy VR formats in the years to come. With Theta Network platforms can reduce the burden of these costs, while at the same time gaining a more loyal and engaged audience by way of TFUEL token rewards.
You recently partnered with Fortnite banner Cutting Mercs, What profile of streamers are Theta looking to attract to its platform?
THETA.tv has its origins in the esports streaming world, but in the past year has expanded to other content types like classic movies from MGM, live rocket launches from our partnership with NASA TV, World Poker Tour, and more. A major focus has been on crypto streamers like Chico Crypto and Crypto Lark, who are now regularly streaming to THETA.tv. Given the Theta userbase is more crypto-savvy than most from using the Theta Network, crypto streamers are a natural fit to add our banner lineup.
What's your vision for the blockchain industry generally and how much do you think the space is going to grow in the next five years? Can you offer any predictions of the type of advances people should expect?
In the next 5 years we see blockchain moving from niche technology to underpinning major consumer and enterprise apps, often without an end user even realizing it. Removing or obscuring the pain points of private keys, gas fees, etc. is a necessary requirement to mass adoption, because the typical consumer will never want to deal with these technical aspects of blockchain. Once the user experience in blockchain-powered apps matches that of today's leading apps, then blockchain technology will flourish.
