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Meet the Crypto Twitter's favorite Web3 consultant : S4mmy.eth
140 Plays2 years ago
The crypto and NFT space is full of so called experts who don’t actually know much. You scroll through Twitter and you see the same post 10 times over that doesn’t add much, if any, value to the debate.
S4mmy is the anti all that. He does not pretend, you doesn’t try to front us, he just keeps on delivering value day in, day out, enlightening us on relevant use cases and advances of these technologies we all care about so much.
He recently announced becoming an ambassador for Mocaverse (Animoca Brands project) and advisor for Courtyard NFT (tokenization of Real World Assets)
If you like to go deep, if you want to know what it takes to build and grow a web3 business, what businesses out there are doing right or wrong and what opportunities to look for in the market right now, this is the episode to listen to !
The Polymath Experience is a podcast owned by its listeners, join us on Discord to be rewarded : https://discord.gg/PwYt39W95k
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Polymath Experience.
00:00:02
Speaker
I'm your host, Polymath.
00:00:04
Speaker
And today, we have someone who, in a sea of AI-generated content on Twitter, is a breath of fresh air.
00:00:11
Speaker
When they're just trying to get a few bucks, you can count on him to bring in a new perspective.
00:00:16
Speaker
No one's covered before.
00:00:18
Speaker
He doesn't just scratch the surface.
00:00:20
Speaker
He goes deep.
00:00:21
Speaker
and he's focused on uncovering interesting and important pieces of information.
00:00:25
Speaker
Recently, he was one of the only ones I saw who was covering the courtyard Pokemon drop as it was happening.
00:00:32
Speaker
And yeah, he brings in his experience as a Big Four consultant to do it from an angle that's just not being done elsewhere.
00:00:40
Speaker
So, Sammy, welcome to the show.
00:00:42
Speaker
What an intro.
00:00:43
Speaker
I appreciate it.
00:00:44
Speaker
Good to be here.
00:00:45
Speaker
My pleasure.
00:00:46
Speaker
My pleasure.
00:00:47
Speaker
Well, I only have special people on the show, so they deserve a special introduction.
00:00:53
Speaker
That's great.
00:00:53
Speaker
It's probably one of the warmest welcomes I've ever had.
00:00:56
Speaker
So yeah, I appreciate it.
00:00:58
Speaker
I'm glad you like it.
Crypto Journey and Blockchain Interest
00:01:12
Speaker
When we were chatting before, you were telling me about your first days in crypto and this romantic era of the COVID lockdown in Melbourne.
00:01:24
Speaker
Can you go back into this a little bit and remind me, remind us of what got you into the rabbit hole, what caught your attention, all of that?
00:01:33
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:01:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think, I mean, that seems like a decade ago now.
00:01:36
Speaker
So long ago, but it's only what, two years?
00:01:39
Speaker
So I think, I mean, I first touched crypto back, so I started working EY.
00:01:45
Speaker
It's probably almost a decade ago now.
00:01:47
Speaker
So I qualified with them, but left them, joined a fintech.
00:01:50
Speaker
And that was my first exposure to crypto because everyone's kind of tech curious.
00:01:54
Speaker
They were buying, I think it was like Litecoin, Bitcoin.
00:01:58
Speaker
I don't think it was even ETH then, but people were buying up that stuff.
00:02:02
Speaker
And I bought a little bit, dabbled, but then kind of lost interest and moved overseas.
00:02:06
Speaker
So other priorities took place.
00:02:08
Speaker
And I think that's when moving to Australia,
00:02:11
Speaker
So I was over there for four years from London, hit the lockdown of COVID in 2020 and just went down that rabbit hole then.
00:02:19
Speaker
So we were kind of confined to one hour exercise a day and we had like a curfew from 8pm to 5am.
00:02:27
Speaker
So we weren't allowed out between those hours.
00:02:30
Speaker
So I was like, okay, well, I'll fill this time with something that I'm interested in.
00:02:33
Speaker
So I kind of started watching videos and kind of understanding more about what's going on in the market.
00:02:39
Speaker
And I was like, oh, this blockchain stuff, it kind of makes sense.
00:02:42
Speaker
So I was working back at Ernst & Young in Melbourne at the time, did a comment to Sydney, started speaking to a few of the guys there, understood that they had like a blockchain working group.
00:02:52
Speaker
So kind of got more involved in that.
00:02:54
Speaker
And then, yeah, just started.
00:02:55
Speaker
realized institutions were coming if they were interested then it's probably going to be here to stay regulators were starting getting inquisitive putting out consultation papers so okay well this this is clearly here to stay let me go down the rabbit hole start doing some qualifications internal credentials with eY
00:03:12
Speaker
And then realized I was probably learning at a faster pace on my own than I was at the firm.
00:03:17
Speaker
So I kind of went on my own.
00:03:19
Speaker
And that would have been November 2021.
NFT Market Dynamics and Insights
00:03:21
Speaker
There was a flurry of activity in mid-2021 with NFTs.
00:03:26
Speaker
And I think Damien Hirst was what piqued my interest.
00:03:30
Speaker
So the currency.
00:03:31
Speaker
And he's a British artist.
00:03:33
Speaker
And he...
00:03:34
Speaker
created this really interesting idea where you use NFTs to either redeem the physical by burning the NFT or you keep the digital equivalent, but you burn the physical.
00:03:45
Speaker
And I thought that was the first proper use case of this tech that I thought, well, this is something that could be used.
00:03:51
Speaker
So that, to me and my housemate, both actually applied to get this piece.
00:03:55
Speaker
I think it was like $2,000 or something at the time.
00:03:58
Speaker
Immediately after sale, it went up to like 11 ETH, which at 4K per ETH, that's like 44K.
00:04:03
Speaker
K or whatever it was.
00:04:05
Speaker
Um, so yeah, he, he ended up getting it.
00:04:08
Speaker
I didn't get it.
00:04:09
Speaker
So yeah, I was a little bit like I introduced him to it as well.
00:04:12
Speaker
And it was like, Oh yeah, he was a passionate, uh, Damien Hirst fan as well.
00:04:16
Speaker
So he ended up keeping it, riding it all the way up, all the way back down.
00:04:19
Speaker
Nice.
00:04:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:20
Speaker
It's, uh, it's,
00:04:21
Speaker
It was a bit of a whirlwind.
00:04:22
Speaker
I think back in 2021, that blow off top of NFTs, I think it was around about August time and then the second one in January 2022.
00:04:30
Speaker
It was just crazy to see the level of interest, the level of trading going on, the money flowing in.
00:04:37
Speaker
And yeah, I've just stayed interested, curious ever since and just been exploring different types of tech that's been happening.
Blockchain Transparency and Business Implications
00:04:43
Speaker
Yeah, so I think from then, just started writing stuff on Twitter, probably in late 2021, early 2022.
00:04:51
Speaker
And it's just kind of snowballed from there.
00:04:53
Speaker
Thank you, man.
00:04:54
Speaker
Yeah, looking back on those times, now the market is probably closer to its real value because there's no speculation going on.
00:05:03
Speaker
So when you see the levels, especially the trading volume, it was completely nuts what you'd see in a day.
00:05:11
Speaker
Do you remember, because you just mentioned that you found blockchain interesting.
00:05:15
Speaker
And in my experience, we all have that one trigger.
00:05:19
Speaker
that one thing that really based on our own experiences and our own mindset really triggers us in, all right, like this is, this is for me.
00:05:29
Speaker
Was there anything specific for you that was like the aha moment?
00:05:34
Speaker
That aha moment was probably, I think being able to see everything on chain.
00:05:37
Speaker
So just like, I mean, I worked in, so I started in audit.
00:05:42
Speaker
So in terms of like transactions, ledgers, things like that, centralized ledgers.
00:05:46
Speaker
Um,
00:05:47
Speaker
And then kind of moved into consulting advisory.
00:05:49
Speaker
But I think just being able to, I found getting people's data or client data very difficult sometimes.
00:05:55
Speaker
You'd have all these systems sometimes which is not right or not accurate and they didn't kind of reconcile and all this kind of stuff.
00:06:01
Speaker
But then seeing...
00:06:02
Speaker
blockchain where you had all this open ledger, transparent, like literally just export all the data there or just scrape it or whatever.
00:06:10
Speaker
I was like, well, this is just, it's the ledgers there.
00:06:13
Speaker
It's immutable.
00:06:13
Speaker
You can't, you can't change it.
00:06:15
Speaker
And I know like centralized systems, you have these, you have like audit trails and things like that, but it's, I feel like you can probably edit those ledgers a lot more easily.
00:06:26
Speaker
So from a professional skepticism audit background, I was just like,
00:06:30
Speaker
I just feel like this is just superior tech.
00:06:33
Speaker
I don't understand why people aren't using this.
00:06:35
Speaker
And I think it is just, I mean, a lot of my clients were insurers and you had policy admin systems that would be dating back.
00:06:42
Speaker
I mean, sometimes like 30 or 40 years.
00:06:45
Speaker
So you'd have a mismatch of about 30 different systems that would get aggregated into another ledger or whatever.
00:06:52
Speaker
And it would just be chaos.
00:06:53
Speaker
And especially when you have mergers and acquisitions between companies where you have incumbent systems and things like that.
00:06:58
Speaker
So I think having one source of truth, it just makes sense to me.
00:07:03
Speaker
It's so powerful.
00:07:03
Speaker
Yeah, coming from that background and seeing...
00:07:08
Speaker
where I think it's probably going to go with all these financial institutions eventually.
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think the penny just dropped then.
00:07:14
Speaker
That makes so much sense.
00:07:16
Speaker
Do you think we're ever... Because there is a big... A lot of companies like to cover up their tracks.
00:07:24
Speaker
There is magical accounting techniques to do what you want or delay things.
00:07:34
Speaker
I was watching this documentary...
00:07:37
Speaker
What's that Japanese camera company, Olympus?
00:07:42
Speaker
Did you, did you, I'll send you later on, I'll send you, I'll send you a documentary on this.
00:07:46
Speaker
It was, it was fascinating.
00:07:48
Speaker
And especially because it was the first time where you could see that business in Japan is very, it's very important when you're a business person, you're providing for people.
00:07:59
Speaker
And so there's this notion of respect and of like being the man of the, of the company.
00:08:03
Speaker
And so betraying or even, yeah, betraying that trust, even without any ill will is terrible.
00:08:11
Speaker
And so they,
00:08:13
Speaker
covered up their accounting in ways to buy them time.
00:08:19
Speaker
And this was just like a top of head example.
00:08:23
Speaker
But do you think we're ever going to move to a place where there's this level of transparency?
00:08:30
Speaker
as like you have a blockchain and stakeholders and even maybe users see accounting in real time?
00:08:36
Speaker
No, it will never
Blockchain Adoption Challenges and Incentives
00:08:37
Speaker
be like that.
00:08:37
Speaker
So it will be, you'll have permission blockchains, you'll have, I think blockchains where
00:08:43
Speaker
I mean, you're going to have the companies that like the internal companies probably going to have unfettered access or even like certain departments will, but they wouldn't even let the entire company have full access because there's going to be sensitive data.
00:08:54
Speaker
And I think ZK, so zero knowledge is one way of, I think, hiding some of that sensitive data.
00:09:00
Speaker
I think there's some innovation there, but yeah, permission blockchains are one thing.
00:09:05
Speaker
So yeah.
00:09:07
Speaker
It's interesting about the whole cultural thing because I actually had a few Japanese clients.
00:09:13
Speaker
I used to be called Sami-san and all this kind of stuff.
00:09:17
Speaker
It's interesting seeing cultures overlap with the tech side of things as well because I agree that some cultures are probably going to be less accepting than others to change.
00:09:28
Speaker
I think...
00:09:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's difficult because I wouldn't say that companies generally want to be transparent with regulators.
00:09:37
Speaker
I mean, when they build up the systems, they have governance processes.
00:09:40
Speaker
It's in interest to do that.
00:09:42
Speaker
It's just that you're going to have a few bad actors within companies that probably potentially want to hide things.
00:09:46
Speaker
And that's probably because they're doing stuff that's not right.
00:09:50
Speaker
And I think that
00:09:52
Speaker
my old role as an auditor would be to look for errors.
00:09:55
Speaker
And then also if we stumbled across stuff that, I mean, that could be to do with fraud or negligence or whatever.
00:10:02
Speaker
But I think that there are going to be bad actors in companies.
00:10:05
Speaker
It's just human nature.
00:10:06
Speaker
There are going to be those bad people.
00:10:09
Speaker
But I don't necessarily think that
00:10:11
Speaker
Companies generally, when you get to a certain size, are going to want to mislead or hide some of those things.
00:10:17
Speaker
Yes, they're going to want to keep things confidential from a competitive standpoint, but I don't think that they would do it intentionally just to...
00:10:26
Speaker
like hinder progress or like hinder that level of transparency.
00:10:30
Speaker
I think eventually it's going to change.
00:10:31
Speaker
It's just a matter of time.
00:10:32
Speaker
And I think the biggest issue is the first movers are going to, they're going to have to have quite a big upfront cost.
00:10:38
Speaker
See that the investment's going to be quite big.
00:10:40
Speaker
So it's going to be a trade-off between like the innovation that you, or the benefits that you're going to receive from it to the innovation that's going to, or the upfront cost that's going to get that innovation kicked off.
00:10:51
Speaker
So I think there's always going to be a business case that they have to put internally to,
00:10:55
Speaker
a board of directors or whoever to get signed off.
00:10:59
Speaker
And I think with those big companies, those processes can take years.
00:11:02
Speaker
What do you see the opportunities being for the company?
00:11:06
Speaker
Why, in your perspective, would they be incentivized to use it despite the huge upfront cost?
00:11:14
Speaker
Well, fraud is a huge issue with companies, especially when I used to work at financial institutions, you'd have pension fraud was huge where you'd have
00:11:25
Speaker
internal and external.
00:11:27
Speaker
Like people would be chartle bad actors would be trying to defraud and change things in the ledger to then be able to extract funds similar with insurers.
00:11:35
Speaker
So you'd have fortunate activity there where you'd have fortunate claims or like, or people would make changes in the ledger to then siphon funds off.
00:11:44
Speaker
And I think
00:11:45
Speaker
it kind of prevents you from doing that.
00:11:46
Speaker
And you have, I think that it's almost a deterrent as well.
00:11:49
Speaker
If you've got this immutable blockchain, you're going to have to post transactions that are probably going to get spotted a little bit more easily to then get away with that kind of stuff.
00:11:58
Speaker
So I think having an immutable decentralized ledger, it just, yeah, it kind of makes sense from a forward standpoint.
00:12:04
Speaker
I think as well, just the cost being cost effective.
00:12:06
Speaker
Like if you have like a reliable source of truth, you know,
00:12:10
Speaker
The amount that companies spend on making sure that things reconcile, that they are correct, accurate, complete, like all those things, like it can cost an enormous amount of money in time and having reviews, external reviews, peer reviews, all that kind of stuff.
00:12:25
Speaker
I think it will cut costs.
00:12:27
Speaker
If you can just rely on that being true, then you won't have to get like the IT team to come in and make sure that things are complete and accurate or provide reports or you like...
00:12:39
Speaker
For instance, audit costs might go down because you might have them come in and be like, okay, well, you're using this ledger.
00:12:44
Speaker
We can just rely on it.
00:12:45
Speaker
Therefore, it will take us less time to do it.
00:12:48
Speaker
We'll reduce our fee.
00:12:49
Speaker
I think there's just so many different angles that you can implement with like blockchain tank that
Consulting Experiences and Industry Trends
00:12:54
Speaker
you'll benefit from from a corporate standpoint.
00:12:57
Speaker
But then it just does come down to like the cost benefit analysis.
00:13:00
Speaker
Like,
00:13:01
Speaker
it might cost millions to implement this system, but you might not see those benefits for the next like 10 years.
00:13:06
Speaker
So in which case, I think anyone in a short term position that's got like maybe a two to five year time horizon in a decision making position is probably less likely to go with that.
00:13:18
Speaker
But if for instance, it's a 500k initial outlay, but the paybacks within a year, then they're going to be like, well, yeah, of course, we're going to go with that.
00:13:25
Speaker
And I think that we'll probably get to that point at some point.
00:13:27
Speaker
But yeah, it's going to be a way off.
00:13:29
Speaker
Although, I mean, we're seeing what recently with the UBS news on tokenization with like a, I think they're working with the Singapore Central Bank.
00:13:38
Speaker
So they're looking to tokenize assets.
00:13:42
Speaker
Same with, I mean, Citibank recently, London Stock Exchange.
00:13:45
Speaker
I think recently we saw ANZ partner with Chainlink to kind of,
00:13:51
Speaker
use their CCIP, which I think is like, it's kind of like an Oracle system.
00:13:55
Speaker
So off-chain data with on-chain and like marrying up the two.
00:13:59
Speaker
So I think like there's so much that's happening.
00:14:01
Speaker
And I saw recently a report that BCG said that asset tokenization would be worth 30 trillion by 2030 or 13 trillion, sorry.
00:14:10
Speaker
So huge.
00:14:12
Speaker
Which I think at the moment it's like, it's way less than a trillion.
00:14:16
Speaker
It's like, yeah.
00:14:18
Speaker
maybe a couple of hundred million, but I mean, the upside is huge.
00:14:21
Speaker
It's just kind of, we're seeing stuff come through now.
00:14:25
Speaker
So yeah.
00:14:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:26
Speaker
It's, it's, it's really bubbling up everywhere on, on, on all fronts.
00:14:32
Speaker
It's, it's very interesting to get this perspective because I, I've always been focused on like the decentralized side of things, you know, not the efficiency, the traceability, the, the, and type fraud and,
00:14:46
Speaker
And so it's very cool to see that side of things and to remember that blockchain is literally going to permeate our society as a whole.
00:14:57
Speaker
in the next 20, 40, 60 years.
00:15:00
Speaker
I don't know when.
00:15:01
Speaker
I'm super curious about a few things.
00:15:05
Speaker
But in our realm right now, what was it like at the beginning at EY?
00:15:12
Speaker
How did you approach consulting blockchain businesses?
00:15:17
Speaker
I've got a little bit of an answer, but what types of businesses were there?
00:15:21
Speaker
What were they asking of you at that point?
00:15:24
Speaker
So, I mean, I joined their working group, but it was more just very much building out like a pipeline of potential clients and looking at leads and things like that at that point.
00:15:34
Speaker
So, I mean, consulting-wise, a lot of the clients that I think EY would do work for would be
00:15:41
Speaker
I mean, it would effectively be like proof of reserves.
00:15:43
Speaker
So auditing their reserves to make sure that they're complete, that they exist.
00:15:48
Speaker
And that kind of stuff is, I mean, you look at a lot of these big exchanges where they do all these Merkle tree testing.
00:15:55
Speaker
It would be kind of that sort of stuff.
00:15:57
Speaker
And I think there was a lot of other firms that did the likes of Binance, Coinbase,
00:16:02
Speaker
I think we had maybe some, I think we'd maybe looking at doing some work with VV when I was there and then some other companies.
00:16:10
Speaker
But yeah, I think proof of reserves was one thing.
00:16:12
Speaker
But then, I mean, blockchain consulting can go all the way through to supply and chain management.
00:16:16
Speaker
So...
00:16:18
Speaker
I think BHP, which was like a mining and minerals company.
00:16:21
Speaker
So you'd effectively have stuff dug up out of the ground.
00:16:25
Speaker
It would then be put onto a system or whatever, and you track that around to where it was supposed to be delivered.
00:16:32
Speaker
So then it could be, yeah, and that would go on ships.
00:16:35
Speaker
That would go domestically around Australia.
00:16:37
Speaker
And I think there was even implementing blockchain with
00:16:44
Speaker
Marine, I think companies with like integrating blockchain based systems for like the, I think, I can't remember the name of it.
00:16:52
Speaker
There was, there was like a startup that integrated or worked with, it was like an insurer that worked with a specific blockchain.
00:17:00
Speaker
I can't remember off the top of my head.
00:17:01
Speaker
It was pretty bad.
00:17:01
Speaker
It's a VeChain?
00:17:02
Speaker
No.
00:17:03
Speaker
It's the only one that comes to mind when, when I, when the concept of supply chain comes up.
00:17:08
Speaker
So I,
00:17:09
Speaker
No, it wasn't VeChain.
00:17:10
Speaker
It was, I can't remember.
00:17:11
Speaker
I think, I know EY was working with Polygon at one point, whether they were building a separate blockchain on Polygon or at the time.
00:17:19
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, there was a number of different clients that they were working with and it was completely different capacities.
00:17:24
Speaker
But I think a lot of it was being driven out of the US.
00:17:26
Speaker
When I was in Australia, it was quite a small team and people were kind of doing it as a side hustle to their existing roles at EY.
00:17:33
Speaker
But I think most of it came out
00:17:34
Speaker
came out of the US, maybe to an extent in the UK, but Australia was kind of like piloting it over there.
00:17:40
Speaker
And I know that
00:17:42
Speaker
I think the guys were working, I think ASIC or whoever the regulator was at the time, was sending out consultations or requests for consultations around blockchain, crypto.
00:17:53
Speaker
And I think EY was responding to that at the time.
00:17:55
Speaker
So that was kind
Regulatory Environment and Web3 Challenges
00:17:57
Speaker
of progressing.
00:17:57
Speaker
And I think the Australian Stock Exchange looked to integrate, effectively do what the London Stock Exchange group was doing at the moment, was tokenizing assets for security.
00:18:07
Speaker
So they have like a chess system in Australia, which is effectively,
00:18:12
Speaker
you're testing like the existence of these assets or the ownership back to whoever that certificate says.
00:18:21
Speaker
So for a lot of our clients, we would go back to chess statements to verify that they're the owner of these assets and there might be equities or whatever it might be, but they were looking to tokenize all that at one point.
00:18:31
Speaker
I haven't checked recently to where it got to.
00:18:33
Speaker
I think it might've got
00:18:34
Speaker
delayed just because again cost benefit analysis but yeah I think that was quite interesting at the time and I was like okay well that's happening yeah and I think the Australian like regulator is probably quite progressive it seems to be quite proactive the fact that
00:18:51
Speaker
ANZ is working with Chainlink and I think they were the first bank to issue an Australian backed stablecoin.
00:18:59
Speaker
So I think there's like a number of things that are happening over there that probably is maybe slightly ahead of the UK and the rest of the world.
00:19:06
Speaker
I don't think it gets the coverage.
00:19:08
Speaker
Maybe that's why I kind of got interested into it because I was seeing a lot of activity from institutions, regulators,
00:19:15
Speaker
Whereas had I been in the UK or elsewhere, maybe I wouldn't have seen that and maybe not got as interested and potentially still be working in a corporate job as opposed to a digital nomad roaming rounds, working with magic internet money.
00:19:29
Speaker
So...
00:19:30
Speaker
What a crazy world we're living in at the moment.
00:19:34
Speaker
We're still in this phase where the market is not mature and the businesses that are Web3 are not mature.
00:19:40
Speaker
It's still very much projects with a few businesses here and there that have a grasp on thing.
00:19:49
Speaker
From your experience as a consultant, what are the big mistakes that you see those projects doing that they're going to need to fix if they want to level up?
00:20:00
Speaker
I think the biggest thing is they build out a roadmap or a promise.
00:20:04
Speaker
They mint a project and then they don't meet what they're intending to do.
00:20:10
Speaker
I think what needs to happen going forward is they actually build the product first, which I know can be difficult with funding, or at least a prototype to an extent so that
00:20:22
Speaker
you can actually have something tangible to show for it because like so many times, I remember in 2021 especially, people would launch with all these lofty promises of maybe a game or like, or whatever it might be, not knowing the sheer amount of work that would need to go in to then deliver it.
00:20:41
Speaker
And they completely wildly miscalculated how much they needed in funds or they might just not manage their treasury appropriately and they just run out of runway.
00:20:50
Speaker
And then they just either slow rug or they just kind of just basically say to them, sorry, guys, we've run out of money.
00:20:57
Speaker
Or they try and raise a second round from their community.
00:21:00
Speaker
And yeah, it just goes south.
00:21:01
Speaker
So I think like proper planning and implementing.
00:21:03
Speaker
And I think that even when you look at, there was a raft of activity where a lot of projects were getting VC funding.
00:21:10
Speaker
And I think they were effectively cherry picking the ones that had like an MVP or had something that was...
00:21:16
Speaker
tangible to show for it.
00:21:18
Speaker
And I think there was a lot of time that as soon as there was a VC announcement around the project, it would just pump up because people would assume that they've done their due diligence and whatnot.
00:21:26
Speaker
And I think it just went through the cycle of being like, you could throw money at anything, it would pump in price and effectively die after that because there'd be no tangible...
00:21:37
Speaker
thing behind it to they have a product, they get VC backed, it pumps, and then it kind of does relatively well.
00:21:44
Speaker
And then say 50% of it drops off.
00:21:47
Speaker
The other side kind of builds out maybe some software or something useful, but then people use interests and move on to the next shiny object.
00:21:53
Speaker
So it's like,
00:21:54
Speaker
I think people's attention spans are very fleeting.
00:21:57
Speaker
And I think retaining that attention as a project has always been very difficult.
00:22:01
Speaker
Even the top projects, you see them being really successful and then all of a sudden something happening and it just, like the price of the NFTs dropped completely.
00:22:09
Speaker
But I think the biggest thing is just building a, if you want to build a company, build a company with real revenues and complement it with NFTs as technology.
00:22:17
Speaker
I think that's probably the angle that I would push rather than
00:22:22
Speaker
making a NFT based company because you're kind of trying to find a solution for it then rather than having a product or a service and then complementing or enhancing that with NFT.
00:22:33
Speaker
So which is why I see like loyalty reward programs, ticketing, like all these kind of things are just it kind of makes sense.
00:22:39
Speaker
Even even PFPs with Reddit avatars, but having a lower cost to acquire them.
00:22:46
Speaker
That kind of makes sense as well.
00:22:48
Speaker
I think long gone are the days where you can like mint a PFP project and expect that to go to the moon because I think it's just a speculative asset to a degree.
NFT Evolution and Tech Comparisons
00:23:00
Speaker
And then if you try to start adding utility to that PFP, all of a sudden, especially if you can tie cash flows to it,
00:23:07
Speaker
you're going to effectively completely undermine the current value because I guess from a financial perspective, you have like present value future cashflow model.
00:23:18
Speaker
So you can literally just, you can then work out, okay, well, what revenue am I going to get from this based on what they, the utility that they've put to it?
00:23:26
Speaker
Okay, well, I'll discount those cashflows back to today.
00:23:29
Speaker
And that's what the value of that actual PFP then comes.
00:23:32
Speaker
And it's like, well, what's the point in,
00:23:34
Speaker
doing a pfp project if you're just going to add other utility to it so i think it's just working out what like what are you actually doing as a business what are the revenues like um and just does actually doing an nft make sense you could do like a software as a solution or something like that it might make more sense like you don't have to use nfts i think does tokenization make sense and i think you touched on courtyard recently and i think that that just like as a penny penny drop moment where
00:24:03
Speaker
you have these actual physical assets that have value and you're tokenizing them, putting them on chain, but you know that there's like a custodian.
00:24:11
Speaker
So Brinks that's been around for 150 years is partnered with Courtyard.
00:24:15
Speaker
So they can actually hold those physical assets reliably.
00:24:19
Speaker
And you know that whatever they're going to tokenize, you can redeem through their platform with Brinks.
00:24:24
Speaker
So, and that NFT that you're buying, like the actual NFT, I don't know how much that
00:24:31
Speaker
is really valued, but the actual, cause you, the intrinsic value is the underlying collectible.
00:24:35
Speaker
So you know that you can redeem that asset and then sell that collectible elsewhere or just keep it or like there's actual utility to that.
00:24:44
Speaker
Whereas I think with a lot of PFP projects specifically,
00:24:48
Speaker
could literally go to zero because the intrinsic value is it's just the image.
00:24:53
Speaker
Like that's, that's all the value is.
00:24:56
Speaker
So it's a lot more risk.
00:24:57
Speaker
And I think like we're finding that there's actually more use cases to NFTs now and people are actually putting them to, to use, which is incredible.
00:25:05
Speaker
Especially with like NFT lending and all that kind of stuff that opens up a raft of global liquidity.
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:10
Speaker
It's, it's really tricky because we still haven't, I think, I think,
00:25:15
Speaker
Most people and most businesses and projects still don't really see NFTs for what they are.
00:25:20
Speaker
Usually they get stuck on one idea of NFTs as a way to raise funds, for example.
00:25:28
Speaker
And then what do we do with them?
00:25:31
Speaker
Whereas, yeah, the case of Courtyard is very simple.
00:25:34
Speaker
It's a way for you to purchase something that exists in the real world without any of the...
00:25:40
Speaker
Like how do I take care of it?
00:25:41
Speaker
How do I resell it?
00:25:42
Speaker
How do I store it?
00:25:44
Speaker
And yeah, this whole like very speculative phase was based on the promise of what could be and the value of the network was in the people that were in the network.
00:25:56
Speaker
Since that was the only thing, as soon as someone starts leaving the network, the PFP in and of itself loses value.
00:26:04
Speaker
I'm glad we're beyond those days.
00:26:06
Speaker
I'm glad we're moving on.
00:26:08
Speaker
It's been, yeah, it lasted long enough.
00:26:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's progress.
00:26:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's natural.
00:26:15
Speaker
I mean, you've probably heard this a million times, but people liken it to the dot-com bubble.
00:26:19
Speaker
And then you have those companies kind of come out of it, the Ebays, the Amazons, and other companies that are now maybe over a trillion dollar market cap that went down like 95%.
00:26:31
Speaker
But I think that's because they actually built products that people wanted and then developed and built on that.
00:26:39
Speaker
And I think we'll probably get to that point where
00:26:41
Speaker
I think we're still in those ashes and we probably will be for next year or two.
00:26:44
Speaker
But I think there's companies now that are building real tech that can be used that will develop into those next big companies or probably just be acquired by them.
00:26:52
Speaker
But it's just interesting to see that.
00:26:54
Speaker
And I think blockchain and NFTs will be, I mean, there'll be the ownership layer of the internet.
00:27:00
Speaker
So I think it's here to stay.
00:27:02
Speaker
You're talking about building...
00:27:07
Speaker
a product that works and then growing it.
Decentralization and Governance in Web3
00:27:12
Speaker
One thing that I like about or that I care about with these more the decentralized side of things, maybe not the blockchain use case, the corporate use cases, is that you can gather your initial community, your minimum viable community and paint them a picture of a future and build it together.
00:27:33
Speaker
What we've seen is that that minimum viable community that would need to be a thousand people, we're trying to reach 30,000 people or 50,000 people because that's how we cash out the most.
00:27:45
Speaker
And what I regret is that we fall back on VCs and institutions because they have the money and they have the funds.
00:27:55
Speaker
And I would love for us as a
00:27:58
Speaker
as an ecosystem to find a sweet spot with teams that have enough of a vision, that have proper planning, that have an idea of their costs, that are able to build an initial community based on that vision and on the costs and the needs and start to build together.
00:28:17
Speaker
Because,
00:28:19
Speaker
I hate it when I'm looking at the project pie chart and it's like 20% for that group of investors.
00:28:26
Speaker
And I care so much about decentralization.
00:28:29
Speaker
And so for me, we need to reach that point.
00:28:32
Speaker
And I don't know how we get there.
00:28:35
Speaker
I think the decentralization point is a very interesting one because I mean, I hear the phrase with Henry Ford.
00:28:40
Speaker
If you asked the people what they wanted, they'd say faster horses, but then he went and built a car.
00:28:45
Speaker
So I think there's a reason why
00:28:49
Speaker
certain project founders, like they need to lead because they probably have those ideas that actually will change the future or they will create products that will be really impressive and they won't be what the community necessarily would think of.
00:29:03
Speaker
But I think once you get to a certain size, then yeah, I understand that decentralization makes sense from a risk perspective, but I still think like the decision-making process and how
00:29:14
Speaker
quickly you can execute those decisions and doing it effectively.
00:29:17
Speaker
I think it becomes like the bureaucracy, like it can slow things down, which I think should be fine for like a very large company.
00:29:25
Speaker
It's why you have like with those listed companies, quarterly reporting and quarterly board meetings, having things approved.
00:29:31
Speaker
It's why it takes like at least three months for a decision to be made.
00:29:36
Speaker
And it's why startups are so agile.
00:29:38
Speaker
Like you go in with like an idea in the morning and then by the evening,
00:29:41
Speaker
you have everything implemented and it's just a completely different change of pace.
00:29:45
Speaker
And I think like having worked across multiple, I find the startup stuff more exciting and that's kind of where I've veered to and why I'm kind of in this space because there is so much happening.
00:29:56
Speaker
But yeah, I think to the decentralization point, I think there's definitely a balancing act depending on the size of the company, the stage that that company's in, where it's the early stage of the life cycle because you need that
00:30:10
Speaker
that shift in decision-making process to happen quickly to then actually come with something.
00:30:15
Speaker
Because if you have it decentralized from the beginning,
00:30:18
Speaker
then I just don't think anything would ever get done.
00:30:22
Speaker
And I don't think, I mean, there might be a few that come out really well.
00:30:25
Speaker
And I think, I don't know too much about the now and so our ecosystem, but it's, I'm assuming that's a decision-making process and they ended up having to fork it because, yeah, I think there's a split in the community.
00:30:37
Speaker
So it's a challenging one.
00:30:39
Speaker
I'm like all for decentralization, but I think there's probably like an optimal trade-off.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you.
00:30:45
Speaker
And I'm glad you're raising this because it allows us the chance to talk about what decentralization is.
00:30:52
Speaker
Because so far, we've talked about it in a black and white manner, where you have some things on the end of the spectrum that are not decentralized.
00:31:02
Speaker
And you have other things at the other end of the spectrum that are where everyone has a vote, usually based on the tokens that they hold.
00:31:10
Speaker
And I think that the sweet spot will be somewhere in the middle where you have governance that's more decentralized than that other end of the spectrum, but where governance is distributed to the right people.
00:31:24
Speaker
It's so easy right now to use SBTs and to...
00:31:29
Speaker
give someone governance over product development and give someone else governance over the global governance of the ecosystem that you're, that you're referring to.
00:31:38
Speaker
And you could very well compartmentalize the decision-making and the governance in, all right, like this is a major strategy change.
00:31:48
Speaker
And we believe as a,
00:31:51
Speaker
shepherding team leading team because you always need a leading group of people that's how communities have always worked but we'd like your we'd like your your opinion that's what i i my initial foray into into this was building a dow a couple years ago and that's what we did we made a lot of like the smaller nitty-gritty decisions by ourselves like what marketing agency to go with and what uh
00:32:16
Speaker
were investing in NFTs also, and sometimes we kept that a little bit centralized.
00:32:22
Speaker
But when there were decisions that impacted
00:32:28
Speaker
the whole ecosystem, the whole group, then we try to invite them into the debate and into the decision making.
00:32:36
Speaker
And so I think there is a way to do this.
00:32:38
Speaker
I mean, it makes sense to put those big decisions to the masses for, yeah.
00:32:44
Speaker
I think the only thing is though, to what extent are we rehashing existing governance processes?
00:32:49
Speaker
but just putting them on chain.
00:32:50
Speaker
Because you could have like, you could delegate your vote or whatever to a group of people.
00:32:56
Speaker
They could then make that decision making process for you because you're trusting them that they make the right decision for you based on your interests.
00:33:05
Speaker
And as long as it's sufficiently spread across multiple people, then maybe they'll end up with the right decision.
00:33:10
Speaker
But to what extent is that done with
00:33:12
Speaker
like a board of directors where you have a balanced board of directors that will make a decision, like they'll make a decision or they'll challenge things in the interests of shareholders against management.
00:33:23
Speaker
And it's like,
00:33:25
Speaker
Are we just basically taking what we had originally and putting it on chain?
00:33:30
Speaker
That's my only challenge.
00:33:31
Speaker
And how do we actually improve that, improve that actual process?
00:33:35
Speaker
It's a difficult one.
00:33:36
Speaker
It's not something that will be solved overnight, but it's an iterative process.
00:33:39
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
00:33:40
Speaker
It definitely is.
00:33:41
Speaker
And I think where it starts is that in the systems that we're considering right now,
00:33:48
Speaker
the masses, so the users or the stakeholders will have more of a say or at least more visibility into who ends up in these positions.
00:33:58
Speaker
I think that's the end goal.
00:34:00
Speaker
And that's what we're trying to do in the ecosystem that the DAO is telling you about is growing into.
00:34:06
Speaker
We're trying to make sure
00:34:09
Speaker
that we have the proper people who are aligned both with the set of values that we have and the business objectives, and then try to do a balancing act with the people that they're representing or that they'll be bringing in.
00:34:25
Speaker
And that's what's really hard about where we are, about what we're doing as a whole, as an ecosystem, because
00:34:36
Speaker
It changes governance, it changes the financial economic systems that we're building, it changes how product is being developed and designed.
00:34:44
Speaker
And so you have to adjust and work on a little bit of everything if you want it to be successful.
00:34:50
Speaker
But we're still, like you're saying, we're still iterating and figuring out what works and what doesn't.
00:34:56
Speaker
It must be really interesting having that, the journey that you've had with that DAO though, because you're still working with it now, aren't you?
00:35:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's been fascinating because I came in with – in 2017, my eureka moment was really decentralization.
00:35:12
Speaker
It was the solution to everything that I'd noticed because I came from a law background.
00:35:18
Speaker
I trained as a lawyer.
00:35:20
Speaker
I'd been observing institutions because I did international law and then business law, and I was a big fan of tech.
00:35:29
Speaker
It was really easy to see the problems.
00:35:31
Speaker
You had international law that was completely disconnected from the ground.
00:35:36
Speaker
The people that it was representing were...
00:35:40
Speaker
It would take from the event and its legal resolution, it would sometimes take like 10 years.
00:35:48
Speaker
And so it made no sense in the fast-paced environment that we're in.
00:35:53
Speaker
And then you could see tech that was building these crazy efficient systems where all of the value of 90 or 80% of the value would go to a small group of people.
00:36:07
Speaker
And so, decentralization for me, it solved all of this and it created an idealist in me.
00:36:14
Speaker
And I spent like three, four years building this up in my mind and thinking, yes, we need decentralization, we need to give people the power.
00:36:23
Speaker
And then we had a small doubt, like it was three or four, 500 people maybe.
00:36:28
Speaker
And it was impossible to get a good decision to happen because you would throw in a vote and people would just say yes.
00:36:37
Speaker
Or people would just say no.
00:36:38
Speaker
There was no real debate or no communication.
00:36:41
Speaker
And it taught me a lot about, yes, decentralization is good, but it needs to be nuanced.
00:36:47
Speaker
It needs to be balanced.
00:36:49
Speaker
And you can't just give decision power to anyone.
00:36:54
Speaker
Otherwise, you're going nowhere.
00:36:56
Speaker
So, yeah, it's really been... It's difficult though because how do you give it to the right people without being biased?
00:37:01
Speaker
It depends.
00:37:03
Speaker
It really depends on the system and what you're trying to build.
00:37:07
Speaker
You must know about BioPills, right?
00:37:10
Speaker
Yeah, BYA Pills.
00:37:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:37:12
Speaker
They're doing it perfectly in my books because they're building a... I think it's going to be a triple game and they're keeping all of the right...
00:37:23
Speaker
decisions to themselves and giving governance, giving a say, giving a choice and a voice to the people in their community.
00:37:35
Speaker
It's not very decentralized because they're building the game, they built the world, they make a lot of the design decisions, all of that.
00:37:43
Speaker
But they're building their ecosystem in a way where
00:37:48
Speaker
people in their community like how to say in the names of the places and the map and the name of the characters and they're building the lore of the world together.
00:37:58
Speaker
It's not perfectly decentralized.
00:37:59
Speaker
It's probably more on the centralized end of the spectrum, but it's decentralized enough because they're creating something that actually belongs to everyone where the economy is going to belong to the people in this.
00:38:15
Speaker
one way to do it in the gaming example for example.
00:38:17
Speaker
I remember them actually because I ended up I think I minted a pill and then I got the avatar got the vehicle as well.
00:38:27
Speaker
I completely missed the land minting window.
00:38:31
Speaker
I think it was like 0.1 ETH mint but I think it rocketed to like over an ETH for the land alone.
00:38:36
Speaker
Yeah it went crazy.
00:38:37
Speaker
But yeah I think I
00:38:38
Speaker
I still own those assets, but I haven't had the time to check in.
00:38:43
Speaker
So I think what I found really interesting about that project was when you got that pill and they had that app on your phone that you could literally, whatever pill you had, you then see the trippy experience that you could literally view it through your phone.
00:38:56
Speaker
And I thought that was really innovative.
00:38:57
Speaker
And I was like, these guys are obviously well-educated.
00:39:01
Speaker
They're well-educated.
00:39:02
Speaker
in the in the tech tech world to be able to do that as a side project to the main thing that they're building i was like this is keeping the community engaged and i know some some friends in real life that actually went pretty ham on that that collection bought a hell of a lot and i think got is it the goddess as well and yeah wow so it's but then they equally they just held them and it's kind of gone up
00:39:23
Speaker
extremely high in price and then come back down with the entire market.
00:39:26
Speaker
So it's interesting that they're still building and you think they've got a lot of hope with that.
00:39:32
Speaker
Because I think gaming is a very challenging niche to break into.
00:39:37
Speaker
Everyone's building a game.
00:39:38
Speaker
You've got these AAA companies that are coming in, gaming studios, that have so much funding.
00:39:44
Speaker
And if you're competing with them, it's always going to be a challenge to, A, get the attention out there.
00:39:49
Speaker
Because I know, especially with mobile gaming, the majority of the spend is on marketing.
00:39:54
Speaker
You could build an amazing product, but if you can't get that out there to the masses to get that universal appeal, then are you going to get the right number of players?
00:40:03
Speaker
But I guess it does come down to what is the right number of players to sustain that game?
00:40:08
Speaker
And I think you touched on that earlier on.
00:40:10
Speaker
Whether it's the core 1000 members or whether it's 10,000, it might not be going for the millions.
00:40:14
Speaker
So interesting one.
00:40:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's so exciting everywhere you look.
00:40:21
Speaker
I wanted to have a little exercise with you.
00:40:24
Speaker
What do you think... I pointed out Pudgy, Artifact, Yuga and Izuki.
NFT Project Strategies and Community Engagement
00:40:30
Speaker
What do you think Pudgy is doing very well right now that others... Because we're talking about a blueprint right now.
00:40:36
Speaker
A lot of people are.
00:40:38
Speaker
What is the blueprint that you think they're building for future NFC projects?
00:40:44
Speaker
So Pudgies is a little bit different because Luca acquired them for two and a half million back in April last year.
00:40:52
Speaker
I feel like his interests are aligned in the sense with the community.
00:40:56
Speaker
He's not like a founder that's launched a project, got a load of mint proceeds and then been like, oh, you know what?
00:41:02
Speaker
It's actually quite hard.
00:41:03
Speaker
I'm going to step away and take a paycheck and just leave.
00:41:10
Speaker
He's kind of got that vested interest in the project that he wants to see it succeed.
00:41:15
Speaker
He's also got a very... His background is commerce and I think he was very successful at that.
00:41:22
Speaker
And it's clear that with the Walmart partnership recently, I don't think anyone's got that.
00:41:28
Speaker
So anyone that tries to copy their playbook, his network is probably...
00:41:33
Speaker
part of that value and the ability to get those toys in those stores to have that additional toy line is like i think quite unique for for an nft project specifically like he was got it on amazon like he's he's making all these partnerships work um and he's creating real revenues for the project and i think the biggest thing for i mean he touched on this like funnel so the the attention funnel where he gets the toys in in walmart stores he gets all these giffies all these like things on instagram gets the attention gets the eyes on them
00:42:04
Speaker
that creates like demand for the products.
00:42:06
Speaker
And eventually like you've got these 8,808 pudgies that are effectively the first editions and the nature of people is going to be, well, I want to, I want to collect that, uh, holographic charizard, the first edition shadowless charizard, because it's the rarest.
00:42:21
Speaker
And I think the value of blockchain is that you can prove that it's the rarest.
00:42:25
Speaker
So like these Pudgies, effectively, he's going to drive demand to that.
00:42:29
Speaker
But the thing that I find really interesting is that's not the pure value proposition because you've also got this whole licensing thing as well.
00:42:37
Speaker
So if you want to see your Pudgie in stores, then it might be a licensable Pudgie.
00:42:43
Speaker
And then people are starting to look at all these different NFTs as to which one's the cutest as opposed to which one has the rarest trait.
00:42:50
Speaker
So it's just switching up.
00:42:51
Speaker
like what the community perceives about it and actually driving, driving value back to his core holders, which I don't think a lot of projects have done.
00:43:02
Speaker
Even you go, I don't know what, I mean, I like what they're doing with the other side, but I'm not a holder because there's always that, that debate that is it, is that ecosystem becoming diluted now?
00:43:13
Speaker
Like what's the difference between the board apes and the other side stuff?
00:43:17
Speaker
Like, yeah,
00:43:18
Speaker
And I think, is that being commingled with the ape token?
00:43:22
Speaker
Are you like entwining this whole ecosystem that if one part of it goes down, the whole ecosystem kind of goes down in terms of value with it?
00:43:30
Speaker
And I know what Matt, she's doing recently with the trying to get those bored apes into museums and things like that.
00:43:36
Speaker
It's kind of you're trying to distinguish between bored apes and the rest of the Yuga ecosystem because
00:43:42
Speaker
You want to be able to detach that and have that value attached from an artistic standpoint, which CryptoPunks do really well.
00:43:49
Speaker
So I think it's just I think each of these NFT projects that are starting to show signs of success, each has their own individual value proposition.
00:43:57
Speaker
And I think it's very it's not like it was back in 2021 where.
00:44:03
Speaker
You just think that it's going to have that speculative value that goes up massively.
00:44:07
Speaker
You've got to have those real cash flows to then demonstrate that it's a real business and just complement it with NFTs.
00:44:13
Speaker
And in Pudgy's case, it's just the NFTs are the first additions that you can prove ownership for that potentially one of those might get licensed as well.
00:44:23
Speaker
It's really like, yeah, Pudgy is really a masterclass because what's really hard to do in business is keeping things simple.
00:44:31
Speaker
And they've done just that.
00:44:33
Speaker
They create great content.
00:44:34
Speaker
They're broadcasting.
00:44:37
Speaker
Well, doing the partnerships is not the simple part, but it's... And they're distributing and keeping everyone happy.
00:44:45
Speaker
And they're not promising too much.
00:44:46
Speaker
And the expectations were so low because...
00:44:50
Speaker
Pudgy holders thought that they've been scammed pretty much.
00:44:54
Speaker
For you, it's an interesting use case because it's extremely centralized.
00:44:59
Speaker
There's no decision being made outside of them.
00:45:04
Speaker
And I completely understand certain members feeling alienated.
00:45:10
Speaker
Where do you stand on that?
00:45:11
Speaker
Do you think...
00:45:14
Speaker
It's fair.
00:45:15
Speaker
They've built it.
00:45:16
Speaker
They've sold it.
00:45:17
Speaker
They raised the funds and they're making the decisions or, or in your view, could they have done better?
00:45:24
Speaker
I think it's, it's very hard to say people, because I mean, they like say that they could have done better because I think it's, I mean, for a period of time, everyone was like, don't fade you go.
00:45:33
Speaker
Like they, then the price kept going up and the air dropped to the original holders.
00:45:38
Speaker
They gave value back and actually it didn't really dilute the ecosystem until the,
00:45:43
Speaker
what, probably earlier this year when things started to unravel from a price standpoint.
00:45:48
Speaker
But I mean, from an innovation standpoint, how do you sustain that?
00:45:52
Speaker
Like if you've got an NFT that's a PFP that's speculative, it's going to be volatile in price.
00:46:00
Speaker
Especially when it goes so high.
00:46:02
Speaker
When it goes so high, especially the people that have bought the top, who do you owe a duty of care to?
00:46:07
Speaker
I mean, realistically, they minted a board eight for 0.08.
00:46:12
Speaker
That's what the original proceeds were.
00:46:14
Speaker
I know that with the other side, they got a huge amount of mint proceeds from the other side.
00:46:21
Speaker
And the gas was pretty wild as well.
00:46:23
Speaker
But like, I think that it's very difficult because they are like the first in the entire ecosystem to do that.
00:46:31
Speaker
And you've had so many people, so many projects try to follow that playbook and just failed.
00:46:35
Speaker
So, and maybe it is the fact that they have this ridiculous amount of funding that they have the opportunity to build out this huge ecosystem in this world.
00:46:44
Speaker
And who knows, like maybe in the next bull market, all of a sudden, like,
00:46:50
Speaker
it just twigs and it takes off and everyone's like well it was definitely yuga all along like um but at this point in time where it's a bear market prices are suppressed things are being built but it's just not happening quick enough and people's attention spans are so so swift to move on i think it's very difficult i think in terms of if you take a step back you've got like pudgy doing their thing you've got yuga they're building stuff and people are playing it
00:47:16
Speaker
People are getting frustrated, but I think that's just human nature.
00:47:19
Speaker
People want things now, whereas they're building something for the future.
00:47:23
Speaker
I'm sure when they do fully launch their other side, people will get enjoyment out of it.
00:47:28
Speaker
I don't know whether the price tag of...
00:47:31
Speaker
I don't know, 50 ETH or 100 ETH for a Bored Ape way back when is worth the value of being able to access that metaverse and play your Bored Ape in there.
00:47:39
Speaker
I don't think that's necessarily the thing, but it's very difficult to, when an ecosystem's grown to the size it has, it's very difficult to segregate parts of it and then drive value back to those specific holders of that particular niche of that particular area of the business.
00:47:57
Speaker
I was chatting to someone yesterday about the heavy metal stuff.
00:48:01
Speaker
And I mean, they bought in quite high.
00:48:04
Speaker
They played the game, but they've been playing that game for like three months and they're just kind of a bit, they're now invested in it and they're just, they're just playing it for the sake of playing it.
00:48:13
Speaker
And to me, I don't know if that's just because Yuga is buying time with this, these side games, um, so that they can focus on their main thing, which makes sense from a business standpoint, they're trying to keep their community engaged, but
00:48:27
Speaker
They're building out their main long-term vision with the other side.
00:48:30
Speaker
And I think it's just very, very difficult to keep everyone pleased.
00:48:34
Speaker
So hard.
00:48:35
Speaker
Yeah, you kind of have to accept that you won't keep everyone pleased.
00:48:39
Speaker
It is possible to imagine a future...
00:48:42
Speaker
like not close future.
00:48:43
Speaker
I'm talking five, 10 years, maybe 15, where Yuga has become this massive ecosystem where it's like the player one, ready player one, Oasis.
00:48:56
Speaker
But it's tricky to see right now.
00:48:59
Speaker
And since they're treating it
00:49:02
Speaker
It's a business.
00:49:03
Speaker
It's not a Web3 business.
00:49:05
Speaker
It's a Web2 business that's using NFTs and that has a token for governance.
00:49:09
Speaker
But yeah, I'm not a holder.
00:49:11
Speaker
I've never been a holder, but I can understand why there would be some frustration.
00:49:16
Speaker
But from the business perspective, I completely get it.
00:49:19
Speaker
What about Artifact?
00:49:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:25
Speaker
I don't know.
00:49:25
Speaker
I think like, I mean, they, they, the partnership with Nike, I mean, Nike pretty much just gave them, I don't know what the agreement was, but they basically got the, the green stamp for approval to go run with the funds and the brand and just do something cool with it.
00:49:40
Speaker
And, um,
00:49:42
Speaker
I don't know.
00:49:43
Speaker
It just seems to have faded.
00:49:44
Speaker
It's one of those things that was probably up there, had so much potential.
00:49:49
Speaker
I just don't know if the execution is there from a Web3 standpoint.
00:49:52
Speaker
I think at least the perception has probably changed of that particular ecosystem.
00:49:57
Speaker
I'm not an owner and I never have been, but I've just been an outsider looking in.
00:50:02
Speaker
Anyone who had an artifact or CloneX, PFP, would be like,
00:50:08
Speaker
I don't know, like, it's just, like, almost on a, like, way back then, it was, like, on a par with, like, you got assets almost.
00:50:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:14
Speaker
Just, like, the echelon below.
00:50:15
Speaker
But now it's, like, I don't see anyone, really.
00:50:18
Speaker
There's very few.
00:50:18
Speaker
I think you've got one.
00:50:19
Speaker
But there's very few.
00:50:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:21
Speaker
I feel pretty lonely at times.
00:50:24
Speaker
And I don't know, like,
00:50:27
Speaker
Ultimately, I think that comes down to, are they, were they driving value back to their holders?
00:50:32
Speaker
And I think maybe you as a holder can probably answer that better than I can.
00:50:35
Speaker
But I think the fact that there's not that many people that rock those PFPs anymore, it probably, like people want to be proud of what they're wearing.
00:50:44
Speaker
And I think with the pudgy news, I think we, if you look at inspect, you saw an uptick in the number of people that would rock, not just pudgies, but little pudgies.
00:50:51
Speaker
And I think even little pudgies are like 0.8, 0.9 each now, which is nuts for a secondary collection.
00:50:56
Speaker
Wait, the,
00:50:57
Speaker
They were like 0.4 a few days ago.
00:51:00
Speaker
Wow.
00:51:01
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think yeah, 0.42.
00:51:03
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think it's I like mine.
00:51:07
Speaker
I like the like visually and I think it looks good and I've been using it to launch this podcast and all this.
00:51:15
Speaker
I'm keeping it for now.
00:51:17
Speaker
I do have a gut feeling that they're going to do very well in the future.
00:51:23
Speaker
Because I think they're starting, they're getting into the mass market strategies by doing the LeBron partnerships and onboarding and all of those things.
00:51:38
Speaker
And it wouldn't be really hard to imagine it being the go-to digital collectible for streetwear enthusiasts.
00:51:46
Speaker
Forgetting about the monoliths, forgetting about the Animus projects, forgetting about all of that.
00:51:52
Speaker
it gives you access to a very limited drop of very cool clothing.
00:51:59
Speaker
And only 20,000 people in the world will have access to that.
00:52:04
Speaker
And so I think just for that, it could do very well.
00:52:08
Speaker
But same thing, not in a year or two, I think, but more in like five or six when it's really starts to get easier.
00:52:17
Speaker
into mainstream.
00:52:18
Speaker
I actually agree with that take.
00:52:19
Speaker
I think the potential is there.
00:52:21
Speaker
I think it just comes down to the execution, I think.
00:52:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:24
Speaker
I mean, having the fact that it's kind of partnered or backed with Nike, it has that potential to have the right people in place to execute well, particularly as it scales.
00:52:34
Speaker
Whereas, I guess if you compare it to Azuki,
00:52:37
Speaker
I mean, they've done well from a Web3 native perspective, and they probably have people in there that have that prior experience at these big tech companies or whoever.
00:52:48
Speaker
I mean, they're pushing the clothing brand as well with physical back tokens and that kind of stuff.
00:52:53
Speaker
And it's just interesting to see, is there going to be a bunch of different projects that do well, or is it going to be...
00:52:59
Speaker
like projects that are backed with like backed by existing companies that have those that brand loyalty from an existing user base that you have to bootstrap that to then take off it's like i think user acquisition can always be very expensive especially for gaming and it's like probably the same with clothing as well like if you've got a loyal fan base of and the 10 000 azuki holders like yes you might be able to sell products or clothing to them but
00:53:26
Speaker
Will you be able to break out of that niche?
00:53:27
Speaker
Will you be able to resonate with an audience that's outside of the Web3 native group?
00:53:33
Speaker
Potentially, they might be able to, but there is that higher risk, I think.
00:53:37
Speaker
It's so hard.
00:53:38
Speaker
I have no clue what Azuki is doing.
00:53:41
Speaker
I don't get what their strategy is.
00:53:44
Speaker
And when they dropped the elementals, I thought that was the end of it.
00:53:49
Speaker
I thought it was like their last hooray of, okay, let's cash in, let's cash in a few more, a few more million and then done.
00:53:57
Speaker
I don't get it.
00:53:58
Speaker
I don't, I don't see what their plan is.
00:54:01
Speaker
Well, I think their plan was to build out like an anime storyline and then maybe try and monetize that way.
00:54:07
Speaker
So it's kind of looking at the pudgy angle with real revenues, but going down the act, like creating an anime, building out that kind of awareness, which kind of makes sense for that project.
00:54:17
Speaker
It's kind of got that culture.
00:54:19
Speaker
It fits pretty well.
00:54:20
Speaker
It's on brand, but it's expensive to do that.
00:54:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:23
Speaker
And it's a risk.
00:54:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's a huge risk, but they have to take that risk because otherwise they're just going to
00:54:28
Speaker
they'll fade into the abyss of being a Web3 project that was successful and they'll just fade away without this continued innovation and potential.
00:54:35
Speaker
And if, like, similar with Pudgies, if they went down the angle of licensing individual Azukis that are in those animes, then you've got a real revenue coming in.
00:54:43
Speaker
It's like, well, that kind of makes sense.
00:54:46
Speaker
And they've got these, like...
00:54:48
Speaker
The clothing is pretty cool.
00:54:49
Speaker
And there was a bunch of merch that got dropped to some people, some holders recently, and they were all impressed by them.
00:54:56
Speaker
I didn't see anyone that was upset.
00:54:58
Speaker
So I think there is potential there.
00:55:00
Speaker
And I think currently a lot of people have short-term views on how the market's going to perform.
00:55:05
Speaker
But actually, I think if you have that two-year, three-year viewpoint, there's a number of projects that are probably going to do reasonably well.
00:55:12
Speaker
But it does come back to what is their overall vision?
00:55:15
Speaker
Do they intend to break into the mass market or are they happy to have a 10, 100k core fan group that that's the largest they're going to get?
00:55:26
Speaker
But that's sustainable.
00:55:28
Speaker
It's interesting.
00:55:29
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
00:55:30
Speaker
Oh man, the use cases we're going to have in like 10 years at the top business schools in the world, looking back on this exact period and our main characters.
Rapid-fire Questions and Personal Insights
00:55:40
Speaker
Especially given Luke has done that building in public, so it's literally all there for them to review.
00:55:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:47
Speaker
I haven't watched that actually.
00:55:49
Speaker
I should.
00:55:49
Speaker
Okay, I have a little bit, a little segment of rapid fire questions.
00:55:54
Speaker
I'll throw you a question and you can throw back an answer without thinking about it too much.
00:55:58
Speaker
Now, if you could only buy one NFT to hold for the rest of your life, what would it be?
00:56:02
Speaker
I mean, at this point, I'm biased, but pudgy penguins are Genesis.
00:56:05
Speaker
If you could only hold one crypto for the rest of your life, what would it be?
00:56:09
Speaker
Yeah, fair enough.
00:56:11
Speaker
Who are your top three people that you vibe with the most at the moment in this space?
00:56:15
Speaker
That's really tough.
00:56:16
Speaker
Cause there's, I mean, I speak to so many people.
00:56:19
Speaker
So actually, I mean, there's, I guess there's different angles.
00:56:21
Speaker
So I think like there's been early supporters of me and they have helped me so much and I'm forever grateful.
00:56:27
Speaker
So like,
00:56:28
Speaker
whale like when i was very low number of followers like he reached out to me started like connecting with me and like he referred reference was it referred my newsletter from his newsletter just to get me off the ground and that's like i'm forever forever grateful for that and i've had chats to him with him and he's been very helpful so i'm eternally grateful to whale i mean yeah there's a number of people like i speak to so b check he got me started on my newsletter
00:56:56
Speaker
And he's provided like an enormous amount of guidance on that.
00:56:59
Speaker
And in terms of like monetization, all that kind of stuff.
00:57:02
Speaker
And that's been incredibly useful and very helpful.
00:57:05
Speaker
And yeah, we used to meet up every Wednesday in London, which was great.
00:57:09
Speaker
And I've met a lot of people in London as a result of that.
00:57:12
Speaker
So yeah, really grateful for that.
00:57:14
Speaker
So there's so many like Legendary, Kermit, like there's just a lot of people, Zymiri, like any, like we, I think there's a group of people that,
00:57:24
Speaker
We're in a similar position in like what we're doing.
00:57:26
Speaker
We just kind of bounce ideas off each other.
00:57:28
Speaker
And it's just very useful to have, it's very helpful to have that network because especially when you're working remotely, it's very difficult to know like, or make those decisions on your own.
00:57:38
Speaker
And it's like having people who are going through that similar,
00:57:41
Speaker
phase of whatever they're doing, just bounce ideas off or even just get like a different perspective.
00:57:46
Speaker
And sometimes, sometimes it's not aligned with what you think is the answer and it's like, okay, well, that's really interesting.
00:57:51
Speaker
Maybe I'll take a different approach.
00:57:52
Speaker
And that's, that's really, really handy.
00:57:55
Speaker
So yeah, it's just like three people is very difficult.
00:57:58
Speaker
There's just so many, and I've probably forgotten a bunch that I shouldn't have, but yeah.
00:58:03
Speaker
It's okay.
00:58:04
Speaker
They, they know that it's a tough question to answer.
00:58:06
Speaker
What's something about you people online don't know?
00:58:08
Speaker
Simple one is born on the 4th of July.
00:58:11
Speaker
so american independence day uh turn turn i turned 21 in america i was doing like a road trip at the time was in vegas when i was 20 some some places i could gamble some and get into places but some places i couldn't uh because my so my birthday because over there they've got the month and the day the other way around so actually in a lot of places i was passing it off as the uh what the
00:58:36
Speaker
7th of April as opposed to the 4th of July.
00:58:39
Speaker
And then until one point I got to, I went to like some casino in Vegas and they took my ID and they were like, oh no, I think in the UK it's the other way around.
00:58:47
Speaker
So they took my ID, they picked up the phone and then I saw these two big bouncers like walking over.
00:58:52
Speaker
So I grabbed my ID and ran.
00:58:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:54
Speaker
So that was, that was when I turned 21 in America.
00:58:59
Speaker
Memorable.
00:59:00
Speaker
All right, break over.
00:59:01
Speaker
One of the subjects that comes up the most either directly or indirectly and when we're chatting is tokenization.
00:59:08
Speaker
Can you give like a very simple explanation of what tokenization of real world asset is?
Tokenization of Assets and Market Impact
00:59:14
Speaker
What does it mean?
00:59:15
Speaker
It's putting them on chain.
00:59:18
Speaker
I mean, I can talk about the benefits and stuff like that, but I think ultimately what it is, is you're taking a physical asset.
00:59:25
Speaker
It doesn't even have to be physical.
00:59:26
Speaker
It can still be digital, but you're tokenizing it.
00:59:28
Speaker
So you're putting it on the blockchain.
00:59:31
Speaker
So the example that I think just clicks with a lot of people is Pokemon cards and Courtyard did that very well.
00:59:37
Speaker
So they have looked at what the weak points in that system is.
00:59:41
Speaker
And ultimately with any transition from physical to digital, there's going to have to be a trusted intermediary.
00:59:47
Speaker
So what they've done very smartly, they've gone out and they've basically said, look, who is the most reliable custodian of these physical assets?
00:59:56
Speaker
Oh, it's Brinks.
00:59:58
Speaker
Let's get them as a partner.
00:59:59
Speaker
And you can almost minimize that to an acceptable level of risk when it comes to tokenization of those physical assets, because you as a holder of that token knows that you can redeem that token for the physical item, whether it's a Pokemon card, whether it's a comic,
01:00:15
Speaker
whether it's Supreme clothing at arcade XYZ or whatever, whether it's a Rolex, whether it's like any physical asset, if you know that you can redeem it or there's a 99% chance, or you know that it's insured if things go wrong, then you're going to, it gives that token value.
01:00:31
Speaker
But the moment that that weak link disappears where, you know,
01:00:34
Speaker
Say you had all these tokens and all your assets are stored at some, I don't know, second rate custodial service that goes under and all of a sudden they sell all your assets to cover their losses and then they disappear.
01:00:45
Speaker
Your tokens are worthless.
01:00:46
Speaker
So I think the tokenization process, there's always that risk that it's probably never going to be fully decentralized Web3.
01:00:54
Speaker
You're going to have that intermediary.
01:00:56
Speaker
It's not going to be fully disintermediated.
01:00:58
Speaker
So I think like, yeah, the tokenization process of going from physical to digital has value so long as that weak point is fine.
01:01:08
Speaker
How and how does that, because it's, we're talking about a few hundred cards, for example, for the courtyard drop.
01:01:15
Speaker
But how does that work when all the cards, all the cars, all the watches, when everything's been tokenized in like 30 years, how does that work?
01:01:26
Speaker
Like, where does everything go?
01:01:27
Speaker
How do we, how can we, because it relies on people and it relies on physical infrastructure.
01:01:34
Speaker
If I own assets in a game, in a Web3 game, I'm
01:01:38
Speaker
They're not going to disappear.
01:01:40
Speaker
I don't have to trust anyone.
01:01:41
Speaker
That's the beauty of it.
01:01:42
Speaker
And so how can you, what do you do to give people certainty that they can trust those processes?
01:01:52
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it comes down to risk management.
01:01:54
Speaker
I think that you have audits.
01:01:57
Speaker
So you have audits of those custodial services that say that in the event of XYZ, these assets are ring-fenced, they're safe, they're secure, the creditors have no claim on them.
01:02:10
Speaker
There could be insurance in place.
01:02:11
Speaker
So you could have a third party insurer that you take insurance out with, or as part of that arrangement with that service, you receive an insurance policy that says that in the event of this going under, and you're unable to claim those physical assets, there will be a payout to cover the market value of those assets.
01:02:29
Speaker
So you as a consumer or a user of that particular structure or product, you know that
01:02:36
Speaker
No matter what, you're going to be able to get some, if not all the value of that underlying asset back.
01:02:43
Speaker
And I think that it's happening now.
01:02:46
Speaker
Like you've got different audit firms that are getting involved.
01:02:49
Speaker
And I think real world asset tokenization, like all the big four audit firms are going to be doing existence testing on those assets.
01:02:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:59
Speaker
There'll be the completeness and all the accuracy testing of the tokens on the blockchain, which is fine.
01:03:06
Speaker
But actually testing that those assets exist where they say they're stored is probably another thing that those firms will need to be engaged for.
01:03:14
Speaker
And I think that's probably a huge...
01:03:16
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure they're thinking about it, but if they're not, that's, that's where they should be thinking because that's like, that'll be a huge like revenue for them.
01:03:24
Speaker
Insane.
01:03:25
Speaker
One of the really interesting things, things you made me realize, I hadn't thought of that side of things is the, um,
01:03:32
Speaker
liquidity that it's going to unlock because you have all of these collectors or all of these investors in those types of assets, whether it's art or cars or watches or whatever.
01:03:43
Speaker
And all of a sudden, that's going to be trillions of dollars of liquidity unlocked over the course of the next few years.
01:03:50
Speaker
Do you have any idea?
01:03:51
Speaker
It's too big for me to even grasp.
01:03:54
Speaker
Do you personally have an idea of how the markets will react, how the prices of those assets will react?
01:04:00
Speaker
What's your bet on what happens in the next few years?
01:04:04
Speaker
So a lot of people might think that that liquidity is going to
01:04:07
Speaker
pump the price of those assets but actually i don't think it's going to do that i think the issue with a lot of these smaller markets like collectibles markets specifically is it's very difficult to match a buyer and a seller in an efficient manner and i think tokenizing it putting it on chain does that but that doesn't necessarily mean that the price of those assets is going to go up actually there might be a a guy that's holding this asset that i can't find a buyer for it or can find like several buyers
01:04:34
Speaker
but the buyers can only find him as a seller.
01:04:37
Speaker
All of a sudden, if you put all that on online, you've got maybe multiple sellers, in which case the supply has just increased based on like, just because that's been tokenized, you can see it on chain.
01:04:48
Speaker
So actually, actually it meets its true market value a lot more efficiently because people have a complete open order book of, of what's being traded in real time, what the recent sales are.
01:04:59
Speaker
So yeah,
01:05:01
Speaker
where people would ordinarily be able to arbitrage or find opportunities in the physical collectibles market, actually, that's going to be a lot harder to do in the digital world because it's going to be a lot easier to find what the actual recent sales are and things like that.
01:05:15
Speaker
So I actually think it's probably, you're going to have like some surprises.
01:05:19
Speaker
There'll be some assets that you can't find the demand for, in which case the token is going to drop.
01:05:24
Speaker
But conversely, there's probably going to be a bunch of assets that like
01:05:28
Speaker
that would have had this perceived number in issuance, but actually the circulating supply of that on chain is actually really low.
01:05:36
Speaker
So the price of that might pump because you might have that demand on chain for it until such point that when those physical assets get tokenized, they might come on chain and then it kind of balances out.
01:05:46
Speaker
So I think there'll be like a period of time where there'll be a lot of volatility in prices, but I think they'll find that true market value a lot more efficiently.
01:05:56
Speaker
later on when everything is tokenized.
01:05:57
Speaker
I don't think it's going to be just because it's on chain, everything's going to be traded at a premium.
01:06:02
Speaker
I think it's just going to be like they'll find their true market value.
01:06:05
Speaker
But there is, I mean, having said that, so it's a bit of a rabbit hole, but there is other aspects of it that could add value.
01:06:12
Speaker
So say, for instance, if a company was to issue
01:06:15
Speaker
a physical asset, but also a tokenized asset, then they might offer extended warranty for that particular asset because they know that it's on chain.
01:06:23
Speaker
It's like there's more reliability around that verifiability.
01:06:28
Speaker
So they're willing to offer some actual extended warranty for that product.
01:06:33
Speaker
Now, all of a sudden, the NFT or the token has the value of what that additional cost of insurance would be.
01:06:39
Speaker
as a premium over the physical asset.
01:06:41
Speaker
Like there's ways of incentivizing, like insurance companies are going to want to have all their assets on chain because it's easier to track them, check for fraudulent stuff, authenticity.
01:06:51
Speaker
So they're probably more likely to offer discounts on premiums and things like that.
01:06:55
Speaker
So I think there's a whole raft of like intersections with different markets.
01:06:59
Speaker
The penny is going to drop and it's just going to roll out and there'll be so many different benefits on offer through tokenization programs as opposed to just everything being
Blockchain and Government Oversight
01:07:08
Speaker
physical.
01:07:08
Speaker
I wonder what the effect is going to be on government and state oversight.
01:07:15
Speaker
once everything is on chain, it becomes easier in some ways and not so easy in other ways to, to yeah, to do surveillance, I guess.
01:07:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:24
Speaker
I mean, that's, that's the age old issue of privacy commission blockchains, which I think is what ZK is like trying to do.
01:07:33
Speaker
Like you can, you can prove it without knowing what you're proving so you can validate it on chain, but there's a certain level of anonymity or confidentiality retained.
01:07:42
Speaker
So much hope and so many questions left unanswered.
01:07:47
Speaker
Let's move on to we're talking about gaming and gambling
Decentralized Platforms and Fairness
01:07:50
Speaker
as well.
01:07:50
Speaker
And gambling is one thing.
01:07:52
Speaker
I love to play poker and I played it online for lack of a better option for a while.
01:08:00
Speaker
But I don't do it anymore because it's so...
01:08:04
Speaker
I find it very hard to trust online poker platforms.
01:08:08
Speaker
It really feels like it's not completely random.
01:08:11
Speaker
How do you, because you have an eye on the regulation side of things and you have an eye on the corporation side of things, corporate side of things.
01:08:20
Speaker
How do you see crypto gambling evolve?
01:08:22
Speaker
And I think the biggest question for me is,
01:08:25
Speaker
Do you think we ever have non-KYC decentralized gaming, gambling, or in my case, poker platforms?
01:08:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think there will be just out of jurisdictions that require it.
01:08:36
Speaker
But to your point around making sure it's truly randomized, I think if they do that on-chain, then you can prove it.
01:08:42
Speaker
So actually, that might completely disrupt that whole industry or at least provide that level of comfort that players need to then do that.
01:08:49
Speaker
And actually, if you have a company that does that and all these players are really concerned about,
01:08:56
Speaker
the house or the company ripping them off, then you might see a transition to decentralised gambling platforms as a result of being able to prove that that was truly random because I can see it online after the fact, obviously, because otherwise you'd probably be able to game the system if you can see it in real time.
01:09:12
Speaker
But yeah, I think that's probably a huge case.
01:09:16
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
01:09:17
Speaker
And oh man, I hope this industry gets disrupted because you have just a few players on that market and that are... I was playing PokerStars back then and happy with it, played another platform where...
01:09:31
Speaker
What was happening on the table just did not make sense from a game theory point of view.
01:09:36
Speaker
It was just every, there were draws at every single hand for multiple people.
01:09:43
Speaker
It was almost and in that case, you don't know what's happening.
01:09:48
Speaker
just bummed because you can't play it well?
01:09:51
Speaker
Or is it actually true?
01:09:53
Speaker
Because it's so... If the statistics don't add up and it's like, or like the chances of that happening are slim, but it keeps happening, it's like, it's a bit fishy.
01:10:02
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
01:10:02
Speaker
It is.
01:10:03
Speaker
And also you fall back on the fact that I'm not a computer.
01:10:07
Speaker
So, I'm not calculating the statistics of all the hands I've played overall.
01:10:12
Speaker
And so, maybe I'm being biased in my... Maybe I'm just not drawing well and maybe I'm just a sore loser.
01:10:21
Speaker
So, it's hard to... Yeah, that could change a lot of things.
01:10:25
Speaker
It could make things a lot more transparent and maybe change the perception also that we have on those types of games eventually, hopefully.
01:10:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:34
Speaker
i think you've just got me uh hooked on poker again i haven't played a number of years i used to play a lot at uni yeah it's a lot of fun i prefer in-person poker though just for those exact reasons and i think like you can throw people off with you can try and like yeah trick them and stuff i know that tells are like if you're a professional poker player you can probably read through it but it's like
01:10:56
Speaker
when you're playing against amateurs you can kind of just trick them into thinking that you've done something bad in person i think that's part of the fun whereas online you just don't necessarily have that it's purely numbers and yeah and reaction time yeah i mean i think like talking about it again makes me want to go play well if you're ever if i'm ever in london we'll go we'll go i really want to do tournaments i've never done live tournaments have you
01:11:23
Speaker
No, I haven't done live tournaments.
01:11:25
Speaker
I did go to a couple of games that some of my friends were doing, but I don't know.
01:11:30
Speaker
I think I enjoyed doing it for fun.
01:11:32
Speaker
I just, I think I felt that because I have a very addictive personality and it's probably why I ended up in crypto and blockchain and stuff like that and went down the rabbit hole.
01:11:40
Speaker
But I think I would do the same with...
01:11:42
Speaker
with poker as well if i was to take it seriously i would probably just end up going down that rabbit hole too much and maybe that's why that uh there's so many poker players that have come into crypto because it takes a certain personality but i think i i purposely don't put i put controls in place to prevent myself from doing that because i know that it's probably not going to be good
01:12:01
Speaker
Yeah, good for you.
01:12:03
Speaker
I think it's a similar thing that attracts me to poker specifically because I tend to be too curious, for example.
01:12:10
Speaker
So I'll pay to see the cards, which is the dumbest thing you can do.
01:12:15
Speaker
But it's also a very good exercise for...
01:12:18
Speaker
self-control and for your mental state of like you have to constantly be focused and aware of the actions that you're taking and i think that's more than anything what i'm seeking there it's uh it's to put myself in in danger of losing money and so i have to i have to absolutely be focused and in control of of who i am and what i'm doing it's interesting
01:12:43
Speaker
I just want to do a last thing on because we have about 10 minutes left, I think.
Innovative Projects and Economic Models
01:12:49
Speaker
Web3 Gaming and start with a moment of silence for ether orcs.
01:12:57
Speaker
I think it will be remembered.
01:13:00
Speaker
I think it played too big a role to be forgotten.
01:13:03
Speaker
If the whole provenance thing of being the first fully on-chain RPG plays out, then it's going to have value, I think.
01:13:09
Speaker
I've still got, I don't know, 33 Genesis Orcs.
01:13:13
Speaker
Yeah, so that was probably the biggest hit for me.
01:13:15
Speaker
But actually, I learned so much about them just because... Well, so much about bridging all this kind of stuff that I probably wouldn't have otherwise done.
01:13:25
Speaker
And I think the...
01:13:27
Speaker
the excitement that I had when I read their white paper and I was like, what, you can use these NFTs to do this with the smart contract.
01:13:36
Speaker
And it's like, you can actually play the game and you can gamify the system.
01:13:39
Speaker
And I was like, I really want one.
01:13:41
Speaker
This is just like, I had that the first time where I had that addictive like feeling about a project.
01:13:48
Speaker
And the penny just dropped.
01:13:49
Speaker
And I was like, you can't put a price on that feeling.
01:13:51
Speaker
And I think what they rolled out, the rate at which they rolled it out and the way they trailblazed with the bridging to Polygon and all that kind of stuff and then actually creating a dungeon crawler around it, they had a core community of people.
01:14:06
Speaker
They still do to an extent, and I don't know what the DAO is going to happen with it, but they had this actual game that people wanted to play and they were willing to spend... I was probably...
01:14:15
Speaker
net paying to play which to me it tells me that they had a successful game i was willing to pay to play the game because i wanted to get the rewards and i wanted to hold those rewards and prove that i've played that particular limited edition dungeon or whatever and i think that that to me was like that was the first successful moment of a game being created fully on chain yeah so i think it should have value in the future and i think so many so many projects iterated from that i know wolf game did i think
01:14:45
Speaker
I think it was like Space Game and Wizards and Dragons and a bunch of others.
01:14:49
Speaker
So, yeah, I think like there has to be some sort of provenance.
01:14:53
Speaker
But I think in my head, for the sake of sanity, I've just kind of assumed there's a rule.
01:14:57
Speaker
Yeah, ruled it out.
01:14:58
Speaker
And then maybe in the future.
01:15:00
Speaker
I mean, it's on chain.
01:15:01
Speaker
As long as Ethereum is around, it's going to be around.
01:15:03
Speaker
So maybe collectors will come looking in years to come.
01:15:08
Speaker
I really hope that someone comes in and starts doing documentaries on those projects.
01:15:15
Speaker
It's bound to happen at some point, but I hope it's soon.
01:15:19
Speaker
Because these are... Imagine a documentary about the saga of Paji Penguins.
01:15:25
Speaker
That would be fantastic.
01:15:26
Speaker
Aether Oryx is the same.
01:15:28
Speaker
Did you ever play RuneScape when you were younger?
01:15:31
Speaker
I did, yeah.
01:15:31
Speaker
I was really addicted to it.
01:15:33
Speaker
Yeah, same.
01:15:34
Speaker
And I find myself now, I don't play anymore.
01:15:38
Speaker
I had like two months where I played a couple years ago, I think.
01:15:41
Speaker
And I find sometimes they pop up on my YouTube and I watch documentaries about events in RuneScape.
01:15:48
Speaker
Like it's so...
01:15:51
Speaker
It shows that a story doesn't need to be rooted in the physical world to have appeal.
01:15:56
Speaker
And those stories would be fantastic.
01:15:58
Speaker
It's the nostalgia.
01:15:59
Speaker
I think little things like, is it Duradel 666 or something like the Falador massacre?
01:16:05
Speaker
They literally created a storyline around that.
01:16:07
Speaker
And in reality, all that was, was someone found a glitch in the game when construction was going on that he ended up...
01:16:14
Speaker
going out and killing people in part of the world that you couldn't usually do that so he was taking a lot of items that were actually probably made a lot of money flipped it to another account and then in reality you could then trade that for real like it's on the black market for real money it's like yeah i don't know so many people have their childhood rooted in that and i found there's a big overlap between the runescape community and and web 3 as well people
01:16:40
Speaker
hustled in RuneScape and then used that, what they learned there, to come over to Web3 and do the same thing.
01:16:47
Speaker
Do you think, because we were talking about EtherOrgs and we were talking about the fact that straight up Ponzi in the beginning, because they're
01:16:56
Speaker
Like giving you a lot of assets that have real world value.
01:16:58
Speaker
And do you think Ponzi-nomics will become accepted growth tactic that eventually becomes a sustainable economy?
01:17:06
Speaker
Like, would it be okay to have things started as Ponzi-nomics and then evolve beyond that?
01:17:13
Speaker
It's difficult because I think like if you, if you, if you broke it down, like with a, with a Ponzi, you effectively need new people coming in to sustain it.
01:17:19
Speaker
So I think the issue is when those new people become yield, like that's effectively what's wrong with a Ponzi.
01:17:28
Speaker
Like,
01:17:29
Speaker
You need to have outside cash flows or a real product that people are willing to pay.
01:17:33
Speaker
So you need to have a consumer at some point.
01:17:34
Speaker
And I think that's where a lot of projects fall down because Pudgy have gone out.
01:17:40
Speaker
They've created a product that people want to buy.
01:17:43
Speaker
So they're willing to bag hold these Pudgy toys and they've paid X amount for it.
01:17:48
Speaker
And that effectively flows through to the pudgy ecosystem.
01:17:51
Speaker
So I think it's like the word Ponzi is, it's quite broad and vague, but I mean, people have referred to the U S government as a Ponzi.
01:17:59
Speaker
They're just printing money and then that money's devaluing and then all this kind of stuff.
01:18:04
Speaker
So I think, I don't know, economics to a degree does involve a certain level of Ponzinomics.
01:18:10
Speaker
It's just like growing the ecosystem big enough to have that liquidity flow around it sufficiently to make it viable or
01:18:19
Speaker
Just being smart about how you do it in a way that's not detrimental to the entire ecosystem.
01:18:24
Speaker
It's like, yeah, you have to have something that people are willing to buy in the end.
01:18:29
Speaker
I think that's just generally how I look at things.
01:18:32
Speaker
If there's no productive value, if you're not creating something that people want, then it's probably going to go to zero at some point.
01:18:40
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
01:18:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:42
Speaker
I'm just wondering if, have you seen like the We Crashed TV show about WeWork or the one on Theranos?
01:18:51
Speaker
No, I might write that down actually.
01:18:53
Speaker
Man, you should.
01:18:54
Speaker
The three We Crashed, I think the Theranos one is The Inventor.
01:19:00
Speaker
And then there's the Uber one and like best three TV shows about like businesses ever created in my mind.
01:19:09
Speaker
And yeah,
01:19:10
Speaker
All of these, well, actually on one side you have Theranos and WeWork where it was fake it till you make it pushed to the absolute extremes.
01:19:22
Speaker
And then you have Uber, which is a little bit of fake it until you make it as well because you have like smart accounting, smart marketing to inflate numbers.
01:19:34
Speaker
Eventually through a lot of drama ended up becoming a
01:19:40
Speaker
a company that works.
01:19:42
Speaker
And I have a feeling that Ponzi-nomics could be the same thing for the economies that are being created online.
01:19:52
Speaker
Because you have to start somewhere and you have to give people incentives in the beginning.
01:19:56
Speaker
And so, it makes sense that early adopters get rewards.
01:20:00
Speaker
But where does that stop?
01:20:02
Speaker
Where do you say, all right, we've done enough and now we
01:20:06
Speaker
this is the product this is uh the more sustainable cash flow that's very interesting actually because i i take what you said then and i think immediately think of frontech with the bonding curve i don't know if you're yeah a little bit in that but not involved that's like i mean everyone knows that that bonding curve isn't sustainable but it incentivizes people to to play because it inflates your portfolio value and you're like oh i only put one eth in but
01:20:31
Speaker
my portfolio is worth like five ETH now.
01:20:33
Speaker
And it's largely because of the bonding curve.
01:20:35
Speaker
But also, I mean, they have to, like you said, they have to encourage people to come play the game early on to adopt the tech.
01:20:43
Speaker
And I think over time, you eventually make it more sustainable.
01:20:46
Speaker
But you have to reward those early adopters.
01:20:48
Speaker
And I think, yeah, that's one way of doing it.
01:20:50
Speaker
People are motivated financially.
01:20:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's just interesting.
01:20:54
Speaker
It is.
01:20:54
Speaker
And how do you do it in a way that's because you want to keep a level of transparency or and even if it's not
01:21:04
Speaker
from top-down transparency of the company actually saying, all right, we're using this mechanism to hook you in.
01:21:11
Speaker
At least that we are aware that this mechanism is for that sake and that this is not sustainable and not being cheated into thinking that you will forever see your money doubling every few days or a few weeks.
01:21:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good point.
01:21:26
Speaker
And I think anyone who gets that right is probably going to do pretty well.
01:21:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:30
Speaker
And maybe that's why, I mean, people are fully aware about the bonding curve in Frentech, but they're willing to play it.
01:21:37
Speaker
And it does come down to gamification, PvP to an extent.
01:21:42
Speaker
And psychology.
01:21:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:45
Speaker
I hear people already planning out strategies of leaving the Ponzi early enough so it doesn't collapse and getting the decent airdrop and this kind of stuff.
Frentech's Market Dynamics and Future Outlook
01:21:55
Speaker
I mean, they're fully aware.
01:21:56
Speaker
Well, I'm assuming they're fully aware of the risks, but it just leads me to think like,
01:22:03
Speaker
They're aware of what's going on, but they're willing to play the game.
01:22:05
Speaker
Frentech gets the fees, the protocol fees.
01:22:08
Speaker
They get the user activity.
01:22:11
Speaker
They can then do what they need to do for the next phase of the company or startup.
01:22:16
Speaker
And then the users get what they want because they're early adopters.
01:22:19
Speaker
And some people will lose out and probably just lose interest and faint away.
01:22:23
Speaker
But those that stick at it and play it smartly will be rewarded.
01:22:27
Speaker
And I think it's like any...
01:22:29
Speaker
I mean, it's similar with the blur farming early on.
01:22:32
Speaker
Those that did season one did very well, but then as soon as it became saturated and more people came into it, it became less of a successful venture.
01:22:40
Speaker
Maybe we'll see that with Frentech over the next couple of months where the late adopters will come in, but they'll lose out, unfortunately, because the airdrop won't be worth the offset in cost from losing whatever they'll lose from buying these keys.
01:22:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:54
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:55
Speaker
But for now, everyone's making money.
01:22:57
Speaker
Everyone's happy.
01:22:59
Speaker
Everyone's holding each other's keys.
01:23:02
Speaker
Man, thank you so much.
01:23:03
Speaker
This was really fun.
01:23:05
Speaker
I'm happy you agreed to do this.
01:23:08
Speaker
It's been a pleasure.
01:23:09
Speaker
Thanks for having me, Polymath.
01:23:10
Speaker
My pleasure.
Conclusion and Guest's Contributions
01:23:12
Speaker
For the people who've made it this far.
01:23:14
Speaker
Who are you, what are you looking for at the moment?
01:23:16
Speaker
Who should reach out to you?
01:23:18
Speaker
Are there gigs you're looking for?
01:23:19
Speaker
Are there like specific people projects?
01:23:22
Speaker
Uh, to be honest, I write a newsletter and if, if you, if you enjoyed like what you heard on here, I tend to write a lot about this stuff in my newsletter.
01:23:29
Speaker
It's weekly, it's free.
01:23:31
Speaker
So it's in my bio on Twitter.
01:23:33
Speaker
So just drop me a follow, subscribe, and then yeah, just go from there.
01:23:37
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:23:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:38
Speaker
And if you've listened this far, please follow us everywhere.
01:23:42
Speaker
Drop a comment.
01:23:43
Speaker
It always helps.
01:23:44
Speaker
It doesn't cost you a lot.
01:23:45
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this one.
01:23:48
Speaker
I highly encourage you to follow Sammy and to go check out his newsletter.
01:23:53
Speaker
I genuinely was very excited to have him because I love reading his content.
01:23:57
Speaker
I'm not going to lie when I say that you're probably one of the only people when I see...
01:24:03
Speaker
your new content, I actually read it and not have to force myself.
01:24:07
Speaker
Because I get triggered by other content creators on Twitter who are doing it for whom it's very clear that they're doing it for the engagement and the likes.
01:24:18
Speaker
Whereas for you, I sense this, like you're actually genuinely very interested in what you're doing and it shows and I'm always learning something cool and surprising.
01:24:28
Speaker
So,
01:24:29
Speaker
Thank you so much for what you do.
01:24:30
Speaker
Keep doing it.
01:24:31
Speaker
Keep inspiring and teaching us.
01:24:33
Speaker
And I'll talk to you soon.
01:24:35
Speaker
What do you say?
01:24:35
Speaker
I appreciate that.
01:24:36
Speaker
It's really, really, really welcoming.
01:24:37
Speaker
Thank you.
01:24:38
Speaker
My pleasure.