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The Future of Gaming with Michael Tabone
13 Plays4 months ago
Michael Tabone is a Sr. Economist for Cointelegraph and a Professor at the University of the Cumberlands in the internationally accredited IACBE.
- Global Business with Blockchain Technology Master's program.
- CFO of DRIFT Studios. Director of Strategy for DigiKerma.
- Advisor to many Web3/blockchain projects.
- Bitcoin Maxi Plus (“Bitcoin is all that matters, and so does everything else.”)
As a business strategist, economist and project manager, he provides consulting to firms concentrating in the Defi and blockchain space.
He has co-authored, researched, and produced several reports for Cointelegraph Research on topics from blockchain adoption, DeFi, NFTs, GameFi, venture capital and institutional demand. Michael's Ph.D. was in Business and his dissertation focused on DAOs and their practical applications.
Connect with Michael on Linked-in or X
Check out the Drift Labs website
Play Payout Pursuit here
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Feature
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to another exciting episode of Otterly Positive Cocks. I am really... Pretty excited about today's conversation because we got Michael Tabone from Drift on the show today.
New Partnership Announcement
00:00:23
Speaker
Now the Laughing Otter and Drift have recently formed a partnership because we, and I'm sure you guys will now thank it, Drift is is one of the coolest new gaming companies in the web 3 space and beyond. They are changing the way people play games and
00:00:46
Speaker
really excited to have Michael on the show and he's going to talk a little bit about drift and we're going to talk about the future of gaming and web three and where the world's heading.
Drift's Gaming Philosophy
00:00:53
Speaker
um So welcome to the show Michael. Thanks Jeff for having me I appreciate it yeah very very pumped to be here and now I'm excited for what we're going to do together moving forward so it's really cool. Yeah so I guess a great place to start would is maybe share a little bit about drift and where where you see it fitting in the world and and how you guys are changing the landscape. Sure.
00:01:17
Speaker
so um So Drift is a Web 3 studio and we were trying to do things a lot differently than normal. So like and whenever I start talking to people about, you know, GameFi, they go, oh, well, then they automatically fall into how games have utilized tokens and how games have utilized and NFTs, non fungible tokens and stuff like that in the past. And I have to try to stop them and go, wait, wait, wait, back up. This is not how it really works with us.
00:01:44
Speaker
So first off, yes, we are a ah game studio. So the idea is to have more than one game. So we're actually not stuck on one game. We have our first game that's out right now called payout pursuit, which you can play at payout pursuit dot com. It's a free mode. There's also what's called a tournament mode where people can actually and have an entry fee. And for that entry fee, they get and they get to play the race or whatever it is, that tournament for as long as they want, as long as the tournament goes on for.
00:02:12
Speaker
and then they earn a particular portion of that of the prize pool. So if you're in the top 30%, you win. I think it's up to 70% of the prize pool gets earned by the top 30% of the winners. So it's a it's a it's really amazing opportunity for people. And we have a saying called, get the GGMF, which is get good MOFO. MOFO, you probably imagine, is you know can be changed out for something else. But the idea is to get good at the game and to constantly upgrade your skill. And because you can play as many times as you want, and because people can play, you can always try to beat that first place
00:02:49
Speaker
person and get to get the majority of the pot there, become the Drift King and you win NFTs for that. But those NFTs don't give you special powers on the court or on the track or wherever it happens to be.
Technical Aspects and Tournaments
00:03:00
Speaker
um We're not really a a pay to win. We are a pay to win like you have to pay to to enter the tournament. But we're not a you you buy a but special supercar and then you get special superpowers and you get to dunk on people's rest forever. That's not how we operate. It's really a skills based only.
00:03:18
Speaker
type of environment, which we are trying to incorporate with all the games that we'll have in the future. And the more events that happen, the more the people that actually hold the drift token, which the drift token never actually and enter interacts with the games. You with the games are in ETH, BNB and Polygon for now, we are looking to um expand into other things that we actually utilize Chainlink CCIP, which is the cross chain interoperability protocol.
00:03:45
Speaker
And Chainlink, as many people of I'm sure are familiar, is one of the OGs in the space. And they've been awesome working really tightly with them on um um the code and everything else. They've been fantastic working with us. So the whole idea is to utilize that CCIP. The chain drift itself can move in and out of each one of those three chains interoperably. So people can utilize it in BNB, Polygon, or ETH, whatever they want to do. They stake it, and they earn They earn, holders earn, if they stake it, ETH, BNB, and Polygon. You don't earn drift. You earn the natives. So everyone's earning natives. Everyone's trading natives. Everyone's all this kind of thing in the native thing. But drift itself is still for the holders themselves. So it's a new take on how GameFi works. um And it's a different tokenomics model than I think people are used to. But we're trying to get the word out about we're trying to get the word out about that big time and we're as we move into
00:04:41
Speaker
the end middle of q3 here and into q4 that message is you know we're going to be on the rooftops with bull horns as loud as it can be Yeah, it's all pretty cool and um I guess the listeners wouldn't know this, but um as you're talking, you're preaching to the converted because the Laughing Otter, like I said before, we partnered with you guys and we're actually, for the listeners, we're running two tournaments ah that ah over the month of August, one will be a Laughing Otter tournament and
00:05:18
Speaker
Then you see, you can sign up and you win some money and, uh, which is pretty fun. And then also we're having our toast for as part of our toast for peace
Web 3's Social Impact
00:05:28
Speaker
initiative. We're running another tournament towards the end of August. So yep, we're preaching, you're preaching the converted. One, one thing that I love about your model and it's something that's really attracted me to web three is this way for people who are.
00:05:48
Speaker
in disadvantaged situations that they can earn personal ah build personal wealth through through Web 3. And I just see this as people who are in a situation where they're unbanked in unstable economies, all those kind of places, being able to earn some extra cash where a few dollars is a big difference to their lifestyle um just by playing games. and
00:06:25
Speaker
i i I'd like to hear your thoughts on that. Well, yes, that's one of the the reasons why I got into Web 3. And just for the listeners just to understand, I teach, um I teach, i'm a ph I have my PhD in business. My dissertation was in decentralized autonomous organizations and their practical use cases. um yeah i used I am a former deputy director of research for Cointelegraph. I teach at the University of the Cumberlands in ah
00:06:56
Speaker
blockchain a global business and blockchain program graduate program so I'm involved with this stuff big time. The reason why I got involved is I'm not a big fan of gatekeepers. So I hate people that tell people, Oh, you can't have a bank account. You can't do this. You can't do that. And I'm a big fan of, of, um, I'm letting people have control over their a own big fan of, life's energy and life's work. Right. So I like it when I hear stories about um, I'm a people that are in disadvantaged countries, big fan of, third world countries um, and everything else, taking advantage of Web three in a good way, getting involved, you know, doing the game to earn thing and then changing their whole life perspective because they get involved with the stuff. So that's that's what I like. You know, I like people that are able to save their life's work and energy in places like, you know, Turkey and
00:07:45
Speaker
and you know other parts of the you know South America and everything else that have runaway inflation and issues with hyperinflation, at least they could find something in cryptocurrency where they can hold their their value. And um yeah, being able to play a game where it's skill based is more is important because what's what really, really is a terrible situation is when someone gets involved with a game,
00:08:07
Speaker
and they buy a NFT or they buy a token or they buy whatever it is, they get involved in the game. And then somebody who is an insider to the team or whatever it is happens to have more tokens or they they because they bought a an NFT back in 2021 and they keep getting airdrops for forever. They're the kings of the universe and they get to dunk on everybody else who gets involved later on. That's terrible um and I hate that type of model, you know, and That that model just kind of It's that model within a game is the microcosm of what's wrong with this world It's if if you constantly give the people who already have an advantage more of an advantage Well, how do you expect anyone who's disadvantaged to ever climb out of that to that basic level? Which were that you know
00:09:00
Speaker
from us who have been who were born in Western countries and um in stable homes and that sort of thing. We we already had that advantage. Whereas, you know like you said, people in South America, people in Africa, people all over Asia,
00:09:15
Speaker
there are they they just don't have that baseline ah chance. and And then so if you create a game where the only way that you can win that game is by pumping in more money, well, then already you you've created that same ah hierarchy and ah disadvantage. Whereas what you guys are doing, it doesn't matter.
00:09:42
Speaker
if as long as you can get ah like as long as you have connectivity, you can be as good as anyone else. And not that's a beautiful thing. And that, and that again, you if you translate that out to the macro, well, that's what Web3 is all about and in so many cases is is ah creating that equal playing field for people uh, from everywhere. Uh, so yeah, it's great. It's, um, like you're, you're a PhD in business. I got my master's in business until I joined web three.
Future of Web 3: Trends and Challenges
00:10:18
Speaker
I'd never heard the term unbanked before, but I hear it every day in web three, because there's so many people who are really focused on that area of just giving people in those situations a chance.
00:10:35
Speaker
thousand percent. Yeah. there's That's the thing is, you know, getting, and getting more people with the ability to, you know, be able to save and to be able to transact. That's what it's all about, man. You know, um, and that was the hope with, with drift, right? The idea behind drift is that at whatever price point the pool is, if the pool's at a hundred dollars, there's somebody in the world that would love to win that, that that, you know, the hundred dollars in the pool. Yeah. when youre when you're When you're dealing with people who are, when there's players who, you know, they're earning $10 a day or, or even, or even less, if they win $5 that's, that's huge. Um, for to them, to their families, to their, and, and it it opens up the opportunity that maybe they can save a little bit, uh, where in most cases they wouldn't. Um,
00:11:30
Speaker
Yeah. and And one thing too is what's interesting is like the the the huge percentage of people who are unbanked, but yet they have a mobile phone. And so um with with your games, you know, almost anyone can play because they they do have a phone and they do they are able to play. Right. Well, that's the thing, right? So like, you know, like we, you know, before before blockchain existed,
00:11:58
Speaker
In Africa, they people were were were exchanging minutes on their phone, right? They were exchanging minutes, you know, calling minutes and they were using that as currency, saying, and I'll give you 10 minutes for, you know, phone calls if you do this, that and everything. So all of this already existed. Right. um The idea behind a digital type of asset being traded as a for in a way of as same way as money.
00:12:23
Speaker
um was already in in a place before blockchain ever even became a ah household name. um So you know people are used to this kind of thing, and there's goingnna be they're going to find a way. Just like if we went to prison, um you know we would say, OK, well, you know cigarettes are now a form of currency. Everyone's going to find a way to do it. And economists, especially in my my line of economics, which is I come from the Austrian school, have been talking about a you know talking about an-cash
00:12:54
Speaker
for a long period of time. And then when Bitcoin came around and, of course, gave birth to the Blockchain Revolution, here we are today. Right. So that's the you know, that's the best part. Now, through GameFi, people are able to take these these assets. And even if they are NFTs, whether they give you special powers in the game itself or not is immaterial.
00:13:16
Speaker
Um, the, like like, for instance, the laughing otter, when we have our race, uh, later on this month, there's going to be assets that are specifically laughing otter assets. Right. And it's going to be cool because there's going to be a limited number of them, but what's really cool is what we would call generational, generational assets. Um, that you're going to be able to you know have this asset forever. The cool thing would be if it could play.
00:13:41
Speaker
in other games and other worlds and other things, because we're not in the we're not in the we're not in the mode right now where we can have competition or really yell at each other or be upset with another group. We really have to work together in Web3 because we're not big enough. um You know, we're not we're not Coke and Pepsi, and we can yell and scream at each other and have Pepsi or the Cola Wars. You know, that would happen in the 80s or early 90s, where it was.
00:14:06
Speaker
We have to kind of work together. So, you know, every single game company that I've come across or talked with when I was at the Harvard Blockchain Conference, for example, I get a moderated a panel on Web 3 there. And we ended up partnering with everybody on the panel um basically because, you know, the and I'm talking about other game studios. There's no reason to to you know have this kind of conflict.
00:14:29
Speaker
There's, you know, we're, we have to still overcome a big amount of challenges in the web three gaming community, especially when it comes to onboarding new people. So there is no real competition as far as I'm concerned, because we all have to work together. And then, you know, five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, let's, you know, let's turn up the heat big time on competition and everything else where everybody's onboarded and, uh, and everyone's on the web three, um, bent.
00:14:57
Speaker
But right now we just need to work on getting players everywhere to start looking at having and owning on chain assets is a big thing that you can pass down to, you know, your kids and know and know it's hard for people to think of this generational stuff like it's, ah you know, the family China or something, the family China set of dishes and stuff. But, the yeah, you eventually you're going to have so many of these kind of things.
00:15:21
Speaker
not only you're gonna wanna pass down your Bitcoin and your other assets like that, but you're gonna wanna pass down, you know, this gaming NFT, which you spent all this time making and and putting energy into and everything else, and maybe it'll be worth something, or at least it's an identifier for you or your family. um Like a sigil was on like the ah the Game of Thrones thing, you know?
00:15:40
Speaker
um But this is will be your digital your digital flag. You can fly. And that'll be, I think, very important for people as we move forward, you know, and if they can go through anything in and out of different games, different out in in and out of different games with the same look, then that means something, you know, um people are very brand aware, and especially you can make a brand that's your own brand. That's amazing. You know, um and that's and ah that's a that's a really cool part of what could be coming up in the future.
00:16:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think one one thing that people who are not in Web3 probably don't see as much as when you're living it every day is how collaborative the whole community is ah with what you were talking about. um i ah had ah There was someone I was talking to last week, can't remember who it was, but they summed it up really nice and that the Web3 community is still working on baking the biggest pie possible together and then we all take a slice of it as opposed to anyone trying to grab the whole pie and so it it is actually really attractive and it makes it a lot of fun to to be involved with things like this because you know we're collaborating with partners all the time just like when we we reached or we came connected with each other and very quickly we realized there was an opportunity for a partnership and
00:17:09
Speaker
ah between drift and lapping otter. And so that that's definitely one of the more exciting things um of this space. So ah outside the generational um ah components and all that,
00:17:26
Speaker
Where do you see the the future in the next, well, really, I think and anyone who's trying to predict it past three years is dreaming, but, you know, in the foreseeable future, where what what do you think is exciting on the on the horizon? So for me, I really think it's, um you know, well, this year was really weird, right? So in the beginning of the year, everybody in my industry, you know, from Cointelegraph and, you know, our competitors and everything else, we're talking about three things.
00:17:56
Speaker
which was RWA, which is real world assets, AI, which I'm sure everyone in the whole world has heard of by now, and GameFi. Those were the three things that we thought were going to drive the entire space this cycle. And then in the middle of February out of like nowhere came in memes and meme coins exploded.
00:18:20
Speaker
And um you know there's been reports that you know in April of this year alone, there was a million new projects that launched, um mostly on base in Solana, that just you know took everything by fire. And ah you know that that means ah um you know there was it's something like six million prod six times the amount of projects have launched already in this cycle than the last cycle. So it's a tremendous amount. so there's more liquidity out there in the world chasing few you know more projects. The only problem is that um there's not retail retail has not showed up yet. And the reason why we know that to be true is we can actually watch different metrics. One metric that I like to look at is the amount of people that actually are checking out YouTube videos because people get their
00:19:10
Speaker
information from YouTube if they're trying to figure out, you know, who to who to invest in or who to look at or what the charts are doing or whatever. And in the cycle where last cycle, 2021, 2022, when we were at our top, there was about four million views per day amongst all the the top YouTube crypto people around the world. Four million views if you aggregate them altogether.
00:19:39
Speaker
Now we're around 800,000. So retail is not here yet. It's just the same people that were here last time are still here now.
00:19:50
Speaker
and we're all still just trading amongst each other at the moment. Nothing has nothing new has happened um as far as retail, as far as everything else comes. Yes, has have has institutions come into the space? They have. And matter of fact, some VCs are even just spending money on just meme coins. They're buying meme coins in the speculative theory. that you know So even VCs have kind of fallen prey to the meme coin thing. But um yeah, it's ah it's interesting, space.
00:20:18
Speaker
For GameFi itself, I think it's going to go the same way as everything else eventually, ah the which is interoperability, which which we've heard a little bit about last cycle. right We heard a little bit about Polkadot, and Cosmos is still out there doing its thing, and and all of these different operability chains that exist out there. EVM has gotten bigger. you know Everyone wants to have part of the Ethereum virtual machine and and be able to interrupt through some kind of way, including like Avalanche and all these other I think they're technologically superior processes, but they're all trying to get on that Ethereum bandwagon, that Ethereum train together. But I think interoperability is it, man. I think that's what's going to be happening in the next cycle. You're going to hear a big time about interoperability. And the whole point of that is because right now me and you are talking over a bunch of different softwares. And if you and I were me and you trying to list out
00:21:16
Speaker
all of the different softwares that we we're talking about here, you know, there's probably way more intricate things that are behind the scenes than you and I know. And that's the whole point is right now to be in Web 3, I got to know what metamask is. I have to know what network I'm on. I have to know if what way is, you know, how do I how do I reduce it? You know, ah How do I what do I use for a bridge to go to Solana? It's very confusing, right? um And people just can't handle that much complexity unless they start studying it and really get into the space, which is what a barrier to entry for people playing Web three games is. They just want to turn on their console and play, ah you know, PlayStation or or or Xbox or whatever console it is. They just want to turn it on and play a game. And eventually Web three gaming is going to be that way. It's just going to be they're not going to know their
00:22:07
Speaker
They're not going to know that they're playing a Web3 game. they're just They just know they're playing a game, which is why we've partnered with people like Gaiman and Wonkin, who ah bring that type of the experience to users. And they onboard Web2 users who don't even know that they're playing a Web3 game and they're through their own platform. So that's very exciting. And that's coming up shortly in this you the next couple of months for us. But that's coming up for the whole industry, which I think will be huge.
00:22:36
Speaker
I agree, and I think what this what' where the change is, like I hear every day somebody say about Web3, we need mass adoption, we need mass adoption. Well, there's two two things, and they're kind of related, is the people within Web3 need to, to get out of the bubble and realize how hard it is for everyone else to that haven't been around and haven't spent the hours trying to figure out how to actually, you know, uh, to navigate through the space, um, and start realizing that and stop this idea that it it has to be either web two or web three. There's no other
00:23:24
Speaker
technology or advancement or anything in science or anything where people just scrap the history and start anew. Like everything from, you know, you look at something like a Tesla. Well, it's still a car based on all of the ah evolutions of cars since you know since Henry Ford. He didn't go out and just build a completely new version of a car. It still has four wheels, a steering wheel and all that and the aerodynamics and all that that people have known. And so i don't I've never understood why Web 3 has this belief that we have to ignore the 30 some odd odd years of Web 2 and all of the
00:24:13
Speaker
the consumer and user behavior that ah that that we know works and what um what the the the end user expects. Like you expect, here's where a button should be. If I click it, this is what happens. And this is how I fill out a form. This is all of
Tokenomics and Financial Realities
00:24:34
Speaker
that kind of stuff. It's all been tried and true through like trillions of dollars worth of R and&D. So why why we ignore that is beyond me. um And the the second thing, which I think, which you highlighted is everybody in web three has been in web three for a while now. And the one thing that I find interesting and frustrating is the almost, it's almost fear driven, I think,
00:25:07
Speaker
that the Web3 community actually doesn't want to go ahead ah to to get out to the world. And i where I see it is, like, we need to start marketing to people outside of Web3. And that's the Laughing Otter has always been about that. We're not a Web3 company. We're an entertainment company that happens to love Web3. And so we we market to everybody.
00:25:31
Speaker
And we're because what i see is like the same people go to the same conferences the same companies sponsor all the same conferences it's like nobody nobody is reaching out and marketing to people outside.
00:25:47
Speaker
of the community. And until we need to just start telling people about what's going on in Web3, warts and all, and so that so that the masses start figuring out, well, there's more to it than pixelated apes and rugs and scams, and this person got rich and this person lost all their money. like There's more to it. so it's It's a soapbox I've been on for a while. It's like, let's start Marketing to the masses if we want to recruit the masses. Oh thousand percent thousand percent yellow that. This goes down to the old the old adage rate so what is the.
00:26:27
Speaker
um
00:26:30
Speaker
You know what's the what's to call it.
00:26:35
Speaker
The mother of inventions necessity, right? The problem is that people are still, they're still an easier way. People are always going to go down to the path of least resistance. I ran out of the path of least resistance is I pay 60 bucks for access to some kind of a video game. And I have, um, and I have that access forever. And that's what people want to do, right? That's the problem. And, um, it's too easy.
00:27:01
Speaker
We want to get to the point where Web three is just as easy as that. Right. And I agree with you a thousand percent. You want like, you know, for musical events, you want people to be able to be able to get a POAP really easily. And that way they can turn that POAP into an NFT if they want, and then they can have that ticket stub for seeing that concert or whatever it happens to be forever um instead of trying to, you know, hold on to those hold hold on to those memories through some kind of paper stub. And now it's an NFT that you have forever imagined.
00:27:28
Speaker
Imagine ah owning the NFT from Woodstock and in 69 right now in your wallet. right People would pay some serious money for that. And there's still a record that you, through your wallet, had access to it. So it's not like you lose the the ability to prove that you were there. just ah you know It's just that you don't have access to that to that that piece of memorabilia anymore. Somebody else does. So um I think that's a very cool thing that people are losing sight of is And that's one of the cool things right right now, one of the classes I'm teaching is blockchain development. And I'm very big on not just the theory of development, but I ask them to constantly go into the world and say, what are some things that are being built now? And I want to know what the use cases of what's being built now and what can be built. So for their final project, you know, I want them to make a ah basically a.
00:28:20
Speaker
white paper, a slight white paper on ah something that they can create. you know it doesn't have to you know They only have eight week classes, so it's not like they can be tremendously detailed, but the idea is to get at least a rough draft or a rough idea of an application for blockchain out in the world today that they don't see that they think is a possibility. right That's what i what I want is people to go through this and the cool. And what unfortunately, we do have to go through, you know, like you just brought up before about adoption. Right. When electricity came around back in the day, people were still using kerosene to light their houses. It wasn't like it was, oh, boom, let's put some lights in and some wires and we're good to go. There was a lot of different, especially light switches, how lighting, how electricity got put in ah wiring. All of of these things went through evolutionary stages.
00:29:07
Speaker
And we're going to have to go through evolutions. There's going to be, have to be experiments with tokenomics models. Like we are doing with drift. There's going to have to be experiments that are going on through all different types of game, five web, three RWA AI, a million. That's why there's, that's why, you know, there might be a million projects. Let's say they got launched in in April, like we say in the, um, through the reports and stuff, which is very true.
00:29:32
Speaker
Um, out of that, there's probably 5% that are utility. In other words, they actually have, um, they're actually projects that are looking for, you know, they have some kind of utility behind it, like drift, where you get utility out of the token itself. So they're not just, um, you know, a coin with no backing or a coin with no, you know, um, you know, that's just out there in the world that someone just drew up in five minutes. There's probably a lot of projects that are like that. And we, we talk to projects like that all the time.
00:30:02
Speaker
the um
00:30:05
Speaker
There's going to have to be experimentation and some things just like yeah just like all experiments, some things are going to fail, some things are going to succeed. What you want to try to do is look for the things that have the best chance of succeeding and understand where we are in the market cycle right now.
00:30:18
Speaker
So there are projects out there in the world that are real with real teams and real everything else behind them um that are dealing with the market trends that we're at now. Like I said before, retail is not here yet. So it's one of the challenges that we have, but.
00:30:32
Speaker
You know, the ETH ETF in America, which is 26% of all equity markets around the whole entire world, just got released on Tuesday, um, being artificially suppressed by, um, grayscale, gay scales, Ethereum trust releasing ETH into the world. Um, but eventually that, you know, should give a boost to Ethereum itself, um, which will give people, you know, people out in the retail world, like, Hey, what's going on with that Ethereum that I bought, you know, uh, uh, two, three, four years ago, it's finally going back up again.
00:31:02
Speaker
You know, that'll bring some eyeballs. All these things will help bring eyeballs and and and evolution to our process here. And hopefully we get into the next cycle, you know, relatively, you know, as we move into the third and fourth quarter of this year, um which I think will bring a lot of eyes to projects like Laughing Outer, like Drift, you know, like the other partners we have involved with here within ourselves. so Yeah. It's a, it's an interesting time and, um, you know, people just have to keep their head on swivel and be patient. I know patience is a, is like a four letter word when we talk about web three, because everyone thinks that, you know, a day went by.
00:31:37
Speaker
What do you mean? a Didn't the day go by? Didn't you guys like fix everything? Isn't everything perfect now? I know it's been a day. You know, 24 hours feels like a year to some people in the space. And the reason why is they got they got spoiled by either the last cycle or they got spoiled by things that have happened in the past with Web three, where something spikes up and they sell it and they've made a a hundred X.
00:32:03
Speaker
and they're excited, and I'm sure they are, um and they think that happens all day long. And it happens all day long for for different people at different times, and you just have to be happy if you're at the top of that scale. Then you jump out and you're like, oh yeah, this is great. It's not great for everyone who also lost money, right? So um and they lost real money. People don't just lose, you know, I have respect for everyone's um eth and everyone's BNB and everyone's polygon, everyone's Solana and everyone's everything else because that's real. It's a real thing they put out there into the world. um And people have to start respecting those people's intent with that money, right? So yeah I think there has to be um the one thing when I hear people
00:32:51
Speaker
Oh, it was a scam. It was, a you know, I got rugged, and all all this kind of stuff site. Did you really get scammed or were you just blinded by greed? Because if you didn't recognize that a 800 by 800 JPEG is probably not going to hold its value of three, $4,000.
00:33:16
Speaker
indefinitely. If you didn't realize that, like, whose fault really is it? Like, yeah, 1000%. and And so i don't i like i I'm all like above all cool. ah Gamble as much as you want with your money if you can afford to lose it. um But be realistic. like If you want those 100X returns in a couple of days, well, you you pretty much need to accept the fact that there's a really good chance that you probably you might that you're going to lose that money as well.
00:33:47
Speaker
um And what i what I do see with people like Drift and the Laughing Otter and other um ah other projects is like you said, it's that 5%, which I think is probably um generous, but let's say it's 5% now of companies, I don't even call them projects, I call them businesses. Projects are things that you do in your backyard. A business is something that you create with,
00:34:15
Speaker
um that has, like you're building it with an infrastructure that has sustainability, can weather weather markets ups and downs and that sort of thing. But i what i what I'm seeing is, i don't think I don't think the percentage is growing, but just the whole market's getting bigger.
00:34:37
Speaker
ah There's just more companies that are actually using the Web3 technology and the and and ethos to build real businesses and and hopefully more and more people will gravitate to those companies rather than ah But we're never, we're never going to get past the point where a large percentage of people are in this space just to make money quick. A few of them will and and a lot of them will lose a lot of money. Yeah. thousand percent Absolutely. You bring up a good point too, Jeff, about rug pulls, right? People are, people misclassify this rug pull thing all the time.
00:35:20
Speaker
um Yes, a rug a rug pull of a project or a company that comes up into the world, takes everyone's money and then runs away the next day. Yeah, that's a rug. Right. But there are legitimate projects that are that are trying to make it out in the world or make it out in the thing. And it could just be a matter of failure. You know, that does exist. And people have to take that into account. People just use this term rug pull all the time, like rug pull, rug pull, rug pull. And, you know,
00:35:51
Speaker
Unfortunately, like we just talked about, there's going to be a lot of experimentation in the space. Well, if you're betting on 10 experiments, do you think that every single experiment in the world works? you know if i were to buy he says i were If I were to invest in 10 different pizza places,
00:36:09
Speaker
you know, that just popped up. How do I know all 10 of them are gonna be successful? It's probably not true, you know. um So you have to just take take it with a grain of salt, um look into the teams that you're you're getting involved with, do your best due diligence, and then, you know,
00:36:26
Speaker
I So I bought them. I sat there for three months, waited for the mint minted. I got a gold one. Right. So anybody who knows anybody, NFTs, you know, if those 10,000 piece collections, the bought gold ones are always the ones everyone wants because they're like the most rare or whatever an NFT one time it is. So I had bought for like 0.4 ETH, right? And I sat on this thing and you it went all the way up to, you know, some of them were selling for like 10 ETH, whatever it is. And then I saw the prices start going down. So I sold mine for, I think six ETH.
00:37:13
Speaker
And people were sending me messages going, you're an idiot for sending it, selling it for 60 years. You're dumb. I'm like, I bought it for point 40. I sold it for 60. This is an amazing return. Right. You know, over 10 times my rate, 12, you know, 40 times my money. This is amazing. You're like, oh, you could have made more money.
00:37:33
Speaker
i'm like guys you guys are just spoiled by this you just guys are totally spoiled by web three you know you put things into the stock market whatever it is and you know you get ten percent back per year you're happy guy you know um and you know that's ten percent yeah you know, other than you've invested, not, not this, you know, 10 times stuff. So everyone is getting very, very greedy. And I agree with you that, uh, if they don't, if they don't hit that 10 times thing, they get, um, it's a rug pole. It's like, no, you just made 50% of your money bet, which is great. You know? Um, and you guys need to look at like that and the people don't, you know, it's unfortunate that.
NFT Market Insights
00:38:10
Speaker
the It's Web3 has been great for financial literacy for a lot of people in a lot of different ways. And in some ways, people that have you know made tons and tons of cash you know have kind of gotten skewed. you know um And I don't know if it's going to keep persisting. Every single every single every single cycle, that that chance to do those type of gigantic jumps, the marginally the marginal return is reduced every time. so you know It might not be possible next cycle. It might be only possible this cycle left to do that kind of stuff. and The next cycle, it'll be you know find the find the safe bets only kind of thing. I think what will happen too is um is much much like in the 2000s when online poker went crazy, everyone I knew jumped on playing poker and all these poker sites just went ballistic.
00:39:06
Speaker
And then very quickly, people realize, well, actually, it's not that easy to win. And after they've lost ah you know a few thousand dollars, they went, oh, I don't like these poker sites anymore. So it the people who jump into this space and think, oh, all I got to do is buy an NFT and I'll retire in six months. Well,
00:39:28
Speaker
Not really. Like if there's, like you said, there's a million, a million projects just got launched. Like you gotta, you gotta to find the winners, which is not that easy. And I just, what I encourage people to do is look at the team behind it. Like if, if it's a bunch of people with no experience and, um, and they won't even show their name or their face, like, I don't know how much money I, I don't put money into people. i don't never met or
00:39:59
Speaker
don't even know where they live or don't even know what they stand for or anything like that. So I think people need to be going to this with open eyes and sure, invest. Absolutely. you know support but Support the projects that are run by people who know what they're doing. And you can tell that they're not going to just disappear. Oh, a thousand percent. I'm actually looking for this poll that point Telegraph did because it it gave you the percentages of what people actually look for in a project. So I know I have it. I know I have it somewhere because it was super interesting to me um at the time.
00:40:45
Speaker
The reason why is because I always talk about team, right? Team, team, team, team, team. And that was like not high on people on this poll. um I got to find it. It's it was super interesting when I found my wife found this. The yeah the I agree with you a thousand percent. I would. That's how I do things. um As I look at I look at the team first, you know, who's behind this thing, you know, I try to dig deep. ah Then I try to figure out tokenomics models, you know, all that other stuff is, you know, what who is who are these people? If it's just some no name,
00:41:24
Speaker
random person who I'm never going to know, then I, you know, it's hard for me to believe that the rest of it has any kind of, um, gravitas. Uh, and that's kind of how I, how well I've done things, but I understand that people are, um, you know, people are, uh, you know, they, they skip all that. They don't care. They don't read the promo, the promo material, which I know that I know people have, you know, in, especially in, even in drift, right? People are just.
00:41:51
Speaker
oh yeah someone told me this is a good idea and they and they bought it and then they're they're trying to explain to them what ccip is you know chain like ccp and they're like i didn't know anything about this and i was like well we've been very upfront the ccip chain linkk thing has been a big part of why we're doing this um like oh if i had known that then you know i wouldve bought on this this chains that are that chain i was like well that's why we had it on all three chains man's cuz of so chaining ccp so i mean people people have even you know um I hate to use the term, but aped in to to, you know, drift. And I'm sure they've aped into, you know, laughing out or they drift or they or they or they or they, you know, do so on just somebody's recommendation. And I would hope that we stop doing these things and recommendations. Oh, here we go. What is the top factor you look for when researching a new crypto project? This is from Point Telegraph, right? ah The choices are team and advisors was 26 percent.
00:42:50
Speaker
Um, technology and innovation was 15%. And the number one one was use case and utility 49%. So people just go, Oh, it's game fi. And I can earn money by owning drift. I can earn E3, E3, BNB, your product by owning drift. That's what they care about the most is use case and utility community and partnerships was 11%. So.
00:43:13
Speaker
Um, yeah, it's, uh, unfortunately I think, you know, that each one of those, I think should really be 25% each. I think all, all four of those categories are equally as important, but people just seem to really care about use case and utility. And I think that utility, I gotta be honest with you. I think utility for the most part.
00:43:33
Speaker
his his number go up. People only care about if the token goes up. Yeah. let's yeah when i When I hear utility, I kind of laugh because it's everybody is just like um most people. who like if you're If you're buying an NFT and that's all that exists, well, the only utility that brings is the potential of of you selling it again.
00:43:56
Speaker
ah I, maybe you can argue that, well, I actually liked collecting the art, but that would be a very small percentage, I think. Oh yeah, I agree. I mean, I was part of an NFT community, uh, a couple of years ago. I still own a mall. Um, I spent, I spent more money than I should have put it that way. Luckily I use them in my business. So they're, um, the write offs. So that's the good news, right?
Web 3's Influence on Music
00:44:22
Speaker
I get to write off my taxes. So that was only yeah's the only positive part, but, um, uh,
00:44:28
Speaker
You know, I learned a lot from that. I thought the NFT people were diehards. I thought that they were the the the diamond handers of diamond handers, you know, because it was exactly you just said they get involved with the the art and they love the art. You know, that's right. That's what I thought. You know.
00:44:43
Speaker
um and I couldn't find out that that's that's a way way way off you know that's the way wrong approach and these NFT guys as soon as the price goes down they were they were out you know just as just as fast as ah somebody who's knows are getting involved with a pump and dump and these guys um yeah it was sad that and here I am buying this stuff because I think it looks cool um And a lot of people will just, oh, yeah, I love it, but I'm never going to. This is my PFP forever. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, and then as soon as as soon as the price goes down a little bit, they're selling it or they're out, you know. But, you know, the there there are some of the NFTs that are PFPs, let's say, that give you the ability to go to, you know, special places or to get invited to certain things or um those type of things are great, you know,
00:45:34
Speaker
um Yeah. But, and ah you know, eventually, you know, you're going to have, you know, in fan and people in music are doing this now. I'm sure you're aware um people in music are doing this now where, you know, you become part of the fan club. but You know, you give them the you buy a special super NFT for X, um you know, artist. And then you get to go to their concert, go to the backstage all the time. You know, you get special releases to their singles that no one else gets, you know, all that kind of stuff. So I think that's really awesome. You know,
00:46:03
Speaker
um And, uh, you know, just because you, and if you really like, let's say I'm going to make up a, you know, let's say I'm not saying Taylor Swift is doing this, but let's say Taylor Swift were to sell a super, super fan NFT, you know, that gives you access to all this stuff. And then, you know, three years from now, you know, Taylor Swift is only being able to sell out, you know, small venues in the middle of the Midwest somewhere only. Um, that's not Taylor Swift's fault. She just ran out. She just fell out of favor with the the world, you know?
00:46:32
Speaker
Not that I think that it's going to happen to Taylor Swift, but you get what I'm saying. it's um yeah yeah yeah Well, the the other the other side of it, too, is that I heard yesterday that Megadeth is really active in the NFT space with all that kind of stuff. So the potential to to keep keep a keep a band relevant. to off They fly their own planes and they're in NFTs. That's really cool. That's it.
00:47:01
Speaker
um Well, sir, this has been really enjoyable. um What do you want to tell people about Drift? Close this up. with Where can they find you? Where where they can they learn more about Drift? And um yeah, well, yeah. Awesome. Yes. I appreciate it, Jeff. Yes. Drift is currently trading on Uniswap. It's a Drift ETH pair. ah So you can find it on there. Go to drifttoken.io or driftlabs.io and you can find the um You can find the contract address, which is what I suggest you go off of. And so you don't make the wrong drift purchase. Um, always check the contract address first before you do anything with the kind of stuff. Uh, take the contract address over to, um, to uniswap, or if you go to drift token.io, there's a link right there that'll show you that it's also on decks tools. So you can watch everything. Um, there's a, we are starting the big push for marketing and stuff coming up next month, big time. So, um, that's when it's all going to start and check out payout pursuit.com.
00:47:58
Speaker
which we also have links on the website for drifttoken.io. But payoutpursuit.com ah is where the game is. Check it out for free. There's a tournament. There's a free tournament, different laps there, ah including the roadmap. You can actually play the roadmap so you can see what the roadmap is from now until the end of the year.
00:48:13
Speaker
which I highly recommend that you do. And then we will be um I'm sure ah Jeff and the team and and we will be um advertising that the Laughing Otter race, which will be up soon in a couple of weeks, which I'm very excited about, which I think will be really cool. um I've seen the mockups for some of the graphics on the on the on the on the race itself. And it looks awesome. So I'm very pumped about that. And then toast for peace, which is the big thing that that I reached out to to Jeff to get involved with, because I think that that's a very worthwhile cause. There's a lot of war going out in the world um all over the place, both sung and unsung wars that are out there that you might see in the news and something you might not see in the news that have just been continuously going on. And um I think anybody in their right mind is is willing to, you know, put down the guns for a little while and, you know, jump on some cars and have some fun racing and, and you know, stop stop stop shooting at each other.
00:49:12
Speaker
verbally mentally physically and let's just kind of like you know chill out and you know and get together as a human race instead that's you know pun intended on the race thing and so I so I really appreciate that and not and and I get a chance to actually do a toast so which is uh you know I don't drink as much as I used to so that's always a good thing so you know they Yeah, we're we're excited about the Laughing on a Race and Toast for Peace.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:49:39
Speaker
It is exciting. You you summed it up really nicely. So thanks thanks for being on the show and for everyone. Thanks for listening. I hope you learned a lot. And yeah, make sure you check out Drift. um And everybody just remember, we all deserve to be having a lot more fun. Thanks for listening. Awesome. Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate it.