SotN #35: NFT MANIA! Are NFTs the Future of Art? Nifty Gateway Founders Griffin and Duncan

Transcript

All right, welcome everyone to another episode of State of the Nation. We're super excited about this. We're gonna dive deep into NFTTS, which is super timely because we just had Mark Cuban on who is giving us the bullish case for NFTTS. Uh here's what we do every week at 2 o'clock on Tuesdays. We talk about what's happening. We relate it to the big picture stuff and then we drop some insights and action items for you. So, it comes out on YouTube live and then also on the podcast. David, before we get to NFTTS, well, actually, maybe you could tease tease this article, tease this uh episode. Yeah.

Episode I'm hearing myself in the background, so I got to shut that down, but tease this episode for us. What are we going to talk about? Yeah. So, uh NFTTS are the hot topic, right? And the thing of the cool thing about NFTs is how much possible surface area there is, right? We have we have uh you know the crypto punks which are a lot of very similar NFTs and there's like one set of them but then there's uh other kinds of NFTs which are um lots like high labor high energy like costly uh to produce NFTs that are really really I would call them luxurious NFTs art digital art like high quality art NFTs and these are different kinds of of of products right and NFTs can almost do anything but that's that's What we're

going to be talking about on this specific episode of Bankless State of the Nation is high quality art NFTTS because that is what Nifty Gateway really excels at. Um so if you guys the audience will likely have heard of Bele people dropping these massive drops on Nifty Gateway RAC one of my favorite musicians dropping NFTts on uh Nifty Gateway and like they're fundamentally different than some of the the Crypto Punks or Uler Beats or CryptoKitties types of NFTs. They're they're specifically there's extremely rare and they're hard to produce, right? Like you know, art is hard to produce and that's kind of the NFTts that you see on Nifty Gateway. And so it's a different end of the spectrum that we're going to explore on this state of the nation. [snorts]

All right. Awesome, man. Let's talk about what's new. David, do you want to talk about what just happened this morning? Because like I'm still wrapping my my my head around what just happened. Yeah. And and the reason why NFTts are in the cycle is people like Mark Cuban think that they're awesome, right? There's a ton of people that don't really care about crypto, don't really care about Bitcoin, don't really care about Ether, like they don't really care about the the new monies of the world, but um there there is this world of people that really care about digital art, right? Digital art um and and natively scarce art. Um and so that's that's that's pretty cool.

All right. So, this is almost turning into like NFT week, you know, where we're doing some articles on NFTs. We're talking about NFTs with Cuba. Now, we're talking uh about NFTs with Nifty Gateway. And we've got some articles coming out this week, too. So, stay tuned to the bank list program to check that out. David, we've also got some stuff going on in Clubhouse. So, what is Clubhouse and what are we experimenting with on that? Yeah, Clubhouse is this new social media app and it's a drop in what they they call it a dropin chat room which is which is pretty fantastic. Um and and what that means is that uh there are these rooms that can be created and anyone can hop in and start listening to the conversations. There's different ways to moderate these rooms.

Some people are speaking, some people can't speak. Um but there is it's I really like this quote from Naval where uh podcasting is like the studio album but clubhouse is the live performance. the live show. Uh, and so Ryan and I and the Bankless Nation are trying to get into Clubhouse. And so if you guys want, if you guys are Clubhouse members, you can follow both Ryan and I on Clubhouse. Trustless State, the my normal Twitter handle, Twitter handle, and then Ryan Shawn Adams. Ryan Ryan's Twitter handle is Ryan S. Adams. His Clubhouse handle is Ryan Shawn Adams. So make sure you you follow the right uh Ryan Sean Adams there. Um, but I I I think this is going to be a great community generation tool that we're going to leverage.

Yeah, absolutely, man. All right. Well, we're going to get to the episode. Of course, I got to ask you the question, but before we do that, a special shout out to Lattis. We're doing a lot with uh security, hardware wallet security. Ever since we talked about Hugh Carp. Oh, is that your Lattice? Look at that big, beautiful display screen guys. The big screen is cool because it allows you to double check a transaction, a crypto transaction before you send it. Uh, so lattises are back in stock. We'll include a link to the show notes. Pick one of these up if you are interested in doubling down on your crypto security.

David, now let me ask you the question I asked at the start of every one of these state of the nations. What is the state of the nation today? The state of the nation is collecting. We are collecting things, right? Uh there was a tweet that went out not too long ago where uh uh DeFi people and and cryptocurrency people are all about wealth and uh and nifty people, NFT people are all about status and NFTs are the the the meme is that NFTs are about like status signaling, right? Signaling that you have these cool NFTts and people like to signal their status and NFTs are a way to express that desire to have status, right? Um, I have plants and those are kind of my unique NFTts

things that I like to signal that I think plants that's your status. That's my status symbol, my plants. Yeah, I thought it was and digital art and NFTts are a way to for people to convey status and people like to collect them. So, this week in the state in the bankless state of the nation, we are collecting. All right, awesome, man. Well, we're going to get right to that, but before we bring on Duncan and Griffin to talk about NFD, Nifty Gateway, we want to tell you about this fantastic sponsors who made this possible. If you are looking for a product that connects your fiat bank account with DeFi tokens and products, you need to download the Dharma mobile app. Dharma is a non-custodial smart contract wallet and comes with a bridge that connects you right into your bank account. Dharma is

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All right, guys. We just had Mark Cuban on this morning. He gave us the bullcase for NFTs. Now, we're going to talk about how they actually come to market, how it gets done. NFTs are absolutely going to explode in popularity this year. We've got Duncan and Griffin who are the co-founders of Nifty Gateway. This is a marketplace for NFTTS in particular art NFTTS. Most noticeably, as David said in the intro, mainstream artists are starting to use this. Bele is one. RAAC, uh, you know, uh, fantastic musician also released there. Duncan Griffin, guys, how you doing? Are you bullish NFTs or what?

I don't know. Is the Pope a Catholic? Yeah. [laughter] Hell yeah. Thanks for having us on, guys. Delighted to be here. Dude, we got to ask about that background. Like, what what's going on in that background? Is this an NFD? It looks awesome. Yes. Yes. You you nailed it. Coincidentally, it is an NFT. Uh this is a way to express my pain. So, this is an NFT called Last Stand of the Nation state, which originally sold on the primary market for $40. It was an open edition. It was open for 24 hours, and I bought 10 of them. And then I gave away seven to my family and friends to like spread the good word of NFTts. And now they're trading at $20,000 each. So, oh my god, I'm going to be living with a lifetime of pain on this one.

When did you do that? When did you first like buy that and give it out? I think it was in October. Yeah. And the artist who made it is named Slime Sunday and he's an incredibly talented artist. He's one of the best artists that we work with and he, you know, he just came into the NFT medium and just absolutely knocked it out of the park. So, I I think this is an NFT that people will still be talking about 20, 30 years from now, maybe even a hundred years from now. and I will be living with regret the entire time thinking about what could have been. So, you know, there's a lot of ingredients here where like we can resonate with the early bitcoin story where like we were talking before we started recording where bitcoin would not be what it was today if a lot of early people didn't give

bitcoins away. And there were a lot of early people that gave bitcoins away not knowing and or not thinking that the the number would go up, the value would go up. And the similarity between this story and I've heard other stories of this nature similar to NFTTS. The reason the the the fact that these stories are similar makes me bullish, right? It's like well we know that this pattern exists. We're seeing it we see we saw it play out with Bitcoin and now we're seeing it play out with NFTs. You don't even need to like really be bullish on digital art to understand and put all the pieces together that like these same patterns are existing both with NFTs that we saw with Bitcoin.

Yeah, totally. You see it all the time like with Bitcoin. Everybody's like, "Wow, the Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin is so high. I guess it's a little too high to buy." And then two years later, it's like, you know, 10 times as high as it was then. And I mean, most of my network is in Bitcoin, too. And you see the exact same thing with NFTs. Like, they're scarce and they'll always be scarce. And I I gave away a lot to spread the word of Nifty Gateway just three or four months ago. And I think I must have given away almost $100,000 worth of NFTs, maybe even 300,000 now. And it's just crazy to think about. That's what's crazy is um you know bit Bitcoin pizza was a long time ago, right? Like everyone remembers that story like 2012 or something. Um but what you're talking about has just now

happened in the last like four months. Like it feels like this these are this is NFT's moment. It's about to it's about to blow up in a big way and you've all that appreciation you're talking about that that was just since October. I mean guys, can we start here though because some people to be honest still don't get it like they don't understand NFTTS. Maybe maybe Duncan, in your words, how do you explain NFTTS? Why are they a thing? Absolutely. Yeah. Um I totally understand. Honestly, it took me a while to grasp the concept as well. I think it takes everyone a while to to grasp grasp the concept, but if I just had to explain them really simply. Basically, what I say would say is like NFTs are digital items you can truly own. You

know, like we there are lots of examples of of digital items like a Fortnite skin for example, but if my Fortnite account goes away or or Fortnite the game shuts down, like that item disappears forever. That's a really weird experience for me because like I'm used to say buying a pair of Nike shoes. Imagine if you buy a pair of Nike shoes and then Nike shuts down and your shoes disappear. That just doesn't make any sense. That's not how like we we view the stuff we own because NFTs are are based on a a blockchain that's like permissionless and decentralized. for the first time. It means that, you know, whoever made the NFT could shut down or completely disappear, but the NFT still exists, which is actually a crazy important concept for us because that's as humans, that's how we understand ownership.

Like, I wouldn't pay so much for a pair of Nike shoes if Nike shutting down meant those shoes go away. And it's partly why digital items could like never really be valuable beforehand. But NFTTS have allowed that to happen for the first time. Um, and that's that's really what I think the bigger picture is here. Duncan, can I ask you a question? Because um some people who are kind of critics of NFTTS h have told me that hey, but here's the reality, guys. Like users don't care. They're still buying Fortnite skins for a lot of money. Like like billions of dollars a year, and Fortnite is completely centralized. Fortnite can inflate the the value of of skins. There's no no concept of scarcity outside of like the what the game studio explores. Do users really care about having blockchainbased

uh, you know, property settlement layer that enforces scarcity or are they just going to just go onto a centralized platform, not really care? Look, it it really depends honestly. You know, like if I'm a a Fortnite gamer, I'll buy a skin for 10 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever. It makes my character look cool. If I'm buying a a work of art for a million dollars, like yeah, 100% I care. And, you know, it's it's actually it's really very interesting. This is a very little known fact, but there are competitors to Nifty Gateway that are essentially centralized versions of digital art ownership where they'll basically issue you a certificate of authenticity for like a work of digital art, but it only exists on their platform. Those those platforms all failed. None of them really broke out.

You know, the idea didn't catch on at all for precisely the reason that I was talking about. Our collectors were our collectors said like, "Well, I I can't, you know, spend so much money on a digital item when your guys platform going away means that digital item will just disappear." And that's why it took a decentralized truly permissionless system like blockchain to make digital artwork. Um, and you know, it's it's really exciting. We we've seen this sort of like happen slowly and now it's everyone is figuring this out all at once. That's really exciting for us to see. It's just very very cool. And that reminds me of a article that um I I read recently about the spectrum behind NFTTS and that I really want to I we were

going to talk about this at the uh towards the end of this live stream, but I want to kind of get into that now since it's topical. There's there's a different uh spectrum of trustlessness with NFTTS and this comes down to where the where the art is actually hosted, right? you you can put everything you want onto Ethereum, but the bigger the data is, the more expensive it is. And NFTTS are media and sometimes gifts can be multiple multiple megabytes large. And if you get to the be larger than a single block on Ethereum, you can't put it on Ethereum, right? Uh and so there's a spectrum here of like how onchain some of this this art is. And so maybe you guys can talk about how you think about uh the NFTts on Nifty Gateway and like do you guys have aspirations to try and

be a totally like self-s sovereign onchain like trustless censorship resistant uh NFT platform or or how do you guys think about about this industry and do people even care about this conversation? Look, 100% I think people care and 100% this is like what we're what we're moving towards and we're actively we're actually like you know rebuilding our our minting and our deployment system right now. The goal is like if Nifty Gateway shuts down then the art lives on forever period. Um that's why it's so important to build on top of a a blockchain that like is going to live on forever I think you know like Ethereum because like if your blockchain shuts down then your NFT shuts down no

question. And then, you know, our our our updated system is going to have as much information about the work of art on chain as as is possible. You're right, you really you can't store image files on chain. Some of the some of these artworks are 200 megabytes. It's it's simply impossible to put those on a blockchain, but what you can do is you can you can store a hash that, you know, provides like an immutable way to check that a provided image file is the correct image file for a you know, for a particular NFT. And then what we're going to do is we're going to give the artist the ability to like to take control and to to upload their own image URL if Nifty Gateway shuts down. You know, there's a number of different decentralized file storage solutions.

We're just going to say like, okay, we're going to let people put images wherever they want because you're right, that is the that is sort of the difficult part that you have to navigate with NFT art is you can't put a 100 megabyte file on the blockchain. That's that's just simply impossible. So you do have to, you know, get creative when it comes to making it truly permissionless and like living on forever. But absolutely, that's our that's our goal. That's our that's our northstar with the NFTs we create. I think the NFT ecosystem over the past few years has really figured out ways to to make this information better and to put more information on chain to make the NFTs themselves more survivable. And I think eventually, excuse me, eventually we'll see people start to to like really care

about that as they realize that this does have an impact on the the value, you know, like putting the name of the artist on chain is important like putting the putting the addition number etc etc like you know people as the market matures more and more people will wake up to that. So with with NFTTS like it comes with a file like a media file one megabyte half a megabyte 30 megabytes and so the thesis is that you know maybe the centralized hosting database that hosts that information goes down but there's still an NFT with a hash that provably links to that file type right so the file type goes through a hashing algorithm outcomes a hash that hash is very very small this is how blockchain

works digital signatures and then that hash hash makes its way to the NFT and that's what you own. And so the media file can circulate as any other file does on the internet except it's the hash that can verify that this hash goes with this piece of digital art. And again, if with NFTTS this I I think this is kind of hard for typical the newbies to get in get their minds around is like the art isn't scarce. It's the ownership of the art that's scarce and that and so the art can be on any any and everyone's computer but that doesn't mean you own it. You own the certificate. You own the legitimacy. Um and we could even go into the conversation of something like decentralized storage. How does decentralized storage fit into this

conversation? Yeah, I think decentralized storage sorry go ahead. Yeah. One thing I want to highlight there is like a lot of people think this this sort of like owning a certificate of authenticity concept is is new to NFTTS, but it's actually been common in the physical art world for almost a hundred years now where you know Marcel Duchamp he sold a he sold a work of art that was just a commercially produced urinal. To make a perfect physical reproduction, all you'd have to go do is buy the same urinal, but that's still like a a very valuable work. It's held in a few different museums. The difference is the authenticity and like this kind of thing is very common in the the physical art world. NFTs are just taking this concept that has existed and mainstreaming it and bringing it to a

much larger audience. So I think a lot of people don't really understand. A lot of people who are skeptical of NFTs have not spent, you know, a ton of time in the the physical fine art world, which isn't that surprising because it's a it can be kind of a very niche world. But yeah, this concept of sort of owning the owning the authentic one despite the fact that there are perfect reproductions out there, that's like that's been around for a long time. So yeah, I just wanted to highlight that because I think a lot of people don't really I think they miss that when they talk about NFTs. And I think RAC had a really good tweet on this too. He was like the concept is polarizing, but like of course it is.

Some people care about owning NFTs and other people don't. the people who do care are gonna pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for an NFT or maybe they'll pay $20,000 for an NFT that I gave away seven of or something. Um, but you know, the people who don't care. [clears throat] People who don't care don't want one. So, like they think it's stupid, but it doesn't matter. Like, if half the world thinks it's stupid and half the world's willing to pay a million dollars for it, it'll be worth a million dollars. And that's kind of why the concept is polarizing. But we're also just seeing just insane growth, you know? I mean, the growth in the NFT space over the last three weeks, you know, between Topsh Shot, between the numbers we're seeing, between all the NFT platforms, it it's just something that like it does remind me of the early

days of Bitcoin because it, you know, to the early observers, it almost doesn't make sense. Like, it's mindboggling to see. They always believed in the concept, but when these things hit at the scale of the internet, like they take off like crazy. And that's just where NFTs are at right now. And, you know, it's crazy to be a part of. It's funny, it goes back to a conversation David and I were having uh actually earlier today where he was like, "Hey, at first I was kind of uh bearish on NFTTS, but then the market proved me wrong because like the ultimate validation of any idea is the open and free market and there is no there the the most open and free market in the world is DeFi, right? So the fact that NFTts are going for these amounts of money doesn't matter what you think like

somebody's paying for them. So, you can no longer deny that there's value here because what sets value for anything, whether it's stock or gold or ETH or Bitcoin, it is what the market is willing to pay. I want to get back to this question because this kind of came up in our uh Mark Cuban conversation too, which is like something that you were saying Duncan and maybe Griffin you can riff off of too, which is like the platform that the NFT is issued on actually matters. And this is interesting because uh we were talking with with Cuban about hey like mainstreaming NFTTS and he brought up up uh flow right and what it's doing with um with with collect uh with collectibles NBA top shots like it it kind of strikes me and you guys tell me but like if you're doing you know $5 $10

sort of sports cards right like maybe you're fine having that in a in a in a centrally managed um you know solution basically chain uh that doesn't have the decentralization, credible neutrality, and like property rights guarantees that something like Ethereum has. But if you're doing something with a, you know, million-dollar art pieces plus, then you have to have the strongest settlement guarantees. Is that kind of what you guys were were talking about? And if that's the case, will we uh will we see basically the big amounts of capital and the highv value NFTts on something like Ethereum where you know we we'll see lower value smaller economic

transactions on all of these these centralized like side chains? How do you see this this shaping up? And is that mental model uh accurate? I I personally think it's accurate. I mean that's that's my thesis. We I mean we we choose to release our our NFTs on Ethereum largely for the reasons that you've outlined. You know, it's it's very credibly neutral. It's extremely decentralized. It's truly permissionless. And uh you know, if you if you have an asset that is worth a lot of money as as some of these NFTs are now, th those attributes become really really important. And certainly I I think that that would definitely be a factor in my mind where if I'm spending a millions of dollars on an NFT, I would really want it to be on a a a truly

permissionless decentralized network like Ethereum as opposed to some of the other, you know, as opposed to some of the other chains out there. That that would definitely be a really important factor in in my decision- making. Um yeah, I I do think, you know, like it might take a while for the market to figure that out. And the thing about decentralization, right, it's like it's the sort of thing that that uh doesn't matter until it does. So sometimes it takes that event where it matters before people wake up and realize they're like, "Oh crap, I I really want my NFTs on like a a truly permissionless network." So, you know, there that that's kind of the way I I think about it. And yeah, we it might take a while for people to figure that out as it has in the past with other like you know, with other

decentralized applications. Yeah, you don't know that Robin Hood is centralized until they pause your like GameStop trading, right? Like Griffin, what would you add to that? Yeah, exactly. I I would totally add to that. And then what I would say is I think people don't realize this, but Ethereum is scaling. Like it is happening and it has such a lead. Like I'm highly confident Ethereum is going to win in the end. You know, it has all the network effects we've seen before and to me it seems like a no-brainer. And we're, you know, we're releasing a new minting system on Ethereum where we'll be able to cut down our gas cost to like less than 1% of what they currently are. And we'll be able to mint NFTs on Ethereum for like cheaper than they are on Flow or WAX or any of the other computing blockchains. And that

that tech is happening, you know, it's all getting built. So, right. And Ethereum like has never compromised on like the core values of decentralization and permissionlessness. And it in my opinion like it it's by far the best store of value. And I think Duncan's right. The market's gonna wake up to that. Uh, you know, and it'll just happen slowly than all at once, which we see all the time. Do you know that's what that's what's funny, Dave? Uh, should we get into like explaining Nifty Gateway because we haven't yet, or should we go down this track of layer 2? What do you want to do? I I think Nifty Gateway first because then we then we can ask about how we come to cut the gas cost down by 99%.

Because that that was that was huge. That I really want to get into that. But first, let's talk about Nifty Gateway and how it differentiates itself from other NFT platforms, right? Because Nifty Gateway is quite unique. The the NFTs you find on Nifty Gateway are not the same kind of NFTs you would find elsewhere. So, what is Nifty Gateway and and what are the unique characteristics that it brings to the table? Yeah, that's a great question. I can talk about Nifty Nifty Gateway. Yeah. Okay, nice. Pulling up the website. So, Duncan and I started Nifty Gateway about two years ago. Um and when we we when we began our mission was all about accessibility, right? Like we wanted to build a um we wanted to build a website where people anyone could access NFTs.

That was the idea. That's why we called it nifty gateway you know like buying NFTs before was a very difficult process especially on Ethereum. You had to get a MetaMask wallet. You had to uh you know load Ethereum into that wallet from after buying it on on an exchange and it was very very difficult. So, one of the core tenants of Nifty Gateway has always been accessibility. Just making it really, really easy. Yeah, there's last stand in the nation state. God damn it. Making it really easy for someone for anyone to buy an NFT and then custody it. Uh and that was all built on top of Ethereum. So, the original product was actually a credit card purchasing portal where we let other people buy Nifties from other projects with a credit card.

But then we realized the real demand is like taking NFTs mainstream. It's finding people who are like already famous in the world outside of NFTs and making it really really easy that for them to launch NFTs to their audience and as well as market it and that's kind of like Nifty Gateway in its current form. Do you want to talk about that a little bit Duncan? Yeah, for sure. So, we we got acquired by Gemini and that that gave us access to technology that we didn't have before. Um, and that that sort of let us realize our our full vision which was which was twofold. The first part of the vision is that you never have to be onboarded into cryptocurrency to to sign up and start trading. And the cool thing thing that we find is like it's a really good, you know, entry point into into

crypto. It's it's I mean we literally called it nifty gateway where people are interacting with the blockchain without even realizing it and then slowly they pick up that knowledge and they get more and more curious and they're sort of onboarded into the the way that like blockchains work without even realizing it which we think is really really powerful. So that's tenant one. You can sign up, you can buy NFTs, you can sell NFTs, and you never have to be onboarded into cryptocurrency, which just makes it so much easier for a a person to get started. Tennet 2 is all about, you know, um emphasizing creators and like people who are making NFTs that we think are really really strong. So, there's a huge curational aspect to this. Um, you know, Ryan, you were talking earlier about the platform that you release NFTs

on mattering. A lot of the NFT platforms, including Nifty Gateway, have a pretty strong brand behind them. So, when we put an artist on our platform, we're basically endorsing their work. We're saying like, "Hey, this we think this artist is going places. We're we're really proud to offer the work." It's a similar value proposition as as top art galleries have with the artists they they present. So, that's really aspect number two where we we curate, we really build a lot of excitement, we we put a ton of effort into marketing every single artist that we release with. And you know the end result of that is I think collectors are are comfortable buying from us because they know a nifty gateway endorsed artist is like is going places. They have a strong career and

yeah so we we sort of play a similar role to the the role that galleries play in the physical art world except we play it at a much larger scale. So sometimes we call ourselves like an art gallery at the the scale of an internet the scale of the internet. So it's really those two things. It's really easy to access for new people and then there's like a curational element where we select artists we think are awesome and and endorse their work and I will add on to that or sorry no go ahead yeah just quick question are tokens are are NFTs on Nifty Gateway fractional can you participate in a fractional NFT if you if you can't buy all $15,000 of a token can you get a a piece of one not on nifty gateway no but other people have uh other people have created

fractionalized services and you know all the NFTs on Nifty Gateway are ERC 721s and can easily be withdrawn and turned into a fractional ownership. Bele for example, this is a really cool project when he sold you know his everydays as one of ones and they all went for about $100,000 $100,000 each which is a huge event in the NFT world. the buyer of those took withdrew all 20 of them and has fractionalized them into something called uh B20 which is now tradable as an ERC20 token on unis swap and it's just like an insanely cool project because you can get ownership of like maybe the most important drop in the history of crypto art. Although it's also interesting like just last Thursday we had an artist Mad Dog Jones sell $4 million in a single five minute open

edition window which like pasted people's primary market and then we have Grimes coming up on Sunday which you know I mean we'll see what the numbers look like. We're upgrading our servers because it's just going to be an absolute bonanza. So we'll see. New records are getting broken like every day. [laughter] Just for the record grime we're talking about Elon Musk's wife, right? Yeah. Yeah. Elon Musk, who's has a name of by herself. She's a fantastic artist and she's also Elon Musk's wife. Like, wow. Yeah. I wonder if I I wonder if he's going to be pumping this a little bit.

Yeah. I wonder too. I wonder what Elon thinks about NFTTS. Like, we don't really know yet, but I feel like he would love it. It's practically made for Elon. Yeah, Elon loves memes and that's a great place. That's a great jumping off point. Well, it's interesting because we're talking so much with Cuban like about the just the surface area of this and this being sort of the gateway to decentralized finance for for everybody. Um, so c can you talk about some of these these like big things that have happened cuz I mean I bet two years ago when you started this this would be kind of like dream scenario. You get artists like Bele. I mean that was absolutely massive. And now now Bele is um what's the big auction house? Um Christies Christies people on he like you guys mainstreamed

people to NFTTS essentially and by extension mainstreamed him and introduced him to to DeFi and uh everything that we're doing in crypto. Can you talk about maybe some examples of this like some of the most exciting uh I guess u artists coming on that are more mainstream accessible and and you know how that's helping crypto, how that's helping DeFi and NFTs in general. Totally. Yeah. Honestly, when we started last year, it was it was such a such a mission to pitch artists and we'd go in there and they would just have these like blank stairs on their faces and it was like what what on earth are these guys talking about? Like I can screenshot it but I still own it. It it was just like and then we look at now

where we basically we have just so much inbound interest like we have the opposite problem where we need to to figure out how to like select the people who are reaching out to us. It's really been like such a a monumental shift over the past year. Honestly, I think one good example is um Trevor Trevor Andrew. He's known as Gucci Ghost. He's like a pretty he he has like a strong following with, you know, some specific art collectors. We pitched him in March of last year to try and get him on the platform. Took us seven or eight months to convince him of like, you know, just following up repeatedly being like, "Hey, this is the future. This is really, really cool." And then he released his work. One of his pieces sold for $30,000 on the secondary market. He's about to come back next

month with like a huge new release. He's like posting on Instagram. All my friends are sending me his Instagram post where he's like, "I just got a cut of my secondary market digital art sales like NFTTS of the future." And yeah, it's it's really like it's honestly really crazy for for me to witness because like we've been here for for years like pushing this idea, trying to tell people like how cool NFTts are and now it seems like people are finally waking up to that. So yeah, for for Trevor Jones, if things keep going how they are, you know, he'll probably make millions of dollars from his next drop, you know, and like that's probably more than he would make in multiple years in the art world, maybe. I The thing is, sorry, Trevor Andrew. Yeah, Trevor Jones is Trevor Jones is one of the biggest

crypto artists in the world and he's actually dropping tomorrow and that one's gonna be bonkers. Our core servers. Do do you guys remember in uh do you guys remember in 2017 there was like this crypto meme that was like the institutions are coming right like right near the top where we like oh you know Bitcoin hit alltime highs ETH hit all-time highs but it's probably not alltime highs because the institutions are coming and this was a meme but like it really feels like the artists are coming right the you know the celebrities are coming the uh the the creators are coming in a big way to NFTs and what's what's crazy about it is uh I feel like no one's still talking about it in in just general crypto, right? Like we're all very excited about

Bitcoin price and ETH price, but like in our the non-crypto bubbles, everyone's starting to talk about this NFTs and it's like it's spreading. It's it's going viral. Is this the year that the creators come to NFTs and DeFi? Are you are you feeling like we're about to be hit by a tsunami? Dude, it's already happened. Yeah. Okay. I wish I could share some of the names we have like lined up, but I would just say too. You can [laughter] you can if you want. We'll we'll share them. Just go to niftygateway.com and sign up for our mailing list or follow our Twitter and like you'll see them very soon. Like believe me, fair enough.

Um but yeah, like 100%. Like this is absolutely the year. I think the comparisons to the early days of Bitcoin are really poignant. You know, the comparisons to the early days of Facebook, too. Like what we're seeing with NFTs is really remarkable and it is kind of a once in a generation shift and like creators are starting to realize it and the numbers just speak for themselves and I have so many friends from college now who are just like totally into it. Like they never cared about crypto before like but now they're just like going gaga over NFTs and buying all of our drops. I I do think all the other crypto infrastructure has paved the way for NFTs. And this is something we continue to see happening with crypto, right? like first Bitcoin happens and then Ethereum happens and builds on top of that and enables smart

contracts and then DeFi happens and then NFTs happen and every time like the system just gets more and more mature and everything just grows and builds on top of it. So I think that compounding is going to continue and like you know it's exactly like the internet where we're going to see steady growth for the next few decades until blockchains basically rule the world. It's awesome to be a part of I'll say that much. What are some of the cool stats that you guys have seen? So like tell us tell us some things that'll impress us, right? So, like you were throwing around numbers about like big sales being in the millions of dollars. Talk about that. Talk about how many people are in this space. Like I don't know what the metrics are that you're looking at, but tell us some metrics.

I can I can share some metrics and I'm sure Duncan has some too, but Nifty Gateway launched about 11 months ago, right when COVID hit, incidentally, and we've grown around se we've grown around 70% month overmonth every single month since we've launched. We've actually never had a single down month. What does that measure? 70% growth in what? In in total sales on the platform. Okay. Volumes, money, volume. Volume. Yeah. Yeah. And then we've had some months where our total sales went up five or six in a single month over month period. From November to December, our sales November, our sales our total sales were about 1.4 million. In December, they were about um 7 million, I think. And now, like we're actually in in the midst of another like five or 6x

boom. Our total sales for uh February will probably end up around $50 million. Are you kidding me? $50 million? Yeah. Yeah. I kid you not. Put that in context. In March of 2020 when we launched, we had $30,000 in sales. And we were excited about that. We were like, "Oh my god, people are spending $30,000 on NFTts." On the one year anniversary, we It's Yeah. Okay. It's not a win for our poor team. There's only 15 of us trying to keep up with this. So if you want to apply, please come apply to Nifty Gateway because we desperately [laughter] need help. Yes, desperately need it just keeps growing way faster than we ever thought it would. So Okay. So like we we talked about the mainstreaming of it, right, as as being one maybe factor of of growth here. What

else explains the growth here? Is it is it also let me ask you is an element I don't know whether these people are coming uh whether it's kind of crypton natives jumping into NFTs and like crypto natives are feeling pretty good these days with Bitcoin price all-time high ETH price all-time high DeFi summer all of these things so they've got some cash to spend is it more them or is it are we attracting kind of a new crowd outside of crypto some combination both what are the factors that account for a $50 million month honestly you know what it is a big part of it is just the fact that you've never been able to collect digital art before like this is such a concrete problem that that NFTs are are solving for the world that there are so many amazingly talented digital artists out there and

basically what they what they do is they post their work for free on Instagram and then they get hired to do contract work for like advertisements they can never sell their work in a gallery they can never like you can sell a print of a digital artwork and so there was just this like huge group of people out there who are so talented they have a they have a fan base who loves their work on social media but they had ne their fan base couldn't collect it and NFTs just came in and like and fit that like a glove. And I think that's a big like a big aspect of what's happening here. And a lot of the, you know, a lot of the collectors we see, yes, it's a lot of crypto people, but it's a lot of people who are fans of these digital artists

and have been following them for a long time and have been asking for a way to collect their work and all of a sudden here's a way to that that actually works that where you can actually collect digital art. I think that's a huge factor in all of this. And then there's people who are buying it, you know, as an investment and are realizing that like there's this massive shift in the world where value is shifting onto blockchains and crypto networks. And like I said again, we really saw it starting with Bitcoin, but I think that process is only accelerating. And NFTTS are such an incredibly awesome and fun way to get exposure to that that people are just going nuts like investing money. And I I have some friends from college who are like very riskaverse people and like they all texting me about how they're buying like last

night's drop and then yeah like our our poor servers when Grimes releases on Sunday and her artist is fantastic. So I I don't know tomorrow our poor servers. Yeah. And Trevor Jones tomorrow who's one of the biggest crypto artists in the world just you know a super talented artist. So sometimes an idea just fits and like I think the the numbers really speak for themselves. Um, and yeah, like we weren't expecting this. We would have hired more people if we were, but like it's it's just been awesome to be a part of. I also think there's a huge element of like we see a ton of musicians like musicians have they like RAC for example, he can put his music on a streaming platform, but he can't like sell he can't really sell merchandise that includes music. Like we we had

Grammatic on over the weekend and he tokenized four or five full-length songs. Did over 1.5 million in sales just tokenizing those full length songs. That's a year of touring revenue for him um that he made in a 10-minute time period. Yeah. So, I think yeah, it honestly like don't underestimate how much like NFTTS are growing just because this is a really cool new creative medium. Like people can put out creative stuff that they haven't been able to before. Like, you know, imagine being there when the video camera was invented and all of a sudden someone makes a dope movie and you're like, whoa, that was this video camera thing actually might work. That's what we're seeing with NFTTS. like people are making really really cool stuff in this new creative medium that like just could not exist before and that's driving so much adoption.

This is definitely the conversation I want to turn to next because NFTTS have historically been like little digital little tidbits, right? Digital images. Now we've kind of gotten into gifts, but we recently saw our first audio NFTs and then now you guys are bringing up how musicians are using NFTs, right? And we have to remember like this cryptocurrency revolution is it's one part a re revolution in how humans perceive value and it's one part revolution in technology right cryptographic money is a revolution and now we have cryptographic art and we there's and NFTs just like when when Bitcoin was super clunky back in 2010 2011 I expect to that NFTts kind of are matching Bitcoin in their clunkiness at their very beginning and I expect the

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hop off. Yeah, that's a great question. Honestly, digital is like an incredibly incredibly open medium and that's maybe the coolest part about it, right? Like we're really just seeing scratching the surface of what can actually be done, what can be tokenized with NFTTS. Um, you know, art is a way to capture a moment in time and like it always reflects the culture and digital is the most like open format in

history. Does that really well. We're working with comedians and they're, you know, they're going to be like tokenizing some of their main jokes or some of their biggest lines from standup from their standups and like making those collectible. And like that just goes to show like how like really open a concept this is when you start to think about it. Like when you really start to think about what NFTs could be applied to, like what could be made collectible in a digital world, like your your head kind of hurts because it's just such such a large market. It and you know, we're really just scratching the surface. It's like 0.1% of the way there, I'd say.

Yeah. What I like to compare it to is the the invention of the video camera. I mean, before the video camera, people would put on plays, but think about how hard that was to distribute. Like, you had to perform the play each time in front of an audience and like maybe a hundred people could consume that play. The video camera comes along, it creates a new medium, but it also it's a medium that's inherently easier to distribute because you can just like create a copy and send it all over the the country. I we're seeing something really similar with NFTTS in my opinion where like physical art is inherently really difficult to to send to people. You know, the the phys a work of physical art can only be viewed by one person at a time as opposed to an NFT which can be viewed by anybody at a time. And so like

yeah, we're still in the early days of people figuring out how to use that new tool set to make like really really exciting stuff. But you ask people nowadays like hey what are those like what are those cultural things that define your life? Like they're going to talk about their favorite movies. they're going to talk about like ET or the movies that changed their lives. You know, in 50 years like I think we'll see like a similar displacement with digital art where where it'll be like, hey, what are the what are the works of art that really like capture a moment in time? You know, NFTTS are really like moving into that position really quickly. Maybe someone like gave away seven copies of a piece of art when they bought it for only $40 and then like they spend the rest of their life like

talking about it and regretting it or something. [laughter] I could see that future. I don't know. You could see that might happen. I couldn't imagine. Who would do that? [laughter] Who would do that? Who would sell so early? One thing I'm I'm really What makes me so bullish about NFTTS is the amount of surface area that they bring to the table. Um, and uh, we're we're trying to get Andrew Andrew Yang on the podcast. And the way that I think that we do this, hell yes. Is we talk about how much uh, monetization tools, specific Ethereum and specifically NFTTS can bring to the table where all of a sudden we have these tools for these artists that probably wouldn't have been able to make it previously can monetize their own labor. talk talk about like perhaps this renaissance of coming and in both

artistic expression and the ability for artists to be their own bosses to create and produce artistic value without having to sign away their soul and their contracts. Talk talk about this conversation. Yeah, I mean honestly that that's the coolest part. That's like what gets us and the Nifty Gateway team out of bed every morning, you know, like when we see Grammatic post about the fact that he he wasn't able to tour all last year. he did an NFT drop with five unreleased songs and he was able to like make up for all that touring revenue in a single NFT drop. That's the thing that gets us the most excited. Or the like last year, one of our artists, Twisted Vacancy, after three drops with us, he bought a house. He has a family now. He's like living comfortably because he can sell

his artwork on on Nifty Gateway and other platforms. That's like the coolest [ __ ] in the world, frankly. I mean, like these people, you know, and th those are just two examples. There's there's way more artists like this. um people who could never like sell their artwork before. They have a big following. People love them, but like there's just no way for it to be collected. All of a sudden, they're making like literally millions of dollars. And some of them are like achieving financial independence. Some of them are escaping like, you know, bad situations where they're in abusive families. And uh yeah, like that's that's literally the coolest [ __ ] in the world, seeing seeing artists achieve like financial independence.

I agree. And I would add to that something else which is that like the every era of history is usually most impacted by the newest technology, right? Like you read about the late 19th and early 20th century. It's clearly most impacted by industrialization which caused like huge conflict between workers and like very wealthy owners and you know maybe led to World War I or two. Those were just like times of great shift and you know now is certainly no exception. The internet has like influenced the world I think enormously over the last two decades. Um, and we have so much new technology coming down the pipeline. I really look forward to a world where NFTTS are like one of the most important technologies and a true creative renaissance where people are like passionate about collecting where art penetrates at a global scale, you

know, where where these things like really start to impact the world and, you know, I'm very optimistic. I think the 2020s are actually going to be a time of remarkable technological innovation. I don't know if anyone's read Ark Invest theory about all these technologies that are coming down the line, but there's huge adventures in biotech and obviously blockchain and all this this other stuff. So, I'm just really excited about, you know, truly a digital renaissance where our culture shifts and the world becomes optimistic and, you know, it's all captured in this art of the time and like, you know, 100 years from now, you go to the the Reichkes Museum in Holland, you see the paintings of the Dutch masters in the 18th century and like you can see Holland was on top of the world back then. like just from the paintings like because they ruled you know they had the

largest empire and like the largest financial system I I wonder what these digital NFTs will say about our time like 300 years from now in the internet but and it's just really cool to think about truly impacting the world at scale and artists having such a large impact so I don't know we'll see what happens but it's really exciting to be a part of Duncan I know you have to go in a minute Griffin if you have some time to to hang around we'd love to ask you a couple more questions but maybe Duncan uh you you could just answer this last question for us. So, uh, re real quick, Cuban, we asked him how how what's the size of the NFT market. Uh, he said 100 billion or so, and he gave that a time horizon. I have a feeling you guys might be a bit

more bullish. How big could this NFT thing get? Well, people spend about $60 billion a year on on physical art. I think what we've already seen are early signs of like digital artists because like NFTTS are just so much easier to to move and send. like people are going to spend more money on them. They're essentially like easier to trade. The same way like people spend way more money on movies than plays just because it's so much harder to produce plays. So I think on art alone we'll see a a larger amount of money spent on NFTts than physical art. Um trillion. And then I think it's like days.

What I what I like to say is like you know we we started Nifty Gateway very much as like a company that was grounded in a specific point in time for the NFT industry. It was always supposed to be a gateway. That's that's why it's called Nifty Gateway. But like you can never start Airbnb in 1994 because people just had no idea what the the internet was. Once we penetrate NFTTS with like digital art, with NBA Top Shots, with a few other use cases, then the fun really starts where it's like, okay, why are we sending people Christmas cards? Like we could just commission an NFT and send them that. Like why am I like I could commission an NFT as a Valentine's Day gift for my girlfriend and bam, there's 10,000 commission artists. You know, that's like a modern day version of Cameo. So once once these first few use

cases really hit then like then the sky's is the limit and who knows what's going to happen. And then that doesn't even get into like Snapchat adding NFT filters you know there's like there's these are like or video game items. I mean it's like yeah really like the potential is unlimited and yeah again like we started nifty gateway it's supposed to be a gateway. It's like very much grounded in this philosophy of like people have to understand a single use case of NFTs and then all of a sudden it'll be like people don't send Christmas cards anymore. They just send NFTs. And that's that's my final thought.

I did not think about that use case at all. That is absolutely [laughter] face melting. Duncan, thank you so much for for being with us on the the state of the nation and and just cheers. Thanks for being part of the conversation. Thanks guys. Bye. And of course, we're sticking around with Griffin. So Griffin, I kind of want to more minutes. Yeah. Cool. And and I think this is going to be a final a great final piece of the conversation to to end on is I want to ask about uh what is your perception as to the role of NFTTS in the bull market? Right, we're quote unquote in a bull market. Uh today doesn't look like it. We're a little bit down, but over the grand scheme [laughter] of things, I think we're going to be in a bull market. What role does NFTs do NFTs play in this bull

market? Yeah, that's that's a great question. Um my main answer would be I don't know. I think we're gonna find out. But I think NFTs are really, really compelling. And when I was talking to Justin Blau, the DJ who's very into NFTs, he thinks a lot of the reason there is such a bull market is that everybody like doesn't want to hold on to to the dollar, which I I do think there's a lot a lot of truth to that. And it's really interesting. I I don't know. I I sometimes wonder if official measures of inflation are doing a bad job truly measuring how much inflation is happening because there's huge inflation across all sorts of like elements of life and everything certainly feels more expensive and I I think it's a large reason why people are fleeing to these safe haven assets. Um but I I think

NFTts play an incredibly important role because they're like unique stores of value the same way that art is. They're just like 10,000 times better than art at being a store of value, right? The default with a piece of art is that like the provenence is almost impossible to like actually certify. Like I was talking with someone in the art world and all the committees that formed to certify artworks by Andy Warhol had to break up because they kept getting sued because Andy Warhol's artworks are like prints of Campbell soup cans on paper and they're so easy to fake. So like it was so easy to fake them and like the committees that tried to like actually authenticate them just literally couldn't do it. Um so NFTTS it's the opposite. like the authenticity is the default and that actually makes them an incredibly good store of value which

drives the prices really high in like counterintuitive ways. People always see the prices that NFTs are going for and like it seems strange at first but when you think about it on like that systems level they serve that function very well. It actually kind of starts to make a lot of sense because authenticity is what stores value in art and NFTs have perfect authenticity by default. Um, and yeah, and then the other thing I would say is NFTTS are also a great way to like take some gains and flex and like buy something amazing and people are really starting to do that. And you know, it's just like it's honestly so fun. I I would caution people against getting started because it's just seriously addicting and you spend money like you didn't think you were capable of spending money. And it's happened to a lot of my friends actually. Like I

kind of worry about some of the financial decisions they made, but you know, they're all doing pretty well now. So Griffin is an NFT dealer it sounds like. And watch out. This could be the gateway drug into NFTs into crypto. Hey Griffin, I I know you've got to run, but we left one thread hanging. And I just the TLDDR for this because we don't have time to get into a technical discussion, but you said uh you could do nifty gateways issue NFTs 1% of the gas fee. Uh you know, make it more efficient. How are you doing scaling? Is L2 involved? Are you guys going to solve this? Can you do this in like 30 seconds or less? give us a quick explanation and then come back when we talk about layer 2 from a technical perspective.

Yes, absolutely. Happy to come back and talk about this anytime. It's too bad Duncan left because he knows more about it than I do. But um long story short, we're switching our minting method. So I I think the new standard is called EIP2309 and it was pioneered by another NFT platform named Cargo. And we're able to get away with minting all of the editions with one single blockchain transaction instead of right now every single NFT is minted with its own transaction. But right now, like if we sell like 2,000 open editions, we'll be able to do all of that with only a single transaction on Ethereum. And I I wish I understood the technical details better, but Duncan has always been the one in the weeds coding and solidity.

So, he would know much better than I do. As far as L2 goes, I think L2 has a lot of, you know, it it's definitely the future, but Nifty Gateway itself is centralized. You know, we're a centralized NFT exchange the same way Coinbase and Gemini are. And like that for us serves most of the purposes of L2. You know, anyone can send an NFT to anyone else on Nifty Gateway for free. Anyone can put it up for sale, you know, with no fees because all of that's happening offchain. And I I I really think the future of Ethereum is like some sort of hybrid like that. Everything that's onchain needs to be onchain and then everything that doesn't need to be on chain isn't. And L2s are also going to get more much more advanced. And by the way, the centralized approach, not everyone is a

fan of it, but you know, our thing is always like we give you the option of custodying your NFTs if you want. You can custody them with us and like trade them on our marketplace or you can custody them yourself. It's about giving you a choice. So that that's how we see it. And plus there's so much other infrastructure that you guys shouldn't be responsible for building that you guys can tap into once it is built, right? decentralized storage, you know, L2 technologies. Uh, these are not these are not NFT centric platforms. Somebody else should build those things. When they're ready, you can tap into those. And I do believe that like the NFT platforms that win are the ones that do um give the strongest assurances about the uh the redeemability or the link between the token and the art. Uh, and

you know, that requires some sort of decentralization and decentralized storage. Um, but there's no reason why we need to wait for those things to come about. Like, let's get these these this NFT revolution underway and it's already underway. Um, so, so thank you for what you have built with NFT Gateway and thank you for pioneering this conversation into the mainstream. Cheers, guys. Thanks for having me. This was a blast. I hope to be back soon. Once we hit our first $500 million month, I'll come back. So, all right. So, we'll This should be April. Yeah. Right. [laughter] Our poor team, the poor engineers. Oh, whatever.

Awesome. Well, guys, this has been Yeah, fantastic. You guys are doing great work. Thanks for keeping us up to speed on this. It's happening faster than I think uh any of us in maybe bank list thought it would, and this is definitely an exciting year for NFTs. So, we've just had Griffin and Duncan on from Nifty Gateway. Guys, action items. You can check out Nifty Gateway and what they're doing. Uh check out some of the artists. We'll include some links in the show notes uh of this um risks and disclaimers. We should say NFTs are risky. the valuation of them is anyway. So is ETH. So is crypto. All of DeFi is.

You could lose what you put in. But we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But thanks for joining us on the bank list journey. One last thing I forgot. Uh Nifty Gateway is a wholly owned subsidiary I believe of of Gemini. Gemini is also a sponsor. It's not why we had them on. We had them on because Nifty Gateway is awesome and NFTTS are dope. But just wanted to disclaim that. Guys, thanks a lot for joining us on another State of the Nation. Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Banklist HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcast, and community

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